Musicianship

Info

First rule of barding, always insure your instrument, a tuneless bard is a helpless bard.

The essential skill for a Bard is Musicianship; any attempt to use other bard skills is preceded by a non-difficulty based check of the character’s Musicianship skill. If this skill check fails, the subsequent skill check to use the bard ability is never made and the character must wait some time before attempting the ability again. For every point above 100 that a Bard attains in their Musicianship skill, they will be granted a success bonus of 1% per point to Discordance, Targeted Peacemaking, and Provocation attempts. For example: If you have a Musicianship skill of 110, your chance to provoke, discord, or soothe a target will be increased by 10%.

All bard abilities have a range. The bard must be within this range of the target to use the ability. Furthermore, the bard must remain within this range or the ability’s effect ends. The base range of all bard abilities is 8 tiles, with each 15 points of skill in the ability being used increasing this range by one tile.

If a creature becomes under a given barding effect (Discordance, Peacemaking, or Provocation) and a second bard attempts to use that same effect on the creature, then the older effect takes precedence and remains active.

Instruments currently in game consist of tambourines (plain and tasselled), drums, bamboo flutes, lutes, lap harps, standing harps and aud char plus the special instrument, the fire horn. Used as weapon or tool by a Bard, instruments follow these rules:

• With a few notable exceptions, all musical instruments wear out with use. A non-exceptional player-made instrument, one purchased from an NPC or a magical instrument has approximately 400 uses. An exceptional player-made instrument has approximately 700 – 900 uses.
• The instrument used by a bard skill will automatically be the “last instrument” you double-clicked. When players wish to change their default instrument (when, for example, you have different magical instruments and need to switch between them), they can simply accomplish this by double-click it and having it set it self as the new default “last instrument.”
• Using an exceptional player-crafted instrument adds 10% to your success chance.
• Magical instruments are available in the game that have some similarities to the “slayer weapons” that are more effective against specific creatures, or creature groups, and less effective against others. Each of these magical instruments adds 20% to your success chance when used on the correct creature type. However, possessing these instruments does not cause the bard to be vulnerable to other types of creatures. Instead, when using the instrument against the opposing creature type, the attempt has a difficulty penalty instead of a bonus, reducing your success chance by 20%. As an example, a “Demon Slayer” instrument of will increase the bard’s chance to use a barding ability against any variety of Demon by 20% (when that instrument is used). When used against an elemental, however, the bard’s chance of success is reduced by 20%.
• Special Instruments
  • Gwenno’s Harp – an Ilshenar minor artifact dual slayer instrument: Repond and Reptile. 1600 uses
  • Iolo’s Lute – an Ilshenar minor artifact dual slayer instrument: Demon and Undead. 1600 uses
  • Dreadhorn’s Flute – a rare drop from the peerless, Dreadhorn, regular instrument, self-recharging, maximum uses 700
• Three slayer instruments, each having 450 uses, available from clean up points are:
  • Nature’s Tears – a fey slayer
  • Primordial Decay – Elemental Slayer
  • Arachnid Doom – Arachnid Slayer
  • Flute of Renewal – Superslayers in 6 forms, undead, demon, reptile, repond, arachnid and elemental, self-recharging maximum charges 300. NB: This item is destroyed if allowed to reach 0 uses.
• Firehorn – a common monster-drop
  • A fire horn is a weapon that can only be used by bards.
  • It works as a kind of area effect fire damage spell.
  • The more points you have in the 4 bard skills, the more damage you will inflict.
  • Using a fire horn requires at least 52.6 Musicianship skill.
  • Using a fire horn will use up 4 Sulfurous Ash.
  • You have to be within 3 tiles of your target to use a fire horn.
  • When you use a fire horn there is a small delay until you can use it again.
  • Each time you use a fire horn there is a 1% chance that it will break.
  • When used against another player the fire horn will do less damage than against a monster.

Training

• Active

0 - 30:	Purchase training from an NPC Bard.
30 - 80:	Play an instrument in the Alexandria sewers or the entrance of the Decayed dungeon. If a character has completed training other bard skills, this is the quickest method.
80 - 120:	Take your noise elsewhere.

• Passive

0 - 30:	Purchase training from an NPC Bard.
30 - 80:	Train your Discordance,Provocation,or Peacemaking in the Alexandria sewers
80 - 120:	Stop making racket in the sewers and go bother the creatures of the world.

Musicianship has a chance to raise anytime one of the other bard skills is used. Most likely, Musicianship will be at the desired level before other bard skills have completed training.