From the Bard College of Silence by Kai Linder comes Vo the Voice Snatcher, an aberration capable of stealing the voice from your throat and adding it to its own. It's a kind of creepy that stays with you long after the fight is over.

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Opening music "Ethereal Temple" from ComposerJD and Hoffzart at AdventureMusic:

www.patreon.com/adventuremusic

Closing music from Jason Shaw at Audionautix.com

A droplet lands in a puddle and it's tiny echo

thunders through the warehouse.

Rafters.

Every shuffle of the adventures feet makes them wince.

The rogues voice comes from the shadows above, ah, friends.

You've come back to vote.

The others look at the rogue, stood beside them with a face widest

parchment lips, clamped shut.

We've come to.

The cleric holds up a hand for the fighter to stop speaking.

Her words echo many times longer than they should.

Another sound of skittering at a large form spirals down a wooden pillar it's

modeled lizard, body carried by 11 spindly legs, a human face drawn and

unconcerned looking extends away from the body on a worm-like neck until

its inches from the fighter's nose.

The air stands still full of the scent of flaking skin and dry costs.

You've come to talk.

Of course, surely your friends, new silences and improvement

over their lie tongue.

You can be honest with fo you can't really want it back.

My name is Kyle lender.

I am a writer and editor on DM, skilled and working on other TT RPGs as well.

I'd always really liked the idea of bringing music into D and D a lot more.

Originally the idea for musical subclasses started the thought of, I

want to actually make just some fun little songs that people can insert.

here's a song that mercenaries like to sing, and if you sing it around

mercenaries you have advantage.

Or other bonus on negotiating with them about if you play it around

Nobles and Nobles will get pissed off and they won't like you as much.

And just making up little, things like that that weren't necessarily meant

to be magical, but maybe someone like a Bard could cast a spell using it

because bards are the instrumentalists.

And I was thinking, Oh, what else can I put in this book?

Ooh, subclasses and just toying around with it.

I ended up thinking actually let's do subclasses first because this is the.

The most player facing thing that I think people would like and decided

to just do it as a series that lets me release it regularly and

constantly draw attention to them.

And it's been really, really well received.

Very, very pleasantly pleasantly surprised about that and have

enjoyed having that kind of start to become associated with my brand.

I have the path of the war drummer for barbarian.

Pacted the bell for warlock Whistler, which is for Rangers.

That makes sense.

the dancer for rogue, the school of incantation the way of harmony for monk.

What's the next subclass coming up?

So the next one that's coming out on January

4th is the oath of HIMS Paladin.

So that one will be all about chanting hymns and incantations to create

musical or as around yourself, give the pallet and even more, or as to, to

power up their friends that are nearby.

Cause you know, everyone looks at Paladins and says, not enough auras

and needs more auras, so more or less.

Among that whole list, the college of silence for

bards is a bit of a sore thumb.

Why this sudden reversal

Part of it was just, it tickled me a bit that everyone

gets musical subclass and we get to Bart and we go, you know what?

You've got enough musical stuff.

Let's have someone who's just quiet encounters, all of that stuff.

And if, if someone's going to do it, I want it to be the Bard

for fun, for the sake of fun.

Cause I mean, everyone knows the stereotypical Bard is loud and boisterous.

So let's invert that and have a bar who's quiet and contemplated.

Kind of happens to it a little bit villainous compared

to all the others as well.

In each of these individual subclasses, I have a little, like a sidebar at the very

end that says Oh, here's three samples.

Of this kind of music.

So here's an African war drum.

Here's an American drum beat.

Here's what handbells sound like kind of thing.

For college of silence John Cage's four 33 is the first example.

I think that I used as a soundbite for silence.

The college of silence comes with a creature you've

named WIOA, the voice snatcher.

Why is this the monster you wanted to talk about today?

So I have designed a few other different monsters, but I feel like this

one in particular, a it's it's linking as we have touched on a little bit to

the current brand of musical subclasses.

But B, because I think of all the monsters I've designed it best expresses my design

philosophies and the kind of things I like to play with when I design monsters.

I know of course the reference that this immediately calls to my

mind because I was of a certain age at a certain time in history.

But before I bring it into the conversation I wanted to ask, what are,

what were your influences for a vote?

The voice snatcher.

So I, I I'd say that it's a little bit less interesting than you

might expect in that I think there's not really other than the obvious one

that meant that you were many people might think of, which is co the face

Steeler from avatar, the last Airbender.

I don't really have any specific conscious influences or inspirations for this.

There's just like general feelings.

As, as someone who's moved a lot and lived in a lot of different places,

I don't really have my own specific culture to to draw on for this.

So it's not taken from any specific culture.

Chinese mythology, for example, loves using, human faces on creatures.

