Binder

Quite to the contrary of other binders, the Brotherhood of Ascetics believe that self-discipline is the only path to enlightenment. Binding vestiges isn't enough: one must have perfect control of their own soul to truly accept the gifts of wandering spirits. Thus, Ascetics deprive themselves of worldly pleasures and the very power of their bound vestiges in order to assert their will perfectly and achieve transcendental wisdom.

Starting at 7th level, while you are suppressing a vestige, you can use your action to manifest a wave of psychic fists to strike your foes. You can make up to four unarmed strikes against creatures which are within 5 feet of you. You can't attack a creature more than twice using this ability.

Once you use this ability, you can't use it again until you finish a short or long rest.

Starting at 10th level, you can perform a special ritual over the course of 10 minutes, granting you blindsight with a range of 15 feet. You maintain concentration on this ability as you would a spell.

By 14th level, you can achieve total focus by suppressing all your vestiges as a bonus action. For up to 1 minute, you gain the following benefits:

Once you use this ability, you can't use it again until you finish a long rest.

Gyx was the first binder known to history, and the first to establish an Esoteric Cult. In those early days, the nature of vestiges, the Void, and the effects of binding magic on the soul were not well understood; therefore, Gyx's fanatical followers believed that they were at the forefront of a new religion, not a cult. Multiple inquisitions have since seen the church driven into the shadows, their message and practices stifled, but not eradicated.

Members of the Church of Gyx seem almost cleric-like, but brandish different holy symbols and tell entirely different tales. Their scriptures are the legends of various vestiges, woven into a sort of pantheon, with the enigmatic Erebus at its head. For her part in this mythology, Gyx plays the role of messenger of the gods, delivering to mortals the art of binding, and opening the Void for the divine vestiges.

By 7th level, you receive the blessings of all the forgotten gods through your vestiges. As a reaction when you make a saving throw, you can add half your binder level (rounded down) to the roll. Once you use this ability, you can't use it again until you finish a long rest.

Starting at 10th level, you can perform a special ritual over the course of 10 minutes, warding yourself against undead threats. For the next hour, whenever an undead targets you directly with an attack or harmful spell, that creature must make a Wisdom saving throw. On a failed save, that creature is turned for one minute or until it takes any damage. A turned creature must spend its turns trying to move as far away from you as it can, and can't willingly move to a space within 30 feet of you. It also can't take reactions. For its action, it can use only the Dash action or try to escape from an effect that prevents it from moving. If there's nowhere to move, the creature can use the Dodge action. If a creature's saving throw is successful, it is immune to this ability for the next 24 hours.

At 14th level, you can cast your bound Vestiges into the Void to bring forth miracles. On your turn, you can expel a vestige you have bound to cast a spell from the cleric spell list without using a spell slot. This spell must be of a level no greater than the level of the vestige expelled. Once you use this ability, you can't do so again until you finish a long rest.

Nearly all binders learn that Ishtar, the vestige of love and sexuality, is forbidden, for once she is summoned, she can never be dismissed. Driven by jealousy and obsession, the once-goddess seizes the soul of her binder and embraces it tightly. Her love is like a grasping weed, and it strangles all it touches. Yet those who reciprocate her love and placate the envious goddess might join the ranks of Ishtar's Faithful, a cult of binders who prize Ishtar above all others.

If the binders of Ishtar's Faithful devote themselves wholly to the goddess, they are slowly bequeathed with her gifts in return. However, they can never neglect the goddess or question their devotion for even a moment, as Ishtar the Envious is fickle and prone to rage at the slightest perceived infidelity.

At 7th level, you gain the use of Ishtar's Enamor feature.

Starting at 10th level, you can perform a special ritual over the course of 10 minutes, enrobing you in a 30-foot radius aura that infects the minds of others. When a creature enters aura for the first time on a turn or starts its turn there, it must make a Charisma saving throw against your spell save DC. On a failure, if the creature regards you as of a species and gender to which it is normally romantically attracted, it is charmed by you while it remains in the aura, up to a maximum of 1 minute. Once this effect ends for a creature, it is immune to the effects of the aura for 24 hours. This aura lasts for one hour, and its effects end early for a creature that takes damage or succeeds on an opposed ability check made to socially interact with you.

At 14th level, you gain the use of Ishtar's "Trait: Arms of Embrace" feature.

By 14th level, Ishtar's love can drive mad those who you expose to it. As an action, you can end the charmed condition on each creature charmed by you that you can see within 120 feet. A creature affected takes 4d8 psychic damage.

The binders of Legion's Lodge fill their souls with an abundance of spirits, becoming hives of wandering ghosts and whispered voices from beyond the pale. With each new spirit they bind, they develop even greater power, as the whole of their collection is mightier than the sum of its parts. At the peak of their strength, these binders speak with the voice of dozens in uncanny unison and sling attacks for a swarm of minor spirits which linger around them.

Beginning at 7th level, you can burn the totality of a minor spirit's essence for a flash of great power. When you hit with a minor spirit's spell attack or a creature fails its saving throw against your minor spirit's ability, you can choose to deal four dice of damage, instead of only one. Once you do this with a minor spirit, the spirit is dismissed until you finish a long rest. While a minor spirit is dismissed, you can't use any of its abilities or the cantrip the minor spirit allows you to use.

