The Bard's Tale IV: Director's Cut

The Bard's Tale IV: Director's Cut

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How to Buld a Winning Party
By jgaltx
A brief guide on how to create a Bard's Tale 4 party that will power through your foes.
   
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Introduction
Like many CRPGs, some race, class, and skill choices are better than others. Read this brief guide to understand how to build a strong party that will serve you well throughout the game.
The Winning Party
After much experimentation, I settled on the following party to beat BT4 easily

Front Row:
Dwarf Fighter, Dwarf Fighter, Dwarf Fighter
Ok, it's a bit boring I will admit, but there's two things you want your front line to do.
1. Absorb damage
2. Protect the back line
I choose only the Dwarf race for my front line fighters, because Dwarves are the only race that cannot be pushed or moved, and if your front line gets pushed or moved then your enemies can attack the back line with melee attacks.
It's important that your fighters are not moved. Not because they have lots of hit points or lots of armor, but because they are the only thing standing between your squishy back line and death. Further they have the best front line skills in the game, and it's not even close.

Defense
Heavy Armor and CON of course
Critical Shield Block - this happens much more often than the 10% would indicate
Quick Reflexes - once you get this you will block nearly 100% of incoming attacks and take 0 damage
Shield Bash - Can stun melee attackers when you block them, and you will block about 100% of the time

Attack:
Vanguard - all your Fighters should have Vanguard so they can use 2H Swords and shields.
Sweeping Slash - Great to hit 3 melee foes at time, makes your front line fighter good damage dealers, although with Champion, you can really just stand there and watch melee opponents die
Sundering Smash - Good to remove enemy armor and many of the late, higher level enemies have lots of armor, so you will need this and Biting Taunt to strip it
Get all the Sword Crit abilities for extra damage

Command:
Commander (only for 1 of your fighters, and it should be the one that off to the side)
Champion - maybe the best (other than Shield Block) fighter skill in the game. Once you have this Shield Block, and Vanguard it easy mode for melee opponents. Once you get this you'll love enemy melee opponents who strike you multiple times. Your shield will block all of their attacks and your Champion counter attack will hit them back for each time they attacked you for about 30 points of damage each. Once I had this skill and Vanguard and Shield Block I could just let my front line stand there and all the melee opponents would die.
Taunt and Biting Taunt - make them attack you, strip their armor, and then retaliate with Champion

Back Line:
Why 3 Outlander Humans? Easy, the back line will get hit most often with Bleed, Poison, and Fire attacks and if you're immune to those your back line will take MUCH less damage. While it's tempting to take Baed Humans for the extra skill points, resist the temptation as the Outlander Humans will make your back line much tougher and you'll be very happy with the choice, especially late in the game when the opponents will hit your back line with Bleed, Poison, and Fire often.

Outlander Human Bard - come on it's Bard's Tale for goodness sake! Honestly, Bard's aren't really that strong and you could replace with another Rogue or Practicioner if you wanted to, but I liked have a Bard in the party for variety and I loved the Bard character creation screen when he/she jams the electric guitar. Be sure to get the Grand Rabble Rouser skill.
Outlander Human Rogue - I went with a Sniper, Assassin Rogue with the Bow/Dagger Crit Skills, and Strength plus the Subterfuge skills. I found the ranged multi target damage of the ranged Rogue was way better and more versatile than melee even through melee does do better single target damage. However, since my Rogue is in the back row (because like all non-Fighters they are very squishy) ranged attacks work much better and let you strike any opponent.
Outlander Human Practicioner - Focus on skills that do mental damage as your Practicioner's main job will be to disrupt the focus of the opponents. Focus on Arcane Barrage, Mangar's Mind Jab, Meditation (get the +1 and 2x Meditation options) to build up SPs fast. You'll want maximum Intelligence to maximize your mental attack damage. Other than that choose whatever you want as your 4th skill.

With this team your front line is immovable, unhittable, and does great damage against melee opponents due to 2 of 3 Fighters doing high damage counter attacks due to the Champion skill and able to draw attacks and strip enemy armor as needed. The back row is all about damage amd utility and the Outlander Human racial choice will ensure that they can ignore some of the high level enemies worst attacks late in the game.

