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View Full Version : D&D 3.x Class Corpse Binder (Binder PrC; Halloween Harvest of Horror)



Zaydos
2016-10-01, 05:48 PM
CORPSE BINDER

"Rise Paimon, take up your arms and slay them." – Mellek, Corpse Binder

Soulbinding is the art of taking in a vestige, a spirit beyond the realm of the gods, and allowing it to use your own body as a vessel, to fill yourself with its power and act to channel it towards your ends. A Corpse Binder is a practitioner of pact magic like any other, but in their eyes letting some entity from beyond the veil run rough shod in your body is foolish or at least wasteful. Why risk your own identity when you can offer it another vessel. A Corpse Binder uses humanoid corpses to serve as these vessels, allowing the vestige's energies and their will to reanimate the dead as their sword and shield.

Becoming a Corpse Binder

All that is needed to become a Corpse Binder is skill in the art of pact magic, knowledge of the nature of undeath, and a willingness to profane the corpses of the dead and to turn them into your puppets bound by strings of your black arts. Most Corpse Binders learn their art not from other Corpse Binders directly, but their journals, tomes, and books of profane knowledge. Corpse Binders tend to be a secretive lot.

Prerequisites:
Alignment: Any Evil.
Skills: Knowledge (arcana) 2 ranks, Knowledge (religion) 8 ranks, Knowledge (the Planes) 2 ranks.
Soulbinding: Ability to bind 3rd level vestiges.

Class Skills
The Corpse Binder's class skills (and the key ability for each skill) are: Bluff (Cha), Concentration (Con), Craft (Int), Gather Information (Cha), Intimidate (Cha), Knowledge (arcana) (Int), Knowledge(history) (Int), Knowledge (religion) (Int), Knowledge (the planes) (Int), Profession (Wis), Sense Motive (Wis), Spellcraft (Int), and Use Magic Device (Cha).
Skills Points at Each Level: 4 + Int

HD Type: d6.


LevelBABFortRefWillSpecial
1st+0+0+0+2Corpse Binding, Soulbinding +1
2nd+1+0+0+3Animate Dead, Soulbinding +2
3rd+1+1+1+3Death's Healing, Rebuke Undead, Soulbinding +3
4th+2+1+1+4Corpse Binding (2 corpses) Soulbinding +4
5th+2+1+1+4Deathly Touch, Soulbinding +5
6th+3+2+2+5Eyes of the Bound Dead, Soulbinding +6
7th+3+2+2+5Corpse Binding (3 corpses), Create Undead, Soulbinding +7
8th+4+2+2+6Life Sucking Touch, Soulbinding +8
9th+4+3+3+6Dual Bound Corpse, Soulbinding +9
10th+5+3+3+7Corpse Binding (limitless), Create Greater Undead, Soulbinding +10

Weapon and Armor Proficiencies: A Corpse Binder gains no new weapon or armor proficiencies.

Soulbinding: At each Corpse Binder level, your soulbinding ability improves as if you had also gained a level in the binder class. Your corpse binder levels and binder levels stack for the purpose of determining your bonus on binding checks, the effectiveness of your vestige-granted abilities, your abilities to bind-higher level vestiges, and the number of vestiges you can bind. You do not, however, gain any other benefit a binder would have gained.

Corpse Binding: A Corpse Binder learns how to bind a vestige into a complete corpse. To do so they must make a pact as normal, except that instead of binding the vestige themselves they bind it into a corpse they have available. This corpse must be either a small or medium humanoid or a member of their own race. The corpse rises as undead with hit dice equal to your effective binder level plus racial hit dice (to a maximum of your racial hit dice if your race can progress both by hit dice and class levels) or your effective binder level -2 with no racial hit dice if it does not share your race. These hit dice determine its BAB and base saves. It retains the Strength and Dexterity it had in life but gains a bonus to each equal to twice your Charisma modifier, it has no Constitution, Intelligence of 5 plus your Corpse Binder level with a maximum Intelligence of yours -4 or 3 whichever is higher, Wisdom 4 less than yours, and Charisma of 4 less than yours. It has undead traits and gains turn resistance equal to 1/2 the level of the vestige bound into it. It possesses your weapon and armor proficiencies, and is considered to have any feats you possess which could be used while within a Barbarian rage, it also is considered to have your ranks in Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, and Wisdom based skills. It does not have skills or feats of its own. The bound corpse has a natural armor bonus to AC as a skeleton of its size and DR 2/bludgeoning if bony, or as a zombie of its former race and DR 2/slashing if fleshy; if this natural armor would be higher than the highest level of vestige you can bind it is reduced to a bonus equal to the highest level of vestige you may bind. The undead creature is animated by a piece of your will, a piece of the creature's soul, and a portion of the vestige's power. You have full telepathic control of the undead created this way as long as you are both on the same plane (if it is on a separate plane it acts in accordance with a mixture of homicidal blood lust and the desires of the bound vestige), but it is unable to communicate back telepathically to you beyond the limits of an empathic link. In addition to the above the bound corpse gains all benefits associated with the vestige bound into it, as if it was a binder of your effective binder level or effective binder level -2 if it is a different race, though it is unable to suppress the sign even if you could.

