Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General My bard: lore or valor?

I wanted to be a bard anyway when the full game is released and the last patch convinced me even more.
Looks like they are good at everything except raw damage.
They are good skill monkeys and party face anyway.
Too bad Larian is obsessed with AoE and unavoidable damage, so concentration for buffs or CC may be hard.

I want to have high cha and dex and some con and wis. This means low str and int.
As race I would take half wood elf or drow. Half elfs get +1 stat, stealth profiency and more movement, drow have perception skill and superior darkvision.
Half elf is properly better for power gaming, but this is mostly a role playing choice for me.
Note: If the final game has rolling for stats I will do so until I like the results.

I want to focus on social and rogue skills. Lets see what combat you can avoid through talking (At least at first so you can put yourself in a better situation when you want to fight later.)
Also take a good mix of spells, including social spells ( talk with animals, detect thoughts and so on, not sure how many potions or items you find for this, like the speak with dead amulet. well you could change them at lv up.) No using todpole though.

Now comes the question: lore or valor bard?
lore gives:
- 3 skills (would be great if you could chose wich ones)
- cutting words (sounds good but I am not sure how it is done without a proper reaction system)
- 2 spells from any class at lv6
- self buff with inspiration at lv 14

valor gives:
- martial weapons (because dex I use rapier anyway, so its just for longbow or heavy crossbow, not sure if reload will be a thing)
- medium armor + shield ( I will be encumbered with low str and maybe disadvantage for stealth)
- combat inspiration (once again not sure how to use it without reaction system)
- extra attack at lv6
- attack is bonus action after casting spell at lv14

I think lore is better. With low str and high dex its better to be a casting skill monkey then a wanna be warrior.

As skilled party face with low str there will be one annoyance: shopping
I buy and sell stuff but I often have to switch inventory with my "pack mule" to do so.

As party I need:
- A wizard for those int skills (oh no, Gale is eating my loot )
- Somebody with lots of str to carry my stuff, should also be able to swing a huge sword/axe (Lae´zel battle master?)
- somebody else, a bard can replace almost everything.

Right now, one of the major reasons to take Valor is severely gimped and simultaneously at the mercy of the RNG.

1) All Bardic Inspiration/Combat Inspiration rolls happen automatically on the first instance that the conditions for their use are fulfilled.

2) The die are rolled whether they would have mattered or not.

3) The bonus to attack rolls and skill checks are toggled on by default. The bonus to saving throws and AC (of which both are merged into one toggle) and damage rolls are toggled off by default. This means that in a real combat situation, if you are intending to use Combat Inspiration to attempt to mitigate an incoming attack for a party member, it actually can't do anything against incoming attacks from enemies that act before that party member in the initiative order. Worse still, an enemy could immediately blow the die by moving away and taking an opportunity attack.

Take that into consideration, and you basically have a mage with Extra Attack who doesn't get anything like the class features that the actual martial classes get, meaning their damage output will fall off hard late-game if that's something you're even considering. Of course, you're taking a Bard for their support capabilities, but as we've already established, Valor Bards can't reliably do that at the moment.

What game changing spells will be available for a Lore Bard to grab at level 6?

Any way, this is only a 4th level crash test dummy we are talking about here.

i went Gmone with 15 [+1vole] char, 14 str and dex valour as my first run, the important thing is taking Faerie Fire as your first spell to make the boss fight easy... after that its all optional

+1

I would love to multi-class Paladin with Lore Bard and pick up Spirit Guardians and fireball.

Stats

Full Plate & Packing Steel!

I played with a valor str based bard because I like melee characters better. It works well.
As Saito said combat inspiration is not working as in intended in DnD which is sad. It also add a bit of "toggle management" that's not really fun (what to enable, what to disable).

I'm not a fan of "more" skill proficiencies with Lore but at least, Cutting words is great.
You can use your reaction during your turn (yes, like your actions and BA) to use it. On top of that the effect of the feature last for one full turn. It's a very powerfull debuff.

I haven’t seen anything show up in the combat log, though maybe I’ve missed something. What you’re describing is what the tooltip says, but the ability might be completely broken for all we know.

Also a reminder that it doesn’t work on crits. Those hit no matter what, so kiss your bardic die goodbye.

Valour allows for some insane damage spikes with ranged rogues. You can either one-shot or very heavily damage most non-superboss (Ethel, Grym) enemies through a combination of a high-ground sneak attack with advantage (for maximum accuracy) and the damage bonus from Combat Inspiration, poison (preferably wyvern poison for the nastier enemies), bracing, and having the gaping wounds effect on your target. If you roll a critical, they're toast. Although it really suffers from how borked the implementation currently is (you lose the inspiration die for damage if your attack misses, for example). It would work well with melee heavy-hitters too, but it's harder to guarantee a hit since you can't get the high ground's +2 to attack.

