UO Discordance Skill Guide
Discordance (also known as Enticement in older versions) is a bard skill used to reduce the stats and resistances of creatures and players. It is one of the most powerful debuff tools in PvM and PvP, making it essential for bard support builds.
Discordance is a bard skill in Ultima Online, rated as Medium difficulty to train. This guide walks you through everything you need to raise Discordance from 0 to grandmaster, including the most efficient training methods, the targets and items to use at each skill range, and the gains you can expect along the way. Whether you are building your first character or optimizing a finished template, the breakdown below will help you train Discordance as quickly and cheaply as possible.
Below you will find an overview of what Discordance does, a step-by-step training guide, recommended skill ranges, any bonuses Discordance provides, and the templates that pair well with it. If you would rather skip the grind, UO King can deliver a ready-made character or the gear you need to support a Discordance build on your shard.
Discordance is the bard skill that plays a jarring tune to sap a creature's effectiveness, temporarily lowering its stats, skills, resistances and damage output. On the Stratics Barding Difficulty page it is one of the four abilities fed into the Barding Success Calculator, which combines your Musicianship, Discordance and instrument choice to estimate whether a song will land against a given target. A successful discord makes a monster easier for you and your allies to kill, which is why it pairs so well with tamers and melee groups.
Effective difficulty 70.0. Success = 50 + 2 × (your skill − difficulty); 25+ points below you cannot attempt, 25+ above always succeeds (but stops gaining).
You gain skill by successfully using Discordance on creatures. The chance to gain increases with the difficulty of the target relative to your skill level.
| Skill Range | Recommended Creatures |
|---|---|
| 0.0 – 30.0 | Buy skill from Bard or Musician NPC |
| 30.0 – 60.0 | Ostards, Timber Wolves, Snow Leopards |
| 60.0 – 90.0 | Drakes, Serpents, Scorpions |
| 90.0 – 120.0 | Nightmares, Cu Sidhe, Greater Dragons |
0.0 – 30.0
30.0 – 60.0
60.0 – 90.0
90.0 – 120.0
Discordance never works alone — a Musicianship check gates every attempt, and your gear and companions shape the outcome:
- Musicianship — mandatory; anything above 100 directly lowers barding difficulty, improving your odds.
- Instrument quality — exceptional instruments shave 5 off difficulty and the right slayer instrument shaves 10.
- Discordance itself — discording subtracts 10 from base difficulty, the largest of the action bonuses.
- Provocation and Peacemaking — the sister bard skills round out a full crowd-control template.
A creature's Difficulty rating is the skill level at which you have a 50% chance to land the song; the exact figure varies per creature within about ±2% of the calculator value. Chance of success is 50 + 2 × (Bard Skill − Difficulty). Twenty-five points below difficulty you cannot even try, and twenty-five points above it you always succeed but stop gaining skill. Discordance benefits from the strongest action modifier, subtracting 10 from base difficulty as shown below. A short list of creatures ignores bard songs entirely.
| Condition | Effect on difficulty |
|---|---|
| Exceptional instrument | −5 |
| Matching "slayer" instrument | −10 |
| Opposite-aligned slayer instrument | +10 |
| Musicianship above 100 | − (Musicianship − 100) / 2 |
| Provoking | −5 |
| Discordance or targeted Peacemaking | −10 |
The following creatures are Non-Bardable — no amount of Discordance skill will affect them:
| Blackrock Golem | Brigand Cannibal Mage | Charybdis | Dark Wolf (Familiar) |
| Death Adder (Familiar) | Dream Wraith | Elite Ninja | Fire Rabbit |
| Giant Tentacle | Horde Minion (Familiar) | Mercenary | Noble |
| Prison Rat | Revenant | Ronin | Seeker of Adventure |
| Shadow Wisp (Familiar) | Ship Bat | Skeletal Lich | Vampire Bat (Familiar) |