My take on it is an Asrai (Wood Elf), A dexy AA with weapon finesse, good stat spread, good skills, an all-round great Spell-Bow. I rate this as my favourite AA build, easily able to mix it with most other AA's. It is a highly adaptable build with many slight variations not just possible and playable but adequately devastating in the right hands.
With your leave, I will post my version. It is totally non min-maxed, and I will explain why I play it this way.
1. SD taken early for playability .. hips and uncanny dodge. 2 Early SD levels still gives you 17 pre epic BAB, with an 8/2/10 split.
2. Cha is only taken to 15. I have no real use for lvl 6 spells in this build, not even extended lvl 5. This frees up 2 stat points.
3. Int is 14 to support all the skills. I love skills in a build.
4. Str is 12. Gotta carry the loot, and wood elves are a bit 'stronger' than the average elf. Many servers implement an additional +2 str for wood elf subrace (-2 Dex). Sometimes however, I leave it at 8 and pump con. Con is the only stat the bard cannot self buff.
5. Weapon finesse is taken as a sword and board option, I do actually find this handy at times, its a personal play style. This in most cases would and should be swapped out for Called Shot, Blind-Fight or Rapid Shot (in that order imho).
6. Combat Casting taken in Epic. GAH! Yowsers! Again - playstyle.. sometimes you get swamped, and you gotta cast a spell. I never used to include this but found myself on the sharp end a few too many times, with failed concentration checks. You can swap out the two concentration feats for extra DEX for +1AB +1AC and reflex.
7. Woefully low will. Ah well. Cast some Protection from alignment, carry some clarity pots, or even better get yourself a Golden Circlet if thei're available. A skillful player should be able to make up for this shortcoming.
8. I have been known to swap in Taunt skill in place of Discipline. This is environment and playstyle dependent.
9. Extend spell taken for spell book management - warcry impr invis and displacement. Without breaking the build you can swap this out for Blind-Fight, Called Shot or Rapid Shot.
10. Have never bothered with improved crit. For the tough fights where the damage could come in handy, the mobs in my experience usually have crit immune .. everything else doesnt last long anyway.
Now .. Final effective ranged AB when she puts the foot down is something like:
50 +6(max dex) +2(song) +5(curse) +2(warcry) = 65
Not bad, add in any bow enhancements. With a truestrike scroll, I make the effective AB at around 83 (ignores warcry right? Have never checked). In the low 80's anyway.
Flatfooted mobs stand no chance, and you are going to turn most things into a pin cushion.
Melee AB also not too shabby, so definitely dont discount weapon finesse for purist reasons.
a) for a non melee build this aint too bad b) for the astute, there is a nice melee synergy with the AA filling in pre-epic BAB.
There are many options for combat. Obviously, Hips and snipe flatfooted mobs. Darkness/Ultravision. Grease and snipe for those with truesight. When you get surrounded, drop a Balagarns Iron Horn or a Slow spell. When the going gets a bit rougher, UMD with scrolls etc. Done it all, it all works well with a slight hint of fromage.
I suck at AC calcs, wont bother. Sorry. Suffice to say you are going to be hard to target, let alone hit. For the tougher encounters, load up on impr invis and displacement, fall back on ghost visage and ethereal as well. Consider wounding whispers if you are going to get hit, but its not something i would recommend, the spell slots are too valuable.
Instead, I will give you a back story on this toon. Purely to entertain, I dont want to hijack this thread, just to embelish and lighten everyones day. Was feeling .. creative.
Note that I have built and played all the theme characters in this story, the bartender included. I built a whole heap of Asrai toons in the years gone by (guess what warhammer army i play)....
. . .
A Bard, A Cleric and a Druid walk into a Bar.
Bogdash the barman spits in a glass, gives it a cursory wipe with his filthy bar rag and with a casual arrogance looks up.
The world slows waaay down. In a cartoonish slow motion (think wiley-e-coyote holding up an "oh sh*t" sign), the glass slips from Bogdash's grimy paws as he starts to dive for cover, an unintelligable utterance that sounds a little like 'aaaaahhhhhhhh cccccrrrraaaappppppp' escaping his mouth, and an involuntary bowel movement escaping his rear.
