Have you ever wanted to make a pact with a powerful creature, but didn’t want to throw your life into the constant fear and chaos that comes with being a warlock? Then ERF Jordan Look no further than Mark of the Vestige (follow her on Twitter). Vestiges are a (relatively) safe subsection of powerful creatures that you can make pacts with to temporarily gain great powers.
The person who enters into these agreements is a signatory. In fact, in 3.5e, binders were a unique class that utilized the exact same imprint found in Mark of the Vestige. However, this supplement updates the Trace and various pact features to D&D 5e, allowing any character to form a pact with a Trace. It’s a playground of player options for your table!
Mark of the Vestige boasts 35 unique traces updated from the Tome of Magic 3.5e supplement and 20 new trace-themed magic items. It also includes all the mechanics and information you need to add and use Traces in your D&D 5e game. Currently available at DM Guild for $7.95.
I was playing 3.5e quite a bit at the time, but I wasn’t really familiar with the Tome of Magic vestiges or anything. Importantly, we cannot talk about how well the various vestiges translated from 3.5e to 5e, so we will instead focus on how they are in the current 5e state of Mark of the Vestige. I will guess.
Proper formatting and layout
I received an early review version of Mark of the Vestige, but work is still being done on the product, so not everything in this section may be completely accurate. I’ll make changes or additions to this review if there’s anything that warrants it in the final version.
The product layout template was created by Nathanaël Roux and I like it overall. Although it’s clean and similar to the official 5e design, there are subtle differences in the layout that still make Mark of the Vestige feel unique. The black and white artwork included throughout the appendices works with the layout and honestly looks great. I’m a fan of everything!
Although my copy of Trace of Traces did not include a bookmark, it did come with a table of contents showing the exact page number where each trace could be found, which was helpful. I also appreciated the “How to use this book” section in the introduction, which provides a concise and detailed explanation of the information provided in each chapter.
It was an easy read and a well-edited supplement. Great job in every way!
The main event, traces!
When a character binds to a trace, they gain additional powers. Traces are not tied to any particular class, race, or background, but there are some prerequisites that characters must meet before bonding.
Each trace has level prerequisites. Multiclass users are in for a treat, as this level prerequisite is tied to the character’s total level. The higher the level of prerequisites, the more powerful the imprint. That’s fair, right? Level also determines the number of traces that can be restrained at any time.
Traces also have a bind DC requirement that a character must pass in order to bind to a trace. Similar to level prerequisites, more powerful traces usually have a higher bond difficulty. Each binding DC is relatively high, clocking between a minimum value of 15 and a maximum value of 35. However, each trace has certain offerings that can be made to reduce the difficulty slightly. These offerings are expensive and usually come in the form of magic items, gold, valuables, and even HP.
Bind DCs are created using Charisma modifiers, but include descriptors about how the bind ritual changes thematically if the character is allowed to use different ability score modifiers. There are variant rules. Failing this check still grants you the power of the vestige, but in return the vestige can influence you as it wishes for the duration of the pact.
Keep in mind that agreements with traces are not easily broken. Entering into a pact with a vestige is an expensive and risky decision. This power comes at a price!
flavor
ERF Jordan directs readers to the 3.5e Book of Magic for the detailed lore and background of each trace, but she notes that I have no real connection to the 3.5e traces. It’s loaded with flavor and lore for people like you.
Each trail has a section with at least a few paragraphs of legend and background information about the trail. This section also includes the page number of the magical book of traces, in case the reader would like to learn more about the lore of this particular trace. This is a nice touch, and I’m sure this added convenience will be appreciated by anyone who wants to find out more about each trace.
However, for someone like me, the lore, flavor, and background information contained in Tome of Magic is more than enough.
There’s a lot of flavor packed into every part of the vestigial mechanism. All trace powers are built from traces, and summoning rituals are unique to each trace. If you’re looking for a flavorful new character option, Trace is certainly worth considering.
mechanics
It would be nearly impossible to examine all 35 traces and talk about their mechanisms. Instead, this section will explain a little about what traces do to characters, and give my thoughts on this mechanic as a whole.
