Musicianship is the base skill for all bard abilities.
Any attempt to use other bard skills is preceded by a non-difficulty
based check of the character’s Musicianship skill. If this skill
check fails, the subsequent skill check to use the bard ability
is never made and the character must wait some time before attempting
the ability again. For every point above 100 that a Bard attains in their Musicianship skill, they will be granted a success bonus of 1% per point to Discordance, Targeted Peacemaking, and Provocation attempts. For example: If you have a Musicianship skill of 110, your chance to provoke, discord, or peacemake a target will be increased by 10%.

Instruments

Instruments currently in game consist of tambourines (plain and tasselled), drums, bamboo flutes, lutes, lap harps and standing harps, plus the special instrument, the fire horn.

Exceptional instruments will lower the difficulty of using a Bard skill
against a creature by 5 points, meaning they will offer a 10% increase
in the chance to successfully use a Bard skill against a creature (i.e.
for every .1 of skill, the Bard will have a .2% chance).

Magical instruments have some similarities to the “slayer weapons”, they are more effective against certain creatures and less effective against others. Each of these magical instruments will give the bard 10 skill points worth of difficulty modifiers against a specific class of creature. Using the instrument against the opposing creature type gives a difficulty penalty instead of a bonus.
As an example, an instrument labelled ‘Demon slayer’ will increase the bard’s chance to use a barding ability against any variety of Daemon by 20% (when that instrument is used). When used against an elemental, however, the bard’s chance of success is reduced by 20%. Magical instruments are fairly common as loot on various creatures.

Restrictions

All bard abilities have a range. The bard must be within this range of the target to use the ability. Furthermore, the bard must remain within this range or the ability’s effect ends. 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.

The Peacemake ability has an alternative mode usable as a radius of effect. For this variant, the radius of effect is identical to the ability’s range.

Once a bard ability has been used on a target, the bard must remain alive, visible, and within line of sight of the target or the effect ends.

A single creature can be the target of only a single instance of each bard ability at a time. A single creature can be the target of both Provocation and Peacemaking, but cannot be the target of two simultaneous Peacemakes.

If a creature becomes under a given barding effect (Discordance,
Peacemaking, or Provocation)
and a second bard attempts to use that same effect on the creature,
then the older effect takes precedence and remains active.

All current skill usage delays remain in effect, but there are no new limitations other than those stated above on their use. A bard can have several Provocation fights going at once, provided all of them meet the above restrictions.