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Message: <blockquote data-quote="doctorbadwolf" data-source="post: 8232336" data-attributes="member: 6704184">Now, please understand that this is a rough draft. The idea is to play a ritual master who binds powerful energies to their will. The flavor of their magic is that it is all sourced in rituals done throughout the day, during rests, or when first gaining a new ability, and then channeled through ritual implements, circles of power, arcane glyphs and seals, etc. Some of these powers are called Vestiges. These are more directly linked to a Power in the multiverse, a place of power, an artifact, etc. Things like the Reigns of The Erlking, which tie you to the Great Hunt, and grant you power over mountable creatures and empower your ability to hunt. These are much like Warlock Invocations, but tied specifically to the idea of vestiges, or remnants of beings, places, events, and objects, of power. Some Vestiges are more simple and open-ended, such as the Vestiges of The 9 Circles of Power, each of which gives a single casting of a 6-9th level spell, and the ability to learn spells of that level, and cannot be taken out of order. ie, Vestige of The 6th Circle allows you to cast a 6th level spell once a day, learn 1 6th level spell when you take the vestige, and learn more 6th level spells as you adventure.There are also a Greater Vestige Seal, which allows a level 11 or higher Binder to bind truly immensely powerful Vestiges. Something like the shadow of the dead god Io, or the residual energy of the death of a planet, or echoes of worship and sacrifice of an ancient temple. The Seal can only be used once, and recharges over 1-9 days. The other of 3 pillars of the class's identity is spellcasting, and especially Ritual Casting. The Binder learns and prepares spells like a wizard, has wizard-style ritual casting, but casts spells like a warlock. The last pillar of the base class are your Implements. You choose one at level 3, and master the other two at later levels. Also central to the class, as all classes, are the subclasses, which you gain at level 1. Your subclass, called your Binding Seal, determines your primary combat efficacy, especially at level 1, when you have yet to gain pact magic, and only have ritual casting. This is the biggest part of your power, though spellcasting certainly competes with it in terms of giving you your punch. Your spell list is not built for combat, however, so most Binders will rely primarily on subclass to kick ass. <ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">The Seal of Goetic Evocation is focused fully on being a Summoner. You choose a creature type specialisation, and can turn anything you summon into that type, and empower any creature that you summon or gain magical control of, and eventually you can magically give your allies your specialization creature type and all the benefits of your class features, as if they were a creature of that type that you had summoned. </li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">The Seal of The Gathered Swarm is focused on swarms, and creating areas of effect. not yet written</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">The Seal of The Heretic is a Binder that has bound an angellic power to their will, gaining divine magics and angelic gifts.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">The Seal of The Ninth Gate is a teleporter who can hack teleportation circles and the like, and create and dispel things like Glyphs of Warding, and stuff like that, and uses gates to help their allies with mobility, defense, and getting around enemy tactics, and can use gates to change the directionality and range of spells using portal physics.  not yet written</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">The Seal of The Emergent Truth is your classic Jekyll/Hyde bastard. You turn yourself into a monster. not yet written</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">The Seal of The Blood Bond is hyper focused on buffing the new spell Bind Servant, turning your power into your Servant's power and watching it wreak havoc in your name.</li> </ul>I'd love to hear your feedback on this iteration of it. The main elements I am still not fully sure of are:<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Gaining spellcasting at level 2, as a "full" caster. The subclass makes you effective without spellcasting, but I don't know if I'm working too hard to put my vision of a caster who is a ritualist first into mechanical representation.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Making full spellcasting optional, via vestiges, rather than automatic.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Gaining spells known from Binding Seal and from Impliments. This isn't really a power boost so much as a versatility boost, so it's not a balance issue for me, but I worry that giving too many spells known might overshadow the ability to learn spells as you adventure? note here that I will also be including rules for researching and inventing spells in the suppliment that this class will be found in, and those rules will include both downtime and setting aside time as part of each long rest, so that learning new spells is less campaign dependent for wizards, binders, and ritual casters who can learn spells this way. Also, all classes can learn new spells via training and research, but if you don't have a class feature it takes a long time and has limitations. </li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">The Greater Vestige Seals. I really like the idea of a power that is so out of the league of any PC that even at high level you cannot use it more than once per day (I'm considering a very high level upgrade that lets you recharge by spending a spell slot at the end of a long rest), and it is just well outside the norm for what you could normally do. On the other hand, I gotta actually design and roughly balance these things, and I even suspect that maybe they'd be better as magic items that don't regain their charge until a month has passed, and binders can recharge them a bit faster by binding to them. IDK. <ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Another idea is to move this idea into the Binding Seal, but that greatly limits what you can do with it.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">I really like the idea of it being a passive benefit befitting a normal vestige, that you must bind/attune, can only have one active, and can manifest one that doesn't have to be the same one you have bound to you right now. IDK.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Maybe you should be able to bind multiple, but can still only ever use one before recharging your Greater Vestige Seal?</li> </ul></li> </ul>Anyway, this is certainly not a direct port of any previous version of the Binder, but rather a summoner class whose flavor and principles are directly inspired by those of past Binders. [USER=205]@TwoSix[/USER] I know you wanted to see what I've got, so here is the rough second draft. Some abilities aren't even named yet, so please take it as a rough draft.</blockquote>

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