Tell me about bards ...
Sojourner
Member Posts: 42
As I have never played one and am now determined to turn Imoen into one. Unfortunately I'm not sure what a bard is supposed to have access to.
I've been trying to use EE Keeper to modify various NPCs - such as turning Minsc into one or the other of a berserker or a ranger - as a berserker he keeps 2 handed sword but switches fighting style to 2 handed sword instead of 2 handed fighting, as ranger he keeps 2 handed fighting but loses the sword. Sometimes I add a special ability - like a gift from the gods in compensation for whatever great service (I imagine) he did that resulted in his head injury and permanent loss of mental function. Protection from Evil is what I usually give him as an innate ability.
I turned Viconia to chaotic neutral solely because as a female player I don't have access to the "romance" module that lets you turn/save her (though I have hopes for coopting that somehow to a "just friends" sort of thing instead of romance/sex). Didn't change a thing else about her.
I have used EE Keeper to reduce Alora's level after I cheat her into the early game because she shows up as a L4 thief (no wonder she was so awesome, LOL!)
All of these worked fine, characters seem to continue on their paths as expected.
But trying to turn Imoen into a bard has not been working out so well, and I'm not sure how much of that may be a lack of support in EE Keeper for handling the thief abilities or to me not knowing what abilities a bard can actually have.
What I WANT is a bard who puts all her points into the non-stealing thief abilities such as Find Traps, Detect Illusions, and Set Traps primarily, with Move Silently and Hide in Shadows in only a minor way if at all, and ABSOLUTELY NO investment in either Open Lock or Pick Pocket.
All the stealy-stabby sorts of things that absolutely can't be skipped would be done by either Coran or Alora, whichever one I have in the current party. Coran, stealy-stabby, but Alora, I would only use for stealy things. Happy little halflings shouldn't go about backstabbing innocent monsters joyfully.
I have repeatedly read stuff that talks about adding points to (some bard)'s find traps or detect illusion, and then I've found other references that say bards ONLY have pickpocketing.
So give me the straight skinny - WHICH thief skills does the bard have access to?
And what's going on in EE Keeper that it can't seem to touch the actual thief abilities of even a straight-vanilla thief from the "Thief" tab? When I set each category (such as pick pocket) to a certain value on that tab, the change does not appear on the character when the save game is loaded back up. In fact sometimes it changes some OTHER thief ability altogether. In the meantime if you load the changed save game back into EE Keeper, it still shows the values you put in those fields, even though the game doesn't seem to see them...
I've been trying to use EE Keeper to modify various NPCs - such as turning Minsc into one or the other of a berserker or a ranger - as a berserker he keeps 2 handed sword but switches fighting style to 2 handed sword instead of 2 handed fighting, as ranger he keeps 2 handed fighting but loses the sword. Sometimes I add a special ability - like a gift from the gods in compensation for whatever great service (I imagine) he did that resulted in his head injury and permanent loss of mental function. Protection from Evil is what I usually give him as an innate ability.
I turned Viconia to chaotic neutral solely because as a female player I don't have access to the "romance" module that lets you turn/save her (though I have hopes for coopting that somehow to a "just friends" sort of thing instead of romance/sex). Didn't change a thing else about her.
I have used EE Keeper to reduce Alora's level after I cheat her into the early game because she shows up as a L4 thief (no wonder she was so awesome, LOL!)
All of these worked fine, characters seem to continue on their paths as expected.
But trying to turn Imoen into a bard has not been working out so well, and I'm not sure how much of that may be a lack of support in EE Keeper for handling the thief abilities or to me not knowing what abilities a bard can actually have.
What I WANT is a bard who puts all her points into the non-stealing thief abilities such as Find Traps, Detect Illusions, and Set Traps primarily, with Move Silently and Hide in Shadows in only a minor way if at all, and ABSOLUTELY NO investment in either Open Lock or Pick Pocket.
All the stealy-stabby sorts of things that absolutely can't be skipped would be done by either Coran or Alora, whichever one I have in the current party. Coran, stealy-stabby, but Alora, I would only use for stealy things. Happy little halflings shouldn't go about backstabbing innocent monsters joyfully.
