Epic Spells vs Requiem - A Comparison

[DaloLorn]

The only real way to get Those Epic Bard song Feats is by going All the way into bard since bard song progression is kind of hard coded above 24+ uses cause of black box hard codedness.

And Requiem requires 20 of those 24 songs, so you can take literally all the song-progressing PRCs on BG and still have access to Requiem in all its glory. (Which is the more fun way to build a singing bard, IMO... though we really do need to set up a workaround for the song progression already. We have at least one viable idea how to do it, but nobody's gotten around to it yet.)

[metaquad4]

I wonder if it might be more interesting to make a handful of different epic songs, maybe something like this:

• Hymn of Requiem: Deals PBAoE sonic damage over time, as current Song of Requiem. (I like the name better. ) Maybe also a Will or Fortitude save to stun affected targets.
• Melody of Rejuvenation: PBAoE healing over time, as current Hymn of Requiem. Maybe also some lesser restorative effects, and/or some immunities (like poison or ability loss) for the duration.
• Sheltering Song: PBAoE Greater Invisibility for a duration scaling with Perform ranks. Maybe some mirror images too, or Freedom of Movement?

The idea being to make each individual song weaker, but open up a greater variety of song types to choose from and make burning an epic feat or two on Requiem a bit less of a no-brainer.

This could work, but more-so if they are un-nerfed as well.

So Hymn and Song become separate, and their calculation becomes Bard-Song (or Bard Caster Level) Class Progression Levels + Perform in damage (or healing).

Agreed on giving them some cute secondary effects as well.

[edmaster]

The only real way to get Those Epic Bard song Feats is by going All the way into bard since bard song progression is kind of hard coded above 24+ uses cause of black box hard codedness.

And Requiem requires 20 of those 24 songs, so you can take literally all the song-progressing PRCs on BG and still have access to Requiem in all its glory. (Which is the more fun way to build a singing bard, IMO... though we really do need to set up a workaround for the song progression already. We have at least one viable idea how to do it, but nobody's gotten around to it yet.)

I have a way to do this, Hit me up if interested

[DaloLorn]

I wonder if it might be more interesting to make a handful of different epic songs, maybe something like this:

• Hymn of Requiem: Deals PBAoE sonic damage over time, as current Song of Requiem. (I like the name better. ) Maybe also a Will or Fortitude save to stun affected targets.
• Melody of Rejuvenation: PBAoE healing over time, as current Hymn of Requiem. Maybe also some lesser restorative effects, and/or some immunities (like poison or ability loss) for the duration.
• Sheltering Song: PBAoE Greater Invisibility for a duration scaling with Perform ranks. Maybe some mirror images too, or Freedom of Movement?

The idea being to make each individual song weaker, but open up a greater variety of song types to choose from and make burning an epic feat or two on Requiem a bit less of a no-brainer.

This could work, but more-so if they are un-nerfed as well.

So Hymn and Song become separate, and their calculation becomes Bard-Song (or Bard Caster Level) Class Progression Levels + Perform in damage (or healing).

Agreed on giving them some cute secondary effects as well.

I would say either-or. Unnerf or secondary effects, not both. (That said, I'm leaning more towards secondary effects.)

[metaquad4]

I wonder if it might be more interesting to make a handful of different epic songs, maybe something like this:

• Hymn of Requiem: Deals PBAoE sonic damage over time, as current Song of Requiem. (I like the name better. ) Maybe also a Will or Fortitude save to stun affected targets.
• Melody of Rejuvenation: PBAoE healing over time, as current Hymn of Requiem. Maybe also some lesser restorative effects, and/or some immunities (like poison or ability loss) for the duration.
• Sheltering Song: PBAoE Greater Invisibility for a duration scaling with Perform ranks. Maybe some mirror images too, or Freedom of Movement?

The idea being to make each individual song weaker, but open up a greater variety of song types to choose from and make burning an epic feat or two on Requiem a bit less of a no-brainer.

This could work, but more-so if they are un-nerfed as well.

So Hymn and Song become separate, and their calculation becomes Bard-Song (or Bard Caster Level) Class Progression Levels + Perform in damage (or healing).

