Just for a lark, some Jester Songs

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1. Cacophony of Combustion: All enemies within 30' of the Jester must Save vs Spells every round or suffer a spontaneous combustion of 1d12 Fire Damage. If a save is successfully made, the enemies' hair merely lights up and they suffer 1d2 Fire Damage.</font>
2. Psychedelic Trance: Without exception, everyone within 30' of the Jester, except the Jester, must Save vs Spells every round or go into a hallucigenic state where everything suddenly makes sense and pigs do fly. Those affected are stricken with Chaos for 1 turn.</font>
3. Delusion of Paranoia: Scrying into his enemies' minds within 30' with this tune, the Jester sings a song of his enemies' worst fears. If the affected is Level 12 and below, it must Save vs Spells or enter a state of Emotion:Hopelessness for 1 turn. For those above Level 12, they must Save vs Spells or be stricken with Fear for 1 turn.</font>
4. The Cows Come Home: Whipping out a banjo, the Jester starts to sing of cows and old man McDonald. For every round of this song, a random target from everybody within 30', INCLUDING the Jester, will get hit from a cow dropped from the sky. It is unknown where the cows come from.</font>

Tainted Love: All romances are immediately broken.

Sounds of Silence: Enemies in a 30' radius must save vs death at -2 or be afflicted by Chaos.

Pan-Amnnish Idol: 20 + 1d10 level 1 fighters are summoned around the bard.

[ 04-20-2005, 05:00 PM: Message edited by: K2Grey ]

PMSL! I have to agree, that song should clear a room in no time flat.

That would be awesome!

Horn of Silence
Horn of Blasting
Iron / Bronze / Silver Horns of Valhalla
Magic Flute (ToB)
Harp of Discord
Methild's Harp
Harp of Pandemonium

Perhaps it's worth mentioning that only the harps and flute are exclusive to bards. Also the harp of pandemonium is only available through the bonus merchant Deidre.
However they function like rods/wands. I don't think there are any instruments that augment or alter your bard song.

Not yet there aren't, but they could be made to alter it. It would have to be a Usable Ability, though, as things that go in the Quickslots (and Ammo slots) cannot have Equipping Effects. It actually wouldn't matter that the Horns are usable by the other classes, since an effect that changes Bard Song would be irrelevant to anyone but Bards.

The Rogue Rebalancing mod includes a Harp called the Lyre of Progression, which goes in the Shield slot and adds a couple of spellslots.

I think it is worthwhile to mention that the following message is extremely technical. You have been warned.

I have (for other reasons) retrieved my collection of AD&D 2ed rulebooks and am now able to provide a more indepth analysis. My goal is to compare the spellcasting ability of bards with that of mages.

Let us first examine the core rules. These are rules made through a decade of playing, balancing and feedback. It is safe to say that they are as well-balanced as possible given the nature of the system. To assist us we will compute a value I have chosen to call Spell Mastery (SM). Spell Mastery is the total sum of spell levels a spellcaster is able to cast at a given level of progression. If a spellcaster can cast 3 1st level spells, 2 2nd level spells and 1 3rd level spell he would have an SM of 10 (3*1+2*2+1*3=10).
If we compute the SM of Bards and Wizards and plot it against their XP we get the following graph

http://www.dsr.kvl.dk/~maddog/bg/core.jpg
(Source: Players Handbook, DM's Option - High-Level Campaigns)

Pretty striking isn't it? For those familiar with statistics let me say that the Pearson square values of the regressions are above 0.99. It is a perfect linear fit and certainly not a coincidence.

Please note that the slope is IDENTICAL. Everytime a bard and a wizard earns the same amount of XP they get the same amount of spell levels to cast! This cannot be overlooked. The principal differences are

1) The wizard always have 30 spell levels more. This advantage is earned during the first 10 levels where the bard is expanding his pickpocket and fighting ability the most.

