I'm looking for a way to make my eloquence bard more useful for the party in combat. Not necessarily dealing damage, but happy to do that.
First time playing DND, with a party of first timers, and trying to figure out how to make myself more useful in combat for my team. We have a totem barbarian, ancients paladin, and trickster rogue in the party. So I'm not the only caster, but the only full caster. They're all good at dealing damage, and I'm happy sitting back and sending out support spells, but so far we've always had more fights in a day than I've had spell slots. We are still new in the game, so it might change, but I don't think it will. This puts me in a situation where for a fair number of fights, I'm either only using cantrips, or fighting with a sword.
For background:
My stats are: 20 cha, 18 dex, 16 int, 14 con, 12 wis, 9 str (we rolled for stats).
My character is a half elf, but has rejected his elf side for a lot of reasons, but the mechanical effect is he doesn't really like using bows or crossbows and is clumsy with them. I realized later this eliminated a few possibilities.
The DM requires reasons for picking up feats. He's basically said fey touched and shadow touched are off limits unless I find a way to spend a lot of time there. He said we won't retcon backstories to make it fit (phb feats are perfectly fine to take... I think). He also requires a lot of gold and time to write spell scrolls (50 gold and 3 days for a level 1 spell) along with a DC 15 arcana check to complete it at the end or the time and gold are lost. So my original idea of picking up those fests and writing spell scrolls to help extend the spell slots is off the table for a while at least. This is mostly to say that I don't think there's a viable way to cast more spells than the number of spell slots I have, which leaves me the options of fighting with cantrips and rapier only for at least some fights.
My question is, what can I do to help my party not be a 3 person party in a fight that doesn't use bardic inspiration or spell slots? Mockery sounds obvious, but usually we fight 3-5 creatures per fight (our current one we are fighting 11). Mockery might take half an attack away on average though. So instead of 3-5 attacks per round, it's causing 2.5-4.5. Although about a third of our fights we gave fought creatures with 2 or 3 attacks per round, so in those cases it causes 5.5 -9.5 attacks per round. It's not nothing, but it feels like that's pretty negligible when it takes one of our characters out of the fight to do it.
Fighting with a rapier has been my normal go to. I've been hanging back and hopping in to hit stragglers with flanking mostly. More to give our barbarian or paladin flanking than to for myself, but the extra damage is nice. However it carries a lot of risk of going down in a fight which would put a lot of pressure on everyone else, which is what I'm trying to relieve a bit.
Any suggestions on what I might be able to do to be more effective in combat? As I said, I'm happy to have ways to do more damage in the fight, but I'm happy for other ways to support the fight as well.
What level are you at, and how often do you level up? Bards are known for their versatility, but it can often feel underwhelming at lower levels especially if you use up spell slots quickly. Eloquence Bards excel at control/debuffing enemies with their Unsettling Words feature, so spells such as Hold Person or Command will really shine. Focusing on the more dangerous enemies and shutting them down can be crucial and, in my experience, very fulfilling!
If you truly feel you need to wade into melee, you could consider a hexblade dip. But honestly with your status as the only full-caster, it might be best to stick with bard and get creative with your spell usage. Speaking of, what spells do you currently have...?
We're level 3. We leveled very fast, but our DM told us he was trying to get us out of a phase where a random dice roll might mean we die. He said he's going to slow down our leveling to get a little more in line with where we should be. I suspect we will have slow progression to level 4 and 5, then level relatively normally.
I'm all for the control and buff spells, and picked eloquence specifically to land one of those in a critical moment with unsettling words (although I kinda fell in love with the minimum 10 dice rolls for persuasion and deception, took expertise in those and can't roll less than a 19 right now). Conceptually I'm on board with this build. It's more that I'm having trouble being useful in fights where I can't spend a spell slot or inspiration and I think we're going to have a lot of days with more fights than I have either of those.
I'm happy to take 2 levels of another class. I looked up the 19 and 20 effects for a bard and they're both... well muticlassing gets you a lot more than a feat does, and the 20 cap is... not really useful. Since you get no new spells either, I can't see a reason to not multiclass. I'm actually planning to take 2 levels for divination wizard right now, pick up arcane recovery, a few useful level 1 spells, and portent. I figure with 16 int, it's not a bad idea, especially since I'm not looking at too many attack spells. Mage armor and shield seem like they'd be super helpful, and a handful of ritual spells would be a nice boost. I'm not completely married to the idea for wizard though.