There's loads of other ones like to pull on these little different threads

of, of taking away people's expressions and such, but I couldn't remember ever

having seen anything or read anything that does it specifically to voices.

If, if someone knows if one feel free to.

Feel free to let me know.

I would love to learn about it.

But for the most part, it was just one of those strokes of inspiration.

I was like, Oh, I want to do this.

Oh, this reminds me a little bit of co okay.

So we got to avoid copying him, but I definitely loved the imagery of co where

you go to a place, you speak to a creepy thing who is willing to deal with you.

But you really, really don't want to be there and you want

to leave as soon as you can.

So I definitely wanted to draw on that emotion of, of how co stealer made

me feel in a certain way and see if I could twist it a little bit, even more.

Do you think this is more impactful?

The voice than than the stealing of a face would be.

And why?

That's a good question.

I think the gut reflex is that having your face stolen is much creepier because

a lot of people also tend to think very, very visually about this sort of thing.

What does it look like for you to not have a face anymore?

I, I personally do think the voice is very creepy.

Possibly more so, because I think voices are very under appreciated

which might sound silly at first because we use them every day.

People, people sing and talk to each other a lot, but I think that's why it's

under appreciated the, the loss of that.

Yeah, I think the average person probably takes their voice

for granted and would feel.

Very alienated in, in losing that method of self-expression,

which kind of is shared with your face giving actual expressions.

So I, I think because it is much more a precise communication tool for, I guess,

who and what you are I think it can have a deeper impact than losing your expression.

I want to talk about mechanics.

How is this ability to snatch a voice encoded into Vose step block?

He has a few unique voice oriented mechanics to help him work, but

the, he has a snatch voice reaction that recharges each turn on a five or six,

so he can potentially use it multiple times in a, in a combat or in a day.

He can target any creature within 30 feet that he's heard speak, and he can force

them to make a charisma saving throw.

If Volvo has caught the person lying or telling any untruths in the last

minute, they have disadvantage on this.

So telling the truth makes you a lot less susceptible to vote.

If you fail to save, he just straight up rips your voice away,

you take a bunch of psychic damage.

He gains.

10 current and maximum hit points as he steals your voice, which means the

more voices he steals, the more powerful he gets and he can just stack up and

get tougher and tougher as he goes.

Um, the creature loses the ability to use their voice in any way whatsoever.

And Volvo becomes able to use that creature's voice at well.

This only ends and the creature only regains their voice when Vogt dies

or willingly returns to the voice.

There is no duration on this.

It's indefinite.

You don't get your voice back after an hour.

If he steals your voice, you either need to kill him or you

need to trade him something for it,

which is nice and nice and rough, but he's, I've I've put him at

a challenge level, level 11.

So.

Most adventures will be pretty tough if they come up against him, but he's a

pretty strong problem or a pretty strong creature that demands to be dealt with.

Have you assigned, devote to a particular environment

or a place in the game?

Where does he usually hang out?

Yeah, so I've, I've given him a layer in the product.

No layer actions, but he does have layers.

He prefers to layer underground or in large buildings because

he likes places that can.

Preferably be nice and echoey.

He likes lots of open space and darkness so that he can move around in there

and hide in the shadow while still being able to hear what's going on.

So, so caves and abandoned warehouses are perfect for him.

And he tries to find any of those that are near either well-traveled

roads or population centers, because vote needs to be near people.

So it's finding these big abandoned, dark, empty plate echo-y places.

That can potentially Lou where people in

If you have a group of players who have encountered vote, who have gone

through this visceral creepy experience, the way you intended it to be dad, what

are the things, things you want them to remember, or is there anything that

you feel this creature would help them understand after having encountered it?

good question.

I, I think one of the things is, as I touched on earlier is the

power of expression and how people under appreciate their voice.

Because if, if.

Put playing D and D everyone wants to express their character.

They want to be cool.

They want to save.

This is what my character is about and vote.

It'll significant way takes that away.

And players will very much want to get that back.

I can't imagine any player that I've ever had, having that

happen to them and going well.

Let's, let's go find some gold somewhere else.

Um, I would hope that it would make them look at how potentially as

well they communicate within the party both in and out of character.

Because I think one of the things that I, that I like about this about

Volvo is it isn't is one of the actual other mechanics I gave him.

He has an ability called life from sound where whenever he hears a creature

within 30 feet use their voice, he regains a little bit of hit points.

So the more you talk, the more he heals and the harder he is to defeat.

And I like the idea of that pushing your players to try and in character,

they need to communicate without speaking, they need to have an idea

of what the others are going to do.

You kind of have to have to trust that, okay.

We know that our barbarians probably gonna run in we know that our, our wizard.

Actually really doesn't like damaged spells.

So he'll try and buff someone, our cleric did our cleric bring,

bring healing spells today?

I would like for this kind of thing too, to evoke that, that feeling of disrupted

communication, that means you appreciate the communication you do have afterwards.

