Quote Originally Posted by Shurrikhan View Post
If you cause buffs of any particular type to merely stack additively, rather than multiplicatively, you'd already reduce that excess/inadvertent power.

Consider, right now Greased Lightning IV (40%), Twin Snakes (10%), Brotherhood (5%), and Embolden (10%) together add up to a +65% damage modifier, but multiple up to a +78% Damage modifier (at 20% greater effect).

(This is a bit of an inflated example though, as Monk's 50% damage bonus is necessary just to get it up to normal damage, making the real difference nearer to 15.5% vs. 15%, which is only a 3.33% difference in effectiveness, down from 20%.)

Sum them instead, allowing only one of each type, such as Damage, Critical Hit, Direct Hit, Attack Speed, etc., to then apply multiplicative bonuses on buffs (since they cannot be summed with other types). If we cannot calculate damage increases simultaneously between the players and their target, then debuffs would have a similar one of each type limit of their own on multiplicative effects (Trick Attack would only stack additively with Foe Requiem, though both would -effectively- stack multiplicatively with Chain Stratagem, etc.). You'd faintly return compositional concerns, but you'd avoid any enforcement of a "synergy meta" directly owed to (de)buff stacking. /shrug
This is a nice idea, but would require a lot of rework for how the game handles buffs and debuff, on all class. As even the slightest base damage buff (Jinpu, Twin Snakes, or even AST cards) would have a drastically different impact. While I do like this idea, the amount of work it demands may be too big for just one Bard "rework"/new spell.