I'll answer this as honestly as I can. What does giving +10dex and +10str have anything to do with your complaint? Would you have put +20 into charisma? Because I can tell you that it wouldn't have mattered.

In my opinion dispersing your points that way is a bad idea regardless of what you bard play style is but it has absolutely no baring on charm.

As far as permacharming mobs. Bard spells tend to last 3 tics. If you don't sing anything ut that song then it's sort of permanent. However, charmed mobs always have a chance to break charm every tic. This goes for all types of charm from any class. Basically what you do is don't stop singing the charm song then you might get hit a couple times by the mob but it will eventually come back under your control.

If you are going to reroll, I suggest all points into stamina... or hell, all into charimsa even. Don't bother with strength and dex since 75% of melee gear in the game gives bonuses to one or both of those stats.

That's how it works on p99. What's the complaint exactly and how should charm normally function to be more classic?

I never managed to charm a mob while it was already charmed on my Live bard since I started it Apr 1999.

Mez yes, charm no. I would have to wait for it to break or use invis and recharm.

On live, with the level 27 charm, if you played the song on your targeted mob, and didnt stop the song, or start a new one, it would remain charmed indefinitely.

It wasn't game-breaking or anything by any means though, because eventually they added the whole "you cant charm anything above your level" clause, and you couldnt play any other songs, and as a bard, you're pretty dang gimp without any songs.

Oh sorry, I didn't explain myself well. Currently if you don't interrupt your own charm, it will recast upon breaking. I suppose this means that it breaks more often on p99 than on live, but the functionality is almost the same: you get an "indefinite" charm so long as you don't get stunned or you don't cast another song (or go out of range or something).

Although I do still think they should change it to be more classic, it's certainly no reason to reroll.

...i'm pretty sure thats exactly how it works here....

*edit*
Lol posted right as lazor says the same thing in his above post.

Any reason to lower the bard population = a good one. shhh

Ah, true. I take back what I said. All Bards except me and Mashiro should reroll as rangers.