Hello everyone, I'm a level 2 bard at the moment and I'm not sure if I'm fighting correctly.
My cantrips are: Minor Illusion and Prestidigitation
My spells are: Tasha's Hideous Laughter, Sleep, Healing Word, Dissonant Whispers and Identify
So I use my spells to control enemies, my weapon to attack and I use bardic inspiration to help my team. But the longer a battle goes on, I feel like I'm having less and less of an impact. I run out of spell slots, bardic inspirations and all I end up doing is attacking with my weapons.
Edit: Thanks everyone for the suggestions, it's a lot more detailed than I expected. I ended up choosing College of Valor because it made more sense RP-wise for my character.
Well, there's is no "right way to play" a bard in a battle, the subclass you get may put the PC into some sort of stereotype, but you can always act in a pretty unique way accourding to whats the personality of your character. So, any tips you get here are more like "what would I do" than "how to play".
If you playing a support role, you seem to have playing well with what you have at your disposal. The major problem that seems to me that you have (based on the way you put it) is that you maybe are using your best resourses on the first rounds and than you run out of power too fast.
If you want to avoid that situation of spending the last-half of the encounter just with your weapons, "what I would do" is to change that tatics and save my best resourses to the end. Remeber that besides casting/attacking, you have a plenty of options that you can use to make the combat more dinamic. Try to focus on get advantages for your party in some of the frist rounds using bardic inp. but also using help, flank, inprovise, etc (use ropes, traps, loose object on the battlefield. Sand-pocket your foes eyes using help action. Buy some ball bearing. Shit like that). Than you can swith between healing some and dashing and sneaking foes for a while, you can always forgo a spell/weapon attack on one turn to hide and have advantage on the next (even if you don't have rogue's sneak attack thats a good tatic for bards to keep safe). You may have used two or three spells slots and maybe rolled for a couple of attacks at this time and also you have runned from a lot of rounds.
Save Sleep for the mid or final of the combat, when you have a lot of foes pretty injured. You can work with your team to lure injured foes in a close range so you can use Sleep with good results, probablly putting lots of them to bed. Also, put your focus on minions to that spell, its way better to drop out 3 or 4 pain-in-the-ass that have each one attack per round than a single mob/boss that your team can fight at once if rid from those minions.
Anyway, as I already said, there's no right way to play, you just must to have fun for you and your party. Try to switch between weapon attacks, spells and creative actions and moves more often and save your best cards for later in the encounter (also, don't even use it if you see you don't need - no one knows if the next encounter come soon). It may make you feel more usefull or feel less monothone at the latest rounds of the encounter. In that suggestions I've made, you maybe can go through 8, 10 or even more rounds before you have to use your best spells, spending just some of your slots and ammo.
Also, not all encounters must end up in blood. There's a lot of the creatures in 5e that are pretty convinceble to quit a fight with a deal. If you DM dones't play their monsters as dumies, you can try to use your skills to intimidate or persuade them to stop fighting, or to use it at your advantage in a fight. If your party rid form half a gang of bandits in a fight, for exemple, the rest of them should probably give up if you throw a few coins for them to flee away or convince them with a pretty (or terrifying) speech - way whould a bunch of thieves die for an already lost theft (honor????).
Part of your issue will come from being at such a low level, so using your weapons some of the time is to be expected; if you take a look at your upcoming levels you'll see how the class starts to really open up:
3rd Level: You'll get two second level spell slots and another first level, a pretty huge boost to your spellcasting. You'll also gain skill expertise and pick your bard college, so this is a huge level for Bards.
4th Level: Ability score increase lets you boost Charisma (more Bardic Inspiration uses, better casting) and you'll also get another cantrip choice.
5th Level: Two third level slots and another second, so another big expansion to your casting. Your Bardic Inspiration will also refresh on a short rest and increases to d8's, so another big level for a Bard.
In the mean time it's all about conserving resources, which is worth learning for any caster as even when you gain more levels you still need to take care not to burn resources too quickly. You could have taken Vicious Mockery as a damage cantrip, but it's pretty low damage with a decent debuff (use it on the enemy with the strongest attacks to try and force one miss per round). But really using a weapon is a perfectly reasonable thing to do; try to get a ranged weapon if you can (a crossbow, hand would be ideal) otherwise you need to choose your moment to go into melee; Bards are reasonably durable, but you probably want an ally to get into close combat first before you consider joining yourself. If your party has a Rogue then you might consider working with them so they get their sneak attack damage as reliably as possible.
