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Eldan
2013-07-09, 05:24 AM
Yeah, me again. Same as ever. I have a homebrew idea, I need more ideas for it.

This time, I want to do a bard. Primarily as a magic musician and less as a trickster. Anyway, I have a good basic idea on how I want to handle the basic music system in a way that should be versatile and novel.

But I need a few more ideas for magical music. So, what can magic do? It doesn't have to be a rules effect of any kind, or even anything you think D&D can do. Just anything you've ever heard or thought of that music can magically do. I'm plundering everything from Zelda to the Dresden Files to Finnish Mythology anyway.

illyrus
2013-07-09, 06:10 AM
From Read or Die: The villains compose a song that causes people to commit suicide.

Musical Guard and Wards style effect. The song determines how you traverse the guarded structure.

In nWoD: Mage, your ability to affect someone not in visual range tended to be determined by your "sympathy" to them. So if you have their favorite toy as a child you have a good sympathetic connection while some blood would be an excellent sympathetic connection. In D&D Scrying works off a similar principle. Going off that idea a bard could perform a song so moving that the audience identifies strongly with it. From there the bard could use that song as a focus point to cast spells from afar on anyone and everyone who heard and was moved by said song.

BWR
2013-07-09, 06:16 AM
I like the idea of spells making backup music (Summon Backing Band) to supplement primary music of the bard. Later on, spells that create entire symphonies or equivalents. Mechanically irrelevant or giving some minor bonus to a Perform or Bardic Performance attempt.
That and bardic music videos. While using Inspire Courage, the bard sings of an epic battle between gods and enormous ghostly figures tower over the battlefield showing the actual fight he's singing about. Just because it's cool.

And allowing bards to work together for improved effect.

Mostly, it's just refluffing the bard spells to be cast as music. Sleep? a lullaby.
Charm person/monster - music hath charms to soothe the savage beast.
Calm emotions? musical version of a cat's pur.
Tasha's Uncontrollable Hideous Laughter? a dirty ditty.
Dominate Person? I'm the Music Meister! (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V_q1SdaWLlw)

Eldan
2013-07-09, 06:29 AM
A lot of those work well, but perhaps I should expand:

With the mechanics I'm thinking off, the main difference between bard and, say, wizard, is that the bards effects are always long lasting. Apart from buffs, most caster throw out one-shot effects. The bard almost exclusively has things that last as long as he wants to play.

Then, while playing a certain song, he can temporarily increase the effect. Seeker of the Song has something like it. I'm thinking of naming it "Melodies" or "Beats" for the base effects and "Chords" or something for the one-time effects.

But yeah. Calming emotions will certainly be in, as wil sleeping. Possibly one as a stronger effect of the other. I'm also thinking weather control and, inspired by the Dresden Files as mentioned above, Zombie Reanimation (your drum works as the Zombie's heartbeat).

BWR
2013-07-09, 06:45 AM
Have you checked out Pathfinder's Masterpieces (http://paizo.com/pathfinderRPG/prd/ultimateMagic/spellcastingClassOptions/bard.html)?
Most of them are a bit weak, but a very nice idea. If fixed up a bit they could be really nice.

Still, my take on the bard has always been that he works on the hearts and minds of people. Things that move much beyond Enchantment or Illusion spells and effects really seem weird. Animating the dead and changing weather is not what they do, in my book. You can always make some sort of variant bard that can do these things, but that sounds like Feat chains or Prestige Classes, rather than basic bardic abilities.

Hunter Noventa
2013-07-09, 07:20 AM
Music can bolster the power of your allies, demoralize your enemies, and tear apart the very existence of terrifying monstrosities from beyond the stars, all at once! (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=awAi36JjFiQ)

(Probably not as useful as it could be, but it was the first thing that came to mind)

BWR
2013-07-09, 07:23 AM
Of all the Macross series you had to choose that one.
*shudder*

Eldan
2013-07-09, 08:26 AM
Have you checked out Pathfinder's Masterpieces (http://paizo.com/pathfinderRPG/prd/ultimateMagic/spellcastingClassOptions/bard.html)?
Most of them are a bit weak, but a very nice idea. If fixed up a bit they could be really nice.

Still, my take on the bard has always been that he works on the hearts and minds of people. Things that move much beyond Enchantment or Illusion spells and effects really seem weird. Animating the dead and changing weather is not what they do, in my book. You can always make some sort of variant bard that can do these things, but that sounds like Feat chains or Prestige Classes, rather than basic bardic abilities.

