Which Bard (NPC) do you prefer?
Arcanjo
Member Posts: 155
Bards,
apparently they can use spells from any school!
learn until level 4 of spells!
has Magic slots: 3 (Level one and two), 2 (Level three) and 1 (Level four).
Song on BG: EE only protects against fear!
I do not know if there are any items that make it hard to have or cast more spells.
Honestly, I do not know if Bardo has any differential that makes it worth being on the team, I leave you with comments, your opinions about it and of course the vote! If so, please explain the reason for the vote.
apparently they can use spells from any school!
learn until level 4 of spells!
has Magic slots: 3 (Level one and two), 2 (Level three) and 1 (Level four).
Song on BG: EE only protects against fear!
I do not know if there are any items that make it hard to have or cast more spells.
Honestly, I do not know if Bardo has any differential that makes it worth being on the team, I leave you with comments, your opinions about it and of course the vote! If so, please explain the reason for the vote.
- Which Bard (NPC) do you prefer?66 votes
- Eldoth [Char: 16 | Int: 13 | Con: 15 | Dex: 12 | Str: 16 | Wis: 10]28.79%
- Garrick [Char: 15 | Int: 13 | Con: 9 | Dex: 16 | Str: 14 | Wis: 14]53.03%
- None18.18%
2
Comments
The BG1 developers made the odd choice of having Garrick, Eldoth, and Skie in a kind of love triangle. So, the intention was to have both Garrick and Eldoth, but two bards in one party was pointless.
Now, in BGEE the Luck and morale effects of the vanilla Bard song make it useful. There's also a suit of elven chain available in BGEE for a bard's armored spellcasting needs, and a few bard-specific items have been added (like the Bard Hat in SoD). So, bards are much more useful now. Certainly, the EE vanilla bard can start to hold its own against the bard kits from BG2.
In IWD and IWD2, bards have always rocked (the Jedi War Song in IWD1 was OP TBH; IWD2 nerfed it to combat-only). I would never tackle IWD or IWD2 without a bard.
A shame that the standard bard song doesn't give better bonuses
Edit: I just checked and it seems that it should give +1 luck now, according to the wiki, but this is not written in the in-game text description of the class. Anybody can confirm the +1 luck bonus applies? If so, the song is really interesting
He's proficient in Longbows but he'll never be able to use Composite Longbows.
He's tied to a thief you get very late in the game.
If you based your entire party around him he could be better than Garrick but it's hard to say he'd be worth the trouble.
At BG1 as far as I know, it only protects against fear! The bonus to Luck? If so, how do I see in the game if the bonus actually exists? here does not change any status.
Speaking of equipment, what equipments in BG1: EE, are made for Bards or fit well in it?
i found garrick to be pretty mediocre, but where he really shines is solo runs,
he is the best "bag of holding" and a great identifier, and what i will do it wait until i hit the 32000 XP mark and he warps up to level 6, then bring him to the area where you fight droth and the sirines for an easy level up to 7, and then drop him back off in beregost when i need him, and then when it it time to go to baldur's gate, he is chilling outside the sorcerus sundries ( or whatever it is called )
Full disclosure: once I met Baeloth I put the zombie ring on Eldoth and left him at the Friendly Arm Inn. He provided me with the Skie quest-line and magic IDs. My CHARNAME was such a user.
Like others have mentioned, pick pocketing, identifying stuff, casting level, and wand use are all major selling points for either (or both) bard(s). In BG 2 they can kind of lose their luster at higher levels if you're barding a CHARNAME.
I dislike Garrick simply because his voice annoys me.
- Elven chainmail (don't forget to remove it when you want to pickpocket)
- Amulet of metaspell influence : gives an extra level 2 spell slot
Weapons:
- [Longbow] The dead shot
- [Short bow] Protector of the dryads
- [Crossbow] Light crossbow of speed
- [Halberd] The Chesley Crusher : Thac0 +2, damage +6, set to 1 APR, as long as you have enough strength to carry it (30 lbs)
- [Darts] I guess darts can be good too
The list is not exhaustive but that's what I think about
EDIT:
Of course the best equipment for your bard is **wands** : wand of fire, wand of paralyzation, wand of polymorphing, etc.
I hear Garrick can be a shockingly effective melee combatant if you give him The Chestley Crusher and the Gauntlets of Ogre Power, but I imagine the same could be said of anybody. Any bard certainly.
On the note of wands though, one thing that I think a lot of people don't take advantage of is the ability to cast from scrolls. There are several spell scrolls that merchants sell in bulk. You can buy up to twenty scrolls of Otiluke's Resilient Sphere for example, so basically one or two for your casters to memorize and then the rest is just a wand with twenty some odd charges.
You can't see luck directly in the character record, but you can see the impact of that on combat. That's perhaps made easier by adding the following to your LUA file to show more detailed combat information.
SetPrivateProfileString('Game Options','Extra Combat Info','1')
This screenshot shows the extra information you get.
You can see in the to hit roll the specified increase in luck (even without the extra information you'll see that having bard song active will increase the displayed modifier by 1). Note that luck will not cause a die roll to go higher than its natural value, so if a base 20 had been rolled, the luck modifier would have shown as 0 rather than 1. The impact on damage rolls is less clear as the luck modifier is not separately shown, but if you keep rolling you'll notice that the value displayed as base damage is always at least 1 above the theoretical base damage for that weapon.
Garrick
Stats: Higher Wisdom helps Lore Dex helps AC ranged attack
Align/Personality: Fits better with Good/Neutral parties
Pros: Early Access
Cons: After Silke, no other quests, light banter
Eldoth
Stats: higher Str and Con means higher HP, better pack mule and better melee when forced.
Alignment/Personality: Fits better with Evil/Neutral parties
Pros: Has some late game quests, can create poison arrows (but only he can use them)
Cons: Tied to Skie, aquired late in the game.
If I had to choose, Eldoth with his poison arrows gives him the edge.
Friends, Identify and Knock are all great spells that would be wastes of spell slots for a mage but as they will always be used where it is safe to remove armour, they are ideal for a bard.
And you say there isn't much equipment for a bard in BG1, what about Bracers ACX? They're made for bards
I love bards, very much indeed
Saludos.
EDIT: and the luck effect from song is a much bigger boon in early exploration IMO.
EDIT2: For best equipment, you'd be looking at wands and some scrolls. Monster summoning, fire and paralysis can be picked up pretty early if you're properly prepared for the areas they are in. Thalantyr sells sleep wand. They can make tough fights a breeze. Early game party a (regular kit) bards song is very good to boost your fighters and thieves to-hit rolls too.
If you also have BG1 NPC project I can recommend having Eldoth and Garrick and Skie in your party too.
I'm tempted to do this myself now actually, and give kits to Garrick and Eldoth!