Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="The Sigil" data-source="post: 2009574" data-attributes="member: 2013">Song & Silence is the fourth of five "class books" published by Wizards of the Coast.Percent of OGC: NoneFirst Impressions: I thought of the brownies from Willow when Willow tried to "heal" Finn Razel but wound up turning her into a raven instead - "boy, the Nelwyn really butchered that one..."  This was a book that I felt had a lot of promise but instead wound up falling flat on its face by missing the obvious and focusing on the trivial.  When a good percentage of the book is equipment/instruments that provide a +2 bonus here but a -2 penalty there, you know WotC is reaching for material - and the sad thing is, they didn't need to.  The next thing I thought was, "why did they call this 'Song & Silence?'  As far as I can tell, it is mostly 'Silence' and little 'Song' to speak of."Initial Annoyances: Where the heck is the stuff for bards?  One lousy prestige class?  A few spells?  Is that it?  No, a whole bunch of (non-magical) instruments doesn't do it for me.  How on earth did WotC drop the ball on expanding bards so badly?  The section I thought was the strength of the book (and that's not saying much) - the traps section - was not nearly as well-developed as Traps & Treachery (which had been on the market for some time before this book came along, so the parallel development defense is a hard one to claim).  I guess I was most annoyed that while fighters and monks got new  combat maneuvers (some in the form of Feats), wizards and sorcerers got new spells and flavorful metamagic feats, clerics and paladins got new uses for their "Turn" ability, bards and rogues got... um... ahem... "Batman's utility belt."  The focus on equipment (which any class can use, by the way) rather than class abilities really turned me off.Chapter Summaries:Chapter One is the obligatory Prestige Class chapter.  I found most of the prestige classes to be either uninspiring, out of place for rogues, or flat-out ridiculous.  Uninspiring - the dungeon delver, whose specialty is overcoming trapped dungeons - pardon my naivete, but ever since the inception of D&D, wasn't the reason you have a thief - er - rogue in the party to begin with because he can detect/disarm traps?  This is just a skill set - there's nothing "Prestige" about it.  Out of Place - the Dread Pirate (Leadership Feat and skill selection) and the Royal Explorer (what he heck?  This is Expert or Aristocrat stuff).  Ridiculous - The Fang of Lolth should have been a template, not a class, and is FR-specific.  The Virtuoso was a nice touch for bards, but again, seem to be more of an Expert-ish class (poor combat skills in exchange for a few more music abilities?  Please help me out here in understanding why a character would take this class).  The only class that struck me as truly apt for bards/rogues was the Spymaster - and even that was poorly executed with the mechanical concept of "cover identities" (that is IMO in the realm of roleplaying), though the mechanical concept of avoiding detection amid a magic-rich world was good.  The thief-acrobat is a throwback to Unearthed Arcana and was a welcome addition for nostalgic purposes, if not game purposes (again, "Skill Set" and "Feat Chain" come to mind rather than "Prestige Class").Chapter two discusses new Feats and Skills.  The Feats were almost universally awful... a lot more of the +2/+2 Feats that I would have liked to see.  I DID like things like "Green Ear" (allows a bard to affect Plants with his music ability), however... had a little more time been spent following these veins (in the Prestige Class Chapter, perhaps), it could have made a huge difference.  Green Ear is the type of Feat I expect from a book like this - one that opens up new avenues for characters.  Unfortunately, such Feats were few and VERY far between.  The Skills section, by contrast, is actually quite good - while I would have preferred to see poison-making fall under Alchemy (mineral poisons) or Herbalism (vegetable poisons) or Wilderness Lore (animal poisons), I suppose a catch-all Craft skill is okay, too.  I do think that a synergy bonus for having ranks in the above would have been nice, though.  The trapmaking section is not too bad, and I have to agree with Psion on this one - this should have been in the DMG.  The rules are not quite as well-explained as those in Traps and Treachery, but they certainly do the job for those who don't own T&T.  The rules are flexible and provide a wide variety of options.  This section is not bad, in fact, they're quite good - it's just that they're not quite as good IMO as T&T... and since they were published well after T&T was, that's a bit of a problem.  The "stat blocks" for a boatload of traps are nice, though.  Not to beat a dead horse, this section of the book is really good - it's just that T&T was a little better.  