Talk:Kaiton, Ethereal Trickster (3.5e Vestige)

Influence Mechanics

So, I'm having a hard time figuring out what constitutes a violation of this vestige's influence. I'm guessing that you violate Kaiton's influence if you're presented with a riddle and refuse to try to answer it, but what about the "great hatred towards kitsunes" part? Does this mean you attack them on sight? Refuse to come to their aid if they need help? Avoid them? Seriously, what happens when you encounter a kitsune? How does Kaiton react? --Luigifan18 (talk) 22:08, 21 November 2015 (UTC)

Influence are not a code of conduct, you can't violate a vestige's influence. It just how they influence your behavior. If you act in m matter conttrary to how the vestige influence you can take a penalty, I don't quite remember. In this case, probably hugging kitsune and stuff. --Leziad (talk) 22:11, 21 November 2015 (UTC)

That's what I mean by "violating" a vestige's influence — what causes you to be considered to disobey the vestige and take the penalties for doing so. Violating a vestige's influence and acting contrary to a vestige's influence are the exact same thing. But, yes, whenever you disobey/violate a vestige's influence, you suffer a −1 penalty to attack rolls, saving throws, and checks until the vestige leaves you, and this penalty is cumulative for each time you disobey/violate an influence. So if you violate an influence 10 times, you're taking a −10 penalty to attack rolls, saving throws, and checks. Ow. --Luigifan18 (talk) 22:28, 21 November 2015 (UTC)

In this particular instance, it looks like the only thing you can actively violate is "you want to answer any riddle you hear", and a failed attempt still counts. It only would apply if you intentionally avoid trying to answer a riddle. Makes sense. -- Eiji-kun (talk) 22:32, 21 November 2015 (UTC)

Well, yes, the riddle part makes sense. What I'm asking is what's meant by Kaiton hating kitsunes. All Leziad said is that he hates them, but does that mean anything? Does he require the binder to act towards kitsunes in a certain way? If Kaiton requires you to attack kitsunes, then that means that every time you encounter a kitsune and don't attempt to murder kill it, you violate his influence (and therefore get a −1 penalty to your attack rolls, saving throws, and checks). If Kaiton requires you to not interact with kitsunes in a non-hostile manner, you violate his influence every time you speak to a kitsune (without insulting, belittling, or otherwise conducting some sort of social assault on it), provide aid to a kitsune, or, really, interact with it in any way that doesn't involve harming it. If he requires you to not interact with kitsunes, period, that means that doing anything with a kitsune except for completely ignoring it violates Kaiton's influence. Do you see where I'm going with this? If you want Kaiton's hatred of kitsunes to be a mechanically-relevant part of his influence, you have to define what he does or doesn't want you to do to any kitsunes you happen to meet. --Luigifan18 (talk) 22:44, 21 November 2015 (UTC)

I disagree. Hate is a subtle thing, and highly subjective, which is why I didn't list it as one of the things you can actively violate. Hate doesn't always mean you kill kitsunes on sight. You can intimidate them. You can be smug. You can even be nice, as long as your dishonest about it. And since it's a subjective thing, really only the player can know when they are intentionally violating things. Perhaps say they have a kitsune wife and, for some reason, bound this. They may not want to be dishonest to their wife and intentionally breach influence. It's a pretty niche case though, so it's effectively a non-issue, just fluff more than anything. -- Eiji-kun (talk) 22:52, 21 November 2015 (UTC)

Also no, the penalty for disobeying a vestige influence do not seem to stack as per the same source rule. --Leziad (talk) 23:05, 21 November 2015 (UTC)

If you are under Kaiton's influence, you hate kitsune, what you do to things you hate depend on the character you are playing. If a LG paladin/binder hates kitsune, he will be less merciful when dealing with an evil kitsune. If a murderous CE binder/wizard hates kitsunes, he will most likely attempt to harm/murder any one he finds. A CG thief would likely favor kitsune as his targets. And so on. --Leziad (talk) 23:10, 21 November 2015 (UTC)

To Eiji-kun: Again, that's what I'm asking. What is meant by "hatred"?!? What does Kaiton want the binder under his influence to do to kitsunes? Maybe the hatred is just fluff, like the pranking thing. Lots of influences have aspects that are strictly fluff. The kitsune hatred thing could be as simple as being less friendly to them, which isn't mechanically relevant except in very social-interaction-oriented games, since you aren't violating the influence unless you're as nice or nicer to kitsunes as you are to any other race. But if Kaiton wants you to do something nasty to kitsunes, we need to know the extent of that nastiness. Maybe all he wants is for you to taunt a kitsune or otherwise be smug towards it. Maybe he wants you to bully them. Maybe he wants you to rough them up. Maybe he wants you to ignore them. Maybe he wants you to undermine them at every turn. Maybe he wants you to kill them. I dunno. Leziad didn't say, and I'd kind of appreciate it if he did.

