Level Up (A5E) Are Bard Hymns Overpowered?

[FrogReaver]

Every day I get closer and closer to just posting my bard re-tune before having playtested it extensively lol



I do generally feel like this "conceptual" idea is what most people will land on, but it ignored the sheer omnipresence, power creep, and lack of actual meaningful choice that is introduced on a holistic interpretation of the class.

Saying it's "like" something else doesn't really address an issue either. Spellcasting, in general, relies on things like line-of-sight or at least line-of-effect. Hymns ignore this entirely by being essentially omnipresent. They are able to be benefited from simply by being perceived. In fact, nowhere in the rules does it say YOU as the caster of the hymn, have to be directly aware of a target. This is a HUGE boon with the 60 foot radius size they have, essentially allowing them to cover every map that isn't untenably enormous. Bards are capable of changing their hymns at the end of ANY creature's turn as a reaction, essentially allowing them to constantly have the perfect counter for anything that comes their way. As non-frontliners Bards rarely use their reactions anyway so this is always valuable.

Unlike spellcasting, Hymns have a universal cost of 1 bardic inspiration. To even compare these effects to a 5th level spell should be obviously ridiculous. We would never say "It should be expected that sorcerers get a bit stronger" if suddenly they can cast Warrior's Instinct on an entire party for a first level spell slot simply because they reached level 11. I totally agree with you that each ability individually doesn't feel TOO bad, especially if you look at it in the context of "Well Bards get powerful spells like Dominate Monster and can even take from other classes", so it really is the granular buildup that causes problems.

Let me paint a picture:
As a level 11 bard, I can choose to make it so that my entire party has a +5 to all saving throws, essentially nerfing all the threat of an adult dragon's most powerful attack unanimously. I can keep this up essentially all combat. I have advantage on all concentration saving throws, so no worries on failing those as long as I don't have terrible CON. Further, WHILE all of this is going, I can blast a massive area with Cone of Cold and do crippling damage. All of this is done on turn 1 and I still have my bonus action AND reaction.

OR, how about:
As a level 9 bard, I can, at the start of my turn, heal a dying party member for 1d10 health, get them back on their feet, and then turn them AND an ally into Giant Apes with one single polymorph spell. At the end of their turn I can use a reaction to buff one of those apes to rolling +1 damage dice, all while I wait for my next turn to come around where I can now cast spells, sustain concentration, and move my hymns around.

Lastly, and I DO genuinely think this is important, the bard feels like it's been stripped of its identity a bit. This is something that my party's bard has echoed a lot, which is that at no point in the "level track" does it feel like his bard really emphasizes the "jack of all trades" that is so archetypal of bards as a whole, but rather it just feels like they're given all of their choices at a very low level, and levelling up is just a process of taking limiters off. This makes them more powerful, yes, but it also means choices are being taken AWAY from them. Instead of focusing on playing that tactician role, it's just "naughty word it, flip on every switch at once, and do it for 5 rounds without a pause". It really pigeon-holed the type of playstyle that my party's bard could pursue, partially because I had to start planning encounters AROUND how omnipresent these abilities were, but also because it felt like the bard, by virtue of merely existing, was seen as a passive buff to the entire party, and thus it became expected of them to perform that role.

Anyway, that's my two cents. Like I mentioned in the beginning, I ended up writing an entire re-tune to the core class, revamping all the battle hymns and arts entirely. Still haven't playtested yet, but I might end up making a post about it in the future if it works well with my party. I do totally recognize that individually everything reads a "okay", but it is these granular interactions where the friction can consistently grind things to a halt, and that's really the issue. No one cares if a PC CAN pull off really broken and cool things if they play their cards right, but this isn't that. This is just the game handing you a whole deck, telling you that you can only play one ace at a time, and then as you level up being able to play more aces every single turn all at once

I'm going to break this down into 2 parts. 1 about conceptually and the other about power.

Conceptually for me hymns reinforce the bard as performer, which for me is the #1 most important thing about the bard. Yes they dabble and thus jack of all trades conception as well, but they are performers first. Maybe your conception of bard is different but that's mine or you view the dabbling as more important than the performing. But for me the hymns reinforce the Bard as performer conception.

On power - the only truly game changing ones are the ones that effect the whole party and even then they are no more game changing than a Paladins Aura, hypnotic pattern, a sorcerers twinned polymorph, etc. In fact, there's many times where there are a number of spells on the bard list i'd much rather cast than use the hymns.

