Bardic ritual music

[roguerouge]

It's always bugged me that bardic music starts to have an effect in six seconds, when songs generally require a verse to really inspire me. Now, I'm DMing a player who rarely uses bardic music in combat. I was wondering about making bardic music more tempting for her to use. So, I thought, what if bardic music took minutes to perform, but lasted longer?

What would be a good way to write this mechanic up? Should bardic music last an encounter? Or should it last a minute per level? Which types should? What perils should I be conscious of in writing this up?

 

[Kerrick]

Our group has a couple feat that lets casters take longer to cast spells, but you can add metamagic feats without a higher level cost.

We also have rules for ritual spellcasting. In this case, I'd call it cooperative casting - two or more bards forming a medley or harmony to gain a greater effect for their music. They can effectively "metamagic" their songs, to make them last longer, have a larger AoE, etc.

If you want to keep it simple, just have it take longer (say, a full round to a full minute), but the bard can extend the duration of some of his abilities (like inspire comeptence), or the effects last longer after the bard stops singing - say, 1d4 minutes - for the ones like inspire courage.

The main problem I can see is that it won't be very "combat-friendly" - the bard will have to use it beforehand, or she'll be standing at the back of the party through the entire combat singing, only to have it take effect as or after the battle ends. It'd be great for sending troops into battle, though, or non-combat uses.

 

[roguerouge]

It's a nonstandard campaign, in that a lot of encounters are at sea, where she can see the opponent from miles away. There's going to be dungeon crawls too, obviously, so I'm not sure exactly how nonstandard it should be.

But she's fourth level and has used her music abilities in combat like twice.

 

[Kerrick]

Okay, so let's go with the third idea - it takes longer for her singing to have an effect, but said effects last far longer.

For simpllicity, we could just extend everything by 10 - that is, it requires a full minute of singing, but the effects last 10 times longer. Mostly this would affect inspire courage/heroism/competence, since those have a duration after the bard stops singing (I'd increase that by 5 instead of 10). For countersong, she could keep it up for 10 minutes instead of 1.

Question: Is it a sailing ship, or a rowing ship? If it's the latter, you could have the bard sing and grant the rowers greater speed...

Don't forget, too, that sound carries for a far greater distance over/through water. You could think about doing a Seasinger-type PrC, where the bard has power over sea creatures, and can extend the range of her singing over/through the water. Hmm... that's an interesting idea. I might just do that myself and post it here.

 

[roguerouge]

It's a sailing ship. Essentially the goal is to get something that she can keep track of easily and that doesn't feel unfun in a one person campaign with mucho NPCs.... I'm thinking adding an option to the Inspire bardic songs of singing a minute and having it last for an encounter or task, as defined by the DM, as well as bardic music as written.

Thoughts?

 

[Kerrick]

That could work, yeah. If you want to get a little esoteric, you could give her the ability to learn some weather-like abilities - she can sing up a wind, for example, to push the ship along, or call marine life. Those are some of the things I was thinking for the Seasinger (which needs a better name).