Bard Song is Overpowered

[gotesu]

Disclaimer : I play a bard.

I will start by saying I think that bard song as it is is actually weaker than I think it should be, I know it sounds odd, but I'll explain.

Up until lvl 14 (14!!) the combat bonuses are +1 ab/ac/dmg/saves/skills. If to compare it to the other party buff class (warden), they will have by now +3 ac bonus that -stacks- with other sources (unlike a bard's deflection bonus), +2 on ab/dmg, and their capstone martial ability (overpower/shield wall).

There are exactly two things that scale significantly as the bard goes through these lvls, and that is the temporary hp and duration. The way this is most effectively utilized is by reactivating bardsong midfight to refresh the THP. Each such time costs a bard song use, spends a round and smacks 8 hp on your party. It's not gamebreaking, but it can help in tight situations.

Aside of two of the bardsong bonus feat song abilities who actually tweak the main bardsong, all bard song abilities will require bard song use seperately from the main song, which means the same pool is going to be used with no means of refreshing it. This is also true for curse song. This means that pumping up people with the other bard abilities (which last 1-1.5 min depends on lingering) will -quickly- drain your uses.

On the issue of curse song : in practice, I find curse song to be -far- weaker than the theoretical calculation might imply. If anyone thinks standing in the middle of an enemy crowd and spamming an average of 22.5/round at lvl 18(!) for 18 rounds while everyone's agro turns to you and they all gunk you while you can't do anything else is a good idea, be my guest. I dont think it's a good tactic at all, and Im understating. (And just to give an impression, on the current lvl cap it'l be 10 dmg on average per round, most times you're better just hitting with your weapon).

So, being able to use just spend one bardsong use for the regular song due to the long duration is a blessing and also a way to make sure the bard is able to give his main class contribution throughout the whole fight as imo it should be. I do agree it sometimes gets silly when a bard is buffing a party with a song and just sends them off so I agree it makes much more sense to limit the effects to the bard's proximity.

So in my opinion in short : Bardsong bonuses aren't that significant, Duration is fine as long as bard song uses cant be replenished, Curse song spam is an ineffective and suicidal tactic in most cases so not really a problem, song affecting only while the bard is around makes more sense.

 

[TwistyShape]

Disclaimer : I play a bard.

Up until lvl 14 (14!!) the combat bonuses are +1 ab/ac/dmg/saves/skills. If to compare it to the other party buff class (warden), they will have by now +3 ac bonus that -stacks- with other sources (unlike a bards deflection bonus), +2 on ab/dmg, and their capstone martial ability (overpower/shield wall).

There are exactly two things that scale significantly as the bard goes through these lvls, and that is the temporary hp and duration. The way this is most effectively utilized is by reactivating bardsong midfight to refresh the THP. Each such time costs a bard song use, spends a round and smacks 8 hp on your party. Its not gamebreaking, but it can help in tight situations.

Aside of two of the bardsong bonus feat song abilities who actually tweak the main bardsong, all bard song abilities will require bard song use seperately from the main song, which means the same pool is going to be used with no means of refreshing it. This is also true for curse song. This means that pumping up people with the other bard abilities (which last 1-1.5 min depends on lingering) will -quickly- drain your uses.


So in my opinion in short : Bardsong bonuses arent that significant, Duration is fine as long as bard song uses cant be replenished, Curse song spam is an ineffective and suicidal tactic in most cases so not really a problem, song affecting only while the bard is around makes more sense.

I think bringing the Warden capstone abilities in somewhat of a moot point, overpower being just a flat AC bonus, which, at level 14, is 1 (to a max of 3 at 18), and shieldwall is arguably a questionable ability in terms of usefulness until we can use it to see for ourselves. The Warden also comes with significant drawbacks in that it buffs the party for a total of, on average, seven rounds, totalling 42 seconds (6 seconds per round) every 3 minutes, and this does not scale with caster level. I personally think the Warden's abilities are in a good place in that you have to choose when to use resources.

Perhaps this conversation is a little early in the game, seeing as we're only level 8. As I've said in earlier posts, I don't think the resolution is changing the Bard Song in terms of its ability; if anything, you could even make it a touch stronger in terms of what it does, but I believe the cooldown and length need to be revisited. We're seeing situations where parties are grabbing bards to buff them before even leaving the city, and that feels awfully strange. Alongside this, there seems to be no consideration at the moment or, in my opinion, ever considering how the other bard song variables seem. The one question I do have is: do you need to turn off the base bard song to use skills such as Pavane or Capriccio? Or can you use them while maintaining the base bard's song buff?

 

[Reikenbach]

Bard Song is very potent. At the current level cap of 8, it's a buff that provides as much offensive and defensive utility as Bull's Strength and Shield of Faith combined, while also improving saves and skills - and it affects everybody rather than just one person. Because Deflection AC doesn't stack, Bard Song also enables divine casters to do something else with the spell slots they would have spent on Shield of Faith. More importantly, Bard Song is also probably going to be the only reliable way of even hitting +3 Deflection AC.

The comparison with Wardens is unreasonable, because you're comparing a buff that has maybe 25% uptime with one that has 100% uptime. More importantly, the effects stack - there's no reason not to bring both a Bard and a Warden.

Not sure anyone's arguing about needing the potency of Bard Song anyway. The issue is the ludicrously long duration relative to how many charges you get - odds are you could run 2 or 3 dungeons (depending on length) at the current cap of 8 without ever having to refresh the song unless you wanted more THP. I don't think it's unreasonable to expect that short dungeons should require maybe one cast of Bard Song and longer dungeons should need at least two. That still leaves plenty of Bard Song charges to use on the other songs - and you've still got regular spells and your own middling combat ability besides.

