Kicking ass and singing names: optimizing the Harmonious Knight

[Kuroimaken]

A nice build is:

Human Bard 1/Cloistered Cleric 19 with initiate of milil, able learner and extra music. Grab some bard alternative class features. And that feat that lets you cast while singing. Profit.

Weaksauce! We can do better than that.

[woodenbandman]

Divine Bard really is so much better than normal bard, with the exception of qualifying for Sublime Chord. You can get domains and learn the spells from them, and use DMM. Divine Power, Righteous Might, etc. And you get Lyric Spell shenantics for huge amounts of spells/day as well as being able to use Divine Spellpower, Travel Devotion, etc.

Where does it say that you get domains Oo

I said that you CAN get them, via Cleric Dips, Contemplative levels, etc.

True about the MAD, but you no longer need Dex with the new bard due to your ability to wear heavy armor (with a cleric dip), and you can get the Bardic Sage variant to change the Wis requirement to Int (after it's changed to WIS).

[Dictum Mortuum]

Weaksauce! We can do better than that.

Well, it's a DMM cleric, only better with full UMD and other bard goodies.

Ah, then you probably don't get access to the domain's spells from the bard list.

[Operation Shoestring]

A nice build is:

Human Bard 1/Cloistered Cleric 19 with initiate of milil, able learner and extra music. Grab some bard alternative class features. And that feat that lets you cast while singing. Profit.

Weaksauce! We can do better than that.

Dipping 3 levels of prestige Pally, maybe?  +Cha to saves is nice, and you add a few extra spells.  Plus, Milil stacks pally as well as cleric.

Hmn, you could go Azurin, and take the sub levels at 1 and 9, then grab that Incarnum feat that lets you boost Lay on hands for a decent pool.  More CHA synergy, but i dunno if Lay on hands is worth it.

Then again, you could go Bard1/Cleric4/Prestige Pally 15, and do some sort of mounted build.

Anything else breaks up your pretty pretty IC progression.

[woodenbandman]

Divine Bard really is so much better than normal bard, with the exception of qualifying for Sublime Chord. You can get domains and learn the spells from them, and use DMM. Divine Power, Righteous Might, etc. And you get Lyric Spell shenantics for huge amounts of spells/day as well as being able to use Divine Spellpower, Travel Devotion, etc.

Where does it say that you get domains Oo

I said that you CAN get them, via Cleric Dips, Contemplative levels, etc.

True about the MAD, but you no longer need Dex with the new bard due to your ability to wear heavy armor (with a cleric dip), and you can get the Bardic Sage variant to change the Wis requirement to Int (after it's changed to WIS).

 

Sorry it's not written out, but by taking Contemplative, you can learn domain spells as per the rules in the beginning of Complete Divine. And cast them at-will.

[pfooti]

Then again, you could go Bard1/Cleric4/Prestige Pally 15, and do some sort of mounted build.

Anything else breaks up your pretty pretty IC progression.

Beating this horse - I don't see anywhere in Initiate of Mlili or Harmonious Knight that says anything about advancing the quality of your Inspire Courage. As far as I know, the only way to do this is either stay a bard or use Song of the White Raven and Crusader/Warblade levels. And if you go that route, you lose everything else (songs per day, spellcasting, etc) - I view that as mostly a warblade or crusader build who happens to dip bard, take extra music and whip out those mediocre Inspire Courages as swift actions.

[Kuroimaken]

Then again, you could go Bard1/Cleric4/Prestige Pally 15, and do some sort of mounted build.

Anything else breaks up your pretty pretty IC progression.

Beating this horse - I don't see anywhere in Initiate of Mlili or Harmonious Knight that says anything about advancing the quality of your Inspire Courage. As far as I know, the only way to do this is either stay a bard or use Song of the White Raven and Crusader/Warblade levels. And if you go that route, you lose everything else (songs per day, spellcasting, etc) - I view that as mostly a warblade or crusader build who happens to dip bard, take extra music and whip out those mediocre Inspire Courages as swift actions.

Actually, the wording of the Initiate of Milil feat is pretty weird. It says the levels stack for determining which songs you get access to "but not other effects of bardic music", whatever the hell that means.

However, it doesn't say anything about advancing a pre-existing progression; it says you determine something to get access. In other words, if you somehow gained the feat without having its prerequisites, you'd get access to the songs anyway.

[pfooti]

Yeah, I had interpreted it to mean that you used your combined levels to determine if you got Inspire Competence, Greatness, and Heroics and probably Song of Freedom and Suggestion/Fascinate, but not the scaling level-based effects of those songs (so you can only ever inspire greatness in one person, your inspire courage is only a +1, and so on). But I will be the first to admit that (a) it's open to argumentation and (b) YDMMV. But I think it's definitely no slam-dunk in terms of the rule interpretation. I was just hoping that there was a ruling in an errata or some other source somewhere which was clearer.

