Skald or blade and other questions

Cvijeta

Is there any advantages of skald over blade?
Should I max dex or str on my kitted bard?

ThacoBell

Opinions vary of course, but I think the Skald has the best Bard song before you unlock the epic bard song HLA. The Blade is the best choice if you want to mix it up in melee. Max dex on any character you build, its important for everyone. If your bard is going into melee, you will want to max their str too.

jsaving

For personal melee DPS, blades are the best bard kit, though I'd say they are outclassed both melee-wise and spell-wise by dualed fighter/mages. Since blades have low hit points yet can't benefit from a 17+ CON, you want to set their CON to 16 and max DEX to give them a better AC. Maxing strength doesn't hurt either but is less important for blades because they're limited to 18 strength, as opposed to a fighter who could have 18/00 or a half-orc who could start with 19.

Son_of_Imoen

jsaving said:

Maxing strength doesn't hurt either but is less important for blades because they're limited to 18 strength, as opposed to a fighter who could have 18/00 or a half-orc who could start with 19.

Though, if you create a Blade with 18 STR and give hime the tome of STR, he gets massive dmg and Thac0 boosts as it'll increase it's STR to 19 straight away.

Son_of_Imoen

By the way, Blades and Skalds play a whole lot different. Blades take a lot of micromanagement, buffing properly, using either offensive spin or defensive spin at the right moment while the Skald can just hang out in the back and use his song, being a supporter and giving a +2 bonus to the rest of the party without being involved in the fight himself as he's singing. So the difference in playstyle is huge and in my opinion a more important decision that it's effectiveness.

Skatan

Agree with the above, I don't consider Skald and Blade to be in any way interchangable. They are almost like two different classes when you think about how to play them.

Personally I cannot play a Skald in BG since they are to inactive for my liking. I only ever use them in IWD. had their existed a Skald NPC, I would have used it.

darkmoon500

I'd choose a different class altogether, has to be the weakest useless class ever, only thing worse is a kensai, or kensai/mage, I mean if u want a challenge u got it with those classes, but your gonna get stuck and die, unless u cheat and get robe of vecna or dak'kons sword, like others do

TheArtisan

darkmoon500 said:

I'd choose a different class altogether, has to be the weakest useless class ever, only thing worse is a kensai, or kensai/mage, I mean if u want a challenge u got it with those classes, but your gonna get stuck and die, unless u cheat and get robe of vecna or dak'kons sword, like others do

The best offensive self buff and the best AC self buff in the game, 3 dual-wielding points, fast leveling, Enhanced Bard Song, Use Any Item, Spike Traps and you're saying it's the weakest most useless class?

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Artona

I'd argue with calling kensai or kensage weak.

TheArtisan

The Kensai/Kensage is overrated but not weak. The Abjurer is weak. The Beast Master is pretty weak. There's the difference.

Actually I'd even go the whole way and say that the kensage has crossed the line twice into underrated considering how often vets like to subtly mock how cliche the build is.

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unavailable

Neither. I consider the IWD bard mod for BG an essential mod, both for RP and gameplay purposes.

The f/m and kensai mage make the blade pretty redundant.

The Skald is good alternative to plain old bard, but I like that the bard has so many more songs and can be a pretty good heal bot with its eleventh level song healing everyone for 2hp/6 seconds.

TheArtisan

You get 3 APR from dual-wielding with Offensive Spin.

You get massive stat rolls.

You get a 10 AC buff.

You get more hit points than the F/M from faster leveling.

You get better spell scaling.

You don't have to dual-class.

You don't have to multi-class.

You don't have to specialize.

You get Pick Pockets.

You get Spike Traps.

You get Time Traps.

You get to abuse any item in the game in otherwise impossible ways.

The Blade is far from redundant.

brunardo

heavy melee party use a skald, if not blade probably better way to go to help as semi front liner