Help me with balancing homebrew vestiges! D&D 3.5

First and foremost I'm using names from PoE as they fit the theme and I love them so much.



The idea is that these guys are going to be "Lords of Shadow" or dominant near-diety like beings from the Plane of Shadow (which I'm going to be messing around with)

So without going into actual campaign stuff where the players deal with them I'm just going to focus on the benefits of using these beings as vestiges. (Binder class - Tome of Magic)

They are going to be named
Ishmael - The Waning Hope Special Bind requirements - Can not be bound with Abaxoth
4th - DC 26 Bind.

Haast - The Unending Fury
6th - DC 33 Bind
Special bind requirements
Always active - If you do a full attack action your consecutive attacks get stronger. For each attack that you hit the opponent with in this round your next attack gets an additional stacking +1 to attack and damage.
5 round cooldown - If you're making a full attack action you gain one additional attack at your highest BAB. This attack does not stack with additional attacks granted by haste or similar spells.

Baphomet - The Freezing Hate
6th- DC 30 bind
At will: As a swift action you can make your weapon shadow giving it the ability to bypass armor. This functions as the spell Wraithstrike (Spell Compendium; Page 243)
Andariel - The Enveloping Flame
5 round cooldown. You are able to summon a semi-real shadow to burn away your enemy.
This spell functions like Shadow Evocation, Greater (3.5 Players Handbook; Page 277) except as noted below. You can only use this ability to mimic spells with the Fire descriptor.

Abaxoth - The Reaver of Light
8th- Binding Dc 40 - Special: will not bind with anyone who doesn't already follow him and is not of Evil Alignment. If someone who has the feat Ignore special requirements he will remind them that while the binding method is similar he is in fact an entity that can make his way into the materiel plane.
At will - Create a 10ft circle of shadow around you.
Always active - While in one of the circles of shadow you gain 25% concealment
At will - As a swift action you can teleport to another circle of shadow as Teleport without error as long as it is within 10ft/per binder level.
5 round cooldown - You can fire a ray of shadow at one target dealing 1D6 damage per two Binder levels and bestowing one negative level. Will save for no negative level. Ranged touch attack. DC 10+casting modifier + 1/2 binder level


I'm currently looking through info as to what good abilities these will grant.

They will all be granting a template that will be either a blanket one called Envoy of Shadow which will be similar to the Dark One from the Tome of Magic or I will create one for each of the Lords.

Feel free to give input on the names.

I will be editing next to the names with possible ideas I come up with or see that I feel will be a good addition.

E: I'm going to need to make it clear to my players that this is not a normal vestige in the sense of it's bound to an unknowable plane that both exists and doesn't but that these are still entities of the Plane of Shadow that grant their powers in a manner so similar to that of binding that it is in game rules counted as the same for the purposes of class skill except where otherwise stated in the vestiges description

I'm hoping this will be a fun little exercise in creativity! :)

These names are all references. I would be thinking about real life stuff if I heard them in a D&D setting. Ishmael just invokes Moby Dick too strongly, although it's a real name. Andariel invokes the image of a belt of green potions. It's like naming your bear-knight character Beorn instead of just some classy-sounding English name, it might not break the immersion for everyone, but someone will get the reference and be thinking of that when the name is spoken.

The inspiration is sound though, these characters are very cool for a campaign basis.

If they're all Lords of Shadow from the Shadow Plane, how about they each manipulate shadow in a different way? You've got one casting a creeping shadow, who can teleport through pools of shadow. Why not have one which can use the shadow of a blade to cut, or the shadow of his hand to grasp? There could be the one shadow guy from the x-files who burns people with harsh shadows, (but soft shadows and darkness are safe). Is Haast the flying one?

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ionface написал:

These names are all references. I would be thinking about real life stuff if I heard them in a D&D setting. Ishmael just invokes Moby Dick too strongly, although it's a real name. Andariel invokes the image of a belt of green potions. It's like naming your bear-knight character Beorn instead of just some classy-sounding English name, it might not break the immersion for everyone, but someone will get the reference and be thinking of that when the name is spoken.

The inspiration is sound though, these characters are very cool for a campaign basis.

If they're all Lords of Shadow from the Shadow Plane, how about they each manipulate shadow in a different way? You've got one casting a creeping shadow, who can teleport through pools of shadow. Why not have one which can use the shadow of a blade to cut, or the shadow of his hand to grasp? There could be the one shadow guy from the x-files who burns people with harsh shadows, (but soft shadows and darkness are safe). Is Haast the flying one?

You are right in the references, except for the intended one for Ishmael. It's meant to evoke a biblical feeling. Only one other person at the table plays PoE and they don't know the names of the Beyond bosses, and none of them are huge ARPG players so I don't know If they'll get Andariel from D2.

Aside from that, I know it wont break immersion if they get the references as we have been playing together every Tuesday for 9 years.

The entities themselves are still bound to the Plane of Shadow, but a class called "Binder" is able to share their body with the souls of things called "Vestiges". Doing so grants them small parts of the power of the "Vestige" in return to allow it to take over part of the characters soul for a duration of time.

Having one allow them to generate a shadow blade is good though, maybe it'll be Baphomet that allows them to generate a bladed weapon of their choice that does 1dx+casting modifier damage and is a touch attack or maybe gives them the ability to at will cast a swift version of Wrathstike wrapping the characters weapon in shadow... I like that second one. more versatility.


And you have my the idea for my 5 round cd for Abaxoth. A ray of shadow that deals 1d6/2 binder levels and bestows 1 negative level as a ranged touch attack. Dc 10+Casting modifier+1/2 of binder level