Song and Silence is a book of highs and lows. As the latest in the series of class guidebooks (after Sword and Fist, Defenders of the Faith, and Tome and Blood), it showcases bards and rogues. Like those that came before it, it's a mixed bag of different sorts of material -- prestige classes, feats, equipment, spells, and ancillary information. Even more than the material found in the other books in the series, this mixed bag is extremely, well... mixed.

My own five-star rating system hardly does this sort of product justice, in that some of the material I think is great and other bits I think are far less than great. So let's go section by section on this review, and in the end, you can decide whether you think this book is for you.

Chapter One is about prestige classes, which is a shame, because it's the low point of the book. I think most players and DMs will find these classes uninspired. Most resemble 2nd Edition kits (in concept) rather than prestige classes. In other words, characters might find it interesting to say that they were an Outlaw of the Crimson Road or a Dread Pirate before they became adventurers, as a part of their background, but neither's exciting enough to aspire to. And no, neither has interesting enough abilities to make very cool NPCs, either -- you'd be better off just using rogues. With the exception of a couple of the classes, they all seem underpowered and underwhelming. The exceptions are the Fang of Lolth (a strange inclusion here, but an interesting class that turns the character into a progressively more monstrous creature) and the virtuoso (a simply better version of the bard, with the drawback that virtuosos don't go on adventures, they only perform shows -- not much to hang a campaign on...). Lastly, a number of these classes -- the virtuoso and the vigilante being the worst -- have far too generic names. If the DM says "a dozen vigilantes are burning down the jail," a player says "Ooh, they're all at least 6th-level characters, we're not going there," when really the DM simply meant to use the English definition of the word, not the game definition. That's just a pet peeve, though (I'll certainly never forgive myself for creating an NPC class called the warrior).

Chapter Two deals with skills and feats. While a few of the feats are cool, most are rather lackluster, are reprints from earlier products, or don't actually make a lot of sense (Green Ear allows the bard to affect plants with his music, but it never explains how that could possibly be). However, that's forgivable due to the fact that the chapter has a great section on poisons and traps. The section on building traps is a little cumbersome, but certainly worth reading -- and it's a must if your PCs want to build traps in their own abode. The list of sample traps is great -- a nice grounding of the basics before you get into anything more off-beat like those found in Traps and Treachery.

Chapter Three is a lengthy presentation of bard and rogue equipment. This is interesting stuff, although you're going to have to be really into bards to enjoy the very lengthy discussion of musical instruments. There's a few wacky gnome devices like the automated footpad, but if the book is going to go down that road (and I'm not saying that it shouldn't), a lot more items and a lot more "gnome-tech" information is really necessary. As it is, the few examples did not seem to fit in.

The magic items raise a few questions in my mind. This is the only time, in fact, that I thought something was hinky with the rules in the whole book (with the exception of some of the prestige classes being a little underpowered). For example, the vial of the last gasp is the "preserved last breath of some famous figure, trapped in a vial." Cool flavor, but there's nothing about it in the item's prereqs. The game mechanics don't match up with the flavor. The same goes for statements like "Thief catchers are extremely rare." Okay, but their prereqs aren't that tough. Why are they rarer than other high-priced items? These sorts of statements are surprisingly "2nd Edition-ish" -- where the game system didn't fully tell you how to make magic items.

Chapter Four has organizations for bards and rogues. Guilds, mobs, gangs, spy networks, smuggler's cartels, bard's colleges -- they're all presented with useful general information, and lots of examples, including NPCs that the DM can use, should a PC rogue want to join a guild and need to meet a few other members while passing the initiation tests. Overall good stuff.

Chapter Five is called "You and the World Around You." This is all the basics on what rogues and bards do, both as members of a party and as people in the fantasy world. Well done, but nothing really groundbreaking. This chapter also contains some very useful diagrams regarding flanking that practically anyone playing a rogue will find invaluable. It also contains the lengthy garrote rules that I have to say are probably too long and involved to warrant how infrequently they will be used. It's like grappling, but different, which makes it more confusing. (I could be wrong -- there might be tens of thousands of garrote fans out there and happy to finally see the page and a half of rules that the weapon so richly deserves. But I doubt it.)

Chapter Six, the spells chapter, provides some much-needed new bard and assassin spells. Both classes deserve more spells unique to just them, and the ones presented here aren't bad.

Overall, there's nothing in Song and Silence that will unbalance your game. The vast majority of the book is mechanically sound -- and that's really saying something. However, only bits of it are really exciting, innovative, and new. Thus, while I would not rate it low (because it's not bad), even the few really exciting things here (the traps, some of the equipment, some of the spells) are overshadowed by the mediocre bulk, and thus I cannot rate it very highly. That puts my rating at an even three stars. You decide whether this sounds like something you could use.

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