Your opinion of Pactmaking from Tome of Magic

[Hussar]

Graf: My answer would be both. There's tons of stuff in SL that would make funky vestiges.

 

[lukelightning]

I also think it's conceptually off-putting to other players to see you a goat-horned fire-breather one day and a clown in a ballerina outfit the next day, or what have you.

A wizard can be a fireball tossing pyro on day, and an illusion casting trickster the next.

 

[green slime]

I couldn't get past the Introduction. I can't seem to get excited enough to want to read the whole chapter. I did enjoy the Shadowcasting chapter though. I do hope it works out for you. If I heard more exciting things about it, I might summon enough energy and oomph to actually read the dang thang.

 

[Jefe Bergenstein]

My biggest complaint is that all binders are going to be fairly similar mechanically with the same flexible choices every day, similar problems to the divine casters choosing every day from every spell on their list.

That was my thoughts as well. Not enough flexibility during the day (unlike the incarnate, which can slide essentia around on a round by round basis). Any prepared spell caster has a similar level of flexibility. The binder should have been more able to do pacts on the fly without the expenditure of many feats.

Also, many of the abilities didnt need to be on a 5 round timer (I changed some to d4), and some of the options didnt scale well or at all (such as the vestige that lets you make skill checks untrained, which is by and large useless given their low Int in anything but a very high stat build). Too many seemed related to granting proficiencies the binder should have received in the first place (heavy armor and weapons) since he's pretty much a warrior who augments himself.

Another issue is that you cant make a binder particularly challenging for a party to face against, (in comparison to a cleric or wizard). Its strength is in using certain abilities over and over again, and like the warlock, it suffers since NPC's dont tend to get into multiple fights in the same day with PC's.

Despite that, its a class with a great feel, solid base mechanics, and the vestiges ooze flavor. It just needs a few tweaks.

 

[amethal]

I am finding the binder great fun, although so far I've only got up to second level.

I have been picking a different vestige each session, although after next week's session I'll have used all the first level ones and I'll have to start recycling them.

I am the only one in our group with Tome of Magic, and the DM trusts me not to mess it up or cheat, so he's happy to be surprised along with everybody else.

The other characters are coming to the conclusion that my character must be an escaped lunatic, due to his regular personality changes, and even in a medium level magic world having horns one day and not the next is causing comment amongst the NPCs.

Power wise, its probably the weakest character in the group, but of course the other characters don't know that because I keep them guessing about what I can do each day

 

[lukelightning]

My next character is gonna be an Anima Mage. All you need is one level of binder plus the improved binding feat and three levels of wizard (or 4 of sorcerer); all you give up is one level of spellcasting.

 

[JoeGKushner]

One of the reasons I think the Pact Magic section works 'potentially' so well is in the background of the game system where we have all these great names and associations with different eras and different systems brought under one heel of Pact Magic in terms of the game's history. Making Pacts with Kas and the former Primus? I'm there!