Starting at 10th level, you can perform a special ritual over the course of 10 minutes, manifesting a minor spirit you have bound in a physical form. This minor spirit becomes a familiar, as per the find familiar spell, and remains in this form until you take a long rest. Additionally, on your turn, you can command your familiar to use any of its abilities it offers as a minor spirit (using your action or bonus action, as appropriate), which originate from it.

At 10th level, you gain another additional minor spirit.

Beginning at 14th level you can bring your army of minor spirits to bear all at once. When you use your bonus action to make a spell attack with a minor spirit or use a minor spirit to cause a target to make a saving throw, you can use this ability twice, or use the bonus action of another minor spirit, targeting the same or different creatures.

The Order of the Crimson Binding sees the nature of the soul as not unlike that of the Void itself: unknowable, fractal, and ultimately hollow. With their special ritual implements and ink made of lodestone, they can form special red seals with which to entrap vestiges deeper into their souls, capturing more of the vestige's essence and allowing them greater control of the binding process.

Beginning at 7th level, you can transfer some of the damage you take to your vestiges. As a reaction when you take damage, you can halve the damage taken.

Once you use this ability, you can't use it again until you finish a short or long rest.

Starting at 10th level, you can perform a special ritual over the course of 10 minutes, allowing you to partially bind an additional vestige. You can only bind one vestige at a time using this ability, and this vestige doesn't count against the number of vestiges you can bind nor toward the number of vestiges you have bound. While it is bound, you gain only the vestige's Bonus Proficiencies feature, if it has one, or one of its Traits, if it offers the ability to replace a skill roll with a 10 or your binder level plus your Charisma modifier. You remain partially bound to this vestige until you finish a long rest.

Starting at 14th level, the total level of vestiges you can have bound increases by 3.

Initiates to the Society of the Stygian Seal learn the story of Erebus, The Shadow Interminable, a vestige of singular age, profound implication, and terrible portent. She is a vestige inextricably linked to the creation and destruction of the multiverse, the latter of which is prophesied to be heralded by her sign, the Stygian Seal, being fixed in the sky for forty days and nights before the multiverse is to be unraveled. Initiates of the Society seek Erebus's sign and the ritual means to draw her true form from the Void to hasten the end of the multiverse, and by extension, the coming of a new, more perfect world, uncorrupted by the shortfalls and compromises made by the primeval gods of our multiverse. By drawing parts of the Stygian Seal, binders of the Society can pull forth voidstuff, a manifest absence in space, and shape it to their whims.

At 7th level, you can use your action to cause a creature you can see within 60 feet to make a Wisdom saving throw against your Vestige save DC. On a failed save, the creature is banished into an endless sable demiplane adjacent to the Void. While there, the target is incapacitated. At the beginning of your next turn, the target reappears in the space it left or in the nearest unoccupied space if that space is occupied. You can also target yourself with this ability, requiring no saving throw.

Once you use this ability, you can't use it again until you finish a short or long rest.

Starting at 10th level, you can perform a special ritual over the course of 10 minutes, shrouding yourself in plates of voidstuff which act as ablative armor. You gain temporary hit points equal to your binder level plus your Charisma modifier. While these hit points remain, your AC equals 10 + your Dexterity modifier + your Charisma modifier. These temporary hit points remain until you finish a long rest.

Beginning at 14th level, Erebus whisks you away to the Void, rather than subjecting you to death. As a reaction when you take damage, but are not reduced to 0 hit points or killed outright, you can use your reaction to teleport yourself to an endless demiplane adjacent to the Void. You remain in this plane as long as you wish, and can use your action to return to the space you left or in the nearest unoccupied space if that space is occupied.

All binders call to their vestiges from the howling Void, but only the Avatarists bring them into physical form, outside their very bodies. Doing so is an ancient discipline, harnessing the very magic which conjures fiends from the underworld—as with all the other great secrets of binding, conjuring an avatar is heresy of the highest magnitude. Those that manage this feat may join the ranks of the avatarists, a selective legion of binders who combat others using only manifestations of their spirits. Such combat is a battle of the ego as much as a physical brawl, for a fraction of any injury bestowed upon an avatar is in turn laid on the binder.

By 7th level, you can use your bonus action to exchange places with your avatar. Once you use this ability, you can't use it again until you finish a short or long rest.

Starting at 10th level, you can perform a special ritual over the course of 10 minutes, empowering your avatar into a towering spirit. When you summon your avatar, its size is Large, it can move only 20 feet on each of your turns, and it can add half your binder level to its damage rolls. These changes persist until you finish a long rest or you dismiss them as an action.

Beginning at 14th level, as an action, you can trade roles with your avatar, becoming spirit, while it becomes more tangible in your place. For the next minute, you fade to the ethereal plane, as per the spell etherealness, from whence you can command your avatar in your place. At the end of this duration, or when you end this ability as an action, you return to the space you left or the nearest unoccupied space, if that space is occupied.