DDO: Monks and Bards

I discovered something the other night, logging in to DDO. Despite my love for bards and monks, I've actually found they're two of the most stressful/difficult classes to play. I think I've managed to narrow down why.

In DDO, monks get a lot of nifty, customized abilities that weren't part of 3rd edition. It adds some flavor and flash, and there's some talk about them being overpowered, which of course makes them desired by anyone who wants to be unbeatable. I have to admit that they can be very lethal in dealing out massive amounts of damage, and pretty quickly. In that regard, they're on par with a dual-wielding rogue with sneak attack. Yet fighters and rogues both have ways of dealing with the aggro that comes from dealing massive damage: fighters have more HP, and can wear shields to increase damage reduction, while rogues have an enhancement ability that decreases the aggro (or "hate" as it's called in-game) that their sneak attacks produce. Perhaps a Constitution-heavy monk would be better at taking the hits, but they'd also be less adept at giving them. Some of the monk abilities can reproduce a few beneficial (but at low to mid-level relatively unused) clerical spells, like removing blindness or curing diseases, but overall I end up feeling like I should multiclass into rogue or cleric so I can be more useful.

Bards are another issue, one that extends beyond just DDO. Jack-of-all-trades, master of none, yes, I get it. They're supposed to be able to make up for an existing lack in party balance, tossing in whatever low to mid-level magic is necessary that the cleric and wizard are too busy to cast. Plus they get the bard songs. But the bonus the party gets from the songs is minimal, and in many cases is easily replaced by spells from other classes, and you'd be hard pressed to find a party that wouldn't rather have a second cleric than a bard. Because the bard's role is so varied, you either end up wasting time trying to figure out what your role in this party needs to be, or you end up being told what you should be doing which may or may not correlate with the skills and spells you've taken as a bard. Regardless, more often than not you end up feeling superfluous or just plain weak.

More than clerics, I think bards have a significant in-game and balance reason for needing the ability to switch spells on a daily (or in DDO, per-rest) basis. It wouldn't really help their survivability, but it would let them tailor their abilities to each party a bit better, much like a wizard or cleric can. As it is, in DDO they can change one spell every 3 real-life days, and pay in-game currency for the privilege.

The rules for bard and sorcerer spells were based on a system in which the character would be played with (generally speaking) a single group. It didn't account for having five different parties in a single day, and having to re-figure your character's role in each of them.

Experience Points and Level Ranks

In the MMORPG Dungeons and Dragons Online, the experience points required to level were altered (increased) from the 3rd edition rules that the game is based on. This was a good move for them, because an online game isn't limited to how often a group of people can gather around a single table, and the internet has already seen how singularly dedicated people can be to level-grind in games. If it used the original table, either the rewards given for quests would need to be seriously reduced, or people would face no real challenge in getting to the current maximum level of 20.

To give an idea of the difference between the two experience tables, the original 3rd Edition requires 190,000 experience to get to 20th level. DDO requires 1.9 million, ten times as much.

Even in an online setting, however, this amount of experience between levels can be daunting, so DDO breaks each level up into five ranks. Each rank you achieve (that isn't a level-up) gives you one enhancement point, to be used to purchase minor abilities and provide a way to further customize your character's skillset. I think that some of these abilities are pretty neat, and will probably be looking for a way to incorporate some of this into my game.

I don't think adopting their experience chart is the right path for me to go, however, since live games are few and far enough between already. I'm all for making each level gained feel like an epic accomplishment, but I think I'd end up discouraging people. So if I want to add this, I'd need to figure out some other way of distributing ranks or enhancement points.