Overhaul Music

Estarra · November 2013

Discuss the Overhaul Music Skillset.

Moi · November 2013

ab music
You have gained the following abilities in Music:
Practice            To master your instrument: practice, practice, practice!
MinorSecond         Serious disharmony that can damage the body.
BlankNote           Only the deaf can hear the blank note.
BardicPresence      Enjoy increased ego and performance ability.
MajorSecond         Subtle disharmony that degrades the ego.
MinorThird          Sad, calming note that can soothe the savage beast.
MajorThird          Harmonious tone that heals the body and mind.
PerfectFourth       Upbeat tone that attracts even the smallest of creatures.
Tritone             A sound that weakens the mind.
PerfectFifth        Whoever hears this sound cannot leave your performance.
MinorSixth          Strangely creepy sound drains both mana and ego.
InstrumentBond      Choose one instrument above all others.
MajorSixth          Sound that allows travel to various milestones.
MinorSeventh        This disharmonic tone enhances magical damage.
Roulade             A succession of tones to rouse your ego.
BlankChord          Similar to a blank note, but much stronger.
MajorSeventh        Strong disharmony that weakens the body.
Fugue               Change another musician's composition by joining in.
Octave              A harmonic unity that holds spiritual vibrations in place.
Master              Move on to a master specialization.
See AB MUSIC <ability> for more information on an ability.

ab music practice
MUSIC - PRACTICE

Practicing is done simply by playing an instrument. The more you play an instrument, the more adept you will be with that instrument. However, in order to establish a bond with an instrument, you must first purchase a "virgin" instrument (one never before played by another musician). As soon as you begin playing, that instrument will then bear your mark and practicing it will increase its bond to you. The greater your affinity to an instrument, the better you can play it (increasing the strength of some musical spells and decreasing the equilibrium it takes to play that instrument). Once an instrument reaches maestro level, practicing will not increase its strength. You may practice with any number of instruments.

ab music minorsecond
MUSIC - MINORSECOND

Syntax: PLAY MINORSECOND <target>
Damage Type: 100% Magic
This interval creates an extremely disharmonic sound, which can be sent
offensively against opponents. Note that if it cannot be heard, it will
do no damage.

ab music blanknote
MUSIC - BLANKNOTE

Syntax: PLAY BLANKNOTE <target>
Ailment: Auditory, Level 2/Max 5
One of the most closely guarded secrets amongst musicians is the existence of a "blank note" which can only be heard by those who are deaf (auditory, level 1). Miraculously, any who hears the sound of this note will receive a level 2 auditory affliction. This also has the effect of dissolving the magical shields that protect your target.

Note that auditory afflictions beyond level 1 (deaf) do not inhibit hearing; thus, the blank note will not have any impact on the auditory system.

ab music BardicPresence
MUSIC - BARDICPRESENCE

Buff: Ego Bonus, Level 3/Max 5
Your very presence as a bard will give you an ego bonus (3/5). This passive benefit is always active so long as you have this ability.

ab music MajorSecond
MUSIC - MAJORSECOND

Syntax: PLAY MAJORSECOND <target>
Affliction: Auditory, Level 1/Max 5
            Ego Curse, Level 1/Max 3
This interval creates a disharmonic vibration that creates a vice that squeezes the ego whenever it is used, giving an ego curse (1/3) and auditory affliction (1/5).

ab music MinorThird
MUSIC - MINORTHIRD

Syntax: PLAY MINORTHIRD <target>
This interval can only be played on denizens (not players). If they are hostile to you, there is a chance that the sound will soothe them. Note that some denizens are immune to this effect and you have to wait a short period of time before they will listen to it again.

ab music MajorThird
MUSIC - MAJORTHIRD

Syntax: PLAY MAJORTHIRD <target>
This interval produces a harmonious vibration which can heal. You can play it on yourself or on others.