I have repeatedly read stuff that talks about adding points to (some bard)'s find traps or detect illusion, and then I've found other references that say bards ONLY have pickpocketing.
So give me the straight skinny - WHICH thief skills does the bard have access to?
And what's going on in EE Keeper that it can't seem to touch the actual thief abilities of even a straight-vanilla thief from the "Thief" tab? When I set each category (such as pick pocket) to a certain value on that tab, the change does not appear on the character when the save game is loaded back up. In fact sometimes it changes some OTHER thief ability altogether. In the meantime if you load the changed save game back into EE Keeper, it still shows the values you put in those fields, even though the game doesn't seem to see them...
1
Comments
(I say that because its the one thief skill that I never use)
more thief skills
more spells
more saving throwes because he is gnome
but bards are cool for other reasons like being bard
Secondly, the bard is more a fighter/mage than a thief. His most important features include an ability to cast arcane spells starting at 2nd level, use practically any item (wands, potions and scrolls included) except armor heavier than chain mail and shields larger than buckler. The bard also has a very high lore (to identify items). A kitted bard (a Jester an a Skald) has a useful song.
Also, the bard levels up very fast so that you can use spells effectively (especially, MM, Chromatic Orb, Skull Trap).
You'd better take a look here: http://playithardcore.com/pihwiki/index.php?title=Baldur's_Gate:_Classes_and_Kits#Bard_Kits
Much later, in ToB the bard will have an access to Trap HLAs - he'll be able to set these traps with 100% rate and no need to put any points into this skill.
Personally, I find using a kitted bard fun and interesting (I prefer a Jester or a Blade).
There've been some great discussions here: http://forum.baldursgate.com/discussion/14881/bard-vs-fighter-mage , http://forum.baldursgate.com/discussion/5830/bard-vs-f-m-t-place-your-bets , http://forum.baldursgate.com/discussion/14758/party-with-bard-jester-and-sorcerer-but-no-mage-viable and http://forum.baldursgate.com/discussion/10434/mage-thief-vs-bard .
Also this thread can be intersting: http://forum.baldursgate.com/discussion/14006/is-pickpocketing-worth-it
In BG2 you can get infinite money and experience by stealing scrolls. You can get a ring of regeneration from Ribald which will let your fighter gain full health everytime you rest without spells cast. You can in Ribalds shop steal scrolls from the lady at the back (100% succes with 140 pickpocket) and you can easily get over 100 000 experience from learning them. The rest of the scrolls you can take to the black market thief in waukeens promenade and sell them to him. Then you can steal them from him again and sell them back. If you're alright with this obviouse fault in the game engine then you can easily get 200 000 gold at the start of the game at waukeens promenade.
So I'm into the realm of a mod kit then?
Because I don't want a "fighter mage" or a "fighter thief" or any sort of thieving at all. A bard shouldn't be primarily a fighter at all, nor even (IMNSHO) secondarily.
It's sort of like the argument people make against having some proficiency in scimitars/curved swords just because you have proficiency in some other type of sword. The argument goes that because you spend years developing proficiency in say longswords, you'd have to spend more years developing similar proficiencies in scimitars - you can't just transfer the experience/knowledge of using long swords to a curved scimitar, which is a slashing weapon where the long sword, while it also has considerable utility as a slashing weapon, also performs very well in blocking/parrying and thrusting, and, to a lesser extent compared to the great sword, also serves somewhat as a 4 to 5 foot long club in some respects - a blow from the flat of a longsword will definitely challenge the target's balance. Scimitars don't do any of the last 3 jobs nearly so well and excel as a slashing/cutting weapon, the curved blade helping to ensure that the blade comes free more easily.
So the techniques for using them are totally different and both take years to develop more than a passing proficiency. Sure, at lower levels familiarity with one can help to learn the other - but it can also interfere.
