-Scholor's 2nd Advancement: The Bard-

Bard:

Bards use songs or dances to cause effects, often strengthening the party or weakening the opposition through temporary stat reduction via the Sing command. They generally equip harps as weapons. Some Bard incarnations have the ability to Hide from the enemy. This command is mainly inserted due to the Bard's low physical abilities. A variation of the class, the Dancer, uses special Dances to cause status effects or damage to enemies on a battle field. Unlike songs, the result of a dance is usually random. Other variations include Moogles, Songstresses, and members of royalty. Bards have MP regeneration songs and stat boosting songs. (In some games) Bard and Dancer are the only male and female (respectively) unique classes held by generic units. Dancer uses TP points to carry out dances which have varying effects and can be played as a front-line healer because of its restorative dances. -Can maybe cure/dispel (magic).-

To make things quite a bit more complicated, there are two types of
instruments. Wind instruments, like the flute and cornette, and string
instruments like the harp. Wind instruments have a tight range, and string
instruments have a much larger range. Thus, if you're playing paeon and
trying to cover the whole party, you should equip a stringed instrument.
Likewise, if you're playing minuet, you should probably equip a wind
instrument.

Armor: Cloth

Bards channel/cast songs, songs take a bit to take effect.

Burst Moves: A barrage of musical notes...

Forms of Steady Damage: None

Utility Moves: Buff, Debuff, Heal

Buffs: Damage Amplification Buffs, Mana Energizers

Debuffs: Damage Reduction Debuffs, Movement Speed Debuffs (with CDs)

Healing: Song of Healing (3 Sec Channel) Healing Notes (HoT with CD), bard is a backup healer only, usually really to defend himself

Surviving Buffs: Magic Note Shield (Reduces damage taken by a set percentage, has charges, this will be the skill that makes people say "KILL THE BARD FIRST, NO1 IS GOING TO DIE UNTILL THAT BARD DIES")

Trees: PvP (Survival, Buffs/abilities amplifications), Healing/Energizing (More power to heals, energizers)

Stats:
Int: Increases mana.
Charisma: Increases spellpower/tone.

Tone: Quality of sound. This amplifies spells.
Volume: Range
Playability: Chances of making a mistake.


*All Scales with Spell Power* - Meaning the more spell power the more it buffs/debuffs
Simple Skills: (numbers will be changed depending on whether they are too weak or too powerful, this is a *foundation*)

Inspiring Song: The upbeat and happiness imbedded in this song inspires everyone around you, increasing their damage by 10%
Catchy Beat Song (or talent): The rhythm and beat of this song makes everyone around you get funky increasing their melee and spell haste by 5%.
"Booing" Noise: Creates a cone of sound in front of the caster, taunts the opponents with a demoralizing sound, decreasing their happiness and frustrates them, damage decreased by 10%
Soothing Melody: (1.5 sec channel) Plays a southing song, rocking the target to sleep, the target sleeps for like 10 seconds. will be used for cc'ing garenteed.
Squeak (Flute/wind instrument): Creates a harsh high pitch noise, slowing the movement of opponents (and maybe allies) around the area.

Amplifiers:
White Note: Casts a white note over the target, amplifying any holy healing taken by 5%, but increasing holy damage taken by 10%.
Black Note: Casts a black note over the target, amplifying any shadow healing taken by 5%, but increasing shadow damage taken by 10%
Blue Note: Casts a blue note over the target, increasing frost damage taken by the target by 10%
Green Note: Casts a green note over the target, amplifying any nature healing taken by 5%, but increasing nature damage taken by 10%.
Yellow Note: Electric
Red Note: Fire

Fun Spells: Make everyone burst into dance.

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Reading the Skill/Spell Lvl guide of: http://www.ffcompendium.com/h/faqs/ff11bard.txt


Buffs/Debuffs: Def, Att Power, HP5, DoT Damage (on enemies), increase friend resistances vs poisons/disease/magic/curse, decrease enemies resistance against magic schools, increase friend accuracy, increase friend evasion, increase friend silence resistance, increase charisma (i guess that's spell hit), increase "Party Mind Up," increase MP5, increase intelect, increase agility, increase attack rate (haste), increase vitality, ranged accuracy (single target), increase dexterity, increase sleep resistance, dispel magic, increase strength, decrease enemy attack rate (haste), blind resistance (blind could be a decrease of accuracy rather than a cc), petrification resistance, resurrect, movement speed increase (high lvl skill), charm enemies.

