Ways to Make Pure Bards more Popular

[Pestilence]

I once quested with a halfling Bard that used stealth, Bard song, and taunted. I talked to him and he said that he thought his char was horribly done (mechanics wise) because he wasn't able to do well in combat (Close/Ranged). I said to him you have a bad character only if you think you have a bad char. So he helped me with Observatory and we 3 man crushed it.

Bard Songs, Taunts, Stealth, and Curse song. All things of beauty!

[Egon the Monkey]

Forget all the other buffs of like "+10 str when bardsong..." or -100% spellfailure while wearing fullplate.

O_o

Say what? The other popular suggestions were:

• -10% spellfail with bardsong up, which would stop Light Armor being more trouble than it's worth as a feat to a class that has Mage Armor available. Even leathers spellfail is a significant annoyance. I actually sold my DM loot leathers on Mister Banks because of it.
• Giving them a few extra "swashbuckly" weapons that would add variety to bards (who I rarely ever see use anything but Martial Weapons or a Spear) and they get in DnD, NWN2 but just not NWN for some reason.

Barbarians for example have been given some significant class abilities that encourage people staying true to the class. As in, not wearing heavy armor and making sure someone with the confidence to run at a enemy screaming defiance and fury doesn't dump his charisma score. Those two bard adjustments would encourage bards to make use of their class's light armor ability usually rather than intermittently, and choose flavourful weapons. Rather than  "Since I get spellfail in leathers, it's not any worse to just use a chainshirt and take it off to cast up. I can always cast mage armor anyway" or "Well since I have to take Martial weapons for that longsword, may as well take Exotic and get a Bastardsword". They are freebie equpiment abilities to nudge players in the direction of classic DnD bard concepts NWN gets in the way of mechanically.

[Drakill Tannan]

Egon is right mort. The suggestions regarding the bardsong and perform are to empower the bard, but the others are to make a flabourfull bard.

[Pestilence]

I really think the bard weapon proficiency needs a boost. Adding in Longsword, Rapier, Scimitar, Darts, or even throwing weapons.

[shadowsong]

Well bards are not supposed to be able to cast spells while using their bard song, not that NWN enforces that limitation. Any spellfail reduction is better than none though. However in this instance it will apply to any arcane spellcasting they cast not just the bard spells. As was said before there is no way to attribute the spell type.
 
Which is fine I will run out and make an elven wizard/bard/fighter right pronto, hold on while I roll that up :). Five rounds of no asf casting in leather armor is wicked nice.
 
Plus bard songs apply to the whole party so you'd have to script it so it only affected the bard and then was removed only from the bard when the song ended.
 
It is better imo to modify the onequip/unequip to specifically work with bards who have no other arcane caster class. That ensures that they are only using it on bard spells because they don't have any others.
 
And really lol bard spells are not so powerful, don't come so early and in not such great numbers that casting them in even AC 4 armor is a huge balance shift. In fact the whole class's casting ability is supposed to be balanced against that. Plus you have modified mage armor here to not help for armors greater than 3 so the potential for any overbuffing is low.

[ScottyB]

Any spellfail reduction is better than none though. However in this instance it will apply to any arcane spellcasting they cast not just the bard spells. As was said before there is no way to attribute the spell type.
 
Which is fine I will run out and make an elven wizard/bard/fighter right pronto, hold on while I roll that up :).

I already said the following:
- The -10% spell failure would be added to the caster only,
- and would only be available on and after 5th (bard) level

Which is one line of code. And it becomes just a little tiny bit longer if I make it a pure-bard-only feature. (One actually has to go out of their way to make a spell script affect multiple creatures - it doesn't automagically target and affect everything by itself.)

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I also can't just throw on Elf or Rogue proficiency in any clean manner. You can get a choice, though, which is pretty damn cool, IMO.

While free-action Bard Song might be kinda cool, I think the above is more important and desirable, and we shouldn't make too many changes at a time.

[Equinox]

Scotty. you are a god amongst men. Do it.

[TheImpossibleDream]

Sounds awesome

[Egon the Monkey]

ScottyB, King of the Code Monkeys. If it's that simple it'd be great to see, and having to make a choice wouldn't be that limiting, as well as meaning it's not giving them access to a massive amount of weapons in the same way as giving them Elf *and* Rogue.

[Listen in Silence]

Has/Will this -10% spellfailure change been/be done?

[Egon the Monkey]

What LiS said.