Similarly, it's silly to assume that someone who has either invested years in learning to be a warrior or years learning to play an instrument and write/sing/perform music or other entertainments is then going to turn around and operate as anything but a second class musician (in the case of the primary warrior) or second or even THIRD class warrior (in the case of the entertainer/musician)
I simply don't buy the idea of "blades" or any other fighter/mage flavor of the bard. If you have fun playing them, more power to you - but a REAL bard would never risk his/her hands to the law by indulging in petty thievery and pick-pocketing.
The whole "Blade" thing, and thinking of bards in general as primarily fighters, just isn't sensible. Where charisma OUGHT to be a major factor in being a bard, instead people are all over trying to pump them up like Arnold Schwarzzeneger. (Or however you spell that). Conan wasn't a bard, and your average bard shouldn't be built like Conan.
(That's Conan the Barbarian - actually Conan O'Brien pretty much IS my idea of an actual Bard, of the Jester sort, LOL!)
What *I* want is an actual bard whose proficiency centers around cunning and the manipulations of magical energies that come from his/her proficiency in music - eg lasting bard song, healing song, ranged weapons (since most bards won't have the physique or the time to train as an effective melee warrior). His/her abilities should be innate, arising as sequlae to his/her training in music, not related to wizardry or religion. He/she isn't a wizard or a cleric, and bardic magic should be a separate category from either. The bard should act primarily from a distance and in a supportive capacity rather than as a tank.
Let me rephrase slightly - MY bard should act that way. Yours doesn't have to.
Well there you go. It'll take a mod, apparently. I'm not sure I'm up to that these days.
In any case, that's the death knell for Imoen. I can't stand her thief persona and I don't buy her as any sort of a mage. A bard I could buy - an HONEST bard, that is. That made sense. But, it is not to be.
Thanks for the reply.
And my guess is that after 15 years, if there were really much interest in an honest bard, someone would already have modded one.
Most folks seem to like to play this game as power-gamers, despite all the hoo-hah about "WoWers ruining the game" etc. Hence, "blades" which are a sort of super-warrior and have very little to do with actually being a bard at all.
That also explains why "Bard song" is so limited and sort of generally not very interesting, never develops, never does anything but affect somebody's morale.
"Song and Silence" modifies all the thief abilities for several different flavors of thief/bard. Including -20% to pickpockets for "Burglars".
Maybe you can't cut it off altogether - but you CAN handicap things so some abilities get buffs and others get nerfed.
EDIT:
OOOPS - Looks like I missed something - at least one of the kits in Song and Silence totally disables setting traps, also backstabbing in several instances. So at least SOME abilities CAN be cut off in a mod.
(I would download it in a trice)
This is for bg2. Not converted to BG:EE as of yet, AFAIK.
http://www.shsforums.net/topic/39299-bard-song-switching-icewind-mode-for-bg2-v21/
A blade can be an excellent fighter, not because he is a muscle-bound warrior like Conan, or have the skill of a great swordsman, but because they get special, flashy abilities that can augment their skills well and they can cast all the useful mage spells. A powerful blade is a showy warrior who makes himself look like a lot stronger than he actually is, because he is charismatic and showy, and knows how to capture an audience. In combat, it helps as he can distract the enemy to gain his various spin bonuses.
Blades in 2e are rogues, and kin to thieves, in that 'they think the world owes them a living', (2e PHB says so) Thieves use their stealth/cunning and skills to take what they think rightly are theirs. If succesful they can be rather notorious and infamous. Bards are more people-centered, and are pursuers of art and knowledge, they too want to earn their living from the common folk, but they do gain the admiration of people instead of fear and hatred like the thief. (most of the time, anyway)
There is a thief kit spesificaly designed for Imoen, in BGT game installs. Charmin rogue is the kits name and with it Imoen gains some minor spell casting as speical abilities, and you can determine her focus in thieving skills yourself to suit the mental image you have. There is Viconia friendship mod for the female pcs. For bg2, ofcourse.
http://www.spellholdstudios.net/ie/viconia
I haven't played a bard in like, EVER, so I don't really know how they work - in fact I've never played a thief either because I don't like thieves. So I don't really know how THEY work either.