Maybe it's not the bard anymore as its known in D&D, but I'm pulling from a broader amount of sources here and I can't think of a better name for "magicial musician" than bard. Think more Väinämöinen. Or the Silmarilion. Or the Truenamer, if you have to.

The Kalevala is probably the main inspiration, probably. They sung bogs into the ground to slow people, sung to learn ironworking and boat-building, to escape danger, to turn people into birds, to change the weather, put people to sleep... everything, really.

BWR
2013-07-09, 08:58 AM
So take any caster you like and refluff it. You don't study fell arcane tomes, you put time into learning and crafting songs. Or you rely on inspiration from the Divine Song that permeates creation. Or you learn a few songs that you choose from at will. Or your connection with the Song of Nature allows you great flexibility in communing with nature, even allowing you to change your shape.

I'm honestly not quite sure what you want. Do you want ideas or do you want a full alternate casting system?

Grinner
2013-07-09, 09:14 AM
Well...a magical musician's powers should tie into music, right? And what is music but art? Art itself serves a couple purposes. In some cases, it's merely aesthetic, but in others, it's expressive or communicative. So maybe he's some kind of spirit-talker?

BWR's idea of tapping into the musica universalis is pretty cool too.

Taet
2013-07-09, 12:37 PM
Magic is what happens when you add new rules like "say this nonsense and grind this gemstone" to physics. Music is what happens when you add new rules like "say this nonsense and clap this rhythm" to speaking. Make it only one way to add new rules in one area at one time during one event. So what is more important? In a roleplaying game people are important and adding new rules to speaking would change more. In a fighting game challenges are important and adding new rules to physics would change more.

I don't mean counterspell and countersong. I mean that in an area people can only use magic or use music and never both at the same time. Not until the other type stops. In a court people would never stop using bardsong and magic would never work. In a magical dungeon magical creatures would never stop using magic and bardsong would never work. In a regular dungeon there would be both and a player fighter could knock out the monster bard and after the monster bard is not making music any more then the player magic user can start to use magic.

Eldan
2013-07-09, 12:45 PM
A bit harsh, isn't it? Total magic negation? Though I could see a more brutal form of countersong.

valadil
2013-07-09, 12:52 PM
Then, while playing a certain song, he can temporarily increase the effect. Seeker of the Song has something like it. I'm thinking of naming it "Melodies" or "Beats" for the base effects and "Chords" or something for the one-time effects.


This plus the thing about bard songs being long lasting gave me an idea for chord progressions. Could the effects of the music depend on the context of previously played music? If I strum a G major, it's happy. Em is sad. But the transition between the two is stronger than either of them on their own.

Basically the chord you're currently playing gives a passive bonus. Maybe the bonus grows for the longer you play. But on your turn, when you change chords something else happens and effect depends on which chords you're transitioning between.

If you want to go overboard, you could give people feats to learn different varieties of chords than the usual major/minor ones.

Eldan
2013-07-09, 03:47 PM
Ooh. That's a really neat idea.

My basic idea was just effects like that.

Hmm. So, we make two types of effects.

Long-lasting effects: with a name like beat or melody that give effects that last as long as the bard wants to play.

Then something like chords, which are one-off effects. However, each chord has a mood and the mood of one chord adds a bonus effect to the next chord.

Or perhaps this: if you play several chords of the same mood in a row, their effects get stronger. DC increase, perhaps. But if you change mood, you get a bonus effect.

Slipperychicken
2013-07-09, 04:17 PM
Then something like chords, which are one-off effects. However, each chord has a mood and the mood of one chord adds a bonus effect to the next chord.

Or perhaps this: if you play several chords of the same mood in a row, their effects get stronger. DC increase, perhaps. But if you change mood, you get a bonus effect.

So it's basically dragon shouts with music? I can dig that.

Waker
2013-07-09, 08:36 PM
Have you ever read Symphony of Ages (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symphony_of_Ages)? The main character Rhapsody has access to a form of musical magic that is half Bard/half Truenamer. If she knows the Name or Note of something, she can change/add attributes, repair/heal, delve into the past/future and a few other odd effects. Examples of the Naming powers include: saying the name of tallgrass to create an illusion of her being tallgrass, a man living several hundred years by whistling his Name everyday (rebuilding himself in the process), granting a friend an remote vision-type ability when she named him "Pathfinder".

