First Born Bard : 35Bard/4Barb/1Monk

[atomicsomething]

First : Hello all !!!! this is my first post there

Well, this is it : Bard is the new black this winter ... Third build posted in 48hours...
Funky and slayer posted two great bard builds. The only problem i see with them is that any new player trying 'm out will find himself eat the dirt more than he expected in LL areas.
My build have not the purpose to compete with theirs, but to give new players an decent bard able to survive after level 40.

i consider that bards are very tricky to play and set up. They require a adhoc secret subrace and nice loot.
Another thing with bard is that they need feats from other classes :
4th attack : to tank a bit. Other builds went dual wielding... Dual wielding is consuming in feats you'll need to boost your stats in order to fill the lack of secret subrace, and means no shields which you'll need. On a first build, go for the 4th attack
AC Monk : to not getting wipped when tanking
Uncanny Dodge : For me a must-have on your first bard build. As a bard you'll find yourself running to curse things and the whole run and curse leave you flatfooted. Without it, you'll find yourself dead reaching the mobs, or even before if they're archers (as i always say : "bad chicken bad")
Evasion : Your reflex saves will be high, so evasion will save your guts more than once
Save bonuses : As a bard you'll have to invest some in Charisma. So you'll probably want to make this investement fructify with pally or Blackguards levels.

That's a lot... and you can only take only 2 other classes. so, let's recap the classes giving you at least 2 of these feats :
Monk (1 level) : Monk AC bonus and evasion
Blackguard / Paladin (4 levels) : 4th attack and Save bonuses
Barbarian (4 levels) : 4th attack and Uncanny dodge
Rogue (3 levels) : Evasion and uncanny dodge
Shadow dancer (2 levels) : Evasion and uncanny dodge

First thing : You cant have em all .... You need to drop at least one of these nice feats i listed before. My weaking link is save bonuses. You can easily find items that will boost them and ... you're a bard, so boost yourself up
The 4Barb/1Monk combo gives you all of them except saves. It's a pretty nice compromise for a 1st build.

Now the build itself :
Race : Human.
Subrace : None.
Starting stats :
STR : 8
DEX : 16 (32)
CON : 14 (16)
WIS : 10
INT : 10
CHA : 16

Stat boosters : All on Dex.

Class progression : 1-12 Bard - 13-16 Barb - 17-20 Bard - 21 Monk - 22-40 Bard

Feats choosen :
Lvl 1 : Toughness, Curse song
Lvl 3 : Weapon Finesse
Lvl 6 : Extended duration
Lvl 9 : BlindFight
Lvl 12 : Extra Music
Lvl 15 : Weapon Focus
Lvl 18 : Extended Critical
Lvl 21 : Epic Weapon Focus
Lvl 24 : Great Dex 1
Lvl 27 : Lasting Inspiration
Lvl 28 : Great Dex 2
Lvl 30 : Armor Skin
Lvl 31 : Great Dex 3
Lvl 33 : Great Con 1
Lvl 34 : Great Dex 4
Lvl 36 : Great Con 2
Lvl 37 : Great Dex 5
Lvl 39 : Epic Prowess
Lvl 40 : Great Dex 6

After lvl 40 :
Great Dex 7-10
Epic skill Focus : Perform
Skill Focus : Perform
Spell Focus : Transmutation
Epic Spell Focus Transmutation
Epic Fortitude
Epic Will

Weapon : You will sure take your focus on one finessable weapon. This build let you free choice (If you already have looted some good weapons on previous builds, tak'em).

Discutable choices :

Monk level after 20 : Well ... this build is not kama exclusive. Taking before level 20 will make you loose your 4th attack if your not kama wielder. the price to pay is lower saves overall.

Extended duration : heh, at level 40ish you Ethereal Visage will bring you something like 50/55% conceal. Not a great choice compared to displacement who allow you to grab a shield. The issue with displacement is its duration hence the extended duration. This costs you one feat, but will help you a lot in earlier LL areas.

Skill Focus Perform : Now .... i'm the first bringing this up in a bard build i think, but perform requirements are very high, and around level 45, without those feats and without UR bard gears you will have to struggle too much with perform even by sacrifying one item slot. this two feats help you keep some decent song/curse effect.

No lingering song : In LL areas the rythm is slow and mages will rest a lot. you will have to sing a lot to keep everyone with bonuses anyway (mages resting and tankers not). i consider this feat as expendable.

No subrace : heh ... this build is for everyone, so no secrets subraces here. But you might consider Satyr as subrace or even better choice ... Yuan-Ti (Yep even with the -3 wisdom starting stats are slightly better with Yuan-Ti if you want 14 CON - and you really want 14 CON trust me- , the SR might come handy also).

I will complete this build with expected AB/AC/HP/saves at level 40, and stats with Yuan-Ti and Satyr.

Bards are really fun to play, and i hope this build will allow some new players to experiment it.
I've seen too many people giving up their bard after level 40 because their toons could not survive in higher areas.

Any help is welcome to help me improve this build, but keep in mind that it is designed for someone with no UR or even secret subrace and with few even no UR items.

[Yomi]

My first level 60 character was Yue's Cheese Bard (that post was responsible for a short resurgance of bards on HG). I still pull her out every now and then. She was great fun to play at almost all levels. It's nice to see more bard builds.