As it goes, I originally wrote my character to be very against getting into anything kind of binding deal/contract etc. So paladin, warlock, and probably cleric are all pretty much completely against his entire personality. Hadn't thought I'd multiclass when I did that, but also I like the character arc it set up. it's a direct result of some weird events in his past that's kind of his core motivation for everything. I know I ended up writing my character a little restricting on things, but I actually like how his story turned out, so I'm not hating it that much.
Right now I have
Cantrips
- vicous mockery
- prestidigitation
Level 1
- faerie fire
- silvery barbs
- disguise self
- unseen servant
Level 2
- invisibility
- suggestion
I'm planning to pick up minor illusion cantrip next level along with aid and either blind/deaf or hold person. I was originally set on blind/deaf since I could cast it while concentrating on another spell, but less certain with the spell slot/fight ratio we got going right now. I'm planning to get the metamagic adept feat with extended spell to upcast aid and other 8 hour spells before a long rest and have them active when we go out the next day.
Hey, I'm all for placing restrictions on your build for character reasons! It's more fun to have a challenge rather than simply picking the most optimal spells/strategies.
I didn't even consider a wizard multiclass, but divination could work! Or, alternatively, perhaps bladesinging? It would give you a stronger reason to wade into melee as it increases your overall AC (+3, alongside being able to wear light armor) and improves the Concentration checks (+3) you will inevitably be making. Not sure how stringent your DM is about Bladesinging being only available to elves, but with your character being a half-elf there is plenty of room for RP potential.
Blindness/Deafness or Hold Person are definitely good picks with different things going for them. Given the party composition, I think a well-placed Hold Person could feel awesome both for you and all your melee friends. But that's ultimately up to you!
(Sorcerer might also be a multiclass to consider, especially if you plan to nab Metamagic anyway. You'd have the two sorcery points from the feat plus two from the class. Subclass would depend on solely what you think would fit your character the best.)
I would stick with Bard but take Magic Initiate as my feat. You get two cantrips from a class (pick Sorcer er or Warlock for the Charisma cemetry. You will pick up a 1st level spell that is a spell know but also a free casting of it. You also get two more cantrips.... Take a good damage cantrip, and maybe a battle control if you can find one. the 1st level could be something that either debuffs, controlls the battle field or could be a small area of effect damage spell like burning hand.
This one feet will give you damage cantrips since you do not use a bow and a free 1st level cast that can either damage or help your melee players get a round with out taking damage.
While it’s always fun to do a great deal of damage, I’ve had a lot of fun playing a Bard and using primarily control spells. They can be very potent in taking one or more characters out of the battle for a while as the damage dealers work against a smaller party. Then they can take on the enemy or enemies that you’ve affected with your spells. Works well.
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Began playing 1st edition back in the late 70’s and love playing and DMing 5e to this day. We have a great group of players and would love to have someone who compliments our group join us. Would be great if we could add a woman, cis or trans, but are open to anyone who loves the game, loves RP and is reliable.
Someone had asked for help with their eloquence bard before, with an emphasis on aspects other than damage. I gave my build for my level 10 eloquence bard that was a pretty good fit. Here it is. I know that you are a much lower level but you can take from it what is currently available to you and build into it as you go. If you want to be effective, I will say that my bard was so effective in combat, that the DM started targeting me from the onset of battle, before I even did anything. A bit meta, IMO, but I digress. My inspiration was almost exclusively used for Unsettling Words just before I cut them down with some saving throw. Creatures rarely made the save and it became more rare the higher my inspiration die became.
Take a look. I was a titan in and out of combat with this build. Granted, I was reasonably dependent on a team pulling creatures off of me, but if you can maintain your concentration, you will do just fine and get more powerful as you go.
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DM mostly, Player occasionally | Session 0 form| Doctor/Published Scholar/Science and Healthcare Advocate/Critter/Trekkie/Gandalf with a Glock | He/Him/They/Them
About the character’s bow penalty, the crossbow is really not a specifically ”elvish” weapon. It is really more associated with humans and dwarves. Well, the drow have crossbows but if your character isn’t half drow that doesn’t probably make crossbows ”elvish”.
Technically, this not quite ”elvish” crossbow is the most efficient single class bard at will damage tool for a long time with your stats.
But actual advice for your situation: If can multiclass dip two levels to hexblade and take eldritch blast and agonozing blast. That makes you also quite good at dealing damage and improves your defenses with shield and shield the spell.
