?'s on playing a bard...

[KDogRex]

I'm playing through ToB right now and I've added a bard to my party, Now here's my question:
Is there anything that a bard is good for in combat, other than for the bardsong? I'm seriously debating dropping him in favor or a fighter/mage or something like that, but dang, I can't get past the bardsong and the lore score! Any suggestions? Thanks!

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Guitars, women, beer...what more can a man ask for?
I AM the bard eternal

[Thrawn]

You want to know about bards right well ive soloed as a bard, played many varrious types of bards so i know quite a bit about them.

Regular bard:

nothing remarkeable about him it would be better to take eighter the blade or skald. one could take jester but ive tried him and his song isn't that great cause of the +4 save that's ughy esp with the super low saves toward end of the game.

Blade, now this is my favorite class personaly, it has the offensive spin, this help espicaly while soloing or if you can't spare any silot to haste. and it can go to 3 dots in dual wielding all the others can only go to two dots i think.

then defensive spin, now that is a lifesaver. the early low level bard don't have egough spell casting power to do stone skin early on so this ability can be a lifesaver, and later in the game there are wild surge room and dead magic room so this also is lifesaver ability even later in the game an -10 to ac helps lots later on, well sort of it depends but it does help.

Skade, now that's an good support bard, cause of his song, but then again you can get the improved bard song with the blade and it does the same as the improved song that the skade gets, it repaces the normal song. imho the skade is good support character and his song are helpful untill the blade gets his improved song.

Magic, well the bard can only go up to level 6 magic but that is sitll helpful, like magic missiles, can give your party the little extra punch u need. then its more of an support mage and self buffing mage, stonesking soooooo much help an fighter, he's an front liner so his mage spells can save his ass at times, esp consdering he don't have the fighters hp. nor their ac, cause i don't think u can wear plate untill you get the all item ability. Thirdly he can set traps, no he can't set normal traps like thief but when he start to earn speical ability he can set spike trap, time stop trap, exploding traps. theyre great and also imho he has better Thac0 than thiefs because he can tensor transform, imho tensor transform are made for fighter/mage and bards. an regular ol bard with 150 hp can suddenly become a juggernaut with 360 hp or more, even an fighter can't beat this, unleast theyre like an kenshi dualed to mage, or some other class, i have never seen any one but an fighter/mage and bard break the 300 hp with tensor transformation. and the fact u get stone skin is so useful

oh yeah bards can pocketpick so that means u won't need to spend points in ur thief's pockpicket skills at all if youre in a group.

Imho bards are like the jack of all trades not quite master at all, not quite master thief, not quite master fighter not quite master mage, but if you put them all together you get an quite potent combation and an viable way to play the game!!!! its almost like a fighter/thief/mage muliclass.

[Dundee Slaytern]

Blades rule in ToB, Skalds in SoA.

The following is a tactic I use for Blades, feel free to modify it to your preference.

While it may seem nice to Dual-Wield in melee with a Blade, he can be much more potent Dual-Wielding from a range.

The following exploits a bug from combining Melf's Minute Meteors and Dual-Wield. When you cast Melf's Minute Meteors, you can still use a weapon in your off-hand weapon slot. This off-hand weapon will transform into a ranged weapon, why is this such a big deal? Just visualise this, Crom Faeyr becomes a returnable throwing warhammer of doom. Celestial Fury, a stunning returnable throwing katana. Those are just two extreme examples, feel free to use other one-handed weapons.

Since Melf's Minute Meteors has been casted, the Blade gets 5 attacks per round. Throw in Offensive Spin, and you get 6 attacks per round, all of which will deal maximum damage. The attacks are as follows.

1st attack, Melf's Minute Meteor
2nd attack, Melf's Minute Meteor
3rd attack, Off-hand weapon
4th attack, Melf's Minute Meteor
5th attack, Melf's Minute Meteor
6th attack, Off-hand weapon

There is no extra attack from Dual-Wield because the spell Melf's Minute Meteors nullifies that.

What I have just described is just the basic attack plan, you can further enhance it with other tactics.