If you made a good pact this bound corpse is fully under your control. If you made a bad pact and you order it to ignore the influence you must make a binding check (at no penalty for being rushed) and if you fail it obeys the vestige's influence, if you succeed it disobeys as directed and takes the normal penalty for ignoring a vestige's influence.

Vestiges bound to your bound corpses count against your number of vestiges bound. You do not gain any of the benefits of the bound vestige, and any abilities triggered by having a vestige bound are not triggered due to it (if you have another actual vestige bound they'd trigger unless they required the specific vestige). You may Expel them with the Expel Vestige feat as if you had them bound personally as long as they are on the same plane. When the vestige leaves the bound corpse it becomes a regular corpse once more, you may make it into a bound corpse once again, but any damage it suffered previously remains; if it is destroyed you cannot reanimate it again in this fashion. If you are able to bind multiple vestiges you may bind the same vestige into both you and your bound corpse at the same time. If you do so you make two binding checks one for yourself and one for the bound corpse gain a +4 bonus on both binding checks and may take a penalty on the binding check for your bound corpse to gain the same bonus on the binding check for yourself; there is no limit to the penalty you may take.

You may only have one bound corpse at a time regardless of how many vestiges you may bind. At 4th level you may have 2 assuming you may bind 2 vestiges. At 7th level this increases to 3, and at 10th level you may have any or all vestiges you may bind bound to corpses instead of yourself.

Animate Dead: A Corpse Binder learns the ways of animating the dead. Beginning at 2nd level a Corpse Binder may cast Animate Dead 1/day as a 3rd level arcane spell. They cast this spell as a sorcerer would, but cannot cast other spells through the spell-slot granted and have no other spells on their spell list or spells known (for Corpse Binder). Their caster level equals their effective binder level.

Death's Healing (Su): A Corpse Binder's dark studies makes it as easy to channel negative as positive energy through vestiges that would normally heal not harm. Beginning at 3rd level whenever a vestige's granted power would allow a Corpse Binder or one of his Bound Corpses to channel positive energy they may channel negative energy instead (healing undead/damaging living creatures if it healed living creatures/damaged undead, rebuking undead if it turned them, and so forth).

Rebuke Undead (Su): A Corpse Binder learns to channel negative energy through themselves. Beginning at 3rd level a Corpse Binder can Rebuke (and Command) Undead as an evil cleric of their effective binder level.

Deathly Touch (Su): A Corpse Binder's ability to channel negative energy continues to increase. Beginning at 5th level a Corpse Binder gains the deathly touch ability as a paladin of slaughter or tyranny of their Corpse Binder level.

Eyes of the Bound Dead (Su): A Corpse Binder retains a connection of will to their bound corpses. It is this that allows them to communicate with their servants, and as they grow in power they learn to use it also to see through their eyes. Beginning at 6th level a Corpse Binder may concentrate (as a standard action) to gain direct sensory information from one of their bound corpses that are on the same plane as they are.

Create Undead: A Corpse Binder continues to learn the ways of animating the dead. Beginning at 7th level a Corpse Binder may cast Create Undead 1/day as a 6th level arcane spell. They cast this spell as a sorcerer would, but cannot cast other spells through the spell-slot granted except Animate Dead and have no other spells on their spell list or spells known (for Corpse Binder). Their caster level equals their effective binder level.

