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Gish characters in PbP

   
Bards have a decent spell-list, no great but entirely workable, far diverse enough to cover a lot of things. Sure they aren't tossing fireballs, but really that's probably the least effective way to use arcane magic any way. They have a good selection of a lot of different spell types.

Really bard is probably the only not full casting class (by this I mean one that doesn't get 9th level spells) that stays equally good at all levels of play.

As does Jester if you use Dragon Compendium, though you end up losing out on Inspire Courage shenanigans for shenanigans that don't quite work as well with focused Gishing. Still works, though.

Bards in addition have some excellent prestige classes to play around with Sublime Chord, Virtuoso, Lyric thaumaturge. Plus expanding their spelllist isn't too difficult since they can qualify for a couple of good sorcerer prestige classes as well.

Whilst many of those are great, they're mostly not really gish classes. I would probably just go straight Bard or something like War Chanter for that, possibly Warrior Skald. You could probably do something like Bard 4/Fighter 1/Spellsword 1/Abjurant Champion 3/Eldritch Knight 1/Sublime Chord 1/Abjurant Champion +2/Eldritch Knight +7 for full Sublime Chord casting and nearly-full BAB (or more Bard, less PrC if you wanted to be less messy), and I daresay that would be reasonably effective, but it's more like a Sorcerer-into-PrC gish just using Sublime Chord instead, and certainly not very standard as Bards go.
(Or Swiftblade, as mentioned)

In terms of most simple, "out of the box" gish, I still lean in favour of the Battle Sorcerer, or possibly the Wilder. Bard comes quite close behind. PsyWar has a power list which is geared much more towards melee so if we're being strict, not really a true gish (very few real direct offensive powers, mostly buffs and movement and stuff), and Duskblade is quite similar. Hexblade actually has both full BAB and independently good spells, but the casting is so limited that I don't think we can count it.

Also Cleric and Druid, obviously, though they probably don't count.

Quote:
Originally Posted by TheFred View Post
Whilst many of those are great, they're mostly not really gish classes. I would probably just go straight Bard or something like War Chanter for that, possibly Warrior Skald. You could probably do something like Bard 4/Fighter 1/Spellsword 1/Abjurant Champion 3/Eldritch Knight 1/Sublime Chord 1/Abjurant Champion +2/Eldritch Knight +7 for full Sublime Chord casting and nearly-full BAB (or more Bard, less PrC if you wanted to be less messy)
Bard based gished don't really need full base attack to be effective, with inspire courage/inspire greatness, haste and other buffs like heroism they can do decent melee without a full base attack

bard 6/lyric thaumaturge 10/Knight Phantom 4 as an example gets you BAB +15 and the spellcasting of a 19th level bard with the extra spells gained from lyric thaumaturge.

Good spellcasting and decent combat, without having to do any PRC dipping.

No but Sublime Chord has a low BAB; it's basically a Sorcerer. A straight Bard 10/SC 10 has a final BAB of +12 by L20, which is pretty bad for a gish (and loses you your fourth attack). If you're going to do that, just be a Sorcerer 20. Same with Virtuoso since it's low BAB too.

Lyric Thaumaturge is a great PrC, don't get me wrong, but it doesn't add a great deal to a gish specifically unless you're cherry-picking the right spells or using the sonic power for some kind of sonic-substituted Heightened Flame Blade trickery or something. And BAB +15 is as good as a mile, since you're so close to having +16 but not there.

You can literally just do Bard 20 (or maybe something like Bard 15/AbChamp 5, or Swiftblade) and be a perfectly competent gish character; all I am saying is that none of those PrCs you mentioned really do anything special to make you be better at being a gish specifically. Bard/LT is about on a par, and the other two make you better at other stuff and worse at melee.

Quote:
Originally Posted by TheFred View Post
And BAB +15 is as good as a mile, since you're so close to having +16 but not there.
Meh, that extra attack you get at +16 BAB is at +1 BAB, really not that big a deal to lose compared to getting inspire greatness on top of extra abilities from lyric thaumaturge and still having BAB +15.

Plus bards get Haste as part of their standard issue spell list it's not like they have that much trouble keeping up with a fighter attack wise or outshining them with judicious uses of buffs.

The fourth attack is not insignificant, especially when you have all those buffs upping your AB. It stacks with Haste, too.

If you're not getting at least +16 BAB from your class levels, why not just be e.g. a straight Sorcerer and use a Skilful weapon?

Of course, getting +16 BAB by L20 only matters if your game actually takes place at L20, which many do not. Prior to that, getting those iterative attacks earlier rather than later is still a big deal, but it's less clear-cut.




 

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