Skills/Provocation

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Provocation plays music that drives a creature into a rage against another creature. Turn monsters on each other and let them fight while you watch.

At a glance

Skill cap	100 (Grandmaster), raised up to 120 with Provocation power scrolls
Tool	any instrument
Partner skill	Musicianship
Main uses	Turning monsters against each other
Stats it trains	Dexterity and Intelligence

How to use it

1. Use the skill and target the creature you want to anger. On a good Musicianship roll: You play your music and your target becomes angered. Whom do you wish them to attack?
2. Target a second creature. Both must be within your range of each other.
3. The Provocation check uses the average difficulty of the two creatures, minus 5. On success: Your music succeeds, as you start a fight. The first creature attacks the second, and they fight each other.

On failure: Your music fails to incite enough anger. A failed provocation often turns the creature on you instead.

• Pets can't be provoked: They are too loyal to their master to be provoked.
• If the pair is far beyond your skill: You have no chance of provoking those creatures.
• If they're too far apart: The creatures you are trying to provoke are too far away from each other for your music to have an effect.
• Provoking innocent creatures costs karma. You lose 75 karma and hear Think not that I fail to see what thou art doing!

After a use you must wait 10 seconds, or 5 seconds after a failure, before using another skill.

How bard skills work

Every bard skill starts the same way:

1. Carry an instrument. If you have more than one, the game asks which to play the first time.
2. Use the skill and pick your target.
3. You first make a Musicianship check: your chance is your Musicianship out of 100. If it fails: You play poorly, and there is no effect.
4. If you play well, the skill itself is checked against the target's difficulty.

Range: 8 tiles plus 1 for every 15 points of the bard skill you're using (14 tiles at 100, 16 at 120).

Difficulty depends on how tough the creature is: its hit points, stamina, mana and total skills. Spellcasters, fire breathers, poison-immune creatures and poisonous creatures are much harder, and paragons harder still. You get help from:

• an exceptional instrument: 5 points easier;
• a slayer instrument against its matching creatures: 10 points easier (but 10 harder against the opposite kind);
• Musicianship above 100: half of every point over 100 comes off the difficulty.

Your chance with the bard skill is 50% when your skill equals the difficulty minus 10, rising or falling 2% for every point of difference.

Your Provocation minus (difficulty − 10)	Chance
-25	0%
-15	20%
-5	40%
Even	50%
+5	60%
+15	80%
+25	100%

Training Provocation

• Every attempt that gets past the Musicianship check is a chance to gain. Pairs you succeed against about half the time teach the most.
• Start on weak creatures (rabbits, birds and other animals near towns) and work up to monsters.
• Below 10.0 you gain on every attempt, sometimes several tenths at once. Above that, each attempt has a chance to gain 0.1.
• The harder the attempt is for your skill level, the better your chance to gain. Your chance also drops as you get closer to your Provocation cap and to your total skill cap of 700.
• If you've set Provocation to go down (the arrow in your skills list), gains elsewhere can lower it to make room under your total cap. Lock skills you want to keep.
• Reaching 100.0 adds Provocation to the Skills Mastered count on your achievements.
• Bards and bard guildmasters will train you for gold: up to a third of their own skill, at most 42.0, for 1 gold per 0.1 points. Ask them (or use their context menu) to train the skill, then drop the gold on them.

Stats: each successful use has about a 1% chance to raise Dexterity and a smaller chance (under 1%) to raise Intelligence by 1 point. Each stat can rise at most once every 10 minutes, and only if it's set to rise.

Suggested path

Provocation	How to train
0 to about 33	Buy it from a bard.
33 to 60	Provoke animals against each other in the wild.
60 to 90	Provoke weak monsters such as orcs, ratmen and lizardmen.
90 to 100	Provoke tougher monsters in dungeons.
100 to 120	Requires a power scroll. Provoke the strongest creatures you can find.

Power scrolls

Power scroll

Provocation tops out at 100.0 unless you use a Provocation power scroll. There are three kinds: exalted (110), mythical (115) and legendary (120). Double-click one to raise your Provocation cap to that number: "You feel a surge of magic as the scroll enhances your Provocation!"

• Provocation power scrolls come from champion bosses: Barracoon, Lord Oaks, Mephitis, Neira, Rikktor, Semidar and Silvani. Each champion boss leaves 6 power scrolls in random fighting, magic, bard and animal skills, handed out among the players who helped kill it. Each scroll is a 110 (60%), 115 (35%) or 120 (5%).
• A scroll only works if it's higher than your current cap. Otherwise: "Your Provocation is too high for this power scroll."
• Champion power scrolls are cursed: they always drop when you die, even from a blessed container. Use them or bank them quickly.
• Raising the cap doesn't raise your skill. You still have to train the extra points.

Tips

• Provoke the strong onto the strong. Two big monsters fighting each other is the bard's way of hunting.
• Stand back. Have an escape ready in case the provocation fails.
• Train Discordance too. A discorded creature is easier to provoke.

See also

• Musicianship · Peacemaking · Discordance