Basically, every point in Bard increases the maximum amount of reactions it can proc. Bard will only proc when it's NOT your turn and it reacts to different things happening. The effects get more powerful the more points you put in. For example if your Archer misses a shot and your Mage is a level 4 Bard, he will buff her with 30% extra hit chance while it's still her turn (immediately after the shot misses). This also applies to getting hit like say an enemy lands a crit on someone the bardic reaction will lower their hit chance while it's still their turn.

What if there are more than one bard, does the scripting chose more powerful bard first ? The main issue about this ability (and reactions in general) as I see is a total lack of control. This game already has too much RNG stuff going on

@necroz: You actually have perfect control. If a trigger for a bardic reaction appears, then the reaction will trigger. If more than one bard on the same team can answer this trigger, then only the most powerful bardic reaction will trigger, which keeps reactions from getting wasted. The reaction economy generates at a set rate every round, and you will see exactly how many were generated in addition to how many total are available, so this is also very controlled. The only time you will lack control with a bard is in a scenario when you have the misfortune of running out of reactions right before a very important trigger situation occurs. In other words, minor threats used up your ability to react to major threats. The monster AI will not do this on purpose, so you can also game the system a little by knowing what triggers reactions and what sorts of things the monsters do that could potentially serve as triggers. For example, if you have a fire-using monster that will afflict you burning, this will use your reactions to cleanse the burning status. But perhaps in the same group you have a monster than can create fear effects; it is much more important to cleanse the fear if you are not already immune. In this scenario it would behoove you to get some burn immunity up in order to reduce the chance of a wasted reaction. Of course, the same way that your reactions get wasted, you can purposely waste monster reactions was well, and this is probably the most important point of control you have over the reactions.

Please note that all reactions work in the same way as I outline above for bard: trigger situation + available reactions = reaction. RNG is not a factor here, although if the scripting engine breaks the reactions probably will not fire. Unfortunately, we cannot do anything further on that particular front.

Elric, thanks for the explanation! Great to know that it will use more powerful reactions first. I guess if a reaction can be spent on ally or enemy there's still issue that enemies will suck your reactions that you want to reserve for allies. And also if you have different power reactions for enemies and allies reserved you cannot pick which one to use for allies and which one for enemies. That's what I mean when I mentioned lack of control

@necroz: I hear you--it is true that although you have control the control is somewhat indirect. It's too bad that we have no way to allow players to set their preference for reaction use in the way that you describe.

I have read that the companions cannot learn some skills that the main characters can, one of them was the bard/grandstander if I`m not mistaken, has this been fixed ? (sorry for the bad english)

I think Demon, Angel and Predator are good - with them you have full control since you are the one activating required buffs/debuffs. However Bard is a bit disappointing because my summons tend to have low hit rate, and bard reactions are often spent on boosting their hit rate. Now the ability level of Bard on my char is not high, so it's not so important, but if I boosted it to high levels then it would be a huge waste. I don't care if my summons miss, their damage is not critical and what is the point to increase their hit rate if they die in 1 turn ? I think I will put low priority on +bard equipment, it will help but other items are more important.

Originally posted by Elric:

The reaction economy generates at a set rate every round, and you will see exactly how many were generated in addition to how many total are available, so this is also very controlled.

I know this is a bit old, but I hope you are still reading this. I have one probably quite simple question:

Where do you see those reaction generations per round and how many you have total ? I do not have a buff of any sort on my (bard) character. How can I track the reactions? :)
Thanks for creating your awesome mod!

EDIT: Never mind, found it. For anyone wondering: it's actually not a buff or anything, it's in the combat log on the screen and in the journal. :)