(I've played Imoen a lot, but I always ignore her thieving skills and pretend like she's not really the slimy little backstabbing thief she really is, LOL!)
As for blades, whenever I see people talking about blades and bard character creation in general, they ALWAYS say that STR must be maxed. And not just STR - you're supposed to max STR, CON, DEX, AND WIS and INT too (to max out lore). Why not have done with it and just CTL-8 while we're at it? LOL!
That's a tank. Possibly everyone who actually plays blades doesn't actually do that, but that's what I've seen bandied about various forums. It has had considerable impact on my perception of the class, perhaps wrongly so. Frankly information has been thin on the ground - hardly anybody seems to play bards. I know I never have, but I suspect for philisophical reasons rather than because of any perception of lack of haxorzness to the class, LOL!
To my mind Imoen pretty much already has good stats for my idea of a bard - not much str, but good DEX and halfway decent WIS/INT. Her CON isn't wonderful either. I think, I forget her exact stats offhand, but a bard that isn't a melee fighter is pretty much up her alley as-is. I'm pretty sure her vanilla stats ad up to like 87 or 88, in that range. So overall lacking in awesomeness for the power gamer but enough raw points to make a good ranged-weapon bard.
I know, most people turn her into a thief/mage, but I HATE thieves and magic users aren't at the top of my list either. For a character I'm supposed to think of as a little sister, she needs to be something besides a thieving little *****, or an untrustworthy snooty magic user, LOL!
No matter how much flash you give her, Imoen would be lousy in melee- she only has like 8 str. I don't know if that allows for dual-wielding anything bigger than knives or shortswords at most, but if it does, it shouldn't. Her HP is pretty bad too - what is it, like 6 starting out? CON is low - well, not high - and she's not a fighter class so she doesn't get that much HP per level even if she maxes it. Just not melee material, no matter how much panache she might get from a blade kit, LOL!
But I'll reconsider the impression I've had of folks running blades. Maybe they're not all power-gaming cheese-meisters, LOL!
@Wisp
What you say makes sense; maybe this is doable after all! Maybe not by me, but doable, LOL! I'd be happy-ish with a bard/jester that has trap setting/disarming skills and nerfed stealing skills. If that can be done by modifying a text file then that certainly sounds like it should work OK. Thanks for the pointer.
Wouldn't give me ALL the characteristics of my ideal Honest Bard, but it'd be a lot closer than anything that currently exists in the game.
Then Imoen could be my cute innocent little musical sister with nary a thieving impulse to shadow her pure little soul, while that creep Coran can handle all the dirty work. He can put all his thieving points to actual thieving, while all Imoen's points can go to constructive things like finding secret doors, seeing through illusions, and setting traps for evil monsters.
Since blade bards are melee-oriented, the most efficient build will have 18 str, yes, with the tome of strength it will be 19 str and will give huge bonuses to blade. A 19 str blade will have +3 to hit and +7 to damage:with increased attacks of offensive spin and dual-wielding, such a blade will wreak terrible havoc! A power-gamer's dream!
If you have difficulty picturing a 18 str bard, remember that pure 18 str is not the epic-muscle bound warrior of immense size, 18 str definitely is not Conan or Sarevok. Fighters have 18/xx strength, which reflects how more powerful and muscular they can be than the other classes. Conan and Sarevok have 18/00 strength, they are massive men, built like a mountain, with bulging, rippling muscles hard as steel. Other men seem tiny and weak when compared to them. They have +3 to hit and +6 to damage.
In contrast, a thief or bard with 18 str has like, +1 to hit +2 to damage. Such characters are muscular and powerful too, but not as overly large and bulging as a 18/00 str warrior. They are more lithe and slim, with less muscle but what they have are very strong and durable.
And when such a bard gets 19 str with a tome, they don't suddenly increase their size or gain bulging, massive biceps and pectorals like Sarevok or Conan. They become stronger than Sarevok's 18/00 (but only a tiny bit sronger) but look pretty much the same. Why? It's magic! ^^
(suddenly pickpocket seems essential to that class)
The closest thing they get to combat bonuses is the automatic maxed two-weapon style at creation, and the ability to make called shots using thrown weapons at no penalty (due to their knife/dart/axe throwing act in circus training).