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List of instruments from the same source:

Instrument Min lvl Effect
Flute 1 Nothing
Flute +1 1 Requiem +1
Maple Harp 1 Nothing
Maple Harp +1 1 Minne +1
Cornette 4 Minuet +1
Cornette +1 4 Minuet +2
Piccolo 9 Threnody +1
Piccolo +1 9 Threnody +2
Harp 14 Minne +1
Harp +1 14 Minne +2
Mary's Horn 14 Lullaby +1 (Dropped by Stray Mary in Konascht)
Royal Spearman's Horn 20 March +1 Charisma +3 (San d'Oria Rank 2 Item)
Traversiere 32 Madrigal +1
Traversiere +1 32 Madrigal +2

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This helps:

Yggdrasil wrote:well now on to instruments i have the basic outlines: Vocal, wind, reed, string(fretted), String (bowed)

early on it shouldn't make much difference they will both play rudimentary melodies.

Vocal: economic no need to buy items to progress, but least powerful

wind: powerful and ecomomic but inneficient winth mana

reed: requires replacement parts from time to time and more mana efficient that wind

String(bowed): incredibly nimble and powerful but instruments expensive and reqires extra items

String (Fretted): most powerful but most expensive often needs new strings plectrums early level instruments incredibly unreliable but makes up for meakness later on

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Judging from all this bards will absolutely be needed for everything creating a huge demand, they will not be OP without having someone to protect them, so it is likely that they will be one of those classes that are rare in the game, but Bard is the class I'm bringing the most appeal to, at least in the beginning. From all the non-funds I have their sound effects will probably be crappy at first, I'll make it not painful I promise. As my game grows I'll flow more funds into the quality of the songs/spells.

Remember: Gameplay > Economy > Story > Sound > Graphics

If the game is not fun, there's no use developing the other stuff, if the economy is broken, then things flip upside-down, if there's no sense in why you are there, you might not be motivated to play, if sounds are irritable or don't make sense, it may confuse the players and interest will be lost sooner, graphics are important up to a point, they have to be good enough to withstand, a player won't like a disproportional pixelated character that you can't tell if it's even human, and trees that look like zombies.

3d Humans that look like this is no:

..MMM..
<(o_0)>
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||(o)(o)||
|||___|||
U(||)(||)U
_(||)(||)_
\__/ \__/


Actually that's not so bad... I might use that for a foundation. lmao.

ok affter planning out the basics of how the system will work for two hours up here my IE decides to crash. i'll post the rest later, but heres the outline of how players will learn songs

1. By ear: first method of learning. later allows players to copy songs from NPCs and opponents by listening to their songs

2. memorization: most useful method can't be used on its own. determines how many times one has to hear a specific song in order to learn it. icreases the SR level that a player can use

3. Sight reading: allows players to buy written music and perform it if they have a high enough SR level to read it.

4 Improvisation: allows players to create songs and melodies at random. effects of songs based on improvisation level and scale used(each scale will have its own sub level)

5. compostition: allows players to write music(not knowing their effects until affter written) simmilar to improvisation, but the songs created can be repeated and even sold or traded. interactive?

next i'll outline the scale system(bards will definitely have one of the most complicated systems to write, but easiest to play)

Those are very good ideas, it could work how "Skill in weapons" works in world of warcraft, exept goes up with what you said there, and there's a very good economical use to it too, but I don't want to give random work random spells, there's have to be some kind of mechanics to the notes they put down on scroll paper and how they alter the benefit/drawback to the song.


Maybe instead of writing something specific they have a chance to write something weak, something mediocre, something good, and something epic (super low chance), so that they cannot just replicate the epicness infinitely, doing that would keep the prices on mediocre, supers and epics high, we can also used the weak songs to train scrub bards' "skill in reading" to keep those prices stable.

This is connecting together economically in my head (which I'm very oriented around, economy is the 2nd most important thing to a game, imo, first being the gameplay)

its not nearly as random as that one segment sounds i thought out a system that vastly narrows down what effects can be acheived and there are further details that i know will have to be in there but haven't quite decided how they'd work. like i said thats just a portion. just like real musicians improvisations and compositions will be based off of the previous songs they've learned, so there won't be any spells that a player couldn't do normally. for example if a player knows a song that buffs attack and another that buffs armor, an improvisation or origional composition might buff both but not to the same extent as the two individual songs. good for tight spots but not if you have time to buff an entire party. now then the second system: Scales

Basic Pentatonic: The Starter Scale used for debuffs. easiest to improvise with. The Pentatonic Scales are the only scales that recieve instant cast songs and can't be used in composition.

MAjor Pentatonic: (level 2) Used for buffs(and possibly healing?)

Blues Pentatonic:(level 5)Used for CC

Major Scale: (level 7) Similar to major Pentatonic but spells are generally more powerful but have longer cast times. Can be used in composition

Minor Scales: (level 9-18) Simmilar to Pentatonic Minor but spells are generally more powerful but have longer cast times. Can be used in composition. Divided into three sub divisions.

