The Enchiridion of Mystic Music

[The Sigil]

Countless thousands of spells have been published over the years. Wizards have long been in the spotlight and with these spells have seen their capabilities greatly expanded. Now, at long last, with the publication of The Enchiridion of Mystic Music, it is the bards turn to have his abilities expanded.

Within this tome you will find:

A more complete description of how music abilities work and what it takes to learn them

Over 70(!) new musical abilities that a bard can learn and use

Over a dozen new feats

Six Prestige Classes, including five brand-new ones

Mystic Compositions - a new class of magic item (think "scrolls for Bards")

Enough other stuff to make sure that this sourcbook is completely self-contained - if you have the three Core Rulebooks (the PH, DMG, and MM), you need nothing else to make total use of everything in this work!

 

[Trousers]

ST Cooley's first publication is targeted directly for players who wish to improve the mechanics for the 3E bard class as presented in the PHB (particularly bardic music). If you don't play a bard or don't care about bards, don't bother reading this review and don't buy this book.

For those of you who have lived under a rock, I will summarize the bard controversy as quickly as I can. With the lid being taken off multiclass limitations in 3E, bards were left with the jack-of-all-trades abilities while a multiclass character seemed to be able to do most of the same things... and arguably better. One of the only unique differentiators that set a bard apart from other classes was bardic music (the others being legend lore, arcane healing spells, and access to skills). However, bardic music virtually ceases at ninth level.

S T Cooley's The Enchiridion of Mystic Music was clearly designed to address the bardic music limitation by presenting over 70 bardic music abilities (dubbed "mystic music"). These abilities stay true to the spirit of the 3E bard and a little more, without making them a wizard or sorceror equivalent. Music is inspirational, can summon creatures, improves bonuses, and (shock horror) one can even cast some sonic damage.

Quick rant: it will always be a very large source of bewilderment to me that in 3E, more monsters crop up who are able to do deal out scads of sonic damage while the class who is the sonic expert might be able to take Sound Burst and Shout... and that's about it...

Anyway, there is a small XP cost to learning the mystic music: a rule that I think will sell mystic music to even the most conservative, guard-dog DM. Furthermore, the guide for mentoring gives an option to this rules that can satisfy the more generous DMs (and whiny bard-players).

There are one or two few mystic musics that seem misranked. The Death Chant requires Perform at 13 ranks -- I am hoping this was a misprint. That aside, I think the mystic music section is overall very well-balanced. With 70 entries, I'd say that makes this book quite an acheivement and well worth it.

Other sections: There is a handy rule on Listening ranges. The feats matched the new music rules well. The prestige classes were okay, but personally I'd like to playtest before giving an opinion. The mystic composition section (scrolls for mystic music) was brief but useful. The rest of the book is minor, but neat.

Surpirisingly, the book completely avoids the 4 skill points vs. 6 skill points controversy (even so far as to not list the skill points in a summary of the class!), but I guess the author decided we could come to our own conclusions on the EN or WotC messageboards ;-)

The negative? What hit me hardest about the book was it's mostly hard-core rules but little in terms of flavor. What colleges could be based around the new mystic music, how they interact with each other, a few sample mentors, how prestige classes might be viewed on other planes... even just seeing stats for the iconic bard mentioned in the book, are missing. Personally, I enjoy this kind of detail, but I am finding that many d20 consumers find this extraneous. Still, the improved building blocks are here for those things to be created on your own, and integrated how your campaign needs it.

A few other minor things: Yes, there are almost no graphics (except the cover and the borders), but this is stated on the website that it's not there, so there are no false expectations. Also with over 70 new mystic songs, a chart listing them in order of ranks requirement would have been nice, but I’m nitpicking here.

So why pick up this book when you can grab the Monte Cook variant on bard? For the record, I think Monte's bard kicks some serious butt. It is excellent for those characters wishing to play a traditional bard with a lute or harp. But those wanting to play an instrument that cannot play chords (drummer, pennywhistle, etc.) seemed to get cut out of some of the higher level spells.

