Which Bard subclass to play?

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I have been looking at playing a bard, after hearing how good Haer'dalis is.

NOTE: I ALWAYS start with Baldurs Gate 1, that way I can get a 19 strength, as boosting all other stats.

I am NOT looking at soloing through the game, and am trying to decide which one to go with.

Blade: looks pretty awesome, but since I don't plan on doing a lot of tanking, I am thinking this might not be the one I want.

Skald: The song looks WICKED especially after getting up to around 20, which I will climb to rather quickly. Boosting everyone in combat looks great, and later on, you get the fear and other things a regular bard gets.

Jester: He looks pretty good, but unsure how good at higher levels. It is true that you can throw malisons, doom, and other things to drop their saves.

I really can't see any reason to play a non kitted bard.

I am not really worried about pick pockets, that is what Jan will be for, after chugging some potions.

I used to play bards quite a bit in regular AD&D, they were awesome, but the roll playing was even more fun as a bard.

I am also wondering what weapons to take.

Longsword seems mandatory. If I have a 19 Strength a sling might be nice, but I will only ever get 1 attack a round, so I am leaning to longbow for some of the wicked bows in Baldurs 2.

 

I have barely plaid any bard in any of the games. I started a couple of different kits but just never got into the bard for some unknown reason. Like you said, bards in PnP are great!

The skald is definitely one to look at. He jacks up the party pretty nicely I hear. I started one but never got out of Irenicus's dungeon. Not sure why I stop playing any of them.

I love bards so I'm going to have to force myself to give it a go past the dungeon.

As far as I know you can cast those spells (malison, doom, etc.) but never tried them so I'm not really sure. Guess I should fire up the game later and see

Playing a NON-kitted bard? Obsurd. Lol.

Jan? I love that little guy. He's in my top 3 favorites. Minsc and Valygar are the other 2 with Mazzy dragging up #4.

Long sword is a solid choice. There's some good ones out there, but some are for other weapons as well of course. I almost always take long sword and dagger with dual wielding.

Some long swords you can get are:
Flame tongue that you find on one guy just before going into the druid "room" I guess you can call it. The area is the last part of the druid grove quest. 3 guys are at the door and one drops the flame tongue. Nice weapon. To bad you get it AFTER YOU NEED IT!! I hate it when they do that.
Another good long sword is the Daystar. It works great vs. undead and you can get it pretty early as long as you can gimp the lich at the gates.
Then there's also the Ras. It's only +2 but you can make it dance for a couple rounds
There's a couple other's but those come to mind. Oh yea. Almost forgot my favorite one, Angurvadal. It starts as a +4 Flaming long sword that can be upgraded to +5 and it will give the wielder 22 strength as well as make you immune to level drain. Sweet eh? Love that little bitty.

If you have 19 strength there's a bow named Strong Arm you can buy from the guy in the Adventurer's Mart . It gets +2 to hit and et's +3 damage

You can check out a bit of info discussion I had about bards and using the skald. Makes the skald look pretty solid.

Hope this helps. I'm usually, almost always, the one asking the questions so maybe the others can help out here as well. But I'm more than happy to lend a hand when I can. Makes me feel all warm and fuzzy to answer instead of ask

 

Not bad advice.

And yeah, all bard kits have their pros/cons. A non-kitted bard only works if you have mods installed.
Bards can cast any arcane spell up to spell level 6.

The blade is the most warrior-like of all the bard kits. At best it's an emergency tank, not a main tank. The best thing about the blade is its offensive capabilities. Any melee weapon you can dual wield works and longswords, as Eyebreaker7 mentioned, are always a good weapon type to invest in.

The skald is the most minstrel-like of the bard kits. It will probably spend most of its time either casting buffs or singing. When it comes to overall buffing capabilities, no other class/kit in the game matches the skald. Proficiencies don't really matter, you'll want to equip a defensive weapon if possible.

The jester is best played as an offensive caster/ranged attacker (bows, crossbows, throwing knives, darts, etc). Its song is basically an on-demand debuff that allows it to confuse enemies. At higher levels the song can also slow enemies and knock them unconscious. The song is technically not a magical attack, so it is not blocked by most spell protections. This makes it very powerful in the sense that only outright immunity works against it.

 

Sorry. I'm just re-reading my post and noticed I never put the link in:

http://www.sorcerers.net/community/index.php?threads/cant-decide-what-to-be.77276/

 

I made a skald last night.

There is one disadvantage that I have found. You can't fight while your song it going, because it stops as you sing.

So once you reach 15th level, all you are really going to do is singing constantly so everyone gets a +4 to attack and damage. Your attacks, even if you hit are not worth the bonuses you lose. Mislead and simulacrum give you the ability to do other things.

 

Does intelligence matter for a bard? I know it does for the other arcane casters but what about the bard? I looked around on other sites and they all say to max it but they are from years ago. Did anything change with the EE change? Can I get away with just an 11( 2 hits from a mind guy)? 16 (3 hits)?

 

I assume the blade gets the same song as a pure bard?

 

Yes and no - while not different from the regular bard song initially, the blade does not get the improvements to bard song at levels 9 and 18 that a regular bard would get.
The usual effects and at which level are as follows :

This means the blade can only get the +1 and morale raising effects all the way until he is able to get the enhanced bard song HLA.
Enhanced bard song gives the following benefit :

This means the enhanced bard song effects are on par with a high level skald - but unlike the skald's song, the improved bard song effects the entire map, meaning you can just plonk down a clone in a corner somewhere and enjoy the effects as long as you don't travel to another area.
This is also the sole reason why i personally dislike skalds. They're good suppoting characters for your party along the way, but once you get to the high levels and pick up enhanced bard song, they are pretty much redundant, sunce another kit like the blade could get the same effects and still keep their own unique class benefits like offensive and defensive spin.

 

How do you create a clone for a non 7th or 8th level spell caster like the bard?

 

Stock up on scrolls and cast it from those.

Also, unless they fixed this in the enhanced edition, a clone created by the 6th level Mislead spell can still use the bard song, even though it cannot attack or cast spells.

 

Mislead images can sing. You can also summon a Simulacrum using the Helm of Vhailor and scrolls.

EE left this as is since Mislead images have always been able to perform actions besides attack or cast spells, though there are rumors that the Mislead component that prevents the invisibility effect from ever being broken unless the clone dies first is getting fixed.

Same as any other caster, bards need INT. 18 is recommended since getting high rolls on a bard is easy.
INT affects memorization chance and how many spells you can memorize. You can get away with using low INT if you really want to, seems unnecessarily tedious though.

 

Bards cannot use the helmet of vhailor unless they get the Use Any Item HLA as well though, which will be late into bg2.