Pyramid Review: Song and Silence (for Dungeons & Dragons)

Pyramid Review

Song and Silence (for Dungeons & Dragons)

Published by Wizards of the Coast

Written by David Noonan and John D. Rateliff

96 pages; $19.95

The latest installment in the guidebook series for Dungeons and Dragons features the two most urban character classes: bards and rogues. While these two classes are quite possibly the most versatile of classes, this book primarily focuses on the two most popular aspects of these classes: music and thievery. There's also a few goodies tossed in for the assassin prestige class.

So, let's break out the old formula and go through the chapters.

Chapter one is the goody that seems obligatory for any D&D supplement: prestige classes. And they offer some jim-dandies in this one. For those pining for the days of Unearthed Arcana, there is the return of the thief-acrobat, now reworked as a prestige class. Also, there is the Fang of Lolth, which starts with the assumption that a PC tries to access an artifact not meant for humanoids with a Use Magic Device roll. Hijinks ensue.

The rest of the prestige classes, while they are interesting and fulfill crucial roles, do not make stretch the genre my motor run and the way that the Fang of Lolth does. Yes, the crime-fighting Vigilante, the Robin Hood-ish Outlaw of the Crimson Road, and the swashbuckly Dread Pirate do exactly what a prestige class is meant to do: help to define a setting. Got a port city with ships going in and out of it? Sure, Dread Pirate is a possible . . .

This article originally appeared in the second volume of Pyramid. See the current Pyramid website for more information.



Article publication date: January 25, 2002

Copyright © 2002 by Steve Jackson Games. All rights reserved. Pyramid subscribers are permitted to read this article online, or download it and print out a single hardcopy for personal use. Copying this text to any other online system or BBS, or making more than one hardcopy, is strictly prohibited. So please don't. And if you encounter copies of this article elsewhere on the web, please report it to webmaster@sjgames.com.