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View Full Version : "Its persistent silence and outstretched arms......." [3.5, Vestige]



TheGeckoKing
2010-11-21, 12:57 PM
Just a mad whimsy of mine;


http://i25.photobucket.com/albums/c83/Vaynor/slender_man_vestige-1.gif


http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_gwhZoTJJhDs/TGf52cYDosI/AAAAAAAAAD8/AeOOLL9PF08/s1600/Slender+Man+2.jpg

Legend: Before the gods, before the universe, before the first aboleths swam through primodial oceans, and countless eons before the first mortals roamed the world, the Slender Man has walked the world. A being of madness and paradox, the Sender Man is an engimatic entity that inspires fear in even those without the intelligence to question the unexplainable paranoia that is experienced when the Slender Man creeps beyond the senses and dances between the shadows of the mind.

The true nature of this entity is completely unknown; the most ancient beings are ignorant children to its age and it is beyond the creation of the gods. Some binder scholars speculate that the Slender Man is a remnant from the Before Times; the age of existence before the gods shaped the world in their image. If so, then the Slender Man is beyond their influence or control, and its very existence and resemblance to mortal races makes the most learned philosophers wonder if the gods truly created mortals or if they are a merely a band of usurpers, our true creators murdered or banished beyond our time. Others theorize that the Slender Man's true form is one of undiluted madness, and he is only seen as humanoid by our minds in a vain attempt to shield our sanity from the truth of its form.


Special Requirements: Must of been panicked once in their lifetime, and must of taken at least 1 points of WIS Damage/Drain that isn't/hasn't been regained.

Manifestation: After the seal is drawn, you gain the horrible suspicion that something is watching you. After a few seconds of dread, The Slender Man appears, a blank faced man with horrifically long and thin limbs, but you can only see him out of the corner of your eye. If you try to look at him directly, he dissapears and re-appears a second later, in the corner of your eye-line. Anyone binding The Slender Man with all-seeing senses (Blindsight, Telepathy, even Lifesense) is horrified to learn he doesn't show up. Although he never speaks, you instinctivly know if the pact will be good or not......

Sign: Your limbs become twice as long but gain no weight or sinew, and so take a slender, almost starved form. Also, your face becomes smoother and your facial features less pronounced as The Slender Man exerts his form on you.

Influence: The Slender Man watches anyone he lends his power to, and whenever possible, you must try to sneak up on your enemies whenever possible, and avoid being flatfooted or being subject to a surprise round.

Granted Abilites: While The Slender Man is bound to you, you gain the abilities to hide, and to horrify.

In the Corner of Your Eye: You gain the ability to Hide In Plain Sight in any terrain, even while being directly observed, with a +10 untyped bonus to your Hide and Move Silently checks. You also gain a continual Blur effect, that can be turned on/off as a standard action.

Twisted Mind & Flesh (Ex): You gain a +5 bonus to your reach and a continual Mind Blank effect. You don't gain the bonus to reach if you are suppressing The Slender Man's sign.

Shifting Paranoia (Su): The fearful cannot bear to look at you, causing you to shift around into the shadows of their minds. As a swift action, you can immediately teleport into a square within 10 feet of a creature that is shaken, frightened, or panicked. The square you teleport into must have line of effect onto the shaken, frightened, or panicked creature, but that creature must not have line of sight on you. After using this ability, you cannot use it again for 5 rounds.

Aura of Paranoia (Su): Your maddening presence inspires fear into other creatures. Whenever you attack a creature with a melee attack and they do not have line of sight to you, they are treated as being flanked against you, and your flanking bonus increases to +4 to your attack rolls and +2 to your damage rolls. In addition, whenever a creature has line of sight to you, they must make a Will save (DC equals 1d20 + your effective Binder level + your Charisma modifier). On a failed save, the creature becomes panicked for 1d4 rounds, then becomes shaken for 1 minute. Regardless of whether or not the creature succeeds or fails against this save, they cannot be affected by it again for 6 hours.

