Bard

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Bard v0.9
Author André Bertelli Araújo
Download link
NetHack PatchDB 76

The Bard, abbreviated by the game as Brd, is a role that is the primary focus of the Bard Role patch. The patch was written by André Bertelli Araújo against NetHack 3.4.3 and dates back as far as 2005, when it was first added to the NetHack Patch Database. The patch is also hosted on the author's personal blog, and the author's post on rec.games.roguelike.nethack discusses the patch in detail.

Features

One of the distinctive features of the Bard patch is the option of "casting" enchantment spells as songs performed on a musical instrument, with various perks and drawbacks compared to the regular versions—the patch grants this 'musicalize spell' skill to several roles, and the Bard role is designed to both rely on this ability and utilize it in more unique ways. This feature is also carried over into NetHack variants that include this patch.

New monsters

The following monsters are added by the patch:

New items

New levels

The Bard quest and its levels are added.

Other changes

  • The music shop is added as a new shop type that makes up 3% of randomly-generated shops and exclusively stocks musical instruments.
  • Some existing monsters are given a chance of being generated with musical instruments:
    • Elven monsters that are not undead may be given a tonal instrument—the chance is 1⁄10 for elf-lords and Elvenkings and is 1⁄50 for other elves, and the instrument has a roughly equal probability of being a wooden flute or a wooden harp.
    • Mordor orcs and Uruk-hai have a 1⁄50 chance of generating with a leather drum, and orc-captains have a 1⁄10 chance of generating with the drum.
  • The musicalize spell skill is added, granting the ability to perform magic songs.
  • Encyclopedia entries for Aglaope, Anthemoessa, bards, lyres, Orpheus, and Pindar are added.

Role information

Bards can start as neutral or chaotic in alignment, and can be played as humans, gnomes or elves.

Starting inventory

Each Bard starts with the following:

Bards start with knowledge of all musical instruments and all basic wards, and will have knowledge of the spellbooks for the sleep, confuse monster, slow monster, cause fear, and charm monster spells. They are also given knowledge of 5–15 random non-tool magical items.

The Bard's default starting pet is a little dog or kitten with equal probability.

Intrinsics

Bards gain the following abilities upon reaching the following experience levels:

Attributes

The Bard's starting attributes are distributed as follows:

Attributes Strength Dexterity Constitution Intelligence Wisdom Charisma Remaining
Minimum attributes 7 10 6 7 7 10 28
Distribution percentages 10% 25% 10% 10% 15% 30%

Skills

Bards have the following skills available to them:

Bard skills
Max Skills
Basic
Skilled
Expert

Bards start with Basic skill in bare-handed combat and the musicalize spell skill. They use the intelligence attribute when casting spells, and their special spell is sleep.

Musicalize spell

Main article: Musicalize spell

The Bard's distinctive advantage is their mastery of a skill called "musicalize spell", which gives the hero the ability to perform magical songs using an applicable tonal instrument in lieu of casting the spell instead of using the spell menu (though there is one song, "Inspire Courage", which is unlike any regular enchantment spell). The skill is included as part of the patch, and Monks and Priests can advance the skill to Basic, while Bards can reach Expert skill.

When applying a tonal instrument with at least Basic skill, a menu will appear with the option of casting a spell in addition to the existing options of improvising or playing a series of notes. Spells performed as songs have the following traits:

  • Magical songs require less energy to perform at 2 times the song's level.
  • Magical songs take multiple turns, and can be interrupted.
  • Magical songs affect all monsters that are able to hear the instrument's music.
  • Every magical song has two instruments that can be used: one that is "preferred" and less likely to be resisted by monsters, and an alternative one that can be used if the preferred instrument is unavailable, but with a lower chance of success.
  • The hero must know the corresponding spell to the song being played.
  • The effects of magical songs tend to be less powerful than their regular forms. For example, successfully playing the Lullaby song puts monsters to sleep for a shorter period of time than the sleep spell.
  • At Unskilled or Basic, songs affect pets as well as hostile monsters, though the effects on pets are milder. At Skilled or Expert, tame creatures are not affected unless playing Inspire Courage (which only affects pets).

All available songs are listed in the table below, along with the required spell, the duration of the songs and their compatible instruments:

Song Description Spell Preferred Instrument Alternative Instrument Duration
Lullaby Puts enemies to sleep sleep wooden harp wooden flute 4 turns
Cacophony Confuses enemies confuse monster leather drum tooled horn 5 turns
Drowsiness Slows enemies slow monster wooden flute wooden harp 5 turns
Despair Causes enemies to flee cause fear tooled horn leather drum 6 turns
Friendship Temporarily tames monsters charm monster wooden harp wooden flute 6 turns
Inspire Courage Increases the damage done by pets cause fear bugle leather drum 6 turns

The chance of a song successfully taking effect is dependent on the hero's experience level, their relevant attributes and their skill level: 

ATTRIBUTE x 2 x MUSICALITY_SKILL + experience level

The musicalize spell skill gives a value of 1 if the hero is at Unskilled, 2 if they are at Basic, and so on. Bonuses are applied in the following order:

  • If the instrument is an artifact or one that matches the song's preferred type, increase the chance by 50%.
  • If the hero's health is lower than 30% of their maximum, increase the chance by 100%.
  • If the instrument is a drum or a harp, and the hero is wearing a shield, decrease the chance by 50%.
  • If the hero is blind, increase the chance by your experience level.
  • If the hero uses the Lyre of Orpheus and is not playing one of Rally, Meditative Healing, Lullaby, or Friendship, decrease the chance by 50%.

