Bard ramblings

[Talon]

So I’ve been playing p99 off and on for a few years now, never really progressing into the “late game”. I’ve finally managed to get my bard up to 54, probably because of the ease and speed of swarm kiting. Not to worry though, I’ve spent plenty of time in groups as well. Pulling, mezzing, regening, even occasionally dpsing. I love my bard and I really enjoy using the power of song to help my group mates perform well, massacring the same poor mobs for hours on end.

One thing that has bothered me, however, is the sort of immersion breaking idea of twisting my songs. If you heard a guy singing four different songs at once, alternating between them every 3-4 seconds, whipping out his tambourine then suddenly replacing it with a lute moments later it would, to be frank, sound like shit. While this hasn’t stopped me from reveling in the joys of twisting and all the fun things it allows us bards to do, I’ve wondered if there isn’t a better way to represent the songs themselves as they are being twisted.

The idea that I have adopted to help cope with this is one that replaces our songs with chords, or perhaps melodies. Instead of imagining my bard switching between songs, I imagine him playing one continuous song that changes slightly depending on the current needs. If, say, I’m twisting my cantana and chorus it is a soft, soothing song with light melodies trickling over graceful chords which put our mana users minds’ at ease. Then, oops, what’s that? Our monk fucked up his pull again and we are facing a mob of angry bipedal lizard skeletons? My song shifts into a refrain of odd plucks of lute strings, confusing our undead suarian foes. Soon I add fierce crescendos of sound which bolster our melee fighters as they hack the one poor skellie that has been left unmezerized apart. As the battle continues and more enemies perish I begin moving into a lighter chord structure that leaves my group feeling refreshed as their wounds begin to mend. Finally, the last adversary is dispatched and it’s back to the soft, soothing melodies and trills that provide our poor, mana addicted cleric with the goods to get through another camp session. He swears he could quit the stuff whenever he wants. But I think we all know better.

To do this I obviously have to ignore the names of the abilities I am using. Almost all of them clearly show that they are individual songs in of themselves. But that won’t stop me from using my imagination to provide myself the satisfaction of knowing my bard doesn’t sound like a frantic lounge singer with severe short-term memory loss.

In conclusion, I work seasonally and have been away from the world of Norrath for almost two months now. I have a lot of time to think about nothing in particular so this must be the result of such ponderings. So, I ask you bards: have you considered this dilemma? If so, what have you done to rationalize song twisting? If not, what’s your deal?

Thanks for your time.

-Ponykeg