The idea of a bard’a instrument also being her weapon is exactly to solve the two hand problem. The only other way to solve it would be with singing, or with some kind of enchant instrument spell, which could play the melodies a bard has active.
Making instruments do damage also relieves the player of having two spread out skill xp across weapons and instruments.
The obvious hybrid of these two ideas is if there are attack melodies/harmonies. I think it’s implied that defensive melodies are a must as debuffing will be one of a bard’s primary roles.
Also, a side thought about this new bard’s primary stats. I’m thinking DEX INT and CON. The first two should be obvious, but CON may seem a strange choice. In many tabletop games, CON is used to determine how long a character can hold its breath. I think the implications here are obvious.
Why would you not want to have tanking bards? I think that given the right melodies/harmonies, a bard could certainly tank, especially if, as above, CON is written as a primary, or even secondary stat. The point of tanking is damage mitigation, so why couldn’t a bard fit into, say, a DEX based tank that lures with song and uses other melodies to slow and mitigate damage? That sounds super interesting to me. Obviously they should not be a primary tank like fighters, but why discount it?
We already have 4 classes that are very capable tanks, Fighter, Barbarian, Monk, Paladin. We only have one primary healing class, I think Bard needs to be more focused towards support and being a viable offhealer, so that with a small playerbase we actually have enough healing classes to form parties reliably.
Paladin is already sort of a problem class because they are both tank and healer and I think thats what is going to make them hard to balance, having two classes that can tank and heal would homogenize things even more.
It doesn’t have to be that bards can’t tank, but I’m just thinking more in terms of defining roles, so out of 9 classes, you have 3 “healing” classes (priest, paladin, bard) and 3 tanking classes (fighter, barbarian, monk), and then 3 dps classes (mage, ranger, thief). Now each of the classes you could subclass further, but in general thats prally how to break them down on a broad scale.
My only thought is if you take away bards ability to cast while singing, Im not sure how much success they are going to have at healing with just their song. Bards in Nexus were probably the second best healer besides clerics simply because they could sustain way longer than paladins could.
I am just thinking they need to stay kind of in a healerish direction.
The beauty of a class refactor is that we can decide how effective their songs are. I get your point about the class roles. And it’s a good one. It’d be difficult to allow bards to be good tanks without having to consider the other classes as well.
If we make it so bards can only use songs while singing, WHILE it is definately WAY more realistic, like I said, combat function goes way down. Then your in a dilemna of, do you make songs just super strong since thats all they can do? Also, there may be old Nexus players out there looking forward to playing a bard class that is at least similiar to the old Nexus bards.
It might make actual combat a bit boring for bards too since all your really doing then is singing, and the rest would pretty automated aside from moving around. Being able to sing to create an aura and then be able to attack with a weapon and cast for damage definately made for a fun to play class (while being fairly unrealistic) Altho perhaps it could be argued that the bard just weaves the spell chant into his song. And if you made instruments count as weapon types for bard, that might alleviate some of the unrealism, altho then your shooting arrows out of a harp and bludgeoning people with a lute, but it might work.
Instruments as weapons though also makes it so you have to add a whole new class of weapons for one class, and have them readily available as you progress, so it adds more itemization end for the coders as well.
Could also make bards really OP if you make them have a damage song, then all you would have to do is find mobs that dont have ranged attacks and just sing to do damage and kite the room around while you AoE everything down. With combat mechanics the way they were, if you did damage to a mob, it would turn on you, so if your on a group doing AoE damage, you would essentially be drawing everything onto you and causing the tank headaches.
In the original Nexus there was No AoE abilities aside from mobs, the mobs could breathe elements on an entire tile.
There is another thread about AoE damage, and I think the way Nexus combat mechanics work, AoE is PROBABLY not a great idea, so then you get in a situation of do you just make a single target damage song? that would be kinda weird, idk.
Perhaps then, a Bard performs a song, which takes a full turn (or whatever the seconds equivalent is), but the effect of the song has a long duration, giving the bard the chance to switch to a weapon or cast a spell while still under the influence of the song.
That might be a good solution, the song basically just activates an aura that lasts for a particular duration. Perhaps the aura is imbued in the instrument and you have to keep the instrument in an offhand to keep it active. Then you can still use a one hand weapon and be able to cast thru the duration.
Exactly. I’m thinking back to game mechanics from something like Ocarina of Time where Link plays a short melody and then magical things happen like teleporting across the country. Keeping the instrument in an off-hand will restrict Bards to melee combat, which may or may not be where you want your support class. Though, if they are buffing/debuffing in a small aura, it could be precisely where you want them. This is breaking into finer game mechanics that I am not as familiar with.
Well you can use one handed missile weapons. In vintage nexus all weapons were one handed so, some bards were melee some missile depending on their stats and preference. But I think a bard should be able to carry an instrument in offhand and when you sing it will just give you a maybe 20 second timer while u finish your song that means you cant cast, move or attack, but perhaps still allows flees. It would make you vulnerable for a short duration to get things goin. It would be less annoying than having to unequip a weapon and reequip it I think and make things smoother.