Agreed on giving them some cute secondary effects as well.

I would say either-or. Unnerf or secondary effects, not both. (That said, I'm leaning more towards secondary effects.)

I'd say un-nerf and maybe add in some debuff songs that have fancy secondary effects might be a cleaner approach. IMO.

[Tekill]

This is ridiculous! Every time I find a class I like you SOBs want to nerf it! Why should I suffer because you all cant build a proper character??!1!!

JK - I'm am sure this discussion was breaking an internet commandment regarding lack of saltiness while discussing a class change, or something. So to avoid drawing unwanted attention, I thought I better troll things up a bit.

Separating SoR and HoR?
-Two separate feats. Ones a Hymn and ones a song. They do different things. Makes sense that they be two separate songs.
Remove the current nerf or not?
-Either way works, but it would be a good trade off to remove the nerf if its going to take extra bard song uses to use both.

[Steve]

If you want to nerf something, make it impossible to sing and stealth at the same stupid time.

[DaloLorn]

I'm still leaning more in favor of greater utility, myself. Skill stacking being what it is, vanilla Requiem could deal over a hundred damage per round, for a total of over 1000 damage inflicted (or healed) with Lingering Song for the price of a single song charge. (For which a pure bard has precious few other uses, and why the hell do some of these PRC songs cost 2-4 charges when they're not nearly on par with Requiem? I can understand Anti-Magic Melody, Great Thunderstrike, or Ancient Songcraft, but why are Songs of Faith and Storms of Vengeance so expensive?)

That said - I'm not promising any changes right now. Brainstorming, yes, but I haven't run this through the proper channels for a change of this type.

If you want to nerf something, make it impossible to sing and stealth at the same stupid time.

It actually already is. (At least for Requiem, dunno about other songs.) Each damage tick breaks sanctuary, invisibility, etherealness, and nonmagical stealth.

[Ithilan]

Im just gonna put this out there, Requiem is for a vast majority of bard builds on this server, the bread and butter that makes and breaks their builds.

Why? Because they are charisma bards with heavy emphasis on more RP aspects in their builds. Outside of their requiem usage, these builds are pretty average, to borderline bad, when not empowering 4 other people in a party.

Requiem is an absurdly and stupidly designed ability in NWN2, bards in general function better in NWN2 than any other D&D iteration I have seen. But for years on end the PvE design on the server revolved around power build gishes, FvS-Paladin, bard builds and other "easy to access" builds that dont rely as much on gear as say a fighter necesarilly does.

So why the change? Is it a problem that a monk build can plow through the server without casting a single spell too? That the WM does an average 100+ damage per hit, while he still UMD a breach scroll or mords to beat up his caster opponent. Is it a problem that epic precision allows you to bypass sneak immunities?

No we call it class flavour and build designs, to compensate for weaknesses, now it seems a majority of people in this thread have never played a bard wasnt a strength 30 requiem trash build meant to power through everything. Bards have many issues, many strengths too, but a lot of issues when it comes to sustain outside of the niche strength power build. And requiem fixes a lot of that for many of the builds.

The comparisson to Hellball is absurdly stupid, thats like comparing a meteor storm spell to a favoured soul casting divine power. Can we have a bit of logic behind our suggested changes? And rather than the envious screaming for others to be brought down, how about buffing hellball?

I find one of the silliest things about epic spells being their limitations. Why not make something like the evocation choices (Hellball and LIghtning Storm) run on a CD instead of a use per day function? Would any one complain that people could hellball once every 10 min? I cant really imagine so.

Further more the math of the original post is terribly wrong, bard songs per day is bugged AF and its not like requiem is the only song out there. On average I use chorus of heroism and legionnaires march about as often, one of them has a CD however but thats a bigger factor in why a party blows up a boss, than requiem ever has been.

Dalo is right about one thing here and thats how requiem becomes a very tiny utility ability in a party. But often hard carries for the solo bard.

I fail to see the problem with requiem, I very much see the issue with Hellball and similar worthless spells.

