Starting Bard Stats

[gambetto]

Greetings all. So, I have decided to enter the world of Bard-ery... Anyways, I was wondering what start stats I should have? Are Bards INT based? So far I'm thinking of starting with 50 Musicianship/50 Provocation/ and Peacemaking. Any tips would be greatly appreciated

Thanks!

[alcon]

The barding skills are easy to gm... I think when I made mine I just did 50 resist 50 taming (because my goal was to make him a tamer). However, I guess I'd say go with magery for your second. I also never used peace making.. i would just bard the monsters and if it failed or they attacked me i'd just ride around and heal myself again. Also, I would recommend for your stats that you do 100 str/100int/25 dex.

[Hicha]

Music
Provocation
Magery
Meditation
Evaluate Intelligence
Resist Magic
Wrestling

Start with 50 magery, 50 resist, 60 int, 10 str, 10 dex. Herding to max out stats (100/100/25), use a macro that double-clicks instrument, then provokes, pause 10 secs.

Resist and Wrestling are great for both caster mobs and PKs.

[nickhimself]

you can swap out wrestling for hiding easily. If you're hidden and someone tries to reveal you, you can recall out before they get a reveal off. Or, you can start running after they start casting and hide elsewhere. Works 90% of the time.

[johttenn]

don't start with 50 resist, it flies up to 55 just walking around in firewalls. It'll take you around 30 minutes. Past 55 resist is a bitch.

[Mikel123]

Music
Provocation
Magery
Meditation
Evaluate Intelligence
Resist Magic
Wrestling

Start with 50 magery, 50 resist, 60 int, 10 str, 10 dex. Herding to max out stats (100/100/25), use a macro that double-clicks instrument, then provokes, pause 10 secs.

Resist and Wrestling are great for both caster mobs and PKs.

Perfect guide.

Also, regarding the next post... if you're going to drop something for Hiding, I would suggest dropping Resist. It's much more costly to GM than Wrestling, but more importantly it allows you to escape a lot more situations.

If you are being attacked (by a player or a monster), resist will lower the damage you're taking... but getting hit by spells will still interrupt you trying to cast a Greater Heal or a Recall, whether they do 12 damage or 25. With wrestling, you have a chance to dodge swings completely. With 0 wrestling, a dexer PK will kill you every single time, because he will never miss and you will never be able to Recall away. With 100 Wrestling, you have more than a 50% chance of getting Recall off without dying.

[Caswallon]

Drop eval for hiding. You dont need it, if you want to get the fame/karma just fire of an ebolt when the mob is red lined, does the trick for all but the biggest bad guys.

[Mikel123]

Yup, dropping Eval is even better. There are some fun/obnoxious things you can do with a "pvp" bard with hiicha's list, but the opportunities are few and far between. For straight up money-making, I'd go with:

Magery
Meditation
Resist
Wrestling
Music
Provocation
Hiding

In addition to it's normal uses, Hiding is also an excellent way to keep your guy relatively safe without the hassle of recalling home while you go to the bathroom IRL.

That is, unless you're hardcore like me and have installed a catheter so you can play UO without interruption.

[Hicha]

Dropping eval means you're ebolts are going to hit for 13-14 instead of 52 - 58, and thats not factoring in your target's resist (if any.)

You'll end up just spamming EV's or BS instead of ebolting spamming something to death.

[Mikel123]

Or, if you want to use actual numbers...
http://www.uosecondage.com/stratics/UOS ... ulator.htm

100 Magery in all cases.

100 eval vs 0 resist: avg 28 damage for Ebolt
100 eval vs 100 resist: avg 24 damage

0 eval vs 0 resist: avg 24 damage
0 eval vs 100 resist: 12 damage

At worst, you'll need twice as many ebolts without Eval. But really, it's never an issue... I've never run out of mana (i.e. tried to cast 6+ ebolts in a row) trying to finish something off.

[nickhimself]

Also, if you're a bard and you're trying to pvp you should just drop the music/provo and pick up swords/tactics.

Don't pvp with your bard. You'll do better with a more streamlined pvp template. I'm not saying it's not possible, i'm just saying there are better pvp builds than music/provo mage.

[Tron]

do not drop resist, do not drop wrestle.

if you must drop one, drop eval, but imo, don't do that either.

you don't need hide, it's sh*t with a bard since you will be provoing anyways and they work on the same timer. and hide isn't going to save you from pks nearly as much as wrestle or resist will. all you need to do is recall from pks, play defense at first, dont insta recall and your opponent will go to offense and not disturbing, when he does, then you leave.

no wrestle means you will never have a chance of living when i come for you, and no resist means you'll have no chance when mym synchs you.

[Gicod]

One possible switch. I see alot of advocates in these threads for starting 50 magery/50 resist. If you are starting with 50 magery anyhow, why not use the other 50 for something besides resist? You can get 55 resist from 0 (and stat gains along the way) fairly quickly running back and forth through a fire field. Starting with 50 magery you should still get reasonably good magery gains from casting the fire fields as well as possibly an occasional gain off all those GHeals you gotta toss on yourself, and med gains from blowing through all that mana so fast. Or do this with a friend with GM med who heals you so you just gotta cast the field and run (an no one needs to flag or be guilded) and you can get it in under an hour. Just a thought. Why blow 50 free points on something so easy to get to that point on yer own?

[Hicha]

I've always done 50 magery/50 resist, so right off the back I can start raising Magery.

From 50-62.9: Lightnening : Mandrake Root & Sulfurous Ash
From 63.0-82.9: Energy Bolt : Black Pearl & Nightshade
From 82.9-100: Flame Strike : Spider's Silk & Sulphurous Ash

How long does it take to raise Resist to at least 50 with fire fields? Has to be a few hours.

By the time I'm GM starting with 50/50, I'm at around 93 resist, which is good enough for most people, and it's barely cost me anything in regs. I suppose if you want to waste time running around in flame fields its duable, but I always look for the less-interactive, afk method of GMing skills.

1. Macro magery/med/resist/part of eval int
2. Macro wrestling/finish eval int on target
3. Music/provo at same time
4. ???
5. Profit/Get PKed by Tron

[Gicod]

Actually resist to 55 in fire fields takes under an hour. My wife and I went out somewhere private (so no one stumbled across one of us flagged) and did 2 of her characters and 2 of mine and none of them took more than half an hour. Starting with 50 resist is a waste of 50 points, honestly.