So its a new year, an I just wanted to make my annual request that bards be looked at for a bit of development love. Here are some things I would love to see at least discussed:

Loresong messaging update explanations: I know the RT was reduced, and some frankly cryptic messaging was added to allow us to tell if scrolls have been infused or not, and the ability to get the exact measurements/capacity for containers, we are able to see exact numbers for TD and AS enhancing items, any thoughts about extending that transparency to allow us to see exact numbers for resistance % or weighting points? Are there things that were added we haven't discovered?

Shields: Its hard for me to justify using my shield, because the only cman I have is sbash. I think shield builds would be more appealing if bards got access to shield wall or other group based shield skills, and/or sonic shields were given the ability to either deflect or absorb elements. While I like the dodge penalty reductions from air lore, in light of the elemental lore reviews, I feel the air lore rank thresholds are too high for shield reductions, allowing the third size reduction at 75 ranks would allow bards to at least free up 25 lore ranks to invest in something besides air lore. In light of some of the recent mechanical updates to the game such as ensorcelling, w/p/s, new scripts like parasite weapons, etc. I would like to see some of these skills accessible for sonic gear, or some development on updating sonic gear (shields, weapons, armor) scripts to allow them to do more than stir the breeze.

Armor:Please please please for the love of Cholen remove the impact vulnerability from 1014 or let us train off the vulnerability through some sort of lore. Can the durability bonus be either better explained, because it seems easily dispelled. Could it possibly replaced with something like the ability to change the appearance of sonic armor so it looks like clothing (costuming) or allow us to just sing 1014 at normal armor and allow it to absorb one or two elements (magic version of armor skill).

Lore: Bards are supposed to be lore masters, and the most magical of the semis, but we don't have a 50th level spell and can only 1x elemental and mental lore(max 101 ranks in each) so I would like to see either bards given the ability to 2x either mental or elemental lore, and or the air lore requirements for things like sonic weapon flares or shield size reduction, lowered to be more in line with tonis that tops out at 75 ranks. This would allow bards to free up at least 26 ranks of elemental lore to learn other lores that might benefit their 400's circle spells without feeling they are giving up too much benefit from air lore. I would also like to see some representation of our lore mastery in combat, either being able to sing to a class of creature to sense a vulnerability and exploit it in those creatures while the bard remains in that hunting area. A magical version of a martial stance basically.

Guild: I have been waiting for over a decade for any trainable skill in the guild. Since I don't think that is going to happen, can we at least stop charging dues for the bard guild and can those of use who have been paying dues every month for all this time at least get some sort of guild title? It also rankles me every Wednesday when other people have a special event and semi's without a guild get nothing, maybe give professions without guild skills, double bounty points on those nights?

Songs: Please look at song of rage, and consider giving it a single and mass target version, it would also be used a lot more if telepathy lore guaranteed the additional rage levels, rather than just giving a small, unpredictable chance of upping the rage level of the target. Remove the terrible side effect neg. aspects of bard songs, 1014 remove the impact vulnerability, 1018 please remove the catastrophic blow up everyone/thing in the room mechanic, 1020 I would not feel like I was missing anything if I never died of thirst again. 1025, please consider allowing this spell to flare, it does not get huge endrolls often so I won't deny that flaring would be a big offensive upgrade to the spell. 1050 it should be a utility spell, its utility should be to give us +15 to +20 generic TD, and or the ability to summon a magic carpet or rope to traverse obstacles like the ferry and rope bridge.

Thank you for your time an consideration of these matters.
Archales

And see also Krakii's Big Long Laundry List Of Stuff:
http://forums.play.net/forums/GemStone%20IV/Bards/Bard%20Magic,%20Spells,%20and%20Spellsongs/view/546

Things like "ELR gave benefit X to two (one of them Spirit) spells... how about same thing for this other spell, and oh look! Elemental Hybrid Semi spell!"
Just saying.

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I, too, would like "more Shield stuff". Half-value of Shield Maneuver ranks, or something. Having to pay CMan for a shield benefit rankles.

Building on Archales' comment, freeing up 20+ EL ranks could do things like 'allow enough Water to benefit from Mana Focus/418'.

Love, love, love, to take advantage of the bug that got cleared up recently, where it WAS possible to have two (2) Sonic Weapons in-hand. Stop calling them "weapon" and "shield". Call them "left-hand" and "right-hand" equipment, and right-hand cannot be a shield. <shrug>

Also, flares for more than just the right-hand weapon. Fine, fine, don't do them at the same likelihood; ONLY allow the Lore flare. Whatever. If we're at seed1 for the current bonus, make it seed2 for the second item, seed3 for the third item, and seed4 for the fourth item (remember: Dancing Weapon/1025).
Yes, allow for flares on Dancing Weapon.

I'll be honest, I pretty much ignored any warding spell (HoldSong/1001, VibChant/1002, Banshee's Wail/1008, Unravel/1013, Depression/1015, Rage/1016 [heh; never cast this one, so far]) until the early-to-mid-20s when I started blowing up the equipment of Warfarers.
Usually I was at 50% mana or more out in the field, so 2 to take a chance on making them less able to hurt me (or in the case of Warriors with reinforced shields, easier for me to hurt) at a cost of 3s in Guarded was a worthwhile use of time.

