Baldur's Gate 3 - Ultimate Bard Class Guide (Lore & Valour Build)

so i finally spent some quality time with the bard class in baldur's gate 3's early access and that goes for both subclasses so in today's video i'm going to bring you guys an in-depth class guide with lots of examples to show chapter markers will be below i'll get into creating your bard here in just a second but first i want to start off talking about the level one feature that all bards get access to that's called bardic inspiration without bardic inspiration combat wise bards wouldn't really feel all that unique this is a staple of the class and after playing as two bards i've come to realize that i want to take advantage of this feature as much as i possibly can bardic inspiration reads as inspire and ally with your performance you cannot use bardic inspiration on yourself you have to use it on someone else they can add a 1d6 bonus to their next attack roll ability check or saving throw it has a range of 60 feet and to use it it costs a bonus action and also it costs a bardic inspiration now you have a limited amount of bardic inspiration which is represented right here on this little musical note and currently it says that this character has three bardic inspiration and these recharge once per long rest now the amount of bardic inspiration that you have to give out is actually currently in early access set in stone at three regardless of what your charisma modifier is in d d fifth edition it's based off your charisma modifier so if you have a 20 in charisma you have five bardic inspiration if you have a 12 you only have one in this example my level 4 drow named benjamin has an 18 in charisma which is a plus 4 modifier but still only has three buttock inspiration and bart my deep gnome bard has 16 and charisma but they both have three bardic inspiration i also created a bard and dumped charisma and noticed that it was still three so i'm not sure what larian's intent with this is because it's a pretty big difference from d and d fifth edition i'm leaning towards wanting it to be based off of your charisma modifier if you put more points into charisma you should be able to inspire more allies but we'll have to wait and see what their plan is so go ahead and cast bardic inspiration on our other bard here named benjamin you guys will notice that now in the bottom right of the hop bar we have a box that represents the different types of ways that you can use your bardic inspiration die the cool thing about bardic inspiration is that when you give it to somebody it won't go away until you take a long rest on that character or if they use it so you can actually use or hand out bardic inspiration before combat begins and now that i have laizelle in my group i definitely want her to have a bardic inspiration die so i'm gonna give it to her before we fight these imps so laizelle now has her bardic inspiration die and let's say i want to use it on my attack roll which is one of the best uses you can get out of it to give us a much better chance of landing our attack we'll go ahead and attack this imp making sure that bardic attack is selected and then we can take a quick look at the combat log the combat log is going to keep moving on us here yep there it goes it's kind of a pain in the butt and we got a plus two from bardic attack so the game rolled a d6 behind the scenes and we got a two which was added on to our attack roll very very good use of bardic inspiration like i mentioned earlier it only costs a bonus action so now that it's my bard's turn i could cast bardic inspiration back on lazelle and then also do an attack of my own or cast a spell or something like that if you want to use your bardic inspiration a bit more defensively because you know you're fighting a certain spellcaster that has these really powerful spells that cause your character do a saving throw you're going to want to make sure that you select bardic defense but just keep in mind with the way that the current reaction system is in baldur's gate 3 you have no control over when this bardic defense is going to be activated it's the next next saving throw that your character is forced to do is when it's going to be used so if you're in a competent counter and a little uh side enemy uses something on you that causes you to do a saving throw your bardic inspiration is gone for that round and then maybe the boss or the bigger scarier creature does something afterwards and you won't have that bardic defense so this is a little bit not as good in baldur's gate 3 as it is in d d because you don't get to choose when specifically you want to use it and the third use is using it for an ability check getting that 1d6 added to an ability check and if you're in dialogue and you have a bard with you and they have bardic inspiration die available an option will pop up and you can simply choose to add it to your role very useful for important dialogue checks or skill checks and dialogue but it also works for passive ability checks and i'm testing this out right in front of you guys right now so you can see for sure so let's go ahead and cast bardic inspiration on lazelle and then we'll go over to laizelle and you can see that we have it right here i'm going to make sure that bardic roll is selected so add a 1d6 bonus to your next ability check and right here is a perception check to reveal that this is an actual door so let's walk up here with lazelle and there is the perception check we failed unfortunately but you'll notice that the bardic inspiration option is now gone she doesn't have the dice anymore so use it for dialogue and you can also use it for important passive ability checks see i found myself mostly