Tactis: Bard

Rangers, bards, treasure hunters, rogues - anyone with a love for the adventurous lifestyle beyond the town walls.
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Rias
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Joined: Sun Sep 03, 2017 4:06 pm
Location: Wandering Temicotli

Tactis: Bard

Post by Rias »

Bards can now learn the Tactics: Bard ability! Check it out in-game or on the wiki.

This unimaginatively-named ability was mainly put in to act as a prerequisite to the Flip Flank bonus of the Flip ability for Bards. I spent a lot of pacing time trying to come up with a bonus of the tactic itself, and went through probably a dozen different concepts before finally, tentatively, settling on this one. I'm still not 100% on it, to be honest, so hopefully some people have feedback on it.

The idea here is that the Bard is observing impressive feats in combat, either by herself or by her group members, which further inspires her to do even better. In addition to inspiration of seeing it happening then and there, I like to think a lot of bards have a lot of the tales and stories they've picked up constantly going in their heads, and seeing these impressive combat feats also makes them recall stories or tales they know of similar feats, which further inspires them and gives them that little boost.

Do note that the Inspiration boost doesn't apply directly to rolls, but acts as a multiplier to the already-existing chance that Morale has to grant an extra reroll. What this translates to is that Morale is particularly important for Bards, which I feel is quite appropriate for their class. The more Morale they have, the more they benefit from this tactic and the related Inspiration stat. If they're in the negative morale, they're up a creek and don't benefit from this at all - so Bards, always keep yourselves confident and enthusiastic about life.

And also, it has then benefit from grouping up. Get a group together and Inspiration will likely max out in no time. Because Bards should totally be grouping up with people.

I realize this might be a little convoluted, but I think it's a pretty cool way to implement a "tactic" for Bards that essentially draws on their love of and inspiration derived from stories of great feats and all that kind of thing.

Oh, it also grants a 5% bonus to overcoming Light Armor encumbrance penalties. So that should be nice.

Enjoy!

P.S. The Inspiration stat/resource could possibly be extended to have further use in other Bard abilities. We'll see.
<Rias> PUT ON PANTS
<Fellborn> NO
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