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any reason to have a regular bard in Black Pits?

SirBaldurSirBaldur Member Posts: 80
in Baldur's Gate: Enhanced Edition
I'm about to roll an all-bard party into the black pits. But i can't think of any reason i would take a regular bard. Maybe i'm missing something?

Similarly, only 1 skald and 1 jester would be useful. So seems it should be 4 blades, 1 skald, 1 jester?

Comments

  • elminsterelminster Member, Developer Posts: 16,317
    Sounds good :)
  • abacusabacus Member Posts: 1,307
    The only reason I can think of is to have him/her as your dedicated spellcaster... 3 blades whack away, your duet sing their merry tune and the vanilla bard throws out debuffs & crowd control.
  • artificial_sunlightartificial_sunlight Member Posts: 601
    And what is the band name? :P
    Or are you more into D12, but that would take 6 jesters :P

    Ontopic:

    A normal Bard as a spellcaster is a good idea, and the song can come in handy somtimes.
  • SirBaldurSirBaldur Member Posts: 80
    is there some advantage to having a normal bard spellcast vs a blade? I went with 4 blades, expecting one to do more casting than the others. I thought she would cast as well as a normal, but go hand-to-hand better as a blade if it came down to that.
  • SirBaldurSirBaldur Member Posts: 80
    my all girls band of bards is on the shelf due to some bugs.
    http://forum.baldursgate.com/discussion/35193/2-bugs-with-dead-people-make-jester-nearly-unusable?new=1

    i'm going to go with an all girls pack of thieves next.
  • OlvynChuruOlvynChuru Member Posts: 3,079
    Go with five skalds plus a dart-throwing blade. WIth Offensive Spin and five skald songs the blade has 4 APR and deals 15 damage per hit. This is for the Black Pits 1 of course. In the second game, all the skalds can cast Mislead, and the copies can sing the skald song too, which will grant +4 bonuses at this point. So, the blade ends up dealing 45 damage per hit.
  • SirBaldurSirBaldur Member Posts: 80
    edited October 2014
    interesting - i didn't know that skald songs stack! I'm not sure one dart thrower is going to be enough firepower, in terms of numbers of enemies that need to be hit or things get out of hand quickly. (Or is this a joke and i am being gullible??? :) )
  • abacusabacus Member Posts: 1,307
    edited October 2014
    SirBaldur said:

    is there some advantage to having a normal bard spellcast vs a blade? I went with 4 blades, expecting one to do more casting than the others. I thought she would cast as well as a normal, but go hand-to-hand better as a blade if it came down to that.

    There's no actual advantage... It just represents a way to get the vanilla Bard in if you were so inclined.
    Also, it means you can pump his/her intelligence to 18 without worrying that you're gimping the physical scores of a Blade.

    Edit:
    You might as well max out Charisma too for store discounts.
  • The_Potty_1The_Potty_1 Member Posts: 436
    I ran an all-bard group through the start of BG2, but they were so overpowered that I got bored and stopped :D

    I took two Blades (PC & Haer'dalis), a Skald (Korgan - level1npc mod), a Jester (Kido - mod for the wicked), and two vanilla bards (Keto mod & Nalia - romance & level1npc mod). Note I found Kido a bit too evil for my taste, his sidequest is super creepy.

    Anyway, the Blades are the damage dealers, the Skald boosts the blades damage output, the Jester confuses the enemies, and the vanilla bards boosted everyones saving throws. Note that I was using the excellent Rogue rebalancing mod, which fixed some of the bugs with bard song in the original BG2, and gave them kit-specific HLA bard songs. In vanilla BG2, the bard song HLA gives all bards the same song, which effectively destroys your tactics.

    As far as my tactics went, the three most important spells were stoneskin, greater malison, and glitterdust. Everyone had those spells memorised, although the blades maxed out stoneskins at the expense of malison. I would lead in with a malison which dropped their saving throws, followed with a glitterdust, which causes blindness and therefore drops their saves further, at which point the Jester song probably took them out, and if it didn't, I still had four casters with clean auras, so I could start dropping offensive spells, which they had a pretty poor chance of making their saves against. Anything still standing got offensive spins from both sides.

    Obviously much of this doesn't apply to BG1:EE, so you should probably check what each bard song actually does in EE. I mean really check. Starrt a multiplayer game, roll one of each bard type up, make them sing, and look at the stats of the others in the group. However, in answer to your question, it appears that vanilla bards in BG:EE only remove fear effects, so perhaps only take one, and replace the other with either a Skald or Blade.
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