A look at one of the latest additions to the Suikoden runes system.

Suikoden III brought a new addition to the support rune class to challenge the Earth Magic class in its sole position as support rune king. It is somewhat of an exclusive rune, as only sixteen characters are able to equip it. The only three characters who can learn chanting skills along with equipping the rune are Nei (S in Chant Purity, A in Chanting Volume), Shabon (A in Chant Purity, A in Chanting Volume), and Toppo (B+ in Chant Purity, S in Chanting Volume). The thirteen remaining characters can equip the rune but cannot learn either skills. They are Ace, Aila, Alanis, Connie, Emily, Mel, Percival, Queen, Reed, Rhett, Wilder, Yuiri, and Yumi.

Chant Purity is the main skill associated with the Jongleur Rune. It increases the effect of the Jongleur Rune spells (songs).

Skill Level	E	D	C	B	B+	A	A+	S
Effect Increase (%)	+3	+7	+12	+19	+26	+35	+50	+70

The other, less important skill for the Jongleur Rune is Chanting Volume. It decreases the cancellation rate of the spell when the character is attacked.

Skill Level	E	D	C	B	B+	A	A+	S
Cancellation Rate (%)	-10	-25	-45	-50	-60	-70	-80	-90

The Jongleur Rune's effects are not stackable. If one person is casting a Jongleur spell and continues casting it into a turn, and another person chooses to cast any Jongleur spell, a two-step process will happen. First, the second person will cast their spell, cancelling out the first Jongleur spell. However, since the first person's move was to continue casting the spell, they will simply cast it again, cancelling out the second person's Jongleur spell. Thus, if a character has cast a Jongleur spell on the previous turn and continues casting it, the only way they will stop casting it that turn is if they are disrupted by an enemy attack.

The Jongleur Rune does not take up any magic points. You can use any Jongleur Rune song and cast it as much as you want, with no ill effects.

This first spell speeds up the chanting of everybody in the party. The base value by which it decreases (at Chant Purity level F), is 20%. Then this might not seem important, but it is: The modifier for learning Chant Purity is multiplied onto this base, not added. So at rank S, the 20% is increased by 70%, to get 34%, which is how much casting time is decreased for the whole party if Nei at Chant Purity rank S is casting the Song of Skylark. This effect does compound with the casting time reduction from having a support character with 'Rune Sage' (like Jeane or Mike). The usefulness of this spell is largely dependant on your situation. The ideal situation for this spell is a boss who casts magic quickly, and is best combatted with magic. If most of your damage is going to come from a couple spellcasters, but they aren't quite as fast at casting magic as your enemy, then this spell will come in handy. In a larger sense, this spell is worth trying for any boss whom your main problem is that your spells don't have a chance to be cast as the enemy moves before them.

The second spell is the only one which applies to the enemy, not the ally party. Every enemy affected by this song has their skill and speed reduced. The percentage by which this is applied I do not know, as it is almost impossible to test. My one big observation from trying to test it, though, is that it doesn't make much of a tangible difference. It is unlikely to slow down any enemies enough to change the order of attacks, and it will just lower their skill enough to maybe miss one more physical attack every several physical attacks they attempt. This song is definately not worth your time.

This one is the reason anybody used the Jongleur rune. All allies are made into berserkers (except for archers and magicians) for the duration of the song (they cannot defend: if you choose to defend, they will attack), and their physical damage is raised by a large amount. The physical damage boost DOES apply to archers and magicians, simply the berserk status doesn't. The base amount by which damage is raised is roughly 45%. To make the numbers given above for the effect increase make sense, you have to convert this number to 145%, as in 145% of the normal damage will be inflicted. When the Chanting Purity skill reaches rank S, the 145% is increased by 70%, to become roughly 250%, or 2.5 times the normal damage. This is an enormous help to any attacker in the party. The overall usefulness of this spell is delved into in the last section of this guide.

The final spell works much like the Drain Rune, without the prerequisite of a critical hit. Each ally will regain hitpoints when they successfully direct attack an enemy. The base value is 20% of the physical attack damage, increaseable to 34% at rank S, much like the Song of Skylark. This is especially useful for high-attack power characters. Some mega-damage dealers will be able to regain all of their hitpoints every time they attack under the effect of this spell! If most or all of your party does their damage by direct attacks, then this is a spell worth at least trying out in lieu of a Water magician. However, if most of your damage comes from magic spells or command runes, the Song of a Hero is an inefficient way to heal your party.

