Epic Perform Gloves

[The Flying Rodent]

So without spoiling too much, there's a certain shop that sells about half a dozen Epic skill-boosting gloves. All of them are of epic quality, except for the Perform ones ... which are labelled as 'elite' and only +6.

There's a paucity of Perform gear for high level bards as far as I can tell, and little incentive to go beyond say 25-26 bard levels, because its just physically impossible to get the necessary perform skill to make use of 30 bard. Introducing the Epic Gloves would easily address this problem.

As an example: Normally high-level Bards get ~ 30 Charisma buffed [+10 mod, so subtract 11 from the bottom equation] , but even on a hypothetical 52 charisma buffed Bard30/RDD10 [which is totally atypical], you're looking at 43 + 15 from feats + 21 from charisma = 79 perform, requiring +21 more from non-existent gear to get to +100 and make full use of the song.

I also can't see why these particular gloves were downgraded to begin with. Bards need Bard levels to make use of Perform skill properly, so there's not much advantage giving them to a low level Bard with low perform skill; its not like they're gonna suddenly become a diva without the levels to back it up. There's also lots of other items and abilities around to boost characters' effectiveness in epic levels that I'd consider waaaay more overpowered.

So, suggestion: Unless there is another source of Epic Minstrel Gloves or significant Perform gear that I'm not aware of, perhaps it would be nice for the Epic Gloves to be for sale in the aforementioned shop , instead of the current elite ones?

[driller]

https://blackstonekeep.com/viewtopic.ph ... it=perform

[The Flying Rodent]

Right. So people thought that having an high level perform item made it 'easier to max crafting', and thereafter the Gloves received a walloping nerf from +30 to +6.

It seems that there's hasn't been much thought put into the ramifications of this change. Two posts in and there's a response to the tune of 'And Now Max Bard Song is Unobtainable'.

Which is exactly my point. There is now no incentive to create bards with more than 26 bard levels, because it is literally physically impossible to obtain the gear necessary to make use of the song. Those who do have 30 Bard 10 RDD's currently either: can make use of it thanks to gear available before the change, or are unintentionally shooting themselves in the foot for taking redundant Bard levels.

In order to make >26 Bard useful, there needs to be more Perform gear. The distinct lack of Epic Perform Gloves in an Epic Glove shop seemed like an obvious place to rectify this issue.

If the nerf was done to try and 'make Max Crafting less easy to obtain': Keep in mind that 5 perform skill, or +10 charisma, = +1 to song skills. Whilst only 2 Intelligence = +1 craft skill. Ergo, if you wanted to make a crafter, you'd index into intelligence, not charisma for extra perform.

Charisma beyond 16 provides next to no use for Bards outside of extra spell slots; Bards don't worry about DC's, and indexing into Charisma gives a pathetic return on potential song power [in addition to Great Ability I-X feats being inefficient in general]. So, indexing into Intelligence over Charisma doesn't put Bards at much of a loss; they just get lots more skill points to play with.

To put it all together: Just about every crafter I've seen on BSK so far is a Bard 26 Fighter 4 RDD 10, that presumably indexes into Intelligence and Strength, whilst not worrying about Charisma aside from being able to cast all the Bard Spells [i.e. 14 base boosted to 16 from RDD]. This is most definitely a stronger build than any Bard 30/RDD10, which typically indexes almost completely into singing instead of fighting, yet can't get the necessary perform gear to make use of it.

Case in point: At the end of this thread on crafter toons, is my current Bard 26 Ft 4 Rdd 10 crafter build. 26 base strength, dev crit, 26 base intelligence, 16 base charisma, no Great Ability I-X feats required. The thread also includes a few other people's similar 26-bard-or-less crafters, and anyone currently mystified about how to make a decent crafter can just look in there.

https://blackstonekeep.com/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=3229

With my current gear setup, my crafter can manage 84 craft skill, which from my understanding is more than enough to max crafting. By adding in more Perform gear, he'd only get another +1 point, to 85.

To quote someone from the old thread about the Gloves: You don’t need Perform gear to “break crafting”. You just need to be a Bard.

Now: if my crafter had traded 4 fighter levels for 4 bard levels, and in the process: lost an attack per round, lost 3 feats, and gained +20 perform skill from extra gear, he'd manage only another +4 craft skill, to 89. But in addition to all the combat penalties he'd receive from doing this ... There's currently no point going over 26 bard, because the necessary Perform gear doesn't exist! =D

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So, again, suggestion:

Could there be some sort of extra perform gear, so that Level 27-30 Bards have something to look forward to other than being out muscled and outcrafted by their fighter dabbling counterparts?

If not +30 Perform Gloves, then maybe keep the +6 Gloves and add a smattering of additional Perform gear adding up to around +15 or so at other stores? [or just revert the Gloves to +20?] This would at least mean that level 30 Bards need to index into ‘some’ Charisma points and equipment to achieve the Max Song, and can’t just receive max crafting with say 14 Int [26 buffed] and no buffs to their token 16 Charisma.

If , say, there were +20 gloves instead of +6 now [so a +14 net item bonus from now], combined with the current +8 bow from various stores, this would mean that level 30 Bards would get 43 + 15 + 28 = 86 perform pre-Charisma modifier. From there, 26 Base Charisma or 38 buffed (+14 modifier) would be required to bump Perform up to 100.

I think this would be a pretty reasonable change. Bards typically don’t invest much into Charisma beyond 16 because of how inefficient it is for them. This would be an incentive to do so at the sacrifice of other things like Intelligence, Strength, or Epic Skill Focus Crafting feats .

It would also mean that people would have to make dedicated ‘crafter characters’ regardless, which seems like it was the main reason why the nerf happened to begin with; to prevent any old Bard 30/ RDD 10 with unspecialised stats from maxing crafting.

Again: As it stands, there’s absolutely no point making a Support-Focused level 30 Bard on BSK, and certainly not if a Melee-Focused Bard 26 Fighter 4 RDD 10 can achieve all the same things song and crafting wise AND have the ability to fight stuff.

[driller]

I will look into it.

[The Flying Rodent]

Thankyou! Sorry for the long winded ranty rebuttal lol.