If that makes sense.

it absolutely does.

I think one of the core.

, principles of playing a character, in a D and D game is predictability.

People tend to use the adjective predictable, like it's a bad thing.

And I think it's a synonym for reliable.

And in that case, it's, really powerful.

Yeah, and I like that by potentially taking this away.

Obviously out of character, people can still share tactics, but it's

the kind of thing where you, as the DM using VO one player might say

Oh, I'm going to, Oh, Oh, wizard.

I'm I'm going to go get next to him.

Can you cast haste on the next turn and then I'll do this and then you,

as the DM can say, okay, how are you communicating that in character?

Are you going, would you like to speak and tell them that, are you

going to give them a knowing, look is your relationship in character.

Good enough that you can trust each other to do this.

And I, I just, I just really like how that works in throwing that

reliability of, of it's easy for us to just say tactics at each other

and kind of disrupts that as you say,

I feel like I've put some of my own kind of design preferences into fo.

And I think another way I've done that, that I haven't mentioned

yet is his damaged vulnerability.

Normally obviously damaged vulnerabilities in D and D or

just cold fire slashing, whatever.

And you take your, and you take your damage from that, but I

had fun introducing a different.

A different way of doing that, this more specific with him.

And I gave him a damaged vulnerability to any damage that's dealt while

he's in the area of a zone of truth, spell embracing this whole notion

that, magically compelled truth is the best way to defeat him, which

gives, gives a nice way for players.

If they want to, to try and figure out a way to help defeat

and flow much more easily.

That also has a little bit of a message to it.

what are some of those design principles that you tend to

rely on when you make your games?

In terms of monstrous specifically I do trying to

give them more things to do than just an action on their turn.

Volvo has legendary reactions, so he can move around bite and

do like a paralyzing shriek.

But he also has abilities like that life from sound.

When I mentioned where you always have to be thinking about this

monster, even on your turn, because he can do things outside of his turn.

I like trying to find ways to make creatures break reliability.

I think your point about real reliability earlier was just a really good one and

perfect for expressing one of the things that I like doing, which is finding a

way to make a monster very memorable.

By breaking what's reliable, but also finding a way to do that by staying

within the mechanical bounds, instead of just, you know, shattering the

whole game and saying this monster gets five turns it's, it's auditing away to

disrupt reliability while also using mechanics that are, that are basically

first and foremost, also very flavorful.

So I try my best whenever I design something to make the mechanics

be entirely in support of, of a flavor concept, which is probably

obvious from the, from the musical subclasses and the silence theme.

Question that this brings up is by tying Volvo so strongly to lies and deceit

you've opened him up to to a whole nother, area of lore and folklore and mythology.

And that's the way that we approach truth as an ideal as something that we.

That we have to work with or pursue, especially in the genre of heroic fantasy.

Why was it important to you that truth be so mechanically involved

in what Volvo does and is.

I don't want it to be something where he shows up and

he just takes it and runs away.

You need to have a way to fight back.

That's not combat.

And in this case, if someone's stealing your voice, I figured either, either

something about, Oh, if he's heard your voice or if he's heard you lie.

And I think.

Given given the kind of modus operandi of most adventuring parties, trying to find

a strong way to make them tell the truth is a pretty, it's a pretty deadly tool

for a monster to have because everyone loves to lie and outwit the monsters.

And this is one that kind of sit around and at the same time as you mentioned,

there's a lot of different kind of.

Cultural interpretations and way of discussing truth and lies.

Typically the bad guy is the one who lies and enforces other people's lies.

Vote is honest.

Vote does not lie though.

Hates lying, and he punishes other people who lie.

And I think that's more interesting because it's, it's more interesting

for people to start fearing the truth that I think it's something a bit more.

Complex to explore them fearing lies because everyone sees that crop up in

media all the time, but what you have to fear and the double-edged sword

of truth is a very, is a very kind of different beasts that is explored

a lot less, especially in like the traditional D and D monster sense.

You can find me on Twitter at, at paradise iliac.

That's P a R a D O L I a K.

Follow me there.

If you want to hear more random design insights and keep track of

all the weird or cool stuff, I'll be releasing over the next year.

But night's falling and it's getting dark and

the characters are starting to worry that well, maybe whatever it is

that did, this might be coming back.

And then the healer notices something as night goes down, the shadows don't

quite line up in the room, right?

The light is not reacting the way it should.

The soft lights that are lighting up the computer gear in the

room and yet there are shadows there where there shouldn't be.

A shadow in the corner towering about six feet tall, hunched over.

And flowing like a cloud of smoke off of his shoulders, his long black shimmering

feathers, like a, a massive Raven's wing, all laid out like a blanket and

and attached to its hands are six inch long bony fingertips that have old dried