A few scenarios -
Mostly melee enemies start 60+ ft away from the party. Use Plant Growth and whittle them down with ranged attacks as you fall back each turn. The most a 30ft move speed creature can travel in the plantgrowth a turn is 15ft when dashing. It will take them about 4 turns to get through, in which case the party can also have increased the distance between them to 120 ft. (I guess technically you can use plant growth and a hymn, but in this scenario that would be pointless).

Any encounter where there is 1 enemy with some harmful save based effects. Tasha's Hideous Laughter (excluding enemies having legendary resistance). It's actually better to disable a foe with dangerous aoe effects than it is to simply boost the parties saves.

Obviously there are scenarios where I would use the hymns over a spell, but optimal play should have you using a good mixture of both.

Honestly, most of the rest of the post comes across as trying to magnify every little thing into a mountain of an issue when it isn't.

 

[FrogReaver]

Totally agree, which is why I would never ask to get rid of hymns, just make them a bit less omnipresent. The big problem I have is that they're just passively ALWAYS good and it's never really a choice, it's just "Do I want to make this combat easy? Y/N?" and it's a simple on-and-off switch. None of the built-in dissuasions are present, because they can't be dispelled since they're not magic spells and concentration is incredibly easy to hold

Also the framing of "progression" is just untrue here. Perhaps there'd be an argument if the ability read as something like "at 4th level you can affect 2 people, at 9th 3 people, etc," but it's actually just "At level 4 you can affect your CHA modifier of extra people", which to anyone playing a bard is a BARE minimum of 3 extra people, more likely 4 or even 5 extra people depending on how the DM allows stat allocation and ASIs

Wouldn't either blindness or deafness end them on a party member? Fairly certain they would need to be able to see or hear the bard? If not then that would seem to fall on the magical side and dispel magic should work to end such a magical effect. Alternatively wouldn't casting silence on the bard work as well?

 

[steels12]

I'm going to break this down into 2 parts. 1 about conceptually and the other about power.

Conceptually for me hymns reinforce the bard as performer, which for me is the #1 most important thing about the bard. Yes they dabble and thus jack of all trades conception as well, but they are performers first. Maybe your conception of bard is different but that's mine or you view the dabbling as more important than the performing. But for me the hymns reinforce the Bard as performer conception.

On power - the only truly game changing ones are the ones that effect the whole party and even then they are no more game changing than a Paladins Aura, hypnotic pattern, a sorcerers twinned polymorph, etc. In fact, there's many times where there are a number of spells on the bard list i'd much rather cast than use the hymns.

A few scenarios -
Mostly melee enemies start 60+ ft away from the party. Use Plant Growth and whittle them down with ranged attacks as you fall back each turn. The most a 30ft move speed creature can travel in the plantgrowth a turn is 15ft when dashing. It will take them about 4 turns to get through, in which case the party can also have increased the distance between them to 120 ft. (I guess technically you can use plant growth and a hymn, but in this scenario that would be pointless).

Any encounter where there is 1 enemy with some harmful save based effects. Tasha's Hideous Laughter (excluding enemies having legendary resistance). It's actually better to disable a foe with dangerous aoe effects than it is to simply boost the parties saves.

Obviously there are scenarios where I would use the hymns over a spell, but optimal play should have you using a good mixture of both.

Honestly, most of the rest of the post comes across as trying to magnify every little thing into a mountain of an issue when it isn't.

This is about as bad faith as it gets, I apologize if I gave you a reason to be so uncharitable in your interpretation. I never at all said to get rid of hymns or that they didn't fit the bard at all. In fact, at the bottom of my post I explained that I even retuned every hymn for my own party. I guess I can't argue with what amounts to "lol you're wrong" and "I know of at least 5 niche meta builds that are even worse" which is funny because one of the examples you gave, the twin spell polymorph, is literally an example I provided as to why this was a problem that Bards can do.

Wouldn't either blindness or deafness end them on a party member? Fairly certain they would need to be able to see or hear the bard? If not then that would seem to fall on the magical side and dispel magic should work to end such a magical effect. Alternatively wouldn't casting silence on the bard work as well?

