Metamagic Song Persist Bard

[Flickerdart]

(Reposted from GiantITP).

We all know the obscene power level of Divine Metamagic: day-long superbuffs making your Cleric into a brutal melee monster. But while rifling through the pockets of a hobo the books, I happened upon two very shiny feats that let a Bard get in on some of the fun, even if it's in a less ludicrous way.

The first shiny feat from Races of Stone is Metamagic Song. You can spend Bardic Music uses to negate the cost of a Metamagic feat for your spell. Sadly, it has the caveat that you have to be able to cast spells of that level. Does that mean that you can't Persist anything because bards only get 6th level spells? No it doesn't. There are two ways of getting out of this. One way is to go 10-level Sublime Chord, but screw that. There's a faster way. Enter Talfirian Song. It works more or less the same as a heighten-only Metamagic Song - but doesn't have that cap (by strict reading, it also lets a 1st level Human Bard qualify for PrCs as if it had 4th level spells, but that's not important). So Heighten something to 9th level, now you can cast 9th level spells, now you can boost spells to 9th with Metamagic Song, now you can Persist 3rd level spells like Displacement (50% miss chance all day? Eat your heart out, Wizard) or Glibness (all day Glibness? Yes!) as early as you can cast it if you have enough music.

If you don't want to spend precious Bard spell slots buffing, then you can use the Lyric Spell feat from Complete Adventurer to offset that cost too, for more Bardic Music uses.

So, a Bardzilla's feats would look like this. Since you must be Human for Talfirian Song, you get that extra feat for free. You take Heighten Spell and Talfirian Song as your 1st level feats. You take Extend Spell at 3rd and Persist Spell at 6th. You take Metamagic Song at 9th, and you're ready to go. By 9th level, you have 9 uses of Bardic Music, which means you can technically cast a 9th level spell, and thus can Persist a 3rd level spell (which costs you 6 uses, disqualifying you from further Persists, choose wisely) without any cost to your daily activity as a Bard. You can get this free Persist up to 5 times if you take a whole bunch of Extra Music feats. With flaws, you can persist spells at 6th level, as none of this has skill requirements. You don't even have to take Perform.

At some point you'll probably want to take Rapid Metamagic or some such so you can use your Bardic Music to Quicken castings of buffs you can't Persist.

TL;DR: Use Bardic Music to Persist spells of up to 3rd level, 4th level with Easy Metamagic and 5th with Metamagic School Focus/Practiced Metamagic (you can go all the way to 6th level spells but nearly all of them suck).

Bard spells to Persist:
[spoiler]
0th level
Summon Instrument: Carry around a flute only you can play! Embarrass your enemies! Amaze your friends!
Ghostharp: An instrument plays a song over and over for 24 hours. If you can't find a use for this, you're not trying hard enough.

1st level
Disguise Self: Fun for the whole family.
Friendly Face: +5 on Diplomacy and Gather Information all day. Pretty nice if you need another bonus.
Serene Visage: CL to Bluff checks. Stacks with Glibness, which you can also Persist. See how many people you can fool into thinking you're the President of the World.
Expeditious Retreat: +30ft to your move speed, all day. Kicks dust in the Monk's face.
Undersong: Make Perform checks instead of Concentration. Useful when stacked with ToB stuff that uses Concentration, I guess.