using this for attack roles super useful to get that 1d6 bonus to your attack roll but make sure you think about the combinations and characters that might need this the most for example laizelle i gave the great weapon master feat which adds 10 damage if you land an attack at the cost of a minus 5 to her attack roll if i give her bardic inspiration it offsets that minus five to her attack roll a little bit making it much more likely that the great weapon master uh passive is actually going to go off giving that extra 10 damage super powerful and then you can also combine it with a cleric who might give liesel bless and then you have a fighter using the great weapon master feat which is insane bonus damage almost always landing their attacks um with such a powerful feat so think about the combinations that you can do so back to character creation let's start off talking about your ability scores we know that bardic inspiration currently is not affected by your charisma modifier but that's not a reason to not focus on charisma because charisma is the bard's spell casting ability it's going to power your overall spell casting make them more likely to hit more likely to take effect and also deal more damage with certain spells most birds are probably going to want to have a 16 in charisma right away in character creation to get that plus three modifier but the only way to get a plus three at sixteen is by playing a race that gives you a plus one because the highest that you can go without a boost is going to be fifteen and the races that offer a plus one to charisma or at least a plus one to charisma are the teefling the drow the humans the half elf and also a lightfoot halfling half elf is definitely the best choice here as you get a plus two to charisma you can also add a plus one to two other ability scores of your choice and for the bard that would likely be dexterity and constitution now you don't have to play as a race that gives you a boost to charisma but just keep in mind that you're not going to be able to go any higher than 15 in character creation which is only a plus two modifier but there is a way in the game to maybe get a little bit more to your charisma but i don't want to spoil it in this video i'll put it in the bottom of the pinned comment now if you want to do a power combat build play as a half elf give yourself 17 charisma and character creation do what i wrote down in the pinned comment of this video and then when you hit level four you can actually boost your charisma up to 20 which is really powerful for the bard now your other two important ability scores for most bards is going to be dexterity and also constitution you can play as a strength based bard but i'll get into that in a future video it's a little bit more complex so dexterity is not only going to help with your initiative and your dexterity saving throws but it's also going to give you a boost to your armor class so bards can wear light armor if you play as a college of lore bard or they can wear medium armor if you play as a college of valor bard you get to choose your subclass at level three and medium and light armor can benefit up to a plus two of your dexterity modifier max of plus two so if you have a 14 in character creation you're getting that maximum plus two added to your armor class making you much harder to hit so i'd recommend having at least a 14. dexterity is also going to help you with your attack and damage rolls when you're using finesse melee weapons or using ranged attacks and these are typically the most common types of weapons that bards are going to use so if you're playing especially if you're playing as a college of valor bard which is a little bit more marshall focused you may even consider getting your dexterity to 16 right away in character creation because you're probably going to be using your weapons maybe a little bit more than a college of lore bard would do but constitution is also very important here as it helps you hold your concentration on spells that require concentration and there's a few of them that are really good for the bard so it's really up to you what you want to focus a little bit more on your other ability scores it's more so up to you what you want to do here strength will help with your jump distance and your encumbrance intelligence and wisdom help with a lot of skills in the game and also help you with saving throws in combat for spells that require characters to do intelligence or wisdom saving throws also at level one we get to choose two canned trips for our bard and a list of eight canned trips and the one can trip that i recommend that all bards should take is called vicious mockery your second can trip it's more so up to you uh what you might think you might need in your group all of those are cantrips that were already in the game vicious mockery is a new one that came with patch eight vicious mockery reads as unleash a string of enchanted insults at a creature and larian has included a total of 97 insults with patch 8. it takes damage and receives disadvantage on its next attack roll so if we cast vicious mockery on this imp right here the imp is going to do a wisdom saving throw so you probably don't want to use this on enemies that have a high wisdom and if they fail they'll take psychic damage and also have disadvantage on their next attack role so this imp just fell that they're saving throw so if we examine the imp it already took its psychic damage now for this round of combat on its next attack roll it will have disadvantage this imp is going to attack right now and as you can see it missed because it had disadvantage so really good uh support with a little bit of offensive capability