Fri
2013-07-10, 01:04 AM
Brown Note (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brown_note), obviously.

And to be a bit more serious, I like the idea of memetic "magic."

I remember reading a short story about a memetic weapon used in world war 2. In that story, it's said that the allies were losing because the german was so disciplined and serious and whatnot. So a... I forgot, was it a language professor? linguistic? anthropology? A professor of something had an idea to create the perfect earworm song. He did that by studying rhytm, language, music, etc, to make a silly and nonsensical german song which by the combination of the rhytm, nonsensicalness, rhyme, and such, was completely unforgetable by native german speakers. Anyone who heard it once can't stop thinking about it. And it wreak havoc on the german concentration and discipline. Like, they comb a room, and didn't notice that a resistance member is hiding inside a closet because they're too busy thinking about that song.

And the other best part is, that song is completely harmless to non-speakers, because the whole thing only fit together if sung in german and you understand it.

Admiral Squish
2013-07-10, 01:36 AM
I was gonna do a major bard rework just before I got wrapped up in my crossroads project. What I had down was very involved. The basic mechanic was skill-based, kind of like my omnomnomicon's cooking checks. You could use any song whenever you want, the limitation was the action economy. some other ideas included instrument groups, with five super-categories and four or so sub-categories, each with slight changes to the magic. (So, a bard who sings plays different from a bard who plays the drums, who plays different from a bard who plays the horn, etc.) Another cool idea was harmony sprites. The idea being that each instrument had a personality, and a skilled bard could bring it out as a sprite, which you could assign to back you up (and grant a bonus to the skill check), play duet (which let you extend the area of your songs), or play something else (which let you have multiple effects going, albeit at reduced skill levels). And then there were the unique instruments. A bag of ivory organ keys animated by necromancy, that would float into position to be played. A brass horn with a bell stylized to look like a dragon that could be made to breathe fire. A demonic golden fiddle.

Anyways, I will have to dig up my notes to see if I can find any details about specific songs. Zelda's always got good songs, you could go through the games and pick out the ones that work the best for you. Song of storms, elegy of emptiness, bolero of fire... I think you have to have some sort of song of time in the list somewhere.

Slipperychicken
2013-07-10, 02:15 AM
And it wreak havoc on the german concentration and discipline. Like, they comb a room, and didn't notice that a resistance member is hiding inside a closet because they're too busy thinking about that song.


What about after the war? Wouldn't such a song, if it was so ruinous to concentration, severely damage the livelihood of every german-speaker who heard it? Not just Nazi soldiers during the war, but every ordinary person just trying to live his life would be afflicted for potentially decades after the war ended (even longer if some jerk decides to ride through the region with a loudspeaker, blaring it at people).

Think about it. A doctor might miss an important symptom and proscribe the wrong medicine (or erroneously diagnose the subject as healthy and send him home to suffer from disease), with potentially disastrous results. A driver might, distracted by the song, crash his car and die, ruining the lives of everyone who loved him (or he would fail to notice a pedestrian and run him over). A surgeon might fumble with his scalpel, killing his patient. A fireman might fail to notice a child trapped in a burning building, leaving the child to asphyxiate or burn to death. And so on.

BWR
2013-07-10, 03:35 AM
I remember reading a short story about a memetic weapon used in world war 2. In that story, it's said that the allies were losing because the german was so disciplined and serious and whatnot. So a... I forgot, was it a language professor? linguistic? anthropology? A professor of something had an idea to create the perfect earworm song. He did that by studying rhytm, language, music, etc, to make a silly and nonsensical german song which by the combination of the rhytm, nonsensicalness, rhyme, and such, was completely unforgetable by native german speakers. Anyone who heard it once can't stop thinking about it. And it wreak havoc on the german concentration and discipline. Like, they comb a room, and didn't notice that a resistance member is hiding inside a closet because they're too busy thinking about that song.

And the other best part is, that song is completely harmless to non-speakers, because the whole thing only fit together if sung in german and you understand it.


There's also the Perform (comedy) (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8gpjk_MaCGM) version.

Eldan
2013-07-10, 03:37 AM
Obviously, the solution would be to give up the German language entirely and just teach all the children a new language from birth, so they can never understand what their parents are singing.

Ill put "permanent earworm" on the list. It's fun.