Bogdan was tough. He had seen, joined in and utterly relished, all sorts of ultra violent fracas in his day. This time was oh so different, and Bogdan's previously non existent and yet curiously present innate sense of instant existentialism knew it too.
The rest of the room was a scene of similar confusion, horror and more than one case of feeling mildly put-out.
Especially the band of Urghal (distant relation to the Urgul, but not related at all to the Urgal) raiders that had not so long ago been making utter idiots of themselves. Not terribly unusal for the Urghals, but this lot had quite recently managed to stumble across a nice lttle prize being carried by a happless elf scout returning from a reconnaisance mission .. they were quite pleased with themselves so were partying it up.
Now dear reader, let me take the liberty of jumping backwards in time, say about 5 minutes.
Eddy was inordinatley pleased with himself. He held in his hand a gadget that gave him a curious sense of well being, a strange sense of belonging, and all at the same time also a weird sense of just being a little better than every body else. He and his band of not so merry barbarian raiders had raped, raided and pillaged, pillaged, raped and raided, and raided, pillaged and raped (mostly in that order), and i guess you could say without being too inaccurate they generally made a damn sight nuiscance of themselves in the general vicinity really. But when they surprised the elf messenger and compulsorily acquired yon gadget, they really had hit the jackpot.
I will digress (again) at this point .. and clarify said encounter.. The elf himself was insanely unlucky, a victim of circumstance, happenstance and the fact that Kurnous (god of the hunt & the beasts), Isha (goddess of harvest & fertility) and Liadriel (goddes of music & poetry) were all out to afternoon tea. So I guess suffice to say he had just run out of luck, and as the ying does to the yang, the aforesaid luck had been unceremoniously and with more than a little bit bloodshed transferred itself along with said gadget into Eddy's grubby mitts.
But back to Eddy. Being the brains of the bunch, Eddy had an instant connection with this gadget, and this gave Eddy a feeling of 'good'. Not something he was accustomed to, given his hard life in a tough neighbourhood. Now, he focused on the gadget. Given that he was smarter than the average Urghal, he knew a few letters, could string together an intelligible sentence or two could actually make out what was printed on the back of this device.
iPaid.
Of course, Eddy had no idea what it meant, and why there was an accompanying picture on the device of an apple with a bite taken out of it. These things, in this time and place are best left with the creators of the device, a band of braniac (and strangely pious) gnomes that collectively refer to themselves as 'Snapple Inc.', led by the chief gnome, General Stevyious 'Grevious' Jobus. Stevious was a member of the sithgnome subrace, but thats a whole other story. Eddy didnt know all this, I am just fleshing out the story (up to a point) for your benefit, dear reader, so you can marvel in amazement at the full and glorious canvas that makes up this timeless saga.
So, as Eddy was inwardly feeling terribly important and smart, and Eddy's band of thugs was swilling as they had never swilled before (they could sense, and thus fed off of Eddy's radiation of betterment), they were completely insular and not entirely in a mentally cognitive state to process the insane amount of trouble they were in, even as Bogdash was diving for cover.
And in trouble they were. The Asrai (Wood Elf) scout that they had creatively liberated the iPaid from was returning from a mission that would deliver to the Asrai seers this item of wonderous enwonderment. The Asrai are commonly known as insular and even aloof (not quite like those prissy high elves) and as long as they are in their woods, and you are not (and they are very very picky on this point), then all is well.
However, this elf scout was betrothed with Yaellwyn J'AzzyBelle. And she was an Asrai warband leader.
And she was very very ticked off.
