Dyogena and Lexicon | Rebinding

In this series, I’ll be slowly tackling a rework of one of our favorite classes, the Binder. The class was originally a straight update of the class of the same name from D&D 3.5’s Tome of Magic, including most of the original vestiges, but as we revisit this class, we’d like to examine its mechanics and its concepts with fresh eyes, improve upon them, and write a whole new list of vestiges.

Dyogena

Dyogena, The Spear of Sin
1st-level vestige

A trained warrior of a bygone empire, Dyogena grants her binders skill with sword, shield, and spear.
     Legend. Thousands of years ago, a great empire spanned the continents, unifying its many territories under an unshakable banner. Oracles spoke of the empire’s demise at the hands of a wrathful prophet, an instrument of the god’s disdain for the wicked regime. In response, the paranoid emperor ordered his governors to execute all holy men that did not swear fealty to him alone. Thousands of priests were slain and the gods themselves wept at the bloodbath.
     Dyogena was one of a legion of soldiers ordered to carry out the massacre. However, when she was to impale Nezare, the martyr, her heart softened, and she instead thrust her spear into his heart, mercifully sparing him of all suffering.
     Historians, however, remember a convoluted story. They paint Dyogena as a cruel warden that tormented Nezare for weeks before his inevitable demise. They even misremember her gender, portraying her as a male soldier. As such, Dyogena’s vestige is a effigy of her sins: it is a twisted creature wearing soldier’s armor, but is divided down the middle, with a noble celestial woman on the left and a diabolic male fiend on the right.
     Flaw. While bound to this vestige, you have the following flaw: “I always feel irreconcilable guilt when I must take a life.” 

Bonus Proficiencies
While bound to Dyogena, you gain proficiency with shields, as well as with battleaxes, longswords, spears, tridents, and warhammers. 

Legion Tactics
While you are within 5 feet of two or more allies who aren’t incapacitated, hostile creatures cannot have advantage on attack rolls against you. 

Coup de Grâce
When you take the Attack action on your turn, you can use your bonus action to make one additional melee weapon attack. On a hit, this attack deals additional damage equal to your binder level. Once you use this ability, you can’t use it again until you finish a short or long rest. 

Trait: Bloodstained
You are stained with the blood of saints, which never washes off while you are bound to Dyogena. Immediately after you take damage from a melee attack, you can use your reaction to gain a number of temporary hit points equal to your Charisma modifier, which last until the beginning of your next turn.

Notes
Dyogena serves two important functions as a 1st level vestige: firstly, she grants her binders shield proficiency, which we don’t plan to hand out elsewhere. Secondly, her extra attack from Coup de Grad and the extra occasional temp HP from bloodstained should make her feel a bit like a fighter, reinforcing her as an important early melee pick.

Lexicon

Lexicon is the early spellcasting vestige, giving you a bunch of cantrips and 1st-level spells to match other spellcasters at this level.

Lexicon, The First Word
1st-level vestige
An ancient sage and the first god of the written word, Lexicon grants his binders a variety of spells and mastery over the written and spoken word.
     Legend. Before Lexicon, all knowledge could be passed only by speech and example through the generations. Man’s oral traditions were rich but fragile, for a single death from a common disease could wipe away untold generations of understanding.
     And so, a wise sage known as Lexicon, who gathered the Words of Creation scattered by K’Sir, devised the means to record information and spare it from oblivion: the Written Word. With a few strokes of charred ash, Lexicon recorded very first word known to man: “Un”, which in that time and tongue would come to mean “me”, or “I am”.
     By naming things, and writing them in certain ways, The Written Word allowed Lexicon to make permanent things that were fleeting and to establish definitive truth. In this way, Lexicon also become the first spellcaster.
     With his great boon of writing and his power over arcana, Lexicon ascended to godhood to take his place along the primordial deities. He believed that his people would record his name forever, extolling his virtues in the annals of history; sadly, this was not the case.
     In time, his tale was replaced by apocryphal ones, and was eventually forgotten entirely. Men today believe that writing has always been with man and that spellcasters have always practiced their trade. Therefore, Lexicon’s vestige is like his legacy, faded to near nonexistance, with an outline of ink and the vague impression of written symbols within.
     Flaw. While bound to this vestige, you have the following flaw: “I obsessively write down and record new information.” 

Words of Power
While bound to Lexicon, you learn 2 cantrips of your choice from the bard, sorcerer, or wizard spell list, plus an additional cantrip for each other vestige you have bound. Charisma is your spellcasting modifier for these cantrips. 

Pale Arcana
While bound to Lexicon, whenever you take damage from a spell, you can use your reaction to gain resistance to the damage taken. 

Mystic Utterances
While bound to Lexicon, you know the following spells: burning hands, detect magic, feather fall, floating disk, fog cloud, identify, mage armor, magic missile, shield, sleep, thunderwave, and unseen servant. You can cast a spell from this list without using a spell slot or spell components twice, plus one additional time for each vestige other than Lexicon you have bound. You regain all expended uses when you finish a long rest.
     Additionally, you can cast any spell from this list as a ritual if it has the ritual tag.

Trait: Glossolalia
You constantly speak in a language that mixes all known (and unknown) forms of speech, and your writing at a glance seems to be gibberish. Despite this, your speech and writing are comprehensible by any creature that can understand a language. As well, you can understand and read any language.

Notes
Lexicon’s original design called for ritual spells, but in practice, we couldn’t figure out how to implement them neatly. After all, rituals are more or less prepared in advance and kept in a book, and the binder’s more spontaneous nature made them work better by simply being cast.
     This vestige probably needs a close look at its scalability as we go forward. At 1st level, the number of spells and cantrips it gets access to are pretty on point with other spellcasters, but I’m skeptical the spellcasting keeps up well enough to be desirable. There’s several solutions here we can take: offer more (2-3) additional castings per vestige bound, increasing the level at which spells from this list are cast, offer a spell at will, etc. For now, the Pale Arcana feature is a little over-tuned to compensate.

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