Splash of Bard for Fascinate

[PopeJual]

The Bardic Fascinate song gets its DC from your Perform skill.

You can continue to increase your Perform skill as a cross class skill up to skill = Level +3 as long as you have at least 1 Bard level.

If you start out with 1 Bard level to splash, you'd still have the crazy high DC on your songs that every Bard has. Am I missing something, or is Bard a pretty sexy splash?

[voodoogroves]

You will get very few songs is all. Even on VON6 with an awesome fascinate I sometimes miss mobs because they aren't close enough. Easy-peasy, re-sing.

Bard 2 with the AP spent on extra song has 3 tries, then you're done. Nice, yes. Gamebreakingly useful? Not so much.

Now if your dip was also for UMD and Swim, then you're in a different water park.

[Chette]

Your fascinate won't last as long on a splash. I don't know the exact equation but a friend of mine did just this on his FvS and his fascinates only last like 30 seconds or something. It's still a nice splash though.

[Freeman]

You can get a crazy-high DC, but the duration is based on bard levels. I don't recall what it starts at, but it isn't much, maybe 24 seconds? There are other benefits to splashing bard, such as UMD and access to healing wands, but there are generally better ways to get those.(Rogue and ranger) Considering how often Fascinate is useless due to immunities at higher levels, I don't think it is worth splashing bard.

[Victor_1]

Fascinate is useful, but the question is, what will you lose by taking bard level?

Since I do not know your planned character, I cannot say for sure.
However for the case of pure rogue, capstone is too tasty to lose. Ranger? probably better to stick with either of 18/1/1 or 12/7/1 setup.
Of course there are some build interestingly incorporating bard levels, this build for instance.

Either way, keep it mind fascinate takes a few seconds to activate, as well as your song usage is equal to your bard level, at least w/o enhancement.
Not to mention song duration too based on your bard levels, it is useful but I won't say it would be one of the best choice.

#edit
I guess I'm too slow with typing!

[Dozen_Black_Roses]

I don't see how you'd get a "crazy high dc" as with a cross class skill you are at a penalty there with only being able to put half a rank in as you level up after the 1st (and only?) level you take as a bard when you can put multiple ranks into it at once. (I could be wrong on this as Im a bit braindead from writing reports for work but believe this is right).

Also the duration of your fascinate would not be very long, and not sure how many songs you get with one level of bard but I am thinking it is only one, no more than three, which is not very useful if you are trying to fascinate mobs in a raid like vons. Yes there are three bases but if you needed to resing a base beacuse you missed or the mobs made their save, (which is more likely with the lower fascinate roll) you're SOL then.

[pregnable]

Well, the only problem with taking 1 splash level of bard, is, that, you are left with 19 levels are unbarded gimpness.

Now, I am not trying to say that Bards are beautiful heroes of the sun, who are kissed by angels and dance in the blood of children...

What I am saying is that Bards are giant planet sized monsters that eat other planets. Unicron, from the transformers movie, was a Bard.

You can never have too many Bards.

The only thing that can kill a Bard, is another Bard, who is using yet another Bard as a weapon. Even when the Bard is killed, he will be brought back to life by the power of his own raw beauty.

Hi.

[hityawithastick]

The only thing that can kill a Bard, is another Bard, who is using yet another Bard as a weapon.

And yea, there were half-orc bards, and in their hands were halfling minstrels, and upon their faces the glory of the music, and it was pretty @#$%#$ radical.

[PopeJual]

Well, I guess it won't do quite what I had hoped, but that's not such a bad thing since completely front loaded classes aren't all that balanced.

I was figuring that I'd get 3 super fascinates, but I hadn't realized that the duration scaled with Bard level rather than with Perform skill.

I was thinking of Fighter 12/Barbarian 6/Bard 2 so that I could still get the UMD that comes with Rogue while also picking up Fascinates.

Thanks for all the input and I think I'll probably stick with my pure Bard Warchanter instead of building a new character to make the Blitz variant.

[Rusty_Can]

I don't see how you'd get a "crazy high dc" as with a cross class skill you are at a penalty there with only being able to put half a rank in as you level up after the 1st (and only?) level you take as a bard when you can put multiple ranks into it at once. (I could be wrong on this as Im a bit braindead from writing reports for work but believe this is right).

No: one bard level will allow him to take full ranks in Perform (23 at lvl 20), but it will cost more skill points; training 1 Perform rank when taking non-bard levels will cost 2 skill points.

[Aashrym]

Well, I guess it won't do quite what I had hoped, but that's not such a bad thing since completely front loaded classes aren't all that balanced.

I was figuring that I'd get 3 super fascinates, but I hadn't realized that the duration scaled with Bard level rather than with Perform skill.

I was thinking of Fighter 12/Barbarian 6/Bard 2 so that I could still get the UMD that comes with Rogue while also picking up Fascinates.

Thanks for all the input and I think I'll probably stick with my pure Bard Warchanter instead of building a new character to make the Blitz variant.

You would get those high DC fascinates, yes, and UMD. Your durations will be limited as mentioned. Just think tho......you could cast grease!!