Incarnum interest level?

Does it seem like there is "Incarnum buzz" out there? People wanting to incorporate it into their games, is your little brother demanding you let him play an Incarnate?

Personally I picked up the book after I realized that it had been conceived by James Wyatt who's been a major creative force in 3.5.

I know there has been some good discussion of what the books include I guess I'm curious about what the reaction is.

I think the system (like 3.0 psionics) is different enough that it's taking time for me to absorb but that its probably going to be quite a good addition to the game as a mechanical system.

I do think it does suffer from one flaw which will hamper its adoption: Two of the core classes are presented as being more extreme than the paladin in terms of their alignment (with no interesting fluff to really balance that out). But the totemist has both more interesting fluff and some fun pictures so maybe that won't be a big deal.

Thoughts? Stories of frenzied fans running through the streets? Any psionics-dislikers who like Incarnum and would run it despite their opposition to psionics? Anybody making a whole campaign out of it?

No player or GM of D&D that I know (in real life) has bought it, or will buy it - unless maybe it hits the super-special bins.

I've given it a good look over now, and it doesn't appeal to me either.

Not to say I can't see some very good potential uses for it, but. . . yeah, just not my style or something.

I'm allowing use of Magic of Incarnum in my campaigns; there'll be a Totemist being played within a month.

Unlike regular Magic or Psionics, it's not a big, flashy magic system.

Cheers!

While I don't see it becoming a major part of most of my campaigns, I'd certainly like to incorporate it here and there, as appropriate. And I've already talked to the DM in the group I game with on Thursdays about making my backup character an incarnum-user, should anything happen (Heaven forfend) to my druid.

So far noone in any my groups has shown any interest in it. I'd probably allow a player if she really wanted to, but I have no plans to buy the book so far.

I bought the book and I'm still "digesting" it.

All in all, I most like the new alternative system. What the book lacks, IMVHO, is some flavour.

I don't want Incarnates to be just "wizards that materialize magic items". I think I'll have the players "customize" the look and feel of their souldmelds instead of relying on the default descriptions of the book, which are nice but too "mundane" for something that should be a physical manifestation of a metaphysical subject.

So, one would describe all of his soulmelds as "ethereal and hazy", another as "organic and biologic", another as "translucent and shimmering". Sorta.

Another things that bugs me is the too strong alignment focus. I know it fits with the concept but i find it too limiting for play. I mean, Incarnates and Soulborns are more focused than clerics and paladins!

A workaround i'm concerning is requiring Incarnates to have one of the alignment axis fixed, say "good", and allowing the character, at the time he shapes his soulmelds to "switch" alignment to one of the three neutral-something alignments except the opposite of his "natural" one. So that a "good" Incarnate each day can choose to be neutral-good, lawful-neutral or chaotic-neutral (obviously he carries with him all pros and cons of the new alignment, such as soulmeld restrictions).

Basically i reverse the assumption of the class, by stating that is the act of choosing which soul to draw power from to have an influence on the character's outlook and soul.

Another objection that many people made on MoI is that there's no use of having Incarnates and Soulborns, which are after all alternatives to Clerics and Paladins.

While this is to a certaint extent true, what many don't consider it that there's no need to have all of the characters come from the same places. Just like many DMs have psionic characters come from distant lands where psionic is more common than magic, so soulshaping could easily be a tradition originating in a remote land of the campaign world, where it replaces worshipping of deities. Actually soulshaping could easily be adapted in being a full fledged religion.

I've got quite a few of buzz on it myself, almost to the same level as I had towards the Warlock class and the original Psionics Handbook (seem like a trend to anybody else? ). I've got the book, and so far what I think is its greatest lacking is that there isn't nearly enough soulmelds for the various classes. The bases are covered, but it could use about twice the amount to really flesh it out.
Another, much more minor, point is that since all soulmelds are available from level one, the base soulmelds will run out of different base effects at some point, going counter to the bigger problem. I think there could be a division to two groups, lesser and greater, to help alleviate this problem, but as I said, it's really a minor point.

Unfortunately, so far none of the people in my group have really shown any interest towards the system. Maybe I'll need to run a game that only allows non-standard classes (Complete series, XPH and Incarnum base classes) to have somebody maybe picking up an incarnum class.

In my case it's not really lack of interest (I'm always interested in magic variants), but rather lack of time and strength to keep up with all the new D&D stuff/options coming out every few months. I'm not in for just tossing a new class into an existing campaign and see how it works, instead if I embrace a variant I want it to be an important part of the game, and that may require a new campaign or at least a new series of adventures.

Also, I generally dislike new base classes, I want variants which can be integrated seemlessly into the existing core rules. I don't know how MoI works, but if it introduces specific classes, specific skills, specific everything, that's not an approach that appeals me usually.

i've read it once. i'll have to go back over it again over the course of play to see if it has anything for me.

first impressions. new races for new core classes... meh.

the extremist alignment classes... definitely something that came from James... (a paladin loving gamer). and something that will be on message boards or other media for years to come if they do see a lot of play or use as NPCs.

i haven't heard anyone in my group that is talking about trying any of the stuff, so i can't say that it has had enough time to sink in yet. maybe the hype wasn't pushed to high enough levels.

On a brief read-through, it didn't seem like something any of my groups' players would want. However, I see some potential for using it to generate a unique NPC or two - perhaps a cult.