2026-09-17 14:44:58 UTC#1
Where Music Is Already Working
I’ve tested the musical side of the system pretty heavily at this point, and short of a few individual instrument sound issues I’ve already discussed with Archin, I think the RP side is in a very good place.
Writing songs is fun, performing them is fun, and the custom note system gives musicians a lot of personality.
What I’m focusing on here is the mechanical half.
The current system is completely playable, but after using it quite a bit, I think there are several places where it could be made smoother. I’ve tried to separate these out because most of them could stand on their own rather than needing to be implemented as one large rework.
1. Shared Ability Pool
I would separate what instrument you play from what kind of musician you are mechanically.
Currently, choosing an instrument that fits your character also gives you a fixed assortment of abilities at 25/50/75/100, whether those abilities fit that character or not.
Instead, every 25 points of total Music skill could unlock one ability slot chosen from a shared pool.
For example:
- 100 Music Theory = 4 ability slots
- 20 Music Theory + 80 Plucking = 4 ability slots
- 25 each in four different Music skills = 4 ability slots
That would let a violinist build as a healer, a drummer specialize in Sanity and Stamina support, or a town pianist work toward Composition and Fatigue recovery from the beginning.
The stronger existing abilities already give us a pretty good pool:
- Gentle String — HP regeneration
- Steeling Strum — Party heal
- Steady Beat — Stamina regeneration
- Rallying Blast — Burst Stamina recovery
- Whispering Wind — Self Focus recovery
- Breezy Melody — Party Focus recovery
- Restful Sonata — Resolve recovery
- Harmonious Rest — Fatigue recovery
- Heroic Resonance — Sanity protection
- Soothing Rhythm — Injury/Illness mitigation
- Battle Hymn — Physical Resistance
- Chord of Warmth — Cold Resistance
- Marching Cadence — Movement speed
- Twang of Surprise — Reveal hidden characters
- Echoing Note — Long-distance signal
- Discordant Note — Combat disruption
- Thunderous Crescendo — HCI bonus
- Music Composition — Custom sheet music
I would probably drop or rework the generic +STR / +DEX / +INT abilities. They feel much less distinctive or useful here than the utility abilities. Even former 100 skill abilities like Music Composition and Echoing Note are so niche that early availability should not cause much issue and would effectively reflect that character's personality.
Once an ability is chosen for a slot, I would also keep that choice attached to the slot even if skill later drops below the threshold.
Dropping from 25 total Music to 24 would disable that ability. Returning to 25 would restore the same choice rather than allowing an easy respec.
1.5 Instrument Mastery at 100
This one wouldn't necessarily need to be attached to the above suggestion, but would be a nice reward capstone for specialization.
We already have the baked-in perk at 70ish instrument skill that prevents missed notes. I think 100 could similarly give each Music skill a smaller mastery perk rather than another mandatory ability.
Just as examples:
Woodwind 100 — Breath Control
+10 Maximum Focus
Bowing 100 — Gentle Touch
Reduced instrument durability loss from Music abilities
Percussion 100 — Perfect Rhythm
Reduced Focus cost for Music abilities
Brass 100 — Carrying Call
Improved projection/range
Plucking 100 — Lingering Chord
Increased Music ability duration
Music Theory 100 — Masterful Arrangement
Further increased note per second limit
That would let the instrument still define your specialization without determining your entire ability kit.
2. Song Library / Navigation
This one is almost completely separate from the ability changes.
The existing composition gump is fine for actually writing music, but it gets awkward once the library grows.
The gump itself takes up roughly a quarter of my screen, and I currently have around 40 pages of saved music. Moving one song at a time gets increasingly painful, while the command system only helps if you remember the exact song title.
A separate small song index gump might be enough:
Blue Danube I — Play / Silent / Edit
Daisy Bell — Play / Silent / Edit
Boots on the Boards — Play / Silent / Edit
Sanity Phrase — Play / Silent / Edit
Previous / Next
Even ten titles per page would make a large library much easier to navigate without making the existing editor any larger.
