Quote Originally Posted by anaximander19 View Post
True; the once-per-long-rest restriction will help. What I meant is that I don't really want to let the player have a 9th-level vestige always available at no risk - the core of Trusted Vestige is to reduce the risk of using a certain set of abilities that you've come to favour. By allowing them to make a binding last indefinitely, it means they can remove the risk entirely.
Yes, but at the cost of flexibility: keeping your high-level vestige active means that swapping him out when you really need to will be costly with regards to the total vestige levels you can have bound. Sooner or later, the binder might swap out this "longterm pact" for a different, lower level one. Until he needs the longterm pact slot for a strong vestige again. Perhaps, to make things easier still, you could limit it to vestiges of up to 5th level, instead.

By saying that the lasting pact has to be with a Trusted Vestige, it limits them to 7th level, so if they want to have 9th-level powers always available they have to take the risk of daily binding checks, so the DC of that check and the effects of failing can be used to balance the powers against each other. More powerful ability, higher DC and/or more inconvenient effects. Nothing crippling, but still enough to make the player think about it.
that being said, you don't want players to think about it to the point they chicken out from using a stronger vestige just because of it's side effects you could perhaps work with the existing system for traits/ideals/bonds (but nothing severe, like a flaw) to create your vestige's influence, perhaps to the point that playing by them can earn you inspiration.
Examples from 3.5 include an inability to lie, intense distrust of authority, an unwillingness to participate in theft or use stolen items, etc. In combat these are less important, but if the player has acted against these constraints recently, then that would impose penalties on things like initiative or damage rolls, and I do intend to bring that sort of thing into the 5e version. These penalties would be small (having a class that's crippled for a day if you fail a few checks in the morning is rather harsh)
Disadvantage on ability checks while bound to a vestige who's pact you broke, perhaps?
but still, no player likes it when their numbers get smaller, so it'll make them think twice about overstretching, and give players a reason to not just always bind the strongest vestiges they can get.
in 3.5, you couldn't bind certain vestiges while bound to other ones. You could replicate that to avoid unbalanced vestige combinations, like WotC did. Just avoid "ignore special requirement", please? :P

I've updated the pact augmentation stuff to be somewhat like a warlock's invocations. I tried not to have these provide any real ability-type stuff, because that should really come from the vestiges themselves.
some of them have no purpose to be taken multiple times, so you may want to fix the wording. I like what you did with the armor class, in the end. It's cute and can help out high DEX/ low STR builds, as well as low economy campaigns and unarmored binders. Might I suggest, that vestiges that give you free AC offer some kind of other aid, like opponents having disadvantage on attack rolls, or the shield spell X/short rest.

Lastly, would you like my help with making those vestiges? I thought I should ask because again - I love pact magic, and want to help.