Mage/Thief vs. Bard

PugPug

I guess in the short term, the bard casts at a higher caster level, owing to a faster XP table. And the Blade kit's offensive and defensive spin abilities are nice. They get a horrible song ability, and they're really good at identifying items for free and pickpocketing, though it can't be used to shoplift.

But the M/T gets full thief skills, can backstab, can eventually cast level 9 spells, can wear robes, and gets mage and thief HLAs (high-level abilities).

Though to be fair, the bard could eventually wear robes with Use Any Item. And he gets free 100 skill in Set Snare upon selecting a trap HLA.

Quartz

A Bard is better at fighting than a Mage/Thief.

That said, I do love me a good Mage/Thief.

MurrayConfederacy

In BG1 Bard is a better spellcaster as it reaches a higher level than mage, especially mage /theif and hence can cast higher level spells.

ryuken87

MurrayConfederacy said:

In BG1 Bard is a better spellcaster as it reaches a higher level than mage, especially mage /theif and hence can cast higher level spells.

Errr no they don't. A bard reaches a higher caster level, meaning spells which improve per level are more effective, but they don't get more spells.

Level 10 bard: 3/3/2/1
Level 7 mage: 4/3/2/1
Level 7 illusionist: 5/4/3/2

Khrondor

I feel in BG 1, a mage/thief would be better. No bard armour sucks. The Robes of the XXXarchmage are great. I think a bard can use a few more weapons, but none that matter too much. Also the Bard song is worthless IMO, whos gonna stand there and sing when you can launch spells or use your weapon. If you could play a song and still do other stuff the nthat would be different.

ZanathKariashi

Err...T/M will destroy a bard....BS alone (reaches x4) is heads above the damage a bard can deal in melee (A 10 bard has a 1 thac0 advantage over an 8 thief, but the T/M will be attacking from stealth for a +3 to hit gain and A BUNCH more damage). And the thief half has MUCH better skills...better stats too, since they don't have a huge honking min charisma to work around.

Sure the bards spells hit a bit harder...but...that's it...and really..a X4 PMSO BS can easily hit 114+ (and that's NOT a crit) damage...that's almost double a lvl 10 skull trap...and you can do it repeatedly, every....4-5 seconds for....I don't know.. 4 turns or so?

The gnome T/M has a major advantage here due to superior spell capacity, and an excellent JoAT racial thief spread.

Chow

If only the bard got all the higher level songs from Icewind Dale... War Chant of Sith is murder.

As it stands, in BG1 bards are pretty useless. I only ever keep one around for their high Lore, and even that I'm almost certain has been reduced in Enhanced Edition.

ZanathKariashi

IWD was weird, since bards also got spell casting up to 8th level.....I have NO idea where that came from...even the 2nd ed handbook only shows them getting up to 6th level spells, and no funky op songs.

Chow

Well, they had to give bards something to replace all the other stuff they lost: a vast majority of bard abilities from tabletop would be completely pointless to have in the games, so what was left in BG or IWD was very little.

IchigoRXC

By higher level spells, I believe he means spells to a higher level. Spells that scale with level are doubled for the purposes of bards I believe. Level 10 bard = level 20 dispel.

szb

For those who say that spells only scaling up to lvl20 makes the bard less usefull, don't forget that you'll be under lvl20 for about 90% of the whole game so thats a nice advantage imo.

Pantalion

Whilst by AD&D rules the Mage/Thief *can* select kits to even further obviate the difference, in BG it's quite a bit closer.

The Bard, as of BG1's cap, does, on average, an additional 10.5 damage per Skull Trap compared to the Mage/Thief, has a 1 lower THAC0 and two levels more HP, which are higher, and rolled.

The Mage/Thief has mostly better saves, thanks to Mage save progression.

Both have 1 attack per round. Neither gets fighter benefits from specialisation (though a Blade *can* specialise for an extra +1 to hit or so), both have Thief THAC0 and HP progression, and the same number of proficiencies (meaning that even though the Bard could specialise, they'll have a narrower range of possible weapons they are proficient with; a Blade could hit 2 pips in Two Weapon Fighting, and specialise in Scimitars, but that means they aren't proficient at all with bows.

