At current the Spiritsingers work alongside Ecology. Pretty sure there is at least one skill that needs Ecology to work properly.

I've sparred bards that had average or slightly above average dexterity, and the dodging was frequent enough to be annoying. The dodging is just another way to completely avoid a warrior's attack, added to stancing, rebounding, parrying, shielding. Are you suggesting with this thread that the dodging be increased? My opinion is that the effects of any stat (STR, INT, DEX, etc) above 18/19 should be parabolic, approaching zero as you increase the stat, making dexterity 24 give a tiny boost compared with dexterity 22 or 20...

Heh, no. I did actually say that I'm just looking for people's thoughts to get the general opinion on it. I'm also unsure as to whether dex has much effect on dodging if at all.

Tarot is about the only skill I can think of that would make me drop Illusions and start playing again. Even if I do love my Illusions.

You're suggesting diminishing returns in addition to weighted stats? Isn't that too much?

Diminishing returns would apply only to the highest stat values, and would be preferable to just capping the effects in most cases. The weighting tries to keep the highest stats out of reach, but for those lucky few who still get there, a secondary solution is useful in preventing the ungodly effects they produce.

I think the point of them was more that they were 'rogue' and wandered around all the time. I'd love if there was a way (any way) to actually play a rogue in Lusternia without losing your combat viability.. but that would probably go against the design of Lusternia. Really a shame. Being a mercenary could be a lot of fun.

No, dodging is not a persecution of warriors. Everyone's offense is affected by dodging.

Before we talk about how annoying bardic dodging is, let us also look at the few defenses bards get... Hrm...

Dodging Dodge the blows of your foes.
-This annoys the crap out of people (and not just warriors) since bards dodge attacks.

Balancing Balance on the balls of your fee, like a cat.
-Helps prevent being proned. Constant willpower drain.

Falling Reduce the effects of falling through body control.
-Helps prevent broken limbs when falling from trees.

Elasticity Muscles can be trained to reduce physical damage.
-Reduces attack damage.

Handstand While standing on your hands, you make a hard target.
-Increases avoidance. If you do anything (speak, SCORE, blink, etc.) you come out of your handstand.

Avoid Prepare yourself to deftly avoid the next blow.
-Basically works like a pentagram. Nice.

Tripleflash Become so chaotic, you will be impossible to strike.
-Don't have the skill, so dunno how it works.

Even with 6 of those active + dodging, I have less defense than I had as a Nihilist. I probably have much less defense than most warriors and wiccans. Dodging doesn't seem all that unreasonable to me, considering that's all we really get. I don't know what defensive abilities ecology has, but illusions certainly isn't very useful for defense except for reflecting.

Not all of us are omnitrans demigod bards with TFs. I'm pretty sure that's just Kaervas.

On the offensive side, I can't even get a hit in most of the time if I'm the only bard in group combat, because I can't blanknote/blankchord enough to get around truehearing to get a minorsecond. Dodging is probably annoying, but so is being utterly useless in any sort of combat situation. Let's not make bards suck even more by reducing dodging effectiveness.

I think they are trying to say warriors have it worst than most other classes when fighing bards

That was what I was trying to say. Thanks.

Ceren makes a valid point still. Thanks for pointing that out for me.

Dodging is the best defence in the game against wounds, vis did suggest a downgrade to bardic dodging a while ago. Something about removing the equilibrium disruption and treating the dodged attack as a miss for warriors.