While we're at bards and which hand holds what discussions... How about two-handed instruments? Like guitars, banjos, saxophones, violins (why are there no violins in cf btw, it's the devil's own instrument ffs.).. They'd be a little bit more powerful than one-handed instruments, but have the drawback of no parry, no shield block and no melee attacks...



Ye like?

Especially when he's in Georgia.

Strange as it may seem considering my usual music tastes, I love that song and I have it entirely memorized.

I rock.

The back to Georgia version considerably less so.

Basically, bards would carry around both two-handed and one-handed instruments, and switch to the two-handed one for non-combat healing/enhancement, combat support, or maledicting the helpless.

This would make knockout effects (bardic or otherwise) stronger than they already are, and would bump bards significantly up in power, which I'm not sure they need in a broad sense.

valguarnera@carrionfields.com

But it'd add just a little bit more depth to bards; even though they aren't the class most in need of it, it never hurts...

For example, you could make them a bit more frail by reducing the effectiveness of resistance ;)

and/or you could make 1h instruments a little bit worse than the current instruments, and 2h instruments a little bit better than the current instruments

edit: Thinking about it, that would edge bards more towards being sleep/spellup monsters than they currently are.. Which probably isn't a good thing as there are enough classes like that. That being said, I do think that bards are tremendouly powerful and I my intentions with the idea wasn't to increase their power, but to diversify them.

(Actually, it was mostly a kneejerk reaction to the funny discussion below about whether bards could punch while holding a shield and an instrument.. Just thought it funny that nobody suggested they might not be able to sing, play an instrument, and cut people up with a sword all at the same time)

edit: Thinking about it, that would edge bards more towards being sleep/spellup monsters than they currently are..

Yeah. We were pretty careful about that sort of thing during the repertoire diversification. I don't think sleep-monster bard got much from that set of changes, but a lot of other bards sure did.

I'm a big fan of increasing object variability, but the problem is that two-handedness is only a drawback during combat, and bards have lots of songs that don't involve combat, and therefore the drawback doesn't matter no matter how bad it is. I think you'd have to do something fairly involved and arbitrary, like "two-handed instruments only help during combat" (Why? Who knows.), and even then all you'd probably do is powerup non-tanking bard, or bard singing your slept form up while fighting some nearby NPC, or some other weird cases.

We're still a big step ahead of "all instruments are the same as far as your songs are concerned", though.

valguarnera@carrionfields.com

Allow an option at bard creation: Do you prefer playing with one or two hands on the keyboard? :p

More seriously, let bards specialize (at creation) in either one or two handed instrument playing.

One handed bards = current bards

2h bards can't play one handed, it's like a capella.. So in order to be able to sing, they have to give upp all melee offense and all defenses but dodge.. They are really frail, but they play music oh so beautifully... If they don't use their instrument, they get some limited fighting abilities (say like current bards minus shield block and enhanced damage.. including saves loss for too high damroll). 2h bards could also get a boosted tune skill which lasts for a few songs (5 or so maybe)...


Just to clarify...

1h bards:


2h bards:

~

I've always enjoyed the thought of someone trying to play a guitar one-handed. If you made it realistic, (99% of instruments are two handed ) then bards would be taking a huge hit. But if you funstick it like you say, and just add some two-handed stuff then bards get, at best, a small power increase.

It would be tough to add new two-handed instruments in a way that makes any kind of sense, though. An alternative might be to give some small advantage to bards two-handing their instrument (ahem) a-la the rumored two-handed parry/disarm bonus with weapons.

And I'm pretty sure there are some fiddles and violins in CF.

Screw violins though, I say ditch the Harp Strung with Pure Light and put a Theremin Powered by Pure Light in its place. This is a good idea and someone should do this immediately.