Idea: Inspire This!

[CE2JRH]

This is a reference to the Wizards of the Coasts; some old hat optimizers did a weekly optimization series showcasing various builds and ideas, trying to keep the old spirit of optimization going. So I think I'm doing a series here now. Cause I want to.

Books: Tome of Battle, Complete Warrior (Warchanter), Complete Arcane (Seeker of the Song), Complete Adventurer (Virtuoso), Dragon magic and feats (race), BoED (feats), Eberron (feats), Unearthered Arcana (feats)

Silverbrow Human
Inspire Courage Based Bard (inspiration focused)
Bard 1 --- d6, 0.75BAB, 0/2/2, 6 skills. Human Feat: Combat Expertise, Level 1 Feat: Weapon Focus Flaw Inattentive, Flaw Murkey Eyed, Feat: Skill Focus: Perform, Dragonfire Inspiration, Trait, Trait, bardic music, bardic knowledge, proficiencies,
Bard 2 --- d6, 1.5 BAB, 0/3/3, 6 skills
Bard 3 --- d6, 2.25 BAB, 1/3/3, 6 skills, Inspire Competence, Song of the Heart
Bard 4 --- d6, 3 BAB, 1/3/3, 6 skills, attribute
Warblade 1 ---
Warchanter 1 --- Song of the White Raven
Warchanter 2 ---
Warchanter 3 --- attribute
Warchanter 4 --- Lingering Song
Warchanter 5 ---
Seeker of the Lost Song 1 ---
Seeker of the Lost Song 2 --- Words of Creation
Virtuoso 1 ---
Virtuoso 2 ---
Virtuoso 3 --- FEAT
Virtuoso 4 --- Attribute
Sublime Chord 1 ---
Sublime Chord 2 --- Feat
Sublime Chord 3 ---
Sublime Chord 4 ---

Stat requirements: Int 15, Cha 15. Some Str/Dex/Con. 14/14/14/15/8/15 is a 30 point build. Total skill requirements: 59, though a fair bit of that is skills you may already care to invest in.

Level 1-2 you're a basic bard, but instead of inspiring courage, you can give everyone +1d6 fire damage on their attacks, which is probably better than +1 attack/damage.

At level 3, you gain access to inspirational boost (SpC), which gets you another +1 on inspires. But so does Song of the Heart, so you're inspiring for +3; which provides +3d6 fire damage to everyone's attacks. Plus inspire competence.

At level 5 you gain warblade niceties: You want a white raven stance for Song of the White Raven; so you need a White Raven manoeuvre too, so the combo is probably Douse the Flames/Leading the Charge. Your next 2 manouevers are probably Wall of Blades (conveniently without prereqs, great for deflecting touch attacks), and action before thought (your reflex save is your weakest). You're also getting enough songs to use Dragon Fire Inspiration followed by a standard inspire courage; providing +3 attack, +3 damage, and +3d6 fire damage, which is enough to let melees mow through pretty much whatever you want. At this level, you can probably afford a 1400gp badge of valor, which provides another point to inspire courage: +4 attack, +4 damage, and +4d6 fire damage.

At level 6 you can start dropping those inspire courages as swift actions; so round one can be inspire courage and dragonfire inspiration, in your same opening round (you can use the badge as an immediate, but you won't get your inspirational boost off on this due to it also being a swift action).

You also get inspire toughness, but you probably don't care that much about giving people +2 temp HP. Pity it isn't based on inspire courage numbers, but when you leave warchanter, it's all the way up to +10 temp HP.

At level 8 you can let people trade AC for Attack; sort of, focused attacking. It's interesting, but probably only useful if you've got a power attack character without AC (Frenzied Barbarian) running around with you.

At 9th level the songs sit for 10 rounds after casting them, which is plenty of time.

At 10th level, you can drop two songs in the same action. Inspirational boost conveniently works for all songs in that round, and badge of valor lets you just boost any “bonus granted by that ability for the duration of it's effect.” If your DM rules separate inspires separate abilities, you might need a few of these and to use a good chunk of your immediates, but whatever. Also, check if they work for you, or everyone affected by the inspire courage. So opening of combat: Swift action, Inspirational Boost, Standard Action: Inspire Courage (+3/+3) and Dragonfire (+3d6), and immediate action boost them (or just the fire) to +4/+4, +4d6, all as your opening round. Then win. Round 2 you don't get a swift action, but rounds 3+ you can start throwing out extra songs as swift actions as you need; you've got +temp HP, -AC for Attack, and inspire competence.


At 11th level, you get +2 AC whenever you sing (all the time), and fire resistance (with cones of flame as a swift action). You probably can't use refrains if you activate the fire resistance by Song of the White Raven.