But yeah, in some ways it's just a case of toughing it out for 2nd level, as you get a lot of your best goodies from 3rd onwards.
This is part of the reason I like swords and valor bards. They lean into the jack of all trades category a bit more. I love being able to cast high level concentration spells and then run in and hit things.
Hello everyone, I'm a level 2 bard at the moment and I'm not sure if I'm fighting correctly.
My cantrips are: Minor Illusion and Prestidigitation
My spells are: Tasha's Hideous Laughter, Sleep, Healing Word, Dissonant Whispers and Identify
So I use my spells to control enemies, my weapon to attack and I use bardic inspiration to help my team. But the longer a battle goes on, I feel like I'm having less and less of an impact. I run out of spell slots, bardic inspirations and all I end up doing is attacking with my weapons.
It sounds to me like you're doing everything perfectly. Bard is primarily a support class, so you do buffs and debuffs, battlefield control, and contribute to damage where you can without getting annihilated. The only suggestion I might make would be to trade out a cantrip for Vicious Mockery, or pick it up when you level up. It does damage and can impose disadvantage, so it meshes nicely with the bard class. It also gives you opportunities to insult enemies and do actual damage with your words. Speaking of words, if you're skilled in charisma based skills, you can also try using skills like persuasion or intimidation to attempt to avoid combat in the first place.
Every class has its advantages and its disadvantages. Some classes are great at some things, others are great at other things. That's the whole reason why characters in-game tend to assemble into an Adventuring Party. A bard, by nature and by design, is intended to be a "jack of all trades, master of none". But that whole "...master of none" should not be taken as an insult. It means rather that a bard can fill any role, take on any mission, fulfill any quest. Bards can fight, though maybe not as well as a fighter. Bards can heal, though maybe not as well as a cleric. Bards can cast spells, though maybe not as well as a wizard. Bards can survive, though maybe not as well as a ranger. Bards can loot, though maybe not as well as a rogue. You will never outperform those other classes at the one thing that they each specialize in. Instead, you are the Eratosthenes. As the late Dr. Carl Sagan said in his Cosmos series, "One of his envious contemporaries called Eratosthenes 'Beta', the second letter of the Greek alphabet because, he said, Eratosthenes was second best in the world - in everything."
You are not expected to be the one who leads the fight and strikes every killing blow. Rather, you are the one who makes everyone else just a little better at what they do, and you always seem to have some trick up your sleeve at just the right moment.
Also, keep in mind the time differential in the game. Because of the game mechanics of D&D, a fight that lasts a mere 30 seconds (in game) might take us over half an hour to play through and resolve. Meanwhile, the six weeks of downtime the party spends in a city might be quickly summarized by three minutes of narration. The point is that while we the players may spend 30 or 40 percent of game time in combat, our characters only spend a tiny fraction of much less than one percent of their time in combat. Some classes specialize in combat, which is fine. They are the proud masters of a fraction of a percent. But you - the bard - you specialize in the other 99.7% of the game. And that ain't too shabby.
So play to that strength. No one expects you to win the fight. But your inspiration, your Song of Rest, and your uplifting songs and spirits will make the hard fight worth it.
Resource management is definitely something to figure out early; you have limited inspiration, limited spell slots, and limited health pool - you have to figure out how to use each of these to maximum benefit. How many resources you spend per encounter may also depend on how many encounters you expect to have within the course of your adventuring day - if you are only going to get in one fight with a group of goblins before you can long rest, you may spend your spells differently than if you know you're going to be stuck in a dungeon for a while and may have a bunch of skirmishes before the day is out.
HeltonMattai is right though, not every encounter has to be a battle; there's some clever ways to circumvent a fight - put your charisma skills to work and persuade those goblins that maybe they should switch sides and fight with you against that mean bugbear that orders them around, or have the barbarian help you intimidate the hobgoblins into running away, or deceive the bandits into thinking you're just poor travelers without coin, but if they let you go, you can give them the details of your rich master who is following with his shiny carriage and fat purse not half a day behind you....Or a well-timed Sleep spell at this level can end an encounter before it even begins.
