bard or skald or sorcerer?
legotaksin
Member Posts: 65
My parry memeber is 4.
Not fury. Difficulty is insane
Dwerven defender
Fighter/thief multi
Archer
Last memebr
I want bard or skald or sorcerer but i can't decide..
There is not cleric because i don't like cleric
Anyway please answer me... thks..
Not fury. Difficulty is insane
Dwerven defender
Fighter/thief multi
Archer
Last memebr
I want bard or skald or sorcerer but i can't decide..
There is not cleric because i don't like cleric
Anyway please answer me... thks..
0
Comments
Because your party consists mainly of fighter types they will greatly benefit from all the bard/skald song bonuses.
A sorcerer (or other full time arcane caster) is not really needed if you're not playing Heart of Fury mode IMHO.
Or we could just use a Jester and make them all go nutty and hit each other. . .
The bard's effectiveness in a party with 3 fighters is the same as in the full party since the missing two characters would likely be non-combative anyway(cleric, mage).
Um... i change my mind.
I take sorcerer!
Since when would any healer type character not be a combatant in IWDee except purely for taste reasons?
A bard can heal, a skald can not, neither can the sorcerer. All there is to do is to project his overpowered defensive buffs on the strike group and maybe help with some spells and that is all there is to it.
A case could be made that a vanilla bard has a defensive edge over a skald between levels 11 and 14 before the Skald song gets upgraded but besides this window a Skald really has it on offence and defence (and most importantly it does it simultaneously rather than having to choose one song or the other).
But the thing is you don't go HoF, according to the OP. So, it becomes a matter of personal preference. I, for example, like a vanilla bard with all the different songs she gets in IWD, I've gone with a vanilla bard myself and enjoyed it a lot.
So, easy, @Roller12 and @Wowo , there's no need for those personal "you don't read what I write" things here. Also, this is the second time there's a kind of a problem with this thing among you, so, please, take it into consideration before posting.
Bengoshi, thanks for your advice!
I chose sorcerer before , but next time, i will play with bard or skald. Haha thanks!
That said, what is best isn't always important and I prefer a vanilla bard for non-HoF parties as it's more fun. I've recommended that people use a vanilla bard in parties many times as the most fun option in a party of 6. However, a bard in a party of 4 or less feels quite underwhelming on the fun scale as the impact of the songs is noticeably diminished. As an alternative a Blade can be quite fun in certain small parties.
War Chant of the Sith and Skald song function inherently differently and each has a set of optimal parameters. A party with hit negation abilities (mirror image, stoneskin, etc.) pairs amazingly with avoidance, and couldn't care less about mitigation or healing. This is why in most standard parties a skald wins by such a huge margin, even if you don't factor in the damage increase, but this party has no hit negation abilities, nor does it have any healing.
It should be noted that with the exception of aoe healing (and then only single target damage being split between multiple party members, taking extra damage from an aoe then healing it is not a net gain), defensive abilities do NOT scale with party size, they scale with enemy damage output. Enemies output X number of attacks per turn regardless of whether all those attacks are on one guy, or spread among 6. The only component of WCoTS that scales with party size is the 2 hp/round, and even then only with number of frontliners taking chip damage from stray enemies.
A party with no healing and a dwarven defender is particularly suited for War Chant, because healing is very effective on high mitigation targets, and mitigation stacks better with itself than avoidance. The optimal AC threshold for Skald song is being hit on a 16 or higher (which caps out skald song at 20 to hit). This grants 75% avoidance relative to the original value, for a total of 95% damage avoidance. Defense stance gives an overall damage avoidance+mitigation of 98.5%. By comparison bard song grants 50% avoidance and 12.5% mitigation (33% when Defense stance is active). This translates to 95% avoidance+mitigation, plus 2 healing per round. If enemy base dpr is <40 WCoTS heals faster than damage comes in. At base DPR of 120+ the innate avoidance benefits surpass the hpr of WCoTS and Scalds pull ahead. Mitigation items (and avoidance if you're at the optimal level for skald described here) further increase that value, until you achieve 20% itemized mitigation, at which point the DD is immune to damage with WCoTS active. At 30% both DD's are immune, but the one with WCoTS is actually healing 10% of the incoming damage. (and has presumably stripped off it's armor to reduce avoidance, making that 10% a rather significant amount woo naked dwarves!)
Skald song increases physical avoidance, grants select immunities, and increases outgoing damage. It is a very potent buff for physical combatants, but, it does not allow for full immunity to a damage type (AC based avoidance cannot exceed 95%), nor does it allow a party to mitigate spell damage at all. Chip damage is very dangerous to a party with no healing capacity.