Life Draining Touch (Su): A Corpse Binder learns how to siphon the energy of life through their connection to their vestige and into the void in which vestiges live. Beginning at 8th level a Corpse Binder may 1/day per vestige bound make a melee touch attack which inflicts 1d6 negative levels. The target is allowed a Fortitude save, if they succeed these negative levels last only 10 minutes, if they fail they last until they become permanent level loss or the target successfully removes them. This is an energy draining effect. When the Corpse Binder uses this ability they select one vestige they have bound, they gain a bonus on their next binding check with that vestige equal to the number of negative levels dealt if the target fails their save (if using vestige-like entities which are not actually truly vestiges, such as archfiend pacts, this bonus does not apply).

A bound corpse can also use this ability 1/day (and a dual bound corpse twice), the Corpse Binder still gains a bonus on their next binding check with the bound vestige of the bound corpse (or one of the two with a dual bound one) as if they had used this ability themselves.

Dual Bind Corpse (Su): A Corpse Binder learns how to put two vestiges into the same corpse. Beginning at 9th level a Corpse Binder may bind a second vestige into an already animated bound corpse. If they do so not only does it gain all the benefits of the second vestige it gains several other benefits. Its Base Attack Bonus increased to +3/4 HD (or cleric progression), and its base Fort and Ref saves increase to +2 + 1/2 hit dice instead of +1/3 hit dice. Its natural armor increases by 1/2 the level of the higher level vestige (this can increase it over the cap), its DR becomes 5/magic and bludgeoning (if bony) or 5/magic and slashing (if fleshy). Its Strength, Dexterity, Intelligence, and Wisdom increase by 2, and its Charisma increases by 4 (to equal yours). It gains the benefits of all your feats and skills not merely those usable by a Barbarian and not based on Int or Cha respectively. It gains +4 turn resistance and +4 hit points per hit die. Finally as long as you are both on the same plane it may communicate with you telepathically, not merely limited to an empathic link.

Create Greater Undead: A Corpse Greater Binder continues to learn the ways of animating the dead. Beginning at 7th level a Corpse Binder may cast Create Greater Undead 1/day as an 8th level arcane spell. They cast this spell as a sorcerer would, but cannot cast other spells through the spell-slot granted except Animate Dead and Create Undead and have no other spells on their spell list or spells known (for Corpse Binder). Their caster level equals their effective binder level.

Martimus Prime
2016-10-07, 03:12 AM
I like where this class is going - it kind of reminds me of the dirgesinger, but building off of my favorite base class instead. The notion of being able to "embody" a vestige as a summon or pet rather than a personal enhancement opens some neat RP and gameplay options. Flanking with your zombie for malphas/marchosias sneak attack shenanigans sounds pretty entertaining, no?

A few suggestions:

In General - This PrC cries out for fluff and abilities centering around Acererak or Tenebrous, but there are parts of the crunch that more or less overlap with the abilities of those two vestiges. IIRC (don't have the book in front of me :smalltongue:), Tenebrous straight up gives you Turn/Rebuke. I'd probably add some bits about those abilities boosting the effects of those vestiges if they're bound, so as to avoid redundancy.

Skills/Saves/BAB - 1/2 BAB might be overly harsh seeing as a lot of binder stuff requires getting into melee range, 4+int/level skill points seems out of place in terms of how you get into the class, weak fort might be overly harsh as well, and I'm not sure where use magic device fits in. Some confusing choices, but perhaps justified if you're concerned about balance.

Corpse Binding/Dual Bind Corpse - It feels like the wording of these abilities can be improved. For example, in this sentence
If you do so you make two binding checks one for yourself and one for the bound corpse gain a +4 bonus on both binding checks and may take a penalty on the binding check for your bound corpse to gain the same bonus on the binding check for yourself; there is no limit to the penalty you may take. I have no idea what's going on.

Also, some of the bonuses that the bound corpse gets seem arbitrary. For example

Intelligence of 5 plus your Corpse Binder level (maximum your Intelligence -4 or 3 whichever is higher) is a bit confusing; are you trying to articulate that the biggest bonus it can get from your level is limited to your int-4 or 3? It seems odd that, assuming such a corpse is intelligent at all, that it wouldn't either have a flat int score or one that somehow scales with your own (a la familiar rules). Some clarification and reference to similar abilities possessed by other classes (i.e. shadowdancer's shadow, wizard's familiar, the relevant zombie/skeleton template, etc.) would speed along implementation of this at the game table; as it is, you basically have to write a new monster with each new corpse. Not that that's a bad thing if you're fast with monster building, but I know my game would slow to a crawl.

