Shattered Kingdoms

Hellions got some loving, how about we get the bard some.

The class is way too squishy, a GM bard with enchanted armor is easily beat down in two to three rounds. You also lose the ability to quaff, recite, order due to singing.

Meditation would be nice considering even with a full mana pool and wisdom maxed you are lucky to get 13% increase to mana while sleeping.

Songs of sleep is useless now, at least remove it affecting your group.

Songs of Anti Magic would be nice if it also could remove things like Rifts (secret cabal ability) (secret cabal ability) (secret cabal ability).

Persuade is severly limited in it's uses and fails horribly. Adjust the saves so that it's possible to use this ability to some degree outside a couple buffs.

Class is hugely stat dependant and kind of one trick ponies. You get to sing while people enchant, lore, and buff a group slightly. You lack any ability to do anything on your own or you get squished.

Summation:

Persuade
Meditation
Shield block
songs of sleep
songs of antimagic
HP pool

In that order.

I feel like for the longest time that songs of sleep was a crutch, an "I win" button we'd all use. I'm glad it got nerfed.

That being said, you're overlooking some fantastic features that the bard class has. Songs of war has been one of my favorite buffs to have. It's fantastic.

And you don't need the shield block skill to strap on a shield.

songs of war is indeed elite. only change i'd recommend for bards is making c-major work like color spray, cone of cold, etc. - hits the target and their group instead of the whole room.

that make might bards op tho.

Persuade is great but it can be a real bummer for a lightie (because then it is bad RP to persuade anyone of light aura - which excludes some good options).
Meditation would be nice.
While I don't feel bards "need" shield block it cracks me up that scouts get shield block and bards don't (and they're the only 'adventurer' class without shield block). Rogues shouldn't be in a situation where they have need of their shield. Scouts either. While bard shouldn't be front rank they'd get more use out of the skill than either or the other two adventurer classes.
Songs of sleep, while not useful in PvP anymore, is still incredibly useful particularly against non auto-aggressive NPCs. (Examples: Rajiin's formation/all those kids in the Dreamscape)
Songs of antimagic is good but takes forever to trigger.
Hp seems fine for an adventurer class.

A 'cone' like attack would be cool for a bard. Like f-minor but instead of screaming into the whole room they yell at a particular formation. Their other songs are crazy useful. Lots of high-end areas force people through null magic zones and a bard can bring in buffs that otherwise can not be had. Songs of protection after loss of armor and shield (or if the group is lacking). Songs of war in general is amazing. Songs of healing is great for sustainability. If given the opportunity I always want a bard along on my adventures.

Edit:
Would be awesome if bards could trip while dancing. The dance is combat capable and it isn't difficult to imagine incorporating a trip into a nimble footed jig.

Survivablity is an issue. Shield will add overall ac but not really help in damage mitigation. The fact that singing and dancing stops you from doing anything else doesn't help. Persuade is such an awesome concept but is utterly castrated under the current code. Songs of Sleep, I just want the ability to move from room to room without hindering my own group. Some kind of Mana regen would be nice considering the length of time it takes to fill your pool back up.

I didn't notice with songs of war, but I did notice with songs of protection that it would cancel out shield affects not stack. So I am not sure how much of the songs bonuses overlap with other spells.

You get taken out of the fight pretty quickly as a bard with no real way to counter it if you are doing what you are supposed to.

solution to this is perhaps have songs of healing (while dancing) also affect the bard? Have it still drain PE from dancing but regen ME.

You can train mana for enhanced regen.

I've personally found that training mana for enhanced regen is really lackluster if you're playing a class without meditation or trance, I presume because the modifiers stack. The same is true for spamming HP trains: There's a world of difference between maxed HP trains with fast healing and maxed HP trains without fast healing. That said, I haven't played a GM bard so if someone has and would want to chime in on whether training mana is actually helpful, it'd be nice.

While it's annoying that bards do take a while to regen their mana, I also haven't noticed much with the bards that I've traveled with running into many mana issues with the most common "adventuring songs" which are songs of healing/war/protection. If you gave bards meditation, they'd basically -never- have to stop singing songs, which I'm against, because when something drains mana, it should mean something. I think meditation would be too strong because it works at all times.

Some people have argued for giving bards trance, not meditation, because that would help their mana recovery issues without making it so that they can sing endlessly. I think that if you wanted to help bard mana recovery, that's the best approach. Even then, I'm not too convinced that mana is really an issue that's "broken" with the bard class as much as it's just a challenge that bards need to learn to address instead of feeling entitled to constant mana usage without any drawbacks.

kid ur straight tripping if you think there's a world of difference. Before the changes to hp regen for hp trains you'd be lucky to regen 15% of your hps with fast healing. I'm talking about with a high hp class like mercenary or barbarian here. With 15 hp trains, my last mercenary, while sleeping, could regenerate 45% of her hps in a single tick.

Late in my mercenary's life I maxed out mana trains and modded wisdom to maximum. Felt that the mana regen was okay enough especially since I spammed rallying cry a lot, and that takes a lot more mana to use than bard songs do.

I have a feeling it's a pacing problem, like someone is spamming c major on one NPC, or singing while nothing is actually happening.

Ardith, I think you proved my point. I meant that HP trains -without- fast healing is much less effective than HP trains -with- fast healing, just like fast healing without HP trains is very different than fast healing without HP trains. Your mercenary likely had mastered fast healing, so maxing her HP trains made her regen go through the roof while sleeping.

In other words, having just one is a moderate benefit, but having both is awesome. I might be wrong on that, as I haven't seen anyone purposefully test what maxed HP trains does without fast healing, but from my own experience it seems to be that way.

I think the same is true for meditation/trance and mana trains. Having just one is alright, but having both is what really makes it noticeable. I just don't think you're going to experience a meaningful increase in mana regen by putting a handful of trains into mana as a bard unless they also get meditation/trance. In fact, I'd strongly suggest against spending attribute trains into mana as a bard currently, because bards are amongst the most stat-hungry classes in the game. I would suggest training WIS instead.

I trained mana on my gnome mercenary with the intention of checking to see how much of an affect it had on my mana pool/mana regen, and I didn't notice much of an increase at all in my mana gains; Granted, I was a gnome with 25 wis, so I'm not surprised it didn't affect my pool, but I was surprised that it had barely any impact at all on my regen rates even at 25 wis. Even then, mercenaries can only train mana 3 times I think, so I'd be hard pressed to think you'd be able to see anything beyond a few percentage points gained even while sleeping as a mercenary.