Or go martial bard and lean into stabbing stuff. It's not glamorous (which is a damn lie - with Flourishes my sword bard is fancy as ****) but there's something satisfying about sticking 'em with the pointy end.
All characters at low level can end up poking the ogre with their pointy stick once they have run out of other things to do. The classes that are designed to go pokey-pokey naturally do it better than classes that are powerful in other ways. It sounds like this is the first time you have played a bard, or at least at this level. You won't be on this level very long. Hopefully when you advance a little the class will feel better to you.
I play bards. They are my favorite class. I have no qualms about going pokey-pokey when I think the situation doesn't deserve the use of another resource like a spell slot. Most people that play bards are fine with taking a support role in combat. You can take a lead role in other parts of the game. But even in combat, you can run over and use the help action to give a paladin advantage on his next attack, and this could be the difference between a hit and a miss, and then the paladin can unleash his smite! If you can't feel good about being the helper and you want to be the smiter, maybe bards just aren't for you. But I'd give it a chance for some more abilities to kick in. You haven't yet scratched the surface of what bards can do on a D&D adventure.
Help Action
Bardic Inspiration - Bonus Action
Attack Action w/ Rapier to finish off an enemy
Cast Dissonant Whispers
Cast Healing Word - Bonus Action
Shoot the enemy from distance with a light crossbow
Later ... Cutting Words to cause enemies to miss you or another party member
Between combats ... Song of Rest - Free Healing
Between combats ... talk to everyone and find out who's got the real influence
Between sessions ... write song lyrics about your adventures and the things you have killed
There are thousands of things you can do with your bard. Hundreds with Prestidigitation alone.
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Cum catapultae proscriptae erunt tum soli proscript catapultas habebunt
Hello everyone, I'm a level 2 bard at the moment and I'm not sure if I'm fighting correctly.
My cantrips are: Minor Illusion and Prestidigitation
My spells are: Tasha's Hideous Laughter, Sleep, Healing Word, Dissonant Whispers and Identify
So I use my spells to control enemies, my weapon to attack and I use bardic inspiration to help my team. But the longer a battle goes on, I feel like I'm having less and less of an impact. I run out of spell slots, bardic inspirations and all I end up doing is attacking with my weapons.
You can get creative with the cantrips in combat but they tend to be more out-of-combat cantrips. I almost never take vicious mockery and would rather use weapon attacks. Which gets to my next point...
You are 2nd level. Spell slots are a very limited resource, and the DC's on them at that level aren't great. All characters are generally going to be relying either on cantrips or weapon attacks for the majority of attacks. You have good spells but without the slots they need to be used decisively and you can expect to do a lot of weapon attacks. It wouldn't be any different if you were playing a cleric, but you have sleep and that's solid.
Your advantage as a bard is with an extra skill proficiency and song of rest, which is rather good in early levels but not a direct combat ability. Keep in mind, however, that extra healing across the party helps keep them above 0 hp and that prevents action loss so some of the benefit is applicable to combat indirectly.
If you stay the course and heal, use control / status effects, buff, and engage in combat as needed that's typical of bards.
Considering the ridiculously high stats you have you shouldn't have any problems being useful in battle, even if you're just attacking with a weapon. That said, you've gotten some really good advice. Getting a combat cantrip should probably be your top priority. Since you've already maxed out Charisma you'll get really good use out of it to the point that it's almost boring. If you really want to cheese it you can take a level of Hexblade Warlock. That way you get the best combat cantrip in the game and you can use Charisma to attack with.
Hello, sorry I just got around to seeing this but this is my character Hops.
Thanks everyone for the advice, I am reading all of this and getting inspired myself!
You look like you're doing pretty well. Use the Sleep when facing several opponents and the xbow to take down one by one. Who else is in your party?
Which college are you planning on going into?
I was thinking about either Lore or Valor, I like that they can add extra effects to their Bardic Inspiration.
One of those focuses is more of a magic Rogue while the other one is more of a magic Fighter. This comes down to play style which will affect what will work best for you.
