Bard Instruments
Bard Instruments Guide
Musical instruments are essential tools for any aspiring Bard. The quality and properties of your instrument directly affect your chances of successfully using Peacemaking, Provocation, and Discordance against creatures. Choosing the right instrument for the job can mean the difference between a successful peace and a quick death.
How Barding Difficulty Works
Every creature in the world has a hidden Bard Difficulty rating. This number is automatically calculated based on the creature's stats:
- Hit Points — the single largest factor, weighted at 1.6x
- Stamina and Mana pools
- Total skill points across all skills
- Special traits — creatures with Magery AI, fire breath, or poison immunity are each +100 points harder
All of these values are fed through a compression formula and then capped at a maximum difficulty of 160.0. Many powerful creatures hit this cap through raw stats alone.
Your bard skill is checked against this difficulty using a ±25 skill window. If your skill falls below the difficulty minus 25, you have a 0% chance of success. If your skill is above the difficulty plus 25, you'd have 100% (though the cap at 160 makes this impossible at 120 skill without instrument bonuses).
Instrument Properties
Instruments can have several properties that reduce the effective bard difficulty of your target. These bonuses stack with each other.
| Property | Effect | How to Obtain |
|---|---|---|
| Exceptional Quality | Reduces difficulty by 5.0 | Crafted by a skilled Carpenter or Tinker with high enough skill to produce exceptional results |
| Slayer (Primary) | Reduces difficulty by 10.0 against matching creatures | Random loot drop or crafted with special materials |
| Slayer (Secondary) | Reduces difficulty by an additional 10.0 against matching creatures | Random loot drop |
| Opposition Super Slayer | Increases difficulty by 10.0 | Avoid using instruments with the wrong slayer type against a creature |
| Tip |
|---|
| Slayer bonuses only apply when the slayer type matches the creature you are targeting. Using the wrong slayer type has no effect — but if the creature belongs to an opposition super slayer group, the difficulty actually increases by 10. |
Maximum Possible Bonus
The best possible instrument is an Exceptional instrument with two matching slayer properties:
- Exceptional: −5.0
- Slayer 1 (matching): −10.0
- Slayer 2 (matching): −10.0
- Total: −25.0 difficulty reduction
This means a creature at the 160.0 difficulty cap would effectively become 135.0 difficulty for you.
Success Rates at 120 Skill
The following table shows your approximate success rate at 120 Peacemaking (or Provocation/Discordance) against a creature at the maximum difficulty cap of 160, depending on your instrument:
| Instrument | Effective Difficulty | Success Rate |
|---|---|---|
| No bonuses | 160.0 | 0% |
| Exceptional only | 155.0 | 0% |
| One matching slayer only | 150.0 | 0% |
| Exceptional + one matching slayer | 145.0 | ~0% (at the minimum threshold) |
| Two matching slayers (no exceptional) | 140.0 | 10% |
| Exceptional + two matching slayers | 135.0 | 20% |
Against creatures with lower bard difficulty, your success rates improve significantly. For example, against a creature with 120 difficulty, even a basic instrument gives you a solid chance, and an exceptional slayer instrument makes success nearly guaranteed.
Success Rates by Creature Difficulty
This table shows approximate success rates at 120 bard skill with different instruments across a range of creature difficulties:
| Creature Difficulty | No Bonuses | Exceptional | Exceptional + Slayer | Exceptional + Double Slayer |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 100 | 90% | 100% | 100% | 100% |
| 110 | 70% | 80% | 100% | 100% |
| 120 | 50% | 60% | 80% | 100% |
| 130 | 30% | 40% | 60% | 80% |
| 140 | 10% | 20% | 40% | 60% |
| 145 | ~0% | 10% | 30% | 50% |
| 150 | 0% | ~0% | 20% | 40% |
| 155 | 0% | 0% | 10% | 30% |
| 160 | 0% | 0% | ~0% | 20% |
Practical Tips
- Always carry an Exceptional instrument — the −5.0 bonus is free and easy to obtain from any skilled crafter.
- Match your slayer type to your target — a single matching slayer gives you −10.0, which can turn an impossible bard attempt into a challenging but doable one.
- Avoid opposition slayers — if your instrument's slayer type is in the opposition group of your target, you are making the creature harder to bard, not easier.
- Some creatures cannot be barded at all — creatures with the Bard Immune flag ignore all barding attempts regardless of your skill or instrument quality.
- Musicianship matters too — your Musicianship skill is checked separately before the barding skill. A failed Musicianship check means the barding attempt never even gets to the difficulty roll. At GM Musicianship (100), you succeed the music check roughly 100% of the time.
- Instruments have limited uses — a normal instrument has 350–450 uses. Exceptional instruments get double uses (700–900). Plan accordingly for long dungeon trips.
- Uses are consumed on each attempt — whether you succeed or fail, each barding attempt uses one charge. When the last charge is consumed, the instrument is destroyed.
Instrument Types
All instrument types function identically for barding purposes. The choice between a Lap Harp, Standing Harp, Lute, Drum, or Tambourine is purely cosmetic. What matters are the properties (Exceptional, Slayer) on the instrument, not its type.