because you get that psychic damage i love casting it when you have to help out somebody that's on the front lines that you know is getting attacked like lazelle is our tank right now so we'll cast it on these ends to help her out a little bit and take less damage bards get to learn four spells right away at level one but keep in mind that bards no spells they don't prepare spells so the spells that you choose here you're stuck with for that level and then when you level up you have the opportunity to replace just one of them so your choice of spells is pretty important for a class like this now there's only one spell at this level that offers you the ability to deal decent single target damage and every other spell is more buff debuff battlefield control focused and that spell is dissonant whispers dissonant whispers reads as whisper a discordant melody to a creature it takes 46 psychic damage and becomes frightened if the creature succeeds on a wisdom saving throw then they will not be frightened and they will only take half damage this spell can be up cast at level two which is the 46 psychic damage and at level one it's 3d6 psychic damage so let's try it on uh poor carlac here so there we go so we did 10 damage and she's also frightened for two turns if we take a look at the frightened status effect or condition it gives creatures disadvantage and ability checks and attack roles so for two rounds carlack is going to have disadvantage on mainly her attack roles which is what it's super useful for the only other spell that is damage focused in this case it's actually aoe damage focused is thunderwave and you guys know me this is one of my favorite spells in the game three two one i think it's a great idea to have on at least one or two of your characters thunder wave obviously knocks enemies back and also does thunder damage definitely not a bad idea to have it especially if you don't have it on your team so after this we're going to take a look at a few of the concentration spells now because it's usually a good idea to get off a spell that requires concentration early on in a combat encounter and try to hold your concentration on that spell as long as you can to gain the passive benefits of it throughout that round of combat and there's a few concentration spells that the bard gets access to at level one we have bane ferry fire tasha's hideous laughter and heroism now heroism is the new one that came with patch eight and this is my personal favorite here if you want to have a more support focused concentration spell um not a bad idea to have someone on your team that has fairy fire especially because it reveals invisible enemies bane is alright i don't use it that much myself but not not bad in some situations and tasha's hideous laughter can actually knock a creature prone in a fit of laughter and take them out for up to 10 rounds of combat just take them completely out of the combat encounter as long as they're failing at their wisdom saving throws but we're gonna focus on heroism because it is a really really really good concentration spell heroism reads as bolster yourself or an ally with valor in health the target can no longer be frightened and gains five temporary hit points each turn heroism can stay active on a target creature for up to 10 turns as long as your bard can hold their concentration and the immunity to being frightened is actually quite useful as a lot of the tougher enemies in this game have the ability to frighten you such as the githyanki and it can get really annoying having the frightened status effect or front and condition active on your character but the real crazy use of the spell is the five temporary hit points that the target gets each turn so let me go ahead and cast this as a level one spell on naked will here so he has a lower armor class because we want will to get hit so i can demonstrate this now if i examine will we can see that heroism is active he can't be frightened and also receives five temporary hit points which is represented by this little heart underneath will's character portrait you can see the five right there now the interesting thing about this spell a lot of people misunderstand it is the five hit points replenish every time it comes back to will's turn so whenever will takes damage it's going to first use up the temporary hit points and then it's going to dig into will's actual health bar so let's see if carlac will attack will and she just kicked will dealing four damage but because will had the five temporary hit points he still has full hp and then it went back to his turn and the five temporary hit points are replenished so let me see if i can dish out a little bit more damage to will to better demonstrate this and we'll do a little friendly fire and we just got a critical hit on him and he took 14 damage or 14 damage is what we dished out but will actually didn't take 14 as you notice he had 31 hp and now he has 20 the five temporary hit points came off of that damage initially and when it comes back to will's turn you'll notice that he has the five temporary hit points back so this can add up to a lot of negated damage over the course of a combat encounter it could be really good to use on like your tanky characters that are on the front lines and over the course of a you know a 10 11 12 13 round combat encounter you could be negating like 50 to 100 damage on a character which is just insane really powerful spell and also note that you can up cast heroism and it will allow you to cast it on two friendlies they just have to be close to each other this is not a range spell so i typically like using heroism on my college of valor bard because the college of valor