ab music PerfectFourth
MUSIC - PERFECTFOURTH

Syntax: PLAY PERFECTFOURTH
If the location you play this interval is home to rats, weevils,
pigeons, or lizards, more will come in answer to the lively sound.

ab music Tritone
MUSIC - TRITONE

Syntax: PLAY TRITONE <target>
Affliction: Auditory, Level 1/Max 5
            Mana Curse, Level 1/Max 3
This interval unleashes a harmful vibration that causes a mana curse (1/3) and auditory affliction (1/5).

ab music PerfectFifth
MUSIC - PERFECTFIFTH

Syntax: PLAY PERFECTFIFTH <target>
Power: 3 (any)
Affliction: Auditory, Level 2/Max 5
This interval creates a beautiful sound such that the person it is directed to literally cannot move away from the musician who played it. When played, it will also give a severe auditory affliction (2/5).

ab music MinorSixth
MUSIC - MINORSIXTH

Syntax: PLAY MINORSIXTH <target>
This interval has a strangely creepy sound which can drain both the mana and ego of the person to whom it is directed.

ab music InstrumentBond
MUSIC - INSTRUMENTBOND

Syntax: INSTRUMENTBOND <instrument>
        INSTRUMENTBOND <instrument> BREAK
        CALL INSTRUMENT
Power: 10 (any) (to bond or break)
You can bond with one instrument that you can use at maestro level. You can
never have more than one bonded instrument, and that instrument will have a
greater strength than any other of your instruments. Further, you can call this
instrument from anywhere in the realm.

So long as a bonded instrument is played on a regular basis, it will always be
kept in pristine condition so that it will not be ravished by decay. Indeed, you
will find your bonded instrument will actually slowly turn back time as you play
it.

You may break the bond you have with your instrument. This will reduce your
aptitude with that instrument to 50% (unless it has an artifact rune attached).

ab music MajorSixth
MUSIC - MAJORSIXTH

Syntax: PLAY MAJORSIXTH <target>
        PLAY MAJORSIXTH IMBUE
        MILESTONES
Power: 1 (any)

This interval creates a sound that is attuned to the various milestones
found throughout the land, affording musicians and bards a unique means
of travel. Also, you may imbue a location with a personal milestone to
which only you may travel - though you may only have one such milestone
at any time. Milestones will last for approximately two months.

ab music MinorSeventh
MUSIC - MINORSEVENTH

Syntax: PLAY MINORSEVENTH <target>
Affliction: Magical Damage Malus, Level 1/Max 3
This interval creates a disharmony that can surround an opponent with a curse that enhances all magical damage done against the target.

ab music Roulade
MUSIC - ROULADE

Syntax: PLAY ROULADE
The roulade is a rapid succession of tones played to a single syllable -
certain to raise your ego to new heights with its bold, confident tones.

ab music BlankChord
MUSIC - BLANKCHORD

Syntax: PLAY BLANKCHORD
Power: 2 (Any)
This powerful chord will affect all your enemies in the location, acting
as though each has been played a blank note. However, if the enemy is
captivated by another bard, it will be difficult to break their
captivation if that bard is in their location.

ab music MajorSeventh
MUSIC - MAJORSEVENTH

Syntax: PLAY MAJORSEVENTH <target>
Affliction: Auditory, Level 1/Max 5
            Health Curse, Level 1/Max 3
This interval creates an intense disharmony that can attach itself to the body, creating a health curse (1/3) as well as auditory affliction (1/5).

ab music Fugue
MUSIC - FUGUE

Syntax: PLAY FUGUE <target> ADAGIO
        PLAY FUGUE <target> ALLEGRO
Power: 1 (any)
You can create harmonic fugues by weaving in your own music with that of another bard who is performing a song (i.e., songs composed through song specializations). Adagio will set the song back one stanza while Allegro will skip to the next stanza. If the song goes back too far or forward too far, the song will end prematurely.