2) There is a difference in the potency of the spells they can command. A wizard earns his first 7th level spell at 1.5M XP where the bard gets them at 2.4M. 8th level is at 2.5M for wizards and a whoping 4.2M for bards. Bards don't get 9th level spells. So the wizard actually have fewer, but better spells. This is due to mentality. The wizard will get bored at low level spells and continually expand the boundaries of his art, whereas the spontanious and adaptionalist behaviour of the bard will lead him to deploy more, but less potent spells.

Now we turn our eyes on BG2. How well has it adapted the guidelines of the core rules? Do they abide by the fundamentals above or do they blow it completely? Lets have a look and make a similar plot

http://www.dsr.kvl.dk/~maddog/bg/bg2_edit.jpg
(Source: Throne of Bhaal manual)

This is a prime example of what happens when you don't have time to do the homework and rush a game to the market. The first thing we notice is that wizards are perfectly linear until level 20. They simply copied the PH spell table. We also notice everything else is royally screwed up. Black Isle seems to have made guesswork rather than pick up the phone and actually ask the ones who made AD&D how spell tables work.

Now this makes me angry. I paid good money for the game and actually did so twice to get ToB. Why didn't they examine what they where working with properly? In effect they could have pulled the rediculous 8M XP off, but there is no real need to do that. 6M would work just as fine if they don't want anything to happen between 6 and 8M XP anyhow.

The marked area are spells the Bard class have been shorthanded. Quite significant. As an assistance I have inserted a black vertical line where the Bard SHOULD have 7th level spells. Coincidence? The red vertical line is where they should have 8th level spells.

Is this something that the "un-nerfed spell progression" thing from Ease of Use (I think..) fixes?

I wouldn't know, because I have yet to install such a mod. I am thinking about it though.

Now I realise someone is going to jump out of their chair and ask the question; why should bards get similar spell mastery as wizards at high levels and how did that ever become such a fundamental part of game balance. Let us examine four hypothetical characters - a fighter, a thief, a bard and a mage.
During the first 12 levels the figther will start to gain proficiencies in Bastard Swords. He will become vastly more deadly with that weapon as a result thereof, perhaps double to triple or more. Moreover his THAC0 improves at a steady and rapid pace. This trend will not stop. He will at a certain point stop his THAC0 progression, but expand the weaponry and mastery becoming the fighting machine he is [1].
Let us as part of our little mindplay say the thief starts with a flat 20 in his scores. Initially he will concentrate on sneak and hide to enable him to overcome otherwise more powerful foes. His increasing backstab adds to this effect. He will quintuple his potency in this field as a result thereof. In his teens he has an intermezo where equipment becomes rare and dear and he needs to setup a guild so he concentrates on pickpocket also quintupling his skill. In his mid- to late teens he will start to encounter more deadly wizards and starts to work on his detect illusion and again (you guessed it) five double his effectiveness. As he is becoming a truely masterful thief he can still work on a 5 double on the remaining skills (read magic, set traps etc.).
Now we look at the mage. During his first 12 levels he is perhaps the one who gains the most, but he IS really pitiful to begin with. He will vastly increase his Spell Mastery. From 12 and onwards he will gain at a steady pace, but wield more powerful spells.
Then we look at the bard. During his first 12 levels he does the full works. He will gain a single proficiency mark in his preferred weapons and gain some THAC0. He will 6 double his pickpocket and he will gain a bit of spells. However if we look after level 12 he will only double his allready effective pickpocket until level 24. His THAC0 is almost maxed and he cannot put more than one proficiency mark so there is a great limitation on him there (equal to a mage who also have a one mark limit). The only place where he really DOES expand is in spellcasting and the only way he can remain equal to the others is if he gains this at a pace equal to a mage. If he doesn't we all know what happens, because we have seen it in ToB - he will simply stand completely still for millions for XP.

You cannot EXPAND the rules if you do not UNDERSTAND the rules and their fundamental idea. Why Black Isle failed so miserably I cannot say, but anyone with PnP experience would be able to point that out. You cannot make new rules at random and expect it to work with the rest of the game.

[1] This assumes core rules mastery. Something that might actually work if the game wasn't a magic item giftshop.