Game: Whispers of Death
Publisher: Sundered Blade Games
Series: d20
Reviewer: Wyrdmaster
Review Dated: 12th, December 2002
Reviewer’s Rating: 6/10 [ On the ball ]
Total Score: 20
Average Score: 6.67
If there was a catchiness test for roleplaying supplements then Whispers of Death would do well. I think that’s a pretty catchy title. I think Sundered Blade is an equally catchy for the company. Whispers of Death is source book for assassin characters in the d20 system. As with every other class source book there’s a bunch of new feats, spells and prestige classes.
Oh yeah. Wait a sec. Assassin is a prestige class. The new prestige classes aren’t uber-prestige classes that stack even higher. The prestige classes represent different styles and flavours of assassin. They’re an extra set of choices for that rogue, bard or whichever class of character is looking to become a specialised killer.
That’s a good start. Some readers will roll their eyes at yet-another class book but there is new stuff in Whispers and I don’t just mean new feats, spells and prestige classes.
The prestige classes are largely detailed through 10 levels but a few just 5. You’ll have to look down the page and into feats section to find the Sniper’s advancement table but it’s there. There is just over a page of new feats and only a small number fall into the well-scraped barrel of “Improved-Advanced-Enhanced-Extended”. The assassin equipment section is of a similar size and rather refreshingly isn’t dominated by high-fantasy zap-pow items and weapons. You’ll find rules for footpads in here – as in the pads you wear on your feet in order to assist your attempts to sneak around.
Assassin styles offer something new but yet assassin styles aren’t new. At least the idea of assassins using different styles isn’t new but I’ve rarely seen them used outside house rules in roleplaying games. Compare the ninja to the suicide bomber; two very different styles but they’re both assassins. That particular example leaves little wonder to why most games and supplements take the route of simply developing entirely different classes. The assassin styles in Whispers of Death directly influence game mechanics, they should inspire roleplaying as well as rollplaying and they cost XP. Each style has five ranks and each rank as a character level requirement, a training time and experience cost. Low level style ranks might turn specific skills into class skills for the assassin and high level style ranks bring bigger and bolder advantages such as dramatic reductions to Difficulty Checks or spell like abilities. It would be reassuring to see the spell like abilities officially labelled as a “spell like ability” just to save the DM from debating that call. The styles are fairly varied. I like the ones with impressive names (this must be a Sundered Blade shtick – catchy titles) such as the Shadows of Light and Venom Shadow style. Mind you; I’m still not won over with the “assassins can be good people” idea that one of those two styles subscribe too.
There’s a small section titled “Compensation”. It’s actually a chart of appropriate payment for assassins. I don’t know if compensation and payment are synonyms elsewhere in the world but it made me blink. Perhaps “Blood Money” would have been a better title. I didn’t get the payment table at first either. It’s based on the way XPs are handed out. The tougher the critter you kill then the more money you’ll get paid/can charge. That makes sense. It also makes sense to reduce the amount of XP you get for the job as you increase in level. The amount of money you get decreases as you increase in level. Okay. It might be done for balancing game mechanics but it doesn’t make sense to me. Hiring a 10th level assassin should always be more expensive than hiring a 6th level assassin. It’s also kind of weird to suggest that the assassin magically knows the challenge rating of his target or the assassin’s employer knows or even that there is such a concept in the game world. It is just a small section in a packed PDF though and not worth too much of a grumble.
Much of the product is taken up with details on different assassin guilds. Each guild has its own flavour, history, typical leaders and members. Some of this is flavour – I’m a fan of flavour, some of this is splat (the NPC stats) and some of this is crunch. Each assassin guild has an associated Path. Paths represent the typical career choices made by members of the guild, in other words, they state which character class a first level member of the guild begins with (since it can’t be the assassin prestige class) and then when and where they multi-class to. The table of paths is kind enough to print what the various bonuses, feats and class feats available at each level will be so for doing that. Paths seem innocent enough but they push forward the idea that your Character Class isn’t “what you do” but “how you do it”.
The download finishes off with a couple pages of new spells and magical items.
Kinda. You’re only on page 28 of 42 at this point. There’s an appendix of course. The first thing the appendix does is re-print the assassin prestige class for you. I didn’t know you could do that. Whispers of Death doesn’t actually have the d20 logo on the virtual front cover. It does carry the license text though.
After the license text there’s an preview of a bow master prestige class from Sundered Blade’s Legends of Chaos campaign sourcebook. (Which is ‘upcoming’ at the point this review was written and marked as so on the PDF. Describing a product as ‘upcoming’ probably isn’t too bad a move for a PDF but it would raise my heckles if it appeared in a book – what if I was re-reading the book in 2010?).
There’s a whole collection of character sheets. One’s blank and that’s for you. It’s a character sheet especially targeted towards assassin players. Blank character sheets are good things to put in an easy to print PDF product. There’s a bunch of filled in character sheets to go with the important NPCs described in the Guilds previously. You can see that author Steven Gilman goes with the “few skills but each at high levels” approach of character design. One of the NPCs has the Hide skill at 44. 44! You should shine an assassin-spotting searchlight directly onto him while he danced around with in a t-shirt with the words “I’m a hiding assassin” emblazed on it in neon pink – and still not see him.
There are a few assassin class products in the market place. Whispers of Death is better than some and not as good as others. Whispers of Death beats the average mark on GameWyrd’s 1-10 scale but will fall in there on less extensive scaled ratings. It’s worth noting that this is a 001 product and I think it bodes better than “average” for Sundered Blade and the future product line. I like the direction they seem to be going in. If you’re more of a game mechanics fan than me I suspect you’ll rate the product more highly than me. Whatever the case I’m sure you’ll find the assassin styles useful and easy to incorporate into your game. If you’re looking to expand the range of assassins and related characters then Whispers of Death is a safe bet. It’s PDF and that means it’s a particularly cheap and easy to get hold off safe bet. The preview of Shadowstalker Prestige Class should also make the whether to purchase a copy or not decision easier.
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