ab music Octave
MUSIC - OCTAVE

Syntax: PLAY OCTAVE SEMPRE (to build a maestoso)
        PLAY OCTAVE TACET (to remove a maestoso)
Power: 3 (Any)
This is an extremely powerful use of music, whereby a maestoso or a
single perfect note is created that holds all spiritual and some magical
vibrations in place. This is quite dangerous because it affects everyone
in the room, including the musician and his allies. If the musician
leaves the room, the note will die out or, alternatively, a rival
musician can silence the sound by playing a counterpoint. Those who can
hear will not be able to heal auric ailments of any type nor be able to
focus spirit.

ab music Master
MUSIC - MASTER

Moi · November 2013

General notes:
Octave doesn't appear to be doing anything right now.
Master should probably get an AB again.
Blanknote doesn't work on people without deafness.
Non-blanknote music effects don't work on people with deafness.
I am absolutely in love with the BardicPresence change.

Estarra · November 2013

I think Octave does something with some of the other skills (I forget what at this moment but it's not that much of an impact). It probably should do something more (or maybe get rid of it?). Open to suggestions.

Master now has an AB.

The idea of Blanknote was to a way to move auditory ailment high enough that deafness will be hard to recover (deafness is level 1 auditory and blanknote will raise it 2 levels). As a deafness counter, I'm not sure it needs to work non-deaf.

Llandros · November 2013

Since the cure blocking part is not not needed (YAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!) octave also increased damage of discordant chord and made it not strips the affs of the target when used.

Not sure if you want any of those or not though.

Ssaliss · November 2013

Question on the general affliction system:

When it says "Affliction: Auditory, Level 2/Max 5", does that mean it will go from 0 (or 1) directly to 2, or does it mean it adds one level to a max of two? I assume the "Max 5" is the max level of the Auditory tree, and not actually part of which afflictions this specific ability will give.

Tacita · November 2013

Sidd and I have been playing about with this a bit. We did a lot of testing with DiscordantChord, which whilst it's gained in the spec I'm going to talk about here because it's common to all bards/involves all the aurics which are in Music.

Firstly, here are some numbers with using DCC at various affliction levels. All of these were done without octave, and were cast by Hollimar on Raklang.

DCC with L5 Auditory, L3 Manacurse: 1534h 1485m 2436e

DCC with L5 Auditory, L1 H/M/E Curses, L1 Magic Dmg: 1475h 1845m 2265e

DCC with L5 Auditory, L3 H/M/E Curses, L3 Magic Dmg: 1211h 1485m 1923e

DCC with L5 Auditory, L3 Magic Dmg: 1788h, 2025m, 2436e

DCC with L5 Auditory, L2 Magic Dmg: 1703h, 2025m, 2436e

DCC with L5 Auditory, L1 Magic Dmg: 1619h, 2025m, 2436e

Found two bugs whilst we were testing:

PerfectFifth is not currently raising auditory affliction level.

You can talk whilst stunned.

When we came out of the arena and were talking in the staging grounds, Sidd (as Synkarin) had one of my says (as Tacita) appear under the 'quadruple echo' effect that you get from auditory afflictions. It only happened once though, and wasn't the first or last thing I said. He was the person in the arena who had auditory afflictions when we were testing. There were also people in the arena testing at the time.

Here are some thoughts/observations we had (this answers your question I think, Ssaliss):

Health/Mana/Ego/Magic Damage curses do not strip when you DCC someone outside of Octave (didn't test it under Octave yet). We're not yet certain whether this is bad or not; it depends on how much curing can outpace things, and neither of us had a 'system' set up as yet. Noted here mostly so we/others can go back and test it once systems are kicking around! Gut instinct says this is a bit dodgy though.

In a similar vein - you can spam Tritone/MajorThird/MajorSeventh to raise auditory affliction levels. Again, cannot be certain if this is a 'problem', because it depends how much curing can outpace it (I'd guess that you put much less pressure on if you're only doing one type of curse), will want to look at this later.

