Discussion of Nifft's Martial Bard

[The Souljourner]

Please look at the Martial Bard here: http://www.enworld.org/showpost.php?p=3334709&postcount=2

A friend of mine is playing this in one of our campaigns, and it seems terribly overpowered. This may be bias since I'm playing a crusader and another friend is a warblade, but man - the martial bard is just a little too good.

The main contention I have is with how it regains maneuvers - a swift (or move!) action gets one spent maneuver re-readied. There's pretty much zero cost to this recovery, and it means that the martial bard can use the same maneuver every round. Even if you rule that you can't use the maneuver you just recovered during this round, it still means that unless you use more than one maneuver in a round (which is generally unusual), you will never have more than one expended maneuver at any time.

The class is basically just like the swordsage (same huge number of maneuvers, 6 skillpoints, 3/4 BAB) with bardic music and a FAR SUPERIOR recovery mechanic (swordsage has to spend a full round action to recover one maneuver).

Yes, the swordsage's recovery mechanic is terrible, but the Martial Bard's is just as horrible in the other direction.

-Nate

 

[Nifft]

Hello! Am I invited in this thread? If so, when we're done, we can merge it into the main thread which you link above?

- - -

The Martial Bard and Martial Ranger are causing me a bunch of trouble. I'm working on making a PDF now, and have been stuck on them for a while. Basically, they're the least tested and commented part of the whole thing, and have had the least attention paid to them. So I'm not totally surprised that there are errors.

Since (as you note) the Bard is based off the Swordsage, it would make a good deal of sense to simply use the Swordsage's recovery mechanism; likewise for the Ranger, who's based off the Warblade, I'll probably go with a Swift action followed by an Attack (full or single, melee or ranged), or a wasted Standard action.

Moving to the Swordsage's recovery mechanism is IMHO code for "take Adaptive Style right now", and thus annoys me, but then I've heard there are Swordsages out there who actually don't take Adaptive Style... I dunno. I'll update the main thread when I'm done. :\

Thanks for the feedback though!

Cheers, -- N

 

[Destil]

Perhaps instead allow the martial bard to recover all maneuvers when they begin using bardic music (Standard action)? You'd be burning both music uses and actions, but it's not a really wasted action if you want to switch songs and could fit the class better...

 

[The Souljourner]

Hello! Am I invited in this thread? If so, when we're done, we can merge it into the main thread which you link above?

Of course!

The Martial Bard [is] the least tested and commented part of the whole thing

Well, we're testing it, so we'll let you know how it goes. The recovery mechanism was the first thing I noticed.

Moving to the Swordsage's recovery mechanism is IMHO code for "take Adaptive Style right now", and thus annoys me

I think the original point of the sword sage's recovery mechanism was that they didn't need to recover except rarely, since they had so many maneuvers available. However, I agree that taking a full round action to recover a single maneuver is completely useless. It's something you'll never do unless that one maneuver is the only way you can be at all effective.

Here's a change I was thinking of - you choose and recover half (rounded up) of your expended maneuvers with a standard action. That's a little worse than the warblade's recovery (which I think is a little too good). It still allows you to use the same maneuver every other round, but you can get back more than one maneuver if it's been a long-ish fight. and you can actually take a move action in addition.

-Nate

 

[Sollir Furryfoot]

Just a suggestion, but how about letting a Martial Bard recover a manuever as a move action in exchange for a use of Bardic Music? Perhaps even as a swift action for 2 daily uses, but to balance it out, they could only recover them for free as full round actions (basically out of combat).