Discordance[]
"Discordance is evil. Harmony is virtue." - Plato
Music may soothe the savage beast, but playing a few clashing notes will weaken even the strongest of creatures.
Discordance is used to lower the skills of your foe, making it a much easier fight.
The Discordance skill goes hand in hand with the Musicianship skill.
Bards must remain within their range and remain visible or the effects of the skill will wear off.
Make sure when you're adventuring with a Tamer to coordinate with him, so you do not by accidently gimp the animals he wished to tame for later usage.
Training[]
Before you start training Discordance its wise to stash away the instrument you got on character creation. The instrument is Blessed, and you might want to take it with you only for usage after you have died and lost all your other instruments. Training Discord will eventually wear out the instrument used.
Another idea is to train Musicianship past 80.0 or so making since in addition to influencing the level of success for the other Bardic skills. More success is more skill gains.
Method 1
0 - 30 Visit a Bard NPC and have him train you in exchange for a few hundred gold coins.
30 - 40 Cows, Hinds, Sheeps, Black bear, Slimes, Corpser, Ostard
40 - 50 Scorpions, Great Harts, Polar Bears, Orcs, Corpser, Ostard
50 - 65 Lizardmen, Great Harts, Grizzly bears, Bulls, Frienzied Ostard
65 - 90 Get a friend to tame you a Giant Beetle and pump up the jam.
90 - 120 Giant Beetle gains will slow down dramatically ( "needs more editing and information" )
Method 2
You could optionally train a bit of taming skill and animal lore from a Stable Handler NPC.
Note that succesfully using Discordance on a creature will make you unable to use the skill again on it, until the Discordance falls off. Running out of sight or making yourself invisible will make the Discordance wear off faster.
But a more common strategy is to get a Mount for each skill level. Which are Horses , Llama, Desert Ostard, Forest Ostard, Frenzied Ostard, Giant Beelte, Raging Phoenix, Nightmare, Unicorn or Hiryu.
When succesfully using discord on these creatures and mount them for at least 18 seconds. The moment you dismount them the Discordance effect will have worn off.
The Numbers[]
The base range of all bard abilities is 8 tiles, with each 15 points of skill in the ability being used increasing this range by one tile.
Barding Difficulty is a value that indicates the skill level that a Bard must have for a 50% chance of success versus the creature in question. If a bard's skill is 25 points below the Barding Difficulty value, the bard has no chance of success. If a bard's skill is 25 points above the Barding Difficulty value, the bard has 100% chance of success and cannot gain any skill points against that creature type.
The percentage lost is dependant on your Discordance skill. For example at 50.0 skill the target loses 10% from all stats and skills and at 100.0 skill the target loses 20% from all stats and skills.