The Dragon Crooner: 26 Bard/10 RDD/4 PM

[ekstroem]

For quite some time people (myself included) have complained about the dragonblooded UR racebook being next to useless. I decided to give it a try and see if I could come up with a decent build that could be used in combination with the dragonblooded book. However, the build does not require any specific feats from a subrace so a lot of races could be tweaked to work with this build (prismatic HD, stinger, white HD, gnoll, deep orc, daywalker, ...)

After spending some time in hells I had been thinking about building a STR bard that could serve two purposes: function as a STR tank and have the essential bard song and curses. I discussed the idea briefly with a few of the other players and this is what I came up with in the end. Incidently, I recently partied with Yomi while leveling this toon and it turned out he was also working on a STR bard very much like this - I'm not sure about his specific build but we did briefly throw ideas back and forth and both of us complained a bit about the number of feats you have to spend to increase saves for this build.

Example with Dragonblooded (half-elf):

Ability	Start values	Subrace	Result
Str	18	+2	20
Dex	8		8
Con	16	+2	18
Int	9	+2	11
Wis	8	-2	6
Cha	11	+2	13

Example with Kolyarut (human):

Ability	Start values	Subrace	Result
Str	17	+5	22
Dex	9	+5	14
Con	15	+4	19
Int	10	+2	12
Wis	8	-2	6
Cha	14	-2	12

Level Progression: 12 Bard/10 RDD/13 Bard/4 PM/1 Bard

Alignment: Chaotic evil

All stat increases into STR.

Pre-epic feats:
Luck-of-heroes
Weapon proficiency (martial)
Iron Will
Lightning reflexes
Blind fight [skip this for dragonblooded]
Weapon Focus
Improved critical
Toughness


Epic feats (* should be taken as bard bonus feats):
* Curse song
* Lasting insipration
Armour skin
Epic weapon focus
Great Strength 1-4
Great Constitution 1 [take blind fight instead of constitution 1 if dragonblooded]


Legendary Feats:
Epic fort
Legendary will
Legendary reflexes
Epic prowess
Expertise
Great Strength 5-6

Skill points: Get 8 lore by level 12. Max tumble, discipline, perform and UMD on every bard level and you will still have spare skill points for your favorite skill(s).

Ability increases and feats will give you +34 STR, +2/3 CON, +2 INT, +2 CHA and +10 AC (draconic armor, bone skin and armor skin)

Build comments:
There were a few hard decisions to make for this build. I'll try to address some of them here

• CHA 14. You'll end up with a final CHA of 14 which means you will not be able to cast level 5 and 6 bard spells (CHA 15 for dragonblooded so they can cast level 5 spells). I decided that wasn't too critical as the build would be wearing full plate all the time anyway so arcane spell failure would be almost certain. Also, the improved EV is canceled if you wear shield or heavy armour so that spell is useless here. The build is not completely without spells though: war cry and displacement (50% conceal for 46 rounds) are both non-somatic and can be cast in armour. And before battle you can strip and GMW/keen your own weapons (I choose to use transmutation book so I could keen my rapier - it's usually easier to grab hold of a GMW from a friendly caster).
  
• No heavy armour proficiency. Need to use a cloak of worldliness to equip your armour.
  
• You get curse song and lasting inspiration late.
  
• Since the pre-epic BAB is 15 you end up with only 3 attacks/round. On the other hand you can always maximize your own attack bonus to +20 from song/war cry so your final AB will be pretty good (around 76 or so).
  
• Fire immunity
  
• Ability to use scrolls, wands, Dachy staffs for epic armor, ...
  
• Level 46 bard song (at character level 60). The curse song only lowers opponent saves 1 less than a cheese bard and is almost on par with a
  whistling pixie.
  
• Final saves should be: 62/63/63 (for kolyarut). Slightly less for dragonblooded (in particular reflex will be a bit lower). You should end up with STR 68/66 (kolyarut/dragonblooded) and CON 34/32. AC should top at 132 without BUR gear but with cleric AC buff.
  