I think compared to other classes, once you cast and concentrate on something, you're left with somewhat little to do other than cast cantrips from a safe distance lest you risk your concentration breaking, aside from the other, obvious risk of falling unconscious cause bards typically aren't the beefiest guys around.
For that reason, I think the best way to play a bard in combat is to multiclass that bard with something else.
Start out as a paladin, then go swords bard until extra attack, then pick up your next paladin level, then go bard all the way. Now, you can attack in melee well without the crappy AC. Or, maybe you want to start off proficient in CON saving throws, dump STR, and don't care too much about smite. Start out as fighter for a level, and do the same as mentioned prior. Since the new upcoming AL season will allow play across settings within the forgotten realms, I'm starting a v.human fighter with GWM and a pair of ogre gauntlets that will ultimately be a fighter 1/swords bard X. Maybe I'll pick up an extra level along the way, but not before lvl 11. That character will be able to fight just fine in melee in terms of damage and still have dandy spell casting.
Maybe you do want to start off as bard, well, multiclassing into warlock is great to get access to EB+agonizing blast. Now your damage will -never- be lacking with a simple two level dip. Multiclass into the obvious hexblade, now you got decent armor too and the shield spell. All with one level.
Of course, you do face the obvious downsides of multiclassing in that you're delaying your spell casting ability by a level or two, though in my opinion that's pretty worthwhile to not have to be stuck with spamming vicious mockery over, and over, and over again.
I've been playing a Bard primarily for several years now. Let me tell you that people who advise you to cast a lot of cantrips are giving you bad advice. There just aren't that many good combat cantrips for bards.
What I do as a Bard of Lore is focus on trying to control the battle with spells like Heat Metal and Hypnotic Pattern. At your current level, you can still use Sleep.
Then, while concentrating on such a spell, I use my xbow to inflict damage.
There's a tendency to forget to use Bardic Inspiration.
Hello, sorry I just got around to seeing this but this is my character Hops.
Thanks everyone for the advice, I am reading all of this and getting inspired myself!
You look like you're doing pretty well. Use the Sleep when facing several opponents and the xbow to take down one by one. Who else is in your party?
Which college are you planning on going into?
I was thinking about either Lore or Valor, I like that they can add extra effects to their Bardic Inspiration.
Valor and lore cover the main bard archetypes very well, and I think valor does the best job of a bard being a typical traditional bard while lore is more in touch with the mythological and historical roots of the concept. The flavor I want in the character is important to me and I find it make the playing more enjoyable for any of my characters so here is the general leaning for bard colleges.
Creation (TCoE) -- leans into the song of creation mythos
Eloquence (MOoT or TCoE) -- based on Greek mythology and philosopher poets; Hellenistic
Glamour (XGtE) -- musician tropes
Lore (PHB) -- classic historical and Celtic / Welsh mythology trope; translates into other cultures with similar roles on oral history
Spirits (VRGtR) -- crystal balls and seances; occult style
Swords (XGtE) -- leans into the pop-culture roguish trope; swashbuckler
Valor (PHB) -- a traditional bard trope as a magical warrior poet with roots based on the skald
Whispers (XGtE) -- shadowy manipulator
The bard class covers a variety of archetypes. They either add effects to or alternative uses for bardic inspiration.
The question I would ask is how you see your character. If you want to engage in combat then valor or swords carrying better armor and extra attacks work, or picking up armor and better attack cantrips in other ways on some of the other options. A lore bard with war caster, moderately armored, booming blade, and shillelagh who likes to use command or dissonant whispers has combat damage options. It takes investment on bards based on what you want.
I agree with @wren_the_munificent that controlling the battle a bard strong suit when it comes to combat. It's not that they can invest enough to get to a reasonable point in other areas; it's that spell list that's loaded with debuffs and status effects. The bard can be good at healing but other classes can be better. The bard can add damage but not to the extent of other classes. Even the status effects and CC can be outperformed because of other class mechanics. But the bard still has a strong mix of CC and healing and buffs and skill support to make for a strong support class outside of any attacks the PC might make.
If you are considering lore then you might also consider eloquence or spirits.
