> For lore/RP purposes, are the Bards still supposed to have this special confound with this unseen race of Naga drawn to sound?

The current crop of GMs don't find this to be particularly interesting. They're not retconning it away, but they're also not making a big deal about it.

Naga definitely aren't the Bardic confound, though the Bardic confound isn't terribly well defined right now (Loosely it's the interaction between their magic and music).

As for the Plane of Elemental Sound... I'd be somewhat dubious. Are there any IG references to anything like that (I've been wrong before!)?

-Raesh

"Ever notice that B.A.'s flavor text swells in direct proportion to how much one of our characters is getting screwed?" - Brian Van Hoose

>> > As far as I'm aware there isn't any direct connection between the Naga and Bardic magic
>> Keep in mind that a particular naga leaving a particular music box caused all bardic magic to go offline (the 1.0 -> 2.0 conversion). So there's a connection of some sort.

The other half of the sentence you quote-mined agrees with you.

>> My preference is for our confound to simply be music. There's no reason a confound needs to be supernatural or extraplanar.

I could be mistaken, but I think that confounds are explicitly intended to be supernatural and/or extraplanar. In any case, I think having "simply music" being a confound is entirely backward from the way confounds are intended to work, which is that they're supposed to be something that only members of a specific guild can access, and "simply music" is accessible to literally everyone, so it wouldn't work.

>> As for the Plane of Elemental Sound... I'd be somewhat dubious. Are there any IG references to anything like that (I've been wrong before!)?
>> I'm also not keen on the existence of a plane of elemental sound. That way lies the semi-elemental plane of ranch dressing.

My source for information since coming back to the game is Epedia, and I can't find anything there about it, but I'll see what I can dig up other places. I do explicitly remember reading (either in written lore or a conversation with another GM) the words "Plane of Elemental Sound," but it's entirely possible that I'm merging two memories or something. For example, it could have just been "Plane of Sound," and "Bards use Elemental magic," and I got my wires crossed. I am fairly sure that it was explained to me at some point however that the place where Naga come from (whatever you choose to call it) was 'beyond' the Elemental planes, and that this somehow related to why Bards used Elemental mana.

I

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Kneebiter Zhunee just arrived.
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Zhunee glances around the room and says, "Someone pull my finger."
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Kneebiter Zhunee runs west.

>> A confound is a non-mana-based ingredient that mages use to simultaneously simplify their spellcasting and broaden its scope. I don't see a problem with bards mixing music with elemental mana for this purpose. Yes, there's no metaphysical reason WMs couldn't learn to do the same, but then there's no metaphysical reason MMs couldn't learn to backstab. It's just a very specialized skill they never bother to learn.

Is "Backstab" the Thief confound? It's their special skill, but I don't think it's supposed to be their confound.

According to Epedia, the listed confounds are...
* Clerics — Devotion and attunement to the Spiritual Plane
* Moon Mages — Latent mental link to the Plane of Probability
* Warrior Magess — Attunement to the Elemental Planes
* Bards — Exertion of sound waves and a relationship with the Naga
* Empaths — Empathy
* Necromancers — Thanatological Transference link and (potential) attunement to certain demons
* Paladins — Soul state
* Rangers — Attunement to the forces of nature
* Traders — Starlight Infusion

Those are all far more metaphysical than simply "music." I'm not saying that music couldn't play a role in the Bardic confound, but your suggestion that it "simply be music" really does seem out of place when compared to the others.

I

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Kneebiter Zhunee just arrived.
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Zhunee glances around the room and says, "Someone pull my finger."
R>
Kneebiter Zhunee runs west.

>> Yep, everyone else's confound has a supernatural component. But since I don't see being supernatural as necessary to filling a confound's role, it's a pattern I'd like to break.

I guess I'm just unclear on what your reasoning is for not seeing a supernatural nature as necessary for a confound, given that all extant confounds have some form of supernatural nature. Do you have some post or statement to cite that gives credence to this position?