Pyromancer999
2010-11-21, 01:25 PM
Looks alright, although I don't get the tentacle attack thing. If you're trying to do something for the arms, just extend the reach by 5-10 ft. Also, maybe have some kind of teleportation ability that allows the binder to teleport in a way that causes him to end up just so that a victim of Discerning Presence can only see him out of the corner of his eye. Make it a standard action, and unusable for 5 rounds after using it. Another suggestion for an ability would be a blur effect.

TheGeckoKing
2010-11-21, 01:32 PM
Firstly, thanks for he comments

Secondly, While the +10 foor reach and blur effects are good, I haven't got any idea on how to stat up teleporting into the corner of someone's eye. How could that be worded?

Pyromancer999
2010-11-21, 01:39 PM
While the +10 foor reach and blur effects are good, I haven't got any idea on how to stat up teleporting into the corner of someone's eye. How could that be worded?

Slender Man's Shift: As a standard action, you may select an enemy who is affected by your Discerning Presence, and teleport to any spot within 5ft of him that he has line of sight to. This spot cannot be directly in front of the enemy selected. Once you use this ability, you cannot use it again for 5 rounds.

TheGeckoKing
2010-11-21, 01:51 PM
Ah, that seems brilliant. Thanks!

Pyromancer999
2010-11-21, 02:20 PM
Ah, that seems brilliant. Thanks!

No problem. This vestige seems pretty good for horror-themed campaigns, so I think I'll use it in the future sometime.

TheGeckoKing
2010-11-21, 03:12 PM
The fact you want to use it makes my scaly heart feel good :smallbiggrin:
The fluff shall be added right now

Admiral Squish
2010-11-21, 03:38 PM
Can't sleep, slendy will get me, can't sleep, slendy will get me, can't sleep, slendy will get me, can't sleep, slendy will get me, can't sleep, slendy will get me, can't sleep, slendy will get me, can't sleep, slendy will get me...

Golden-Esque
2010-11-21, 04:21 PM
Legend: A being neither here nor there, but a bit perpendicular and somewhere parallel to the madness of men, The Slender Man is the engimatic entity of fear that exists to bring the world into it's imagined realm of paranoia. It has existed for a long time, and even the first Aboleths to swim through the seas of primordial life remember spying a figure now and again, which they didn't recognise until the first humanoids were put on the world by the gods. How this anomaly came to occur no-one knows, as no-one can get a straight answer out of the Aboleths, the Gods won't speak about it and most ancient beings barely know of The Slender Man's origins, only that he is to be feared or at least respected. Now The Slender Man walks the realm via Binders strong or mad enough to call him, sowing fear amongst the land for reasons that no-one can fathom.

You have some odd indentations in this paragraph. I've cleared them in the examples above; they may be intentional for style, but they're a little distracting.

Your first sentence is a run-on sentence, and doing so doesn't add fear to your description; it makes it whimsically odd and a little difficult to understand without several readings. If this is your intent, then I guess it's fine, but I'd suggest something like this:

Before the gods, before the universe, before the first aboleths swam through primodial oceans, and countless eons before the first mortals roamed the world, the Slender Man has walked the world. A being of madness and paradox, the Sender Man is an engimatic entity that inspires fear in even those without the intelligence to question the unexplainable paranoia that is experienced when the Slender Man creeps beyond the senses and dances between the shadows of the mind.

The true nature of this entity is completely unknown; the most ancient beings are ignorant children to its age and it is beyond the creation of the gods. Some binder scholars speculate that the Slender Man is a remnant from the Before Times; the age of existence before the gods shaped the world in their image. If so, then the Slender Man is beyond their influence or control, and its very existence and resemblance to mortal races makes the most learned philosophers wonder if the gods truly created mortals or if they are a merely a band of usurpers, our true creators murdered or banished beyond our time. Others theorize that the Slender Man's true form is one of undiluted madness, and he is only seen as humanoid by our minds in a vain attempt to shield our sanity from the truth of its form.