Conclusion: if you're looking to play a bard or improve the bardic music abilites for the 3E bard, look no further. This book makes the bard an actual class again and not a lame hybrid. If you play a bard, I highly recommend picking it up. It's $5 off RPGNow, and really... for five lousy bucks, why keep your bard stuck as a fool?

 

[Messageboard Golem]

This is a fantastic book!!! Be forewarned, however, that there isn't much here for any class other than bards, but that much should be obvious enough from the title.

If you do, in fact, play bards then immediately pick up this li'l gem. It's a whole lotta bang for your buck.

First of all, the book clearly states the range of bardic music (as opposed to the "official" within "hearing". This makes for much more accurate mechanics. Also, the writer's mods to the bard allow a DM to insert there rules with very little change (if any) to the core rules. An absolutely wonderful job as far as that goes. The author offers a second bard class called the dark minstrel that is pretty neat and quite useful. The feats here are pretty decent and make a hell of a lot more sense than the ones used in Song & Silence. The real meat of this comes from the "Mystic Music Section" This breaks the Bard song down, gives you some great options and makes for much more interesting characters & abilities. Also great is the "Composition" (think bardic scrolls).

In fact the only real downside is the lack of art, but I can forgive that seeing as how the author apologizes pre-emptively in the forward.

Overall: 4.5 Bangs for my 5 Bucks.

 

[Voadam]

The Enchiridion of Mystic Music is a pdf sourcebook devoted to bards and mystical musical abilities.

The Enchiridion is 73 pages long and contains no artwork outside of a rippling musical notes graphic at the top of every page. There is a striking blue border on the outside edge of the pages, but there is a printer friendly version of the sourcebook without the border that is downloadable for those who bought the pdf. There are minor editing errors throughout the material but nothing that is not easily fixable or that seriously impaired my understanding or enjoyment of the material.

The sourcebook is devoted to expanding options for the core bard class. It coins the term mystical music abilities for the bard’s class performance abilities and for any similar abilities. Any class that can use such abilities are termed mystic musicians.

The sourcebook provides 13 new feats, 6 prestige classes, rules to further define and clarify using mystical music abilities, rules for mystic musicians to learn new musical abilities, 84 mystical musical abilities, a new category of magical items, 6 spells, 1 dragon and 1 template.

The material is heavily focused on crunchy rules material and very light on fluffy flavor text.

The rules provided for mystical music abilities seem well thought out and reasonable, providing a definitive range from which abilities can be effective.

The book reprints the bard class and bardic mystical abilities using its own terms. It also reprints the dark minstrel prestige class from Librum Equitis Volume 1, and low level animate skeleton and zombie spells from Mongoose’s Necromancy book.

The new feats seem reasonable to me, allowing manipulation of mystical abilities, increasing range or duration, allowing extra uses per day, etc. There are also feats for manipulating sonic magic and dealing with silence effects.

The class section reprints the bard class which I found useful so that you do not need to cross reference the srd or PH when checking out how the core bard class will interact with the material in the sourcebook.

The six prestige classes all require significant ranks of performance but do not require any prior bard abilities so they are easiest for bards to qualify for but others such as rogues may do so as well. Mechanically any musician class levels stack for purposes of number of times per day that the character can use their mystic music abilities.

The six classes are the dark minstrel, the eldritch caller, the elemental caller, the herald of nature, the politico and the sonomancer.

The Dark Minstrel a type of variant darker bard based on tragedy and loss. This class has its own spell list and darker flavored musical abilities than a straight bard. The spells go up to fourth level, the character has weak attack progression and only a strong Will save.

The Eldritch Caller is a five level class that uses musical abilities to summon outsiders as summon monster spells and to influence and deal with outsiders. The elemental caller does not gain any spell casting abilities.

The Elemental Caller is similar to the eldritch caller but with respect to elemental creatures and using the new elemental summoning spells that summon creatures with the elemental template. The elemental caller chooses one element at first level and a second one at fourth level to specialize in. The caller gains energy resistance based on his chosen element(s) and a damaging aura when the caller uses his mystical music abilities.

The five level Herald of Nature requires six ranks of animal empathy and eight ranks of perform so this class is designed for multi-class bard/rangers and bard/druids. The class gains animal summoning abilities, animal influence abilities and wilderness abilities. The class has a strong attack progression and d8 hit dice but no spell progression.