At 12th level, you get to combine songs again, which lets you produce 3 bardic music effects as a single standard action, and an anti-construct song. This is also where you get Words of Creation, allowing you to double your bardic music bonuses for 3d4 damage on inspire courage; giving you +8/+8 attack/damage, +8d6 fire damage (it uses your inspire courage number, though it's unclear on Badge of Valor), and dropping a 3rd song of your choice (fire resistance, temp HP, competence, -ac for +atk, anti-construct). The only downside is inspirational boost using your swift action means you can't use your refrains. But throwing down Temp HP to mitigate the words of creation damage? Classic.

The virtuoso levels increase your effective bard level for inspire courage alone; but that's what the dragonfire is based on.
At 15th, you get another +1 inspire courage. Round 1: +10/+10 attack/damage, +10d6 fire damage, and a 3rd song of your choice.
Bard 9: Inspire Courage +2
Badge of Valor +1
Song of the Heart +1
Inspirational Boost +1
If you can get the vest that gives +5 effective bard levels, that brings your inspire courage base up to +3, for +12/+12 inspire and +12d6 fire damage.

17-18-19-20 diversify your magic to let you finish with all the power and bliss of a normal bard.

In the end, you have 14 BAB, base saves of 9/6/14 (with a reflex save replacer), bardic casting to 6th level spells (thanks sublime chord), more than 4 skills per level but less than 6 skills per level, and more than a d6 hit dice but less than a d8.

The build's best levels are 3-14 or so. After that, it's sorta not got the things it needs to compete in a high level game. The sublime chord bootstrap on the end does something to fix this, but depending on the way you play, it might not be enough.

The other major downside here is the use of 4 prestige classes, for 2/4/4/5 levels. It's not quite as clean as I generally like. And the Badge of Valor is inspecific as to whether it affects all bardic musics, or just one, so with this build, the action type you'll never have enough of, is oddly swift and immediate actions.

The use of War Chanter also delays Words of Creation: using a +2 BAB +1 BAB dip after bard 4 (Duskblade? I don't even remember) will let you put it earlier; but I don't think you have to. The progression seems fine as is.



The other way to run this build is Bard 7/War Chanter 5/Seeker of the Song 2/Sublime Chord 6. You get better casting, but all of your abilities come in quite a bit later, and Virtuoso provides extra riders for Bardic music, so...it's more of a fit to use Virtuoso.

[JKTrickster]

Why Seeker of the Lost Song anyway? That really complicates your build and it doesn't really add much. I like the build but generally you either go Gish (Bard -> Warblade) or Caster (Virtuoso -> Sublime Chord).

Honestly that's why your build is so weak late game. It doesn't have the good BaB of a Bard/Warblade or the sheer casting power of a Virtuoso/Sublime Chord (9th level spells for the win!). Even at high levels a Warblade is extremely effective, especially combined with the raw bonus from Bard's Inspire Courage.

I think you tried to do too many things at once. Since you said this was supposed to be a melee bard, you should focus on that. Dump the other PrCs and go straight Warblade (sprinkle in some Crusader as needed). That'll bring the BaB way up and Maneuvers are way better than 6th level spells anyway.

[CE2JRH]

Seeker of the Lost Song is there because the second level has another shot of combine song, which gets you a 3rd song in your standard action. The Warblade dip is just to drop in Warchanter as early as possible, and song of the white raven is of course, gravy.

This build is all about trying to do precisely one thing: having a large and fast inspire courage/dragonfire inspiration drop. The reason it said "melee" up there originally was to contrast from the second build I was thinking about, which I posted at the bottom.

[JKTrickster]

I think Warchanter pales much in comparison to Warblade, or even Crusader. But that's another discussion. Your build is pretty good, but I think it still tries to do too much with too little.

[CE2JRH]

War Chanter has to be in there for the first shot of combine song, but I do agree that 5 levels of War Chanter is the tragedy of the build --- it's just for the theme of dropping out maximal amounts of songs as fast as possible.

[ravitiate]

I've actually built something similar, but it's somewhat simpler. The idea is the same - optimize Inspiration but my build forgoes casting entirely. It's something like this: Bard3/Warblade17 - Dragonfire Inspiration, Song of the Heart, Song of the White Raven, Words of Creation. Gets level 9 maneuvers and sings for a total of +12 (Since Song of the White Raven stacks with Bard-levels in terms of bonuses). Since you get insane damage on each attack you should pick maneuvers like Raging Mongoose and Time Stands Still to grant you extra attacks, and probably use Two Weapon Fighting for extra attacks.

Math for Inspire Courage:
Bard20: +4
Song of the heart: +1
Inspirational Boost: +1
Words of creation: x2
= 12

Bard6/Warblade14 works as well, gets an extra feat since you can use Eberron Bard to get Words of Creation and more songs/spells per day. You do lose some high level maneuvers and BAB though.

[CE2JRH]

That is a fair bit more straightforward, but you have to use the first 2 rounds singing, or forgo inspirational boosts, since they tragically use swift actions. And I generally prefer spells to maneuvers, but *shrug*.

Either way, I like the suggestions and ideas, and I like bringing people into this subforum . You guys should post your own builds if you've got favourites.