Eloquence giving silver tongue enables any bard with a 16 CHA and expertise in persuasion to auto-succeed 15 DC persuasion checks for favors. At 5th level eloquence bards auto-succeed 20 DC persuasion checks for favors. It's a diplomancer build and fun, and comes online at al relatively low level. Unsettling words for a penalty to saving throws enables landing spells better at those lower levels. Unfailing inspiration and infectious inspiration capitalize on an already decent ability.
Spirits gives the guidance cantrip for free and a small bonus to healing or damage from spells. Spirit session seem like a more limited form of extra secrets but it's changeable like preparation and improves up to a 6th-level spell eventually. Tales from beyond gives a strong use of a bardic inspiration die.
You have plenty to work with on how you want to play a bard in combat.
I only have access to Valor and Lore colleges but the other ones sound nice too!
My character is a travelling "entertainer" so I was leaning into Valor on the RP side plus I didn't like that Cutting Words can be resisted by creatures that can't hear you, Combat Inspiration doesn't have that limitation. I still want to play a control, support role for the team but Lore is better at that since they get more spell variety.
I'm surprised Vicious Mockery is a good spell. It does low damage and the way the spell fails is out of your control.
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Hello everyone, I'm a level 2 bard at the moment and I'm not sure if I'm fighting correctly.
My cantrips are: Minor Illusion and Prestidigitation
My spells are: Tasha's Hideous Laughter, Sleep, Healing Word, Dissonant Whispers and Identify
So I use my spells to control enemies, my weapon to attack and I use bardic inspiration to help my team. But the longer a battle goes on, I feel like I'm having less and less of an impact. I run out of spell slots, bardic inspirations and all I end up doing is attacking with my weapons.
Edit: Thanks everyone for the suggestions, it's a lot more detailed than I expected. I ended up choosing College of Valor because it made more sense RP-wise for my character.
Well, there's is no "right way to play" a bard in a battle, the subclass you get may put the PC into some sort of stereotype, but you can always act in a pretty unique way accourding to whats the personality of your character. So, any tips you get here are more like "what would I do" than "how to play".
If you playing a support role, you seem to have playing well with what you have at your disposal. The major problem that seems to me that you have (based on the way you put it) is that you maybe are using your best resourses on the first rounds and than you run out of power too fast.
If you want to avoid that situation of spending the last-half of the encounter just with your weapons, "what I would do" is to change that tatics and save my best resourses to the end. Remeber that besides casting/attacking, you have a plenty of options that you can use to make the combat more dinamic. Try to focus on get advantages for your party in some of the frist rounds using bardic inp. but also using help, flank, inprovise, etc (use ropes, traps, loose object on the battlefield. Sand-pocket your foes eyes using help action. Buy some ball bearing. Shit like that). Than you can swith between healing some and dashing and sneaking foes for a while, you can always forgo a spell/weapon attack on one turn to hide and have advantage on the next (even if you don't have rogue's sneak attack thats a good tatic for bards to keep safe). You may have used two or three spells slots and maybe rolled for a couple of attacks at this time and also you have runned from a lot of rounds.
Save Sleep for the mid or final of the combat, when you have a lot of foes pretty injured. You can work with your team to lure injured foes in a close range so you can use Sleep with good results, probablly putting lots of them to bed. Also, put your focus on minions to that spell, its way better to drop out 3 or 4 pain-in-the-ass that have each one attack per round than a single mob/boss that your team can fight at once if rid from those minions.
Anyway, as I already said, there's no right way to play, you just must to have fun for you and your party. Try to switch between weapon attacks, spells and creative actions and moves more often and save your best cards for later in the encounter (also, don't even use it if you see you don't need - no one knows if the next encounter come soon). It may make you feel more usefull or feel less monothone at the latest rounds of the encounter. In that suggestions I've made, you maybe can go through 8, 10 or even more rounds before you have to use your best spells, spending just some of your slots and ammo.
Also, not all encounters must end up in blood. There's a lot of the creatures in 5e that are pretty convinceble to quit a fight with a deal. If you DM dones't play their monsters as dumies, you can try to use your skills to intimidate or persuade them to stop fighting, or to use it at your advantage in a fight. If your party rid form half a gang of bandits in a fight, for exemple, the rest of them should probably give up if you throw a few coins for them to flee away or convince them with a pretty (or terrifying) speech - way whould a bunch of thieves die for an already lost theft (honor????).