You don't have to use one exactly like this, but the best way to instill a sense of horror into people is to give them answers to questions they don't care about, but keep the important details that make things feel safe from them. For example, if you explain what a spider is to someone who has never seen one and tell them that a spider is "a hairy monster with eight eyes and eight legs, each leg topped off with a menacing talon and crushing pincers for a mouth, and an organ that produces a sticky substance that it can entwine its prey for several days before slowly draining its corpse of all bodily fluids," without mentioning that most spiders are the size of your fingernail, then holy hell, you probably just scared the crap out of that person.

In other words, focus on the "negative" traits and leave out the "positive" ones. That's one of the things that makes the unknown so terrifying.


Special Requirements: Must of been panicked at least once, by something you never learned the identity of for at least a few weeks, if not ever.

I don't think there's a rule for becoming panicked (as the game condition) by something you've never learned the identity of. This special requirement is really, really fluffy and it doesn't add much gameplay wise, so I think it either needs to be redone so it makes more sense, has an actual gameplay effect, or just simply dropped. I mean, if you're adventuring with a Bard, you're probably going to know the exact type of creature, it's habitats, and its favorite place to go out dancing on the weekends with a single Bardic Knowledge check :).


Manifestation: After the seal is drawn, you gain the horrible suspicion that something is watching you. After a few seconds of dread, The Slender Man appears, but you can only see him out of the corner of your eye. If you try to look at him directly, he dissapears and re-appears a second later, in the corner of your eye-line. Anyone binding The Slender Man with all seeing sences (Blindsight, Telepathy, even Lifesence) is horrified to learn he doesn't show up. Although he never speaks, you instinctivly know if the pact will be good or not......

Nice touch. The only thing I would suggest is to describe exactly what the Slender Man looks like, even if you only catch glimpses or what not, you should probably add that he looks like a humanoid with long, slender limbs or whatnot.


Sign: Your limbs become twice as tall but gain no weight or sinew, and so take a slender, almost starved form. Also, your face becomes a blank canvas as The Slender Man exerts his form on you.

Gosh, how do you hide that? :smalleek:


Influence: The Slender Man watches thoes to whome he lends his power to, and so if you fall under his influence, for as long as you have The Slender Man bound, you can see The Slender Man in the corner of your eye, and even if you close your eyes, he's there. Waiting.

There's no 'e' in 'whom,' "thoes" should be "those," and that's not really an influence power. When a vestige exerts its influence on you, it usually lists how the vestige affects your mood or personality, and if you act against that effect, you take a stacking penalty (see the Binder's core rules). The way this is set up, this doesn't actually follow those rules at are. You need to rewrite this completely.


In the Corner of Your Eye: You gain the ability to Hide In Plain Sight, with a +30 untyped bonus to your Hide checks. You also gain a continual Blur effect, that can be turned on/off as a free action.

I think a +30 untyped is a little much, to be honest, I think. Untyped bonuses, especially to skill checks, is a little overpowered because you can stack them with anything. Binders are designed as the ultimate jacks of all trades, their strength is their versatility, not being overwhelming good at one thing. Try something like +20 circumstance bonus to both Hide and Move Silently; if you have no cross-class ranks in those skills, you're going to be a little worse then a Rogue that does, and if you did spend oodles of skill points in cross-class skills, you'll be a little better. Also, you should need to spend at least a swift action to activate the Blur effect; it's way too powerful if a creature could attack you and before that attack even goes off, you Blur.


Discerning Presence: Whenever someone sees you after you his successfully from them for a full round, they must make a will save (DC 10+HD/2+Binder Level/2) or be Panicked for the round. Someone who makes a successful save against your Discerning Presence are immune to it for 5 rounds.

Should be "Whenever a creature Spots you while you are hiding, they must make a Will save (DC equals 10 + your effective Binder level + your Charisma modifier) or become panicked until the start of their next turn." Your version requires too much bookwork, to be honest. The math on your saving throw isn't standardized (that's what makes the Energy Missile power overpowered; lack of standardization in its rules) and it doesn't seem right to put the 5 round rule on an ability you can't control.


Twisted Flesh: You gain a +10 bonus to your reach and a continual Mind Blank effect.

What does your flesh being twisted have to do with the Mind Blank spell? This doesn't make sense, and reeks of "I wanted more stuff here that isn't need."


