Bard song question and a song mod question

Lammas

When I started playing EE I very quickly noticed bards song does not affect the whole area anymore. The range is really small. Just now I tried googling that a bit and found out that the most recent patch (yes, I have it) should have raised the range to "at least the visual range of the bard".
For me it still appears to be right about half my visual range which is very limiting for it's effectiveness. Did that change not go through or do Blades just still have a sore throat and that change is only for base bard or something?

Then onwards to the mod question. Is there a mod that would make the song just constant instead of switching off for anything? I tried searching for it and all I found was some thread asking for the same thing and it just somehow derailed into an argument about whether you can compare singing on the toilet to singing in a combat... I'd like one where the ability never turns off but having it linger for several hours would be a workable, if a whole lot stronger, solution too.

ThacoBell

If your bard song range is really small, you should probably file a bug report, or at least post in the troubleshooting section.

As for mods, Might and Guile turns bards into semi 3rd edition. So their songs are more like "auras" that are constantly on and don't interfere with other actions (unless otherwise stated in the description.) I am currently expericening a bug with the mod that messes with thief scripts in SoD, but the creator is very active and I'm it will be fixed shortly.

jsaving

Might and Guile is a great mod but be aware that its tweaks are intended to be power boosts rather than faithful adaptations of 3rd edition rules (which its authors straightforwardly acknowledge in the readme). In the particular case of bard songs, Thaco is right that MG moves a bit toward the way 3rd edition songs were handled, but bards in that edition could neither cast spells nor use magic items while singing whereas MG bards can do both.

ThacoBell

@jsaving The MG bards songs are actually the "inspirations" from 3rd edition. Those COULD be used while casting magic and using items.

jsaving

It's true that MG bard songs work like inspirations, but bard songs weren't inspirations in 3e. Still a fun rule to use though.

ThacoBell

jsaving said:

It's true that MG bard songs work like inspirations, but bard songs weren't inspirations in 3e. Still a fun rule to use though.

There were both. Things like "Inspire Confidence/competence" that you get at the first 2 levels were inspirations. Songs came later and had more powerful effects that prevented other actions.

Lammas

Hmmh, I might look into that, though I'd like for a simpler change that only does this one thing of changing the "interupted by other actions" to 0, or however the game has that handled without changing anything else.
It would just be a small change for convenience allowing me to stop from turning auto-pause at round end on and micromanaging it like crazy when I want 100 % uptime on the song. I can already have it up like 80-90 % of the time while doing all my other actions and most of the rest of that percentile just comes from human error causing me to drop it for a round.

CamDawg

IWDification also has alternative bard songs from, appropriately enough, IWD.

Lammas

That's cool, but I'd prefer for the BG songs to remain as they are, just making them constant unless I turn it off myself for invisibility or something. I just want to remove the micromanaging it currently takes to achieve this.

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Lammas

How about adding the lingering effect for it? It's a lot stronger than what I had in mind, turning it into into a better version of the original full area song but I could live with that solution too.

If worst comes to happen and that's not possible either then is it possible to fiddle with Bard hat from SOD to modify it's lingering effect to last a lot longer than it currently does?

jsaving

"Inspire" songs do have fewer restrictions than other songs in 3e, but they still prevent bards from casting spells or using magic items. Other bard songs like fascination/suggestion include these restrictions and additionally prevent the bard from making melee/missile attacks. None of these restrictions make much sense to me, though, as they push the bard into a role of passive spectator, which isn't why anyone actually plays the game.

ThacoBell

@jsaving ""Inspire" songs do have fewer restrictions than other songs in 3e, but they still prevent bards from casting spells or using magic items."

No they don't. I had zero issues using inspirations on my bard in NWN2 and being able to cast spells. Its only the higher level songs that prevent that.

jsaving

NWN2 is an adapted version of 3rd edition that handles many things differently than the actual 3e ruleset including bard songs. You're right about NWN2 though.

ThacoBell

Being kinda right is almost as good!