I

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Kneebiter Zhunee just arrived.
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Zhunee glances around the room and says, "Someone pull my finger."
R>
Kneebiter Zhunee runs west.

Many confounds are not really well defined right now. Really, only Necromacers, Clerics, Moon Mages, Empaths and Necromancers are solidly defined. Paladins are too - but the lore around what the sanctified soul is isn't really well nailed down.

-Raesh

"Ever notice that B.A.'s flavor text swells in direct proportion to how much one of our characters is getting screwed?" - Brian Van Hoose

Step back a moment and ask yourself, why do confounds exist in the game design?

The answer is two fold.

One is that it lets us give additional flavor to the magic of each guild to make them feel distinct.

Two is that it's an additional way to identify signature spells. (The classic example here is Seer's Sense. Mechanically it's not doing anything all that special, and technically it'd work if cast by another guild, but thematically it's all wrong for a non Moon Mage to cast it).

Frankly, the first one is the more important one. We can just call something signature if we feel it should be and that tends to be the end of that discussion.

In an ideal world, this is going to be connected to the Guild specific skills, but this isn't always the case. (Traders will be the prime example of this)

Rangers are a great example here right now. They have a guild skill (scouting), it's not connected to their magic, their confound is some sort of vague "Nature connection" and almost all of their spells feel very lifeless and flat right now. Mechanically, they're fairly sound, but the magic just doesn't feel right for the guild. I have some ideas there - but they're so far down the line (And off topic here) that we'll skip over them for now.

More relevant, Bards are in a similar situation. Their guild skill is very poorly defined, their confound is poorly defined, and mechanically their spells are a bit of a mixed bag. The entire cyclic heavy design hasn't worked out quite as well as I think the initial developers of 3.0 intended. This is why the proper solution for Bards (And Rangers and Paladins as the three primary guilds needing this work) is to have someone step back and really put some thought into the whys and hows of the guild, and use that to inform the design of the guild as a whole - spells, guild ability, confound, etc.

-Raesh

"Ever notice that B.A.'s flavor text swells in direct proportion to how much one of our characters is getting screwed?" - Brian Van Hoose

>>The current crop of GMs don't find this to be particularly interesting. They're not retconning it away, but they're also not making a big deal about it.

Oh ... um. I'm a little disappointed. Couldn't it be incorporated into something else. "Hey, those Naga are actually [[insert other theory]] and you just called them Naga because of your understanding of them was flawed until [[X]]"

>>Naga definitely aren't the Bardic confound, though the Bardic confound isn't terribly well defined right now (Loosely it's the interaction between their magic and music).

Oh good! So . . . what are the Naga?

>>As I recall from some research I did some years back, the Naga are denizens of the Plane of Elemental Sound, which is beyond (if that even makes sense) the conventional Elemental Planes.

Would be interested if Bards got their own Elemental Plane that frustrated Warrior Mages since they can't access it. Isn't the Electric Plane the only one that's supposed to actually have 3 dimensional space? Well what if Bards have access to the only Elemental Plane with sound?

>>There's no reason a confound needs to be supernatural or extraplanar.

Except most (all?) other confounds are supernatural, even if they aren't fleshed out that well, to explain what makes the Guild special. Otherwise anyone with a harpsichord wants Bardic spells and abilities.

>>I agree with ILLIENA when he said, "A confound is a non-mana-based ingredient that mages use to simultaneously simplify their spellcasting and broaden its scope." At least, that is how I have perceived it. According to that statement, there is no reason the confound has to be explicitly supernatural. It does happen that the other guilds' confounds are supernatural, but being supernatural is not written into the definition.

Ugh ...

https://elanthipedia.play.net/mediawiki/index.php/Confound#Confounds

Armifer:

"Every guild has something that complicates their magic and causes the rules to twist, and <strong>these confounding forces often aren't nearly as well understood (or even quantifiable by mortal minds) as mana lines and matrices.</strong>"

Sounds far more than "mundane."

