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

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.