Finally, we have the "new uses for old skills" section - again, a very well-done treatment of how to use existing skills to handle a few slightly unusual player actions (e.g., concealing a weapon and shadowing a mark).  The variant Tumble rules, which make it possible for a 20th-level fighter to get an Attack of Opportunity on that 5th-level halfling monk with the 20 Dexterity and Skill Focus: Tumble again were a welcome addition as well.  Overall, while the Feats were awful, the Skills section was probably the strongest of all the sections in the book.Chapter three represents all that was wrong with this book to me... this was the "utility belt" chapter.  It starts with a huge list of instruments your bard can select from.  Each of these instruments has a minor game mechanic effect (to the tune of "gives a +2 bonus to your DC when using your Fascinate ability but makes it more difficult to use your Inspire Courage ability.")  One or two would have been okay, but dozens?  Come on.  A quick list in a table would have been more than sufficient.  The only thing I can think of as justification for including this is, "filler material to make the 96-page count."  The weapons and equipment presented the rest of the way are more or less entirely for thieves - oops, rogues - except for the "instrument bayonet" for bards.  I liked grapnel-firing crossbows, and it seems to me that to a certain degree, a thief IS cool because of his "utility belt" but I could have done without double-sided clothing.  The section on magic items is useful... there are some low-powered, but cool ideas in here, and the magical bardic instruments were okay, though not show-stopping.Chapter four runs down organizations for bards and rogues... these are fairly universally adaptable, and the examples are appreciated.  I did not particularly feel like I needed them, having seen this sort of thing in the Complete Rogue's Handbook (among other places) but DMs without access to vast libraries of past material - particularly DMs new to the D&D scene (and there will always be DMs like this) will find this very helpful.  That's fine - I don't expect everything to be aimed at veterans of roleplaying and the write-ups are decent to good, even if I expect to find little utility in them for myself.Chapter five gives role-playing advice (and a little bit of mechanical insight) for playing given classes.  This is standard fare in these books and again seems targeted for newer players/DMs.  I found them nearly useless, but since this book has to be all things to all people, I could let it slide... if not for the fact that they were also poorly written and repetitive.  The highlight of this chapter is "flanking 101" wherein flanking and sneak attacks are explained (with visual examples) to help you know when the rogue gets to use his sneak attack damage.Chapter six throws a few spells out there to add to the bard and assassin (an outgrowth of rogue, I suppose).  The assassin spells are good, and well-suited to the assassin's abilities, but the bard spells were disappointing to me.  Many of the spells well could have been (and should have been) re-worked to go within the framework of the Bard's musical ability (e.g., Follow the Leader, which reminds of nothing so much as the Pied Piper of Hamlin).  Bards are limited enough as spellcasters and adding spells like this does nothing to make them more flexible - it only adds more niches for them to specialize given their limited number of spells knonw.  More attention needs to be paid to their neglected music abilities, IMO - that way spells are just part of who a bard is, and they get a chance to shine with something no other class has.  Showcasing spells should be the province of the sorcerer/wizard, not the bard.  Right idea, wrong execution.Presentation: Overall, the presentation was good.  The quality was high, the illustrations were decent - and relevant - and the book seemed well-organized.  No real complaints here, but nothing that struck me as, "wow, well done!"Conclusion: Unfortunately, the conclusion I came to was the same as my first impression.  This book was a huge disappointment.  It had some promising ideas, but wound up executing them all wrong - or (more often) focusing on the wrong ones.  The traps section was good.  A few of the Feats were excellent.  The presentation and artwork and layout of the book was excellent.  Unfortunately, just about everything else wound up falling on its face.  There are some good points in here, but there are too many other products that work a lot better than this one for me to recommend it.  It's not a good book.  It's not even average.  Good production values and a few isolated gems save it from an "appalling" rating but it's a low "poor" at best.  Few products have disappointed me as greatly as this one.--The SigilOctober 16, 2002</blockquote>

Verification