The only reason I'm even requesting it is precedent in other vestiges with a hatred of a specific type of being; for instance, Zagan's influence requires you to kill any snake or snakelike being you come across, which means that every encounter you have with a snake that doesn't result in the snake's death is a violation of his influence. Eligor's influence requires you to preferentially attack humans, elves, and dragons in any encounter, which means that in an encounter with multiple foes, where some are humans, elves, or dragons and others aren't, you can't attack the targets that aren't humans, elves, or dragons until all the enemy humans, elves, and dragons are dead or unconscious. However, his influence's wording includes the phrase "whenever you enter combat", so you don't violate his influence by refusing to attack anyone, by staying out of the fight, by running away, etc. The current wording of Kaiton's influence simply states that you hate kitsunes. If Leziad intended for this to mean that you have to preferentially attack them during combat (as Eligor towards humans, elves, and dragons), he needs to say that. If he means that you have to enter combat with a kitsune and attempt to attack it at least once, but you can run away afterwards without violating Kaiton's influence, he has to say that. If he means that you have to go all-out in trying to kill a kitsune and not rest until it is DEAD (as Zagan towards snakes and snakelike creatures), he has to say that! If he just means that you don't like kitsunes and tend to be unpleasant towards them, he can leave the wording as it currently is. --Luigifan18 (talk) 23:21, 21 November 2015 (UTC)

To Leziad: If how Kaiton's hatred of kitsunes plays out is meant to be up to the binder, fine, the wording can stay as is. Some vestiges make more of an effort to define the actions of their binders than others. I only posed the question because of the precedent of Eligor and Zagan. So if it should follow the precedent of Zagan, Eligor, or some similar vestige, the wording needs to change. But in the end, that's up to you.

However, I have to say that you are wrong about the nonstacking thing. Tome of Magic states about influence violations that "If you fail to fulfill the requirements of more than one vestige or disobey a particular vestige more than once, the penalties stack" (emphasis mine). So, yes, if you repeatedly violate a vestige's influence, you get penalized for each violation. If you violate a vestige's influence once, you get a −1 penalty. Do it twice, and the penalty becomes −2. Three times, and you have a −3 penalty. And so on and so forth. And really, if influence violations didn't stack, you wouldn't worry about them at higher levels. (Granted, you don't worry about them if you make a good pact, but that's the entire point of the binding check.) The way it's set up means that even if you slip up with obeying a vestige's influence once, you still have to continue trying to obey it, or else the penalties are only going to get worse. If it was set up so that it didn't stack, the difference between a bad pact and a good one would be just a −1 penalty; after being penalized, you'd be able to just ignore the vestige's influence as if you'd made a good pact. But in reality, you can't do that. --Luigifan18 (talk) 23:33, 21 November 2015 (UTC)

Let me explain why I'm getting so worked up over the stacking. It's not just a matter of game balance — I nearly made the exact same mistake. I'm currently working on a prestige class called the soul salvager, which is basically a divine counterpart to the anima mage. One of the soul salvager's abilities is to try to forcibly end another binder's pact with an opposed binder check. However, to do so, the soul salvager needs to have that vestige bound himself (at least at first); he also needs to sacrifice a divine spell slot or usage of turn undead, wild shape, or 10 points of lay on hands. If the soul salvager wins, the enemy binder's pact is broken, as though by Expel Vestige, with all the associated penalties. However, if the soul salvager loses, not only is the enemy binder unaffected, meaning that the soul salvager just used up a spell slot, a turn undead attempt, a wild shape use, or 10 points of lay on hands to absolutely no useful effect, but the soul salvager incurs an extra cost; his own pact is strained. Originally, this was going to follow a long string of consequences, based on what the status of the soul salvager's pact with that vestige and his spell slots. First, it would downgrade a good pact to a bad pact. Then, it would trigger a violation of the vestige's influence, incurring the penalties. Then, it would cause the soul salvager to lose a divine spell slot of the same level as the vestige. Then, if the soul salvager had no remaining spell slots of that level, it would use up one of the vestige's limited-use abilities (meaning an ability that can only be used once every 5 rounds and/or a limited number of times per binding). Finally, if all the limited-use abilities were currently expended, the soul salvager's own pact with the vestige would be broken, as though by Expel Vestige, with all the associated penalties. Through all of this design work, I was reading and re-reading Tome of Magic, looking for some sort of rules on identifying vestiges another character is using. I didn't find those (so I had to make them), but I did find the bit saying "if you disobey a particular vestige more than once, the penalties stack." Anyways, that's why I tossed every one of the consequences after "influence violation"; I had only planned those out because I thought you could only be penalized once for violating a given vestige's influence. And it's also why it got my dander up when you claimed that you could only be penalized once for disobeying a vestige's influence — you could very well be stumbling headlong into a design trap somewhere, like I nearly did. (See also the debacle where I thought psionic displays were more-or-less the exact same sort of thing as spell components. That was embarrassing. As was that part of Everlasting Dream that made the Mogeko Snatcher an abomination... with me being totally oblivious to just how insanely powerful that subtype is. I do not regret dumping the abomination traits as soon as that got pointed out to me; Everlasting Dream was meant to be powerful, but not that powerful!) --Luigifan18 (talk) 23:51, 21 November 2015 (UTC)

Honestly unbinding vestige isn't so bad, jsut do it outright like dispelling a spell. "As a standard action, the X can attempt to unbind a vestige bound to a target within medium range. In order to do so the X must make an opposed binding check (d20 + binder level + charisma modifier), if she succeed the vestige is expelled from the target as the expel vestige feat." --Leziad (talk) 00:31, 22 November 2015 (UTC)