Make Scribing Bardsongs Cheaper

[HaveLuteWillTravel]

With being able to buy the songsheets most people would much rather take their chances and see what random one they get than buy them from a PC bard. It's fairly rare that anyone does, except for the most wanted songs. Making the scribing of the songs cheaper would create a PC market amongst the bards, one that doesn't much exist right now.

[Random_White_Guy]

Some sheets can be like 600+ gold and some as well push 500 XP if I recall correctly.

While I know this was done so songsheets would be seen more as "Rare" I think lowering the costs of these would make things exponentially more cool.

I wish there were more song sheets given out as a reward since I imagine there's some very cool ones out there but all folks seem to use are Battlemarch/Hymn/Necromancy, from all of the old Bard Perks.

[Egon the Monkey]

There's really a few problems with the system for collectors. The "lucky dip" merchant is random, so you can get useless stuff like Curse Songs for non curse bards, multiple copies etc. Also you can't pick songs that suit your bard's concept. I've spent considerable gold there on my PC, and ended up selling maybe half to other bards to recoup losses on songs that made little sense for Aorli. NPC merchants might be expensive for scrolls but you can at least buy what you desire. Perhaps a normal store that sells exact songs more expensively?

The gold prices are high, but worth it for a lot of songs. 3-400 is fine, new songs are up there with a new L4 spell IMO. too much and nobody will scribe most of them, even to trade. The real irritating cost is the XP. players don't want to burn 500 XP on a trade item. I'd make 150 the max XP to pay, that's still higher than a scroll but it's not too damaging.

RwG, there's good reasons for why those three see more use. One, those things drop as hero loot, so non-bards regularly end up with them to sell. The Underdark ones don't drop anywhere except the "lucky dip". Two, everyone knows what they do and how they are useful. The custom songsheets give very little indication of what bonuses they give, so players have no idea of their worth. It might help if the custom songs had more explanation IC or OOC on them as to what the song does. Three, some people still don't know about the Underdark songs trader. Finally, the custom curse songs are worse than useless in most cases as they affect you and your allies, making the default better. The only use I've heard of is for covering a retreat.

One of the biggest obstacles with the new system is finding the song that fits your bard's concept. IMO a good way to solve it would be a bard class quest that lets you choose from any custom song in the module, with an explanation of what sort of bonuses come from each. Exclude Battlemarch and Jungle Hymn from that if you want to promote trading and diversity. That way though, my PC could have had a Dwarven bardsong early, STD's mechanist could have had the Engineering tune, Capricious's bard could have had Dirge or the Scholar's necromancy one.

[Drakill Tannan]

I agree a new way of geting songs, an easier one, would be great. The randomness just isn't right. Even if the costs of the bardsongs are not lowered, i'd really wish more dropped from enemies (Bard are supposed to be, for the most part, adventurers)

[Ebok]

500exp is cheap. Try selling Remove Curse.

[Kinslayer988]

Give it time, I enjoy how it is.

[Relinquish]

If every goblin archer has a magical songsheet, they loose their uniqueness. If you want a specific song, you'll likely get it eventually.

[Keeper of the White Wyrm]

Might I suggest a bard only store at the beginning of the module? You can only select one song from the list.

A drawback would be that you could no longer add bard songs to your songbook if you accept this option!

[Drakill Tannan]

That would be far too harsh tom. But a one-song purchase in the OOC area would be good. I do agree uniqueness is rather important, however.


I'd say the low-level songs should be sellable through the already existing method, but not the powerfull ones, they should not, however, be DM only rewards either.

It would be cool to have a one-time, bard-only quest wich, as a reward, gave you a powerfull and rare song from a wide list, if we make it so you need to have been in the server for a while before accesing it we would see worthy bards with rare and powerfull songs that would be almost unique, but they wouldn't by any reason be too common.

[Egon the Monkey]

Remember that custom songs used to be a perk you had a 100% chance of getting the desired song for if you chose it. It wouldn't break the server to let PCs pick from a restricted song list in the OOC area or off a L3-11 easy solo quest like the Wizard Library. All it would mean that rather than a PC having a random magic song when they've picked up 300 GP and found where in Mistlocke the store is, they have a song that's flavourful for them from the word go. Additionally, having a custom song means you're not using the default song, and the default song overrides custom songs already in use.