The main problem with that build (which it seems you're trying to address with this one) is that without a certain little yellow ring hid in a tower far away from mortal realms, you're going to be a sand carpet for almost all of the desert. Once you've got that item, life is pretty good as conceal, high AC, high discipline, evasion, high UMD, and awesome saves are really nice. It's also pretty equipment heavy, as you've got 5 stats you would enjoy having maxed (your build with a shield drops wisdom and charisma, making equipment setup easier for new players, though they might be scrambling for +save gear). Also without uncanny dodge, the flatfooted AC is horrible, so can't just stand about doing nothing when in line of sight. And as you pointed out, it's Siren based which is not available right away. Not having implosion immunity while keeping conceal hurts some, though you always have a shield+displacement option available there. You can also use the bard artifact with the only cost being losing 2 attacks.

As for saves, I often find my characters dying from failed saves more than getting hit. Implodes, drowning, stoning, domination, stun, heart stop, etc. But as you point out, for a 1st build, one can't have everything.

I assume you mean Great Spell Focus: Transmutation, not Epic. GSF would let you keen non-slashing weapons like rapiers -- ESF would get you nothing at all that I can think of (bards don't get epic spells). Whether you want this probably depends on weapons. Rapier, Kukri, Dagger, Kama are all choices that get mentioned a lot, and dual wielding one could choose two at the cost of some feats (my bard used dual rapiers most of her life, now uses rapier+dagger). Kama is nice against critical immune mobs because of the extra attacks you'll get without the penalty of bad criticals vs. rapier/kukri.

If you use a shield, you're going to lose 6 AC from wisdom, but gain 13-19 from the shield, in addition to the bonuses from a shield (very nice). But you lose your wonderful ethereal visage, which gives you up to 80% conceal and immunity to 6th level spells. Using displacement will get you 50% (without the damage reduction and spell immunity), but also has a very short duration (unlike EV, it doesn't last longer at higher caster levels). But it might still work, going for higher AC and no conceal.

You also mentioned extend to fix the short duration -- I never needed extend after caster level 41 with my bard, but displacement as your main conceal would be a reason, and it'd make life a little easer in levels 10-40 (bad tradeoff for old hands, might be a good tradeoff for new players which was your goal).

As for perform, when I played my bard, bardsong didn't scale into LL''s, so super high perform wasn't much of an issue. Immo bracers are the hot item for most bards since it's a lot of perform bonus while being a decent item and reasonably attainable. I can see Epic skill focus for the +10, but regular skill focus only adds +3, which seems like very little benefit for the cost of a feat.

[Besiege]

Just a small thing, but important. You get only 7 feats at LLs, not 10 .

[nerohdam]

Any other critiques on this one? As been noted before, unless one get a special race or special equipment then playing a bard is quite difficult.

[atomicsomething]

This build is a little outdated

Better look at Yue's Cheese Bard

[nerohdam]

Yes, but like you stated unless you have a special race then you can not use Yue's cheese bard. I do like the idea of combining the barb with bard. I see a lot of dex based bards and would like to see a strenth based one if possible.

[Grogbot]

nerohdam said:

I do like the idea of combining the barb with bard. I see a lot of dex based bards and would like to see a strenth based one if possible.

Hey hey

One advantage of a Dex based Barbarian build with a Bard is that the Barbarian gets Uncanny Dodge ... which helps Dexers the world over!

I know some players can live without it - see comments in Funky's Bard thread , but for my money UD (or its equivalents) is a Dexer "must have".

And hence, bring on the Bard (or Rogue or Dwarven Defender or ...)

[Atomicsomething makes this point in his original post too, as Curse Song FF's you!]

Grog-the-flat-footed-hater

[Grogbot]

atomicsomething said:

Class progression : 1-12 Bard - 13-16 Barb - 17-20 Bard - 21 Monk - 22-40 Bard

Doesn't this give a hefty XP penalty after level 21 (Monk and Barbarian more than 2 levels apart?)

Grog-the-XP-miser

[nerohdam]

yes the xp would hit you in the eyes but if you are like me I like to play my toons for a while and makes leveling all the more exciting. When my characters in other games get too high then I usually "retire" them so long play life is cool for at least me...

[atomicsomething]

This build was set up after my first bard reached 60 (33 bard, 4 pally, 3 rogue).
I had a hell of a time during my first LL levels and wanting to post a build that is not meant to be über but solid and can survive the trauma of reaching immortality.
For people who can set up nicely their toon when they 40, there is here a waste of feats :
Extend spell : Once your EV and AC are strong enuf. this one is stricly useless. I took it for displacement/shield combo who was for me a lifesaver.
Epic Skill focus perform : Except immos bracers, items boosting your perform are UR or tough to find. Reaching 48-50, immos bracers alone are not enuf to reach perform requirements. If you dont have nice perform items, i would still recommend it. Sure once you have another item it's useless, but meanwhile ...

On this build also, i did not care about saves and they must be low (i cant remember the values at 40).
Barb over Pally simply drops all your saves by 9. This would mean that your toon would not be able to visit hells. If hells are your goal dont pick this build. But he should do fine everywhere else

I

[nerohdam]

Thanks for your update on this build atomic! I am getting a better understanding of what all is needed to build my super uber duber singing swashbuckler that will make even grown men cry!!

[atomicsomething]

One last thing i forgot is that with the barb levels, you gain some increased speed. Something bards always want.