Just a brief summary of 3.0 changes you may want to look into that for the most part didn't make it into the documentation (Sorry, I'm behind. I'll do write ups for Elanthipedia within a few days assuming nothing terrible goes wrong).

Firstly -- Most of the "Bard 3.0" stuff isn't in, and won't be in the release. I don't think this should be a surprise to people, but I'm hoping to push heavily on it in the coming months. Some of the plans have been notably revised as the rest of 3.0 has taken shape (And as I've learned a lot about design in general in the last two years). This leaves Bardic Lore in somewhat of an awkward place.

For now many Bard abilities teach some bardic lore as a placeholder (Screams, practices etc), and you can learn it from evokes. This isn't enough really, but it's what's there right now - Please let me know how well you are able to move it with these in place and I'll offer some tips and tweaks as needed.

A big change though is passive mojo recovery. That just got moved into plat recently, so I don't expect any problems, but keep an eye on it. It should help with the above Bardic Lore problems.

Recall -- Recall is undergoing a massive rewrite right now to sync it up with how Evoke works and add some new functions and steamline most of the old ones. The downside is... it's not finished yet. Sorry guys. Don't expect anything that runs through the recall system to be horrifically reliable right now. This is basically my top coding priority currently.

When it is finished note that with very few exceptions all of the recalls (including history) will be shared out to everyone, though Bards will retain large bonuses. This is actually a good thing for you Bardic types, because the combination of more people being able to access recalls and the increased ease of building new ones in the new system should notably increase development of recalls (which have oft been neglected in the past. See the total lack of P5 ones for example...)

-Raesh

"Ever notice that B.A.'s flavor text swells in direct proportion to how much one of our characters is getting screwed?" - Brian Van Hoose

>>Some of the plans have been notably revised as the rest of 3.0 has taken shape (And as I've learned a lot about design in general in the last two years). This leaves Bardic Lore in somewhat of an awkward place.

Uhh ohh. Dear god please tell me Beguiles are still planned :( :( :(

~ Leilond
http://i67.photobucket.com/albums/h307/ss1shadow/Leilond_Progression.jpg

Beguiles will likely change a little, but conceptually they're still in a place I like. Same for Lionize and Satirize.

More likely to change are the plans for existing bardic abilities (practice, bluff, scream etc), where I was really allowing myself to be too constrained by "fixing what they already have" instead of "Crafting a holistic vision for the guild", and likely went too broad.

Screams in particular I can speak too -- They're going to become spells. When we got down to it we'd arrived at this weird awkward ability that used TM or debilitation, and may have needed mana and we just finally asked ourselves "Why isn't this a spell? Is there any reason it wouldn't be a spell if it didn't already exist as NotASpell?"

My proposed solution for that is a spell similar to Dragon's Breath that would have the additional screams unlocked as a metaspell, but that's still tentative and screams will stay online until that comes out.

-Raesh

"Ever notice that B.A.'s flavor text swells in direct proportion to how much one of our characters is getting screwed?" - Brian Van Hoose

Defiance too. My current proposal (Which I stress is not yet approved) is that while the spell is on you it'd give you a certain number of charges of offensive screams, but if you were stunned while it was up you'd automatically burn a charge to defiance out of it.

-Raesh

"Ever notice that B.A.'s flavor text swells in direct proportion to how much one of our characters is getting screwed?" - Brian Van Hoose

Screams are the only proposed ability moving to magic. In the end, they're too much like a TM spell to not be a TM spell.

-Raesh

"Ever notice that B.A.'s flavor text swells in direct proportion to how much one of our characters is getting screwed?" - Brian Van Hoose

Bah, beat me to posting before I could delete/repost :P

~ Leilond
http://i67.photobucket.com/albums/h307/ss1shadow/Leilond_Progression.jpg

Sweet, sounds good to me :D

Do we still get an awesome Riposte attack at 100th? :3

~ Leilond
http://i67.photobucket.com/albums/h307/ss1shadow/Leilond_Progression.jpg

Up in the air. I believe combat 3.0 was going to use riposte as a core verb, but I don't see in implemented yet.

-Raesh

"Ever notice that B.A.'s flavor text swells in direct proportion to how much one of our characters is getting screwed?" - Brian Van Hoose

>> Also with it being an actual spell, hopefully we can get not-watered-down awesome screams that make people jealous :3


Hahaha....BUT YOU CAN TRAIN TM IN COMBAT! NO FAIR.

