Bards

[Nulesi]

So, bards cannot cast in armor; yet they cannot take auto still spell. Tell me how this makes sense? No wonder nobody ever builds bards.

[Bargeld]

Most bards take off armor and shield to buff then run into battle forgetting to put armor back on. Or if robes/dex, no worries, just shield.

Then manually still some stuff for battle casting or just swap shield out, cast, shield back on.

Also 2 good shields with 0% failure, and a 3rd ok one. Or just use small.

[frogofpeace]

Bishop had a really nice dexer bard build in IO. War Bard of IO or something like that.

[Lokey]

Still spell is a thing, it's why there's level 7 bard slots on items. Couple shield with -arcane spell failure.

We talk about removing arcane spell failure from armor enough that we can at least try it when we update files again.

[Bargeld]

Assuming they have 8 dex boots and 4 dex buff, for +6 dex ac, only need 16 base dex to be the same ac as full plate. So removing failure from some full plates opens up a few new options. And requires proficiency, so mainly bg/pal type things or burn 1 feat instead of 3 for auto still.

Wouldn't be a major balance tip.

[Celorn]

The problem with dex bards is the damage is not quite as good as a str-based bard.

I have a few str-based bards (Bard/BG/bb is a nice combo or bard/rdd) on the old NS4 that do pretty well, but fiddling with armor and shields has always been annoying (lots of micro-managing).

There is the one plate armor for bards but still has a 15% spell fail, if even that armor had -50% so 0% fail then it would be great.

But hey I'd be fine with getting rid of bard arcane failure all together - would be awesome!