Hydaelyn Role-Players

So I'm planning on making Bard character soon and I have a couple questions about the job.
First of all, how do their songs work? Is it just music that inspires or are they like spells cast through music?

Second, I've seen some upper-level bards use abilities that look like straight up magic. For example, I saw one ability that involved the bard jumping up into the air and firing off what looked like a cluster of magic missiles. How do these abilities work? Is it magic or some kind of aetherial manipulation?

I'm hoping its some kind of magic and not just some visually impressive game mechanic as I'm toying with the idea of her occasionally infusing her bow with aether or a spell in order to explain some of the abilities. Thanks guys.

(09-01-2015, 12:21 PM)Sylentmana Wrote: [ -> ]So I'm planning on making Bard character soon and I have a couple questions about the job.
First of all, how do their songs work? Is it just music that inspires or are they like spells cast through music?

Second, I've seen some upper-level bards use abilities that look like straight up magic. For example, I saw one ability that involved the bard jumping up into the air and firing off what looked like a cluster of magic missiles. How do these abilities work? Is it magic or some kind of aetherial manipulation?

I'm hoping its some kind of magic and not just some visually impressive game mechanic as I'm toying with the idea of her occasionally infusing her bow with aether or a spell in order to explain some of the abilities. Thanks guys.

I'd say it's What It Looks Like.

We can shoot magic bullets out of guns. Roiding up your arrows with magic or using pure magic arrows doesn't seem all that out of place. There's no evidence for it or against it.

Go for gold, I'd say.

There's a lot of questions that we can't really define here. When we hit Rain of Death, are we actually firing dozens of arrows at once? Or is this just a gameplay segregation, so that our abilities look cool? When I use Royal Authority, is there actually an exploding ball of shimmering light that detonates in the target's chest? When you play Mage's Ballad, are you actually channeling mystical energies or just playing a morale-boosting ditty that rouses the aetherial spirit?

Because this is an MMO, the answer to each of these questions is maybe.

You're a bard.  You have options.

You a purely physical bard with NO magic in their background?  Then everything you have is style and grace and grandeur.  You're a one man murder band with more bravado than the entire WWE and enough power in your songs to make the old warrior poet skalds back the fuck up take stock of what they were doing wrong.  You can do a purely physical bard with all of their abilities, just knock the shine and explosions off the moves and just be a story that ends with an arrow in someone's head. You're a legend in motion and you're going to pull everyone along for the ride.

You are using magic? Good for you! You've got words and song to work as aetheric levers to make things move to the motion of your ocean.  Terror or Triumph, howls of wonder and hate.  Storys rolling off the tongue that turn one arrow into an explosion that recants the wars of Olde and the times when the skies went dark with death.

You have options.  Trawl your brain.  We're here to help.

Thanks guys. These have been helpful. I'm rather fond of the idea of weaving spells via music and into my bow and arrows. It kind of reminds me of the bard class in the D&D 5th edition.

I treat Y'raja's songs as what are essentially very long incantations with melodies. She has lyrics she wrote herself for each type of song, and typically sings them aloud throughout a battle. Playing a harp to accompany said singing is mostly for flavor/to add to atmosphere for the sake of morale.

As for the physical abilities, I agree with what's already been said by others. My character likely does a mix of both. A couple of skills are actually her flipping about like a crazy acrobat and flinging off arrows. Others are purely magical in nature. For an example, my FC once had an event where our characters needed to sneak into a warehouse. When I wanted Y'raja to use the equivalent of Flaming Arrow to create a distraction, I played it as a regular arrow she shoots at a desired location that bursts into a ring of flames upon singing a short incantation.

Of course, if you wanted to, perhaps your character can't do most of what BRDs are capable of in-game. Maybe they're lazy. Maybe they're a terrible singer/instrument player. Maybe they're only a bard in terms of morale boosting/musical ability, but in battle they use [insert weapon other than a bow here].

tl;dr: Get creative and have fun with it!