Now, I could say Yaellwyn's reputation preceded her, but the general modus operandii of wood elves consists of either one of two functions. One: all consuming love, peace and harmony (ie .. you are a fellow Asrai). Two: An utterly devastating, mind-blowing, destructive trail of mayhem, you belong to a select few that has ever briefly seen an Asrai (and even that happens rarely), given that you have entered their woods, or they have emerged from said woods to wreak vengeance upon your hiney. Oh .. and you are now very much dead. And there is really no-one ever left to spread rumours, innuendo or any other sort of delivery mechanism for the transmission of any reputations. If Asrai cared about such matters as reputation then they may leave some alive, but take it from me .. they just dont care.
So, Yaellwyn 'walks' into the bar with a couple of her buddies. One of the saloon swing doors is now on the ground, the other is swinging from one creaky hinge. If it was the wild west, a large tumbleweed would have been blowing by the front door. You get the picture.
Phase B of the encounter went a little like this. Yaellwyn whistles a little jingle that Liadriel herself had taught her, splitting eardrums, and striking doubt and uncertainty into the very core of all and sundry in the room. The weakest of the mortals present fall dead on the spot, courtesy of the burst of sonic energy that rends the very fabric of their being. Bogdash is still alive. The Asrai Seer (17Cle,2Ba,21AA if you must know) incants an incantion that stuns or blinds everyone and delivers a godly blow of divinity. More people fall over dead. Bogdash is hurting, he is very much out of his league here. The Asrai Haruspex (18Dru,3Ba,19AA) sprinkles some powdered Gorgon liver into the air and calls on Kurnous. Those left alive, senses already reeling, find the fine powder all of a sudden (aaaargh my old DM would kill me for using that word) hardening around their form, encasing them in stone.
Phase B lasted all of about five or six seconds.
PS. In case you are wondering, and those sharp of wit and with a questioning disposition: Phase A happened outside the Inn. Some preparatory magicks were magicked, some snot cleared unceremoniously on the ground (gotta have clear sinuses - its an Asrai thing), and a few high-fives may have been shared.
So .. Phase C is now underway. Eddy is standing, blind but luckily free of the stone cloud, clutching his iPaid, an uncontrollable wrack of rage (or is it wrath of rage?) exploding from his soul. All three Asrai draw their longbows in perfectly choreographed unison, and their arrows sing out in tandem ..and strangely enough, sing they did. They all emit perfect musical notes; C, E flat and a G: making up a C minor. (Sidenote - The god of punctuatin would have kittens at the punctuation in that last sentence - are you listening Mrs Nicholoson??). Anyway, Eddy had no idea the god of punctuation was reeling, all he was aware of was a dischord of death, a perfectly instant musical tradegy from his point of view. Eddy fell over, nine arrows clumped in perfect sets of three protruding from forehead, throat and where his heart used to beat.
Moments later, everyone else was also dead. Alas Bogdash was among them, the hapless bartender does not escape the Asrai Phase D in this tale.
Yaellwyn walks over to the corpse of Eddy, and removes the iPaid from his death grip. She looks at it, unfeeling.
"My love is avenged".
Original post by JumJones in this thread: Click Here
Possibly one of the funniest stories I ever read on the guild, with a build that looks fun AND has 16+ Bard levels. If you guys check a dictionary for "To make someone's day" you will find me picture there laughing at the office computer while reading it. Kudos. _________________ It's fear of god that brought us to that state. How fortunate the man with none.
Bertold Brecht
I am to please.
Hang on .. this is a serious guild.
NO MIRTH ALLOWED.
Stop it!
Oh .. still gotta think of a name for it too. Something along the lines of The Asrai Mistress of Karnage, or a more plain-jane Asrai Wardancer I guess..
Anyone got any comments on tweaks and options i havent covered?
Edited By jumjones on 04/16/10 00:50
Looks interesting, the early shadowdancer levels will sure make it easier to level than taking it in epic levels (as you get hide, ms, and tumble on bard levels anyway).
Minor note: Perform only benefits you every 5 effective ranks (as opposed to tumble that only work every 5 taken ranks), so you'll need to cast eagles splendor on yourself before you sing, or you'll lose a bard song level (that doesnt matter much).
I haven't studied all the details, but its a viable take on the same build I did, just with a different tactic and philosophy. Nice work, and good story.
