D&D 4E Anyone make a Binder class for 4E?

[generalhenry]

That's what I'm thinking.

A member of the binder class wouldn't have to pay gold to use the binding ritual

 

[Eldritch_Lord]

But then what's the mechanical difference between a Binder who's just a Binder and a player who's decided to focus all his attention toward the Binding ritual?

Should the cost in GP be reduced/removed from the ritual?

Perhaps a feat (yet another one) along the lines of Practiced Binder that removes the cost from the ritual would be best. So you can dabble it in for X gp all you want, but if you really want to focus on it a single feat will alleviate the upkeep.

 

[lordkiwi]

Each feat you take could reduce the cost by 20%, so if you have 5 you an do it for free.

 

[Eldritch_Lord]

Each feat you take could reduce the cost by 20%, so if you have 5 you an do it for free.

I like it. Let's do that.

 

[generalhenry]

so to go meta for a bit

lets look into an optimized character with our current rules.


I think right now warlocks, wizards, clerics and paladin are the best candidates for taking binding feats.

 

[lordkiwi]

For Amon...
1st/2nd level: He will replace everything you have from your class. The only things left are feats (you may have to spend one on Ritual Casting) and racial abilities.
You could try for a mean Defender character. You can still mark using fire damage, you retain your high hit points and armour class. If you're a human you can also benefit from Refreshing Absense as a quick heal.

Optimised 1st level binder using Amon:
Human Paladin
Feats: Ritual Casting and Refreshing Absense.
Statistics: Con and Cha.
Skills: Anything plus Diplomacy.
Powers: Anything that makes a good paladin. Include Cha based at will attacks. At level 2 Astral Speech is a much for every serious binder.
Advantages: Use Con and Cha to hit, very tough, can mix controlling with defending. If it starts to go wrong, expell your vestige to heal and turn into a real defender.
If you get an augment you probably want a Cha based melee attack rather than Ram's Counter.

At 3rd and 4th you could retain an encounter power if you got a Pact Augment and you have 1 or 2 more feats to play with.
Get Augmented Pacts for a cost reduction (maybe?) and you can keep both your at-will and encounter power with a decent pact. Additionally one of the Human feats for good action point useage, so you can get two extra bonuses per AP... if you're spending AP you usualy really need a good bonus.
You are replacing your level 1 encounter power with Amon's so Righteous Smite is a good battle opener, all those temporary Hp should reduce the need to be as much of a defender and it's Charisma based.

At level 5+ you probably want to bind something else.

 

[Dog Moon]

Each feat you take could reduce the cost by 20%, so if you have 5 you an do it for free.

Or maybe you take a feat and instead of reducing the costs for ALL of them, it allows a single Vestige to be ritualized for free. Would have to have some sort of prerequisite in order to prevent just everyone from taking it though.

Just a thought.

 

[lordkiwi]

If having the same Vestige bound every day is something every character will want then we have done something wrong. I can see specific builds wanting permanent vestiges, but like multiclass feats, they shouldn't be for everyone.

Also, specialising in specific vestiges sounds interesting, but may defeat the object of the system: versatility.

Lord Kiwi,

 

[ziegander]

I rather like Dog Moon's idea. Keeps things simple. Who likes to take 20% of something in the middle of a game?

Are we satisfied with our rules at the moment?

 

[lordkiwi]

I'm happy with the rules. We can work on balance and probably agree on one of the two price arangements.

I think it's 20% at the start of the game, rather than in the middle, after which you have a fixed cost per vestige. I'm usualy wary about putting maths, beyond adding/subtracting single digit numbers, into a game but in this case it can be done before hand.

Lord Kiwi,