I had original submitted these to our envoy (Merkada, then Lysandus!), but since they could be modified for all the other bard guilds, I thought I'd post them here too.

Musical Minion
CALL WHATEVER
ORDER WHATEVER SING (target)
ORDER WHATEVER FOLLOW
DISMISS WARBLER
Power: 5
Summon a whatever to sing alongside you.
Desc: The minion continuously strips deafness off the target (with a long time gap in between of course). Various musical minions have been discussed in the thread, most notable one would be a manifestation of the Bard's voice.

This one was written specifically for the Cantors.

Sacred Chorus
Stanza: High
Targetable: Yes
PERFORM (MOTET/CANON/MADRIGAL) SOPRANO/ALTO/TENOR/BASS (target)
Power: 2 - 5
The harmonious sounds of the choir can inspire and protect.
Desc: Scrapped, see immediate below
New Ideas
There were a lot of things I overlooked, so here are some more (hopefully interesting and balanced) abilities:
- Raise a shield (one like circle or pentagram) over all citymates in the room EXCEPT for the bards involved in the song
- Give a buff to all citymates in the room that increases experience gain by 10-20% for a period of time (half a day/hour)
- Halve power cost of all abilities for citymates.......................... kidding!
- Prevent room from being tainted while song is in effect (but room is still non-peaced), but all current demesne effects (if applicable) are nullified at the same time. Heavy willpower drain. Doesn't work on Earth or Nil or naturally tainted ground.
- All those following the soprano singer are instantly teleported to a target on any plane (??? too abusable?), the two other bards are left behind
- Increase max health/mana/ego of all citymates for a period of time

If you've got other ideas then please by all means post them, or think some up for your own city/commune's bards.

Some possible restrictions:
- Must wait 2 seconds before performing the next section of the song
- The song cancels if one bard dies or leaves the room (will probably be made into a restriction for sure anyway)
- Can't be used in certain places (e.g. Supernals, Demon Lords, Avatars)

The way the skill works is that each song (motet/canon/madrigal) has a specific set of voices (soprano, alto, etc), that can be gender specific (e.g. soprano can only be sung by women... let's just keep things simple). For instance, if singing the motet, each bard would have to do PERFORM MOTET and then one of the voices required, depending on their gender (but some voices are neutral), so if the motet required 1 soprano, 1 alto, and 1 bass, you'd need one female to do PERFORM MOTET SOPRANO, one male to do PERFORM MOTET BASS, and either a male or female to do PERFORM MOTET ALTO. I don't know if making them order-specific would be a good idea. Whew, sorry if that sounded really confusing.

To shift attention away from solely the Cantors, here are some possible abilities for other guilds:
Harbingers
- At the cost of lowered health/constitution, the attacks of all commune mates are significantly stronger and faster
- The room is cloaked in darkness and becomes like night (Some Glom guilds get stronger abilities at night I think? *shrug*
- Singing about how life and the world sucks, everyone in the room becomes depressed and is afflicted with pacification (srry, I couldn't help it)

Hmmkay I'm going to stop here, can't think of anything creative anymore... doubt these skills will be used but it was amusing to think up nonetheless.

last edited: Jan 10

1) Don't see much of a need to copy the songbird skill of Achaea/Imperian, especially since the way songs work here, it just doesn't make sense.

2) Peaced rooms are a bad idea. Peaced rooms mean unbreakable melds. Believe me, you don't want to add this to the game. In general though, I'm not sure we need non-wiccan coven copies...

I'd love a birdy! I know Impy has them (and Achaea got them? Knew I should have picked bard. And not wasted almost all my lessons...), but I don't play them, so if I'm to have a neat birdy, it has to be here!

Well, here our bard songs don't stack passive effects, and you can only really have one song at a time, and even then you'd have to shuffle through your songs (unless it's in the first stanza) to get to the desired ability. So with the way the minion would work (not calling it a songbird because I think it should really be another type of creature, sorry Sylphas!), by allowing the bard to have two songs at a time could save a lot of hassle and allow them more access to their skills. That's what I think anyway in my experience as a bard.

Hmm I was skeptical about peaced rooms myself, but I thought it'd fit in with the theme of the Cantors so I just tried to think up of restrictions to keep it from being abused. Perhaps another effect... which I'll think of later. Oh and I knew that wiccans had their covens that worked in a similar manner, but why can't other guilds have cool group-abilities too? Bards singing together in a choir/band, makes sense!

Get a bird that you can order to strip the deafness from a target without using balance but on its own balance, just like a pooka. Gives bards the ability to strip with bird/music every 10 or something seconds plus activly strip deaf and prevent it from comming up again with other abilites, could help?

Instead of a bird, it would be nice to see a manifestation of the voice of the X


I take that back, don't have a ent. Make an item that you can wear that does the same thing. Perhaps Wind chimes, or maybe just a manifestation of the voice that you wear.

Songbirds have been done. It's an Achaea thing, we're not gonna sink that low, are we? Let's do 'em one better:

Beckon the *creature's name to come when I think of it*

Sending out a summons through the fabrics of the Basin, those skilled in the bardic talents have the skill to call to themselves a manifestation of their skill and bardic magics. The creature's mind and voice are so attuned with the bard's so as to allow it to carry on a song the bard in question is knowledgeble in while they lend their skills to other pursuits.

