Okay so, this is how I understand this to work personally.

You weave another verse into your harmony, directing the sound of your voice at an ice troll.
CS: +475 - TD: +91 + CvA: -2 + d100: +42 == +424
Warding failed!
An ice troll is struck violently by the tightly focused sonic energy of your cacophonous shout!
... 91 points of damage!
An ice troll is staggered by the sonic force!
... 20 points of damage!
Good blow to left leg!
The ice troll is stunned!
The intensity of the sonic assault disorients an ice troll!
Sing Roundtime 3 Seconds.

The first portion (the 91 damage) is HP loss, this is what air lore directly adds to.

The second portion (the 20 damage) is the crit, it is determined completely separately from the HP damage and the air lore has no affect on it.

Tal, player of.

Thanks both.

Tal - do you have 30 air lore ranks?

No, mis-interpretation.

The spell has three effects, a primary effect, a secondary effect, and a tertiary effect.
- The primary effect is the HP damage;
- the secondary effect is a critical;
- the tertiary effect is some degree of incapacitation.

"Primary damage caused is based on the warding roll and increased slightly by training in Elemental Lore, Air. The secondary critical is based on bard vs. target level and the warding roll, and may be either an impact or unbalance critical. Tertiary effect is either a stun or a disorient effect." -- Bard List

Boost your Lore ranks with Enhancives, you can do 51hp damage on a 101 result.

Granted, anything at that level is likely to have whole craploads of health, but still.

Or that it does "primarily damage, secondarily a crit, and possibly other debilitating effects."

The wording as it exists on the site is not as confusing as it could be, but neither is it as clearly stated as it could be. I agree that changing it would clarify a great deal.

>There's your problem. Go to the wiki. The play.net stuff is at best vague, and at worst outright wrong.

Only some circles have been superceded by the wiki. Play.net is no longer updated, but spells without recent changes don't have definitive statements on the wiki. For 506 you have to read a post saved on the wiki, but for 1008 you have to read play.net.

Its not written by a GM. If you want to read what the official statement about the spell is, you have to read the saved post.

Thats irrelevant. If I want to make my own interpretation of the official position, I have to read the official position. The spell descriptions on the wiki are player interpretation not the official description. They may provide useful illustrations and explanations, they may be a straight copy of the official description, but they are secondary sources and inferior to primary ones when what is in question is the content of the primary source. If I want to check the exact phrasing of what Finros wrote, reading what Finros wrote beats reading what anybody else says he wrote.

Since Banshee's Wail/1008 is commonly looked down on as lacking a bit of 'Oomph' (given that single-target Disrupt/1030 costs only +2 mana more)...

...would the GMs be at all open to giving it the 'Channel' boost? +Warding margin, for open-hand casting with hardRT?

The bonus for open handed shouting can be from cupping your hand or hands near your mouth to amplify the effect of the sonic shout.