Animate/Create/Create Greater Undead - I'm not sure why you felt the need to articulate these abilities the way you did, rather than treating them as spell-like abilities and calling it a day. I presume this is to allow the PrC to qualify for other PrC that require specific spells to cast or for feats that manipulate them as spells, but I can't imagine what those would be.

Anyways, that's all I've got for now. Sleep is calling and I must answer :smallsigh:.

Zaydos
2016-10-07, 03:27 AM
I like where this class is going - it kind of reminds me of the dirgesinger, but building off of my favorite base class instead. The notion of being able to "embody" a vestige as a summon or pet rather than a personal enhancement opens some neat RP and gameplay options. Flanking with your zombie for malphas/marchosias sneak attack shenanigans sounds pretty entertaining, no?

A few suggestions:

In General - This PrC cries out for fluff and abilities centering around Acererak or Tenebrous, but there are parts of the crunch that more or less overlap with the abilities of those two vestiges. IIRC (don't have the book in front of me :smalltongue:), Tenebrous straight up gives you Turn/Rebuke. I'd probably add some bits about those abilities boosting the effects of those vestiges if they're bound, so as to avoid redundancy.

Acererak doesn't have overlap, though may be a poor choice to bind into a skeleton as they have cold immunity and are healed by negative energy already. Tenebrous's Turn/Rebuke however there is overlap, but I figured you'd be more likely to bind him into an undead and get the potential for 2 rebukes a round, twice the command pool (till he poofs), and so forth. That and I've seen enough DMs rule that you can't use his Turn/Rebuke for Divine/Domain feats that I wanted them to have a non-Tenebrous based version. That said I might make a note of +2 to your cleric level for Rebuking if he's bound or some such.


Skills/Saves/BAB - 1/2 BAB might be overly harsh seeing as a lot of binder stuff requires getting into melee range, 4+int/level skill points seems out of place in terms of how you get into the class, weak fort might be overly harsh as well, and I'm not sure where use magic device fits in. Some confusing choices, but perhaps justified if you're concerned about balance.

1/2 BAB and poor Fort are balance concerns. 4 + Int skill points is because I hate non-Int based classes having 2 + Int skill points. UMD is because I was half asleep when I typed it and thought Binders got UMD.


Corpse Binding/Dual Bind Corpse - It feels like the wording of these abilities can be improved. For example, in this sentence I have no idea what's going on.

If you bind, for example Tenebrous, in both you and a zombie, you gain a +4 on the Binding checks involved to resist his influence and may take a penalty to the one on the zombie to gain an equal bonus on your own.


Also, some of the bonuses that the bound corpse gets seem arbitrary. For example
is a bit confusing; are you trying to articulate that the biggest bonus it can get from your level is limited to your int-4 or 3? It seems odd that, assuming such a corpse is intelligent at all, that it wouldn't either have a flat int score or one that somehow scales with your own (a la familiar rules). Some clarification and reference to similar abilities possessed by other classes (i.e. shadowdancer's shadow, wizard's familiar, the relevant zombie/skeleton template, etc.) would speed along implementation of this at the game table; as it is, you basically have to write a new monster with each new corpse. Not that that's a bad thing if you're fast with monster building, but I know my game would slow to a crawl.

It's intended as a limit to the final ability score similar to how a Familiar's Int can't be higher than your own. This is again me writing when falling asleep.


Animate/Create/Create Greater Undead - I'm not sure why you felt the need to articulate these abilities the way you did, rather than treating them as spell-like abilities and calling it a day. I presume this is to allow the PrC to qualify for other PrC that require specific spells to cast or for feats that manipulate them as spells, but I can't imagine what those would be.

It allows you to get into PrCs requiring 3rd level arcane spells... which I don't know why that seemed like a good idea to me at the time, it allows you to use metamagic on them once I remember to put in the comment that you can still use the higher level slots for Animate Dead, keeps the casting time on Create (Greater) Undead, allows you to use them to counterspell (not that you're likely to need to counterspell animate dead), and keeps the Material Component, as well as Somatic and Verbal.


Anyways, that's all I've got for now. Sleep is calling and I must answer :smallsigh:.

Yeah, I'm drinking some herbal tea and then crashing, half crashed already.

nonsi
2016-10-07, 05:52 AM
.
A minor nitpick. I noticed that Create Greater Undead specifies 7th level (should be 10th).