UO Provocation Skill Guide
Provocation (Provo) is a bard skill that causes two creatures to fight each other. It’s one of the strongest crowd-control and damage amplification tools in PvM, especially when paired with Discordance and high Musicianship.
Provocation is a bard skill in Ultima Online, rated as Hard difficulty to train. This guide walks you through everything you need to raise Provocation 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 Provocation as quickly and cheaply as possible.
Below you will find an overview of what Provocation does, a step-by-step training guide, recommended skill ranges, any bonuses Provocation 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 Provocation build on your shard.
Provocation is the aggressive bard skill: a rousing tune that goads two nearby creatures into attacking each other, letting them thin their own ranks while you stay clear of the fight. On the Stratics Barding Difficulty page it is one of the four abilities in the Barding Success Calculator, which pits your Musicianship, Provocation and instrument against each target's difficulty rating. Because provocation requires beating the difficulty of both creatures involved, it rewards high skill and the right instrument more than any other bard ability.
Effective difficulty 75.0. Success = 50 + 2 × (your skill − difficulty); 25+ points below you cannot attempt, 25+ above always succeeds (but stops gaining).
| Skill Range | Creatures to Provoke | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| 0.0 – 30.0 | Train from Bard NPC | Buy Musicianship too |
| 30.0 – 60.0 | Birds, Timber Wolves, Snow Leopards | Use cheap instruments |
| 60.0 – 85.0 | Ogres, Trolls, Scorpions | Provoke within same spawn |
| 85.0 – 100.0 | Drakes, Liches, Daemons | Hide/Peace after fails |
| 100.0 – 120.0 | Nightmares, Cu Sidhe, Dragons | High Musicianship required |
0.0 – 30.0
30.0 – 60.0
60.0 – 85.0
85.0 – 100.0
100.0 – 120.0
Provocation depends on a Musicianship check and is tuned by your instrument and the wider bard toolkit:
- Musicianship — gates every attempt; values over 100 lower the difficulty you must beat on both targets.
- Instrument quality — exceptional instruments cut difficulty by 5 and the correct slayer instrument by 10, though the wrong slayer adds 10.
- Provocation itself — provoking subtracts 5 from base difficulty.
- Peacemaking and Discordance — the partner skills that let a bard both start and stop fights on demand.
A target's Difficulty is the skill giving a 50% success chance, accurate to about ±2% of the calculator value; success follows 50 + 2 × (Bard Skill − Difficulty). Below difficulty by 25 you cannot attempt it, and above by 25 you always succeed but gain nothing. Provocation applies a −5 action modifier — smaller than discord or targeted peace — and you must clear the difficulty of both creatures. The page's own example: at 120 skill with a dragon-slayer instrument you have roughly a 60% chance to provoke two Ancient Wyrms, dropping to about 20% at 100 skill.
| 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 creatures below are Non-Bardable — Provocation has no effect on them regardless of skill:
| 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) |