The politico is an interesting 10 level class that is sort of the anti-bard, a bardic blackguard. The class is designed around characters who manipulate others but have no soul to be moved by music themselves. They are described as political rabble rousers who follow a cause and give up true creativity and passion to use rhetoric and rote formulas to manipulate the masses and individuals. The class requires that the character be lawful and that upon entering the class all mystical music abilities are given up. However, the character becomes immune to mystical music abilities and gains abilities to manipulate others as various powerful charm spells. Also levels of bard can be traded in for levels of politico as a former paladin who becomes a blackguard may. The class has weak attacks, its own spell list, gains evasion, weapon finesse, and charisma based bonuses. One class power I thought was out of character and overpowered is accurate attack which allows them to add their intelligence bonus to all attack rolls.

The sonomancer is essentially designed for spellcasters who wish to manipulate sonic magics. The eight ranks of perform and 6 ranks of spellcraft and knowledge arcane perquisite makes this 10 level class most suited for bards although multiclass and straight rogues, sorcerers and wizards can also qualify with varying levels of ease. Sonomancer levels combine with other arcane class levels for caster level purposes but not for learning new spells or number cast per day. Instead, at certain levels the character gains additional spell slots and spells which are a level higher than he could previously cast. Also the sonomancer gains access to the sonomancer spell list and can cast a certain number of sonomancer cantrips as a bard or sorcerer. Later they can learn elemental spells of any type as if they were sonic spells on their spell list. The sonomancer also gains access to silence and sonic manipulation abilities. Sonomancers have no mystic music abilities.

The sonomancer introduces interesting mechanics to a spellcasting prestige class and would be interesting to see in practice.

I was surprised to see no listing for an undead caller prestige class since the abilities and appropriate spells are presented in the book and it seemed a natural continuation of the eldritch, elemental, nature calling classes.

Musician classes all learn mystic music abilities from their class automatically at certain perform ranks. Additional ones may be learned by finding a teacher and paying an expenditure of xp and time. A mystic music ability costs 100 xp per prerequisite rank of perform for the ability, the cost of which can be paid by the student, the teacher or split among the two. I liked the cost mechanism, it seemed reasonable and balanced but I did not like that class abilities could potentially be gotten for free by a teacher spending the xp, it seemed a way to mechanically unbalance two equal xp bards or to add abilities to a class without cost. I would suggest requiring the student to shoulder the xp burden of learning new class abilities.

The music abilities are defined similarly to spells, with activation times, descriptors, durations etc. They also all have a prerequisite perform rank instead of spell levels.

The music abilities themselves provide a range of abilities and power levels. All the bard, dark minstrel, and other prestige class music abilities are fully described, as well as dozens more. There are a lot of spell like abilities that seem appropriate for bards (such as sanctuary, circle of protection, etc.) and several sonic and silence related effects. There are summoning abilities, healing abilities, a few buffing abilities, and a number of sonic weapon or armor abilities. There are abilities based on alignment, banishing abilities, undead creation and animation abilities and others. None of these allow a musician to be as good as other classes dedicated to specific magical effects but they provide a nice variety of options for a mystical musician character.

The sonic weapon and armor ones seem a bit too costly for use in a standard campaign. They require an expenditure of xp per round to create sonic pseudo items with enhancement bonuses that vary with the xp per round expenditure. In a game with easy access to enchantable items and low level non xp costing buff spells, this seems a significantly inferior option except for break out of prison alone type scenarios where you wouldn’t have access to your other gear or spells.

I do not like sonics in general. They seem one of the most out-of-genre aspects of a medieval/standard fantasy genre setting. In dragonstar, shadowrun or technomancer I see it fitting in well but not in generic D&D. That said, this books takes the view that of the standard classes mystical musicians should best be able to use and deal with sonic energy in the game and then gives them tools to do so.

Overall, there are a good assortment of abilities, mostly flavorful and useful.

I was also inspired by the mechanics and specific powers to think this would be a great low magic system of magic use. Simply replacing spellcraft for perform and the words eldritch energies for sonics throughout would give a good broad based magic system for a low magic setting/world.

