Abilities

Passives

Body Language Expert

Unlock : Level 1

Bards can get simple messages or ideas across from their body language alone to any social (or at least communication-capable) creature who’s intelligent.

Orator

Unlock : Level 1

Bards have the natural ability to speak very loudly compared to most, allowing them to make speeches that can be heard even in the noisiest of places.

Language barriers don’t exist for people as talented as yourself! You have gotten so good at getting points across that you are now able to get almost any intelligent creature that could be willing to listen to understand your message. You can now transmit messages simply by your tone and body language no matter how complex the message may be!

Unlock : Level 100

Having learnt from all your experiences, you are now able to understand anything speaking (or barking, or screeching, or howling, or …) any languages that you’ve heard being spoken even only a few times before.

Actives

Buff

Heroic Tale

Unlock : Level 1
Condition : Has to be used before a fight is about to begin¹

Gather round’ and hear this great tale about adventurers of times past! Start playing a song to which you sing along, telling your comrades about historical fights and battle strategies, giving them courage and preparing them for combat, giving them charisma * 2 defense until the end of your next encounter.

Warrior’s Orchestration

Unlock : Level 5

Play an inspiring march, helping your allies who can hear you focus, increasing the statistical multiplier of every attack they deal by 1 for the first turn and by 2 for the second turn onwards as long as you keep playing.

Empowering Ballad

Unlock : Level 10

Start reciting a powerful ballad, greatly increasing the determination and courage of all allies who can hear you for as long as you keep using this skill. While this skill is active, your allies gain double INTE and INTI when checked against illusions and feel less pain.

Bluff

Cast time : 1 turn
Unlock : Level 25

Brag about your skills and how powerful you are to someone. If your INTI is at least twice as high as your target’s INTI or INTE, until the end of this encounter, all your social stats will be doubled when used specifically against² whoever was deceived; however, if the bluff fails, all your social stats will be halved for the next 3 turns. This ability cannot be used more than once on the same target per encounter.

Calming Lullaby

Unlock : Level 50

You start playing a lullaby³, calming your targets down, relieving them of any panic or stress they might be dealing with at the moment for as long as you keep playing for them, and healing them for NEG * 5 health every turn. Note that allies affected by this will have all their senses dulled for the duration of the lullaby.

Triumphant Melody

Unlock : Level 75

Play an invigorating melody, firing up allies who can hear you, increasing all their combat stats by CHA / 4 as long as you keep playing.

Aegis

Unlock : Level 100
Cooldown : 60 turns

Put your entire heart into your music, creating a unique song that has an ability that was believed to be lost to time, giving any ally that can hear your song a protection against death from health loss⁴ that can be used once. This effect lasts as long as you keep playing.

Debuffs

Cry for Mercy

Unlock : Level 1

Time to put your acting skills to the test, get on your knees, roll around on the floor, scream, and cry like a small child who’s been cornered! As long as you still haven’t used your intimidation stat or any attacks during this fight, this shameless display of fear will cause enemies intelligent enough to understand the meaning of your actions, but not merciless and stupid enough not to realize you are faking to hesitate before hurting you… If your NEG is at least twice as high as the (individual) enemies INTEL and NEG, for 3 turns after using this skill (5 if you are pregnant, a child or were just hit), enemies will not directly target you⁵.

This skill won’t work on merciless creatures. The effect ends the moment you use your INTI or attack.

Martyrdom

Unlock : Level 5

Present yourself as a dangerous-to-mess-with pacifist⁶ to a target group (or single target) to try and reduce the target’s will to fight or even make them leave altogether. For this skill to succeed your NEG must be at least twice as high as the INTEL of the smartest (or most influential) creature within your target’s group. If this skill works on the target group’s smartest individual (or leader) it will affect the entire target group.

On the second turn you use this skill, if your party still hasn’t attacked, your NEG is doubled. On the third turn you use this skill, if your part still hasn’t attack, you NEG is tripled.

With enough reputation, when this skill is used on humanoids, you can entirely ignore the stat check of this skill.

This skill doesn’t work on extremely stupid, aggressive, prideful or boastful targets.

Unorganised Melodies

Unlock : Level 10

Start improvising half-heartedly, creating purposefully disharmonic arrangements, breaking the focus of everyone around you who can hear you for as long as you keep playing.

From the Abyss

Unlock : Level 25

A very low toned song that seems to carry some magical properties : this song makes the vision of everyone who can hear it go dark⁷, while also making them feel extremely stressed, feel watched and make every sound except the song start to echo, as if in an extremely large cave. This song also makes the temperature considerably until it reaches a point where the air you breath out will at least visibly condensate.

Intimidating Presence

Unlock : Level 50

You daringly proclaim your future victory and announce your presence to all your opponents! Using this skill, which can only be used before a battle or during its first turn taunts every single enemy around you until the end of the encounter while also reducing every enemy’s damage by 25% until your death or the end of the encounter. For this skill to function, you need to win an INTI confrontation against all of your (individual) targets. If you die while this skill is active, every enemy will see their damage be increased by 50% for 10 turns. Enemies’ moral also considerably drops with this skill’s use, making them a lot more likely to flee once a few of them have been felled.

Tonal Correction

Unlock : Level 75

Play a song that carries the power to make all oral communication seem to come from random directions and undistinguishable from one another, making it impossible to know to who’s saying what, while also automatically translating all speech. This effect also applies to creatures who screech, howl, gurgle, whistle, etc., again, it applies to all creature who communicate orally, but those who do not use oral communication will be left almost completely unaffected by this skill and still be unable to understand speech translated by this skill.

