Baldur's Gate : The Sword Coast Chronicles : NWN2 Persistent World

From first glance 'Wizard or Sorcerer 7/Bard 3/Bladesinger 10/Stormsinger 10' should get BAB of 22, caster level of 27.

The bard levels would allow you to throw silence or extra grease, while Stromsinger allows you get one of the better 'cloud' spells via Storm of Vengeance.

And of course, Bladesinger allows you to cast in Armor regardless of spell book and potentially offer more AC and other abilities.

So, how would you go about on such a gish? What would you get?

Sorcerer 7/Bard 3/Bladesinger 10/Stormsinger 10 :
Basically, I would treat it as a high charisma build. It has enough dexterity to make use of Mithral Chain Mail, maybe get some extra AB too with Weapon Finesseable Rapier, but it would play like your usual pure caster that gets some extra defenseves from light armor and intelligence score.

The high charisma would also increase the number of bard spells that are available. Thus casting silence on the ground could be used against caster mobs and in PvP. The higher DC will also naturally boost your 'cloud' spells from Sorcerer Spell Book and from class abilities.

Wild Elf or Half Elf are the only choices to avoid multiclassing experience penalty. Wild Elf does come with +2 dex and -2 int, but I think the two should more or less balance each other out.

Wizard 7/Bard 3/Bladesinger 10/Stormsinger 10 :
The curious thing about this build is that you can actually save the Wizard 5 bonus feat to the epic levels. Thus you just need to go Wizard 4/Bard 3/Stormsinger 10/Bladesinger 3 or Wizard 4/Bard 3/Stormsinger 5/Bladesinger 8 pre-epic and you can take that Wizard 5 whenever you need it. For example you could use it to Grab Automatic Quicken Spell 0-III.

With a high intelligence, you can get it as extra damage per hit and slightly more AC than with the above build, but the DCs of Stormsinger's Storm of Vengeance will be lower.

But just think of all the skill points you can have, in addition to the skills opened by Bard.

Half-Elf, Moon Elf, Sun Elf, Dark Elf are all potential options. The dark elf is probably the best choice due to +2 in dex, int, and cha on top of innate spell resistance.



Also, I made a mistake above, you need Bard 4 to get the silence. It is a shame. But you could in theory drop your caster level to 26 without dropping your spell DCs. I am just saying that Automatically Quickened Silence followed by Grease can shut down low reflex save caster mobs, and some players too.



So, does anyone have any build specific suggestions? Any spell casting tactics to use? It is just something that popped up in my head. I am basically just theory crafting here. So feel free to give any imput. Who knows, maybe it inspires you to roll one with the coming RCR period.

I believe Storm Munin plays this split as a BladeSinger (though not sure if WIZ or Sorc). You might try shooting him a PM to ask him to take a look are provide advice.

While it can work, from what I figure the attack bonus is too low to be a true melee damage dealer so it will need cloud spells and/or SoV to really perform well. Thus best bet is to gather mobs, drop AoE and then whittle away. This likely makes WIZ the better option so you can get INT to 30 for the +5 AC bonus alongside 14 DEX/Cats Grace and Mithril Chainmail for AC in the mid 50's.

Your AB (longsword or rapier) will likely only be ~38 fully buffed when not using CE, so landing strikes is a bit of an issue. I think SM mentioned using Storm Bolt or Clap of Thunder, but I don't recall.

My opinion is the top builds for Bladesinger/Deathsinger is either W10/BS10/EK10 for CL29, lowish damage, but still reaches ~40 AB and has solid DC's to use Cloud Spells or W5/SB5/BS10/EK10 which will have ~43 or 44 AB and 6 APR, but only CL24 so DCs will be 2 lower on cloud spells. Trade off is your average damage will be ~9-12 points higher per strike and you will land more hits per round. In the end when the non-SB build uses clouds, damage output is about the same, swinging in it's favor the more mobs you are facing. In addition it doesn't have to worry much over greater dispel (5%). They are both solid, SB just needs to focus more on getting top end gear.

Your split you list and others still work... For a Deathsinger I like W6/DS10/EK10/SD4 for example. Lowish damage again, but HiPS can be used defensively or to land that first Nova strike quickly. CL25, BAB26 can be switched to CL26, BAB25 by switching to W7/SD3... There are other splits as well... A STR / Longsword BS might go W6/F4/EK10/BS10 to gain some feats to use for damage such as Weapon Specialization and Northlander Hewing. Even with 14 STR and Bull's STR NH would increase damage per hit from ~15.5 to ~23. Still not great, but serviceable. CL25, BAB27.

Bladesinger/Deathsinger is so well balanced because there are loads of options for building them, but you are always balancing your combat prowess with your caster level. If you understand what you are giving up and what you are gaining you can better make decisions about how to allocate and utilize your spellbook for the best performance. My bladesinger is most likely NOT going to cast the same spells or use the same tactics as just about anyone else's and I think that is really amazing. It allows for really cool, unique builds such as the one you're looking in to. You just need to understand and plan for the fact that you have a lowish attack bonus and thus are more reliant on damage over time from SoV and cloud based spells. Still need wards for AB and whatever damage bump you can get, but priority should definitely be wall of fire, acid cloud, incendiary cloud, cloudkill, cloud of bewilderment, etc. Anything that either adds damage or causes AC debuff to your enemies is your friend.