Sat Jan 14 10:00:53 2012

At 7 o'clock PM, Day of Thunder, 10th of the Month of the Battle
on the Theran calendar Badduah perished, never to return.

Race:	half-drow
Class:	bard
Level:	48
Alignment:	Evil
Ethos:	Chaotic
Cabal:	SCION, the Scions of Eternal Night
Age:	72
Hours:	101

Fought you once, it was in the underdark. I'm guessing you thought that I could not walk out with illusion up. Was looking forward to fighting/doing stuff with ya, but times did not mesh

Yeah, I remember that fight! I was trying to be careful on who I picked fights with, but, I knew you were carrying that periapt that Scree was looking for so I went for it.

Earlier, she and I had went to get the periapt and saw you and that transmuter leaving with it. My plan was to take you two on there and hope to hit you with a lullaby, but, you walked past me just as I stepped north and a mob struck me. I couldn't disengage and turn around quick enough. So, being an applicant at the time I thought it would be a good move to try and get the periapt from you in the underdark to give to Scree. I thought it fit nicely with Badduah's lusty role.

Anyways, very nice work making it back to the island in the illusion. That is pretty impressive running. I should have figured you were going to mostly run east and west down there. I spent the first part of the chase checking a few steps into each off-tunnel, which wasted a lot of time.

First, I just want to say I had a ton of fun playing Badduah and didn't delete him over any bad blood. I rolled him up because I had never played a bard or a scion before. In fact, I've never played a character into the hero range outside of Battleragers, where I've played plenty. So it was pretty interesting to see things from the other side.

This character was mostly intended for learning purposes. I wanted to see what Scions was all about, which was awesome. I found bards to be challenging, but, felt like I started to get the hang of it at the end. I could tell that to be really effective I needed to 1) get to hero 2) spam more songs and certain skills 3) spend more time finding more appropriate gear and a better instrument. For example, my fiends were always weak as hell and often low int races would see through them. This I pretty much attributed to not being lvl 51, instrument and low skill %. At the end I just wasn't all that motivated to do some of those things, especially since I was having too much fun taking the bard out for fights, which were always plentiful! That, of course, led me to eat a bunch of deaths so I figured it was time to end the experiment.

As for the role, I did try hard to roleplay with the character. The whole idea behind Badduah was to be a power lusty man who thought he was some sort of witty and smooth dude but underneath it all was really just a sleazy whorehouse owner. I had big ideas for executing this but found it to be real hard and felt like I didn't quite pull it off. Sorry if those ridiculous dirty songs I was writing offended anyone. I had a few more in the cue, but, didn't get around to publishing them.

Anyway, thanks to everyone I interacted with. You all made it fun. I'll respond to posts if you wanna say something.

You were fun to rp with. Never realised you were a scion though or I'd have tried to kill you.

Actually, I did try to kill you but we had some fun rp too.

Thanks alot. I think there were a lot of people that I traveled with as a pledge that probably would have tried to kill me had they known I was a Scion pledge!

For what it's worth:

I think if you're going to play a bard, it's good to learn to PK with lowbie/midbie bard. Once you figure out how to make that work, you don't have to hang everything on echoes and grand nocturne and that's a big help even at hero.

I'd agree with that. Thanks for the advice. Although, I think that holds true for most classes. At first, I had planned to stick in the mid ranks awhile and learn the ropes and practice my songs. I got a little impatient, though. I kept reading on the forums about how bards became more and more effective the closer you got to hero. Also, as I mentioned in another post, I started to notice that alot of my group mates would not have been traveling with me had they known I was a Scion pledge. Having never played a Scion, I began to worry that should I become inducted and become known as a Scion that leveling would be significantly harder to do, so I took advantage of those opportunities with they presented themselves.

As far as grand nocturne. I never considered it to be some sort of I win button. I was only trying to convey how weak it was for me and that I was certain there were ways to make it better but at that point I wasn't willing to put the time into it to improve it. If I conveyed a different meaning in the goodbye post, I didn't mean to. I don't know if people spam that song up or not, but, with the mana cost it would be one hell of a tedious chore.

Echoes is a little bit different of a story. Now having played both sides it's my opinion that echoes is a pretty crucial part of the bard's repertoire when fighting melee classes. Especially, well skilled and equipped melee class characters. I'm sure you can win without it, but, since you have it why not use it?

I did start to learn a few things about using other parts of the bards repertoire at the end. Although, by no means did I learn all there is and ultimately, I'll agree that some more time fighting in the lower ranks would be helpful. Perhaps next time around.

By the way, what's up with the swashbuckler edge? Is it really, really expensive or something? I save and saved and saved for it. I had all the pre-req's perfected, yet, it still never popped in my edge list. Is there some hidden pre-req I didn't have?

It's right up there with the frightful fiend edge, not quite as expensive as that, but close.
But then again, it's a pretty nice edge for human and halfie bards, especially since rarely is charisma ever lowered on a person.

I even considered taking it with a wood elf I had with 24 charisma since I suspect having it (even with a 22 charisma) could be a way to cover the dex loss if you get maladicted instead of using + dex gear. But I never actually did that since I always ended up taking other edges and figured it was just easier to gear for dex.

>As far as grand nocturne. I never considered it to be some
>sort of I win button. I was only trying to convey how weak it
>was for me and that I was certain there were ways to make it
>better but at that point I wasn't willing to put the time into
>it to improve it.

There are exceptions, but in general I think it might be wise to think of it less as a tactical nuke and more as a finishing move. In that context how strong it is is a little less relevant. YMMV.

>Echoes is a little bit different of a story. Now having played
>both sides it's my opinion that echoes is a pretty crucial
>part of the bard's repertoire when fighting melee classes.
>Especially, well skilled and equipped melee class characters.
>I'm sure you can win without it, but, since you have it why
>not use it?

Two things come immediately to mind:

1) I'm going to do a lot of PKing before it comes out at 40, and

2) In a lot of situations, people will quaff or clear out as soon as it lands. That might be okay by you, but then again depending on what's going on and what you're trying to do, it might not.


>By the way, what's up with the swashbuckler edge? Is it
>really, really expensive or something?

It's on the high end of expensive.

You were more than willing to take me on, and did it pretty well. I was enjoying our fights a lot. I'm not sure any fighting class is very fun in Scion. Still, good work, and GLOYN.

Thanks alot, I agree, our fights were lots of fun. Nice char and good luck going forward.

I do certainly hope this is not over being killed by that fort gang. I never expected you to be deathful, and I thought your rp (and mimicing Death, though I expected it to bite you in the ass one day) was funny/refreshing, so you got in.

You were probably the ideal example of someone who does not need to be stand out pk wise, but still a good member of Scion, since you never showed fear, responded appropriately, and above all seemed to RP hard.

Unless of course you were bashing in heads when I wasn't looking, since bard and conjurer synerize as well as a brick and a blender.

Not at all! That death didn't influence me deleting, I actually deleted this AM, not after I died there. See my post above for a little more detail. I will say I was a little frustrated because my last 3 deaths were against warriors that I went 0 for 7 on landing symphonic echoes on. I was cursing aloud about that!

I really want to stress how much I appreciate you giving me a shot to experience Scions. You're a great Advisor and definitely have a very evil vibe about you in char. You really get the feeling you don't want to cross you. Very well done. Sorry about that task. I kinda misunderstood what you were asking of me.

To fighting you some more, what happened?

Yeah, we had some good ones. You were pretty damn tough and you hit damn hard. I was certain there was little room for error when fighting you. If things didn't go well early it was always my plan to retreat. Good luck going forward.