2nd level
Detect Thoughts: You don't really need this if you have your +50 to Bluff, but it's always nice before that.
Tongues: For when people you want to lie to speak a different language.
Elation: +2 STR, DEX and +5ft movement to every ally within 80 feet. If you're leading an army of peasants, they'll need this.
Heroism: +2 bonus on attacks, saves and skills. Probably lets you catch up to the Fighter's to-hit, and also stacks with Glibness and Serene Visage.
Darkness: Now everyone can see the darkness of your soul, but not you.
Force Whip: Handy if you're in a jungle and don't want to get violated by bears as you sleep. Excellent for when you make enemies of Druids.
Bladeweave: If you hit them, and can hit them again as a free action, they're Dazed. Nothing (or nearly nothing) is immune to Daze, and you can do this all day, baby!
Blur: Run of the mill 20% miss chance.
Invisibility: Broken on attack regardless of Persist, but fun if you're not planning to. Use the Swift version if you have Rapid Metamagic.
Mirror Image: Sure, the images might get grokked, but you get to keep the ones that don't all day.
Mirror Move: This build is fairly feat-intensive. Borrow some from friends!
Phade's Fearsome Aspect: +5 Intimidate, +10 Disguise, Demoralize as a swift action. Nobody will make fun of you again.
Reflective Disguise: Negate racism for a day.
Alter Self: You know what this spell does. You know you'd love to have it up all day.
Animal's Bonus spells: If you can't afford the +4 item, this is almost as good.
Swift Fly: Who cares that this only lasts one round, you're zooming around all day!
Harmonize: If you have any Bardic Music left, start one as a Move action. You can start another effect as a Swift action through that one White Raven feat, and a third as a standard action. Three songs in one turn? Damn straight.
Iron Silence: Your armour no longer penalizes Hide and Move Silently. All day. Enjoy.
Sonic Weapon: +1d6 to all your weapon's attacks. What resists Sonic? Practically nothing. Combine with Lyric Thaumaturge and Chain Spell, and you just made a persisted Dragonfire Inspiration.

3rd level
Wounding Whispers: More Sonic damage to stuff that attacks you.
See Invisibility: Ruin some assassin's day.
Speak With Animals: If you don't want to Force Whip all the animals away, use this instead.
Verraketh's Shadow Crown: +4 to Perform.
Warcry: Enemies in a cone cower for a day. Have fun.
Daylight: You get to be shiny. Woo.
Displacement: 50% miss chance. Add the 20% from Blur and enemies miss you 60% of the time.
Invisibility Sphere: Bring along some friends in your all-day bubble. Great for infiltration.
Allegro: Expeditious Retreat, Mass. Now everyone gets to laugh at the Monk.
Blink: Stack this on top of Displacement and Blur and you're looking at an 80% miss chance before AC.
Gaseous Form: Be a cloud all day. I'm sure you can find a use for it.
Glibness: YES. With +50 to Bluff from this and Persisted Serene Visage, you can go around shooting nonmagical Suggestions at people all day. If you can get your hands on Telepathy, you can pretend to be someone's conscience, too.

4th level
Freedom of Movement: All day escaping from grapples. Nice.
Inspired Aim: +2 to ranged attacks for everyone in 40ft radius. If you have a bunch of followers, by all means.
War Cry: +2 attack/damage (or +4 on a charge) and enemies are panicked unless they save. Excellent upgrade from Bladeweave unless fighting fearless foes.
Fugue of Tvash-Prull: Cheese out your Perform check and crush your enemies with this emanation.
Greater Invisibility: Like Invisibility, only you get to attack too. All day.
Spectral Weapon: Make all attacks as Touch attacks. Since you should be Invisible, they're also flat-footed. Never miss again!
Sirine's Grace: +4 to CHA and DEX, +8 to Perform, CHA to AC and an INT-damage touch attack. Pretty sweet (thanks, Claudius Maximus!)
Blinding Beauty: Everyone looking at you gets blinded. Potentially more useful than invisibility with one unfortunate caveat that's fluff-only.

5th level
Revenance: This would be just like a Resurrection except the target dies at the end of the day. Not so hot but not bad if you really need Bob the Fighter alive.
Greater Heroism: The +4 bonus, temp HP and immunity to fear is very nice.
Improved Blink: None of the drawbacks of regular Blink and a bunch of benefits. Mostly take this over Greater Invisibility if your enemies See Invisible.
Unfettered Heroism: 1 action point per round, all day. I'm not sure what they do but it's probably pretty good.