Edit: The argument that bard PrCs are bad too is mind boggling and really goes to show what kind of rookie builds are being considered here. Stormsinger and Dissonant Chord are two incredible classes that are used in a vast majority of good bard builds too. But seems the thread focusses on a 27 bard / 3 cleric build with 30 strength and 10 years of perform gear gathered.

[Gadwin]

An easy and thematic fix that comes to mind for keeping requiem good for cha builds and nerfing it for str powerbuilds is to rework the formula to take a heavier account of charisma than it currently does when determining damage and healing.

On the note of 'class diversity', classes can be different all they want, but when Class A does everything better than Class B then there is no mechanical point in taking Class B. Ideally, the only class that would be a strict downgrade from other choices here should be peasant, since it's self-imposed. The reason I suggested what I did is not to target bard in particular, but to get the server to begin to address the colossal gap in build strengths that currently exists.

As for why I compared Hellball to Requiem, I did so because they both have the same cost of entry- 18 to 20 levels of a class with magic in it, a skill requirement, and one epic feat. If it costs the same then it can and should be compared to other such choices. They do not singlehandedly decide anything, but they are very much worthy of consideration. This is part of what people do to determine the relative strengths of the options availible to them; how much bang for their buck are they getting.

The suggestion you made of making epic spells function on a cooldown or otherwise be more frequently usable is something I agree on wholeheartedly.

[Endelyon]

I'll be blunt in saying we are probably not looking at changing this at this time based on a single thread with no internal discussion. That's not to stifle the discussion, of course. Emotions just seem a little high and the discourse seems tense.

[Blackman D]

Is it a problem that epic precision allows you to bypass sneak immunities?

lets be fair now, this feat is a must have on high SA builds because without it you lose all your damage vs doing half with it, its not as if you get full damage or something

and anything crit immune with DR still drops your output quite a bit, just not to 0 like it would be otherwise

[Ithilan]

Is it a problem that epic precision allows you to bypass sneak immunities?

lets be fair now, this feat is a must have on high SA builds because without it you lose all your damage vs doing half with it, its not as if you get full damage or something

and anything crit immune with DR still drops your output quite a bit, just not to 0 like it would be otherwise

Which is the same effect many bard builds have when their Requiem is on cooldown, or the mob has sonic immunity. So I think its a really fair comparisson. The argument I see that bards can do anything best, is silly.

Dragon druids, warlocks, FvS, rangers and even some of my fighter builds have an easier time soloing things. They fall short in other designs, but yes bards are very strong overall, but a jack of all trades and master of very few. They stand out in a party play cause every one notice the +11 AB my own character provides them with, but im the worst performer in said party.

Perspective and data is important when wanting to change the fundamentals of a spec or class and comparing it to Hellball just simply aint it. Ill retract my self serving mud slinging from the topic now.

[Deragnost]

I can't help but support Shandril's words.
I know, I know, hearing that a bard spell does potentially 130 damage to the first target, 65 damage to the second and 32 damage to the third in sonic damage can scare people off. I say potentially, because it would require to have 100 points in Perform.

Before you ask, yes: I'm playing a bard and I'm CHA based. For experience, and not because "my-class-is-OP-OMG-I-want-it-to-stay-as-it-is", a CHA based bard would have not many other ways to actually deal damage. Especially if they spread out their levels with other prestige classes (like Stormsinger). 24 songs are just enough to make a run with the other friends and... yes, as a bard I work a bit as off-tank and dealing some damage to assist.

The character concept however was born as a spellcaster primarly, and secondly as a support - but again, I'm bringing my own experience.

Sure we can decide to make it all different, and have bards suck while they do nothing and watch the rest doing their job and feeling useless in the process (especially the CHA based bards because they can't literally hit anything in melee - and when they do they deal 15 damage if they're lucky... and half of that damage is granted by inspire courage).

Or...
Instead of separating feats to do other things and whatsoever, why not doing instead the most simple thing?


Adding a CHA requirement to Song and Hymn of Requiem, if the issue is to see bards with 32 STR and using Hymn with only 13 CHA and a +3 CHA item for the spells.
Song of Requiem, let's say, requires 22 CHA or so.
Hymn of Requiem, instead, requires 24 CHA or so.