-So, it could sing any song the bard already knows, I dunno whether to make it a low level skill and have it learn as the bard does, or what.
-Can only sing beneficial songs, maybe at trans, a low level offence one.
-Bonds to the bard that summoned it.
-Cuts down eq regen time for bards in the area.
- Could be worn, appearing as "X is wearing Blah blah blah, and has a nestled calmly on his shoulder."
-Just for fun- custom appearance, based on some convoluted algorithm incorporating letters in character's name/ guild/ city-commune, ect.

Anyone willing to think of drawbacks?

Imperian had them first.

Actually all of the passive effects do stack, else half of them would be useless, it makes bards kind of like a walking demesne as long as we can actually get our targets undeaf and in captive audience.

Still, whether Impy had 'em first is irrelevent. They have the stench of Achaea upon them now, so we must think of something theoretically the same in concept, but in all a lot more awesome, even if merely aesthetically, because we're us.

I think it should just be a deafness stripping thing.

The songbird idea is unoriginal and already used in half of IRE's games, not to mention bards don't need passive afflictions.

Nobody should ever have the ability to peace a room, its just a bad idea to give anyone that power.

*snicker*



HELP SANCTUARY!









p.s. Yes I know its different and not the point, just thought the comment was timely

Okay, edited my first post to remove nearly all instances of songbird, since it was giving people the impression that the skill specifically requested songbirds (I said I couldn't think of any other creature at the time so I just used it for convenience sake)

Aaanyways, the idea of owning an item, like windchimes, instead of an ent, would be cool too, it's something that passed my mind when I thought of the skills. But wearing windchimes may be a bit strange.

And do passive effects really stack? The help file AB COMPOSITIONS states that they don't (though I haven't tested this out yet). Maybe it was overlooked.

So aside from the specific Cantor abilities for the group skill (Sacred Chorus), how do people feel about the idea of it in general? I thought it'd be very interesting, especially if soprano/alto/treble/bass is used, and would throw in some gender variations I don't see much in any games. But if another copy of the coven skill really isn't wanted then *shrug*

The effects themselves continue as long as the song is being played, composition says that you can not have more then one of each passive effect in the song. So your song just cant be for Necroscream, Undeablues, undeadblues, undeadblues, Enginewords, Enginewords, Enginewords, Taintedlove, Taintedlove, Taintedlove. Every effect in a song stacks on top of eachother, and as long as you just refrain in one of them, all the effects will continue to go, which makes us like a walking demesne, and they actually last pretty long as well.

OOOH I get it... wow, this is going to make a lot of difference now that I know that Thanks

I guess that'd mean the summonable ent idea won't work as how I posted then... I'll throw my support behind continuous deafness stripping.

Heh, yeah, I was confused about that stacking thing for a while...and now songs are semi-useful! Hooray!

I think any sort of summoned ent/item would be cool, and the deafness thing is a good idea. Perhaps also have it lengthen songs? 2 minutes still seems kind of short to me (perhaps 3 with trans Music and Dramatics?), especially in a raid situation, when the group just can't stop every once in a while to let the Bard refrain their darned song.

Or, better yet, (new idea), let refrain not take eq, but require it, and cost double mana/ego/both? Something that would allow a more hassle-free refrain...

Also, some other ideas/suggestions I have:

-a song to increase ability of influencing. Kinda fits with the Bard theme, in my opinion...
-a basic Music skill to heal ego (like majorthird, is it?)
-make Perfectfifth and Octave a bit easier to pull off, to make 1v1 combat more feasible?
-do something with the Bardic afflictions so they aren't cured that easily (again, to make 1v1 combat more feasible?). Ie, you can't cure any of the Bardic afflictions while deaf, so you either sacrifice your deafness to cure or keep egovice/manabarbs/powerspikes for a while to protect against other songs

All I really think needs to be done is have acrobatics fixed up a bit, some of the skills are cool in theory, useless in practice, and have Blanknote/Chord have a double effect, the one now if they're deaf, if they aint have it prevent deafness, that's really it. Ohh and to have the song effects tell you when they go off, the passive ones are quite annoying since you cant tell if they are working or not.

I like the idea of a bit of one of the Voices. Every bard needs their own 'inner voice'.

Stripping deafness sounds -excellent-.

And the chorus/band/ensemble is a good idea, but make it distinct from covens somehow. Though a certain level of parallel isn't that bad.

To date, I don't know of a decent bard combatant except for Visaeris (Athana could have likely achieved this, but I don't feel she put enough work into it). City Bards with Tarot are powerful 1-on-1 and in teams. While I definately agree Acrobatics has some bunk skills that could be updated to be more effective, I would note it has some awesome skills (most of which the general population doesn't understand).

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1. A passive entity that strips deafness is fine, but it should be relatively slow: 12-15 seconds. I like the idea of an Inner Voice, which would not be targetable.

2. Motet is a horrible idea. No peaced room skills - period.

3. Canon is silly. Who is going to pay 9p (3p per person, 3 person performance) to cure someone of health/mana and -1- affliction? If it is going to be 3p per person and require three people, it is should full cure that person (health, mana, ego, wounds, afflictions, sleep, hunger - just like trueheal/sacrifice).

4. Madrigal is iffy. Most parts already have defensive empowering songs anyways - why pay 9p and require 3 people for a little bit more? I'd go with something entirely different.

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Commune bards do need some love, which I imagine will come in the form of the specialized Illusion skillset (when it comes out). Ecology is sub par compared to Tarot, but City bards with Tarot have some rather nice potential. For example (and this can be modified to fit Cantors or Cacophony):