Just to be sure:
- Combat inspiration damage bonus works only once for weapon damage, not for any extra damage you do with your weapon, like fire or poison
- You chose if you want hit chance or damage bonus, you don´t get both

I know what these abilities should do, but I am not sure if Larian knows.

The inspiration only works once but the hat gives them an extra D6 everytime it fires so having it go off in combat is nice

OK, after playing around with character creation I made my choice:

Race: drow
Class: bard, take lore college later
Background: charlatan
stats: str 8, dex 16, con 14, int 8, wis 12, cha 16
skills: perception (race), deception and sleight of hand (background), persuation, sense motiv, performance
Cantrip: vicious mockery, friends
Spells: healing word, dissonant whispers, heroism, thunderwave

I think this may be a good idea for a party face who solves many problems through talking or being sneaky, both RP wise and game mechanics wise.

a LORE bard with only 8 intel... thats going to be a bit pointless adding -1 to all skill checks but its your game so have fun

Won't that only apply to intelligence-based skill checks such as Arcana and History? Jack of All Trades assuming non-proficient would cancel out the penalty anyway.

I would suggest the crown of intelligence...but I'm kinda diggin' the hat.

Last I played only our MC could be the "face" or you risked freezing the MC in some kind of dialog bug, but after that get fixed...


Bard as a "face" when the bard can give his inspiration to others to make them better than him at being "face".

Did L mess up and a D&D bard can inspire themself? Otherwise this class seems messed up, because you can ALWAYS buff someone else better than the bard can be buffed.


A dialog bard just seems broken as Wyll would always get better buffs. As far as I can tell the only thing that works with the games D&D implementation is an expertise rogue focused dex bard. Though I didn't do the math, I think buffing shadowheart with inspiration might still make her a better rogue.


Strength shield valor bard is more interesting than a cleric as the party TPK safety, but I'm more going to place this on the roleplay shelf as it doesn't do anything well.

A lore bard does come with crowd control and some TPK safety. Perhaps with some dex and the nuclear arrow shooter of the team.

Though so far the ranger is the only one that get so few buttons he has rooms for arrows in the UI, the current UI needs the number on on screen buttons to be raised by a ton.

If you're worried about all the aoe and/or concentration being knocked off get valor and the shield master feat

I may be an idiot, but I am also the master of deception.
I try to imagine the following dialogue:
NPC: I have a quest for you: Show me a magic artifact in the next 5 minutes and I give you a reward.
You [deception check]: Look behind you, a 3 headed monkey (you grab a piece of junk while the NPC looks the other direction).
NPC: There was no monkey and this is a piece of junk.
You [deception check]: Sorry you did not see the monkey, they are really fast. And this artifact has great magic powers. It can make everything look ugly and boring.
See this nice shop over there? I put this artifact on the table and suddenly it looks like a junkyard. It´s MAGIC.
NPC: OK, you convinced me. Here is your reward.

You win a deception check against yourself and now you actually belief it is an artifact. So you carry a piece of junk around like it was the Staff of the Magi.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

Lore bards can inspire themselves at lv14, but it´s not sure we get this far in this game.
Well, I like that my main char talks to NPC and have some skills instead of being just a buff bot for the party.
Its OK when my party members fight better, but I want to do the talking.

You can have 18 int with expertise and still fail a check.

You can be Forest Gump and still win the Nobel Prize.


It's all about having fun with your character.

I was going to say no it's intelligence but turns out that's a Gnome thing

OK...so finally built a Bard for the first time since 5e came out.

Bard was the first class I considered, so I went with an old build idea (although hardly original).

Half-elf Valor Bard, boosting Dex, Con, and Charisma.

At level 4 I have taken sharpshooter...and WoW...great feat.

I also gave the feat to Astarion and Shadowheart, for the whole Elvin ranged strategy.

I was trying to work in Gale this play-through, but no Spell Sniper available in the mods I picked. Guess I will swap Wyll in and level him up with Eldritch Spear to complete the ranged theme. for melee I have Rapier + shield.

Lae'zel is on every other play-through, but I don't miss her selfish and evil child-mind.

I would play this class at launch as pure Bard and pick up Swift Quiver at level 10 (Magic Secrets). Classic I know, but weighing-in that a ranged party is now viable.


My favorite so far is still Barbarian Totem of the Bear...This is seriously my first choice for a solo class. 2 days ago, I sneaked past the Deurgar and left my party at the shroom village, just wanted to hop the boat to grab the way-point and the ring of invisibility. I completely forgot about the ambush in the middle of the lake. Easily soloed the encounter after pushing the first Dwarf in the water (Level 4). They are not indestructible, but give them Pole-arm Master and +1 Halberd, and they will mow mobs down fast.

+1 Halberd can be obtained from the Zhentarim trader, inside Goblin town in Selune's ruined temple. Took me 5 rests before it showed up in her inventory for purchase, but man is it a pretty weapon. Beats out the Glaive because of Cleave.