PSA: College of Swords Bards are busted right now

[HoboOfSerenity]

Slashing flourish (ranged) lets you hit the same target twice, is part of an attack action and so you your college of swords bard becomes a single target destroyer.

Amount of attacks:
2 times + 1 if dualwielding hand crossbows and sub level 6 or no extra attack
4 times + 1 if both dualwielding hand crossbows and level 6 (extra attack)
8 times + 1 if dualwielding hand crossbows and level 6 (extra attack) and hasted (haste gives you a full action in BG3, so you get to attack twice again, same as with extra attack)
12 times + 1 if dualwielding hand crossbows and level 6 (extra attack), hasted and action surge from 2 levels of fighter.

Pretty decent trade for eating up a bunch of bardic inspiration that you can get back at short rests by level 6 anyway and dropping the last 2 levels of bard for fighter. It synergizes insanely well with action surge too since both action surge and bardic inspiration comes back on short rests, and as a bard you get access to 3 of them per long rest.

Pick up hex once you get magical secrets at 10 bard or burn a feat for it and you can pump up those numbers even higher. Just make sure to have someone in the party cast faerie fire on your target first so you get advantage on all attacks first. Mind the 10+1 is contingent on you having at least 5 uses of bardic inspiration and 12+1 is contingent on 6 uses.

You get 4 from level 5 bard and can get 1 from the gloves in grymforge. You should get 6 from 10 levels of bard + gloves from grymforge but I haven't gotten that far yet so I don't know if you actually do or not.

9 weapon attacks at level 6 is kind of insane and makes every fight trivial if you short rest first. I'd be extremely surprised if this doesn't get patched in the first balance patch and slashing flourish limited to one use per round, because even if you split targets it's an insane amount of weapon damage that makes even great weapon paladins take notice.

[Agony_Aunt]

Nice.

[Sea Base]

Good to know CoW Bards are just as busted in this game as 5e xD

[Szorrin]

That's quite overpowered. I'm going to assume it's a bug, because it's not how Slashing Flourish functions in 5e at all.

[HoboOfSerenity]

Yeah, especially given that there's several pieces of medium armor that highly benefit a dex based build, as well as other items that give a flat (if low) damage bonus per attack that hits. If you add a ring that gives +2 weapon damage to a build that hits 9 times at level 6 (you'll find at least 2 pieces of gear that can give flat damage bonus to your weapon attacks by level 6), stuff gets hilariously broken really fast. Dip them in a candle first to add 1d4 fire per attack and with 18 dex at level 6 you're now doing 1d6+4+2+1d4= 8-16 damage 9 times with a standard handcrossbow. At level 6. With full spellcasting progression.

[ACS36]

If they're going to balance anything in the game they need to balance the game economy first. Too many potions, scrolls, rations, every where. Too many powerful magical items. You're insanely wealthy at level 5 without even having to steal or kill everyone.

I doubt they care that much about broken classes in the game at this point or the game economy. They stated D&D rules are too hard to work with when developing games so they probably just going to put this game on the back burner as soon as they get most of the major bugs fixed.

[matthewclaird]

Originally posted by HoboOfSerenity:

Slashing flourish (ranged) lets you hit the same target twice, is part of an attack action and so you your college of swords bard becomes a single target destroyer.

Amount of attacks:
2 times + 1 if dualwielding hand crossbows and sub level 6 or no extra attack
4 times + 1 if both dualwielding hand crossbows and level 6 (extra attack)
8 times + 1 if dualwielding hand crossbows and level 6 (extra attack) and hasted (haste gives you a full action in BG3, so you get to attack twice again, same as with extra attack)
12 times + 1 if dualwielding hand crossbows and level 6 (extra attack), hasted and action surge from 2 levels of fighter.

Pretty decent trade for eating up a bunch of bardic inspiration that you can get back at short rests by level 6 anyway and dropping the last 2 levels of bard for fighter. It synergizes insanely well with action surge too since both action surge and bardic inspiration comes back on short rests, and as a bard you get access to 3 of them per long rest.

Pick up hex once you get magical secrets at 10 bard or burn a feat for it and you can pump up those numbers even higher. Just make sure to have someone in the party cast faerie fire on your target first so you get advantage on all attacks first. Mind the 10+1 is contingent on you having at least 5 uses of bardic inspiration and 12+1 is contingent on 6 uses.

You get 4 from level 5 bard and can get 1 from the gloves in grymforge. You should get 6 from 10 levels of bard + gloves from grymforge but I haven't gotten that far yet so I don't know if you actually do or not.

9 weapon attacks at level 6 is kind of insane and makes every fight trivial if you short rest first. I'd be extremely surprised if this doesn't get patched in the first balance patch and slashing flourish limited to one use per round, because even if you split targets it's an insane amount of weapon damage that makes even great weapon paladins take notice.

Why would anyone want Larian to nerf my favorite character? He’s not hurting anyone. Why not have our cake and eat it too. How about the online community that thinks my guy is busted, stops asking Larian to nerf him, and let’s me play my way, and they can just not make a COS bard, and play it their way. That way when you play, COS isn’t busted, and when I play it is busted. That way both of us get to enjoy the game the way we want to enjoy it. If you get your way and Larian nerfs it, only you get to enjoy the game the way you want to.

[Hadson]

Other great classes options are Rogue (Assassin, lvl3 or 4 for a feat) for guaranteed crit on all of that, and/or Duid (Spore, lvl2) for a permanent 1d6 necrotic damage added to every single attack !

[yuzhonglu]

Wait until you play a jump monk. LOL. At 4 monk/ 4 rogue with the right gear they can jump 30 times a round, each jump doing 5 GUARANTEED damage in an AOE with hammerhaft.

[northernwater]

Bard flourish is dreamy! I can't imagine playing with out me 3 lvls of Bard. LOL

[seeker1]

They are busted good, and generally nobody complains loudly about busted good. Only about busted nerf or weak.

[brendan_in_china]

Collage of swords is stupid good. I would've thought to see these maneuvers on a ranger or fighter, but nope; bard.

I just put it next to TB monk as another Larianism.

[Zsrai]

Originally posted by brendan_in_china:

Collage of swords is stupid good. I would've thought to see these maneuvers on a ranger or fighter, but nope; bard.

I just put it next to TB monk as another Larianism.

It's not a Larianism, it's how the subclass works (except for Ranged Slashing Flourish letting you hit the same target twice). Welcome to the imbalance within D&D 5e subclasses.

[Black Magic]

Yep. Pair it with Paladin. It went overlooked for such a long while because most people playing the game aren't D&D players so, yeah.

[Rachel Dawn Amber]

And everyone thought bard is a support

[psychotron666]

Originally posted by Zsrai:

Originally posted by brendan_in_china:

Collage of swords is stupid good. I would've thought to see these maneuvers on a ranger or fighter, but nope; bard.

I just put it next to TB monk as another Larianism.

It's not a Larianism, it's how the subclass works (except for Ranged Slashing Flourish letting you hit the same target twice). Welcome to the imbalance within D&D 5e subclasses.

But it is larianism. 5e haste doesn't give you a full action surge like it does in bg3, and you can't dual wield hand crossbows in 5e. Also potions and spells can't be stacked like in bg3.

The reason why it and the monk are so broken in bg3 is because of the various rule changes that busts the action economy of 5e