Last night while in the West Commonlands my party was camping the Dervish
Cutthroat site. I live in Hawaii so at that time of the night there were
less than 20 people in the zone and we were the only group at the dervish
camp. We only had four people in the party, a paladin, a ranger, a wizard,
and myself (all around 13th level). Because we were the only party at the
site, when we arrived the entire camp was full of cutthroats, around 6 or 7
total (fortunately no mages). Knowing that we couldn't take them all on at
once, I told the party to stay back and let me do some bard magic. After
equipping my mandolin, I proceeded to Lament (sadden) three cutthroats and
attacked another one. I ran back out to where my party was and we easily
dispatched the cutthroats that followed. Once we were ready, we dispatched
the ones that I had initially Lamented. After that, we were able to take on
the cutthroats one by one as they respawned.

After the initials battles, my party thanked me for using the Lament tactic.
They all stated they had grouped with bards before and had never seen the
song used in the manner I had used it. I thought that was odd because I
heard about the trick from this forum so assumed a lot of other people used
it frequently.

So what's the point of this post? Well, the bard community needs to educate
the other classes on everything that we can do for a party. A lot of other
players seem to think that our main purpose in a group is to play Selo,
Hymn, Anthem, and at higher levels, Mana regen. I'm only 13th level but
I've learned there is a lot more to it than that.

If anyone else knows of similar tactics that only a bard can perform I would
like to hear about them also.

Now for the rant

After we cleared out the initial cutthroats, we were pretty much able to
take them on one by one from that point on until we ran into a stumbling
block. Here is what happened. The paladin, the ranger and myself, aided by
the Anthem could easily handle one cutthroat at a time. However, our wizard
insisted on expending his mana with direct damage spells even though the
tanks were whittling down the cutthroat without taking that much damage.
The damage we were taking could quickly be healed via the Hymn after the
combat was over. What eventually happened was that the fully healed tanks
ended up standing around while the wizard meditated. In the meantime, the
camp fully respawned. This time, however, there were 3 mages plus a couple
of thugs. I tried the Lament trick again but a mage resisted and everyone
got waxed except the wizard, who gated.

I don't like telling other people how to play their character but how do you
handle a magic user who insists on wasting his mana? The group leader kept
telling him to save mana but it didn't do any good. I can see using one
direct damage spell to help the combat but he would continue spellcasting
once the cutthroat started to flee. At this point, no one was in any danger
because the cutthroat was fighting back. He created a lot of needless
downtime by his actions. Any other recommendation other than finding a
different group to adventure with?

Galtin
E'ci