My Next Party

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Kmonster,

I've taken a couple of your previous stat suggestions to heart and made modifications to the appropriate characters. I haven't yet started the party, but hope to do so soon.


Regarding the bard and leather armor, I've been considering making a mini-mod to account for the ed 3.5 bard rules that allow bards to spellcast without penalty in leather armor. I would accomplish this by giving them 3 points of Armored Arcana at creation in the Feats.2DA file. The flip side is that 3.5E only gives bards Light Armor to start, unlike the current situation where they start with 2 points (i.e. Medium) in Armor prof.

While I don't intend on my enchanting bard to be in melee unless it's forced upon her, I don't want to totally give up on having a barely decent AC or ranged BAB. I may flip her over to using Xbow for the increased AB's, at the cost of fewer shots. (Upside, less expended arrow ammo which can be saved for Ilaxii who will likely be burning thru it like crazy.)


I also don't have to worry about any scripts. I don't use'em. I fully micro-manage all of the characters in my parties. I've always done so since BG1 and can't imagine letting the computer do it for me. Tactical management of the party is the fun part for me.


On a more philosophical note, I suppose that your comments about Bards should be singing all the time except when you want to cast a powerful spell is probably why I get bored quickly playing them. Too much fire and forget. Like I said in the last paragraph, I like tactical micromanagement. And a bard who just stands around and sings nearly 100% of the time has always seemed rather boring.

*sigh*


God, I sound like I'm trying to talk myself out of playing a bard. (Must ... resist.)

 

Too late with too little perhaps but here goes...

I think you should make your bard even more intelligent - see if you can get to 18 so you can talk yourself into a nifty crossbow later and have enough skillpoints to keep most of the dialoge skills maxed as well as Knowledge arcana and alchemy and hide MS too - bards are all about skills and dialoges and they make great leaders. Maybe consider adding a level of wizzy (necro or transmuter both get some "special dialoges" IIRC ).

No need to worry about "singing only" as a bard you can sing and fight or cast at the same time with lingering song - I know you have no issues with micromanaging

I persoanlly don't like to abuse iLingering song so I limit myself to a single song followed by a single "action" (fight or cast spell or move) and will not choose another song until the "action" is complete. (Pause - choose song- then choose action and lingering song goes immediately into effect and plays song for several rounds while you carry out your actions - once you finish the action you can pause again and choose another song and another action and have both songs playing simulataneously for a round or so) As such I do indeed recommend ranged weapons as the primary choice sing and shoot your way to glory (Xbow is an excellent choice but any will do).

With the right race you should be able to get 18 int 14 dex and 16 cha and add your bonus points to cha - the bard doesnt get enough spells to worry about 20+ cha IMO. The wizzie MC could be useful after reaching bard 11 as well and will also add additional benefits to spending the 18 for int.

If you're going to play a bard you may as well play a real great one.

 

Hey, Wanderon, actually it's not too late. Other things got in the way of starting The Silver Owls party for the moment.

The Silver Owls party has transformed a little since I last described it in this thread. I ended up replacing (at least for now) the Drow archer, Ilaxii D'Matra, with a human fighter named Zenya Blademaster, because I felt that the party needed another good tank. I haven't fully settled on this, and I haven't fully settled on what exact sort of character Zenya might be (light tank who can steath vs a heavier traditional tank), but I like her for now.

I struggled over removing Ilaxii because I had a nice portrait edit for her and I really got to like her name. But I was really thinking about having a stealthy, but fairly strong melee tank who could multiclass in a couple of levels of rogue. I suppose that I could have gone with a pure ranger, but that would have prevented Ilaxii from being the "blademaster" I had in mind.

As you can see, I really struggled with this one and will probably struggle with it some more before I finally start up The Silver Owls.


BTW, I only vaguely referenced it above, but The Silver Owls is a party of Selune followers. A silverstar is fairly obvious, but the others are also followers of Selune to some degree or other. And they've come to Targos to seek out the source of the disturbances in the Ten-Towns.