This way it would definetely give an improvement to those who seek RP over the "I go and destroy everything", and reward the CHA build at the same time. I don't see the need to change the formula, only perhaps the requirements if we want to.

A STR-build bard would definetely have its own merits, and the song of requiem would become really just an extra.

They want to dip into cleric? They want to be, I don't know, Dragonslayer? That is perfect - Clerics of Milil are encouraged to take bard levels! And why not adding something for them too?

Maybe a new feat, empowering their offensive damage and attack, a song only they have, requiring maybe 22 or more STR along with 20 songs.

Example:

Song of Strength

Type of feat: Class, Epic
Prerequisite: 20 songs, Perform 24, Strength 22
Required for: Song of Might
Specifics: The bard empowers his weapon and hits with might, doing an extra sonic damage with the blade equal to Bard Level/5 + Perform Skill/10. Lasts 10 rounds.

Use: Song



Song of Might

Type of feat: Class, Epic
Prerequisite: 20 songs, Perform 30, Strength 24
Specifics: Now the Song of Strength also grants +3 to the attack bonus, 5/adamantine DR and +2 regeneration.

Please, take the feats I wrote up here with a pinch of salt, they are ideas and I'm not saying that is how the bard should be!

What I mean is: opportunities exist to improve and give merit to the classes, rewarding the path they choose - barring some other things because that's the character's path (being martial or being spellcaster), without nerfing as if there's no tomorrow.

If you want to nerf something, make it impossible to sing and stealth at the same stupid time.

Although my bardness says "No please don't say it, Deragnost!" I must agree.
It is irrealistic not only that you can sing songs under stealth, but also that you can use the inspirations.
Or at least if you want to keep it, maybe they grant only half of what they actually give. Because they must inspire "softly" and they can't sing loudly - as they have to be careful to not be spotted.

[Ithilan]

Not too fond of this suggestion either Deragnost. Mostly because it ties in to ability requirements, which I think only contributes to more power building.

I know its just an idea and it would have to be tweaked but in current suggestion, you would only encourage bards to become either a strength or charisma bard, punishing the occasional dex build, or just some one who doesnt min max.

A 22/22 build would become as common for bards as paladins nearly, picking up probably both songs and EDM.

Further more the issue with the Song of Strength suggestion would be how it invalidates Ironskin Chant and the Sonic Weapon spell too. And given the sonic resistances on a fair number of bosses, it would be useless. So with all due respect, its not much of a solution at all.

Bards have four epic feats in the game, exclusive to them, three of which revolves around your party members, not the actual bard. A bard with out requiem is typically just a terrible martial build that qualifies more as an off tank with mirror images and concealment up. If you remove requiem from these builds a majority of bards become invalid. If you remove hellball from any caster build, he probably will just celebrate it.

Again these two feats can't be compared at all, the builds in which they exist and interact with, can't be compared at all. And how the server is scaled in regards to either, can't be compared at all.

Im all for more bard songs and more variety, I do not like requiem in its current form, as I state in my original post, it is absurdly dumb design choice by the NWN2 game devs. But while Ed is argueing bards are a no brainer with no mechanical tinkering, its also a feat locked class, that has near no flexibility. If added songs or requiem was a baseline addition you obtain for free, it would be a whole other conversation, but having to invest three epic feats or four for many bards, in to non-choices sucks big time and again, these feats are mostly for the sake of people you play with, not yourself. And still on BG given the many changes over the years and design philosophies, bards are not the S tier build some others are in comparison. Some of the arguments here almost make it sound like requiem is spammable and comes with free healing, not how it requires for you to invest two epic feats (and a normal one) and be a dedicated bard build for the 20 songs per day, as well as skill points, needs lingering song to last a whole minute and has a two minute cooldown, how it now uses concentration checks and can be disrupted, or just baseline silenced with out joyful noise up (who has that outside of Verona kills).

And still, like Dalo says, this is a mandatory and defining ability for all bards and one that comes at a big feat tax. Again I do not see any issues with our current requiem on the server, but I see a ton of issues with some of the epic spells. But thats not comparable.