I really enjoyed playing BT4, and with this winning party, I hope you will too.


14 Comments
Kira 21 Mar, 2024 @ 12:17am 
There are many viable party compositions that will work well. On higher difficulties some of the enemies have the capability to deal so much damage that they can knock out even the sturdiest dwarven fighter clad in full ancestral plate, so the focus of the defense will have to shift to preventing the enemies from attacking via statuses, or placement, or relying on Fichti to absorb the largest blows, reducing enemy strength via Wayland's Watch or Strifespear, or by switching to a stealth-based defense and/or ramping up damage potential to a point where most enemy groups can be defeated in one turn.

There are many topics on the discussion board related to party compositions, I recommend prospective players to browse some of these topics, especially since each player will offer a slightly different composition as the optimal one. For example, I personally find bringing two Rogues to be absolutely indispensable in a 6-strong party.
alation13 3 Jul, 2023 @ 4:40am 
I see that this party may work in many situations, but personally I rather go with 2 fighters, a rogue, a bard (MC) and 2 practitioners. If you need more meat at the front, that is where summons come in. The benefit is that the party is more versatile, and by only having one bard you are reducing your consumable usage.
Trow squeezings alone took me through 95% of the game.
sigloxx 29 Apr, 2023 @ 7:50pm 
Teams with 2 bards are muchhhh stronger if you abuse the energy song, refresh cooldown song and crowd control songs. costs a lots of elven wine though, cam run out of ingredients to craft them sometimes. combine with 2 or 3 practicionners for high damage (one rogue to stun for added cc is not bad though). One tank front line is enough.
jkrame2 23 Nov, 2021 @ 6:21am 
Okay, I just started playing and have yet to figure out how to select party members. I started with a fighter, but can't seem to make other adventurers. I only get the ones that are automatically added when you meet them. How do you make the other members of your party?
Shneekey 23 Jul, 2021 @ 9:52am 
Better idea:

Fighters pick up Veteran and Dual Wield in addition to Vanguard, dual wields Longsword primary and Arming Sword secondary. Active skills: Sweeping Slash, Sundering Smash, Storm of Blades, Taunt. Optional Chant from Censor if he picks up the Cleric tree at the cost of 2 AC from not getting Compass of MACO.

Back row is two Practitioners with a Bard in the middle equipped with Shepherd's Pipes. One Practitioner is equipped with Gaufroi's Wand to spread Melting. Other is set up for Spell Point generation for a second-turn Mangar's Mallet. Bard drinks Elven Wine, which triggers secondary effect of the Pipes for additional spell point generation (plus the spell point passive to start with) and bonus Int so the Mallet hits even harder, and your front row gets massive bonus True damage per hit on multi-hit skills.

You lose AC by dual-wielding instead of shields, but make up for it by deleting enemies before they can attack you.
clintbrew 11 Apr, 2021 @ 9:05am 
that party comp not the best.. 2or3 human einar front, thief w/ whip and bow, magician w/ source dagger and gafroi wand(removes armor), bard w/ turtle broach(shield).. bard give extra attack/wine pairing.. magician and thief do most of the damage.. bout 100 each a turn.. magician w/ max strength not spells
jgaltx  [author] 13 Feb, 2021 @ 1:40pm 
Nice of you to drop by and leave your negative comment, but that's not really helpful to anyone. It would be much more useful to everyone reading this - if you have a better composition to suggest - that you actually post it here.
Pandada-sensei 13 Feb, 2021 @ 4:03am 
The worst possible composition to use outside of the normal difficulty
jgaltx  [author] 23 Jul, 2020 @ 8:22pm 
Thanks and I agree Jonnin.
jonnin 23 Jul, 2020 @ 6:36am 
Well done, thank you!

I have one comment:
Consider the Einarr human as a good defensive fighter. With just a couple of attack skills, notably the sweep attack one that costs 2 to hit 3, you can do massive damage while still doing your job as the tank. The first rounds, not so much. But for those long fights, a few rounds in, it looks something like this: (I have had it higher, but +22 is average and a good example -- he just took out the front row in this one, so there isnt much left now).

https://steamproxy.net/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2175245939