If you give +1 auditory affliction level to someone who is at auditory affliction level 0, then you make them deaf. This is sort of annoying, obviously, as it means you have to blanknote (to raise them from levels 1-2). However, if P5 was working, you could get around this by using P5 straight off. Realistically the vast majority of people will already be at level 1, but worth thinking about nonetheless.

Tacita · November 2013

More DCC figures - again, these are by Hollimar on Raklang:

DCC with L5 Auditory: 1534h, 2025m, 2436e

DCC with L5 Auditory and Octave: 1842h, 2024m, 2436e

DCC with L5 Auditory, L3 Magic Dmg and Octave: 2146h, 2024m, 2436e

DCC with L5 Auditory, L3 Magic Dmg, L3 Health Curse and Octave: 1574h, 2024m, 2436e - with 3300 max health versus normal level of 4500

Neos · November 2013

Tacita said:

Hollister

:-?

Tacita · November 2013

Shhhhh. I didn't spend my childhood watching Red Dwarf, honest.

Silvanus · November 2013

You will have my eternal love if the octave mechanic is removed. Octave prevented Aurics from being cured via normal curing means (but were still cured by passives). Solo-barding was way over-reliant on setting up octave and was way too easily stopped by gusting the bard away. One of the last Envoy reports submitted went into addressing this problem, but this is a much better solution in removing the use of Octave entirely.

Question about D-Chording:

When you had set up all the curses, were your dchords taking power?

Tacita · November 2013

Had a quick glance through my log, it looks like dchord was always costing me 3 power regardless of how many whatsits Sidd had

Estarra · November 2013

Any ideas for a new replacement effect for Octave? I don't mind getting rid of it.

Llandros · November 2013

With the change from mana/ego/power spikes to H/M/E max reductions we lose the intermediary attack of minorsixth to do more than our bashing attack but less than DC.

If DC is indeed intended to strip all auditory afflictions, maybe an attack that damages people based on how much h/m/e they are missing to capitalize on the curses and or help finish off a strong DC?

So an attack that hits harder than a bashing attack but less than DC and is only effective on people who are pretty badly hurt and or have their max h/m/e significantly lowered would fill that gap.

Also, it would play off of the reduced h/m/e from music abilities.

Zvoltz · November 2013

Ssaliss said:

Question on the general affliction system:

When it says "Affliction: Auditory, Level 2/Max 5", does that mean it will go from 0 (or 1) directly to 2, or does it mean it adds one level to a max of two? I assume the "Max 5" is the max level of the Auditory tree, and not actually part of which afflictions this specific ability will give.

That means this skill will give 2 levels of the auditory affliction, up to a max of 5 levels. So if you did it once, they would be at 2, again would put them to 4, and again would max out at 5 (assuming they never cured).

Moi · November 2013

Raklang using DCC on Hollimar, no octave, no other afflictions.
Auditory L0: No damage, no power.
Auditory L1: No damage, no power
Auditory L2: 583h, 2025m, 2436e for 3p. Clears all Auditory levels.
Auditory L3: 917h, 2025m, 2436e for 3p. Clears all Auditory levels.
Auditory L4: 1279h, 2025m, 2436e for 3p. Clears all Auditory levels.
Auditory L5: 1669h, 2025m, 2436e for 3p. Clears all Auditory levels.

Things that improve DCC damge:
Octave, by 20%
Magic Damage Malus by 5.5% per level.

Things that do not:
MajorSeventh/HealthCurse. Damage appears to scale linearly to the target's max health, so decreasing MaxHealth is not giving you any progress.

Moi · November 2013

Possible issue: HealthCurse/ManaCurse/EgoCurse do not decrease current h/m/e, but do effect your maximum. Since damage scales to maximum h/m/e, using HealthCurse means that you're killing your opponent slower (less damage because their max health is smaller, but applied to the previous, larger health total) than if you did otherwise.

Moi · November 2013

Estarra said:

Any ideas for a new replacement effect for Octave? I don't mind getting rid of it.

