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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Janos Antero" data-source="post: 761540" data-attributes="member: 4480">Song and Silence discusses alternate methods of activating bardic music.  The default method of activation for Inspiring Courage and Greatness is song, but it discusses other methods as well.The problem with alternate methods being that you must be using some part of the body so to speak.  If you use an instrument, but don't sing, you could then cast vocal spells, but would either have one hand occupied (if you had a one-handed instrument), or both hands, and would loose out on semantic components, and the ability to fight.Using song or other vocal methods mean you can not use any vocal components and the like (discussed in PHB p28).  Since he can't activate spell completion, magic items by magic word, or cast spells, essentially he couldn't speak while singing or using another vocal method.Specifically relating to the gnome, it is not possible to sing Inspire Courage and activate Speak with Burrowing Mammals because it has a vocal component, and you can not activate any vocal aspects of magic.So a bard can have his hands free to fight and the like, but not speak, or he can speak, but have his hands occupied.Theoretically they could dance and have both hands and speech free, but that would still basically eliminate combat, and other actions requiring movement outside the course of specific dances.So either way of activation, the methods are roughly balanced.As a personal suggestion, I wouldn't allow incorporating speech into bardic song, or dance movements into combat sheerly for balance reasons.  No more than you can cast a spell while mute without a Silent Spell feat.Bard's already have access to a feat that allows magic to be incorporated into normal performances (Disguise Spell), I'd suggest allowing Inspire Courage to be worked into another feat, such as Subsonic, or as some modified extension of Disguise spell, but really, removing one of the casting components of the ability should require a feat.</blockquote>

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