• It pains me not being able to use the free feats from kolyarut
  
• I choose rapier for weapon. Another option would scimitar which also has a base crit range of 18-20.
  

Alternatives:
Depending on your personal preferences you could include additional PM levels to increase AC. Going 22 bard/10 RDD/8 PM will give you +2 AC but will cost you 2 bard bonus feats and reduce your curse song by 1. If you include 4 additional PM levels, 18 bard/10 RDD/12 PM, you will get an additional +2 AC and immunity to criticals but it will prevent you from getting lasting inspiration.

If you hate spending feats on saves you could try 26 bard/10 RDD /4 PAL instead and take all 4 paladin levels pre-epic. That would give you 1 better AB, 1 extra attack/round, +8 to all saves and fear immunity. Also, you'd have heavy armor proficiency for free and free up a total of 5 feats: iron will, lightning reflexes, weapon proficiency (martial), legendary reflexes, epic fort and legendary will but should take legendary luck instead. On the other hand you'd loose 4 AC, and I'm not sure what I should use the extra feats on. One possibility would be more STR or CON and possibly epic damage reduction.

Enjoy!

Claus

PS: Completely unrelated to this I happen to have a few dragonblooded race books up for trade ;D

[tl]

"Completely unrelated" ... !

Mads Skjern (Matador) must be your role model ;D

[chainlink]

I'm going the 4 paladin route and using Half-Celestial to give huge saves (without the feats) and level 6 spells, (plus strider and 70 sr) looks pretty good so far. Definitely a Hells build as you will be able to run up to them, curse then hang around and beat them with your scimitar.

[Yomi]

Bloodmoon actually started his a couple months ago, quite a bit before I started mine.

My build was: 8 bard / 10 RDD / 12 PM / 10 bard

I went back and forth on whether to take 10 PM levels or 12, and finally took 12.

With Human - Shard my starting stats after modifiers were 17 str, 12 dex, 20 con, 8 wis, 12 int, 15 cha. (note Shard gives +4 to dex, con, and cha while also giving very fast movement). All stat bonuses into STR.

Feats were Luck of Heroes, Toughness, Curse Song, WP: Martial, WF: Warhammer, AP: Heavy, Lightning Reflexes, Blind Fight. Epic feats were: Armor Skin, Expertise, EWF: Warhammer, GS1, GS2, GS3, GS4. First Legendary feats would be Legendary Luck, Legendary Reflexes, Epic Will. The next 5 feats for me will probably be Epic Prowess, Imp Critical, Still Spell, GS5. Still spell would be purely for convenience, and you could consider Extend for displacement or other buffs.

With these save feats (total of 5) final saves at level 60 should be 63 fort, 64 will, and 64 reflex. This should be good enough for Hells.

I chose to get Heavy Armor proficiency. It's not strictly necessary but I like not having to dork with equipment just to put my armor on (and potentially be royally screwed if you crash in the middle of a fight). Using Shard of course got me the extra charisma so spending the minimum allowable yielded 15 to start and hit 17 after the 10th RDD level. It also gave me the bonus bard feats.

The advantage of the extra PM levels is 4 higher AC (will hit 134 using Illithid / UR gear and 138 with cleric girding vs. 130/134 for only 4 PM levels), permanent immunity to sneak attacks, critical attacks, and stun. Stun immunity is awfully nice when fighting Amnizus, and crit immune is great against Barbezus. The disadvantage is 8 fewer bard levels -- ending with a total of 38. Compared to a cheese bard you'll be giving +4 attack instead of +6 and lowering enemy saves by 5/4/4 vs. 7/6/6. In my mind in the lower Hells level you've got to have a proper (50+ bard levels) bard for the AC bonus if nothing else, so neither of these would be a good choice for levels 6-9 as the designated bard. However I join a lot of non-Hells groups that have no bard, and even the reduced benefit is pretty substantial. If you don't have any "real" bards available, either of these would make fine additions to the upper Hells levels. They should also make perfectly fine tanks for any level irrespective of their bardish abilities.