New Binder Feats

[Stalker0]

Here's a few new feats to try some different concepts with the binder:

Improved Expel Vestige

Prereq: Soul Binding, Expel Vestige

Benefit: You can expel a vestige 1/day. This stacks with the expel vestige feat. In addition, you no longer suffer the -10 penalty to binding checks after expelling a vestige.


Empowered Binding
In times of crisis, you can call upon greater strength from your vestige, at the risk of losing your soul.

Prereq: Soul Binding, Cha 15+
Benefit: As a free action you can call upon a greater strength from any one vestige you currently have bound to you. Your pact with that vestige is now a bad one if it wasn't before, and you know longer have the option to ignore its influence. Further, you immediately take 2 points of temporary charisma damage, plus 2 more points for every round you use empowered binding. The charisma damage cannot be healed be naturally or magical means until your pact with vestige ends.

While using empowered binding, you receive double the benefits from your pact augmentation ability, as well as a +2 to DC and binder levels for that vestige's supernatural abilities. Further, every round spent in empowered binding counts as 2 rounds for refreshing that vestige's abilities.

Every round, you can make a binding check (at a -10 penalty) to withdraw from empowered binding. Else you continue in the condition. If your charisma drops to 0, your body is taken over completely by the vestige until your pact with that vestige ends.

 

[Xulin]

The first feat is completely pointless. I don't think anyone needs to expel vestiges 2 time in a day.

The penalties for the second one are much too high - if you turn it on, you MAY or may not be able to turn it off. Plus, with 2 points per round, a person with 19 Cha will only last 10 rounds in a day. If you have a tough opponent early on and use this, even if it only lasts 3 rounds, you're sitting on a Cha of 13 for the rest of the day - if you have to make anymore binding checks for the day, you just made it harder on yourself. Besides, losing control of your character for a day is very, very bad. It's like casting Dominate Person on yourself, auto-failing the save, and giving control to some random stranger in the street. Only worse, because you can't save against it.

Plus, the benefits don't make sense. +2 you saving throws against your abilities is not crazy, but doubling the benefits from pact augmentation is weird. What if they get binding through some other means, like the Soul Binding feat? This provides no benefit for them.

I would make that feat work like this:
Empowered Binding
In times of crisis, you can call upon greater strength from your vestige, at the risk of losing control over your vestige.

Prerequisites: Soul Binding, Cha 15+
Benefit: As a free action usable a number of times per day equal to your charisma modifier, you can call upon a greater strength from any one vestige you currently have bound to you, as long as your pact with that vestige was a good pact.
For a number of rounds equal to your charisma modifier, you receive a +2 increase to your binder level and DC for that vestige's supernatural abilities. Further, every round spent in empowered binding counts as 2 rounds for refreshing that vestige's abilities.
At the end of this time, you must roll a will save (DC = 15 + number of times Empowered Binding was used this day). If you fail, you take 1d4 points of Cha damage and your pact with this vestige becomes a bad pact. If you should reduce your charisma below 15, you lose the benefit of this feat until you recover the damage.

 

[Stalker0]

I don't think the first feat is pointless. 2/day just gives you more variety with your vestiges, and losing the -10 is a nice bonus.

I really like your idea for the Empowered Binding feat. I agree mine was too clunky and expensive. However, I think yours is too easy. Once a person gets easy access to lesser restoration, there's no real penalty to using this feat, so you get a very nice bonus for nothing. So let me try this:

Empowered Binding

Benefit: As a free action 1/day you can allow one vestige greater control over your power. Choose one vestige you are currently bound to. For a number of rounds equal to 3 + charisma modifier, you receive +2 to binder level and DC for that vestige's abilities. In addition, every round you spend in this state counts as 2 rounds for refreshing that vestige's abilities.

At the end of the time, you suffer 1d6 points of charisma damage that will not heal magically or physically until your pact with the vestige ends. You suffer this damage even if you are normally immune to charisma damage. Further, your pact with the vestige becomes a bad one if it wasn't already, and you can longer refuse the influence of that vestige. If you make a successful binding check, you only take half the charisma damage and still have the ability to resist the vestige's influence.

 

[Nifft]

Just call it a -4 penalty to Charisma. Then you don't have to worry about immunity to ability damage or Nabarious healing the ability damage.

Improved Expel looks fine.

Cheers, -- N