Technically speaking, Hymns do not mention anywhere RAW that they rely on a creature's senses. Outside of the sentence "It can be expressed in any way you like" (p. 123), and even when describing the audience of a hymn (p. 124) it only says that "Unless stated otherwise a battle hymn does not have a target until you choose one, and each targets a single creature within 30 feet. You may choose to target a creature at any point, but after targeting a battle hymn its target cannot be changed." There is no mention of perception of the beneficiary of the hymn being required at all, that's more of a RaI ruling and, in theory, a hymn is not tied to your particular specialization of performance (which is a soft restriction that Arts have later on), so there would be nothing stopping a bard from going from the pan-flute to dancing a jig if their party goes deaf. In regards to intepreting it as a spell, the rules only state, on the same page, "Performing a battle hymn requires your concentration, as though you were casting a spell." On Dispel Magic: "You scour the magic from your target. Any spell cast on the target ends if it was cast with a spell slot of 3rd-level or lower." The wording is intentional here, and always has been for 5th edition as well, Dispel magic strictly works on spells cast from a spell slot, of which Hymns do not count and would not RAW be susceptible. All of this is, of course, ignoring the fact that it would be ridiculous to assume it's reasonable that the DM preps Blindness/Deafness in a good number of combats that they deal with specifically as a counter.

 

[FrogReaver]

This is about as bad faith as it gets

We are absolutely done at this.

 

[Ondath]

Folks, I really don't want the thread to devolve into an aggressive argument, especially since the reason I opened this thread was to get feedback from people who designed/playtested the A5E Bard and they've yet to write anything.

Thanks! Then I’m personally not concerned. The effects mostly feel comparable to 3rd to 5th level spells when they can effect essentially the whole party.

Affecting a single pc is more in the realm of power of a 1st or 2nd level spell. I’m not concerned with those specific effects targeting 1 pc and then using a 3+ level concentration spell, even on the same turn. Even with a bardic inspiration dice given out.

All in all my biggest concern would be the party as a whole doubling down on ac and then giving all enemies disadvantage to hit them. But that’s a rather specific situation and means no other bard concentration spell at that time. I guess this could be made a little better by taking fireball as magical secrets.

Another high level concern would be how much adventuring day longevity this gives a bard compared to other casters. At level 5 he could use hypnotic pattern in 2 encounters and then use the hymn in 2-3 (short rests +1) encounters for 3-4 (cha mod) rounds each.

But in the grand scheme, these things should both happen rarely so I don’t think I would worry until they started coming up regularly.

With that said, I want to push back on this. 5E doesn't always measure the power of a spell by the number of people it affects. Bless is a 1st-level spell that targets multiple people, because the designers thought a +1d4 bonus for three people is balanced for a 1st-level spell. Haste is a 3rd-level spell that targets a single creature, because getting an extra action is pretty powerful - even for only one creature, so the spell remains single-targeted even at 3rd spell level. So, I really don't think we can make a blanket statement like "affecting the entire party is comparable to a 3rd to 5th level spell".

Another big thing is that Bardic Inspiration as a resource is not really comparable to spell slots. You get spell slots once per long rest, and the number you get - even as a full caster at high levels - is fairly limited. At 5th level, the Bard only has 2 3rd-level spell slots. But that same Bard can use Bastions of Justice (assuming a CHA of +4 and that the party takes 2 Short Rests) 12 times. If they chose additional creatures as their hymn focus (effectively multiplying the hymn's effect by 4), their Hymn has the effectiveness of an ability that says "One creature gets a +4 bonus to all saves for one round", times 48. This is absolutely not comparable to a 3rd-level spell that the Bard can cast two times at the same level.

Or let me give another example to show that the Hymns do not scale to spell level in any meaningful way, and that this isn't just a problem with a few edge cases: At 17th level, a Bard can affect 5 additional targets, and can activate two Hymns at the same time by using 2 uses of Bardic Inspiration. So the Bard could give both disadvantage to enemy attackers (Overbearing Rhythm) and advantage to all saves (Carry the Spirit) to every party member by just using two uses of Bardic Inspiration. Given 15 uses per day, the Bard can give this for 7 rounds to 6 people. Disadvantage to all attackers and advantage to all saves is basically half of what Foresight, a 9th-level spell can do. The Bard can cast Foresight only once per day, and only to one target. They can give half of Foresight's abilities to 6 people for 7 rounds.

I should add that it’s also my impression that advanced 5e buffed most classes a little - but maybe I’m wrong?