This would be useful even if nothing else about Music changed.
3. Better Command Playback
Also independent of everything else: it would help if command playback had access to the same quiet/silent option as the gump.
Something along the lines of:
"[play %Melody1% quietly"
would make keybound song playback much more practical.
Right now, playing through the gump is the only practical way to use silent playback.
The command system is much friendlier in combat, but repeatedly stopping/restarting a song for uptime also means repeatedly stopping it short and replaying the beginning of the song, both hearing it yourself and unfortunately broadcasting it to everyone nearby.
A quiet command would not solve the larger mechanical awkwardness below, but it would still be a useful quality-of-life improvement on its own.
4. Active Music Abilities / Stingers
This is the most significant change here, and probably the most difficult sell technically.
The current passive system does work and the above suggestions make the system a little more practical.
Still, I think this is worth considering even if it proves too large a change to pursue, because it gets at the difference between making the current system easier to operate and changing how it actually feels to play.
Your selected passive sits on the action bar and pulses every six seconds, but only while music is playing. Switching between passives itself is not especially awkward.
The friction comes from having to manage the passive system and the song playback system at the same time.
The song editor occupies roughly a quarter of my screen, as I mentioned. There is no obvious indication of how far through a song you are, so maintaining good uptime often means hitting Play to stop the current song and then hitting it again to restart it.
You can use a keybound "[play" %melody1% command instead, but then you lose silent playback.
So combat Music tends to become:
What passive do I have active?
Is my song still running?
Do I need to restart it?
Move the gump.
Am I annoying everyone?
Whoops, reopen the gump.
Find the right page.
Keep moving.
The ability system and the performance system feel like two separate things being maintained alongside each other.
The more ambitious idea would be to turn the current passives into short active performances instead.
Rather than producing a six-second pulse repeatedly while a song runs, using the ability could provide roughly 12 seconds of effect—essentially two of the current pulses.
Each ability could also have an optional player-defined musical stinger attached to it, perhaps up to around 16 notes.
Use Gentle String, it plays your short custom stinger, and the effect fires.
Use Marching Cadence, it plays its own stinger and provides the movement effect.
Different stingers attached to different abilities gives great audible cues to everyone for what ability is happening without looking at buff icons.
That would keep the mechanical side musical while making it more active and responsive. Instead of maintaining a background process, the player is simply deciding when to hit the button: when to heal, restore Stamina, protect Sanity, recover Focus, or use utility.
The stinger could be as elaborate or unobtrusive as the player wants: a recognizable phrase for every ability, the same phrase reused across several, a single note, or potentially nothing at all.
Full songs would still remain separate and useful.
For something like Harmonious Rest, you might still sit in a Rest Area playing a full three-minute song while occasionally activating Harmonious Rest on top of it. The stinger would not replace normal performance; it would just give the mechanical ability its own short flourish.
Harmonious Rest and Restful Sonata are probably the best arguments for keeping the current passive system, since simply playing a long song while everyone rests feels natural.
Even there, though, Music abilities consume instrument durability, so I would not normally want to leave them running continuously for long periods anyway.
If stingers used the existing composition system, the ability menu could simply assign a saved song to each ability:
Gentle String
Stinger: Healing Phrase
[Change]
Heroic Resonance
Stinger: Sanity Phrase
[Change]
A small “Stinger” checkbox in the song editor could optionally keep full-length arrangements out of that selection list.
Overall
None of these really need to be one all-or-nothing package.
The song index would help even if abilities never changed.
A quiet playback command would help even if passives stayed exactly as they are.
A shared ability pool and new instrument capstones could work with the current playback system.
And the active ability/stinger idea is the more ambitious attempt to address the part of Music that still feels like two systems being juggled together.
The RP side of Music already feels good.
Most of this is just a wishlist for making the mechanical side equally smooth.
Edited 1 time by Blue 2026-09-17 15:54:16 UTC