> Please let me know how well you are able to move it with these in place and I'll offer some tips and tweaks as needed.

Practice breathing/stretching jumps me straight to 17/34. Not sure what the timer is on that, yet. At least 50 minutes.

The bluffs don't teach nearly as well. I got 1 mindstate on distract, 2 on amaze. Keep in mind that these are on timers, also.

I don't think bluff dead teaches anything at all, because it puts you to sleep.

Bluff dodge gives less than 1 mindstate. Also, it can't be used while dodging, which is probably a bug.

Scream defiance gives 1-2 mindstates on a 70 second timer. I've got enough mojo for 6 before I need to recharge.

Screams concussive and havoc also give about 1-2 mindstates.

Considering the mojo costs, I think the only one worth training with is practice.

>I could totally see myself without as my character is more combat oriented, except for the fact they're all pre-requisites for the really awesome combat spells :/

I suspect it might be entirely intentional? Lore primary guild after all?

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Adding nothing to the conversation since 1834.

Practice assess has the lowest timer (and teaches the least) the other practices have by far the longest timer and teach the most.

Bluff dodge makes no sense in the world of 3.0, and I simply haven't remembered to remove it entirely.

-Raesh

"Ever notice that B.A.'s flavor text swells in direct proportion to how much one of our characters is getting screwed?" - Brian Van Hoose

Is scream defiance working in some way that it didn't before? I didn't change it.

-Raesh

"Ever notice that B.A.'s flavor text swells in direct proportion to how much one of our characters is getting screwed?" - Brian Van Hoose

I can really only take credit for Tezirah's Veil, Sever Thread and Tangled Fate all I did was touch them up to keep them working in 3.0, the rest of the credit for those is all Armifer.

-Raesh

"Ever notice that B.A.'s flavor text swells in direct proportion to how much one of our characters is getting screwed?" - Brian Van Hoose

Bards will be getting abilities (I won't say combat abilities since that leads us down a slippery slope of discussion that's not worth getting started on) that are driven by Bardic Lore and thus their primary skill set. Some of those will be useful in combat. Some of them will be new, some of them will be revamps of the current versions. Screams won't be among them.

-Raesh

"Ever notice that B.A.'s flavor text swells in direct proportion to how much one of our characters is getting screwed?" - Brian Van Hoose

>I'm a recently returning player and am pretty excited about all the 3.0 stuff, but I had some thoughts/concerns about screams. I had thought part of the original intent behind screams was to give Bards combat abilities that didn't rely completely on the Magic system because it didn't make sense for all their combat abilities to be chained to a secondary skill set.

DR is a skill based game. For that to have any meaning, people have to get things according to skillset placement.

So, not being 'as good as' a combat type guild, like Barbs or Paladins...is sort of going to be the role for bards. They're better at crafting and lore and teaching etc.

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Adding nothing to the conversation since 1834.

And Bards with their scream-hax.

>>And Bards with their scream-hax.

Nope, this is changing in 3.0 so that Screams use TM.

~ Leilond
http://i67.photobucket.com/albums/h307/ss1shadow/Leilond_Progression.jpg

>>Nope, this is changing in 3.0 so that Screams use TM.

Which will certainly bring them into a comparable level. Granted yes its a secondary skill but using Backstab and the smite abilities as reference theres still a difference. Both Backstab and the Shield abilities need to be trained in combat, whereas the old screams used lore that didnt need combat to train. Now I know this is changing and Im not aware of the details of the new Bardic Lore but I think thats the same reason they are splitting PM they way they are. So that you cant be crazy in combat without having trained in combat.

Though and Im not sure how any bards can be upset at this point... you guys are gettin some major love (which is overdue for sure). I know a lot of folks who are jealous of you all even with your secondary skill screams.

~Tezirite Renzar Lorrani

"Power is merely a stepping stone to more power."

>>The only guild I know of that uses a primary skill for a combat attack is the Paladin guild with smite, that works off their shield skill.

I don't think smite uses shield: it's based on the weapon you're using to smite. It's a glorified slice/bash/thrust (or whatever it ends up subbing when you use it). Are you thinking shield bash, which everyone has?

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The teeth lands a solid (5/23) hit that pokes the teeth into Turul's rear end (more embarrassing than painful!).