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

[AnotherGuy]

Truenamer was mostly inspired by Le Guin's Earthsea concept of wizards drawing power over things by knowing their true name.

I liked that concept when I first got exposed to it with Cryptomancy as one of the Seven Secret Crafts of Glantri (BECMI) and it was even more cool as my favourite Prince of the 10 that ruled the nation was also Cryptomancy's 5th Circle Mistress (head of that craft).

 

[Hussar]

No, the book says how each Vestige appears and how the DM should roleplay them.

You CAN just make your Binding roll, but there was at least some expectation that the player would be roleplaying their Binder PC convincing the Vestige to be Bound.

No. There really wasn't. That's entirely something you've added. There was zero expectation of playing out the pact.

 

[Alzrius]

There was zero expectation of playing out the pact.

Including a sidebar devoted specifically to this topic (page 16) is not what "zero expectation" looks like.

 

[Seramus]

Including a sidebar devoted specifically to this topic (page 16) is not what "zero expectation" looks like.

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Agreed. It doesn't say you must, but they put some word count into helping a GM do so, and provided personality traits as well. How often (if at all) was a personal choice for each table, but the expectation was definitely greater than zero.

 

[Necropolitan]

Agreed. It doesn't say you must, but they put some word count into helping a GM do so, and provided personality traits as well. How often (if at all) was a personal choice for each table, but the expectation was definitely greater than zero.

And it even says a DM could grant a circumstance bonus for good roleplaying, so that's a reason for a player to want to do so.

 

[Hussar]

Y'know, it's been a hot minute since I looked at the Tome of Magic, so, I dug it out to see if I was misremembering. No, I wasn't. Roleplaying the Pact is on Page 16 of Tome of Magic and says this in the first line:

The process of summoning a vestige...was designed to be a behind the scenes process - much like the exact way a cleric receives spells... you can roleplay this interaction if you wish

Yeah, so, no, it was never a requirement. A +2 on your pact check wasn't ever going to make much of a difference and heck, I deliberately always failed my pact checks because it was a lot more fun.

 

[Seramus]

Yeah, so, no, it was never a requirement. A +2 on your pact check wasn't ever going to make much of a difference and heck, I deliberately always failed my pact checks because it was a lot more fun.

Our responses are based on you saying there was zero expectation, not that there was never a requirement. Zero expectation means (to me) that they made no effort to encourage roleplaying the binding of vestiges. I hope you can agree that the game does encourage it.

 

[Hussar]

Our responses are based on you saying there was zero expectation, not that there was never a requirement. Zero expectation means (to me) that they made no effort to encourage roleplaying the binding of vestiges. I hope you can agree that the game does encourage it.

ah. Fair enough. To me, there is about as much expectation to role play the pact as there is to role play the pact in 5e warlocks. IME, players have pretty much zero interest.

Note, that's not quite the same as what was said originally:

The main lore issue with playing a Binder in a campaign is it required the DM to either just go with the mechanics of Binding each day or they had to roleplay through the PC Binding each Vestige.

That's a long way from "encourage".