Shattered Kingdoms

There has been a lot of misinformation in this thread.

Both songs of sleep and songs of silence affect the listeners immediately. It's simply more obvious with songs of sleep because everyone gets the echo of feeling drowsy, and the difference between partial and full entrancement with songs of silence is rather dramatic.

Both songs of sleep and songs of silence have will saves already. Saving against songs of silence keeps you from becoming fully entranced, while saving against songs of sleep keeps you from being put to sleep entirely. Granted, you will never see the latter in PK since it only happens to people who aren't fighting.

The way it works now makes sense to me since the bard can stack saves against spells, but not against getting hit in melee. It's hard enough to fight alone as a bard, and even one round of a fighter resisting songs of sleep would be painful for a class that (a) dies in like six hits, and (b) is severely limited in options once they start singing and dancing. I could see the song getting nerfed in exchange for improved solo survivability. As it stands though, warrior classes already have enough ways to neutralize a bard's abilities.

The only point I'll raise is that lighties don't have easy access to deafness and certain other ways to stop a bard from singing. I still don't think the song is overpowered 1vs1, and there are other ways to deal with it in group PK.

There are two things that affect PK: preparation, and the element of surprise. How would giving songs of sleep affect either one of these? Giving it a saving throw does not mean that people will suddenly start stacking saving throws. If that were true then all the bitching of experienced players and all of the information that is available would have already prompted players to do that. They don't. This change won't cause any difference in the way people play now. It will only make it harder to affect the few that actually give a damn.

Bards have far more at their disposal than just singing songs. Persuade is not as weak as Konrin would like you to believe. It can first provide you with many valuable spell-ups that other players otherwise could not gain themselves, and it can be used to gain an edge in PK. And they also get scrolls which can be used for more defensive buffs and also offensively.

Bards should not have something in their repertoire that is a guaranteed win. And any prepared bard would be able to do just that 1-on-1 with any melee or spellcaster class.

If bards are so useless then why have darkies gone and deafened themselves out of sheer fear of having their group ruined by bards singing songs or using other skills?[/i]

Sigh here we go again. The thing with what you propose, and the thing that everyone else has been pointing out to you is that as things stand now bards simply can not afford the songs to be resisted. Even a person with marginal willpower would be able to resist completly for 1-2 rounds, and a bard dies easily to any warrior in 6 or so hit with a decent weapon. Which means that as soon as that change were put in, providing nothing was done to a bards survivability, it would completly remove any solo pk viability they have provided they don't have a ton of scrolls.

As for persuade, no I'm not exadurating. I can post a log of this later but I have a master level bard with mastered persuade and 23 cha. I fail literaly 90% of the time agaist equal level spellcasters I'm trying to use to buff myself. Furthermore, when used to try to gain buffs at this point, it hardly works anyway because with all the semi-recent changes to tracking and agro if you fail once you lose the abilitiy to persuade the NPC until it dies or the mud crashes since it either A: begins to permatrack you (yeys?) or it becomes agro on entry to you, either preventing you from using it to buff.

As for its viability in PK, the only way I could see that happening is against a giant with no willpower that you persuade to attack an ally, no one else is going to be affected by it, and in the meantime you suffer 2 rounds of lagtime during which someone either a. attacks and kills you. Or b. Destroys half your group since you aren't singing songs of sleep.

Sure you can say that its usable while etherealy...but thats not really all that great a way to pk people...[REDACTED] them off sure, but you're not really killing anyone with persuade while ethereal.

As for why darkies have deafned them is because bards are useless EXCEPT for the one song. If said song were to be nerfed...then no one would bother doing [REDACTED] against a bard anylonger.

Edit: Actually, damn I think Thunder might be correct in what he said. It already DOES have a save, the save just works the same as a damage spell rather than like a maldict in that you either save for none of it, or half of it rather then the way it usually works with maldicts in terms of all or none. Both songs of sleep and silence have two different stages of effectivness, sleepy and really sleep, and slower casting time and no casting at all.

Marginal willpower? This is where we know that you're talking out of your [REDACTED]. You have no idea how much or how little willpower it would take to resist the songs of sleep. You're only casting the worst case scenario. Dulrik doesn't provide us with numbers so we can't say that "this much willpower" will make you immune to songs of sleep. Having a lot of saving throws is not indicative of immunity anyway, and you'd have to go against a save on every verse, just like songs of silence.

Since I've tested out songs of sleep a couple times with a bard, I can assure you that they do not die in 6 hits from a "decent" weapon, whatever that may be. In fact once the bard has a person in the net of songs of sleep there is a lot of things that are in their favor, especially if they are dancing.




You are exaggerating, or you're trying to persuade NPCs that have natural bonuses against charm effects and/or willpower equipment on them.



This is all misinformation from an untalented player.

I love you Cyra, and I'm sure all the rest of us do too, now go back to hiding in your corner and hoarding your loot.

Silence and Sleep work the exact same way, and what I'm saying isn't that the willpower will make them "immune" to songs of sleep, it'll insure that they'll resist it for at least one or two rounds simply because of luck or some other crap during which time the bard is D E A D.

Edit: I'd also REALLY like to see you show something to prove anything of what I said is wrong, providing again what thunder said isn't assesement enough to make you shut up.

Edit 2: I said they would die in 6 hits WITHOUT songs of sleep, not with it.

thunder is right and wrong. Dulrik has stated in the past that songs of silence is the *only* song that has a saving throw. Now unless Dulrik is lying then that is the only song that has a saving throw.

Songs of Silence is working exactly like it should. If you read the helpfile:




The person keeps saving against the effects of being silenced completely but they will always suffer increased casting time whether or not they are shut up.

Songs of sleep on the other hand has no save whatsoever. Once started to be sung they are hit by the effect. They don't have a chance to resist it at all. And if the bard is dancing the effects of the song are actually doubled. But I will have to reiterate, there is no saving throw for these particular songs. Everytime I tested it, I was affected by the first verse sung. And that means you are fully affected by all of the effects the song has.

The effect it has of making people go to sleep is pointless as it has no real effect on PK since everybody who is fighting is not going to be put to sleep, yet they are going to suffer tremendous penalties to their tanking skills and to their ability to do damage through melee.

It's far too powerful of a song to be allowed to have an instant effect.

Also, you put far too little value on the ability to run your [REDACTED] off when in trouble, Konrin.

Fine, roll a bard and wtfpwn everyone with Songs of Sleep then. Oh, no, wait, you are playing a swash, a class that one of its major dangers in PK is songs of sleep. Hmmm...

Why hasn't anyone put up a compromise on the issue yet? Use saving throws on songs, but have the affect halved. I mean, if you have deafness on you can resist it completely, right? If you are HEARING the song then you should atleast suffer part of the penalty.

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Whatever. Continue to argue about it folks, but it might be more productive to figure out ways to fight it ingame instead of asking Dulrik for more changes.

Someone should post the helpfile for 'countersongs' and show these people a good solution to a bard with 'songs of sleep'. Fight bards with bards.

(I'm expecting some sort of angry STFU, condescending or sarcastic rebuttal to these common sense suggestions, so someone humor me...)

Bards suck, songs of sleep is the only thing they have going for them and it is completely overpowered. It makes no sense that bards don't have shield block, I don't see bards as people who should be running around with humongous swords(landsknechts) they should be using a whip/sword and shield.

Thats sort of what I thought it was now Salak, I believed it was if you sing they auto are affected but they get a save against the dancing 2x effect portion of it.