Slender Man's Shift: As a standard action, you may select an enemy who is panicked by your Discerning Presence, and teleport to any spot within 5ft of him that he has line of sight to. This spot cannot be directly in front of the enemy selected. Once you use this ability, you cannot use it again for 5 rounds.

This is a little odd. I'd say that the power should let you teleport to any square within 10 feet of the subject that the creature does not have line of sight to, but you do. For example:

Shifting Paranoia (Su): You can only use this ability when a creature becomes panicked by your Discerning Presence ability. As an immediate action, you can immediately teleport to a square within 10 feet of the panicked creature. You must have line of sight to the panicked creature from the chosen square, but the panicked creature must not have line of sight on you. After you use this ability, you cannot use it again for 5 rounds.

I imagine the idea is that you shift around from the creature's sight, but you're still there and you're still watching. In my opinion, this vestige's fluff makes it feel really Rogue-ish, and I'd try something like this:

Hide Anywhere (Su): While bound to the Slender Man, you gain the Hide in Plain sight ability, except you can hide anywhere, even if you are under direct observation. In addition, you gain a +15 circumstance bonus on Hide and Move Silently checks.

Slender Body (Ex): Your slender limbs grant you a +10 enhancement bonus to land speed and to your reach. You do not gain this ability if you Suppress the Slender Man's sign.

Aura of Paranoia (Su): Your maddening presence inspires fear into other creatures. Whenever you attack a creature with a melee attack and they do not have line of sight to you, they are treated as being flanked against you, and your flanking bonus increases to +4 to your attack rolls and +2 to your damage rolls. In addition, if a creature has line of sight to you, they must make a Will save (DC equals 1d20 + your effective Binder level + your Charisma modifier). On a failed save, the creature becomes panicked for 1d4 rounds, then becomes shaken for 1 minute. Regardless of whether or not the creature succeeds or fails against this save, they cannot be affected by it again for 24 hours.

Shifting Paranoia (Su): The fearful cannot bear to look at you, causing you to shift around into the shadows of their minds. As a swift action, you can immediately teleport into a square within 10 feet of a creature that is shaken, frightened, or panicked. The square you teleport into must have line of effect onto the shaken, frightened, or panicked creature, but that creature must not have line of sight on you. After using this ability, you cannot use it again for 5 rounds.

Hope this helps :).

Vaynor
2010-11-21, 05:10 PM
http://i25.photobucket.com/albums/c83/Vaynor/slender_man_vestige-1.gif

You'll have to add a symbol yourself (or give me a picture and I can add it for you).

Edit: Updated. That good? Or did you want the lines going vertically?

TheGeckoKing
2010-11-21, 05:10 PM
@Squish
Oh, don't you worry. Slendy will make you sleep. He'll make you sleep forever more.
@Vaynor
Wow. Thanks! For the symbol, i'm thinking just a blank, oval head with four lines stretching out from the bottom.
EDIT: Brilliant! Will be added right now.
@Golden-Esque
Thanks a bunch!
Firstly, I AM gonna nick your fluff, because I made up mine on the fly, so I don't care much about changing it for better fluff.
Secondly, I'll just state you need to have been panicked, full stop. Simple and easy.
Thirdly, good point about the desciption. Will add.
Fourth, it was meant to be hard to hide, simply because your binding a primordial entity of fear and you don't just get away wih it with a few blemishes.
Lastly, i'll nick Slender Body and Aura of Paranoia's crunch, with a few changes.

Golden-Esque
2010-11-21, 07:47 PM
Happy to help! And Vaynor, you're simply going to have to tell me where you got that awesome Binder template :).

Vaynor
2010-11-21, 08:30 PM
I forget where I got the template, but I've uploaded my copy. Here it is:

http://i25.photobucket.com/albums/c83/Vaynor/VESTIGE_TEMPLATE.gif

Pyre_Born
2010-11-22, 10:28 PM
TheGeckoKing, The Slender Man Looks great, definitely fits well in a horror campaign. Good work!

@Vaynor, thanks so much for posting that template, been looking for something like this for a while now.

Peace,
Pyre