I was a bit disappointed that there were not more charm and influence abilities among the mystic music abilities. When I think of bards, the archetypes I have from mythology and folklore are Orpheus from Greek Mythology and the pied piper. Their main claims to fame are charming animals and people. The selection of musical abilities is good but I would have found more mind affecting abilities better.

The new magic items are called mystic compositions and they are essentially scrolls or books that include details for teaching new music abilities to musicians who read them. The xp is wholly spent in the writing so again this is a free class ability boost to students. Again, I would change it so that the xp is spent by the student instead of the item creator.

The new spells include spells for animating a single skeleton or zombie and for summoning elemental natives, essentially applying the new template to animals from the animal summoning spells.

The new dragon is a blast drake, a small dragon with a sonic breath weapon and sonic immunity.

I liked the elemental native template. It provides options for making template creatures from the various elemental planes and the para-elemental planes. It provides various abilities for the different planar types and provides options for customizing them, giving a list of powers for templated creatures to choose from. This makes the resulting creatures more work to create but more individualized.

Overall I would recommend this bard supplement to people looking to expand the mechanical options for mystical music use in their games. It provides a wealth of new options and material for the bard class as well as material for use in most any campaign. I found the parts I did not like easy to patch and still use. It does not have advice on playing a bard or on the bard’s role in society, etc. It does not have stories of bards in action or of archetypal or legendary bards to model bard behavior. However, the rules material is very good and provides valuable expansion material to go beyond the Player’s Handbook.

 

[Arnwyn]

GAH! Does *everyone* who writes a review insist on using the word "crunchy"??? One WotC staffer uses it, and suddenly everyone uses it...

No knock on your review, though, which was very good.

 

[blade]

Cost: Extremely good price on page content versus price at over 70 pages.

Artwork:
Cover: Very poor light blue cover art. If this was a book in a retail store, I would not have given it a second glance. With a PDF format, I took the benefit of the doubt to actually see what the content was.
Interior: No interior artwork


Topic: Bard Music. Presented slightly different than the standard bard use, but consistent with a concept of a musician.

It still does not seem like I will find a bard that is like that I envision of the Norse Skalds, or the story teller. The musical instument of voice is something that none of the bards have fully considered.

This product does consider sonic damage, which was something sorely lacking.

If I had this product in either print or PDF format standing next to Monte Cook's Bard to choose which one to go with, I would go with Monte's hands down. I do however believe without a doubt that I would choose this product to compliment Monte's product. They are not mutually exclusive.

 

[Messageboard Golem]

By John Grigsby, Staff Reviewer, d20 Magazine Rack

The Enchiridion of Mystic Music is a new release from S. T. Cooley Publishing written by principle Spencer (“The Sigil”) Cooley. It is available as a PDF download for the low price of $5 from RPGNow.com. So, what the heck is an enchiridion, anyway?

According to The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition, an enchiridion is a manual or handbook, so this is a handbook of mystical music. An appropriate title for a d20 sourcebook for bards, I should think. The cover shows a trio of instruments (a harp, a lute, and a trombone) in a ghostly blue-green glow against a black background, bringing to mind the image of spectral instruments, so I’d say it gives a good feel of the work.

In his introduction, Cooley explains why this book was written, giving us his views on the bard class and how he feels it could be spiced up. It’s always nice when an author thinks to include things like this, explaining what they were thinking and why this was done the way it was. He touches on things that were left out (mostly for a lack of space) and, from what I see here, I sincerely hope a sequel is in the works with some of these ideas included! Finally, he apologizes for the lack of artwork, but I don’t see this as a detraction. Art is nice, but for a gaming work, the important thing is content and this book delivers, with 72 pages of it! I do like the little musical staves that head each page, however. A very nice touch!

First, we have a brief explanation of the history of music and some necessary mechanics for the inclusion of the new material herein into your games. This is followed by an identification of Product Identity (what you can’t use elsewhere) and Open Game Content (what you can). I’m pleased to see that the vast majority of the work is deemed Open Game Content. The game only grows if we all allow others to build on what we create and it seems as though more and more authors are willing to share their works.

