Game Mechanics: Bard buff stacking (Big Haynar thread)

[Technique]

From a Dev Corner thread on bard stacking issues dated 9/21/2001:

Originally Posted by Absor

Many bards have noticed that something went wrong with the emergency patch last night. Here's what happened.

We had to emergency patch to remove an evil duping bug. I'm not going to detail that out, as those details aren't pertinent to the tale at hand.

We were also patching to remove some bard stacking problems. There was a way that a bard could, basically, cheat the system and double up on buffs.

To fix this problem we changed the way that spells cast from items work for bards. Bards using items that cast spells (not songs) will have those spells act just like regular spells, where they were acting like songs before. Bard songs stack with just about anything, and spells have their own sets of stacking rules. Bards casting spells from items were able to ignore the stacking restrictions of those spells.

We changed that. Bards using spells from items will find that they stack just like the spells normally do, not like bard songs.

Let me clarify a few things about this change.

Bards have been able to stack some spells on top of themselves and other spells that were never intended to be stacked. That was broken and never intended to work as it has.

Bard songs are intended to stack with everything. They will continue to do so.

Bard songs that are generated by items will continue to stack just like bard songs sung by bards, they will stack with everything. Most bard unique items will also continue to stack with everything. For example, the Singing Short Sword will stack as it always has.

The only spells that bards will no longer be able to stack will be spells from items, spells that were designed with stacking rules in mind and were never intended to be stacked with everything in the manner of a bard song.

Our next patch will be Tuesday. We'll have the Epic (and the Shaman Epic…) along with the rest of this fixed then.

Apparently the changes were actually reverted with that patch:

September 25, 2001
We have removed the changes to bard song stacking that were made with the recent emergency patch. We will be reviewing those changes for possible update in a future patch.

http://www.tski.co.jp/baldio/patch/20010925.html