Hysteria

Unlock : Level 100

A song that makes anyone who hears it (except the musician playing it) instantly fall into a state of berserk-like rage, making them attack anyone who gets close to them for as long as you keep playing plus a turn. This skill doesn’t work on targets whose INTI or INTEL are equal or higher than your INTI.

Fighting

Melodic Destruction

Unlock : Level 1
Condition : Being desperate
Cooldown : 100 turns

As a last resort, a bard can break their most precious possession, their main instrument, on an aggressor’s head, dealing (1d4/2 * (highest social stat * % of missing health/10 + LVL * 20)) damage, this also stuns the target for a turn, disorients them, and has a chance to knock them out if you dealt at least 25% of their health as damage and win a LUC confrontation against them, or if you did at least 50% of their health as damage.

Strongly Worded Insult

Unlock : Level 5

Words can also hurt sometimes… You start loudly screaming the harshest words you can come up with at a single target, reducing their moral, and dealing 1d4/2 * INTI * 4 damage to them that fully pierces armor as long as the target hears you, understands you and notices that you are talking to them.

Dissonant Arrangements

Unlock : Level 10

Infuse rage into the music you play, making it physically cause harm⁸ to everyone⁹ who hears your song, making them take 1d4/2 * INTI * 3 + LVL * 10 damage.

Final Words

Unlock : Level 25

Infuse the words you throw at someone who’s putting your life at risk with your own fear of death, causing the target to feel your own dread, causing them 1d4/2 * INTI * 5 + LVL * 20 damage. This skill can only be used on someone who has dealt damage to you at least once.

Dooms(d)ay

Unlock : Level 50

A skill that requires you to whisper to someone to function, thus, using this skill lets its target use an attack for free on you (which doesn’t count as their action for the turn)¹⁰. Whisper into someone’s ears, letting them know of an imminent doom, directly damaging their mind and causing them to take 1d4/2 * INTI * 6 + LVL * 20 fully piercing damage, though causing them no physical harm to speak of.

Devil’s Tongue

Unlock : Level 75

Let some unknown entity speak on your behalf, making you produce otherworldly sounds that cause everyone, including yourself, who hears you to become panicked and take 1d4/2 * NEG * 4 + LVL * 20 damage.

Ruination

Unlock : Level 100
Condition : Being desperate and using your main instrument, which you must also have owned for a very long time¹¹.

The nuclear option. Put all your strength, hopes and dreams into a single attack, destroying your most prized possession in the process, causing what can only be described as mass destruction in the process : obliterating your surroundings, creating a crater and producing violent winds pushing away from the location of impact, causing your target to receive (INTI + CHA + NEG) * 10 damage. Using this skill also increases all your combat stats by 100% for 10 turns, after which you will fall into a severe depression.

Exaggerated Tale

Unlock : Level 1

You “accidentally” misremember happenings in your life, trying to make them pass as real, increasing potential reputation gains of an event by 1D100. Be careful, as failing a NEG confrontation against the target may lead to a loss of 1D100 reputation.

Relaxing Tunes

Unlock : Level 5

Play some relaxing beats to relax/study to, slightly reducing the aggressiveness of everyone who can hear you and calming them.

Rallying Chant

Unlock : Level 10

Rally your people with the power of music! This skill allows you to get slightly better results during social interactions based on negotiation, even in the case of failure, by slightly dispositioning the opinions and beliefs of the people who can hear you to be more akin to your own. This skill only works if you have more CHA than your target(s).

Scandal

Unlock : Level 25

You proclaim scandal because of the reprehensible nature of a statement of stance someone just took, forcing them to walk back on their position as long as you have more INTI than they do, and that they aren’t of chaotic alignment.

Imagination

Unlock : Level 50

Using your talents at manipulating facts, you are able to make lies sound like fully reasonable explanations as long as you have more CHA than whoever you are trying to lie to.

Song of Soothing

Unlock : Level 75

You start humming a soothing song quietly, making anyone in a neutral or calm state who hears it start to feel fatigued or sleepy. After five (if neutral) or three (if calm) turns of this in a row, people affected by this skill will fall asleep for 10 turns.

Everything has a Price

Unlock : Level 100

Using this ability allows you to force anyone who has less than half of your NEG to accept the possibility of selling or trading an item they would usually never consider parting ways with. However, be warned that these items will always have an unreasonably high cost for what they truly are, as they will be emotionally (and not rationally) priced.

This skill will only work if you know for a fact a fight is about to begin and cannot be pre-emptively used passively. ↩
Abilities that target more than 1 person are that are simple AOE won’t be affected by this buff. ↩
This skill has an extremely low volume and won’t work in loud environments. ↩
Instead of dying, anyone affected by this skill will survive with one health remaining. This doesn’t use up the ally’s chance to be sent to Death’s Door, as they remain fully conscious and actionable after this skill’s activation, though greatly wounded. ↩
However, AOE attacks can still hit you. ↩
Unlike trying to negotiate with enemies to stop the fight, this doesn’t require you to be able to speak with them or to use your negotiation stat. ↩
The day would seem like dusk, dusk like night, and night becomes complete darkness. ↩
As in “health loss”, not as in “physical injuries”. ↩
Including yourself, in your case, even if you cannot hear the song since you are making it up, and as such, know how it should sound. ↩
The skill is used, and damage dealt, then the enemy gets his free turn against you. ↩
At least 300 turns. ↩

Nazarax