Part of your issue will come from being at such a low level, so using your weapons some of the time is to be expected; if you take a look at your upcoming levels you'll see how the class starts to really open up:
In the mean time it's all about conserving resources, which is worth learning for any caster as even when you gain more levels you still need to take care not to burn resources too quickly. You could have taken Vicious Mockery as a damage cantrip, but it's pretty low damage with a decent debuff (use it on the enemy with the strongest attacks to try and force one miss per round). But really using a weapon is a perfectly reasonable thing to do; try to get a ranged weapon if you can (a crossbow, hand would be ideal) otherwise you need to choose your moment to go into melee; Bards are reasonably durable, but you probably want an ally to get into close combat first before you consider joining yourself. If your party has a Rogue then you might consider working with them so they get their sneak attack damage as reliably as possible.
But yeah, in some ways it's just a case of toughing it out for 2nd level, as you get a lot of your best goodies from 3rd onwards.
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This is part of the reason I like swords and valor bards. They lean into the jack of all trades category a bit more. I love being able to cast high level concentration spells and then run in and hit things.
Vicious mockery is not good =). Stab that enemy.
It sounds to me like you're doing everything perfectly. Bard is primarily a support class, so you do buffs and debuffs, battlefield control, and contribute to damage where you can without getting annihilated. The only suggestion I might make would be to trade out a cantrip for Vicious Mockery, or pick it up when you level up. It does damage and can impose disadvantage, so it meshes nicely with the bard class. It also gives you opportunities to insult enemies and do actual damage with your words. Speaking of words, if you're skilled in charisma based skills, you can also try using skills like persuasion or intimidation to attempt to avoid combat in the first place.
Every class has its advantages and its disadvantages. Some classes are great at some things, others are great at other things. That's the whole reason why characters in-game tend to assemble into an Adventuring Party. A bard, by nature and by design, is intended to be a "jack of all trades, master of none". But that whole "...master of none" should not be taken as an insult. It means rather that a bard can fill any role, take on any mission, fulfill any quest. Bards can fight, though maybe not as well as a fighter. Bards can heal, though maybe not as well as a cleric. Bards can cast spells, though maybe not as well as a wizard. Bards can survive, though maybe not as well as a ranger. Bards can loot, though maybe not as well as a rogue. You will never outperform those other classes at the one thing that they each specialize in. Instead, you are the Eratosthenes. As the late Dr. Carl Sagan said in his Cosmos series, "One of his envious contemporaries called Eratosthenes 'Beta', the second letter of the Greek alphabet because, he said, Eratosthenes was second best in the world - in everything."
You are not expected to be the one who leads the fight and strikes every killing blow. Rather, you are the one who makes everyone else just a little better at what they do, and you always seem to have some trick up your sleeve at just the right moment.
Also, keep in mind the time differential in the game. Because of the game mechanics of D&D, a fight that lasts a mere 30 seconds (in game) might take us over half an hour to play through and resolve. Meanwhile, the six weeks of downtime the party spends in a city might be quickly summarized by three minutes of narration. The point is that while we the players may spend 30 or 40 percent of game time in combat, our characters only spend a tiny fraction of much less than one percent of their time in combat. Some classes specialize in combat, which is fine. They are the proud masters of a fraction of a percent. But you - the bard - you specialize in the other 99.7% of the game. And that ain't too shabby.
So play to that strength. No one expects you to win the fight. But your inspiration, your Song of Rest, and your uplifting songs and spirits will make the hard fight worth it.
Anzio Faro. Protector Aasimar light cleric. Lvl 18.
Viktor Gavriil. White dragonborn grave cleric. Lvl 20.
Ikram Sahir ibn-Malik al-Sayyid Ra'ad. Brass dragonborn draconic sorcerer Lvl 9. Fire elemental devil.
Tayn of Darkwood. Human Life Cleric. Lvl 10.
Resource management is definitely something to figure out early; you have limited inspiration, limited spell slots, and limited health pool - you have to figure out how to use each of these to maximum benefit. How many resources you spend per encounter may also depend on how many encounters you expect to have within the course of your adventuring day - if you are only going to get in one fight with a group of goblins before you can long rest, you may spend your spells differently than if you know you're going to be stuck in a dungeon for a while and may have a bunch of skirmishes before the day is out.