If so the bard being a bit stronger than a normal 5e bard should be expected.

All classes are buffed, yes. But not to this degree. The buffs are usually in the Exploration and Social encounter pillars due to Knacks/Tricks/etc. that each class gets, giving them the kind of out of combat capabilities their O5E counterparts don't have. Almost every martial is buffed thanks to the existence of Maneuvers. But I don't think any class gets the kind of blanket improvement like Bards get with Hymns.

In fact, there is a class whose comparable powers in O5E got nerfed: The PaladinHerald. The O5E Paladin gets two Auras, the Aura of Protection and the Aura of Courage. Aura of Protection is basically comparable to the Hymn Bastions of Justice, except it's always on, but its range is more limited (15 ft, 30 ft at Level 18). Aura of Protection gives you straight up immunity to the frightened condition at Level 10. In O5E, both of these Auras stay on together. In A5E, the Herald can choose either of the two Auras at level 6, but can't have them both at the same time. So the A5E Herald has to choose between frighten immunity and a +5 bonus to all saves, while the O5E counterpart had both options on at all times.

So it's not just that the Bard is stronger than the O5E Bard, or that every class got buffed by the new system. It's that this subsystem in particular has some unexpected synergies built into it that make it way more effective than it initially looks.

Now, I've yet to run a full-on A5E campaign (but I trust @steels12's table experience), so I do not feel confident trying to rebalance these options by ear. Having said that, my primary concern really lies with the "+CHA additional targets" option. Perhaps one way to balance this option would be to say that you can choose additional targets for spending one more Bardic Inspiration use for each new target (so targeting the whole party would take all your uses of Bardic Inspiration until the next Short Rest?).

 

[Pedantic]

Now, I've yet to run a full-on A5E campaign (but I trust @steels12's table experience), so I do not feel confident trying to rebalance these options by ear. Having said that, my primary concern really lies with the "+CHA additional targets" option. Perhaps one way to balance this option would be to say that you can choose additional targets for spending one more Bardic Inspiration use for each new target (so targeting the whole party would take all your uses of Bardic Inspiration until the next Short Rest?).

Perhaps allow that as a default feature of the level 4 or 11 buff and replace +Cha with "1 additional target?"

 

[Ondath]

Perhaps allow that as a default feature of the level 4 or 11 buff and replace +Cha with "1 additional target?"

Hmm, I'm not opposed to that idea! I would need to test both options to see which one feels more balanced...

 

[FrogReaver]

Perhaps allow that as a default feature of the level 4 or 11 buff and replace +Cha with "1 additional target?"

Could simply make it a bardic inspiration cost to hit the whole party. Something like you can spend an additional bardic inspiration per turn to apply to the whole party. At most that would be 2 rounds per short rest of party wide buff.

 

[steels12]

While the focus right now is strongly on the "+CHA amount of players effected" I do think its counterpart level 4 choice: "Battle hymns no longer require concentration" is insanely strong as well. Firstly because it's a level 4 ability, but also because not only does it allow the bard to now concentrate on a spell (of which bards have some of the strongest concentration spells in the entire game), but also we should remember that bards are not wizards, they don't have a tiny pool of health. Hell, my party bard is competing with both our fighter and barbarian for most health in the party. Typically, there are three main ways to get rid of concentration: hitting a caster out of it (making them fail their concentration save), dispelling the ability, or beating them to unconsciousness. There are other ways, of course, but these are kind of the three primary ways. With this level 4 ability, the first way is out, because they don't require concentration anyway. The second way is ALWAYS out, because Hymns are not spells or spell effects. So by taking this option, generally if a bard become annoying with hymns your best option is just hyper-aggro them. This can be VERY unrealistic to do in battle, gets annoying because it almost turns the bard into a tank sometimes, and as mentioned before, Bard are no slouches in the health department so that can be a big investment for the DM

That being said, sticking with the "+CHA amount of players effected" we also have to keep in mind that this is a level 4 choice of 3 options and we shouldn't nerf this ability to the degree that it becomes useless. Most non-minstrel bards are probably only gonna have 4-5 bardic inspirations, so making it more expensive is hard to do effectively without changing a lot of other things in how the class functions

 

[W'rkncacnter]

how would making using a hymn a bonus action (ala bardic inspiration) affect things, do you guys think?