Instead of giving them skills, why not just split Acrobatics up into two different skills, City Acrobatics and Commune Acrobatics, city acrobatics would be more like circus kind of thing, walking around on one hand while juggling with your feet, and playing your instrument with your free hand and your head, and commune acrobatics would be more based around flexibility, kind of like, bending over backwards and flipping up, kicking someone in the head and flipping off into the other room.

Make the Illusion spec for Bards.... HEAVY ON PVP plz... Illusions, or at least the higher end should be a dangerous thing... what's more dangerous than making an illusion on your head where you are bound and a bard is stabbing you and you cannot writhe... over.. and over.... and over... and over... and over... and over.. and over... and when you thought you were free they stab you again..... but then you open your eyes and realize that only a second has passed... and then they do it again.... and again... f's up the mind...


Another one... we could make an enchanting magic skill to heavily buff up bards and give them other means to kill...


Or how about the creation and manipulation of weaker ents... Fae strength, but they can charm them and use them even against the creator... so you have armies of small creatures beating the crap out of each other and other players

Or how about a specialization that is a little bit tied with debating.. so once you crush their spirit you can start afflicting them with personality changing behaviors... making them laugh their asses off... encourage them to think they can beat anything... maybe give them a severe and constant paranoia or a fobia that they take time to cure.. and the greater skill... force them to a major depression so the enemies just kill themselves.. make it so the requires are like preserve, where you have to stack up afflictions in order to kill, not a timed instakill or a half mana/ego/health instakill... Give them abilities that lowers the ego heavily so they can just shatter you and they start afflicting(obviously herb cures)... kinda like the Dancers.. but in order to stack the afflictions they need to shatter you first.. but it would be incredibly easy to shatter you.. OP in influencing, yes, but then again, Bards are supposed to be the supreme influencers in DnD lore

For the love of the gods, please give us Illusions specs. How the is an illusionist bard supposed to kill anyone? Illusion their death and hope their system turns off and they don't know how to cure manually?

As to the Totems choice thing, I would find it amusing to see an Ecologist/Stag Spiritsinger, because he'd just be a Hartstone without a demesne.

Long winded post of which I -hope- makes sense:

Shamarah means Moon Waning and Spiritsinger's deal. That would indeed be -very- powerful. I would -love- drawdown for the damage reduction, though I don't want to lose Acrobatics or rip off another skill.

Having a Bard without Acrobatics is a dangerous thing. We -need- acrobatics for dodging. Aside from Blur in Illusions and the Charms in Ecology, Bards have NO OTHER INNATE (if that's the word) DAMAGE DEFENSE ABILITY BESIDES ELASTICITY. Even then, I'm not sure what Elasticity defends against. During raids against Glomdoring, they can grab six people, walk in, break my shield, vine, and nightkiss me four times in one seconds. I'm dead. I can't stop it. And my chances to Dodge attacks are pretty low, even at 50% Virtuoso Acrobatics and Leather armor.

Bard Acrobatics skills are meh as is, anyways. We've only got a few offensive moves: Forwardflip, Highjump, Jumpkick, Scissorflip. The stun:balance time ratio on Jumpkick is worthless. Forwardflip prones them and has a chance to break a limb. Highjump really does nothing but get people down unless they're without levitation. Scissorflip is a 5-power move, pretty powerful, but is easy to recover from if you know what you're doing.

Defensively? Dodging itself is great. I've never seen much need for Balancing, since we have Springup to get up without eq/balance. Somersault is..nice. Handstand? That skill's usefulness was completely removed when Handspring was changed to no longer require Handstand. Handspring itself is more like a 2x balance leap. Contorton is GOLDEN- a faster writhe for 250 mana. I can't figure out how to make it work in my system, though. Avoid's a version of timeslip that goes off on aggressive action or movement, but with a slight less off eq/bal time. I don't think you can do anything while in Tripleflash, but I guess it's still useful. Hyperactivity only covers balance, so it's useless for Commune bards. Climb is okay, I guess. Lets you climb out of pits faster, but I never really saw it as terribly useful.

As for Illusions...Spiritsingers who want to fight currently cannot pick Illusions. It's impossible. We focus on getting our enemies collapsing from exhaustion. Selenelullaby will make a person tired only down to a certain point. No further. Pixiedust causes undeaf enemies to get more tired when they get hit with a poison- that's the key part of the offense. Ecologists can hit with poisons. What poisons do illusionists have? Nothing.

(Minor music sub-rant: Last I checked, people were tumbling out of my perfectfifth. And you're stupid if you die to Octave from a commune bard if you know what you're doing. )

You can attack while tripleflashed. I think Lysandus used to tripleflash+rub soulless?

Well, even then, still pretty useless for Commune bards unless they're running. What am I gonna do, Tripleflash and Bardoon?

It really is rather annoying how much better city bards are than commune bards.

Bards have illusions solely for the purpose of entertainment, honestly. At least that's how I think it happened.

There's not enough there for a single skillset now, let alone two.

For the people holding out for offensive illusions...I don't remember where I got this idea, but my understanding was that bardic illusions would not be as dangerous PVP-wise as the mage version. The main reason is that bards are made to fight in groups, where the majority of illusions are not incredibly useful. I suspect bards will get abilities like statue/nature/manse, while mages will keep offensive abilities like phantom. The point of a bard is not to be a powerful force on your own. If you're complaining that you suck one-on-one, there's no point: bards are SUPPOSED to be bad one-on-one. They do still need some upgrades, but don't hold out that bards will ever be an amazing 1on1 PVP class.

You won't like what happens to your abilities when the game starts to be balanced against groups, trust me. I don't want amazing, I just want to be able to kill someone who has earwort and a clue. Hell, right now I couldn't kill anyone with half a brain who doesn't have earwort.