And self-healing by truename is useful, as well, though I'll change it a bit.

Minds and objects have names. But souls, souls have music. Every unique soul out there has its melody and harmonic, that it will always recognize. You will hear it and just know, know deep in your soul that this is your music, and yours alone.

A lot can be done with that. From personalized emotional magic to healing effects to divination to resurrection.

Slipperychicken
2013-07-10, 04:15 AM
Obviously, the solution would be to give up the German language entirely and just teach all the children a new language from birth, so they can never understand what their parents are singing.


Then you cross your fingers that no-one catches on to the potential for cultural genocide, reverse-engineering similar songs to work against other language-groups (Hebrew is the first that comes to mind since it's nazis we're talking about, though any language could be targeted).

Depending on how hard they are to write, you could potentially have most of humanity crippled by such songs.

Jay R
2013-07-10, 10:30 AM
Assuming many forms of magic can be accessed through music, I would build my spells based on the following principles.

1. Nothing is instantaneous. A song takes time.

2. Everything is an area effect, based on where the music can be heard. You can't isolate it to a single person. If you're doing a buff spell, and the monsters are listening from the bushes prior to the attack, they are buffed as well.

3. The easiest effects are affecting hearts and minds - that's music's greatest power. Other affects, like alterations, would take longer songs.

4. Music-using creatures (birds, maybe coyotes) are easier to reach than silent ones.

Eldan
2013-07-10, 10:47 AM
Hm. That would be difficult to categorize, though. Or leave quite a bit to DM fiat.

Still, a simple modifier table would be nice:
Musical creature (has perform ranks)
Music-making creature (has language or complicated, structured song (whales, birds, certain insects))
Vocal creature (can make noises and hear them)
Hearing, mute creature (can hear, but not make noises)
Deaf-mute creature.

Should be a simple basic table.


Number two would, really, make the buffing sort of pointless. I think that would have to be changed.

One idea I had was that you start with music that only affects certain kinds of creatures and then spread out. I.e. you start with mortals only. Then, as you add more kinds of supernatural music, you also add creatures connected to those to the list.
I.e. you learn to magically influence fire, which also adds fire elementals to your list and gives you a bonus on all fire-subtype creatures.

Eldan
2013-07-10, 10:51 AM
How about a slightly more complicated subsystem for emotions...

There's some, say, six, basic emotions. Joy, rage, despair, etc. They should probably come in pairs of opposites.

Then there's a table what feeling how much of each emotion gives you. "Creatures feeling category 3 rage gain a +4 morale bonus to strength" etc.

Go over spells and effects, define how much they change your emotional status. Class features, too. "Barbarians can voluntarily increase their rage by two categories, to a maximum of 3. At fifth level, this increases to three categories to a maximum of 4", etc.

endoperez
2013-07-10, 05:53 PM
I would suggest to avoid thinking too much about songs and music as we understand them, and instead thinking back to what the music was for the people in times before literature.

Songs were stories, history, lessons, things to know... Well, not all songs, but most of the songs you're thinking of.

Instead of notes, melodies and emotions, I'd think more about sagas and the kinds of effect that are caused by making a story alive.


Singing the song of the swamp and creating a quagmire.
Singing the song about the origin of boats to craft a boat from thin air.
Singing the story of how sun was stolen, to steal it again. A story is in many ways like a dream - impossible things may happen just like that...


Smaller songs are basically spells:

Singing the song of the iron's mother, to command iron, which made a wound, so the wound closes and is healed.
Or, if that's too many steps, singing the song of iron to make a sword sharper.
Singing the song of great exaggeration, exaggerating a creature into mythic proportions (the bull, the great oak tree, the man from the ocean and many more in Kalevala).


If songs are basically spells, but could be both very powerful and have the ability to affect large areas (as was suggested before), they need some sort of a drawback. I wonder how a reverse sorceror would work - he knows all the spells and can spontaneously cast any one of them, but he has very limited "spell slots". But what would he do when he can't use his most iconic power most of the time?

Perhaps a combination of unlimited minor songs, and a very limited list of major songs. The spell-singer would seem a man of minor magical powers, useful but limited tricks, until the time comes for the big reveal and the big songs. Perhaps instead of spell slots or similar, there's a different price to singing the big spells. Perhaps they just take a long time to sing (=hours, days), or it takes a long time to recover from singing such a song (=days, weeks).