I’ll be the first to admit that one of the aspects of D&D3E that appeals to me most is feats. As such, when I pick up a new product, that’s the first thing I look for. The design of a feat is a real test of ability. It’s not something that just anyone can do and I’ve seen a lot of good feats and I’ve seen a lot of feats that make me ask, “Why?” Fortunately, the feats offered in The Enchiridion are of the former sort.

We are introduced to a new subtype of feat; the metamusic feat. Metamusic feats are similar to metamagic feats in that the grant greater flexibility and power to characters that possess metamusical abilities (that’s covered a bit later). Most of the new feats are of this subtype, as might be expected, but there is one or two that fall into other categories. Just browsing over the list, I’m intrigued with the idea of playing a bardic character with the Segue feat, allowing me to shift from metamusical ability to another without using up another daily use.

Chapter 3 introduces us to some of the people who would make best use of these feats. Of course, this being a bard sourcebook, we begin with the bard. This class is little changed from the one presented in the Player’s Handbook. The spell lists have been expanded slightly to include new spells given in this work, but not much else is altered. The big chance is that what was once bardic music now becomes mystic music, the focus of The Enchiridion of Mystic Music.

The remaining six classes are prestige classes, which is as it should be. The introduction of the prestige class fixes a propensity that used to be prevalent in earlier editions of D&D—that of creating a new class every time someone had a new idea. Naturally, bards will find it easier to qualify for most these classes than other characters, but they are open to all.

The dark minstrel is a very shadowy character that “chronicles the dread, apathy, and hopelessness of the human condition.” The eldritch caller, on the other hand, specializes in the summoning and control of extra-planar creatures. A close cousin to the eldritch caller is the elemental caller. Where the eldritch caller summons extra-planar outsiders however, the elemental caller summons forth elementals. The herald of nature prefers to keep their allies in the here and now, functioning as a sort of druidic bard. And that leads us to the two most unique classes in the book.

The politico is a different type of bard, but no less worthy of the title. Instead of relying upon songs, the politico speaks with a forked tongue crafted of the purest silver (metaphorically speaking). They are unable to draw upon the power of the mystic music, but believe me when I say that they don’t suffer for it! Without doubt, this prestige class is the one that most intrigues me. I think I’ll give it a shot in the next game I play.

Finally, we are introduced to the sonomancer. The sonomancer is a curious blend of sorcerer and bard, sharing traits of both. This is also a fascinating character with a lot of potential. They enjoy the beauty of the song, but also find joy in the crack of thunder or the roar of a waterfall.

In Chapter 4, Cooley delves into the mechanics of mystic music, which is a centerpiece for several of the classes described in Chapter 3. Mystic music makes bards and their ilk a lot more powerful, but Cooley has designed a system of limitations that balances these abilities nicely. Not only are practitioners of mystic music limited to the number of times they can call on this power each day, but some abilities are more difficult to manifest than others. The bard’s Countersong effect, for example, only requires that the user have 3+ ranks of Perform and costs but a single use of mystic music. On the other hand, a dark minstrel attempting to invoke the Deepest Dark Melody will need to have not only knowledge of Dark Melody and Deeper Dark Melody, but also a minimum of 22 ranks of Perform! Furthermore, this powerful dirge will use up 3 uses of mystic music for that day!

Mystic music adds a new twist to the bard class, making them more powerful, but also more versatile. I can think of several brand new prestige classes and mystic music abilities and I look forward to adding to the basics built here and to seeing what other authors come up with.

Of course, bards don’t use scrolls in the traditional sense. Oh sure, they can read arcane writings and invoke the energies thereon, but they don’t manufacture them and the whole idea of a bard relying on a scroll when the spells they cast are in the form of songs is really pretty silly. Cooley changes this little bit of idiocy in a fashion befitting the title bard.

Chapter 5 enlightens us to the nature of mystical compositions, sort of a scroll of sheet music that unlocks a particular mystical music ability. Some are written for general users, while others may require that the performer have proficiency in a certain instrument. This is an idea I admit to having toyed with as far back as 2nd edition and I’m glad to see that I wasn’t the only one. This exemplifies what it means to be a bard!

