Swords bard, dex or charisma first?

[Damphair]

I'm at Auntie Ethel and choosing between the stat upgrades, am I gonna benefit more from getting to 20 dex as a swords bard instead of charisma?

[Metadigital]

Depends on what you want to focus more on; spells or martial attacks. Both are viable.

With a lower Cha, you can use spells that don't require saves, but you'll be more limited in what spells are ideal. With a higher dex, you'll hit more often with your attacks, but keep in mind that you might not want to go above a +3 bonus (if you take medium armor mastery) or you'll be limited in your armor options.

[Damphair]

Got it, thanks!

[Green Odin]

Originally posted by Metadigital:

Depends on what you want to focus more on; spells or martial attacks. Both are viable.

With a lower Cha, you can use spells that don't require saves, but you'll be more limited in what spells are ideal. With a higher dex, you'll hit more often with your attacks, but keep in mind that you might not want to go above a +3 bonus (if you take medium armor mastery) or you'll be limited in your armor options.

I thought the dex cap only limited dex to ac?
If it also caps dex to attack and dex to saving throw well that's a whole 'nother thing.

[LinkToReality.ttv]

Originally posted by Green Odin:

Originally posted by Metadigital:

Depends on what you want to focus more on; spells or martial attacks. Both are viable.

With a lower Cha, you can use spells that don't require saves, but you'll be more limited in what spells are ideal. With a higher dex, you'll hit more often with your attacks, but keep in mind that you might not want to go above a +3 bonus (if you take medium armor mastery) or you'll be limited in your armor options.

I thought the dex cap only limited dex to ac?
If it also caps dex to attack and dex to saving throw well that's a whole 'nother thing.

The Dex cap is only for the AC calculation.

[Cosmo 🐲]

i would go Cha > Dex

[TheProphet]

Dex for sword bard and an hint for me will be to take 2 in paladin for using divine smites with sword bard flourishes yogether , its a very good combo. Charisma you will use only for spells but if you go with sword bard you will use them less than other bards so dex is more important

[Metadigital]

Originally posted by Green Odin:

I thought the dex cap only limited dex to ac?
If it also caps dex to attack and dex to saving throw well that's a whole 'nother thing.

Yes, sorry if that was confusing. It only impacts your AC.

Still, you probably don't want to sacrifice too much Cha either way. You can definitely have 18 Dex and not benefit from all of it in your AC, but I dunno, there's not a lot of spells to choose from if you dump Cha too far and you might regret being a bard. It'll also negatively impact your Cha skills if you dump it too much. That's why I'd advise a 16 Dex being your upper max if you want to get the most out of Dex. You can always buff your chance to hit with spells.

[Many-Named]

Originally posted by Player 1 (Cosmo):

i would go Cha > Dex

same

[Rex is back, baby!]

Originally posted by Many-Named:

Originally posted by Player 1 (Cosmo):

i would go Cha > Dex

same

Same same.

[Damphair]

We'll see, I really want a bump into my attack bonus so I'll be trying out dex for now. With Ethel's stat increase and an ability improvement feat i'm not at 20 dex and 16 cha. Figure I can bump up to 18 cha at lvl 8 and see how it goes.

[LordAnubis]

Originally posted by Rex:

Originally posted by Many-Named:

same

Same same.

Definitely CHA > DEX. Consider this: You can have higher DEX and have a *slightly* higher chance to hit and a little more damage, OR you can buff your spell save DC and Faerie Fire the sh** out of a group of enemies then your entire party has advantage for 10 turns, which is a higher chance of critical hits.

Dip 3 levels into Sorcerer for Heightened Spell meta magic and now enemies have disadvantage to their save for Faerie Fire, which is going to be important on enemies that have both a high AC and/or a high DEX for the save.

[Damphair]

Originally posted by LordAnubis:

Originally posted by Rex:

Same same.

Definitely CHA > DEX. Consider this: You can have higher DEX and have a *slightly* higher chance to hit and a little more damage, OR you can buff your spell save DC and Fairie Fire the sh** out of a group of enemies then your entire party has advantage for 10 turns, which is a higher chance of critical hits.

Point taken, re-loading as we speak xD

[KmFN [deaG]]

In case someone else stumbles upon this thread there's a couple other things to take into consideration

1) you can dump DEX on a respec once you get 18 dex gloves if you so desire, but then you're stuck with those gloves and can't use others. There's some really really good glove options, but now you know (these are available in act 1)

2) act 2 has a medium armor that doesn't impede your Dex bonus. So if wanting to maximize on your ac modifier, don't sweat pumping dex to 20

3) smites scale with CHA and swords bards benefit highly from dipping into paladin, with 20 CHA your smites are hitting like a truck and you're probably not missing much since you can maintain bless on you and your team at all times. Go 6 bard 3 paladin and 3 rogue for sneaks and assassin bonuses and you can start every fight with a free crit and with smites/sneak die you're easily doing 100+ dmg per round as a dual wielding melee Frontliner with over 20AC and high movement speed (not including defensive flourish) and an irresistible shove for anything crazy enough to stand near a cliff.

4) maxing dex comes heavily into play if you plan to dip into gloom stalker, which you should if you're playing dual hand crossbows - with a speed potion at level 9 you have 6-7 attacks per round (sword bard 6, gloom stalker ranger 3) 3 levels into fighter for action surge and you're a gatling gun with precision strikes paired with sharpshooter for +10 dmg per shot and you're killing everything in the game in one turn. Mix in surgeons amulet to paralyze first shot with illithid auto crit and now every one of those shots will crit. Scary damage.

[Solvem Probler]

20 in a stat isn't that important.
Take Warlock 3 to get Blade Pact, scale everything you do off Cha.

[Akvar]

Either way, as a max level bard, i strongly advice you to look into twin hand cross bows as soon as possible