As a die-hard 3E fan, I love the pathfinder RPG from what I've seen, and there seems to be a great amount of things being fixed from 3E (and I have to say I love the class changes like Barbarian, Fighter, the spellcasters, and rangers, and the bard; however...).
However, one of the things that has alarmed me is the bardic music. I was really hoping with all this re-balancing that the bard music would be fixed, and brought more in line with the system. The problem comes from using a SKILL CHECK to determine the SAVE DC, such as in the bard song power fascinate.
I've been DMing and playing since the game came out, and I've been on each side of the bard-song issue (that is, on each side of the DM screen), having it be used by players, or worse, the DMs. The stipulations essentially turn the fascinate ability into a useless feature in the heat of combat, or a broken-feature outside of heated combat (especially when combined with their Suggestion power).
Worse yet, if I understand this correctly (been reading through the alpha release), the bard now has a save-or-die effect that uses the exact same mechanic (skill check = Save DC), which is just messed up. Imagine the DM using a 20th level bard against a party of 20th level characters; and they will all die if they are within 30ft of the bard when he/she uses the Deadly Performance ability. A bard with a +0 charisma (but obviously closer to +10 easily) would have a save DC of 25-45, and an optimized bard could net DCs that go much higher (considering we're assuming only 24 ranks worth of skill, not including things like Skill Focus, magic items, masterwork gear, or the like).
Ok, now that I hopefully have made a good clear point, I'll stop complaining and try to offer some ideas (besides, I like mechanic-crunch).
My first suggestion would be set the save DC as 10 + 1/2 the bard's level + bard's charisma modifier, or 10 + 1/2 HD + charisma modifier; because this is a MUCH more reasonable mechanic for both Fascinate AND Deadly Performance; as it scales well with the character, and provides a much more reasonable potential for growth as well as save DCs comparable to things you would see at those levels (notice most abilities function off the 10 + 1/2 HD + ability mechanic, and it works well). 20th level bards would have a base DC of 20, plus Cha which could push it to 30 without too much trouble, plus any other relevant modifiers (I'm pretty sure the Ability Focus feat can apply to Bardic Music).
Now the downside that some might find to this particular feature is that it seems to rely less on the perform skill at all (since hey, it's not a skill check!), but in fact you need 20 ranks in the perform skill to access the power, which pretty much explains from a role-play and mechanical perspective that "This ability comes from super-awesome performance power", and doesn't break the game nearly as easily.
I mean really, as printed, the Deadly Performance is like a (albeit fairly close range at 30ft) super wail of the banshee that can be used up to 20 times per day, that only affects enemies, and so on.
Can I get some thoughts from others, or perhaps Mr. Jason Bulmahn, on this subject?