It's actually REALLY annoying how many different ways there are to advance bard abilties. Virtuoso does one thing, Lyric Thaumaturge another, Song of the White Raven yet another, and Harmonic Knight even another. Initiate of Mliliililili is just another one of those things.  I guess the game designers realized that "hey, bardic abilities are handy, we'd love to give them to people without making them have to be a bard".

As an aside, though, I only find Inspire Courage compelling when it's combined with Song of the Heart, a Badge of Valor and the Inspirational Boost song. With those options on the table, and the normal IC scaling (or better yet, a vest of legends at times) you can really affect the combat. Without those around, Inspire Courage is only good for slowing down combat because everybody forgets to add in that dinky +2/+2 that they have.

[Kuroimaken]

Yeah, I had interpreted it to mean that you used your combined levels to determine if you got Inspire Competence, Greatness, and Heroics and probably Song of Freedom and Suggestion/Fascinate, but not the scaling level-based effects of those songs (so you can only ever inspire greatness in one person, your inspire courage is only a +1, and so on). But I will be the first to admit that (a) it's open to argumentation and (b) YDMMV. But I think it's definitely no slam-dunk in terms of the rule interpretation. I was just hoping that there was a ruling in an errata or some other source somewhere which was clearer.

It's actually REALLY annoying how many different ways there are to advance bard abilties. Virtuoso does one thing, Lyric Thaumaturge another, Song of the White Raven yet another, and Harmonic Knight even another. Initiate of Mliliililili is just another one of those things.  I guess the game designers realized that "hey, bardic abilities are handy, we'd love to give them to people without making them have to be a bard".

As an aside, though, I only find Inspire Courage compelling when it's combined with Song of the Heart, a Badge of Valor and the Inspirational Boost song. With those options on the table, and the normal IC scaling (or better yet, a vest of legends at times) you can really affect the combat. Without those around, Inspire Courage is only good for slowing down combat because everybody forgets to add in that dinky +2/+2 that they have.

I understand where you're coming from, pfooti. I have to admit it's a bit on shaky grounds, myself. I think it's doable and no DM would want your hide for it though, and you have to spend two feats just to make it work. Assuming it does for a moment, how about we work with what we've got?

I also think that optimizing Inspire Courage goes a long ways towards helping out. Obviously, this would be more of a gish-y build with further emphasis on the fighting side, since the casting would be hard to do things with.

[PlzBreakMyCampaign]

Weaksauce! We can do better than that.

If I had some, I'd give you a cookie. I'd much rather have someone try something sweet (that is questionable by RAW) but actually took some effort and thought than just spam: X / Cleric 19 

[Kuroimaken]

The main trouble with this concept is that there are PrCs that could make effective use of this, thus making giving it a direction more troublesome.

[Operation Shoestring]

Okay, here's what i got.

Ignore the 1st HK sub level; keep detect evil, it's more useful.

take the ones at 6 and 9, this gets you inspire competence and greatness.

get yourself a masterwork Harp (see Comp Adv.)

Take these feats:
1) Extra smiting
3) From Smite to Song (sure it's 3 cross class ranks, but you keep detect evil. worth it.)
6) Song of the Heart

At level 9 you can give 2 people +3 HD.  All sorts of ways to abuse that.  If you can get words of creation as well, that can arguable go up to 5 or even 6 HD.  You can use your smites to Inspire courage as a bard of your level, meaning at 20, you can have IC +6 if you have the Hero's Badge  Or 10/12 if the Dm lets Words of creation count for this too.

[Kuroimaken]

That actually sounds like a really interesting alternative, but wouldn't an item of continuous Detect Evil solve the problem and still allow you to nab Devoted Performer and Initiate of Milil?

[Operation Shoestring]

That actually sounds like a really interesting alternative, but wouldn't an item of continuous Detect Evil solve the problem and still allow you to nab Devoted Performer and Initiate of Milil?

Hmn, okay, if you can get the item, take the sub level and save 3 skillpoints. 

But all milil does versus what I have is get you inspire heroics, which is good but not as exploitable as greatness, and you can only do it on 1 person.  Devoted performer doesn't do anything unless you take bard levels, which actually isn't in my build concept.  If you are taking bard levels, then i suppose you need Milil/devoted.  My build was actually aimed at a single class Pally.  Preferably one who takes a sub level (Half Orc?) to trade out the aura of courage for something more interesting, since he gets a buff to fear saves already.

Sure, he's not as good at IC as a bard, and doesn't get snowflake, but he functions.  Between the song and full BAB, he's not doing so bad, and he gets the full mount/ACF replacing mount, and can cast or take the ACF that replaces casting for more options.

[Kuroimaken]

Hmmm, I suppose you're right... I just figured getting more out of Cha was a good idea.