More for Perform

KidCthulhu said:

I think you're overlooking one very serious factor. Almost no famous musicians are proficient in more than one or two styles. Look at opera singers who try to sing popular tunes ("For All the Girls I've Loved Before"?), look at rock stars who try to play jazz.

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True, but thats not how the rules for perform work. In d20 if you have ranks in Peform Guitar, you can play Skittle, Blues, Classical, Jazz, Speed Rock, and Ska equally well.

Further proof that game designers are not necessarily musicians.

Really. The point of Perform is that you can use it to do all kinds of things AND to do single things really well. Strange and cloogy, but not as strange as some of the older (playtest & 2nd ed.) versions, where you had to put points into each skill (play instrument, ventriloquism, sing, juggle) seperately.

The point of perform is to emulate, not simulate the mechanics of being a performer. This is true of most Skills, and a very important distinction.

KidCthulhu said:

Further proof that game designers are not necessarily musicians.

Really. The point of Perform is that you can use it to do all kinds of things AND to do single things really well. Strange and cloogy, but not as strange as some of the older (playtest & 2nd ed.) versions, where you had to put points into each skill (play instrument, ventriloquism, sing, juggle) seperately.

The point of perform is to emulate, not simulate the mechanics of being a performer. This is true of most Skills, and a very important distinction.

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Yeah, thats what I am coming to understand. That rule-wise a Bard takes Perform Melody. But flavor wise he specifies that he sings Country songs. Just like a Monk's Unarmed Attacks do not have a kung-fu style.

I'm not real happy with the way the perform skill works.

Take a schmoe like Yoyo Ma or Jimi Hendrix. These guys have, what, a dozen or so ranks in perform, wouldn't you say? That means that, in addition to being a master cellis, Yoyo Ma is almost as good at playing the tambourine, and just a little bit worse than that at playing the ukulele, and then nearly as masterful a sax player, and so on, with a dozen different instruments.

Hmm. That's not how real-world performers work, I think. Real-world performers tend to specialize in one type of performance; some of them are pretty good at a second or even third type. But few, AFAIK, are good at a dozen different performance styles.

I don't know how to fix this, though, so I haven't changed the rules IMC.

Daniel

[edit: doh! I shouldn't take so long to post -- most of what I said was already said by others more eloquently]

Skat and Rich Little

Being able to mimic someone else's voice (or animal sounds) seems to me as if it would fall under the Disguise skill (with a bonus - or penalty - based on Wilderness Lore for the animal sounds).

Mel Torme sang skat (as do/did many jazz singers, but he's the only one I can think of by name off the top of my head). It's more a linking of "nonsense" syllables than imitating instrumental sounds.

Hope that helps at least a bit.

If you are the DM, you can make the perform skill as specific or as broad as you want it to be.

For example, if you think just having perform (guitar) is too broad a skill, make the bard take a specific style of music to be played on the instrument. perform (jazz guitar), perform (rock guitar), perform (bluegrass guitar), etc.

Of course, this won't work with all instruments. Bagpipes and spoons sound the same, no matter what type of song you're playing with them.

With singing, it's more the type of song being sung than it is the style of singing. There are ballads, story songs, anthems, epics, lyrical, melodies, chants. This is what I interprete the Player's Handbook referring to for the choices under perform. The style you sing each type of song is sort of the bard's trademark, or signature. Everything song Frank Sinatra sang had his trademark style. This is done through the arrangement.

A ballad can be performed by a single person; two or more harmonizing; in a country style; in an operatic style; in a rock style; in a jazz style; in an R&B style; in a gospel style; in a rap style; in a barbershop style; in a Mongolian throat-singing style. All the same song, just sung in a different style. And even those styles have subcategories. East Coast rap, West Coast rap, gangsta rap, rock-rap. Southern Gospel. Contemporary Gospel. Traditional Gospel. Speed Metal Gospel. Just check out a full list of the Grammy Nominations sometime for all of the different styles of music, and remember -- any one song can be performed using any of those various styles.

I haven't looked at the list recently, so please forgive any redundancies.

Puppeteering
Gymnastics/Acrobatics
Marksmanship (like the Blade from 2e)
Eating displays (you know, like those folks who always enter goldfish eating or jalapeno eating contests )
Hustling (those fellas on the streets in NY certainly know how to perform)
Balloon animals...did they have balloons?