Perform "use" ideas

[Spookydodger]

Idea:

How about making your perform skill as the modifier to the following:

• Fascinate:
  
  • replaces (or adds) to Charisma modifier (charisma modifier already built into perform skill check) for fascinate checks (or becomes the DC modifier if there is no check). This is to say, if you have a perform of 20, you get a +5 to the DC of your fascinate checks

• Song duration
  • Perform total modifier gives bonus to song duration

• Magnify personality
  • additional bard song ability that makes players appear to have the bard's perform modifier (20=+5) to all Charisma based checks (Diplomacy, intimidate, haggle, etc). This would allow the Bard to help their party, say, when dealing with the NPC outside of "Thrall of the Necromancer" to give them the prerequisite bluff skill to not have to pay 10,000 gold to advance the quest, or allow party members to buy things more cheaply from vendors

Any other ideas? At present, there is no other use for bard songs than getting more bard abilities, and that's only a point to ranks, not total skill modifier. So items like Gylan's blade and perform bonus items are absolutely useless at present.

[Aeneas]

i don't think fascinate has a save or dc check.

[Spookydodger]

"Why not make it like Perform from PnP?" you may ask?

Well, the problem here, I would imagine, is with the skill being largely useful outside of combat, in PnP. Fascinate, in PnP, is useless once a battle has begun. It simply cannot be used once hostilities have broken out. Additionally, the bard has to keep visible, and has to keep playing.

In DDO, none of these are prerequisites, and probably rightfully so. It would be too hard to use, otherwise. With that ease of use, I suppose giving the song DC as a perform check might have been considered too powerful. In PnP, your perform check (What you roll on your perform skill) sets the DC of the target's Willpower save. In this game, where there are tons of items and absurd Charisma abilities possible, most perform checks would be set at 40+, well outside the range of possibility of saving in all but the most amazing will saves, and even then it would be difficult.

[Spookydodger]

i don't think fascinate has a save or dc check.

I don't think so, either.

However, it would be good to have one. It would reduce the uber-power of a bard (I have one, so I would be gimping myself on this one), but it would give a benefit, as well.

If you made the modifier for the DC of the fascinate ability save based off the perform skill, you would still get something very hard to save against and have a point to perform items. Then, if you make Red and Purple named bosses NOT immune to fascinate, it would be incredibly useful and still fair as their save would make it hard, even with a 50 perform (for a +25 bonus or so) to stun them.

The whole purple/red named immunity, especially on mobs that heal themselves (while attacking, mind you!), would be reduced in sillyness.

[Qwanderer]

Add magical instruments to the loot tables for bards to use. Things like pipes of the sewers, pipes of pain, Harp of charming, various magical drums, lutes, ocarinas ect. Set the use for such instruments to be vs. a perform DC to activate them, kind of like how UMD operates and exactly how they work in PnP. There are several magical instruments that use these rules.

Seems like a good use for the skill.

[Uska]

Add magical instruments to the loot tables for bards to use. Things like pipes of the sewers, pipes of pain, Harp of charming, various magical drums, lutes, ocarinas ect. Set the use for such instruments to be vs. a perform DC to activate them, kind of like how UMD operates and exactly how they work in PnP. There are several magical instruments that use these rules.

Seems like a good use for the skill.

I would like to see bards get more instruments and some more songs I do miss my entertainer from pre-nge starwars sometimes

[Uska]

facinate is already to good in pvp(not that I go there) I think the changes they have made in bards have taken fairly well the changes that ddo had to do. I hate 3.0-3.5 bards anyways(playing them I like them in my party) bring back 1st ed ad&d bards

[jaitee]

i say give a save to fasinate, then might aswell take out the class, a bard's one ability that is actully different and unique about the class being nerfed, bards already have a hard time, why would you guys want a save on theie songs?, as for PVP, the pvp system isnt thought all too well, but many spells are too strong in pvp

[Kraldor]

Then, if you make Red and Purple named bosses NOT immune to fascinate, it would be incredibly useful and still fair as their save would make it hard, even with a 50 perform (for a +25 bonus or so) to stun them.

Making purple raid bosses vulnerable to fascinate? You're joking, right?
Velah the Red Dragon - she will not waste her time listening to some stupid music, she will roast the bard alive. Did you really think that it would pull her attention away from something she is sacrificing her life to do?
Warforged Titan - construct, no chance
Demon Queen - what, Lailat the Demon Queen, who is fighting for her life against allies of her mortal enemy, will really just sit down and take a break to listen to some tunes?
The Stormreaver - he is setting off a doomsday device, I'm pretty sure its hard to take that off of your mind with some nice melodies!

As for other red named bosses that you mentioned making vulnerable as well, the same things apply. These are people who are leaders of all the mobs that you have fought throughout. They are no ordinary enemies. While I admit that having blanket immunities to everything is pretty annoying, having bard song immunity is completely reasonable and should not be removed.