Natural minor: (level 9) Used for Debuffs based around stat reduction(armor deffense attack reduction ect.)

Harmonic Minor:(level 12) Used for Debuffs involving DOT. Difficult to imporvise with.

Melodic Minor: (level 18) Used For chaneling spells IMPOSSIBLE to improvise with

Mixolydian Scale: (level 15) A hybrid of Major and minor but closer to major. used to buff self/allies but buffs offer a nasty suprise for opponents and NPCs such as a spell that boosts armor and debuffs enemy when attacked

Lydian Scale: (level 20) congradulations you've reached level 20 and can summon wildlife! this scale allows you to summon natural creatures such as birds wovles ect.

Blues Scale: (level 25) a powerful and versatile system based loosely off of blues pentatonic. primary use is CC but can create secondary effects resembling major(chance to steal buffs or chance for instant self-buff), mixolydian(chance for instant self-buff), lydian(mind control enemy), melodic minor(stealing health or mana from sleeping enemy), and (later on) dorian songs(additional debuffs. see Dorian Scale When I post it). Difficult to use in Composition

Ok I just Mapped out the milestones for the first 1/4 of the game and its getting late. be on the lookout. i wanna work on special scales in addition to these and the other milestones i'll mention in my next post or two. scales that you don't NEED to progress through the game but are powerful and useful nonetheless. i'm researching real scal we can use such as the gypsy and japanese scale systems and other Pentatonics(so that you can do more than just the basics with instant cast.) I'll explain it all when i know what the hell i'm talking about

Edited by Kejin
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Well for now we're only concerned for lvls 1-20, but anything from 20~50 is fine we can save it for after we're done with 1-20. Try to build some specialisation trees for the bard, similar to what world of warcraft had.

The tree you build will be based on the lvl cap temporarily being 20, put a move at the end of each tree, it wont matter if the talents are overpowered, the players wont have much talent, and when we extent the lvl cap we can move around the talents. Check out the wizard post for more details.

well now on to instruments i have the basic outlines: Vocal, wind, reed, string(fretted), String (bowed)

early on it shouldn't make much difference they will both play rudimentary melodies.

Vocal: economic no need to buy items to progress, but least powerful

wind: powerful and ecomomic but inneficient winth mana

reed: requires replacement parts from time to time and more mana efficient that wind

String(bowed): incredibly nimble and powerful but instruments expensive and reqires extra items

String (Fretted): most powerful but most expensive often needs new strings plectrums early level instruments incredibly unreliable but makes up for meakness later on

I'm going to start putting your posts into the bard thread. Thanks for the information. Since bard is part of the scholor class, you can start putting info about mechas in a post about "engineers." Scholors will also be able to do pure dots, along the lines of affliction warlocks (from world of warcraft) but the real warlocks just use shadow magic (not neccicarily pure dots)

(edit: ignore this)

wind/reed - you can put like 10 points into either wind or reeded instrument specialization in the one job advancement

frett/notfret string - ditto

other - ...

And make skills that would be like "string only" or "wind only" for the specs, like playing 6+ notes at once (string; other instruments can't do that)

as it turns out in medival/ancient times there were actually portable keyboard instruments some that were around the size of today's computer towers this is great since this will explain later how the groups flute player can use the mega-death-boss organ. in short all bards should have keyboard skills of some sort as they will fill many purposes. they are what is typically used in composition make an excellent backup weapon should a string or reed break or if a trumpeters lung is punctured or a singer is silenced. a bard choosing keyboard as a primary instrument would have a great deal of difficulty in the beggining as cheap instruments are of terrible quality but skills such as polyphony(the ability to play a duet by ones self or even as many as 12(13 if they can sing!)instrument parts)and powerful instruments later on will make it more than worth it come that special day when you get to play the death organ

instrument qauities other than obvious major differences than will come into play later an overall
volume: maximum loudness(range) an instrument can handle spells will have dynamics i.e. a range of volume mute= 0-10%PPP=11-20% PP=21-30% P=31-40 mP=41-50 no marker= 51-60% mf=61-70 F=71-80 FF=81-90% FFF=91-100%
Breaking piont:the volume at which the sound quality is diminished to the point where a spell may not have effect
resonance:ability of a piece to play soft passages without safcirficeing volume(adds range)
sustain: the ability of an instrument to play slow passages without sacrificing volume
playabilty: the ease of an istrument to be played can be compensated by player skill
tracking:similar to breaking point and playability. a limit on the speed an instrument can be effectively played pushes player to buy new instruments as they progress as increased playing ability actualy makes tracking more of a problem(an experienced player is more likely to notice how bad an instrument sounds than a begginer who's excited to have an instrument in general)
range: another economy freindly factor that pionts out that certain instruments can only hit certian notes and certain spells will require notes that not every instrument can hit