I'm looking for a way to make my eloquence bard more useful for the party in combat. Not necessarily dealing damage, but happy to do that.
First time playing DND, with a party of first timers, and trying to figure out how to make myself more useful in combat for my team. We have a totem barbarian, ancients paladin, and trickster rogue in the party. So I'm not the only caster, but the only full caster. They're all good at dealing damage, and I'm happy sitting back and sending out support spells, but so far we've always had more fights in a day than I've had spell slots. We are still new in the game, so it might change, but I don't think it will. This puts me in a situation where for a fair number of fights, I'm either only using cantrips, or fighting with a sword.
For background:
My stats are: 20 cha, 18 dex, 16 int, 14 con, 12 wis, 9 str (we rolled for stats).
My character is a half elf, but has rejected his elf side for a lot of reasons, but the mechanical effect is he doesn't really like using bows or crossbows and is clumsy with them. I realized later this eliminated a few possibilities.
The DM requires reasons for picking up feats. He's basically said fey touched and shadow touched are off limits unless I find a way to spend a lot of time there. He said we won't retcon backstories to make it fit (phb feats are perfectly fine to take... I think). He also requires a lot of gold and time to write spell scrolls (50 gold and 3 days for a level 1 spell) along with a DC 15 arcana check to complete it at the end or the time and gold are lost. So my original idea of picking up those fests and writing spell scrolls to help extend the spell slots is off the table for a while at least. This is mostly to say that I don't think there's a viable way to cast more spells than the number of spell slots I have, which leaves me the options of fighting with cantrips and rapier only for at least some fights.
My question is, what can I do to help my party not be a 3 person party in a fight that doesn't use bardic inspiration or spell slots? Mockery sounds obvious, but usually we fight 3-5 creatures per fight (our current one we are fighting 11). Mockery might take half an attack away on average though. So instead of 3-5 attacks per round, it's causing 2.5-4.5. Although about a third of our fights we gave fought creatures with 2 or 3 attacks per round, so in those cases it causes 5.5 -9.5 attacks per round. It's not nothing, but it feels like that's pretty negligible when it takes one of our characters out of the fight to do it.
Fighting with a rapier has been my normal go to. I've been hanging back and hopping in to hit stragglers with flanking mostly. More to give our barbarian or paladin flanking than to for myself, but the extra damage is nice. However it carries a lot of risk of going down in a fight which would put a lot of pressure on everyone else, which is what I'm trying to relieve a bit.
Any suggestions on what I might be able to do to be more effective in combat? As I said, I'm happy to have ways to do more damage in the fight, but I'm happy for other ways to support the fight as well.
What level are you at, and how often do you level up? Bards are known for their versatility, but it can often feel underwhelming at lower levels especially if you use up spell slots quickly. Eloquence Bards excel at control/debuffing enemies with their Unsettling Words feature, so spells such as Hold Person or Command will really shine. Focusing on the more dangerous enemies and shutting them down can be crucial and, in my experience, very fulfilling!
If you truly feel you need to wade into melee, you could consider a hexblade dip. But honestly with your status as the only full-caster, it might be best to stick with bard and get creative with your spell usage. Speaking of, what spells do you currently have...?
We're level 3. We leveled very fast, but our DM told us he was trying to get us out of a phase where a random dice roll might mean we die. He said he's going to slow down our leveling to get a little more in line with where we should be. I suspect we will have slow progression to level 4 and 5, then level relatively normally.
I'm all for the control and buff spells, and picked eloquence specifically to land one of those in a critical moment with unsettling words (although I kinda fell in love with the minimum 10 dice rolls for persuasion and deception, took expertise in those and can't roll less than a 19 right now). Conceptually I'm on board with this build. It's more that I'm having trouble being useful in fights where I can't spend a spell slot or inspiration and I think we're going to have a lot of days with more fights than I have either of those.
I'm happy to take 2 levels of another class. I looked up the 19 and 20 effects for a bard and they're both... well muticlassing gets you a lot more than a feat does, and the 20 cap is... not really useful. Since you get no new spells either, I can't see a reason to not multiclass. I'm actually planning to take 2 levels for divination wizard right now, pick up arcane recovery, a few useful level 1 spells, and portent. I figure with 16 int, it's not a bad idea, especially since I'm not looking at too many attack spells. Mage armor and shield seem like they'd be super helpful, and a handful of ritual spells would be a nice boost. I'm not completely married to the idea for wizard though.