Of Misled and Bard Songs
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When a Bard gets 6th level spells, he/she can utilise a nice tactic. The Bard casts Misled, and makes the Misled illusion sing the Bard Song. So the real Bard is free to do other things while the illusion sings and confers benefits to the whole party. This is an extremely potent tactic once the Bard gets the Enhanced Bard Song.

Some Notes: Beware of Time-Stop, when Time-Stopped, the Bard/Illusion stops singing... ...

Another Misled tactic, is to cast Misled in an empty room and charge the Bard into another room filled with enemies. Used this way, the invisibility conferred from Misled is not dispelable. The enemy can cast a billion True Sights and the Bard will still remain invisible.

This also applies to Mages/Sorcerers.

So whenever you can, just cast Misled out of the enemie's line of sight, not out of visual range mind, out of line of sight.

Note: Although the Bard is invisible and non-targetable, Mind Flayers and Umber Hulks will still cast their Psionics and Confusion at him/her, so remember to Chaotic Command the Bard to handle this.

Also, certain creatures can see through invisibility, one example are Liches.

Hope this helps, thanks for reading.

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If not a Sorcerer casting total oblivion, then a Paladin meting out justice. Otherwise, I think I will just be a bard and torture my enemies with, "My Heart Will Go On".

Platinium Sorcerer of ALSB, Aerie Loving Sacred Band! She's MeowRrrr, and more!

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Baldur's Gate Item Mart

[Thrawn]

Also rember youre not a super fighter, not a super mage, you don't have fighter hp, nor their grandmastery in weapons keep that in mind, sure tensor transformation can turn the bard into a potent fighter, but rember it can be dispeled i think, and there are also dead magic room, and wild magic room so its basicaly useless in those rooms.

Secondly if youre soloing the bard, its fun, and you got to plan your strategery of attack espicaly if youre playing on InSaNe DiFfUcItY! don't forget that 2x damage that the enemies do to you can HURT! and i mean HURT, ive seen dragon do execussive of 300+ pt of damage to my bard keep that in mind, the key is stone skin and good resistance, like red dragon got to get that fire resistance up though the roof, and other dragon like blue which is electrial i think etc...

And oh yeah that mief's metore export and mislead export i personaly don't use them but if you want to feel free its your game

When you get speical ability you get the use all item but keep in mind if you desire to cast spells in combat then you got to get elven chain or drow stuff for underdark. or possiably if youre soloing maybe the robe of vecona, but if youre useing your spells to buff up before a fight, feel free to slap on your best plate mall, but keep in mind you will have to take it off and you can't remove armor in combat.

Also you get varrious others speical ability which are imho mostly useless, but its up to you, the improved bard song is nice.

However, traps, well they just rock!

spike trap for your plain damage, its a simple damage trap 10D10 i belive, then you got the exploding trap which is lower damage like 10D2 i think?? but it pushes the enemies away from the trap and i'm not sure of its other effect, stuns them??

finaly there is the good ol time stop trap which is SWEET espicaly if youre solo and don't have a mage to do time stop, and is cheaper than useing time stop scrolls. Keep in mind some boss mosters are immune to timestop. but 99% of the game nothing is immunite to time stop.

so there is some tricks you can do like summon a level 1 moster then turn it hostile then it triggers the time stop. presto you got a mini timestop to cobber your enemies or cast couple spells at him.

oh here's a cheese strategery with time stop trap, set maybe 5 time stop trap then make one of your summon hostile or have a enemy walk in, now one time stop will trigger then when that expires the next one trigger!

Oh if you got the patches there is a limit on how many trap you can set, 10 max, but you wouldn't realy need 10 only need maybe 1 or 2 for most mosters like fire giants, but for tougher mosters like dragon little more but realy the only moster that REQUIRES 10 trap is the demogroggy and i still had to reload two time before all 10 traps rolled high egough to one shot the demogroggy, even 10 spike trap wasn't a guated kill with him that's how much health that dude got!!!! nasty esp the improved one *shivers*

Don't forget there are some nice items like siscreaum the helm of valhor i think it can cast siscreaum which is a level 7 spell I THINK. anyway two of you can't be bad if youre soloing right