And by the same token, I ignored the Sonic Equipment (09, 12, 14) because of MSP.
(I repeat my suggestion that the 'basic equipment' Songs should not count towards MSP. So you could have Sword and Board and Armor... AND your medley of three 'actual' [useful] Songs.)
For Sonics, I think I was probably in mid-20s before I started using the Weapon... and of course, I abandoned weapon-swinging in the mid-30s. Started using the Shield, though, in the late-60s, because +35 Tower (that hinders Dodging as a Medium) is extremely juicy.

PeaceSong is situational anyhow--only need it every so often--and Noise is another one that doesn't match my current style (I want to have magic going off!).

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So that's 11 of the first 20 that just didn't get used, period.
Twelve, if you wait with Luck--darn that MSP!--until you've actually got some Song knowledge to make it likely to happen.
Power is another good one to wait until much longer renewal, and actually having a big enough pool to have larger pulses pay for the cost of the Song. And there's that MSP issue. Thirteen.
Traveler's you only need once per hunt, usually. Fourteen.

Protective magics are all good, so Kai's and Valor and Mirrors and Fortitude (start/stop); Eighteen.

Purification doesn't need casting until you have some gems. Nineteen.

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And the big mac daddy of them all... Lullabye doesn't use warding! It's based on INFluence.

The ELR and 'evoke' unlocked a whole bunch of <other professions' spells>, normal single-target [cast] ones turning into mass-effect [evoke], and normal mass-effect [cast] turning into single-target [evoke].

I promptly went and asked for the same thing for all of the BardSongs that had already existed and had good precedent for working that way.
http://forums.play.net/forums/GemStone%20IV/Bards/Bard%20Magic,%20Spells,%20and%20Spellsongs/view/860

Hasn't happened yet.

Well, I still say that Disruption actually is too powerful...

<flee the pitchforks & torches of other Bards!>

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Or, since we're talking Bardic improvements, I could give up my firstborn.
I mean, both of them are vaporware.... :)

>When it's pretty much all there is...

I dunno. I always found Vibration Chant pretty stinkin' useful.

~ Haliste ~
SGM, Events
Auntie H, Forever

Omrii: Okay, thanks Haliste. You're way better than Wyrom.

But probably not at the low levels that the other poster was talking about.

>> But probably not at the low levels that the other poster was talking about.

I asked and she started using it in her early 30s - she's 45 trains now.

That doesn't mean it wouldn't be effective earlier... that's just when she discovered it was a useful spell. :-)

-- Robert

Due to the volatile atmosphere, random bolts of lightning can intermittently be seen streaking through the skyline.

Heck yeah, in that level range VibChant was great. Sheruvian acolytes & monks swinging a fist--assuming they survived the explosion--were basically flower-children, even if they were at +75AS from calling on their god.
"Puny god." </hulk>

I had good success with it already in the 20s.
By the 60s, up in stone trolls (wooh, something that carried a shield!) & giants, and the Illoke inside the Stronghold, you saw me posting here on the Boards about a roughly ~25% lethality rate.
(7 of 13 areas can have a lethal crit, some of them start at rank5 of 9 available crit ranks.)

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But again--as I had to explain to several complaining Sorcerers & Wizards--it's a self-regulating success, even when it works:
- creature has to carry equipment in the first place.
- if what they choose to carry happens to be a 2Hand or Pole Arm, you get ONE shot at it.
- even if they carry a shield, you may only get a single shot at it if your first explosion's crit severs the opposing hand or arm.
- even if you get an explosion, you may not get anything severe.
- and of course, you may just get a sucky roll and nothing explodes at all.

Sure, you can get a death for 2 mana... but you might also get "it doesn't even drop it", even on a 120-130 result. So it's extremely different from something like Mana Disrupt/702 or Smite|Bane/302, which pretty much work on the principle of "I Deal Damage, Because I Hit You."

1002 is a great spell, manipulation lore helps lower the warding threshold needed to shatter the weapon. I used song of depression 1015 to help lower the targets TD its expensive to start, but the renewals are much more mana efficient than trying to cast 413 at stuff. I believe the base TD pushdown from 1015 is -20 TD so its worth using if you know what you're hunting has a weapon and/or shield.

I like the idea of being able to transfer our sonic benefits onto a real item with enough lore, I say why stop at weapons, let us do this with armor and our shields as well. Call it sonic tuning, maybe limit how many items we can transfer the benefits to at once, or let us use it on our sonic equipment so things like elementals can't dispel them. I would definitely love it, if it let us make a real weapon float around for our 1025.

In closing, I just wanted to mention again how amazing it would be if no more bards had to die from 1018.

Loving the discussion so far,
Archales

That makes sense to me Krakii, about the perceived improvement to 1002 results around 30 trains.

It doesn't make as much sense to use 1015 first unless you are are having trouble warding them with +135 endrolls. My suggestions were mainly about how to lower the threshold a bit more early on. For any bard with 425 you should be able to use 1002 and have it be lethal a good portion of the time. While I haven't tested it, I like to think that using 1015 first, gives em more RT even if they don't die from the weapon/shield explosions, slower foes is a good thing for me as a polearm/brawling/bow user, ymmv based on hunting style and training plans. Out of curiosity why not go from stronghold to the bowels? just tired of hunting stone creatures or is is easier to ward things in the redforest/labyrinth?

Archales