HeltonMattai is right though, not every encounter has to be a battle; there's some clever ways to circumvent a fight - put your charisma skills to work and persuade those goblins that maybe they should switch sides and fight with you against that mean bugbear that orders them around, or have the barbarian help you intimidate the hobgoblins into running away, or deceive the bandits into thinking you're just poor travelers without coin, but if they let you go, you can give them the details of your rich master who is following with his shiny carriage and fat purse not half a day behind you....Or a well-timed Sleep spell at this level can end an encounter before it even begins.
Or go martial bard and lean into stabbing stuff. It's not glamorous (which is a damn lie - with Flourishes my sword bard is fancy as ****) but there's something satisfying about sticking 'em with the pointy end.
Could you show us your character?
All characters at low level can end up poking the ogre with their pointy stick once they have run out of other things to do. The classes that are designed to go pokey-pokey naturally do it better than classes that are powerful in other ways. It sounds like this is the first time you have played a bard, or at least at this level. You won't be on this level very long. Hopefully when you advance a little the class will feel better to you.
I play bards. They are my favorite class. I have no qualms about going pokey-pokey when I think the situation doesn't deserve the use of another resource like a spell slot. Most people that play bards are fine with taking a support role in combat. You can take a lead role in other parts of the game. But even in combat, you can run over and use the help action to give a paladin advantage on his next attack, and this could be the difference between a hit and a miss, and then the paladin can unleash his smite! If you can't feel good about being the helper and you want to be the smiter, maybe bards just aren't for you. But I'd give it a chance for some more abilities to kick in. You haven't yet scratched the surface of what bards can do on a D&D adventure.
Help Action
Bardic Inspiration - Bonus Action
Attack Action w/ Rapier to finish off an enemy
Cast Dissonant Whispers
Cast Healing Word - Bonus Action
Shoot the enemy from distance with a light crossbow
Later ... Cutting Words to cause enemies to miss you or another party member
Between combats ... Song of Rest - Free Healing
Between combats ... talk to everyone and find out who's got the real influence
Between sessions ... write song lyrics about your adventures and the things you have killed
There are thousands of things you can do with your bard. Hundreds with Prestidigitation alone.
Cum catapultae proscriptae erunt tum soli proscript catapultas habebunt
You can get creative with the cantrips in combat but they tend to be more out-of-combat cantrips. I almost never take vicious mockery and would rather use weapon attacks. Which gets to my next point...
You are 2nd level. Spell slots are a very limited resource, and the DC's on them at that level aren't great. All characters are generally going to be relying either on cantrips or weapon attacks for the majority of attacks. You have good spells but without the slots they need to be used decisively and you can expect to do a lot of weapon attacks. It wouldn't be any different if you were playing a cleric, but you have sleep and that's solid.
Your advantage as a bard is with an extra skill proficiency and song of rest, which is rather good in early levels but not a direct combat ability. Keep in mind, however, that extra healing across the party helps keep them above 0 hp and that prevents action loss so some of the benefit is applicable to combat indirectly.
If you stay the course and heal, use control / status effects, buff, and engage in combat as needed that's typical of bards.
Hello, sorry I just got around to seeing this but this is my character Hops.
Thanks everyone for the advice, I am reading all of this and getting inspired myself!
You look like you're doing pretty well. Use the Sleep when facing several opponents and the xbow to take down one by one. Who else is in your party?
Which college are you planning on going into?
Considering the ridiculously high stats you have you shouldn't have any problems being useful in battle, even if you're just attacking with a weapon. That said, you've gotten some really good advice. Getting a combat cantrip should probably be your top priority. Since you've already maxed out Charisma you'll get really good use out of it to the point that it's almost boring. If you really want to cheese it you can take a level of Hexblade Warlock. That way you get the best combat cantrip in the game and you can use Charisma to attack with.
I was thinking about either Lore or Valor, I like that they can add extra effects to their Bardic Inspiration.
One of those focuses is more of a magic Rogue while the other one is more of a magic Fighter. This comes down to play style which will affect what will work best for you.