bard has a better armor class than the college of lore bard and therefore can do better on the front line so i give heroism to my college of valor bard and i try to stay up here with the frontline damage dealers and give it to them as much as i possibly can and hold my concentration on them as much as i can really powerful spell definitely should take it with one of your bards if you want a more support type spell just keep in mind that you can only concentrate on one concentration spell at a time so you don't want to take all concentration spells you'll never be able to use them all now there's plenty of other great useful spells on the level 1 bard spellis that you can choose here like sleep and healing word is one of the best spells in the game even if you're not playing a support focused bard it might not be a bad idea to pick it up it's just so good at picking up downed allies from a distance and healing from a distance if you need it as a backup or maybe you'll just play a support bar and make use of it all the time also at level one you get to choose a starting instrument and the choices are hand drum flute loot liar or leer however you pronounce it and violin now just because you choose this instrument it doesn't mean you can't play the other instruments this is just the instrument that you're going to start off with and you will find many other instruments throughout your play through and what your instrument does is one it affects the animation of your spells so when you cast the bard spell your bar is going to pull out whatever instrument that you have equipped and kind of do a little animation for the spell but speaking non-combat wise uh having an instrument and being a bard which has the performability allows you to perform check it out [Music] there's actually some cool uses that you can get out of the perform ability one is npcs will come around you and if you pass a performance passive check they might give you some gold but also if you want to think of it in other ways you can distract npcs and have them gather around you while other party members do some other more suspicious activities i'm gonna have to sacrifice the drow i have to i'm doing it i can't help it i can't help myself goodbye in the last few things i'll quickly talk about our skills and the remaining class features so for skills bards get to choose three but keep in mind that your background choice gives you proficiency in another two skills really up to you what skills you want to be proficient in obviously the bard is going to excel in charisma skills the easiest way to see what skills your bard is going to the best at is by clicking on the abilities tab and then you can click on each ability here and it gives you the list of skills that fall under that category so because we have such a high charisma modifier we're going to excel in all of these charisma based skills um and taking some of the dexterity ones might not be a bad idea but do whatever you want now for the remaining class features bards get light armor proficiency but when you hit level 3 if you play as a college of valor bard you'll also have medium armor efficiency they get simple weapon proficiency hand crossbow long sword rapier and short sword proficiency the best choice here for damage with a melee weapon is probably going to be rapier for most bards because you have a high dexterity and rapiers are finesse weapons the long swords are not finesse weapons so they'll go off of your strength modifier short swords will go off of your dexterity um they are finesse weapons dexterity or strength but they do less damage than the rapiers rapiers are 1d8 so the rapier is the classic melee weapon for the bard and then for ranged weapons light crossbows are going to be your go-to weapon but if you play as a college of valor bard at level 3 you get martial weapon proficiency and then you can upgrade to a heavy crossbow some of the bows might be a good idea if you find some cool magical bows but crossbows deal more damage and until we get access to multi-attack at level five crossbows beat out bows for the most part at level two bards get jack of all trades which in early access is going to give you a plus one to all ability checks that deal with abilities that you're not proficient in so this makes the bar just a little bit better than most other classes at almost everything that the game throws at you non-combat wise you also get song of rest which can be used and abused and i'll show you why right now in d d fifth edition song of rest gives you more health when you take a short rest in baldur's gate three it basically gives you another short rest so everybody has access to two short rests but if you have a bard in your group then you have a third short rest and if you have two bards then you have four short rests and this is significant because some classes such as the warlock right here as you can see will has no spell slots some classes regenerate or replenish their spell slots through a short rest and this currently does work with song of rest so take a look here go back to will you can see that he has both of his spell slots back and this also works for lazelle's superiority die if you play as a battlemaster fighter i'm not sure if they'll keep it like this they might just turn it into nothing but a heel for balancing reasons uh we'll have to wait and test it out as time goes on you also get to choose one more spell to add to your spell list but we already went over most of those spells so choose whatever you think that you need and if you want you can replace one spell so if you made an error or you don't want a spell you have the opportunity to exchange one of them for a new one level