 

[WillDigForFood]

I mean, people are arguing against any additional nerfs to small QoL things because it's a terrible idea.

There's no truly good reason to start reducing folks' QoL on TDN at this moment. Dungeons are already fairly rough at higher levels, so reducing QoL by stripping away the duration of spells and effects will only accomplish one of two things:

1) People will just stop playing. I've been speaking with a few folks playing spellcasters these last couple of days on this topic exactly, and there's quite a few folks who would just quit the server entirely.
2) People will stop actually engaging with the content. If effects last minutes per level, or less, then folks will just stop RPing in dungeons. They'll sprint through, get their loot, then go RP in the Thoroughfare.

A strong binding theme to the server is well and good, but I've said it a dozen times now: it's not going to keep TDN's player count alive. Content, and the content being fun to engage with is what keeps a server alive.

 

[TwistyShape]

A strong binding theme to the server is well and good, but Ive said it a dozen times now: its not going to keep TDNs player count alive. Content, and the content being fun to engage with is what keeps a server alive.

I think this is where we start getting into the weeds, when it comes to eroding the theme for content, when the content on an RP server should be the RP. Obviously, the counterpoint to that is RPing in dungeons. There's more nuance to be had when you start including the idea of a more robust rest system to help restore spells/skills mid-dungeon, but then the conversation becomes very elaborate. Now, I'm not saying the spells/bard song should be reduced to the same as Warden, fuck no, but it should be a healthy in between, having spells that last hours just seems to be off the mark.

 

[Gadwin]

I do see the points about keeping effects from being too annoying to keep track of, and also them lasting too long. Finding the buff duration that would allow for people to fully complete any dungeon at an un-rushed pace that allows for them to still RP is probably key; 10m / CL uncapped is far beyond that though, and low level dips are also something to be considered. Maybe we could start looking at implementing upper limit caps on spells and abilities in general? Something enough for the vast majority of content without worrying about 3-hour buff spells that have a 3 minute cooldown.

 

[Reikenbach]

I mean, people are arguing against any additional nerfs to small QoL things because its a terrible idea.

If the duration of Bard Song is so long that it only needs to be reapplied once every few RL hours, there's not much point in tying it to the Bard Song resource pool anymore. You may as well just make it a toggled aura if Bards are expected to spend all but one or two of their song charges on songs other than Bard Song. And if it's only being reapplied frequently to restore temporary HP, just separate that part out and make it one of the uses for song charges.

I'm being a bit facetious, but I think it's a very valid point that there's no sense in tying it to a resource pool if you don't really need to spend resources maintaining it. And if it's expected to have more-or-less permanent uptime with minimal resource cost, then it needs to be balanced around that.

 

[MkIV]

People throwing on bard song on a party to just watch them leave is in bad form and I would argue is while not explicitly breaking the rules is very obviously exploiting the game like nature of NwN and TDN. Much as we are not allowed to exploit the AI or pathing.

Bard song being a throw down buff that doesn't need constant micromanaging or handholding feels great and is a massive quality of life change. This means that characters don't need to be within the 3 meters of emotional support range or jumping back to the bard every 6 seconds to ensure that they get the effects. The change feels like it was meant to better reflect that a song wouldn't instantly stop working because you didn't hear it for 10 seconds or because you are now suddenly an extra 2 feet away.

Changing this means that players now need to attached at the hip, no rogues scouting forward, melee OR backline get buffs without awkward positioning or being forced to be in a place they would rather not be. It being a 'everyone stand closeish and listen to me play wonderwall' makes it very easy to play with.


The basic bard song still has the temp HP, with a feat to even increase it, meaning that it is still a tactical choice if you want to spend a charge or not. Someone about to die? You could use a bard song to give them a little breathing room but that means one less use of song of swords.

Bards are not breaking the game or doing impossible things, some classes are better at certain stages of the game than others, I think this is an example of bards being within their element and that +1 feels really powerful because there is no +1 weapons or armour.

 

[TwistyShape]

Bard song being a throw down buff that doesnt need constant micromanaging or handholding feels great and is a massive quality of life change. This means that characters dont need to be within the 3 meters of emotional support range or jumping back to the bard every 6 seconds to ensure that they get the effects. The change feels like it was meant to better reflect that a song wouldnt instantly stop working because you didnt hear it for 10 seconds or because you are now suddenly an extra 2 feet away.

Changing this means that players now need to attached at the hip, no rogues scouting forward, melee OR backline get buffs without awkward positioning or being forced to be in a place they would rather not be. It being a everyone stand closeish and listen to me play wonderwall makes it very easy to play with.

I may have missed any suggestions regarding changing its range, fall-off, or otherwise, but that is not what should be changed. There is nothing wrong with how Bard Song works; the issue stems from how long it lasts. And even then, I'm not saying it should be hamstrung completely; none of the 10 minutes/CL abilities should be, because, as stated, people want to RP in dungeons. But an hour-long buff is crazy. Similarly, as previously mentioned, a buff lasting literally seconds, which costs a spell slot (thus not including Wardens), is also crazy.

I am all for classes remaining fun to play, but I don't think the argument about an 80-minute uptime for Bard Song vs around 30 minutes, meaning you might need to consider how you spend your resources now and then, should be this difficult. For all the RP concerns, I believe sometimes having to take a short rest during a dungeon would add to the experience for me. Some dungeons, a 30-minute buff will be fine, others, a 30-minute buff might need you to pause as you explore. I don't think this is a negative.