Chapter 6 rounds out a handful of new spells, but there really isn’t much here that DMs will find useful. In fact, this is probably the only section of the book that strikes a sour chord (sorry!) with me. I like new spells almost as much as I like new feats, so I’d love to have seen some more bard-oriented spells offered.

Finally, Chapter 7 offers a new monster (the blast drake; a sound dragon) and a new template (elemental native). While the latter has been much needed since the introduction of 3E, this chapter and the preceding still seem to stick as last-minute add-ons to fill space. As much as the remainder of the book presents a beautiful composition, these final few pages decrescendo to a somewhat flat finale.

Almost everything in the book is Open Game Content, so high marks are awarded there. I saw no major problems with the mechanics at first glance, though only extended playtesting can say for certain that everything is balanced.

I simply can’t give a higher mark for originality, and believe me, I would if I could! Too often, the bard is forgotten in favor of the more glamorous classes and I’m so very glad to see someone with an appreciation of music tackle the subject. Cooley seems to have a good knowledge of music and certainly put it to use in this work!

There is no doubt that both players and GMs will find this book useful. If you’ve ever considered playing a bard, but just couldn’t find the drive to do so, consider picking up this book. It has given me so many ideas for bard characters that I may have to create a musical troupe just to utilize them all! The book is, however, aimed at players of bards and you should be aware of this. The low score here isn’t so much a lack of quality as much as the focus of the subject material.

At $5, this work is a steal for any players of bards or music lovers. The score suffers slightly only because of the lack of spells and monsters. If you’re going to devote an entire chapter to such things, then you really should try to fill them up a little more. Overall, I expect good things from Mr. Cooley in the future and I look forward to the sequel to this work with great anticipation.

To see the graded evaluation of this product, go to The Critic's Corner at www.d20zines.com.

 

[Crothian]

Review of Enchiridion of Mystic Music

Enchiridion of Mystic Music is one of the few products that covers a topic much better then any of the others. This pdf gives Bards that much needed extra something to allow them to really shine as the musical masters they are. This pdf is 80 pages long and filled with good ideas and new rules. While there is very little art in the book, the formatting of the pages is very readable and well done. It’s written in a nice two column approach and there are two versions of this file. One that is meant for printing and one that is not.

The first chapter is a short introduction to the new abilities. It talks a little about the range the sounds are able to go and listen checks to detect them.

Chapter two has about a dozen new musical feats in it. There are some to lengthen the duration or increase the amount of times that a Mystical Music can be done per day. Most of these feats are what one would expect and they cover most of the areas but there really does not seem to be any that really stand out.

The third chapter deals with classes and starts with the bard class we are all familiar with. After that it has six prestige classes for the bard. The Dark Minstrel was a witness to the evil that men do and has let that consumer her. While the class seems a little on the bland side in abilities the idea behind the class would make for a great character. Next is the Eldritch Caller, a bard who specializes in the outer planes and affecting the creatures from them. Another good class for the right character but the abilities of the class seems to be lacking in inspiration. The Elemental caller I found to be pretty much the same. However, the next three classes I found to be both great in ideas and in the actual write up. The Herald of Nature is a great way to bring the Druid and Bard together, although the class really breaks away from both in a good way. The Politico is an interesting version of the bard that is the master of the spoken word and influencing the people. And the Sonomancer is a study of the magic of sound. All three of these classes have very interesting abilities as well as being great ideas for the focus of a character.

Chapter four is the gem of the book. It described the Mystic Music abilities and really covers all the rules one needs for them. The abilities can do many things like alter memories to causing death, from creating undead to allowing friends to enter frenzy. There are so many good abilities here it’s really hard to just mention a few. There are 26 pages of them and most of them will really broaden the abilities of the Bard to allow him his glory.

The fifth chapter has magical musical compositions. These are scroll version of the Mystic Music abilities.

Lastly we have new monsters and new spells. There are some really good spells like the Drinking song and Hairbelly Rhyme. I like that many of the spells are designed for none combat use, something that is highly lacking in most d20 sourcebooks.

Over all this is a good book that really gives the bard class new options and many new directions that the core books failed to do. The Mystical Music abilities are the best part of this book and will give any bard character the perfect abilities they need. This is the best bard sourcebook on the market today.