Generally speaking those considerations aren't terribly relevant (Most characters can't stack resistance anywhere near the cap, and most parties have at least some healing) but this is an outlying case where you have massive resistance on a character, no meaningful healing, and only 3 truly viable targets for the skald song. Stating that a skald is superior in this case is, in my opinion, narrow minded, and would lead to a noticeably harder run.
Sorcerors, of course, scale better with smaller parties, and if you don't mind resting for several days to heal every few fights they work fine. The synergy is suboptimal, however, in a party with both arcane and divine spells missing. Sorceror is definitely a better choice than a Skald hitting 3 targets, but I would lean toward the passive regeneration over faster access to spells. Reasonable people could (and will!) disagree.
TL:DR With no other healing and a dwarven defender, Bardsong is the dramatically superior defensive choice to skald, and fills 2 vital party roles instead of 1 that either skald or sorceror would. Play whatever you want, but bring math if you intend to make objective claims about utility.
A Blade is actually the character that would probably fit the party best but if not a Blade or a Sorcerer I would still prefer a Skald to a vanilla Bard as while the WCotS is good it takes a long time to come around while in the meantime a Skald is exceptional from level 1 and can continue to grow with strategies like Mislead singing and Polymorphing to spider form.
I'm fully aware the OP has started their run, and I'm not here to change anyone's minds about what they want to play. I just want the math to be clear about the functional differences between skalds and bards, because I get the impression there are strong biases in play here and not a lot of math being done.
Regardless of the relative squishiness of the target, unless enemy damage is high enough to be fatal within a few rounds (for either setup) the healing will do more work than the actual difference between skald and bard AC. As target AC gets worse, the value of both effects drops, and as it gets better both become more effective. Healing approaches a cap of 100% of all damage taken however, while avoidance approaches only 95% of physical damage taken. AOE healing also, as I mentioned, scales with the number of targets taking single target damage, AC bonuses do not.
A pure avoidance ability simply can't compare favorably to one that gives avoidance, mitigation, and healing unless avoidance friendly mechanics are in play (i.e. mirror image, stoneskin, etc.) which again, in IWD, usually are.
I would gladly bring a skald along instead of a bard in 99% of cases, but in a party that relies on mitigation tanking to survive you absolutely need some form of healing, and if the party doesn't intend to mitigation tank (spam summons or bard tank?) there wouldn't be a DD in it.
I don't consider the fact that the bard takes time to come online to be terribly important, as either type of bard is going to be more useful for crowd control until 11/15 anyway. The major issue the skald has in a party like this, is that at level 15 that doesn't really change.
Thanks for answer
I have one question.
If i change dwerven defender -> cavalier, still bard is better than skald, sorcerer?
I just want to know your opinion
As a result I would think the gap shrinks dramatically. The bard would still supply more overall damage control, but sorcerors scale very well in small parties, and if you have the healing necessary to deal with chip damage and spells a skald works fine, providing more avoidance as well as granting more damage to the whole party. Any of them provide a solid 4th slot.
The Skald has the same spells as the Bard but when the spells run out the Skald song is that much stronger in almost all situations (it will have an especially huge effect on damage output of the archer for instance). Not to mention that in most situations you can cast and sing with a minimum amount if micromanagement.
Yes, of course, combining different defenses creates a very strong defense and I like to combine high AC with spells like Mirror Image and Stoneskin to soak up the few hits that do get through but on non-HoF mode a DDs high AC combined with DR creates a very sturdy defense and the priority at this point should be on offense, not minute gains on defense (even if it does reduce damage taken from negligible to 0). For that matter with the right items a DD can get very close to 100% anyway or more so really doesn't need the bard song except for the healing (which is replaceable).
If the DD was swapped for a Cavalier you'll have much more well rounded character who is an excellent tank with Shield of Faith and good AC with self healing and much stronger offense than the DD courtesy of DUHM (among other things).
The bottom line is that it's really hard to argue that a DD is a worthwhile character in the first place due to how mediocre their offensive powers are and adding a bard to further augment their defense is just compounding the issue.
Even substantial (30-50%) increases in damage do not compare to effective immortality when talking about ease of play, which, when giving advice on party composition, is what we should optimally be talking about.
Dwarven Defenders are also fine. They fill a niche role that is seldom needed in games this easy, but their offense is also fine because they're fighters. Kits are weak for non-humans in general, but DD's actually have unique functionality. I would probably never make a dwarf berserker over a fighter/cleric, but a DD? That's something with interesting utility.