Are battlebards any good??

>I dunno, I'm enjoying Macross Delta: The Belkan War
I think a lot of people were really turned off by the preview episode. I mean I almost was, it was fucking shit. But I'm glad I decided to give it a chance because it's gotten significantly better and continues to improve.

Most of the people still mad about it are just butthurt robotech fags.

Lucky you. Unfortunately that's not the case in literally the rest of the entire planet, and internet.

I couldn't STAND the main guy to start. The last few episodes have really made me start to warm up to him as he realizes that he can't just be flippant about everything and he needs to take responsibility.

Now to just see them give Mirage some good time to show her stuff.

You seem upset. Sorry.

What if you BBEG is a battlebard

Me too, after the preview I was ready to drop the show JUST because of him. But when he was actually showing significant character growth after just two episodes I decided it was worth sticking around.

Why do you hate Top Gun?

I think its refreshing to see an MC who is kind of a jerk instead of some milquetoast harem protag

For a Virtue of Cunning bard, the Resourceful Magician is in the same position as the Life Singer: middling at levels 11-15, then incredible from level 16+.

From levels 11-15, you will receive little of note from the Resourceful Magician.
Its level 11 feature relies on you taking Arcane Initiate, Arcane Prodigy, Blade Initiate, and/or Pact Initiate, all of which are below-average feats for a bard and two of which confer redundant Arcana training. It is quite possible that you will receive *nothing* out of this feature.
Its action point benefit and level 11 encounter power are solid but not outstanding, and its level 12 utility power is shabby (compare it to the warlord's Tactical Orders).

All of this changes at level 16, of course. You can then slowly eschew bard powers in favor of much stronger wizard powers. (You might be able to do this much faster with retraining, but this is a gray area of the rules that never had a conclusive answer. Ask your GM.)

Of course, by level 16+, a Life Singer is also performing highly accurate attacks against Will. I would call the two paragon paths equal.

Damn right I am. I'd kill to find more than one or two people willing to play something other than D&D/PF. Lucky bastard.

>that moment when you notice the flaps move when they maneuver the control stick, and the first space battle has VFs actually maneuvering like they're in 0G
The attention to detail in this show gives me such a fucking hardon.

Yeah. Mirage is a lot of what kept me going in those first few eps.

I just hope she doesn't devolve into a useless moeblob by the end of the show. Still, Macross has a good history of respecting the serious and hard working girl rather than just going for the Moe one.

But Freyja is a miracle. Great chemistry with MC

Oh yeah. I'm not seeing them as relationship material though.

As was said last ep: Are we SURE they were not separated at birth?

Right. Does this change if the GM allows you to benefit through other multiclass feats for the same classes?

The GM right now is debating either:

A) Allowing any multiclass from those classes to get the effect for the level 11.
B) Allowing a redundant skill training (Like arcana) to be 'Any skill' instead.

I was looking at making an Eladrin (Yay Int/Cha) who was a Wizarding School Dropout with a lot of talent but many lazy bones in her body. Going for a very controller-heavy bard and playing up the 'Stage Magician' idea.

I appreciate how they've built Freyja/Hayate as more brother/sister in their relationship than "randomly in love with MC for no other reason than he's the MC."

They are OP

>A) Allowing any multiclass from those classes to get the effect for the level 11.
A significantly effective option. This would probably make the Resourceful Magician the single best Virtue of Cunning paragon path in the system.

>B) Allowing a redundant skill training (Like arcana) to be 'Any skill' instead.
A trivial upgrade at best. Remember that Bard of All Trades will mean that the difference between "untrained" and "trained" is ±1.

>eladrin
Remember that Eladrin Education will give you an extra trained skill, thereby allowing you to select Arcana, Dungeoneering, History, Nature, Religion, and Streetwise, then take the Bard of All Trades and Bardic Knowledge feats, making you a veritable skill monkey.

What is your starting level, and what bonus feats are you entitled to?

>MFW you know there will never be a Macross OVA focused on Destroids and their drivers.
>MFW you also know that the Macross 7 formula of ditching pop idol girls for a rock band will, also, never be revisited.

Being a BattleTech fan first and foremost, at least I can say that Dougram turned out to be something I enjoyed. I wouldn't mind a re-release, but I don't think that anyone would do it justice with a sequel or remake.

You mean like every other Macross protag?

The idea of a bard is fucking dumb and 9/10 leads to lolrandumb characters and play.

>What is your starting level, and what bonus feats are you entitled to?

We are starting at 8 (I'm planning ahead)

We get:

>An expertise feat
>improved defenses

We also get one utility slot/tier that can only be filled with skill powers/class powers for non-combat use.

So far I've yet to touch Themes for the character. The game isn't in a canon setting but all setting material is allowed with GM approval.

