If you know The Le Games, then you know what you have here. 17 new spells for Bards. Quality varies, but all are solid. IF you are really into bards then this is a good choice but there are other options for the price.

17 Bard Spells

<br><br> <b>LIKED</b>: Creative spells<br><br><b>DISLIKED</b>: Rules not always the best<br><br><b>QUALITY</b>: Very Good<br><br><b>VALUE</b>: Satisfied<br>

The poor, misunderstood bard. He doesn't get much love...or respect. He's a support class without much support, and I'm always glad to see new bard related supplements.

To this end, The Le Games gives the bard their ?17? treatment, which usually means that the book in question contains more than 17 of whatever it offers. In this case, however, the precedent has been broken. 17 Bard Spells actually contains 17 Bard Spells. As with the rest of The Le's products, these new rules come at a very inexpensive price. This book is also one of the better looking products I've seen from this publisher. A lot of the art looks like clip art, but its GOOD clip art. The layout is simple but clear, with nice bookmarking throughout.

17 Bard Spells presents its new spells as part of an item called ?the manual of the minstrel.? This is a spellbook with a very clever illusion-based security feature. There is also a magical journal hidden in the back of the book where previous owners have detailed their exploits. These are neat ideas, but one obvious question comes to mind: what use do bards, who are spontaneous casters, have for a spell book? The rules answer this by giving characters that possess the book a number of bonus spells per day. Not bad, but it still doesn't fully answer the problem that bards can't really learn spells from books. Finally, the book grants a HUGE experience award to anyone that reads it, making it somewhat on par (though not quite) with a minor artifact. That's not a flaw, but it does make the book harder to drop into any given campaign.

I'm either hot or cold on most of the spells. Spells like Switch (which allows the caster to magically swap the contents of two containers) and Perfect Addiction aren't overtly powerful, but they could certainly be put to good use by a clever player.

Other spells seem too close to existing core spells. Silent Sneak, for example, is probably workable, but it fills a niche already covered by Silence. Seductive Kiss, as far as I can tell, is just Charm Person with a flavorful descriptor.

There are also a few spells that are either too powerful or just oddly designed. Honesty Aura is way too powerful for a 1st level spell. It basically grants the bard an 85% chance of succeeding at every Bluff check for a number of minutes, regardless of the skill ranks of the bard or his targets. It is a clunky spell, and it doesn't work within the standard d20 rules at all.

Improvised Spell is a good idea, but it lacks mechanics. Basically, it allows you to just make a spell up on the spot, without giving much instruction on how to adjudicate this. A secondary effect allows the bard to cast this spell to duplicate the effects of a lower level spell.

Overall, though, there are some clever spells in this book. Like the bard itself, these bard spells are not overly powerful, but they offer a creative player a lot of options.<br><br> <b>LIKED</b>: With 17 spells at a mere $2 and change, 17 Bard Spells is certainly worth the download. Creative players and GMs will find a couple spells usable right out of the box, and the rest should work fine with a little tweaking. Even the poorest of the spells in this collection should serve as inspiration for a GM looking to make some homebrew bard spells.<br><br><b>DISLIKED</b>: The Ley continues to play fast and loose with d20 rules. A few of these spells are just poorly designed. Thankfully, these are in the minority.<br><br><b>QUALITY</b>: Very Good<br><br><b>VALUE</b>: Satisfied<br>

The Manual of the Minstrel contains 17 bard-specific spells. It is a brightly-colored book that appears quite useless to non-bard characters, but when a bard uses it, or even approaches it, its supposed power is made quite clear. The drawings inside dissuade non-bards from the text within; the bell attached to the bookmarker rings for bards but ignores other classes. The spells are obvious bard-centric.

Tony DiGerolamo is the writer of ?17 Bard Spells,? and the 7 levels of bard spells are all represented here (although in some cases, there is only one new spell for some of the higher spell levels).

The spells are all certainly playable and usable; most the material is well-balanced, but some spell schools seemed a bit questionable (I don?t know if ?instant hangover? really should belong to the necromancy school).

Some of these spells, especially the earlier-level spells, seemed more annoying than useful. While it certainly may be interesting for a bard to be able to cast ?invitation? and instantly create and send a number of invitations to his or her upcoming performance, I don?t know how often a spell like this would be used in a gaming session. ?Perfect addiction? allows the bard to cause a target to become addicted to an item (food or drink) or activity (like gambling), and while this certainly may produce some interesting in-game scenarios, I don?t know how often a player will chose to use this spell at the table (especially with the accompanying 100 gp cost). (Although I could see how some of these spells could be used by a DM/NPC to interesting result.)

Spells like ?roadside repast,? which creates a feast for the bard and his or her companions, or ?the amazing escape trick,? which allows the bard to instantly teleport to a prepared safe location at the utterance of a trigger word (spoken by someone other than the bard), might be more useful in the hands, or spellbook, of a PC.

?Improvised spell? is one of the final spells in the Manual of the Minstrel. Its description is a bit vague; a bard can use this spell to ?make up a 1st to 3rd level spell on the spot.? There is little direction given to help players and DMs in determining just what a 1st level spell would be, versus a 2nd or 3rd level spell. Something like this is just too open-ended for a structured spellbook.

Overall, ?17 Bard Spells? is a nice package, and if nothing else, can provide the DM with a few ideas for interesting NPC spellcasting.<br><br> <b>LIKED</b>: This is a nicely-structured package; The Le Games is notorious for putting together products that are easy to read and use, and "17 Bard Spells" is no exception. And for ease of use, the bard class listing is listed in an appendix at the back of the supplement.<br><br><b>DISLIKED</b>: Some of the clip art artwork has appeared in other gaming supplements, and the type of artwork was inconsistent.

As for the content, I don't know how useful some of this would be for players. "17 Bard Spells" might be better targetted at DMs.

A spell list at the beginning of the supplement and incorporating these spells in the the bard class listing in the supplement would have been appreciated.<br><br><b>QUALITY</b>: Acceptable<br><br><b>VALUE</b>: Satisfied<br>