At the risk of opening a can of worms again, my question never got an answer from anybody happening along: is Caco damage poison or magic?

Carillonknell damage is magic

Already suggested and shot down by the admin, thus the need to expand upon the Plague theme.

Edit: As far as I know, all the skills in Music, Glamours and Necroscream are 100% magic damage.

Don't really like the increased effects over time idea. Songs are a passive attack, so all you'd have to do would be to stay alive and blanknote for a minute and a half until the target has the full afflictions, then hit for the conversion into damage and follow up with a minorsecond for the kill?

Momentum and wounds work as a concept because that is active afflicting and building, not something that is simply a guaranteed result of standing in the room with the attacker for 2 minutes.

I think adding dysentery and vomiting to the list of afflictions that sickening plague can give as well as clasifying them as "plague afflictions" would be good. I think keeping the max affliction count for carillonknell at 5 would be fine.

If they want to keep sickening plage to only 5 then removing pox and worms would be good. If we are going to stick to hunger then we need a better way than a one in 5 shot affliction to stop eating food from being effective anyway.

You guys have been saddled with a theme that involves afflictions mostly used to make people stop moving. Rather than crucify, you have a death song. Perhaps you should be working that angle instead of the SS damage angle.

EDIT: Ninja there, but swapping out pox for dysentry would likely help in that regard too.

Spirits anyone?

if that still sounds as too much, maybe with an active skill instead of a passive one (ala QueensLament, CairnLargo, etc)

Err, can't Cacaphoners take tarot?


But everyone hates spirits! Making another version just doubles the problem!

We can take tarot, but the actual kill revolves around Crucify, Ectoplasm and Sacrifice or Wrack

Edit: Compare with Hunger, it either completely shuts down the victim or does nothing at all. The idea was to go for something gradual, like wounds, momentum, DeathMark and such. Any suggestion on your part?

They could just gust us out or leave the room to avoid the build up. I'm not a fan of making it strictly a time based thing but if the theme is stuck with building up afflictions and hunger attrition we need something to supliment or tweak the approach to make it effective.

I really do think this angle has merrit. I would like to see it stay largely untargeted, and thus a little weaker, so that it's still pretty different from building up spirits.

I'm actually kinda curious why the focus has been on making it synergize with glamours (which is the standard bard tertiary) versus tarot. Poor tarot seems so neglected, but, RP-wise, it makes far more sense for the skills to mesh. I'd suppose it's because the current Caco are glamours users, but I think finding a way for Necroscream and Tarot to work together would be really cool from a RP viewpoint.

I really liked the idea of being able to order people, and nearly switched to Caco early on because of that - this seems like a very powerful, yet underused, ability. From what I've been told, it's a free order every song tick? When I fought Celina, she never used that opportunity, so perhaps the lack of full skill use is where Estarra is coming from when she says that she doesn't think the skillset is that terrible? Then again, I don't fight Cacaphony that much, so I could be entirely wrong here!

Regarding my own suggestions, if I could re-create the skillset, I'd do something like this:

Take the idea of ordering people and shape that into mental domination. Toss plague attacks, give mental affs (meshes better with glamours), focus physical attacks not on damage, but on hinderances (longer writhe time, paralysis, making focus body slow, etc), which would go well with tarot, as well as a cohesive overall RP, akin to a torturer constraining a victim. The idea (and attack texts) would be centered around the psychological damages of such an encounter.

But, that's if I could write an evil bard skillset. I just fancy the idea of music being able to do that to someone. Rock and roll from HELL Nil.

You are not the first one to come with that idea, Sthai, Incabulos and Celina have tried in the past to go for that angle.
It was shot down already by the admin. (since the first Special Report was based around plague afflictions, all further suggestions must revolve around said theme.)

I definitely agree and am disappointed that Tarot never seems to get focus when envoys are considering city bards. We're more than willing to allow tarot changes that better synergize with bards in particular.


Rock on.

domination can be usefull but it's also limited

You can order somone to apply health before you launch an attack but that only works it they are on healing balance.
Making someone smoke myrtle before using colorburst can also delay the healing for a brief moment.
Ordering somone to writhe can knock them off balance but it's so brief that timing it to actually hinder combat would be difficult
A mez/sleep order can put somone to sleep, but again usually just for a moment.

You can't do things like stick powerspikes and then order someone to trueheal.

At least in my experience, Illusions are entertaining and useful as a RP tool. Tarot has nothing but utility and combat. If your not going to have that much success on combat anyway, why not take the RP skillset?

(This applies equally to Cantors and Cacophony)

Edit: That's my guess about why nobody really bothers with Tarot, I could be wrong though

Hmm, maybe we could get a tarrot card that would burn plague afflictions for damage.

Also, you should let us switch out queenslament from blackout and shackles to blackout and ecto and raising the power cost from two to three.

Edit: acutally the queenslament idea can be dropped

There are a lot more options than that which spring to mind. Powerspikes + vitae being the instant OP one.

- rub cleanse/writhe/etc --> yes, they have to have balance, but that nifty little order stops a timed-instakill and if they have balance, they no longer do
- kick Llandros --> kills shield easily? Order that before the real attack
- give (poison) to target/order target sip (poison) --> think that one is self explanatory (would be interesting to explore this with anatine, since glamours can stack kombu cures, followup with self-inflicted fun?)
- empty (x) --> again, self explanatory
- lower hood --> nice in teams when you have a warrior?
- remove robes --> bye bye proofs?
- unenemy Llandros --> no more enemy effects
- enemy Thoros --> oh crap, their room effects are hitting allies!!!
- etc?

Note, I've never had the option to play with ordering in Lusternia, but those are just some options that came out in 5 minutes. I'm sure there are more (and some of the above might not be viable).

Yeah, what you can and can't order is pretty much on a case by case situation. I was told the rule of thumb is that if it seems too good to be true then it won't work. So powerspikes and vitae is almost certainly already blocked.

Empty x would be fine if it wasn't the case that only pox and scabies share a cure.

Ordering sipping poisons against a monk or warrior could be fun, but i'd be hesitant to donate a vial to someone for an attack that may or may not be shrugged off.