"It is when magic interacts with <strong>other supernatural powers</strong>, called by magical theorists "confounds," that the rules change. Clerics call down blessings and damnation through direct interaction with the gods. Moon Mages cheat fate and physics through their interaction with the Plane of Probability. Necromancers defy death itself and raise their minions through an unholy use of mankind's latent empathic powers. And so on."

Supernatural powers.

"All magic users have a confound, a force or attribute that is not itself magical but impacts how they use magic. Empathy is the Empath confound, just as Devotion is the Cleric confound. It's one of the major things that separates the single discipline of magic use into so many shapes and sizes."

You can argue that you'd like to see Bardic musical abilities as just a "trade secret" but that lowers Bardic abilities down to the level of Thief-y sneakiness and stealth and takes away any sort of special, supernatural power. And sure, Bardic Lore and some Bardic abilities could or should just be based on that. But that doesn't deal with the magic/confound end of the spectrum.

>>Really, only Necromacers, Clerics, Moon Mages, Empaths and Necromancers are solidly defined. Paladins are too - but the lore around what the sanctified soul is isn't really well nailed down.

Is this a clue about the new Necromancers Guild? :-)

Isn't that just a longer way of saying "Rangers, Warrior Mages, and Bards are the ones not solidly defined" (Well and Traders, and isn't that still in development)? And Rangers are magic/supernatural tertiary, and at least have the rest of their guild (the Guild specific side) cleshed out.

And even if the Warrior Mage system doesn't seem solidly defined to you, as an outside player looking through the glass it looks rather fleshed out. Far more than Bards ...

So you have two groups. Some, like Traders and Rangers, have clear separate between magic/confound and their Guild specific skill. Others, like everyone else but Bards, have a link between their magic/confound and their Guild specific skill. I guess my question is why is a Lore primary, magic/supernatural secondary guild the one that seems least fleshed out. Because at least for Rangers and Traders their Guild specific skill is pretty well fleshed out. Bards are still awkward on that front too.

Bards DON'T need their Guild specific skill to be directly linked to their confound (they can be in the same box as Traders and Rangers). But it would be nice if they at least had some confound going on.

>>The entire cyclic heavy design hasn't worked out quite as well as I think the initial developers of 3.0 intended.

Oh? I left right in the middle of 3.0 being rolled out ...

I've had my thoughts on Bards, their supernatural realm, etc. for a while, but I was actually thinking of trying to move away from the Guild ...

>> Is this a clue about the new Necromancers Guild? :-)

Necromancers arguably have two confounds, sooo... Heh?

Bards seem to be super into aether as an element moreso than Warrior Mages if I had to pin them to any particular planar thing, but I suppose that's sort of done already.

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Thayet
Follow @thayelf on Twitter for absolutely nothing of any value whatsoever!

>> When I first started work on the Bard guild years ago... Essentially they're a weird piece of lore from the Rigby era of development

This actually sparked a memory fragment; I think it may have actually been you that told me that they were "creatures of elemental sound" or some such, but I think - now that I'm piecing it together - that this was couched in the understanding that it was a bit of old phraseology from a former developer. It could have been someone other than you, but I'm nearly certain that I was told this, by someone who was actively working on Bards. But memory is a funny thing, of course.

>> While there is certainly a musical and/or lyrical aspect of the Bardic confound (In as much as we've defined it), I wouldn't call it mundane.

That's what I was getting at as well; I have no issue with music being a part - a central part, even - of the Bard confound, but calling it "simply music" or "mundane music" I feel loses focus on what a confound is.

I

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Kneebiter Zhunee just arrived.
R>
Zhunee glances around the room and says, "Someone pull my finger."
R>
Kneebiter Zhunee runs west.

You're thinking about the elements too literally. Also, I could list them like this and it would, perhaps, be more accurate:

Air/Aether/Water
Fire
Earth/Electricity

The difference in each tier are much smaller than the gaps between the tiers.

Bards tend to embody metaphysical properties of the elements. When they use magic that calms and soothes and heals, that's usually water based (Though see Will of Winter for a rather different take on water in the Bard spellbooks). Sparking anger or other strong emotions is an aspect of Bardic fire magic.