The problem with Mages getting the more offensive Illusions, is that they're fine now without them, and giving Bards the weak crap would asinine. Tarot vs RP only skillset? Yeah, hard choice there. We already have Dramatics and Influence as common skills, what the hell would you give a bard for non-combat illusions?

Make illusions offensive. Give the bards the ability to create illusions that, in being so unbelievably real looking, become real (to them in any case).

If you want a specialization, why not split illusions into two skillsets, achievable at master. One would make bards defensive healers, in which you will be able to create an illusion that would make you believe you have no wounds, making you clot faster. Or another one in which you would negate astral insanity, by making an illusion appear in front of a target. Or the ability to give the target the illusion of being able to walk with a broken bone normally.

Then the second skillset would be more offensive, but -- it is with the ability to craft certain creatures. At master, you will learn how to craft normal creatures, each that will do a certain thing, and then you will eventually move up to more mythical creatures and such. If it can be done, then each bardic guild would have personalized illusion abilities regarding their organization. Mags would focus on sickness/death/abominations. Celest would focus on astral/insanity/angels. Glomies will focus on fear/darkness/wrights? Serens will focus on sleep/natural creatures/stags?

The higher you are, the longer the illusion would last, and the more realistic it will become.

Take this as a sample skillset for the defensive and offensive illusions.

This could be for celesties:
Defensive
phantasm -- WEAVE PHANTASM -- By crafting the illusion of a phantasm, it will confound your enemies into attacking it.
waters -- WEAVE WATERS -- By crafting the illusion of a watery demense, you will be able to heal your allies.
mists -- WEAVE MISTS -- By crafting the illusion of mists, you will slow down all movement in the room by 1 second.
rubix -- WEAVE RUBIX (TARGET) -- By crafting the illusion of a rubix, you will randomly cure an ailment of an ally, or curse an enemy.
noren -- WEAVE NOREN -- By crafting a whirlpool in a location, if you ENTER WHIRLPOOL, you will be sent to a random room.
torest -- WEAVE TOREST (TARGET) -- By crafting the illusion of unbroken bones, you can believe that you can walk normally.
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athercrest -- WEAVE AETHERCREST (TARGET) -- By creating the an illusion of rebirth, the target will be reborn instantly if he dies. ((Like Vitae))

offensive sub-skillset for mags
Offensive
ghast -- WEAVE GHAST -- By crafting the illusion of a ghast, the illusion will attack your personal enemies in the room.
corpus -- WEAVE CORPUS -- By crafting the illusion of a rotting corpse, the illusion will make your enemies feel purtid if they are in the same room.
graves -- WEAVE GRAVES (target) -- By crafting the illusion of a grave, your target will sip and eat more in a spur of gluttony before death.
ancient -- WEAVE ANCIENT -- By crafting the illusion of an ancient abomination, your enemies will be paralyzed in fear.
altersense -- WEAVE ALTERSENSE (target) -- By crafting the illusion of an enemy, you will be able to create disloyalty towards a certain person's face.
taintwyrm -- WEAVE TAINTWYRM -- By crafting the illusion of a tainted wyrm, it will surround your target until he feels like the illusion of suffocating and dies.
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dissemination -- WEAVE DISSEMINATION -- By crafting the illusion of the demon lord's judgement, the (four demon lords? Five?) each will create a judgement towards a certain person until at the last (demon) kills the target. COST 10 POWER

Hmm, I have always wondered this. Estarra said they were meant to be used for group combat. Never once did she say they should be bad in one-on-one.



See? Nothing.

Classes, in a general rule of thumb, should all be balanced and be able to stand off on their own. The case with bards is that they excel at group combat, while being completely capable of doing fine by themselves.

I'm actually pretty certain I recall her specifically saying that bards weren't meant to suck 1 on 1. Unfortunately, I can't find where she said it.

Edit: @Tenebrae's Illusions: I don't really like the feel of your examples. It seems like your illusions, rather than only appearing to be real, actually become real.

For example, weaving the appearance of unbroken bones to allow the target to walk normally. I would do it more like this.

WEAVE UNBROKEN
Make your victim believe his limbs to be unbroken. If he tries to walk on a broken leg he only manages to mangle it further.
(Would cause prone and mangled leg if target tries to walk away with an illusioned leg.)

The flavour I'm imagining is that the illusions can make the target believe that they're real, but they aren't. To me that's the whole point of illusions, at least if they were split into Glamours and Phantasms.

What happens if you are Krokani bard?

Krokani aren't immune to illusions like Wounds or Phantoms, so why would it cause any problems?

I'd like to see more illusions like Wounds, where it fools things you normally can't touch with just WEAVE ILLUSION. Maybe illusion afflictions to appear on diagnose randomly, to totally screw with systems that reset to match diagnose. Of course, we'd still need a way to actually give afflictions then, or they could just totally ignore it. Maybe one to switch the appearances of vials, so when you apply poison, it just picks randomly from whatever you have. Things like that are still very much Glamours, but focused mainly on combat.

It'd also be fun to take illusions off of diagnose. Taking the Unbroken example further, not only would it mangle your broken limb, but it wouldn't show as broken on diagnose. Maybe give the illusion a chance to fail equal to the probability of spotting a normal Weave Illusion (which would, I assume, be what Daganev was thinking anyway) and curing the limb normally would dispel the illusion.

Hmm, now that I think about it, that could even play into the group dynamic with bards: able to mask afflictions on diagnose or something. Since we can't really give that many, it'd be a lot more handy with a hexer or something, where you could make the enemy believe they weren't afflicted when they actually are.

Along the same lines, perhaps give an ability that masks the next action your target makes? We might not need all these together, but I really like the general idea.

Now to convince Estarra that magi should get Glamours and bards can have Phantasms...*clutch*