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

[Hussar]

Agreed. I can see how his post triggered a "well, actually" the same way we did to yours. I think we're all roughly on the same page now.

Takes a while, but, eventually ideas penetrate my skull.

 

[amethal]

Radiant House did a Pathfinder conversion. I bought their first release of it (Secrets of Pact Magic) and I found it was good, though didn't grab me quite the same (there's nothing quite like your first, haha).

Was curious to see if I still owned the PDF, and discovered they did another remaster of it called Grimoire of Lost Souls, which I'm really curious about, but not curious enough to spend $50CAD for a PDF for a system I no longer play.

It's a very good "Pathfinder-isation" of the class, complete with archetypes, archetypes for other classes that want to dabble in pactmaking, favoured class bonuses and the like.

I do feel some of the original flavour was lost in the process, but that doesn't really matter to me since I have both books anyway.

 

[SkidAce]

There was a recent thread talking about Wild Magic, and it make me really think about how highly "random" abilities work best in a scripted format where there's nothing random about them and it's all decided by the author for maximum narrative impact. Meanwhile having genuinely random features in a game means you're more likely to get a frustrating or anticlimactic result than a narratively satisfying one.

Fascinating idea.

Have the wild magic user choose from the table to fit the narrative, within some frame work that limits always picking the good ones.

Hmmmm.

 

[SkidAce]

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).

+1 for throwback to Secret Crafts of Glantri!!

(I'd +2 if I could)

 

[Kurotowa]

Fascinating idea.

Have the wild magic user choose from the table to fit the narrative, within some frame work that limits always picking the good ones.

In a scripted format, you'd get the silly results when the situation is low stakes, a negative result when failure is recoverable, and a beneficial result when you're in a pinch. No Fireballs out of nowhere when you're showing off in the tavern, very few moment where your magic fails you when you need it most, lots of praying for a lucky result and getting it when you need it most. Because that's the fantasy of wild magic.

I have absolutely no idea how to translate that into a game format better than the current version. The random result table is blindly random, which doesn't produce narratively appropriate results. But what else can you do? Have the DM hand pick a result? Give that power to the player and trust they won't always just pick the best one? Neither sounds like a great idea.

If you can dream up a better way, I'd love to hear it. Otherwise I'm marking it down as a character archetype that doesn't translate between mediums well. It'll go on the list right next to "Brooding lone wolf who refuses to interact with the party a majority of the time but in a dire situation turns out to have anticipated and prepared for exactly that crisis."

 

[SkidAce]

In a scripted format, you'd get the silly results when the situation is low stakes, a negative result when failure is recoverable, and a beneficial result when you're in a pinch. No Fireballs out of nowhere when you're showing off in the tavern, very few moment where your magic fails you when you need it most, lots of praying for a lucky result and getting it when you need it most. Because that's the fantasy of wild magic.

I have absolutely no idea how to translate that into a game format better than the current version. The random result table is blindly random, which doesn't produce narratively appropriate results. But what else can you do? Have the DM hand pick a result? Give that power to the player and trust they won't always just pick the best one? Neither sounds like a great idea.

If you can dream up a better way, I'd love to hear it. Otherwise I'm marking it down as a character archetype that doesn't translate between mediums well. It'll go on the list right next to "Brooding lone wolf who refuses to interact with the party a majority of the time but in a dire situation turns out to have anticipated and prepared for exactly that crisis."

Yeah, I hear yah. Was just brainstorming....no solution...yet.

 

[Voadam]

In a scripted format, you'd get the silly results when the situation is low stakes, a negative result when failure is recoverable, and a beneficial result when you're in a pinch. No Fireballs out of nowhere when you're showing off in the tavern, very few moment where your magic fails you when you need it most, lots of praying for a lucky result and getting it when you need it most. Because that's the fantasy of wild magic.

I have absolutely no idea how to translate that into a game format better than the current version. The random result table is blindly random, which doesn't produce narratively appropriate results. But what else can you do? Have the DM hand pick a result? Give that power to the player and trust they won't always just pick the best one? Neither sounds like a great idea.

If you can dream up a better way, I'd love to hear it. Otherwise I'm marking it down as a character archetype that doesn't translate between mediums well. It'll go on the list right next to "Brooding lone wolf who refuses to interact with the party a majority of the time but in a dire situation turns out to have anticipated and prepared for exactly that crisis."

One way is to keep random charts but have something like 5e advantage on the rolls so you are likely to get something applicable to the situation and what you are doing, that will give you more of the good stuff when you need it, but also have some randomness.

For the failure when recoverable and silly results when low stakes, one way to have those come in is to have them trigger a meta-mechanic, 5e inspiration or something magic related, so there is some incentive for the player to choose them to build up for a future action. This could be how you get a Voltron build up instead of biggest blast first type of effect in the pacing flow of using magic in combat.

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

Do you remember the "concordance" of artifacts in 4th Ed? Maybe when players were roleplaying rightly there was a better concordance with that vestige, allowing to unlock some extra bonus. I suggest rewards and positive stimilus are more efective.

Other point is if maybe 2nd Ed Shaman could be summoning spirits or totems like a game mechanic close to vestiges. Well, really it was a hybrid of primal-spellcaster with a touch of vestige pact.

Maybe the 5e Shaman could reuse ideas from the totemist and the vestige-binder.

If a 5e Binder class could summon vestige-companions like monster-allies then it would be like a weird version of pokemon trainer or digimon tamer

* You could find something in the Pathfinder SRD.

 

[GrimCo]

I finally remembered what Binder reminded me of. It's 7ths sea sorcery from Avalon called Glamour. It allowed user to call upon legendary heroes from Avalon's history and borrow their power, like Robin Goodfellow ( Robin Hood), who grants you great skill with bow (greater damage, greater ranger, greater precision bypassing defense). 7th sea predates Tome of Magic by good couple of years, so maybe designers got some inspiration for Binder class there also.

 

[Necropolitan]

That's a long way from "encourage".

No, that is in fact how the either/or works.

Like I said, either the Binding had to be roleplayed or it had to happen in the background.

And potentially getting a bonus to the check is 100% a way of encouraging roleplaying since bonuses were incredibly important in 3.5 and Binders had very few ways of boosting their Binding checks.

Radiant House did a Pathfinder conversion. I bought their first release of it (Secrets of Pact Magic) and I found it was good, though didn't grab me quite the same (there's nothing quite like your first, haha).

Was curious to see if I still owned the PDF, and discovered they did another remaster of it called Grimoire of Lost Souls, which I'm really curious about, but not curious enough to spend $50CAD for a PDF for a system I no longer play.

Grimoire of Lost Souls is good if you want a Binder class for Pathfinder 1E, I would recommend buying it if anyone is willing to spend the money to do so.

I also found the Greyhawk lore for Binders really interesting because a lot of deities and their worshipers actively opposed Binding and hunted down Binders. There was even an alliance between Good, Neutral, and Evil deities (one of them Vecna) specifically to eliminate Binding.