On Tue, Mar 07/00, kim@... wrote:

> From: <kim@...>
>
> On Sat, 4 Mar 2000, Daniel P. Sniderman wrote:
> >
> > Most casters' spells do not increase in power as they level and become
> > obsolete as the new spells are granted... I would guess that the universe
> > of useable spells is pretty similar for Bards as for casters at any given
> > level.
> >
> > And perhaps we have it BETTER... At 36 with Celerity - I use our Level 1
> > Song - Chant of Battle - it gives AC +4, STR and Dex +14. How many casters
> > use spells granted at level 1 when they're level 36?
>
> I debunked this in the bard petition thread on the official
> boards. At level 40, a shaman can outbuff Celerity + Chant,
> using mostly L16-24 buffs. Doing so takes less than half his
> mana regeneration rate - he has the rest to nuke, heal, etc.
>

And the argument usually used to justify the bard's lower abilitys to
buff is that the bard buffs the whole party at once using no mana.
Unfortunately that not only ignores the fact that the whole party rarely
all need that particular buff, but that the equivalant buffing done by a
caster costs them barely noticable mana. In the above case, the shaman
has a +20 dex spell at L24 that costs 40 mana. By L36 40 mana is a
barely noticable drop in the mana bar and it's unlikely the shaman is
going to need to cast it on more than a couple of people in the party
who really benefit from it.

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