6th level
Snowsong: +4 to attacks and CHA, 15 Cold resistance, fast healing and +1d6 cold damage on attacks. To everyone in a 30ft radius. If you're all about boosting the mooks (like if you're a BBEG), this is a pretty great capstone if you don't run out of feats. (Thanks to Darkmatter!)
[/spoiler]

Unfortunately a lot of these spells are from the Crystal Keep document, which predates Spell Compendium. If any of these spells have been updated, please let me know.
This character doesn't multiclass well (since you lose Bardic Music Uses) but a single level of (Cloistered) Cleric nets you Extend Spell with the Planning domain, freeing up a feat for Extra Music and thus a net gain of 3 uses. Dragon 340 also has the harpy's cap which gives you one-shot Bardic Music Uses for those days when you need to pack extra oomph.

[SorO_Lost]

A. Talfirian Song can only be used to apply Heighten Spell as an illusion spell is being cast. IE by it's self its pretty crappy and hence why it was ignored.
Good find.

B. Metamagic Song states;
Define normally.

C. Metamagic Song also states; Benefit: When you spontaneously cast an arcane spell that is enhanced by a metamagic feat,
You will never have a 7th level spell slot to be able to cast a Persisted Serene Visage, therefor you can never use Metamagic Song with it. Same for cantrips at level 6.

Great list of spells though, I found that useful.

[rasmuswagner]

Heh. Has anyone in the history of 3.5 ever used Heighten Spell for something other than prerequisite hacks or shadowcraft?

[PlzBreakMyCampaign]

globe of invulnerability

[Flickerdart]

A. Talfirian Song can only be used to apply Heighten Spell as an illusion spell is being cast. IE by it's self its pretty crappy and hence why it was ignored.
Good find.

B. Metamagic Song states;
Define normally.

C. Metamagic Song also states; Benefit: When you spontaneously cast an arcane spell that is enhanced by a metamagic feat,
You will never have a 7th level spell slot to be able to cast a Persisted Serene Visage, therefor you can never use Metamagic Song with it. Same for cantrips at level 6.

Great list of spells though, I found that useful.

The idea hinges on being able to cast an Illusion spell of Xth level (using Talfirian Song) counting as being able to cast a spell of that level for the purposes of the metamagic cap. You don't actually need to be casting it in order to have the slot. But I guess the interpretation of those lines on Metamagic Song does make it a little dodgy. Anyone got a less sketchy way to pretend to have the right slots?

[fuinjutsu]

harmonize is a great spell to persist if you plan on using your music to buff.  start bardic music as move action = WIN.

[Kuroimaken]

Lyric Spell will already do that with fewer hoop-jumps.

Polymorph/Shapechange (by taking up Arcane Disciple on something with Polymorph on the list and/or going Sublime Chord) into a Firre Eladrin, which has unlimited uses of Bardic Music per day.

Hilarity ensues.

[SorO_Lost]

C. Metamagic Song also states; Benefit: When you spontaneously cast an arcane spell that is enhanced by a metamagic feat,
You will never have a 7th level spell slot to be able to cast a Persisted Serene Visage, therefor you can never use Metamagic Song with it. Same for cantrips at level 6.

Great list of spells though, I found that useful.

The idea hinges on being able to cast an Illusion spell of Xth level (using Talfirian Song) counting as being able to cast a spell of that level for the purposes of the metamagic cap. You don't actually need to be casting it in order to have the slot. But I guess the interpretation of those lines on Metamagic Song does make it a little dodgy. Anyone got a less sketchy way to pretend to have the right slots?

That's not at all what I'm pointing out with C.

You must cast a Persisted Heroism before you can apply Metamagic Song, see the whole When you spontaneously cast an arcane spell that is enhanced by a metamagic feat, section, then Metamagic Song kicks in and lowers the increased spell slot cost.

In other words, Metamagic Song can only be applied to spells you can already cast. Not have access to X level of slot, not pretend to cast X level of spell, but can cast the exact desired spell before application of the feat. Since Talfirian Song only works with Illusion spells, and may have the same problems but I didn't look, most of your listed spells cannot be affected by this combat at all even if things did agree with you.