What if Octave did this:

Llandros said:

With the change from mana/ego/power spikes to H/M/E max reductions we lose the intermediary attack of minorsixth to do more than our bashing attack but less than DC.

If DC is indeed intended to strip all auditory afflictions, maybe an attack that damages people based on how much h/m/e they are missing to capitalize on the curses and or help finish off a strong DC?

So an attack that hits harder than a bashing attack but less than DC and is only effective on people who are pretty badly hurt and or have their max h/m/e significantly lowered would fill that gap.

Also, it would play off of the reduced h/m/e from music abilities.

Octave makes everyone in the room suffer the previous manabarbs/egovice effect, where some % of mana/ego damage becomes health damage. If you want to keep sempre/tacet, have tacet work in reverse - some % health damage goes to mana/ego damage.

Hiriako · November 2013

Even with Deafness/Truehearing you are still stuck under PerfectFifth. I cannot fleeeeeee.

Akyaevin · November 2013

The current mechanic of auditory afflictions preventing deafness is going to make dsong very powerful - probably too powerful.

A theoretical encounter (would use an actual encounter, except that pfifth is buggy):

Begins with the enemy deaf. Play blanknote. They now have lv2 auditory plus a brief stun.

Play perfectfifth. +2 auditory to Lv4 auditory, possibly still stunned but should recover soon.

Start deathsong. They cannot move until they eat three earwort to become deaf, and I think the current herb balances make that impossible.

Although this is a basic example, the same problem can be achieved with the aurics if just pfifth/bnote are changed, especially given that aurics are so damn fast. Might need to rework/extend deathsong.

Moi · November 2013

Actually building auditory levels seems kinda weird (at least for a bard used to the old system). Tests:

Auditory 0, truehearing:
Blanknote: no effect, costs 2s eq from caster.
Earwort: Auditory lvl 1, costs herb balance.
M2/TT/M7: Listed effect.

Auditory 1, truehearing:
Blanknote: 1s stun, Auditory goes to lvl 2, gives the old earache messages, but has no effect.
Earwort: Auditory lvl 1, costs herb balance.
M2/TT/M7: No effect.
Ironchord: no damage.

Auditory 2, truehearing:
Blanknote: no effect, costs 2s eq from caster.
Earwort: Auditory lvl 1, costs herb balance.
M2/TT/M7: Listed effect.
Ironchord: 1123 and level 1 bleeding.

Auditory 3, truehearing:
Blanknote: no effect, costs 2s eq from caster.
Earwort: Auditory lvl 2, costs herb balance.
M2/TT/M7: Listed effect.
Ironchord: 1154 and level 1 bleeding.

Auditory 4, truehearing:
Blanknote: no effect, costs 2s eq from caster.
Earwort: Auditory lvl 3, costs herb balance.
M2/TT/M7: Listed effect.
Ironchord: 1185 and level 1 bleeding.

Auditory 5, truehearing:
Blanknote: no effect, costs 2s eq from caster.
Earwort: Auditory lvl 3, costs herb balance.
M2/TT/M7: Listed effect.
Ironchord: 1216 and level 1 bleeding.

As it stands, if someone starts out undeaf, ie Auditory 0, you have to use M2/TT/M7 to build auditory levels by 1. This deafens them. You then use blanknote build auditory levels by 2, bringing them up to auditory 3 and curing their deafness. You then go back to M2/TT/M7 for auditory afflicting. There also doesn't appear to be any way to loose the truehearing defense.

Moi · November 2013

And on a somewhat more serious note, PerfectFifth is not respecting deafness in the overhaul; currently there is no escape.

Raeri · December 2013

So hmm... what's the intended role of mana/ego drains now? With no more pre-overhaul auric affs to convert it into damage, it doesn't seem to progress the bard along any kill condition available to them.

Moi · December 2013

There doesn't seem to be any real point to it right now, but it may be useful later in group combat. Or with Dramaturgy.

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