D&D General The 3.5 Binder was a really cool class

[Necropolitan]

There once was an assassin who specialized in murdering other assassins.

He died, went to Hell, and the many enemies he'd made in life who'd ended up in Hell were so mad they staged a mass uprising solely to beat up his newly-damned soul.

When the fight was over his soul was gone.

Now you might be thinking "Did he somehow escape? Was his soul destroyed? Did he go to Double-Hell? What exactly would Double-Hell be like, would it just have twice as much fire or something?"

The answer is none of the above! His soul somehow got shunted outside reality and became a Vestige.

And if you played a Binder in a 3.5 D&D campaign you could have a fraction of his power as long as you were willing to put up with the chance doing so might cause a slight change in your appearance and behavior.

And that's just one of the dozens of Vestiges you could choose from as a Binder!

There were the remains of dead gods, mortals who failed in their attempts to attain godhood, slain primordial monsters, a noble who got really really really scared (like SO scared, he ran out of there like nobody ever had), the victim of an incredibly mean prank (they cut his arms and legs off), someone who managed to steal his own soul from the god of thieves through a divine loophole (which the god appreciated so much he turned him into a Vestige as a reward), an ancient greedy Dwarven queen who inspired me to create Blackbeard as a Dwarf NPC (his name is Flamebeard and his ship is Queen Aym's Revenge), and many more!

 

[Cordwainer Fish]

Doesn't the Trapper Keeper do everything the Binder does, and have much more flavorful options?

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

"A lot of time ago, a crack commando unit was sent to an infernal plane by a rival celestial court for a crime they didn't commit. These souls promptly escaped from a maximum security stockade to the Feywild underground. Today, still wanted by those celestial power (and some infernal dragons) they survive in the memories like vestiges. If you have a problem, if no one else can help, and if you can find them....maybe you can summon The Alaph-Team."

 

[Seramus]

Agreed, the Binder was absolutely dripping with style. It did have some thematic overlap with Warlock at the time, but Warlock wasn't as firmly cemented the way it is now. It was also a little on the weak side. I could easily see a homebrew Binder using the 5E Warlock as a design chassis:

Vestiges would give you a set package of Invocations and a 1-5 Spell List you can access, with the ability to bind more Vestiges simultaneously as you increase in level, naturally.

Of course, nothing is stopping someone from fluffing their Warlock, Cleric, or Sorcerer spells as coming from Vestiges. It's a bit hard to replicate passive abilities that way, though.

 

[kigmatzomat]

The binder was very flavorful but mechanically weak unless you had access to all the vestiges and could make the best possible pacts for each situation given your level, which kind of goes against the concept of the binder.

It was so fraught with synergies that I understand why they never revisited it. If you up the vestiges' gifts, you run the risk of making unintended rule-monsters, but if you don't very few players will want to play it.

On top of that, it puts a ton of load on DMs so that the adventures just "happen" to have long lost tomes/temples/crypts for relevant vestiges. The alternatives are the Binder is almost certainly worthless or campaign revolves around the Binder'sqhest for more Vestiges.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

The binder was very flavorful but mechanically weak unless you had access to all the vestiges and could make the best possible pacts for each situation given your level, which kind of goes against the concept of the binder.

It was so fraught with synergies that I understand why they never revisited it. If you up the vestiges' gifts, you run the risk of making unintended rule-monsters, but if you don't very few players will want to play it.

On top of that, it puts a ton of load on DMs so that the adventures just "happen" to have long lost tomes/temples/crypts for relevant vestiges. The alternatives are the Binder is almost certainly worthless or campaign revolves around the Binder'sqhest for more Vestiges.

I think, if one were going to re-build the Binder under modern design understandings, one would need to force some degree of specialization.

So, perhaps there are...paths, or natures, or types, of Vestiges. Perhaps you can freely adopt Vestiges from within your chosen path, but those outside it either have very sharp limitations (so you can flex a little...but only a little, and only with effort), or are only "initiate" level commitment, rather than "adept" or the like, so you only get partial, diluted, or infrequent access, depending on what makes sense for the given Vestige.

Then, you work to make sure each of the paths has something SUPER tasty in it--but no single character can get all the tasty things at once, or even more than (say) two out of eight or the like.

Or, if you want to really delve deep into the personalities of the Vestiges, maybe we could do some kind of allegiance/rivalry thing. Each Vestige has allied, neutral, rival, and hated Vestiges. If you have bound a Vestige, they will abandon you if you attempt to bind a Vestige they hate, and never accept your binding again. Bound Vestiges will accept a rival, but only for a time--perhaps some kind of DC that rises each time the two are both bound, eventually leading to a forced choice--but you don't lose access to possibly binding the one you "lost" at a later time. Neutral relationships don't care, you can do what you want. And then every Vestige will encourage you to bind its allies, and may refuse to be bound if you avoid binding at least one ally you could have bound.

That way, you're all wrapped up in the politics of Vestige-ness. Rather than the Warlock, who functionally acts something like their patron's employee, the Binder truly is a diplomat amongst powerful eldritch forces, at the mercy of politics beyond mortal ken, but which have very mortal effects.

 

[Alzrius]

Fun fact: the binder class got a lot of third-party expansion, mostly through Radiance House (affiliate link), with their various Pact Magic titles for 3.5, and the Grimoire of Lost Souls for PF1.

 

[thirdkingdom]

I did an OSR version of the binder, here. It was always one of my favorite 3rd edition classes.

 

[Tigris]

The funny thing is: 4e had Vestiges and had a Binder, but the 2 were seperate things.

The vestiges were a normal warlock subclass and the binder was an alternate warlock with less damage (and slightly more control) but lacked anything differentiating from the normal warlock.


The vestiges are a cool pact, but just being a subclass it just has limited things it can do.

Having some flexibility and taking on different aspects, depending on the fight, would have been good for a controller which the binder should have been.


Also the cool effect on the daily vestige powers are on higher levrl just a lot lesd televant since half of the effect is improving your at will, and you wont use that too much, so itnwould have been a lot better for a new class with no encounter abilities.