If you look at the Bardic spellbooks:

Fae Arts -- These are almost all aether based.
Emotion Control -- These are mostly water based, with some fire in there too.
Sound Manipulation -- These are largely air based, though you have some tracers of other elements.
Elemental Invocations -- I like to think of this as the "Warrior Mage" spellbook. This is where you find the bulk of Earth, Fire and Electricity spells.



-Raesh

"Ever notice that B.A.'s flavor text swells in direct proportion to how much one of our characters is getting screwed?" - Brian Van Hoose

>>Totally, but depending on what cosmology the game's based on someone's got to wonder if Electricity somehow has access to other worlds like Vacuum, Steam, Salt, Mineral, Dust, Radiance and Ash. Don't think that's DR's cosmology, but you never know ... :)

This isn't Planescape.

But at the same time, the elemental planes were not all discovered at the same time, leading to the possibility that there are other cosmic elements to find. Whether that can be realized / will actually happen is left to the reader's imagination.

-Armifer
"Perinthia's astronomers are faced with a difficult choice. Either they must admit that all their calculations were wrong ... or else they must reveal that the order of the gods is reflected exactly in the city of monsters." - Calvino Italo

>>I'll say that to the layman, Earth-Electricity is a match that seems confusing.

It's not so much that they're paired as Bards don't tend to heavily utilize either of them.

-Raesh

"Ever notice that B.A.'s flavor text swells in direct proportion to how much one of our characters is getting screwed?" - Brian Van Hoose

>>Warrior mages have a high powered microscope (which is also a laser and has a knife strapped to it), bards are sitting back taking in the view.

I very much tried to convey in my other posts the difference here and that I recognize it, although maybe it was missed by some. The idea that in some very specific situations the physical reality around the Bard seems more real than normal, and that even then it's not clear what's going on, as a proposal, would be the limited extent of any interactions I'd propose for bringing together the lore on Bards. Past Bardic magic clearly had a role for the summoning of intelligence creatures from some other plane. Although again I think it's not clear if the Bard is summoning them to this plane, or if they were already here and is just attracting them.

>I don't think Bards were ever meant to really summon anything deliberately, just attract them, even in the old days. The Elemental Planes aren't "places" anyway, so while I get the spirit of what you're going for it doesn't really gel with the setting as-is.

This is basically what I recall. Unfortunately, as has been pointed out a lot of the information on Naga wasn't recorded for the Ws, -- so a lot of what we have is just well, stuff.

The problem -- and touching back on before where someone said the current GMs weren't ... interested? was it in the Naga lore.. is that there's nothing really that makes sense for it. Yes, it was a thing we HAD, but why (again we have only so much to go on). And then we get into, ok, aside from being a thing that shows up and you can go "Oh neat, a NAGA!" what does it DO?

Hearing the ideas and thoughts you guys have on this is really interesting though, so keep sharing and discussing.

~Evike

>[Earth-Electricity] It's not so much that they're paired as Bards don't tend to heavily utilize either of them.

Sorry to be a week late to the party but - BoS?

>> >[Earth-Electricity] It's not so much that they're paired as Bards don't tend to heavily utilize either of them.

>> Sorry to be a week late to the party but - BoS?

It's not so much that they're paired as Bards don't tend to heavily utilize either of them.

I

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"I don't know if this is the right folder because the forums are a quagmire of hate and sadness." - Thayet

Bards are cool.

(Insert plug for Call of the Siren so I can start another Bard.)

Interesting proposal, I'm not familiar enough with IRL naga lore.

I would be curious what the idea was behind picking a non-western mythical creature and how much they were borrowing real world mythology versus just picking the name as a shell.

I also happened upon this line from Treatise on the Elements, book II.

Note that not all magic beings would be defined as elementals, merely those comprised solely of elemental mana; Nagas, for instance, are beings composed of pure magic and sound, classifying them as a magic creature, but they are not elementals.