three is where things start to get really interesting not only do we get to choose a subclass but we also get access to level three spells the first thing i'll talk about is expertise which all bards will get at level three regardless of your subclass choice and what expertise does is it doubles your proficiency bonus for two skills that you choose that you want to be an expert in these have to be skills that you're already proficient in so if i choose deception i'll now have a plus four proficiency bonus when doing deception checks really powerful the two subclasses that we get to choose from are the college of lore bard and the college of valor bard and these subclasses will grow and thrive in their own way even more once we can get past level four but this is just an early access class guide so we'll focus on that the college of lore bard is a bar that collects knowledge and pursues beauty and truth it's the bard that knows things and the first thing that a lore bard gets is additional skill proficiencies and in this case larian is giving us arcana intimidation and sleight of hand but you're supposed to be able to choose these skill proficiencies in 5th edition but i don't see a way to actually choose them so now that i think of it if you already have skill proficiencies in arcana intimidation and sleight of hand you're not going to gain the benefit of yeah there's no way to change them you're not going to gain the benefit of the additional skill proficiencies in baldur's gate 3. so i'm assuming that larian's going to change that to where we can actually choose them but i guess if you plan on playing a college of lore bar don't take arcana intimidation and sleight of hand proficiency in character creation college of lore bards also get cutting words which is another way that you can use your bardic inspiration really powerful way cutting words is another way to use your bardic inspiration so you only have a limited amount of uses three currently in early access so keep that in mind you can still use your regular bardic inspiration but now you have another use so cutting words you use your wit to distract a creature and stop its confidence so you're using it on an enemy instead of an ally this time and that enemy or opponent will receive a 1d6 penalty on attack rules ability checks and damage dealt until the start of our next turn so let's go ahead and use it on carlac here you can hear the little insult going on in the background and if we examine carlac she now has a 1d6 penalty to attack rules ability checks and damage dealt really good defensive support type way to use your bardic inspiration if you need to also note that with cutting words it costs you a reaction and a bardic inspiration die it doesn't cost you a bonus action like bardic inspiration does so you can actually use cutting words still have your bonus action and your action on your turn the college of valor bard has witnessed many mighty heroes fall in battle and wants to live to tell the tales of those heroes and also inspire future heroes and a valor bard gets medium armor proficiency shield proficiency and martial weapon proficiency so you can use any weapon that you want in the game so if you're going to do a strength basebard you're probably going to go down the college a valor route although you could use a long sword but the best use of the college of valor bar for most bards is going to be equipping a shield on your bard and also wearing medium armor to boost your armor class potentially by i don't know four or five which is a pretty big deal so college of valor bards are going to survive much better especially on the front lines of battle they don't really get anything that boosts their damage with weapons that doesn't come until you hit level 5 when you get extra attack and you can attack twice in one turn while the college of lore bard cannot does not get extra attack college of valor bart's also get something called combat inspiration which adds more uses to your bardic inspiration combat inspiration now allows whoever you cast bardic inspiration on to now be able to add a 1d6 bonus to the damage of their next weapon attack or a plus 4 bonus to their armor class for one attack so let me go ahead and cast it on lazelle and if we take a look at laizelle you can see we now have more options if we want to use that bardic inspiration die that was given to us by a bard we have something called valiant damage so if i select this we're going to get a 1d6 bonus to our damage on our next weapon attack you can't use it on an attack roll and damage unfortunately so you have to choose one or the other and also the saving throw bonus that we had before is now called valiant defense and we can add a 1d6 to our next saving throw or a plus 4 bonus to our armor class for one attack so if you select this this is that more defensive option if a spell is cast on your character that requires you to do a saving throw it's going to use it for the 1d6 bonus to saving throws or if somebody does an attack on your character it's going to give you a plus 4 bonus to your armor class you don't get to choose which attack once you select it for that round if somebody targets you with a saving throw spell or an attack it's going to use it a really good defensive one if you feel like you need more defense in a given situation let me go ahead and use uh we'll use convaliant damage on carlac over here i know i'm picking on carlac a lot i want to go ahead and click on valiant damage and then we'll do a bow shot at her and then we'll take a look at the combat log and you can see for valiant damage we rolled the 1d6 and we got a plus two added to our damage also at level three we get to choose