Bard Song Suggestions

[wundyboy]

As I was talking earlier in the discord about this, I think that the EFU custom songs are very poor. When you spend at the very least three hundred gold per songsheet, and they wind up being a 0 AB song with +1 DMG, with barely a bonus skill and single save on them, you wind up massively disappointed.

For example;

Lament of the Last Musician gives +1 sonic damage, +1 will, +1 random saves(it's unspecified, so I will assume sonic), and +1 to perform. This is at a level 6 bard song. A level 3 bard/4 fighter multiclass gains the same benefits of a pure bard. There is essentially less reason to be a pure bard (at this time in EFU v5) where all the songs can be preformed by a level 3 bard multiclass and essentially do far better than a pure bard.
In comparison to the vanilla song, the base song gives +1 ab, +2 bludgeon damage, +1 saves, +1 to all skills. I cannot think of any reason at all to use this custom song over the base vanilla song. And every single song I've tested has been like this.

My proposal is this;

Custom songs should be similar to the Hammerhand song of v4. Hammerhands did a few things, but in particular it was very strong vs trolls and giants. It would give bonus ac vs giantkind, +2 fire damage, +2 ab, +2 con (at level 8), and +1? fortitude saves. Essentially, songs should be amazing versus certain types of groups. Undead, giantkind, abberants, orc kind, etc. In general these songs should also be equivalent to the vanilla song, but focused around certain mechanics.

A song could be focused around resisting flame damage, with 10% DI, or 2/- vs fire, while giving +2 ab +1 cold or something.  A song that gives 14 SR and +2 ab/ magic damage.  These songs have to give these effects at level 6 or higher, however, to prevent level 3 bard/x multiclasses from being too numerous / as strong as base bards.

Just my opinion on the matter, but at the end of the day I would prefer if bard songs were not a massive waste of gold right now, and actually benefited being a pure bard in this some what low level meta.

[Stranger]

Faction oriented songs! Like a Moonspear requiem that debuffs House Orza. Or an inquisitorial chant that forces druids to leave wild shape (or just dispels that particular effect?).

I think there's a Tickertown tune decrying tyranny that messes up Peerage retainers, for example, that could perhaps use more love and attention.

[Pandip]

I just want to quickly add a footnote to this discussion that, with the advent of the wiki and increase in mechanics documentation and transparency, it would be incredibly helpful if bard song benefits were no longer obfuscated. I don't think there should be a list of bard songs and what they do publicly available, but I do think there should be a command to examine a song in your book and be given an explicit explanation of what it does.

It's hard to check what specific skills change, what DI/DR is added, etc. based on your character sheet in NWN.