Wed Jan 11 08:48:13 2012

At 8 o'clock AM, Day of the Bull, 29th of the Month of Winter
on the Theran calendar Malawen perished, never to return.

Race:	wood-elf
Class:	bard
Level:	51
Alignment:	Neutral
Ethos:	Chaotic
Cabal:	OUTLANDER, the Outlanders of Thar-Eris
Age:	265
Hours:	103

I wanted another shot or two at you (and some others). I even ranked up JUST for it. Now you're all gone. :(

Do not like bards.

The idea here was to see how juiced I could get using the edges available to wood-elf romantic preferred. I was hoping to take serenade, woodsong, psychological insight, get leader, then go nuts with fiend and insects. Yeah. Didn't come close.

Romantic fiend, even with romantic as my preferred repertoire and with the serenade edge, was underwhelming. Consequently I spent a lot of time singing in tragic since someone early on gave me a super-pimp tragic instrument. But it was annoying knowing that I was always less powerful than I could be had I chosen a different preferred repertoire.

Side note on instruments: seems like there are way more "decent" and accessible tragic instruments than there are romantic. There were three top-tier ones I could never get my hands on to compare, but I suspect only one of them would have been good for romantic. That one would probably have been better than the romantic one I was using, but it's also either unique or limit two.

My experience fighting bards was that once they got you distorted they could just spam apocalyptic overture and it was a win button. That was not my experience w/ Malawen. Apocalyptic was also pretty underwhelming against mobs. It took me like 8 minutes to kill the Tribunal outer with no defenders. That was with me spamming piercing dissonance because (on average) it actually did more damage than apocalyptic.

Your plan might have held up ok if you'd gone elf. Otherwise...not so much.

Why- better edges for romantic, or just more likely to get leader?

Inherent bonus to romantic is only high elves, not wood elves.
(I think that is the case, might be wrong)

I tried that build twice as a high elf.
Once in Fort, once in battle.
Still didn't like it.

>Inherent bonus to romantic is only high elves, not wood
>elves.

Yeah, knew that, was just curious if that's what she was referring to or the fact that I'd have had an easier path to leadership as a good-aligned outlander.

Romantic is pretty underwhelming in general. The only ones I ever see using it are high elves, because of their innate bonus. But even then, they'll never have a fiend like tragic. Most of those edges raise it 1 level or something from what I found. Plus people will generally just use resist mental against you, so unless you're fighting villagers it gets harder to pull tricks on people once they know you are after them.

Pysch insight really doesn't help unless you're fighting high int people so it sort of negates a bit of their inherent int saves (I'm guessing int is related since singing to high elves is a pain) Pretty much I find even with it, high ints are still fairly difficult to sing to though.

Serenade I wouldn't bother with unless I play a female. Most chars and mobs are male you'll get more mileage out of it probably, and you get a few eq perks from being a woman. Yeah, power gamey I know.

Romantic instruments are fairly hard to come by, but then again, you can buy one of the nicest one's there is, and there are two others that are not legendary (there may be two legendary ones). One I thought was romantic turned out to be epic of all things, so sometimes it's just hard to know until you get them to compare. I think Hell had one or two nice romantics which are now inaccessible. The legendary ones are probably nicest, but I never see them there. Tragic instruments have a benefit of having one of the nicer ones being non-limited.

Apocalyptic for mobs, if they are higher level you will mostly just get illusions which are weaker than the other two. I tended to use it mostly for things vuln fire, ice or mental. I find it actually more useful in PK just because sometimes you hit that eradicate that people are not expecting. With the edge for it, it's pretty decent at hitting the vuln/avoiding the resist.

>Romantic instruments are fairly hard to come by, but then
>again, you can buy one of the nicest one's there is

Or kill for it, which I found out since my role-play didn't permit buying it. I could never find a romantic instrument better than that one. I did find another one that was "as good" for romantic and was pretty easy to get. It was my suspicion that a certain harp from an area explore, or a certain fiddle, might have been better, but I could never get my hands on them to check.

I had no idea this was you. I had Malawen pegged as more of a newbie.

You might need another run or two at bard to hit your stride with it, but if it doesn't agree with you then it doesn't agree with you.

Hanord almost got deleted a number of times due to suckitude on my part, and tragic human empire bard is about as powergamey as you can get with bard, IMO.

Once I finally got into the groove, understanding the timing and how vastly different it was, it got easier. Then, you know, war master and all that made things even easier. :)

There are some very nasty scrolls/staves you could have made good use of. But it's possible you'd feel an outlander shouldn't.

And you go up and delete! Like Twist said, stick with it longer to get a real feelign for it.

Anyways, was fun running with you for once!