Report 355

Report #355
Skillset: Music Skill: Octave
 Org: Spiritsingers Status: Rejected May 2010
Furies' Decision:
We do not find this to be necessary.
Problem: Time and time again, targets have managed to escape the effects of a
key part of a bard's offensive repertoire, the 3 power Octave ability, by simply
using equivalents of gust enchantments (tackle, beast gust, or passive movement
abilities such as fearaura). This causes the Octave to drop immediately upon
room movement. Given that the bardic specialized ability in Music to remove an
Octave through PLAY OCTAVE TACET, takes 3p to cast and takes several seconds
(4s) to both take effect and cancel the Octave, a proposal has thus been formed
to make setting up an Octave less of a waste of power, and provide more
incentive for a bard to actually cancel the Octave instead of resorting to (like
everyone else,) simply using GUST or similar free forced movement abilities to
negate this large portion of bardic offense.
Solution #1: When a bard exits (both forced, or nonforced) a room imbued with
 an existing Octave, it will not immediately cancel. Instead, it
 begins to fall apart, akin to how Shadow Choke currently
 dissipates over time upon separation of the caster and target.
 The bard will have 8 seconds (twice the time of cancelling it via
 PLAY OCTAVE TACET) to return to the room and resume the now
 still-active Octave, before the Octave completely drops (The
 current "You release maintaining the maestoso" message upon exit
 is kept, but include a new addition along the lines of "Your
 maestoso begins to fall into dissonance" at 4 seconds, and "You
 resume maintaining the maestoso once more" upon returning. An
 intermediate message would be shown to any other bards in the
 Octaved room at 4 seconds regarding the Octave falling out of
 harmony, in addition to the message received by casting bard. The
 current message when Octave completely drops [at 8s] will still
 be visible to everyone in the room, in addition to the casting
 bard. NOTE: These numbers can be adjusted, depending on thoughts
 about this Solution, to balance between being an useless change,
 to being too much. Suggested figures so far are 4/6/8 seconds for
 Octave to completely fall. Comment please!)
Solution #2: In *addition* to the above (Solution 1), as befitting such
 masters of voice and song, bards are still able to use their
 knowledge of the OCTAVE ability to cancel the Octave (for 3p) in
 the current time (~4s) when the bard holding the Octave is in the
 room. However, should the bard maintaining the Octave be out of
 the room when the attempt to cancel(Tacet) the Octave is made,
 the cancelling bard will find it much easier to remove the
 maestoso - and will find the act draining less power (0p/1p?), as
 well as being much faster in both the time it takes to cancel
 (perhaps down to 2s?), as well as the recovery of mental
 equilibrium(halved?) associated with the playing of such a
 counterpoint.
Solution #3: In *addition* to the above (Solutions 1, 2) - [The following is
 suggested to assist in group situations where more than one bard
 may wish to set up Octave, since currently, only one bard may
 attempt to raise and hold Octave up in a room at any given time.]
 Whilst some of those of the bardic profession can be solitary
 creatures, they are equally able to perform in groups, and some
 indeed flourish in such environments. As such, within an Octaved
 room, any bard may lend their instrument and voice to the
 maintainence of the Maestoso in the room (PLAY OCTAVE SEMPRE - or
 a new syntax. The Power cost for playing Octave in this way
 perhaps could be lowered a little). When orchestrated in this
 manner, should any of the bards fail to return to the room within
 this time limit, their contribution to the maintainence of the
 Octave will fall, as per above. The Octave/Maestoso will only
 fall completely if all of the performers are separated from the
 imbued room for the duration listed in Solution 1. Although made
 more resilient in this fashion, the Octave is just as vulnerable
 to falling when the proper counterpoint(PLAY OCTAVE TACET) is
 played - and thus may be cancelled accordingly should such a bard
 choose to do so, regardless of how many such contributors to the
 Maestoso there are. (Practically, this'll basically mean more
 than one bard can put their Octave up. Depending on the time of
 the grace-period in Solution 1, this may not be needed.)
Player Comments:
---[Talan on 4/14 @ 06:07 writes]:
A similar thing was suggested in conversation when 341 was being discussed, but
I decided not to include it as a solution because I didn't want to distract from
the gusting which I feel is its own valid, separate issue. I'm not sure 8
seconds isn't too long, but I do like the general idea of a short grace period
before the effect fades from a room. Those 3ps do add up! With a shorter-
than-8-seconds timeout, you probably wouldn't need to do the extra coding for
the circumstance of the caster not being in the room when another bard goes to
put octave down either.
---[Raeri on 4/14 @ 11:19 writes]:
Updated with Solution 3. The timing of 8 seconds can be changed, of course. It
was chosen to be twice that of cancelling via TACET (which costs 3p). I felt it
made little sense that an ability designed to counter it would be worse
off/equal at best, compared to readily-available enchants.
---[Estwald on 4/15 @ 12:28 writes]:
I like solution #1, maybe adjust the time to 6s.
---[Viynain on 5/2 @ 02:49 writes]:
I agree that octave could stand to not immediately fade, but I wouldn't go
further than 3 - 5 seconds for the Octave grace period. Anything much more just
becomes a room effect which wouldn't fade, especially with bard playing speed.
---[Ethelon on 5/2 @ 14:21 writes]:
I agree with solution 1, but think the time as Viynain and Estwald pointed out
should be lower, maybe 4 seconds. Solution 2 and 3 are adding to much and over
complicating the issue with a over the top upgrade.
---[Talan on 5/11 @ 20:46 writes]:
3-4 seconds would be great.
---[Fillin on 5/18 @ 06:21 writes]:
Doesn't the recent addition of summon resistance to pfifth help with this? I
guess my sympathy is limited when a 10p channel locked barrier can be dropped
with that same gust.
---[Talan on 5/18 @ 20:22 writes]:
Barrier is also, while definitely useful, not as essential to your offense as
fifth/octave are for most bards. You have the demesne, which doesn't dissolve
immediately upon your leaving the room. If people leave the room with you,
they're likely still in the demesne, whereas if they leave the room with the
bard, the bard has to start again from scratch. This isn't a 10p trans skill
we're talking about, but a precept of basic offense for the class.