The problem with Binders

[lukelightning]

Once you get two vestiges at once you're 10 times as effective. There are some sneaky synergy tricks; things like Paimon and Otiax to get a whirlwind of 10' reach touch attacks, stuff like that.

 

[Wycen]

Here's something our DM did. He's created a page of weird things you can do with action points. I think he let the binder use an action point to dismiss a vestige or rebind another one sooner than ordinarily possible.

 

[Tequila Sunrise]

This wouldn't help a low level binder, but what about making vestige levels progress like a wizard's spell levels? While we're on the subject, does anyone have any idea why it isn't that way to begin with?

 

[Henry]

This wouldn't help a low level binder, but what about making vestige levels progress like a wizard's spell levels? While we're on the subject, does anyone have any idea why it isn't that way to begin with?

Not sure of your meaning; Do you mean, why aren't there 9 levels of vestiges? Or why all abilities increase in some way with Binder level?

I do love the freakish flavor a Binder gives, but I definitely think that versatility of binding is a big drawback to even casual play of this class. As Ashanderai says, I wish that either the book would have pushed the point that Rapid pact and Expel were so important, or that the class had been designed such that it wasn't as important as it is. Upon hindsight, they ARE almost indispensible, given the average hard-to-forsee nature of a D&D campaign's threats. (Now, in our case the Planescape setting itself may be partly responsible -- you never know what extraplanar horror you're up against next!

 

[Nightfall]

Henry,

See this is where I'd try to convince your DM to allow to use SL titans (or even Greek Titans), as vestiges. This way you get a chance of better Vestiges.

 

[Soel]

Henry,

See this is where I'd try to convince your DM to allow to use SL titans (or even Greek Titans), as vestiges. This way you get a chance of better Vestiges.

Don't suppose you'd have a resource for the titans statted as vestiges, do ya? I'm playing in a SL game, now.

 

[Tequila Sunrise]

Not sure of your meaning; Do you mean, why aren't there 9 levels of vestiges? Or why all abilities increase in some way with Binder level?

Yeah, I mean why are there only 8 vestige levels instead of 9?

 

[James Heard]

I think part of the problem is that Binders should have some neat multiclassing synergies that could be had if WOTC looked like they were supporting the ToM classes much. Just off the top of my head there should be some nice Wizard and Cleric spells to power up your vestiges. There should be vestiges that grow more powerful in people with specific class abilities too, not just vestige abilities that neatly synergize with some other abilities.

But that's a basic problem I have with the whole book I guess. The whole concept of the classes is nice, but I think they did a little bit too much tacking on rather than expanding and incorporating with.

 

[Nightfall]

Don't suppose you'd have a resource for the titans statted as vestiges, do ya? I'm playing in a SL game, now.

I'm working on it while I work on my SL bible.

 

[Vocenoctum]

Yeah, I mean why are there only 8 vestige levels instead of 9?

I think 8 levels is fine since it's all totally arbitrary anyway. I think the main "problem" is that a lot of powers don't scale, or scale slowly, and you don't get multiple vestiges until 8th level. My gnome binder almost always has Focolar bound, he's not world shattering in power but he's a good baseline. The problem is, if I try to use the versatility of the Binder by going with someone else, I lose out in lots of situations.

I've also always wanted more incentive to stick with a single vestige, as it is, it's pointless to stick to some of the low level vestiges, no matter how neat they might be in theory.