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Starting a Bard's Tale Bard in Oblivion - seeking advice

  • Member
    October 24, 2019

    I recently have began playing The Bard's Tale, and I like it.

    I have even thought about a Bard in Skyrim - but that's too obvious (Solitude has the Bard's College, after all.)

     

    But I also have TES: OblIVion on my PS3 -and I thought, "Perfect!  I'll make my Bard build there.  However, the game already has a Bard pre-made class."

     

    I've done this before - make a new class, using the name of a previous class.

     

    Here's my Bard's Tale Bard build:

     

    Class: BT Bard

    Race / Sex: Imperial / Male or Breton / Male

    Attributes: Personality, Strength

    Sign: Mage (no Atronach - I feel that gimps a mage too much.)

    Major Skills:

    (I try to get one skill in each of the seven attributes)

    Strength: Blade (he'll carry a sword)

    Intelligence: Mysticism

    Willpower: Alteration

    Agility: Marksman (I plan to use this very rarely - the Bard will carry a maximum of 10 arrows, but he can scavenge arrows off dead bodies.)

    Speed: Light Armor

    Endurance: Block (one I plan to never use - the Bard relies on agility to avoid strikes)

    Personality: Illusion

     

    Is this a workable build?  Or am I looking at certain death at about level 10?

     

    I am also posting this to GameFAQs.

  • Member
    October 24, 2019

    Been a long time since I last played Obliv, but I don't see anything there that would make the game too hard. Blade and Marksman are good offensive skills, and Alteration and Mysticisim have some very useful spells. From memory, though, Mysticism takes ages to level, and you may want Armorer instead of Block for the Endurance skill as gear breaks down so quickly. 

    Trial and error is the fun part, though, and you can always adjust the difficulty slider if things get too warm.

  • Member
    October 24, 2019

    Thanks for the advice!

    Also, are there any nice tavern wenches he can "help?"

    (Aside from Faustina and Signy-Home-Wrecker, of course.)

  • Member
    October 24, 2019

    Haha I remember those two! Good times :D

    I'm at a loss, memory is too fragmented. But I do remember an Altmer lass asking for help getting Shadowbanish Wine, and a small farm inhabited by a Dunmer and his two bitchy sisters. I think there are a few inns and farms along the roads that offer quests, so you could probably get some good playtime just by visiting each settlement, doing their quests, and soaking up that itinerant bard theme. I'm just not sure how many of them contain wenches in distress.

  • October 24, 2019

    I think the main consideration here is that you probably won't be able to just tank anything, combat is going to mostly rely on you just not getting hit and fighting enemies one at a time, but it's a build that seems like it's definitely supposed to do that and it should do it fairly well. Personally I'd consider the idea of adding Sneak over Block but I understand that goes against the concept of having one skill per attribute, it'd definitely be the better skill to add (I'd also consider Acrobatics/Athletics here) but, yeah. 

  • Member
    October 24, 2019

    Dragonborn - my whole goal is not to tank opponents - rather to fight intelligently via both my bow and summoning creatures (like the Bard in Bard's Tale does.)

  • Member
    October 25, 2019
    Bard's Tale arrows are a ton more powerful than Oblivion's, so I'd suggest to drop the arrow limitation unless you really want to challenge yourself. I'd also switch out Mysticism for Conjuration because their magic is focused around summoning in Bard's Tale.