Other then that, they're flashy performers who attempt to intimidate enemies or inspire allies via their skill at weapon handling and the costumes they wear.
Offensive spin is a flashy and intimidating attack that takes 1 round to wind up, and when striking the chosen enemy, it causes a no-save fear effect if they have fewer HD then the blade (they get a save otherwise), but only works if they haven't damaged the blade in that encounter.
Defensive spin roots them in place and they begin a wild slashing of blades that grants them an AC bonus due to attacks potentially striking the whirling blades, as well forcing enemies striking in melee to save or take damage equal to 1/2 the blade's level (up to the maximum damage + str bonus of their wielded weapon), but any successful enemy attack ends the spin immediately, and it's so tiring it can only be used once per encounter).
Weapon display goes full out circus show badassery with weapon twirling to try and intimidate enemies and inspire allies (+1/-1 Luck respectively, for as long as the display is maintained..but only works once per ecounter, since it's just not so inspiring/intemidating a second time).
Their spell casting is the same progression as a normal bard, but they suffer a -10% chance to learn spells and can never cast spells from wands or directly from scrolls (until level 24 when they unlock UAI and can use all items normally available to mages, which is all the bard version of UAI is supposed to do (the Thief version just allows them to use wands and cast from scrolls up to 6th level with no chance of failure)).
Jester is surely an interesting choice. The class name itself is brilliant! In BG, the jester's song is fun to use. In BG2... well, at least jesters can cast spells! And the said traps are excellent.
All the monsters have their 2nd edition stats and levels, which assumes characters with average scores of around 12-14, 16 or more is ridiculously rare to have even one stat that high, let alone 2, and 3 or 4 is almost unheard of, unless the DM is just running a munchkin game. It's why so many items in 2nd edition Set stats, rather then adding to them.
Power gaming is the worst way in the world to play this game, and you should be ashamed for even suggesting it as THE way to play. It makes the game utterly boring and pointless to play (turning it into Diablo, basically, minus the loot-whoring, since the drops are always the same), and eliminates any reason to replay because your character is still going to be an unstoppable badass, that can do pretty much everything, no matter your class selection.
the game is boring and a waste of time to play if you use power gamed stats, because it eliminates the need to rely on your party to achieve goals. DnD is balanced around a minimum of 4-6 characters, working as a team to achieve a goal.
I think those of us who prefer heavy roleplaying in our D&D can share that and express it without being needlessly confrontational to those who love hack-n-slash powergaming. I'm trying to be really diplomatic here - the way you've posted your opinion contains several veiled and not-so-veiled insults to @chuukogu, so he's likely to come back with some kind of equally insulting counterpoint, then others will chime in, and before you know it, the thread will erupt into a flame war.
And the topic was supposed to be a discussion of different kinds of bards, I think. We've had threads about roleplaying vs. powergaming, and I guess somebody could start a new one, if they want to go around and around about it again.
But maybe we should just talk about bards in this particular thread.
I think OP is a little bit off in his idea of bards being standoffish and wary of a fight in all situations. Surely, rich bards would act like this but the poor bard in any fantasy setting is nought more than a thief that learned that his quick fingers could play an instrument as well as filch people's belongings.
Furthermore, a Skald was fully expected and required to participate in all battles. After all, for the Norse, if a person sat out from battle he was next to worthless- why would they listen to stories from them? As they got older they might not join in battle as much, but Skalds especially were perfectly capable in a fight, as were all Norse men.
I don't find the idea of the Blade very farfetched, either. In classical fantasy music has often accompanied talent with a blade. The idea that nimble fingers dextrously wooing a lady with a song and those same fingers performing lightning quick flourishes with a blade in battle is one tied deeply to the roots of fantasy.
So, while I do agree that some bards might not be monstrous warriors in battle, the idea that they could be nimble but strong fighters doesn't seem too outlandish to me.