Bard

What this profession is

The bard fights with music instead of weapons: play the right instrument and you can make two monsters slaughter each other, lull a room to sleep, or cripple a boss’s stats. A pure bard barely touches a sword — the loot drops because the monsters did the work. It’s a control profession that shines in groups and pairs beautifully with a mage or tamer who cleans up what the music leaves alive.

Core skills

Provocation — turn monsters on each other. Target two enemies and they fight to the death; you loot the winner. The bard’s signature trick.
Peacemaking — calm. Pacifies a target or an area so monsters stop attacking, buying time to reposition or escape.
Discordance — debuff. Lowers a target’s skills (including its weapon skill, so it hits less) and all five resistances — up to 28% at GM, scaling with your Discordance (Scripts/Skills/Discordance.cs) — making everything else easier to kill.
Musicianship — the enabler. Every bard ability first calls BaseInstrument.CheckMusicianship; fail that play and the song has no effect (Scripts/Skills/Provocation.cs, Scripts/Skills/Discordance.cs). Train it alongside the other three.

The build

There is no dedicated bard template in this wiki yet. Build it around the four skills above (Provocation + Peacemaking + Discordance + Musicianship is four grandmaster slots) and spend the remaining three on a partner kit — commonly Magery, Meditation, and Resisting Spells for a bard-mage, or the tamer skills for a bard-tamer. See 7x GM Templates for fitting all seven under the 700-point cap.

How to play it

Read Combat Advanced for the timing of musical abilities within a fight. The core loop: open with Discordance to weaken a tough target, then Provoke two enemies into killing each other while you stand back; if things go wrong, Peacemake to break aggro and reset. Your songs reach further as you train: bard range is 8 + skill/15 tiles (BaseInstrument.GetBardRange), so a grandmaster works from about 14 tiles away — and for provoke, the two targets must also be within that range of each other. A bard is strongest where monsters spawn in groups — more bodies means more pairs to provoke. Pair with a mage or tamer to finish the survivor.

Gear & tools

An instrument — lute, harp, drum, or tambourine. Quality and slayer type both matter: an exceptional instrument and a matching slayer instrument each lower the difficulty of the target (GetDifficultyFor in Scripts/Items/Equipment/Instruments/BaseInstrument.cs), so a slayer instrument that matches the monster type makes provoke/discord land more reliably. See instruments. Carry a spare; each use consumes a charge (ConsumeUse) and they wear out.
Light armor — you don’t tank, so favor mobility.
A spellbook and reagents if you’ve taken the mage partner skills.

Making a living

The bard’s income is provoke-and-loot: provoke powerful bestiary monsters into killing each other, then loot the gold, gems, and gear off both corpses — often clearing high-value targets at little risk and no ammunition cost. Discordance also makes you a valuable group member for boss fights. Sell loot via Vendors & Banking.