General

Provocation is the bards offensive skill and one of the most useful skills to fight monsters.

The provocation skill allows you to provoke two monsters to fight each other. Most monsters can be provoked this way, with a few exceptions:

1. Monsters can be provoked onto NPCs but NPCs can't be provoked onto other creatures.
2. Many dungeon high-level monsters are 'too smart' to be provoked.
3. Many monsters that are part of a scenario cannot be provoked. This includes golems, some of the orcs in the Orc Dungeon.
4. Tame animals can't be provoked.

Barding Difficulty Infomation

From Xvekez:

Difficulty Calculator (taken from stratics)

1.Use the Animal Lore skill on the creature

2.Add up the following attributes:

-Hit points
-Stamina
-Mana
-all Skills
3.Add another 100 points for each of the following abilities:

-Spell Casting
-Fire Breath
-Radiation or Aura Damage (Heat, Cold etc.)
-Resistance to Poison
-Lifeforce Draining
-Summoning Undead

4.Add another 20 points for each level of poison attack the creature can do. This ranges from 20 for a level 1 poison attack to 100 for a level 5 poison attack

5.If the creature's stats and skills total is 700 or less, continue with step 7

6.If the creature's stats and skills total is greater than 700, subtract 700 from the end result of step 4, then divide the result by 3 2/3 (or 3.67), and fnally add 700 to that result.

7.Drop the numbers after the decimal point and then divide by 10. The result is the creature's barding difficulty.

-Xvekez

Some more information from Ianstorm about Provocation:

As of Publish 16, Discordance, Peacemaking (when used in targeted mode), and Provocation have become difficulty based. Because of this, some of my fellow bards may not know which creatures use their barding abilities on for optimum barding success. How does a bard calculate her % chance to successfully use a barding ability on a creature, and can you give formula examples for all three bard abilities while applying various modifiers such as exceptional instruments, magical instruments, musicianship bonus over 100, peacemaking and discordance getting a +10% boost, etc.?

-Nadya Modavia of Catskills

As a general rule of thumb, if you just keep track of success rates versus different creatures, you can estimate their difficulty. Generally, when the difficulty of a skill check is equal to your skill level, you have a 50% chance of success. At 25 points higher in skill, success is guaranteed, and at 25 skill points lower you can never succeed. (Note that this is the general case, and specific skills use different methods.) What this means is, if you succeed about 50% of the time against Orc Mages, then you can estimate their difficulty to be at or about your own skill level.

Now -- you want formulas? Ok, I can give you that, too. The overall difficulty of a bard skill check is calculated in two phases. The first phase takes into account the target's stats, skills, and special abilities. The second phase modifies that base difficulty based on the actual skill used, the quality and magical properties of the instrument, and so forth.

Using the information from the Animal Lore skill, do the following. First, total up the creature's stats (hit points, stamina, and mana only). Then, add in its skill level for the following skills: Anatomy, Parrying, Evaluate Intelligence, Inscription, Magery, Magic Resistance, Wrestling, Poisoning, Archery, Mace Fighting, Fencing, Swordsmanship, Tactics, Lumberjacking, and Meditation. Now, add in a 100 point bonus for each of the following special abilities: Magic Use, Radius Damage (like the cold radius of Snow Elementals), Fire Breathing, Undead Summoning (like the Skeletal Dragon), Poisoning, Life Draining (like the Succubus), and Poison Resistance. Note that if a creature is under the effects of Discordance, its stats and skills will be reduced, and this will make the creature's base difficulty lower! Now, take the running total. If it is 700 or below, then leave it as-is. Otherwise, subtract 700 from the number. Multiply the result by 0.275. Then, add that 700 back. Divide the result by 10. This final result is the creature's Base Difficulty.

Now, it's time to figure in the other bonuses. If you are using an Exceptional instrument, subtract 5. If you are using a slayer instrument that is strong against the target, subtract 10. If your instrument is a slayer that is weak against the target, add 10 to the base difficulty. Next, compute your Musicianship bonus. If your Musicianship skill is at or below 100, there is no bonus. If your Musicianship is above 100, subtract 100 from your Musicianship skill and divide the result by 2. This is your Musicianship bonus. Subtract your Musicianship bonus from the base difficulty. Finally, apply a modifier for the specific skill you are using. If you are using Provocation, subtract 5 more from the base difficulty. For targeted Peacemaking and Discordance, subtract 10.

After applying all these modifiers, the resulting number is the skill level at which you have a 50% chance of success against the creature. Note that this number may be off by a few points in either direction. Also note that in the future, certain creatures will have their difficulty "fudged" manually by designers for particular reasons. Also, the list of special abilities that grant difficulty bonuses may change at any time.

-Vex

You can read the rest of the interview here and you can find a different approach at explaining the provocation difficulty check here.