So at low levels, the actual difference between the two is marginal, at high levels it evens out to the same THAC0 cap anyway.

Overall, the Mage/Thief levels slower but has far, far more utility at more things in the medium long term (though Backstab + Thief Skills + Set Snare sort of crushes the bard short term, level 6 spells not-withstanding).

But you're comparing wrongly here, the Bard should *also* be compared to Fighter/Mage/Thief.

At level 6/6/7, an FMT misses level 4 spells. It has a THAC0 of 15, 1 better than the Bard, a higher average HP (well, sort of, 10D6 versus 6D10, but FMT benefits from Fighter level Constitution), a mix of better and worse saves, an x3 Backstab multiplier, 2 more proficiency points, better thief skills (just about enough to max two sets of thief skills with an Elf FMT), set snare, can equip robes, can equip any weapon, can specialise and gains the extra 1/2 attack for doing so.

Whilst it takes approximately thrice as long for the F/M/T to gain their first levels, overall the F/M/T is gaining so much more per level, they're drastically superior overall in every sense except spellcasting, where they lag 14 damage behind per Skulltrap and 4 levels worth of duration.

There are of course a number of spells where spell level isn't a major issue, but it is pretty much the only point in the bard's favour.

Once you get into BGII, the difference exacerbates. At the SOA cap of 2.95m, F/M/T is: 11/12/14, the Bard is level 23. That's level 20 power spells, levels 1-6, compared to a smaller number of level 12 power level spells, levels 1-6.

On the plus side for the F/M/T, in exchange for weaker spells, they enjoy an x5 Backstab multiplier, and enough points to max out three or four thief abilities.

They have the same THAC0, and the same number of proficiencies, but the F/M/T gets 1.5 base attacks per round, 2 with specialisation. Saves are F/M/T's 7/7/8/8/8 versus Bard's capped 8/4/7/11/5, being better against Wands, Polymorph and Spells than the F/M/T, worse against Death and Breath.

Once you pass the 3,000,000 cap with ToB of course, everything changes. The F/M/T picks up to 18/17/22, giving them another maxed out thief skill, level 8 spells with a Caster Level of 17, and a THAC0 of 3, 2 *fewer* proficiencies than the Bard, 2.5 Attacks per round, 3/4/4/4/5 saves (the Bard never improves on their level 23 saves from SoA), and four more HLAs than the Bard. The comparison breaks down, and F/M/T becomes HLA godzilla Critical Backstab Striking with Timestop and Improved Haste.


If you try the same comparison for M/Ts, the M/T is level 13/16 for SoA, getting level 7 spells already, finishing with level 20 spell-casting and level 9 spells in ToB, with 3 more HLAs, the same THAC0 (before specialisation), and superior Thievery overall.

So as you can see, Bards are the trade-off between F/M/Ts and M/Ts. They exchange Fighter and Thief abilities for raw levels, a fairly key component in powerful spellcasting. It's a fairly neck-and-neck thing for all of non-ToB BG.

So the Bard is the Jack of all Trades of the Jacks of all Trades; mind bogglingly average.

PugPug

@Pantalion

That really illustrates how ridiculous multi and dual classing is in 2e. The first 10 levels in any class are basically free when you start talking about epic-level characters, and they provide so much. Anomen, despite having 9 levels of fighter, can pop a lich with Turn Undead at high levels.

Compare that to versions 3.0/3.5, where they throw out the class XP tables and go by character level exclusively. A fighter 1/mage 1/rogue 1 needs the same amount of XP to level to 4 as a fighter 3. They swung the pendulum way too far in the other direction, in my opinion, at least for non-warriors. And didn't it go even farther in 4e? Like, all you can get is a certain trait from another class, or something?

TJ_Hooker

IchigoRXC said:

By higher level spells, I believe he means spells to a higher level. Spells that scale with level are doubled for the purposes of bards I believe. Level 10 bard = level 20 dispel.

I'm pretty sure that's not the case. The idea behind the statement that bards cast at a higher level comes from the fact that they level up way faster that mages. So for a mage and a bard with the same amount of xp, the bard will be a level or 2 higher, so any spell that the bard casts that scales with level will be more effective.