Comment on “The Metrics of Happiness”

Perhaps we can turn this latest idea on its head to remove the rankle factor.

Suppose instead that bardic performance abilities charge up a (small, capped) pool of points, which might be used by the bard when needed to remove a point of damage here, wipe away a bit of stat penalty from the day's travel there? On self or on others, naturally.

Or there's another implementation: the pool of points (let's call them inspiration points) recharges in some way, and bardic performance discharges them to produce effects. Perhaps the pool replenishes from drinking booze, as you've put forth previously.

And then from there we can naturally suppose that performers or all artists might be able to draw these inspiration points from some other source than hedonism: religious awe, for example, or self flagellation, or even roving in the countryside to see the sights.

So we could conceive of the bard's core talent as spreading inspiration from himself to others. Art which makes it points successfully is essentially magnifying the effect, spreading that inspiration from one person to a dozen or a hundred.

That seems in line with the happiness-generation angle on the bard. It's just that something other than happiness is being spread, something more general.