Use the sun elf racial variant to trade in Eladrin Weapon Proficiency for proficiency with orbs, staffs, and wands. Remember that you can select alternate racial traits piecemeal, so you can either keep +2 Arcana and History or trade it in for +2 Bluff and Insight.

Choose Arcana, Dungeoneering, History, Nature, Religion, and Streetwise as your trained skills, taking into account Eladrin Education. Select Bard of All Trades and Bardic Education for your first two feats, such that your skill bonuses for all skills are amazingly high.

Take Superior Implement Training (Accurate Staff) as another feat to help your attacks land. Mark of Healing is mandatory for a leader by high heroic; you should know this. Advantage of Cunning lets you slide allies and enemies alike with your Virtue of Cunning. That should round out feats.

Alongside Improved Defenses, take Staff Expertise as your free Expertise feat and wield a Staff of Ruin with a Siberys Shard of the Mage and Resplendent Gloves. Most of your bard powers still inflict damage rolls, so a little striker optimization could not hurt. You can wield a staff one-handed, so use a light shield in your other hand. Staff Expertise will still make your ranged and area attacks with the staff never provoke opportunity attacks.

It is imperative that you take Revitalizing Incantation as your level 6 utility power and Prescient Warning as your level 7 encounter power. Both are extremely above the curve compared to other bard powers of their level.

Remember to take the Signs of Influence class feature. Ritual Beneficiary is a good choice; it covers Linked Portal.

You might consider taking the Cunning Prevaricator paragon path instead. It offers much more of an immediate benefit from levels 11-15, from combat advantage and invisibility for your allies, to saving an ally from a nasty attack 1/encounter with post-errata Trickery's Reward.

>Mark of Healing is mandatory for a leader by high heroic; you should know this.

Well, now I feel bad about taking Mark of Warding on my Artificer (Force weapon + solid sound + the artificer AC buff version)

Intelligence/Constitution artificers are an exception, as they cannot benefit from Mark of Healing (but they do have Enhanced Resistive Formula at level 11).

There is little reason to primarily rely on any at-will power other than Magic Weapon as an artificer, and Thundering Armor is no exception. Its effects simply cannot stand up to Magic Weapon's raw accuracy and offense buff. (For that matter, there is little reason to bother with implement powers as an artificer in general.)

Mark of Warding + Force Weapon + Solid Sound would have been a good combination for, say, a Wildblood warden using Earth Shield Strike, but it is wasted on trying to shore up the defenses of an artificer. This applies all the more when the opportunity cost pushes aside Magic Weapon.

...wait, not Solid Sound. What am I thinking of? The feat that boosts an allies defense when you hit with a force power.

I dunno, aside from his hangups about his family Alto was pretty bland as shit. Hell, Hikaru was probably the least interesting character in his own show.

>Forceful Defense
>Heroic Tier
>Prerequisite: Artificer
>Benefit: Whenever you hit an enemy with a force power, one ally adjacent to that enemy gains a +1 bonus to AC until the end of your next turn.

This must be what you are thinking of. Let us see what your combo requires:

• A Force Weapon, a level 8/13/18/23/28 item, as either a staff (locking you out of artificer weapon powers, which tend to be much better than artificer implement powers) or an actual weapon (requiring you to invest in a way to use it as a weapliment).
• Two feats sunken into Mark of Warding and Forceful Defense.

With that, your Thundering Armor at-will power now grants a +2 bonus to AC and a +2 power bonus to AC. Formidable against the right opponent, although blown straight past by any NAD-targeting attack.

While +4 AC is impressive, the opportunity cost is steep, and I do not think it could hold a metaphorical candle to a generic, pure-weapon-power artificer spamming Magic Weapon, Shocking Feedback, and Debilitating Intercession (possibly while a Punishing Eye is up or a Corrosive Sigil is on the weapon), which is quite powerful out-of-the-box.

Even if you were attached to the Force Weapon + Forceful Defense + Mark of Warding combination, I think it would be better to use it through Magic Weapon anyway.

I rather liked Alto. Mostly as the Straight Guy to Ranka and Sheryl.

Both of them were utterly insane in their own ways and he had to deal with it.

I still love the scene where the pair start off a spontaneous dueling duet in front of him and he's trying to back away, looking scared and clearly thinking 'If I jump off this balcony, could I escape?'

I was mostly using a Forceful Superior Crossbow + Mark of Warding + Forceful Defense to add +2 AC to an ally to all my weapon powers.

Hmm...I think I'll stuck with Resourceful Magician.

It fits them theme/backstory a bit better.

Any thoughts on Themes?

Here is the issue with that, however. You are spending your magic item and *two* feats to be able to add +2 AC to an ally... occasionally (i.e. you hit an enemy adjacent to an ally).