Skill Training

1. 0-30 Buy from a NPC 30-70 Get 3 boats, put a grizzly on two seperate boats, and yourself on third 70-90 Sail a boat to the wyvern isle in T2A 90-120 Dock your boat, run/recall to the swamp next to the compassion desert, place the boat on the shore south of the swamp. Lure two plague beats down to the shore, and sail out enough tiles so they can't spit slime at you. I suggest feeding them 5-10 monsters/livestock every 5 points of skill for the best gains.

-XvekeZ

2. GM Provoking 101 by Blight

[...] Here's how i did it in 3 days.

Requirements:
GM music (read somewhere, its 8x8)
about 40-50 non-GM instruments
about 10-15 enchanted instruments
3 boats
24 hours
Before you start:
Put the three boats on sea, all next to eachother.

Using non GM-instruments:

0-30 just buy it at your local bard

30-40 have a Tlamer friend tame you some cows or something and put them on your boats. Start provoking, get gains....

40-65 have Tlamer friend tame you some scorps or bulls and put them on your boat. Start provoking, get gains....

65-90 have a Tlamer friend tame you some giant beetles and put them on a boat. Start provoking, get gains.....

At this point gains will start to get slow. Thats where the enchanted instruments come in!! They effectively lower your provo-chance by 20% thus 10 skill points. So....

90-100 provoke the giant beetles using enchanted instruments.

This is by FAR the easiest way to GM provoking. Never have to worry about your drake or drag getting killed, you dont have to count tiles to make sure you have enough distance so they dont teleport to your boat. Nothing.... Just provoke and gain

I managed to get to 112.3 provoking another 8 hours with the damm beetles!!! Not bad for 32 hours!!

-Blight

3. I have found your way of raising provoke [post] pub16 version. Provoke is no longer a target based skill and now works on difficulty of [the] creature. I have found that if you take 3 boats with a tamer out into the water and set them up so that they are far enough apart that you cannot cast a spell from one boat to the others yet keep them in a formation where you may stand on one boat and see the other 2. I use a triangle formation with 2 boats in front of me one ot the left one to the right and me in bottom middle boat. Then i find creatures that I will gain good on. Polar Bears, Frenzied Ostards, Drakes, and Dragons. Put one of the creatures on the boat to my front left and one to my front right. I then goto the bottom center boat and release the animals and start a macro to provoke A onto B then B onto A. Then just set there and macro. UOAssist macro looks like:

Use skill/Cast spell   (provoke)
Target                      (Target A)
Target                      (Target B)
Pause 12000
Use skill/Cast spell   (provoke)
Target                      (Target B)
Target                      (Target A)
Pause 12000

Tips & Tricks

• Keep in mind:
  Grandmaster crafted instruments give a 10% bonus to the chance of a successful provoke.
  Slayer instruments give a 20% bonus to the chance of a successful provoke.
  
  -XvekeZ
  
  
• Two main points to the Plague beast method:
  
  1. Plague beasts don't hurt each other so they can be used for a very long time, over and over again until you get to the level you want.
  
  2. Plague beasts can be at *any level* you want on the difficulty chart. If you have them kill something, it will be a more difficult creature to provoke (it "eats" the corpse, gains stats, and moves up the difficulty ladder). so if you find your self successfully provoking them more than half the time, then feed em and your gains will improve.
  
  FYI: I am pretty sure that at GM provoke, I got the "your skill is too low to successfully provoke that" on a plague beast lord vs plague beast. It would prolly work for you at your level, tho.
  
  I went from ~ 65-100 off plague beasts.
  
  Your humble servant, Helicobacter
  
  
• If [your Musicianship] is at 120, that can give you problems because it actually raises your chance of success making gains go slower.
  
  [...] Feed [the Plague Beasts] some of the local critters and they get tougher. You'll want to feed them enough so you get about a 40% success rate.
  
  -Beez
  
  
• Create a new character with at least 1 point in Musicianship/Provocation/Peacemaking to receive a 'newbie' blessed instrument. This instrument can't be lost but will eventually break.
  
  
• Frozenfire's bard essay has excellent information for any new bard (Mainly nostalgia now).
  
  

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Version 1.0: 11/25/02 -Initial Draft.
Version 1.1: 11/25/02 -Removed percentage chances for 50% and 100% provocation (wasn't corrent) and removed being able to provoke onto players because you can't (thanks Jade).
Version 1.2: 12/15/02 -Added Helico's and Beez tips, linked Ianstorm and Nadya in credits, and fixed some formatting problems.

Information Gathered from: Old UOPG Guide, Old Phazer Skills Guides, Blight, other players, UOStratics, Ianstorm, NadyaUOPG Readers, and other sources.