A user has suggested improving this page or section as follows:

"Update success chances, and detail mechanics and some more precise effects of the songs (e.g. pets helping with singing)."

Rank titles

The status line displays one of the following ranks for the corresponding experience levels:

  • XL 1-2: Bard
  • XL 3-5: Lyrist
  • XL 6-9: Sonneteer
  • XL 10-13: Jongleur
  • XL 14-17: Troubadour
  • XL 18-21: Minstrel
  • XL 22-25: Lorist
  • XL 26-29: Well-known Bard
  • XL 30: Master Bard

Quest

Main article: Bard quest

The Bard's quest sees a Bard hero traveling to the island of Anthemoessa to fight the siren Aglaope for the Lyre of Orpheus.

Gods

Main article: Religion

The Bard pantheon is loosely based on Thracian religion, specifically the deities identified with those of ancient Greece to the south.

Encyclopedia entry

The bard is a wanderer, one that plays music at taverns to earn money, win friends and influence people. His wanderings gave him some basic knowledge on several different abilities and some knowledge on ancient legends, myths, magic, and legendary items.

Bards in variants

The Bard role has since been implemented in dNetHack as well as its derivatives and can also be played in SlashTHEM, with their implementations derived from the original patch. Articles detailing each version linked below:

While Hack'EM does not implement the bard role, the bard monster is imported from SlashTHEM and based on the player monster for the Bard of that variant.

Origin

Wikipedia
Wikipedia has an article about:
Wikipedia
Wikipedia has an article about:

In Celtic cultures, a bard is a person that acts as an oral repository and a professional story teller, verse-maker, music composer, oral historian and genealogist. Bards were employed by patrons (such as a monarch or chieftain) to commemorate one or more of the patron's ancestors and to praise the patron's own activities. The English term "bard" is a loanword from the Celtic languages, descended from the Old Celtic 'bardo' ("poet-singer") with roots in both the Latin bardus (sing.) and ancient Greek bárdoi (plur.)—the concept of a bard has existed in a multitude of different forms across cultures, such as the mythical Thracian figure of Orpheus.

According to English fantasy author and Games Workshop founder Sir Ian Livingstone, the title of 'bard' was initially considered to be "a term of great respect among the Welsh, but one of contempt among the Scots (who considered them itinerant troublemakers)": with the decline (but not disappearance) of a living bardic tradition in the modern period and the term's frequent use in Romanticism, it has since come to refer to a generic minstrel or author (especially a famous one, e.g. William Shakespeare and Rabindranath Tagore). The term is also applied to certain storytellers, as well as musicians, poets and similar figures.

The notion of the bard as a minstrel with qualities of a priest, magician or seer entered the fantasy genre from its Romanticist usage in the 1960s to 1980s, with examples including the 1981 Bard by Keith John Taylor, the 1984 Bard: The Odyssey of the Irish by Morgan Llywelyn, and television adaptations of The Witcher series of books by Andrzej Sapkowski. This naturally includes the bard character class of fantasy roleplaying games such as Dungeons & Dragons and Pathfinder, which draws a combination of traits from historical Celtic bards, the Norse skald, and the southern European minstrel as well as other kinds of musical singers—these bards are centered on the idea of accessing magic through artistic expression, which is primarily (but by no means exclusively) musical. The bard of Dungeons & Dragons first appeared in Volume 2, Number 1. of TSR's The Strategic Review newsletter.

In the first edition of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, they were a special class that was unavailable for initial character creation: a character could become a bard only after meeting specific and difficult requirements, achieving levels in multiple character classes, becoming a bard only later. The bard became a more standard character class from the 2nd Edition on, though the prototypical "prestige class" elements of the original implementation were preserved in the 3rd Edition's Fochlucan Lyrist prestige class.

In Dungeons & Dragons, bards are versatile arcane spellcasters capable in combat, art, and magic alike, using their artistic talents to induce magical effects that either bolster their allies or hinder their enemies, typically through charms and illusions. In addition to their magical skills, bards are artistically talented and extraordinarily well-learned, possessing knowledge in a wide range of fields and capable of learning from practically any trade. They are prone to wanderlust, traveling from one place to another in search of either new lore to learn or to spread what stories they already know, and it is commonplace for a bard to prefer the freedom of mobility and living by one's whims.

The most common races of bard in Dungeons & Dragons are humans and elves, as well as half-elves to a lesser extent, and gnomes and tieflings are also quite capable as bards. Most bards acquire their skills as a result of training under previous bards, drawing upon ancient traditions of lore and arcane magic. They hold a strong distaste for blatant violence, at least when it could be avoided, and have reputations for being joyful and inspiring—this is largely true regardless of their individual morals, as evil bards also avoid overt violence and tend towards the manipulative and cunning, twisting the hearts of others through either magic or sheer charisma.

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