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Provocation

Provocation lets a bard incite one monster to attack another — the classic way to make dungeon creatures kill each other while you watch. On UO Sagas the skill is used through the Song of Provocation from your Songbook; using the skill from the skills list just reminds you of that. Buy the music sheet (450 gold) from a Bard NPC — the song system itself is explained in Barding and Songs.

How it works

  1. Play the Song of Provocation (an instrument must be in your backpack).
  2. Target the creature you want to enrage.
  3. Target the victim it should attack.

If your Musicianship and Provocation checks both succeed, the first creature attacks the second for the song's duration — 20 seconds by default, up to 52 seconds with maxed Duration levels and the Virtuoso perk. When the provocation ends, the creatures stop fighting.

Restrictions:

  • Both targets must be creatures — you cannot provoke players, and pets or other controlled creatures are "too loyal to their master to be provoked".
  • A creature cannot be told to attack itself.
  • The two creatures must be near each other: within your bard range (8 + Provocation/20 tiles), and close enough to notice one another.

Difficulty

Each creature has a barding difficulty from 25 (the weakest) to 180 (the strongest), based on its overall strength. For Provocation the song difficulty is the average of both creatures — provoking a weak critter onto a dragon is much easier than starting a fight between two dragons. Your skill is then checked against a window of ±25 around that number, after bonuses from Musicianship over 100, instrument quality, song Potency and the Virtuoso perk. The full difficulty math with worked examples is in Barding and Songs.

A magic instrument of Provocation adds +5 to +25 directly to your Provocation skill while it is your active instrument.

Immune creatures

Some creatures are immune to all bard songs — among them ogres, ogre lords, golems, bog things and several boss-tier monsters. A few more are specifically unprovokable. If either of your two targets is immune, the provocation fails outright with a warning, before any skill check is made.

Raising the skill

Provocation can be trained to 100 and, with Barding skill scrolls, capped up to 120.

Skill Method
0–30 Pay a Bard NPC for training
30–100 Provoke pairs of progressively tougher monsters — gains come while the outcome is still uncertain, so move up when a pairing becomes trivial
100–120 Provoke high-end dungeon monsters onto each other; their difficulty keeps the check challenging even at 120

Every song attempt also trains Musicianship. Gains follow the normal rules in Skills Overview.

Damage dealt by creatures you provoked earns Barding Points (half the damage as points), which level up your songs — see Barding and Songs.