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I was thinking of keeping the bard I found in beregost. What does his bard's song do?

Another question is whether anyone elses charisma but the leader has an effect?

I believe that the bard song gives you a +1 bonus to damage, THAC0 and saving throws as well as a +5% bonus to thieving skills.

I'm fairly positive that the Charisma score only matters for the person initiating the dialog, so, say, Garrick with 15 Charisma talking to a merchant would get a better discount than say your half-orc, or Khalid (who has 9 Charisma). :laugh:

For all the years this game has been around, I've never gotten a straight answer to this question. The manual isn't clear.

The best I've been able to surmise is bard song adds +1 to your saves vs. fear. Seriously. Pretty useless. It becomes much more useful in BG2.

What does it do in BG2? I'm using tutu so I might get the BG2 benefit. If I can find something slow like a bear I may test if the bardsong makes arrows +1 damage.. Just kite the bear with imoen.

I believe that the base Bard song does the exact same thing in BG2. As you know, it's only different through the HLA and the Jester and Skald kits.

It's worth using in BG1 and at the start of BG2, when your THAC0 is still too high to hit all the time, and when a lot of your opponents have less than fifty hitpoints.

In the original BG1 the bard song was useless, however in BG2 it is more useful if you can cope with one of your most effective party members sitting around playing his lyre wilst Rome burns!

As the bardsong is hard coded into the engine and therefore can't be modified, and as Tutu uses the BG2 engine logically it must use the BG2 Bard song. And as Crenshinibon says, it is actually a lot more useful in that game. He can always stop playing and whip out his wand if necessary, and unusually for a Brit, no innuendo intended!:laugh:

PS Oh, and I believe the song adds one to THACO, saves and possibly armour class, but not sure about damage. You'll have to let us know Claudius.

Keep in mind that the song lasts for a round after playing it, so you can play it while traveling, and on the first round of the battle, you will have its benefits. Additionally, whenever your bard has a round to spare, you can sing it again to regain the benefits.

If you really want to micromanage, you can say play the bardsong, have your bard take a round action, and while on "cooldown", such as after casting a spell or making an attack or even approaching an enemy, you can resume playing the song for that round to keep it up almost constantly.

I looked this up on google. I am not sure if its the same bardsong in BG1 and 2.. but in the blade kit it says the bardsong does not improve which implies if you are not a blade that the song does improve.

Somebody posted that the bardsong improves thaco 1 saves 1 morale 1. At 9th level the total is raised to 2 and at 17th? level it raises to 3..

The consensus was that by 17 when the song gets good most every melee hits every attack anyhow. And a bard is giving up 2 ranged attacks to cast his song. I will definitely use this song when I am fighting casters with hold person or something (i'm in bg1) where a fail is often a reload. The loss of the bards archery isn't worth the loss of saves.

If you have a level 3 bard with a thaco 19 and 17 dex...which leads to +2 to hit I think..

If I was going to take Garrick I think I'd turn him into a jester, which seems more in tune with his character to me. He even jests at himself:

"Brave Sir Garrick, Sir Garrick lead the way,
Brave Sir Garrick, Sir Garrick ran away"

Or something like that!

Garricks's fun but he's a one of the crappiest NPCs in BG, so if you're new you'll probably want to pick some of the tougher companions and try to rest in later playthroughs.

The strongest picks would be Montaron, Kagain, Khalid, Jaheira, Ajantis, Minsc, Kivan and later Coran.

The bardsong is surprisingly powerful.

Assume you have 5 thieves using shortbows, 2 attacks per round with 50 percent chance to hit for 1-6 damage.
Each of them does 3.5 damage per round average.

Add +1 to hit and damage from the bard song, now you have 2 attacks per round with 55 percent chance to hit for 2-7 damage.
Each of the thieves does now 4.95 damage per round average.

So the bard song raised the average damage output by over 40 percent, adds more damage than 2 additional thieves would without using ammo and also improves saving throws.


Bards like Garrick can be very useful, besides the bard song they also get high lore and mage spells at the highest possible casting level.

Thats kinda what I was thinking kmonster though based on my online readings I don't think that damage is raised by +1 unless the bard is a skald.

galraen wrote:If I was going to take Garrick I think I'd turn him into a jester,

I've turned him into a Jester and he was pretty useful for crowd control

I'm positive that the Bard song does add a bonus point to damage.

Even in BG1 (non-tutu so no jester here) I found Garrick to be vastly underrated.

Bard song can be quite good, his lore is really handy at low levels, his spellcasting can be quite useful, and his thieving abilities are solid.

Just like in the description of the bard itself, he is a master of none, for sure. But if you use him for a multitude of reasons, he's really solid.