[NobleNick]

Originally posted by Dundee Slaytern: A Bard is VERY useful on HoF mode because of his War Chant of Sith, which grants Defensive bonuses such as -2 AC and DAMAGE RESISTANCE... If I have said it once, I have said it a thousand times. A Bard should NEVER be considered as a backup Mage on HoF mode, but is instead, a Mage of last resort, or a Mage to prebuff the party. A Bard casting, is a Bard not singing. It takes an entire round for the song to kick in, even if you see the symbol on your party members. You can at most, afford to cast one or two offensive spells before the opposing sides clash, and the singing becomes more important. "Good gravy! Why am I hurting so much from his slashing damage? Oh right, the Bard is not singing. Sing, foole! Sing!" Speaking of which, summons do benefit from HoF mode, and you will be heavily dependant on them to absorb damage throughout the whole game. Lastly, about Generalist/Specialist. I already mentioned in the past that on HoF mode, you will be hardpressed to find enough scrolls to fill up your spell slots. [img]tongue.gif[/img] Throw in a few Rings, Robes and whatstuff, and a Generalist Mage will have too many spells to use up. Unless you like pain and constant death a lot, you will be resting a lot on HoF mode, so your Mage can afford to fling everything out for every battle. More so since you have no way of casting more than one spell per round.

O.K., hold on a second. I just realized something: If you do have the Bard along singing the Chant, your party does not need to rest. Oh, yes, they need to stand around a bit, listening to the Bard sing them back to full health; but no "nighty-night, shut-eye" sleep time. This means that the Mages spells stock will almost certainly be the limiting factor in how often the party sleeps, which means number of slots is a factor in game play, if not in how survivable each fight is.

On the Bard casting spells: Just wanted to point out that I typically use her as a Mage of FIRST resort; doing as you implied, with a pre-buff or first round spell, like an initial Web, Stoneskin, Improved Invisibility, Monster Summon, or Skull Trap. Then it's off to singing for the rest of the battle. After the heat of the battle is over, there is clean-up crew duty: Finishing off those pesky Trolls with a Fireball, Ag. Scorcher, or maybe just Burning Hands. Then there is the occasional maintenance stuff: Knock and Identify, for when your other experts are stymied. Thus the Bard's arcane ability can help out the main Mage quite a bit.

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What's a party,
without a song?
Bards ROCK!
Party On!!