Binding Vow Rules (Jujutsu Kaisen Supplement)

Binding Vow Rules

Binding vows can be very powerful, especially if a player bends the rules while creating one. To help maintain balance, here is a list of binding vow concepts to watch out for:

1. Togglable Binding Vows

A player might suggest a binding vow that can be activated or deactivated at will. For example: "I am a limitless user, and I want my blue save DC to be increased by my Charisma modifier, but it can only affect one creature at a time. However, I can turn this vow on and off, so I don’t suffer any drawbacks."

This undermines the entire concept of binding vows because the player isn't truly sacrificing anything if they can simply toggle the effects off. However, if the player possesses the Vow master feat then you should enforce this rule less harshly, simply because they have studied vows and can be more unique with them.

2. Not Actually Giving Up Anything

A player might suggest a binding vow where their melee-focused character gains advantage on all melee attack rolls but takes disadvantage on every cursed energy attack roll. Since the character isn’t reliant on CE attacks, this is not a genuine trade-off and doesn’t qualify as a fair vow.

3. More Cursed Energy Cost

A player might suggest a binding vow where they increase their cursed energy save DC in exchange for a higher cursed energy cost. While this might seem reasonable at first, it can quickly become unbalanced. Depending on the boosted feature, it could lead to encounter-ending abilities with impossibly high save DCs.

4. Reaction Negation

A player might suggest a binding vow where they lose something in return for making their cursed energy feature immune to reactions. This should be an automatic rejection, as reactions are a core mechanic of the supplement, and removing them entirely disrupts the balance of play, and completely bypasses most of the defense mechanics in the supplement.

5. Mimicry

A player might suggest a binding vow that allows their technique to mimic a feature from another technique. This should also be outright denied because it often doesn’t make logical sense and can quickly become overpowered.

6. Death Saving

A player might suggest a binding vow just as their character is about to die. For example: "I lose all my cursed energy and fall unconscious, but my technique automatically activates, teleporting me miles away." This is extremely unbalanced and effectively acts as a "get out of jail free" card, with no meaningful consequences for the player.

7. Rule Breaking

A player might suggest a binding vow that completely ignores the rules of their technique. For example: Idles transfiguration transfigured creatures being primitive or limitless being only able to teleport once per turn. The techniques rules are there for a reason and would stay better if they weren't broken by a binding vow. However sometimes a vow that breaks your techniques rules can be made good if the downside heavily outweighs the benefits

8. Refinement Increasing

A player might suggest a binding vow that increases their domain refinement. Under no circumstances should a vow like this ever be allowed. Not only is it incredibly overpowered but it doesn't make sense lore wise, as binding vows can only be used to amplify a sorcerer’s physicals, their cursed technique, or cursed energy in some sort of way, and the refinement of a barrier is based only on your expertise in putting one together.

9. Metagaming

A player might suggest a binding vow that their character couldn't possibly know about. For example: A character that doesn't have the barrier master feat or levels in the barrier master class, making a binding vow for a complex binding vow for a barrier. For example: I vow that my barrier is reverse triangle shaped and any objects with cursed energy imbued into them can't pass through it at a certain time of the day but the HP of the barrier is reduced by 30 every round and it's cursed energy cost is increased by half of the original cost, despite not having any advanced barrier knowledge.

Binding Vows And PVP

A lot of dungeon masters with this supplement run games with player versus player combat, and trying to mix in binding vows with PVP can be really difficult and unfun for either side. One of the best solutions to this issue is to simply remove the usage of binding vows in a PVP scenario, if this solution isn't to your liking then please remember that dungeon and dragons is a game built for PVE and should almost never be used for PVP, but PVP in this supplement can work but adding binding vows to the mix completely ruins any chance for a fun PVP match.