If you want to make sure your Song of Madness doesn't get disrupted before you get a chance to benefit from it, you can use command runes and unites that execute right after the song does, so you can benefit right on the first turn. Some runes that will execute almost right after the Song of Madness are Lion and Double Tusk. If you put Jeane in your party to increase the speed of the song chanting, Ripple, Comet, Isshin, and Red Rose will also execute right after the song to benefit from the damage increase. The only command attack runes that will always go BEFORE Jongleur are Boronda Hawk, Full Moon, Great Hawk, Shrike, and Viper. The rest of the ones not mentioned will just go long after the song has begun chanting, leaving a sieable space within that turn for it to possibly be disrupted.

As for unites, Mercenary A (Ace and Joker), Fighter(Juan and Emily), and Pretty Girl (Viki, Mel, and Belle) will go almost right after the Song of Madness. With Jeane, that list is expanded to include Mounted (Sgt. Joe and Shabon), Best Effort (Cecile and Thomas), Child (Melville and Alanis), Adonis (Bazba, Sgt. Joe, Ruby), and Twister (Kenji, Joker, Juan). The only unites that will always go BEFORE Jongleur are Alma Kinan (Yuiri, Yumi), Condemnation (Landis, Ayame), and Ninja (Watari, Ayame). The rest of the ones not mentioned will just go long after the song has begun chanting, leaving a sizeable space within that turn for it to possibly be disrupted.

So, you know it can increase damage a lot, but is it worth wasting a character slot on somebody whose only purpose is to boost physical damage of the other characters? Let's look at many different scenarios, starting with the best case scenario for the Jongleur Rune.

Rank S Jongleur, 300 ATK/each party member, 25 DEF/enemy
Character	A	B	C	D	E	F	Total
dmg w/out Jongleur	275	275	275	275	275	275	1650
dmg w/ Jongleur	685	685	685	685	685	0	3425

Rank S Jongleur, 300 ATK/each party member, 50 DEF/enemy
Character	A	B	C	D	E	F	Total
dmg w/out Jongleur	250	250	250	250	250	250	1500
dmg w/ Jongleur	625	625	625	625	625	0	3125

Rank S Jongleur, 300 ATK/each party member, 100 DEF/enemy
Character	A	B	C	D	E	F	Total
dmg w/out Jongleur	200	200	200	200	200	200	1200
dmg w/ Jongleur	500	500	500	500	500	0	2500

Rank S Jongleur, 300 ATK/each party member, 50 DEF/enemy
Character	A	B	C	D	E	F	Total
dmg w/out Jongleur	250	250	250	250	0	250	1250
dmg w/ Jongleur	625	625	625	625	0	0	2500

Rank B+ Jongleur, 300 ATK/each party member, 50 DEF/enemy
Character	A	B	C	D	E	F	Total
dmg w/out Jongleur	250	250	250	250	0	250	1250
dmg w/ Jongleur	460	460	460	460	0	0	1840

Rank F Jongleur, 300 ATK/each party member, 50 DEF/enemy
Character	A	B	C	D	E	F	Total
dmg w/out Jongleur	250	250	250	250	0	250	1250
dmg w/ Jongleur	363	363	363	363	0	0	1452

Rank F Jongleur, 300 ATK/each party member, 50 DEF/enemy
Character	A	B	C	D	E	F	Total
dmg w/out Jongleur	250	250	1000	250	0	250	2000
dmg w/ Jongleur	363	363	1000	363	0	0	2089

Rank S Jongleur, 300 ATK/each party member, 50 DEF/enemy
Character	A	B	C	D	E	F	Total
dmg w/out Jongleur	250	250	2000	250	0	250	3000
dmg w/ Jongleur	625	625	2000	625	0	0	3875

Rank S Jongleur, 300 ATK/each party member, 50 DEF/enemy
Character	A	B	C	D	E	F	Total
dmg w/out Jongleur	600	250	2000	250	0	250	3350
dmg w/ Jongleur	1500	250	2000	625	0	0	4375

Under many situations, even a less-than-fully trained Song of Madness caster will boost the damage of the party as a whole if they are not disrupted. And with Nei's fully trained S in Chant Purity will even boost damage if there is simply one attacker who will benefit from it. There could be arguments that you could put a better attacker in slot F, but the only way that scenario would cause the Song of Madness-ed party to inflict less damage, is if the character in slot F was stronger than the character in slot A. But why would you do that? Just put the strongest attacker in slot A. And then the Song of Madness-ed party is still the strongest. Unlike the Sword of Magic rune experiment, the Jongleur Rune in Suikoden III proved to be a rune that easily benefits most parties.