As it goes, I originally wrote my character to be very against getting into anything kind of binding deal/contract etc. So paladin, warlock, and probably cleric are all pretty much completely against his entire personality. Hadn't thought I'd multiclass when I did that, but also I like the character arc it set up. it's a direct result of some weird events in his past that's kind of his core motivation for everything. I know I ended up writing my character a little restricting on things, but I actually like how his story turned out, so I'm not hating it that much.
Right now I have
Cantrips
- vicous mockery
- prestidigitation
Level 1
- faerie fire
- silvery barbs
- disguise self
- unseen servant
Level 2
- invisibility
- suggestion
I'm planning to pick up minor illusion cantrip next level along with aid and either blind/deaf or hold person. I was originally set on blind/deaf since I could cast it while concentrating on another spell, but less certain with the spell slot/fight ratio we got going right now. I'm planning to get the metamagic adept feat with extended spell to upcast aid and other 8 hour spells before a long rest and have them active when we go out the next day.
Hey, I'm all for placing restrictions on your build for character reasons! It's more fun to have a challenge rather than simply picking the most optimal spells/strategies.
I didn't even consider a wizard multiclass, but divination could work! Or, alternatively, perhaps bladesinging? It would give you a stronger reason to wade into melee as it increases your overall AC (+3, alongside being able to wear light armor) and improves the Concentration checks (+3) you will inevitably be making. Not sure how stringent your DM is about Bladesinging being only available to elves, but with your character being a half-elf there is plenty of room for RP potential.
Blindness/Deafness or Hold Person are definitely good picks with different things going for them. Given the party composition, I think a well-placed Hold Person could feel awesome both for you and all your melee friends. But that's ultimately up to you!
(Sorcerer might also be a multiclass to consider, especially if you plan to nab Metamagic anyway. You'd have the two sorcery points from the feat plus two from the class. Subclass would depend on solely what you think would fit your character the best.)
I would stick with Bard but take Magic Initiate as my feat. You get two cantrips from a class (pick Sorcer er or Warlock for the Charisma cemetry. You will pick up a 1st level spell that is a spell know but also a free casting of it. You also get two more cantrips.... Take a good damage cantrip, and maybe a battle control if you can find one. the 1st level could be something that either debuffs, controlls the battle field or could be a small area of effect damage spell like burning hand.
This one feet will give you damage cantrips since you do not use a bow and a free 1st level cast that can either damage or help your melee players get a round with out taking damage.
While it’s always fun to do a great deal of damage, I’ve had a lot of fun playing a Bard and using primarily control spells. They can be very potent in taking one or more characters out of the battle for a while as the damage dealers work against a smaller party. Then they can take on the enemy or enemies that you’ve affected with your spells. Works well.
Began playing 1st edition back in the late 70’s and love playing and DMing 5e to this day. We have a great group of players and would love to have someone who compliments our group join us. Would be great if we could add a woman, cis or trans, but are open to anyone who loves the game, loves RP and is reliable.
Someone had asked for help with their eloquence bard before, with an emphasis on aspects other than damage. I gave my build for my level 10 eloquence bard that was a pretty good fit. Here it is. I know that you are a much lower level but you can take from it what is currently available to you and build into it as you go. If you want to be effective, I will say that my bard was so effective in combat, that the DM started targeting me from the onset of battle, before I even did anything. A bit meta, IMO, but I digress. My inspiration was almost exclusively used for Unsettling Words just before I cut them down with some saving throw. Creatures rarely made the save and it became more rare the higher my inspiration die became.
Take a look. I was a titan in and out of combat with this build. Granted, I was reasonably dependent on a team pulling creatures off of me, but if you can maintain your concentration, you will do just fine and get more powerful as you go.
DM mostly, Player occasionally | Session 0 form | Doctor/Published Scholar/Science and Healthcare Advocate/Critter/Trekkie/Gandalf with a Glock | He/Him/They/Them
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About the character’s bow penalty, the crossbow is really not a specifically ”elvish” weapon. It is really more associated with humans and dwarves. Well, the drow have crossbows but if your character isn’t half drow that doesn’t probably make crossbows ”elvish”.
Technically, this not quite ”elvish” crossbow is the most efficient single class bard at will damage tool for a long time with your stats.
But actual advice for your situation: If can multiclass dip two levels to hexblade and take eldritch blast and agonozing blast. That makes you also quite good at dealing damage and improves your defenses with shield and shield the spell.
Dissonant Wispers: 3d6 and potential to add an extra attack (Oportunity attack) to your groups hard hitter.