Soloing a Bard

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Is it technically possible to solo a bard through the game ?
Please dun laugh at this crazy idea
I am just roleplaying my Minstrel from Dark age of Camelot as i miss her alot

 

Technically, any solo should be possible.
How you go about it and how many reloads you can withstand before giving up in disgust is upto you.
By the way, brave move.

 

Bard is the worst solo class, so this is rather a mad idea. The Lingering Song feat may give you some benefit from your bardsong, but IWD2 is so combat heavy, that I do not think you will find this possible.

Good luck, anyway.

 

The adventure will start today as I still dun know how to spec her, been researching alot on bard recently and found out that for powergaming wise a dex-base slinger bard is recommended.

But I am thinking of creating a melee combat bard, and can cast sorcerers spell, and I also think that 2 lvl of Rogue will be useful because of Evasion.
Here is some questions.
1)Does charm effect how many spell a bard can cast per day? *As i was thinking about dropping it.*
2)How would u spec my bard if you are using my idea?

I think that if I solo i will play the easilest mode avaliable.

[ November 04, 2003, 13:16: Message edited by: Jimmy ]

 

Give her the 2-levels in rogue for the evasion and if you want the high dexterity/ combat heavy type give her one level in ranger so you get the ambi-dexterity+two-weapon fighting feats for free as long as you are wearing light or no armor. If you want to cast spells too it's unlikely you will be wearing any heavier than light armor anyway because the spell failure will be too high unless your willing to spend a couple of slots on the Armored Arcana feats.

So briefly:
2 levels of rogue,
1 level of ranger
1 slot in Armored Arcana and only wear light armor.
the rest is up to personal preferance.
Better if she's human because then she'll get the bonus feat. The high dexterity bonus will give you a decent armor class anyway.
Have fun

 

This is OK, Razal'dar, but then Jimmy can never increase the Ranger or Rogue levels again (or he can increase the ranger one level, or increase them both one level, and continue to do so as long as the Ranger levels remain within one of the Bard level), since a triple-class character again beomes vulnerable to the XP penalty-- even when human and without a Favored Class.

Working around this is a distraction from increasing the Bard levels, and slows the increase in Bard levels. IMO, it's also rather a waste of time, since one level of ranger and two levels of rogue isn't much of anything. Neither rangers nor rogues are terribly useful before level 4 or so, given that two-hand fighting isn't much use until you get strong enough to get your BAB up (plus feats to spend on Weapons Focus for both the main hand and off-hand weapon types to reduce the "to hit" penalty), and the Ranger doesn't have any spells. OK, Jimmy could use the two Rogue levels to pump some skill points into Hide, Move Silently, Search and Disarm Device, which is mildly useful. At the beginning. But long before he gets to Chapter 3, he's going to have 3 times as many Bard levels as Rogue levels, so what difference are those few skill points going to make if he hasn't used the Bard levels to increase those same skills further? If he has increased those skills further, the minor additional points gained from the Rogue levels aren't going to make any crucial difference.

I've actually had to recreate characters to remove that single ranger level for these reasons. The one level of Ranger just didn't confer enough benefit for what it cost when creating a triple-class, because I planned to increase the other two classes throughout the course of the game. And if I think that a single "dummy class" isn't useful, I sure don't see the benefit of two.

Jimmy, it might be better to leave yourself some "wiggle room" by just skipping the ranger entirely and simply spending the feat points on Two-Weapon Fighting, Ambidextery and Armored Arcana to reduce the spell failure for Medium Armor to something reasonable. That way, you can create an effective Bard/Rogue (if that's what you want) without worrying about the XP penalty.

I'd be more likely to suggest focusing on the Ranger dual to get some alternative spells (of both Druid and Cleric schools, which couldn't hurt) and using skill points to pump up the various Rogue skills, some of which cross Ranger skills anyway, like Move Silently. You lose the chance at Improved Evasion, of course, but if the Bard/whatever is all alone, you're unlikely to be throwing Fireballs at yourself, so you don't have to dodge them. Plus you get decent HP, the ability to use bows (as opposed to crossbows) and all martial weapons-- which makes Two-Weapon Fighting somewhat more worthwhile-- and a hope of surviving attacks by anything bigger than a single goblin. Don't forget, the Bard isn't even going to get any spells till level 2, and while Mage Armor is better than nothing, more HP, Entangle and some Arrows of Flame +1 are somewhat more useful for a solo, I'd think, especially since a solo Bard isn't going to get Fireball .

And yes, Jimmy, bards do get bonus spells based on their Charisma bonus.

 

I actually forget to mention the xp penalty there, slipped my mind!! Sorry!

 

When solo-ing, the XP Penalty hardly matters.

 

I tried soloing a bard/fighter and up until the Shaerngarn(?) ford he did pretty good. the only problem is you get swarmed very easily and you can't use disable device.

As far as races go I would use one that give you a bonus to your Charisma. Aasimar are alright, but a drow is much better. You get an extra 2 to your DEX and INT to boot, plus spell resistance. If you survive long enough to the end of the game your spell resistance would probably be increadably high. Since there's only one of you, the level adjustment won't matter very much.

Skills, you'd want to max out diplomacy, bluff, concentration. other important ones are k(arcana) and alchemy unless you want to use identify everytime you get a magic item. hide and move silently probably won't be too important unless you take those levels of rogue to backstab.

Now for spells, sleep is a better choice than charm person cause sleep usually knocks out at least two to three enemies and charm person does one. wait until you get dominate or hold person. or better yet use Dale Keeper 2 to just change your spells whenever you get a better one.

for feats I would chose spell focus: enchantment or if you want to do a fighter/bard power attack or expertise.