Re: [Incursion] Bard builds

[Angus Fletcher]

I've got a YAVP for a bard wayyyy back in the archives somewhere if you want to take a peek.

On Sun, Dec 9, 2012 at 4:38 PM, lucky_luca <digirol...@gmail.com> wrote:

I am very new to incursion. I just want a few tips. I've been playing the bard class, I've been putting my points into disguise, diplomacy, perform and stealth stuff. My feats are usually deceiver, educated and +1 to charisma. I'm just wandering what I should do, what I should put stuff into, and how to use spell books. Or if I even can use spell books. So yeah, some general hints would be awesome. I checked out the game guide on the incursion website and so far I've just had the hell confused out of me. I'm beginning to suspect I'm not bright enough for this. Anyway, all help would be appreciated. 

[Levi Backgammon]

Weeeeeelcome to Incursion.

If you're not familiar with d20 systems and the general strategies used in them, you'll have a pretty hard time; that said, it'll still be very fun.

So bard builds. Bards are a bit problematic in general because their spell and skillsets are geared towards rolling with allies, which are not fully implemented. They're difficult to recruit, pretty squishy, and do various things that ruin your day like taking your loot, walking into suicidal situations, or killing things and making you take the alignment hit (If you haven't turned off complicity transgressions, do so now). They're kind of a challenge class at this point. Multiclassing might make it easier, but I wouldn't know how to go about that; probably take one of the summon-proficient classes (Druid, Priest, Weavecraft Mage).

For your skill point distribution, you want to focus on the core skills, which for you would be are Diplomacy, Concentration, Perform, Healing.

There is a bug with Disguise: if you use it before you have enough ranks to totally avoid the penalties, they become permanent. IIRC you have to be somewhere around +15 to use it safely. In any case, it's not particularly excellent; there are a few themed vaults which it's useful for (Illithids, mostly, and orcs before you're ready to take large groups of them), but I wouldn't use skill points on it.

As for feats, it's best to take those that grant non-numerical benefits; you get enough skill points to make the skill-boosting feats completely obsolete by L3 or so, unless you have very low int and are playing a low skill point class, which Bard is not. That said, some of the boosters give auxiliary benefits like Acrobatic's no-AoO jump (which you can use to disengage without contest), so if you can make use of those, do.

As a caster you'd want to at least take Combat Casting. Take Leadership for the extra CR pool. Maybe take another defensive feat; Expertise is useful if you pick up something with very high parry (ex. scimitar), which is a free +6 DC if I remember right. You might want Counterspell and maybe Reflective/Broad Counterspell when you level up.

[Frumple]

Eesh, been a while since I checked in on the group, and this is a pretty belated response. Anyway, one easy suggestion for bards is to sink a good chunk of skill points (and maybe a feat or two) into Use Magic. Several of the offensive wands pack a very, very powerful punch and can give you a nice panic button or preemptive blast on something nasty, and with a good UMD score you can potentially do crazy stuff like one-shot adult dragons. It's very nice. Consider going halfling or picking up a good chunk of luck as well -- it's pretty easy to be rolling in useful wands in pretty short order, and they represent a lot of potential firepower.

Other than that, you've got summoning spells. I'd heavily recommend (ab)using the blazes out of those, as they can make many encounters either much easier or outright trivial. Summoning is very, very powerful in Inc. Bards overall have a pretty decent spell list for general use, so leaning on that instead of going heavy into melee or whathaveyou can soften up the impact of, well, playing a bard, heh. Bards also do pretty alright with melee combat, especially if you use the summons as appropriate distractions (always drop one behind your target if you can manage it, for the flanking bonus).

You could also try the diplomacy route, but it's always been kinda' flaky insofar as AI reaction goes. It's doable, but expect a buggy and somewhat inconsistent experience -- being able to hold your own's going to be pretty important.

[Sophismata]

Even more belated, but I've had a lot of luck with Dance of Tukima bards. The bard's spellcasting ability is not to be sneezed at, she makes a decent fighter/mage.