Let a binder have an extra vistage through a feat tax?

[CyberThread]

Is letting a binder have an extra vistage through the cost of a feat, a bad idea?

[Cloud]

Personally no, but I'm also of the opinion that if you're not allowing them Summon Alien (don't allow them Summon Alien), that they probably should get 1 or 2 more vestiges to bind for free just from leveling up.

...So it might be a bad idea in that if you see it as a feat tax...why not give it out for free.

[Psyren]

I would rather just accelerate their ability to bind more than one vestige, similar to how the Occultist handled it.

As a rule of thumb, any feat that everyone who takes a particular class would go for no matter what they want to do with that class, is a badly designed feat. (I'm looking at you, Natural Spell.) In addition, the class grows in complexity exponentially the more vestiges it can bind simultaneously.

[mabriss lethe]

Meh. It wouldn't really break the class. I probably wouldn't do it, though. It just doesn't seem necessary. I've played binders at all levels and have never really felt the lack of vestige choices.

What would be a bit more in-line with the class and existing feats would be to make a feat that would speed up a character's acquisition of extra bound vestiges by X levels. Not as immediately attractive, but it would give the class a boost, make multiclassing more attractive, and still be powerful enough that you'd be hard pressed to find a reason not to take it. It also wouldn't have any impact on the upper limits of the class.

[NoACWarrior]

While a feat to get an extra vestige might look attractive, and that the binder's powers are actually quite limited in scope and encounter effect, I don't think that feat will help the binder in the way you want it to.

Theres that quick binding feat which hardly anyone ever takes, and a lot of binders who take expel vestige.

What about a feat which grants the powers of one additional vestige per day (activated as a swift action) for a number of minutes equal to the cha mod? The binder would still need to meet special restrictions, but wouldn't otherwise need to make a binding check (with the binder accepting an immediate loss on the contract) or draw the circle and would be restricted to a particular vestige which the binder had bound in the pas 24 hours. It would certainly give a lot more flexibility to the binder, which they are lacking at times if they are "surprised" and wouldn't result in a game breaking experience other than the fact its only on for a few minutes at most.

Additional buying of this feat (lets call this "Residual Binding") would grant one more use per day of this ability, but not allow the same vestige that was last bound through this ability (in the past 24 hours) to be used in this way.