Ideas for Binder Spirit Capabilities

[NRSASD]

Hey Playgrounders!

I have two one-shot bad guys coming up in my campaign and both of them are going to be binders. Binders are characters that make pacts with spirits (called vestiges), allowing the spirit to passively possess them in exchange for a 24-hour loan of the spirit's powers. One of them is going to be a really macho kobold binding the spirit of his former red dragon master, and the other is going to be a priest of animal savagery channeling the spirit of one of their strongest berserkers.

What I need is suggestions for powers these two vestiges grant. I'd love to hear about any official vestiges that might fit the bill, fun concepts from other settings/rule sets, anything really. Just looking for a place to start from. I've already figured that the dragon vestige will grant the kobold firebreathing and a boost to hit points.

Any and all help is appreciated!

[Nifft]

Which game system?

[Oberon Kenobi]

Only Binders I know are 3.5; probably gonna want to have this moved to that subforum (or whatever specific forum relates to your system, since you're asking about mechanical abilities for your vestiges).

[LibraryOgre]

The priest of Animal Savagery should be able to invoke Rage, like the Barbarian power. If appropriate to the system, he should be able to invoke it in other people.

[The Viscount]

For your draconic vestige, there's Ashardalon from Dragon Magic, who is an absolutely ancient Red Dragon.
Amon from ToM gives fire breath, but it could use kicking up since he's a 1st level vestige. Some bits borrowed from Eligor might also be useful.

The berserker one is more difficult to replicate Chupoclops's pounce and bite might be applicable. Zagan's constrict and improved grapple likewise could fit.

[NRSASD]

Thanks for the input! I'm just looking for rough ideas of what powers these two vestiges grant at the moment. I'm using an extremely modified fusion of 1st, 2nd, and 3.5 D&D, so numbers aren't that useful anyways

[Sagetim]

Now, at it's base the 3.5 binder class can pick bonus hit points as a binding bonus (they get a short list to pick from, damage reduction and bonus hp are on there). So if you want the dragon one to grant bonus hp...that might be a bit redundant. Since this is a Red Dragon, it should probably grant a cone of fire. So, something like a 5ft cone per binder level? Well, that would be easy to remember, but at level 20 that would be a 100 foot cone. That's a pretty damn big cone. But that should be okay...because by level 20 you should be able to do some pretty impressive stuff fairly often. If you have hit dice hit a limit like in 2nd edition (I can't recall if 1st ed did that) then you would want the scaling damage on the breath weapon to scale somewhat less than amon's breath does for 3.5. So the breath weapon could look like:

5ft cone per binder level, 3d6+1d6/3 binder levels fire damage, reflex save for half dc 10+1/2 binder level + cha mod. For a game that has second edition style hit dice limits.
For a game with 3.5 style hp, you could have it do the normal 1d6/binder level and probably be fine.
In either case, the fire breath would be a once per five rounds attack.

For other abilities, the Red Dragon Vestige could provide something like:

Endurance of the Dragon- as a standard action you can grant yourself or one target within short range temporary hit points of 1d12+1 per binder level. These temporary hit points last for one hour or until expended. I think that would be a pretty decent amount of hp for 2nd edition style hit dice. For 3.5 style hp, having it give something like 1d6 per 3 binder levels +1 per binder level would scale better.

In addition to that, some form of scaling fire resistance would make sense. Starting at 5 and moving up to immunity by 20 binder would probably work fine because fire is the most resisted type of damage in the game anyway. If you do percentages, as earlier editions of dnd did, then 5% per binder level would result in immunity by 20 (and healing from fire damage after 20 or if stacked with other sources of fire resistance).


For the abilities for a berzerker, you would want some things that emulate the kinds of abilities a peak berzerker like that would have. So being able to go into a rage fits as a vestige ability. Maybe you could have it be something like:

Ancient Tide of Anger- You let the hate of your patron flow through you, entering a rage as a free action. Unlike a barbarian's rage it lasts only until the start of your action on the next round, but you do not fatigue yourself at the end of it. You may use Ancient Tide of Anger again after 4 rounds have passed since your last use of it. Your bonuses from this rage are equivalent to a barbarian of your binder level plus any barbarian levels you might have.

That ensures that the vestige granted rage isn't strictly better than a barbarian rage. It has upsides (same bonuses, usable more than once in a fight) and a severe downside (it only lasts one round per use).

Did the berzerker in question have natural weapons? Because you could have one of it's abilities be something like:

Raging Claws- As long as you are showing the sign of (insert vestige name here) you gain a pair of claws that you can make natural attacks with. They strike as magical weapons of your alignment. If you already have claws, then this ability modifies them and the damage goes up as if you were one size category larger.

And that could be coupled with:

Rending Claws- If you hit with both of your claw attacks in a round against a single target, you automatically rend them for an extra 2d8+str mod slashing damage.

And while your mileage will vary with the suggested damage dice, they can still serve as a point of reference for you to adjust them to the particulars of your campaign's ruleset. Whatever you do, just remember that part of the Binder's Shtick is that they don't have hard per day limits on abilities they get from vestiges, and that the abilities they do get are supernatural in nature and generally ignore spell resistance as a result.

[Heliomance]

As mentioned, Ashardalon is an already-existing red dragon vestige, just use him (and tweak as appropriate).

[Telonius]

For the Berserker, maybe use some form of the Shapeshift Druid from 3.5's PHB2. Basically, it turns you into a kind of natural predator for a certain amount of time, with stat adjustments, special attacks, and movement modes.