[X-Codes]

DMM Persist is ho-hum without unrestricted Nightsticks.  You can only persist 2 or 3 spells per day purely with your own pool of turn attempts, and that usually requires 2-3 Extra Turning feats.  Furthermore, once those spells get dispelled, you're FUCKED (read: all of your feats are rendered completely and utterly useless, in addition to all your superbuffs going away; even worse if you didn't prepare backups).

The point I'm getting at is... Bards don't have Nightsticks.  They have the Extra Music feat, which honestly is kinda crappy unless you're trying for this sort of abuse, but they really have much better things to be spending their feats on than Persist shenanigans.  They just don't have the spell list for it.

[bananaphone]

DMM Persist is ho-hum without unrestricted Nightsticks.  You can only persist 2 or 3 spells per day purely with your own pool of turn attempts, and that usually requires 2-3 Extra Turning feats.  Furthermore, once those spells get dispelled, you're FUCKED (read: all of your feats are rendered completely and utterly useless, in addition to all your superbuffs going away; even worse if you didn't prepare backups).

The point I'm getting at is... Bards don't have Nightsticks.  They have the Extra Music feat, which honestly is kinda crappy unless you're trying for this sort of abuse, but they really have much better things to be spending their feats on than Persist shenanigans.  They just don't have the spell list for it.

I disagree about DMM Persist only being good with unrestricted Nightsticks.  If you are able to get two or more pools or turning that specifically counts as Turn Undead to power divine feats(such Rebuke Dragons and Incarnum Channeling), you can quickly accumulate a ton of turns to fuel DMM.  Especially with Extra Turning, which will add 4 turns to each pool

This is also the reason why Bards can't effectively abuse DMM Persist, they only have one pool of bardic music.  The lack of items that grant bardic music uses hurts too though. 

[X-Codes]

I disagree about DMM Persist only being good with unrestricted Nightsticks.  If you are able to get two or more pools or turning that specifically counts as Turn Undead to power divine feats(such Rebuke Dragons and Incarnum Channeling), you can quickly accumulate a ton of turns to fuel DMM.  Especially with Extra Turning, which will add 4 turns to each pool

...and one Wall of Dispel Magic/MDJ turns you into buff-less cleric with no feats whatsoever.

[juton]

Heh. Has anyone in the history of 3.5 ever used Heighten Spell for something other than prerequisite hacks or shadowcraft?

globe of invulnerability

Is there a ruling or precedent for this? Because is you can heighten a globe of invulnerability to affect higher level spells then you should be able to do the same thing with Anyspell which I would find very useful.

[Solo]

I think what he meant was to get spells past Globe of Invulnurability with Heighten Spell.

[bananaphone]

I disagree about DMM Persist only being good with unrestricted Nightsticks.  If you are able to get two or more pools or turning that specifically counts as Turn Undead to power divine feats(such Rebuke Dragons and Incarnum Channeling), you can quickly accumulate a ton of turns to fuel DMM.  Especially with Extra Turning, which will add 4 turns to each pool

...and one Wall of Dispel Magic/MDJ turns you into buff-less cleric with no feats whatsoever.

Oh I was addressing your Nightsticks comment. 
If you are getting hit with Disjunctions, you and your party are probably screwed.

I don't care for DMM Persist Clerics anyways for the reasons you stated.
I much prefer DMM chain with Divine Ward   

[ImmortalSoul]

Well, get a ring of counterspell, or more.
Point is, in theory a dispel easily counters DMM:P. In the games I've played in it usually doesn't, because you encouter only so many dispels a day. Otherwise, combine with Dweomerkeeper.

[skydragonknight]

Eh. Just use War Weaver. Buff your whole party with three spells as a move action and inspire courage optimization as a standard (you only lose +1 bonus for 5 levels of war weaver). Who needs Persist? Greater Heroism, Greater Invisibility, Heroics, Improvisation or anything shadow conjuration can get you...pretty decent buff choices.