I think compared to other classes, once you cast and concentrate on something, you're left with somewhat little to do other than cast cantrips from a safe distance lest you risk your concentration breaking, aside from the other, obvious risk of falling unconscious cause bards typically aren't the beefiest guys around.
For that reason, I think the best way to play a bard in combat is to multiclass that bard with something else.
Start out as a paladin, then go swords bard until extra attack, then pick up your next paladin level, then go bard all the way. Now, you can attack in melee well without the crappy AC. Or, maybe you want to start off proficient in CON saving throws, dump STR, and don't care too much about smite. Start out as fighter for a level, and do the same as mentioned prior. Since the new upcoming AL season will allow play across settings within the forgotten realms, I'm starting a v.human fighter with GWM and a pair of ogre gauntlets that will ultimately be a fighter 1/swords bard X. Maybe I'll pick up an extra level along the way, but not before lvl 11. That character will be able to fight just fine in melee in terms of damage and still have dandy spell casting.
Maybe you do want to start off as bard, well, multiclassing into warlock is great to get access to EB+agonizing blast. Now your damage will -never- be lacking with a simple two level dip. Multiclass into the obvious hexblade, now you got decent armor too and the shield spell. All with one level.
Of course, you do face the obvious downsides of multiclassing in that you're delaying your spell casting ability by a level or two, though in my opinion that's pretty worthwhile to not have to be stuck with spamming vicious mockery over, and over, and over again.
I've been playing a Bard primarily for several years now. Let me tell you that people who advise you to cast a lot of cantrips are giving you bad advice. There just aren't that many good combat cantrips for bards.
What I do as a Bard of Lore is focus on trying to control the battle with spells like Heat Metal and Hypnotic Pattern. At your current level, you can still use Sleep.
Then, while concentrating on such a spell, I use my xbow to inflict damage.
There's a tendency to forget to use Bardic Inspiration.
Valor and lore cover the main bard archetypes very well, and I think valor does the best job of a bard being a typical traditional bard while lore is more in touch with the mythological and historical roots of the concept. The flavor I want in the character is important to me and I find it make the playing more enjoyable for any of my characters so here is the general leaning for bard colleges.
The bard class covers a variety of archetypes. They either add effects to or alternative uses for bardic inspiration.
The question I would ask is how you see your character. If you want to engage in combat then valor or swords carrying better armor and extra attacks work, or picking up armor and better attack cantrips in other ways on some of the other options. A lore bard with war caster, moderately armored, booming blade, and shillelagh who likes to use command or dissonant whispers has combat damage options. It takes investment on bards based on what you want.
I agree with @wren_the_munificent that controlling the battle a bard strong suit when it comes to combat. It's not that they can invest enough to get to a reasonable point in other areas; it's that spell list that's loaded with debuffs and status effects. The bard can be good at healing but other classes can be better. The bard can add damage but not to the extent of other classes. Even the status effects and CC can be outperformed because of other class mechanics. But the bard still has a strong mix of CC and healing and buffs and skill support to make for a strong support class outside of any attacks the PC might make.
If you are considering lore then you might also consider eloquence or spirits.
Eloquence giving silver tongue enables any bard with a 16 CHA and expertise in persuasion to auto-succeed 15 DC persuasion checks for favors. At 5th level eloquence bards auto-succeed 20 DC persuasion checks for favors. It's a diplomancer build and fun, and comes online at al relatively low level. Unsettling words for a penalty to saving throws enables landing spells better at those lower levels. Unfailing inspiration and infectious inspiration capitalize on an already decent ability.
Spirits gives the guidance cantrip for free and a small bonus to healing or damage from spells. Spirit session seem like a more limited form of extra secrets but it's changeable like preparation and improves up to a 6th-level spell eventually. Tales from beyond gives a strong use of a bardic inspiration die.
You have plenty to work with on how you want to play a bard in combat.
I only have access to Valor and Lore colleges but the other ones sound nice too!
My character is a travelling "entertainer" so I was leaning into Valor on the RP side plus I didn't like that Cutting Words can be resisted by creatures that can't hear you, Combat Inspiration doesn't have that limitation. I still want to play a control, support role for the team but Lore is better at that since they get more spell variety.
I'm surprised Vicious Mockery is a good spell. It does low damage and the way the spell fails is out of your control.