another spell but the important thing here is that we now have access to level two spells once we reach level three and the two new spells that came with patch eight in the bard class include phantasmal force and also calm emotions and we'll start with phantasmal force phantasmal force floods a creature's mind with an illusion of the last thing that attacked them and at the start of that creature's turn if they fail an intelligent saving throw so better to use this on lower intelligence creatures that creature will take 1d6 psychic damage at the start of all of their turns as long as phantasmal force is active each round of combat that character is going to have a chance to do an intelligent saving throw to try to get rid of the phantasmal force effect and also your bard has to continue to hold concentration to keep this active let's go ahead and give it a try on poor carlac oh okay there we go so she succeeded so let's examine her or she failed the saving throw you can see that she has phantasmal force on her so let's go ahead and cycle back to her turn and you can see she just took six psychic damage but she succeeded in an intelligent saving thrown phantasmal force is now gone also note that each time that this creature that has phantasmal force active on them takes damage from another source the damage type of phantasmal force changes to that particular damage type so if you're facing an enemy that's vulnerable to fire damage cast phantasmal force on them and then have somebody else cast firebolt or something like that and the phantasmal force is going to change to fire damage you're going to get more damage out of it it's going to be double the damage whenever phantasmal force goes off really powerful combination like i mentioned earlier you don't want to take too many concentration spells so if you really like phantasmal force but you're also planning on running heroism which we talked about back at level one you can't run both of those really at the same time so in in my instance i have two bards in my group i'm running one with phantasmal force and one that uses heroism every time common motions is another concentration spell but this time you can suppress strong emotions in an area making all humanoids immune to being charmed or frightened so this is like an aoe immunity to charmed and frightened and those two status are those two conditions you do come across quite a lot especially frightened so if you want to save your entire team from a boss or maybe the githyanki encounter where they keep frightening all of your characters use common emotions and you can see everybody has it active on themselves and it lasts for up to 10 turns as long as your bard can hold their concentration so not a bad spell to at least have on your backlog of spells in case a situation arises where you need to protect your entire party you probably won't use it every encounter you can have this along with other concentration spells but just having it in your arsenal might save you in a few of the tougher encounters a ton of other great spells here other great concentration spells clouded daggers is extremely powerful old person's a great spell shatter is one of the best spells in the game in my opinion so if you're looking to have good damage i think you should take shatter with you because it gives you that aoe potential once a bunch of enemies group up together there's no other spell out there that can do as much damage as shatter currently in early access and then of course you have all of the other non-combat type spells that you may consider depending on what you want to do with your character at the current early access max level of level 4 it's pretty simple just like with most classes most classes are going to boost up their primary ability up to 18 or maybe 16 depending on what you did in character creation in this case i'm going to uh yeah give myself an 18 in charisma with that plus 4 modifier which is going to help with our spell casting and possibly the bardic inspiration if larian changes it to be based off of the charisma modifier you also get to choose another cantrip another spell from the list that we talked about at level three and you can of course replace the spell now have some fun if you want to mess around with some of the feats there's no reason not to have fun and just enjoy early access none of your characters are permanent in early access so if you want to mess around with some of the cool feats and try some stuff i would definitely recommend that you do that don't worry too much about you know having to get your charisma to 18 because you can get through most things in this game um especially if you've already done a playthrough or two and that'll be it for this class guide video i'll be sure to update this when the official game comes out and do a full class guide for both subclasses let me know if you guys enjoy this less scripted class guide style because i typically will script these videos to really try to be precise but i feel like i feel like this style might be a little bit more enjoyable to watch let me know below and i'll catch you on the next one [Music] you

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Keywords: baldurs gate 3, baldurs gate 3 gameplay, baldurs gate 3 bard class, baldurs gate 3 classes, classes, gameplay, bard class guide, bg3, early access, college of lore, college of valor, bard patch 8, baldurs gate 3 patch 8, bard spells, best spells baldurs gate 3, cantrips, bard build, balders gate 3, baulders gate 3, boulders gate 3, bard gameplay, wolfheartfps, wolfheart fps, larian studios

Id: ScKT6VY9Qic

Length: 29min 56sec (1796 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 14 2022