Keep in mind that the stronger the trace, the stronger the agreement. This is beneficial to the player character in terms of power gained, but powerful imprints will have a proportionally more powerful effect on the player character who made the bad pact.
binding
Completing the ritual of making a pact with a trace usually changes you significantly. For example, those who make a covenant with Amon will grow curling black sheep’s horns. Each trace has its own binding signature. Simply put, binders are usually not difficult to recognize.
This can certainly have implications when it comes to role-playing. As it turns out, some of these traces are evil creatures. Letting everyone know that you’re allied with them may not be the easiest choice to live with.
However, if it fails the check against the vestigial binding DC, it will fall under its influence. This doesn’t completely take over the player characters, but each one has quirks and quirks that need to be acted upon in case of a bad pact.
power of trace
The power you get from a contract is generally determined by the power whose signature is known to imbue you with that power. For example, Acererak (known for Tomb of Terror) grants necromancy powers and immunity to necrotic damage.
Each imprint imparts its own set of powers. Some Traces grant powerful new spells, abilities, and boons that you can use to overwhelm your enemies in combat. Other traces give you useful features that can help you or your allies outside of combat. Many of the more powerful imprints give you a little bit of both.
Certain traces synergize more with characters than others. It’s a good idea to find out what kind of imprint your character wants before you commit. After all, depending on the chosen trace, this can be a very expensive and dangerous process.
The number of powers you gain also varies, but you can usually expect to gain between 3 and 5 unique powers. Most of these can be used at any time, but some of the more powerful ones, such as free spells, require you to complete a long rest before you can use them again.
Generally speaking, the more powerful the imprint, the more power you can get. While this may not be true, those high-level imprints have very powerful power.
This isn’t necessarily “balanced” considering it’s like giving a character one or two magic items at a time. Including traces in the game certainly gives the party a huge advantage in terms of balancing encounters. You should increase the average encounter difficulty of your campaign to account for these powers.
Of course, you can always choose to give your creatures a trace or two to level the playing field.
printable handout
The Mark of the Vestige appendix includes printable handouts for the table. These handouts consist of playing card-sized information sheets printed with the most important information for a single site. Here’s everything players need to know about their character’s imprint.
These are created and displayed in a way that is easy to print and cut out, cut out and email to players, or upload to VTT if you are playing online. That is, everything is already written and formatted.
I’m sure these handouts will save you time playing around your character’s traces, so they’re worth using.
This is very simple but a great addition to this supplement. That might be the highlight of the entire product for me. I like that if handouts are included and they fit the requirements, it’s easy to give players just the information they need.
powerful new magic items
A chapter with 20 new magic items flavored with the theme of traces. Most of these items interact with the binder’s power. For example, sachets of offerings can help reduce the binding difficulty of summoning rituals. However, quite a few of these items were made specifically to destroy the power of the binder’s traces. Items like this are a great tool for NPCs hunting parties full of characters with different bindings.
I was pleasantly surprised to find out that all these items have a rarity between rare and legendary. It’s refreshing to have new, more powerful, magic item options! There’s also a wide variety of magic items in this chapter. A healthy mix of weapons, armor, shields, gems, and items.
Similar to the Mark of the Vestige, the magic items section of the supplement has a lot of options for players to choose from.
Final thoughts on Mark of the Vestige
As I said before, I had no knowledge of the 3.5e version of Vestiges and Pact Magic. So if that’s what you’re confused about, I don’t care. This is an excellent supplement with or without prior knowledge. If anything, Mark of the Vestige makes you want to grab all the goodies from previous D&D editions and try to figure out what else you’re missing out on.
I would definitely recommend Mark of the Vestige to any group looking for new player options to throw into the game. Vestige power increases your party’s power level, but you should be able to readjust to this quickly. Just like when the party receives a powerful magical item.
Vestige Power certainly creates a more powerful atmosphere for your campaign, but it does so by giving your entire party a ton of new (and fun) character options. Of course, you can always balance things out by giving creatures and bosses their own powerful pacts.
Overall, ERF Jordan’s Mark of the Vestige is a great addition to your DM’s guild and is chock-full of much-needed content on your table. If you’re regularly looking for new options for your players, this should certainly be worth considering.