Hafted Defense is generally considered a "plain blue" feat, and that confers +1 AC and Reflex. Thus, whatever it is *you* are doing with a Force Weapon, Forceful Defense, and Mark of Warding gives far less bang for one's metaphorical buck than a "plain blue" feat like Hafted Defense.

That is why it is a poor combination in my eyes: the opportunity cost is too steep.

After having examined the Resourceful Magician more carefully, I can identify one saving grace for it from levels 11-15:

>Arcane Initiate (Player’s Handbook 1, page 208): You gain the wizard’s cantrip class feature and you can use the ghost sound, light, mage hand, and prestidigitation cantrips as at-will powers.

Observe the wording. "... AND you can use..." means you would logically gain both the "cantrip" class feature and the listed cantrips.

Now, as it currently stands, there is no plain "wizard" class. There are the wizard (arcanist), the wizard (bladesinger), the wizard (mage), the wizard (sha'ir), and the wizard (witch). Of these four, only the first has a class feature entitled simply "cantrips." What does it read?

>CANTRIPS
>You gain four cantrips of your choice.

There you have it. As a Resourceful Magician with Arcane Initiate, you thus gain four cantrips of your choice, plus Ghost Sound, Light, Mage Hand, and Prestidigitation.

However, you are not just limited to wizard cantrips. You are also eligible for wild talent cantrips from page 81 of the Dark Sun Campaign Setting, which are absolutely cantrips as evidenced by being labeled as such.

That should net you good mileage out of the Resourceful Magician.

ORE NO UTA WO KIKE!

...that is actually very interesting.

I'll have to see which ones are particularly interesting.

I imagine none are really combat usable but they will be fun.

Facade of disgusting space imperialism
Would overthrow and oppress/10
Especially traitor cunt

Body Equilibrium is essentially an always-on insurance against certain types of terrain. Far Hearing and Sensing Eye are both useful for spying purposes, and the latter can reestablish line of sight within, say, a cloud of darkness. Mental Tools can give you exactly the tool you need at any given moment. Psionic Image can fool the unwary. Thought Projection is pseudo-telepathy, good for transmitting messages clandestinely.

As far as themes are concerned, as an eladrin bard with Bard of All Trades, you will find diminished use for perennial skill monkey favorites such as the Courtier and the the Ghost of the Past.

I would take either Fey Beast Tamer for the usual owlbear damage aura, Iliyanbruen Guardian for mobility, Sensate for durability and skill monkeying about (get yourself another reliable source of temporary hit points), or Harper Agent to help an attack land with Llira's Grace.

The Noble Adept, of course, is also a good choice despite lacking scaling at levels 5 and 10. Adept's Insight is incredibly useful both in and out of combat.

People have been using music to psych themselves up for battle since pretty much the dawn of time. And before the invention of radio, even to coordinate troop movements in large-scale battles.

And legends and folklore often give music magical qualities in the hands of an exceptionally skilled performer. In a fantasy setting where magic really does exist, bards are an entirely reasonable idea.

What are battlebards?

GAS THE IDOLS
SPACE WAR NOW

Barara best bard.

>youtube.com/watch?v=QOGhUXDiJbo

> The attention to detail in this show gives me such a fucking hardon.

It shouldn't surprise you. The director and mech designer has a degree in mechanical engineering. He started designing robots for the cash to pay for studying to make actual planes, and then found that drawing anime robot-planes was sort of better.

The last couple Macross shows are sort of living proof that CG mecha is a worthwhile idea. It might not 'blend in' against 2d drawing as well as a hand drawn mech, but they consistently use CG to have VFs pull off really detailed maneuvers at split-second speeds that would have been impossible to animate conventionally, and as throwaway scenes nonetheless.

In Delta, not only do we see little details like control flaps actually moving, but we see stuff like the MC transforming his mech between modes to dodge a cannon blast because the second form has a lower profile than the first, and then transforming back again seconds later to engage in melee. No dramatic zooms or pointing out how clever this is, just "boop, missed me!"

Too bad the Western Transformers fandom likes to crucify Kawamori at every turn, holy shit.

On another note, he also designed a plane for Ace Combat.

>too bad the Western Transformers fandom likes to crucify Kawamori at every turn, holy shit.

What? I had not heard that. Why?

...

I know they have beef with the MP Optimus and MP Starscreams, especially the MP Starscream.

They can't stop giving him shit over the Starscream redesign on one of the big TF forums.

>your bard will never be this cute

Shut up Bogue

Kakugo surun yo!

>goddamn this chick is annoying
>>HOI NA!
>s-stop it, f-fucking moe blob
>> WOWOW WOWOWOW
>HNNNNNG... Freyja a cute! A CUTE!

However Hugetits Mechaphile will forever be my waifu. Even if she is a dyke

I'm actually a miragefag but let's be honest, Kawamori can do his shit.