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MrStabby
2015-10-17, 08:19 PM
So I haven't seen any discussion of fighter valour bards here yet.

I would have thought they would be reasonably popular - take a lvl 1 fighter (for heavy armour, con saves, fighting style), lvl 6 bard for the extra attack then maybe an extra fighter for action surge...

Whilst I know it isn't everyone's style I would have thought something like this would be more popular. By level 12 (which is pretty late on I admit) you can action surge at the start of a fight (with a good chance of being early in the initiative order due to jack of all trades), get up whatever you think the best combat buff is and still launch into melee with a solid two attacks. The loss of a spell level is less significant if you can use your action to attack effectively instead of throwing a spell (shield always remains pretty useful as does counterspell (again jack of all trades kicks in here), although you need magical secrets for these).

If you start at higher level it needn't even be that MAD. Shillelagh as a magical secret, dwarf for the armour bonus and you just need Cha and Con.

I know that Cleric domains can give the armour but I think if you want a real Frontliner augmented by magic then it is worth taking the fighter over the cleric.

JAL_1138
2015-10-17, 09:07 PM
So I haven't seen any discussion of fighter valour bards here yet.

I would have thought they would be reasonably popular - take a lvl 1 fighter (for heavy armour, con saves, fighting style), lvl 6 bard for the extra attack then maybe an extra fighter for action surge...

Whilst I know it isn't everyone's style I would have thought something like this would be more popular. By level 12 (which is pretty late on I admit) you can action surge at the start of a fight (with a good chance of being early in the initiative order due to jack of all trades), get up whatever you think the best combat buff is and still launch into melee with a solid two attacks. The loss of a spell level is less significant if you can use your action to attack effectively instead of throwing a spell (shield always remains pretty useful as does counterspell (again jack of all trades kicks in here), although you need magical secrets for these).

If you start at higher level it needn't even be that MAD. Shillelagh as a magical secret, dwarf for the armour bonus and you just need Cha and Con.

I know that Cleric domains can give the armour but I think if you want a real Frontliner augmented by magic then it is worth taking the fighter over the cleric.


VB doesn't multiclass all that well due to redundant proficiencies. It's not a bad multiclass (Ranger is also useful, although slightly less so unless it's the new UA one), and Fighter 3/Bard 17 with Crossbow Expert and Sharpshooter feats with Swift Quiver for a Magical Secret (and maybe that one ranged Smite for when you run out of slots for Swift Quiver) makes for one of the best ranged weapon users in the game.

Lore bards multiclass much better, since they tend to gain more with fewer redundancies. And of course there's the Bardlock (Warlock 2/Bard X) to pick up Eldritch Blast + Agonizing Blast, which gives you fairly competitive damage and the extra versatility of the Lore Bard (and Cutting Words).

The bard capstone isn't all that great, though, so there's usually no reason not to other than not wanting to wait a level or three for spells/ASIs.