I like Magic of Incarnum but...

[airwalkrr]

So I got to attend a big scientific conference out-of-state and it was too close to fly so my lab group took a 15-passenger van. It was a six-hour drive (twelve both ways). I could have read our grant presentation, but that was boring and I figured I'd have plenty of time at the conference. So I decided to bring along a book I've been meaning to take a look at for a long time: Magic of Incarnum. To start with, I love the concept of soul magic. The idea that there is magic energy in every soul before, present and after is very cool. The concept of shaping soulmelds with a variety of functions is even cooler. When I bought the book I gave it the initial flip-through, read the first chapter, and shelved it for later reading as it appeared much to complex to digest in a quick read-through. Well now, eight years later I finally have a chance to look at it. And I really like it, but...

It just lacks some pizzazz. It seems that a lot of elements are defensively oriented, which, for a Con-dependent character means you are good at doing pretty much nothing but staying alive, which doesn't kill the bad guy and thus doesn't contribute much. Your damage potential is severely limited, although it is sustained over time, the warlock can do just as much (and with the right invocations to a much greater area). Furthermore, I feel saves are broken, as in, non-sustainable. 10 + essentia + Con mod? That's a bit weak when the highest bound essentia will generally be 4-5 at high levels (there are few exceptions and I see and they are very temporary). Compare to a wizard or cleric with level 9 spells and the DC difference is a whole 4-5 points. That's a bit deal. Not that many soulmelds have saving throws, but the woulds that do are gonna be resisted a lot.

So any thoughts on Incarnum in general? Strngths? Weaknesses? Hoese Rules you use to make it fit?

 

[Dandu]

Totemists make for great natural weapon users.

 

[Wyvernhand]

You are correct in that the DCs don't scale well. They are pretty easy to ramp up early, though. It's possible for an Incarnate to swing a DC20 vs Stun Incarnum Weapon by about 6th level, which is pretty brutal if you build for it. Incarnates (especially Law incarnates) have some of the highest stackable sources of +hit, is it is very possible to Power Attack with one despite the 1/2 BAB. You won't be putting out Leap Attacking Barbarian numbers, but you should be able to rival most 2-handed fighters who don't PA for their full BAB anyway with similar attack and damage bonuses against most standard foes. Totemists get most of their damage output from stacking on multiple natural weapons and then adding small static bonuses to the damage with each. Ultimately, it can add up to serious damage per round, but it suffers from the general problem of TWFing, which is DR. DR is subtracted on a per-hit basis, which means that single powerful hits get subtracted once, while multiple small hits might be completely negated. DR/Magic is pretty easy to overcome with the resources in the book, but the more exotic DRs like Cold Iron, Good, Adamantine, etc, become a bear to deal with. If you think it'll mostly be a humanoid hunting game, totemists can kick some serious butt, but otherwise they can get nerfed pretty hardcore against a couple of golems (about as much as a typical rogue does).

My biggest gripe with MoI is that it was published REALLY late in 3.5, not too long before ToB and the MIC, and they didn't include much in the way of per encounter shananananananananananigans. I'm a HUGE fan of per encounter things instead of per day things. I'd either double the per day things (like Incarnum Radiance or the Totemist instant respec) or at least give them a few extra uses/day right off the bat unless you are the type of DM that generally only throws 1 encounter per day.

 

[Herobizkit]

Of course, if you design a character as a "tank", staying alive suddenly becomes a great option.

 

[Particle_Man]

I have heard that Sapphire Hierarch is the way to go if you want stackable combat goodness. In fact, I once dreamed of a "red vs. blue" scenario between these guys and Ruby Knight Vindicators, since just because you are both LN does not mean you always get along.

 

[airwalkrr]

Yeah, well monsters love tanks. "Cool, I can ignore you and kill you last." In MMOs, tanks have ways to force others to fight them (kind of like 4e, hmm). But 3.5/PF doesn't really have that. The best way to get a monster's attention is to deal the most damage. Anyone can build an unhittable, high defense character. The trick is doing so while still dealing enough damage to seem relevant.

So the totemist is the big deal huh? What about the incarnate and soulborn? Do they work on any level? The soulborn looks about as effective as a paladin. If you have a lot of good stats, you can make it work but probably won't ever be super duper. The incarnate I just don't know what to make of though. I kind of what to try to make a 20th level azurin incarnate and just see what kind of numbers I come up with to compare it to other classes. But I am having a hard time seeing them contribute substantially at mid to high levels as anything other than utility.

As for totemists and bypassing DR, there are magic items like silver sheen and oils of align weapon. At least I can see a method there. I honestly hadn't thought too much about the idea of using a vast array of natural weapons.

 

[Pluto]

You aren't wrong that the abilities are very defensively oriented, but the system can manage an offense - just not in the direct way you might expect.

Totemists are the easy class - they can get tons of attacks per round (a level 9 totemist with multiattack and double chakra for girallon arms and a bite attack with a one-handed weapon gets a +7/+5/+5/+5/+5/+2 attack routine even before further investments), abilities that standard melee classes would kill for (things like rend, pounce, flight and wolf-style trips are easy to stack up), they can crank just about any number way up with essentia investment whether it's for grappling, skills or attack bonuses, and they also get some unique and very powerful abilities like the shadow mantle's passive blindsight+area of total darkness or phase cloak's ethereal movement.

Soulborns are harder on account of their absolute suckage, but it's pretty clear what their offense is based on: the same base attack and smites as a core paladin. Between their two decent soulmelds (the charge damage/stunning boots whose name is escaping me and mauling gauntlets), they can get a bit of extra damage and some sizable bonuses to trip checks, which combo well with Sapphire Smite (a feat probably every soulborn is going to take at some point) and the Awesome Smite feat from complete champion.

The straight-classed incarnate is the tricky one where your complaint definitely rings true. There are a few routes they can go on offense, the most reliably powerful being using Necrocarnum Circlet's crown bind to drag around the beefiest necrocarnum zombie available (even if the HD are limited, the template is pretty dang snazzy compared to the usual skeletons and zombies), but there are also some options for Lawful and Evil melee incarnates and Chaotic archer incarnates (both can crank their numbers fairly well - google "Incarnate by the numbers" - but are still going to probably need to get their hands on an aptitude weapon from Complete Arcane and a haste effect from boots of speed or similar, just to keep up in attacks/round). Good Incarnates, with their defensive Incarnate Avatar/Incarnum Radiance bonuses and no access to Necrocarnum Circlet, have some troubles and sometimes just have to grab mantle of flame and a blasting power like lightning armbands or acid spittle, and hope the 1d6+1d6*essentia damage is enough to bait enemies into triggering the mantle's retributive attacks.

But even incarnates can shine on offense in a less direct sense, since it's a class that provides lots of numeric boosts that play very well with multiclassing. Even just a 1-4 level dip can give hefty numeric increases and very potent non-numeric abilities to noncasting classes that dip incarnate (by level 18 with improved essentia capacity, that means things like +12 melee damage && all attacks are force effects && immunity to mind control or a +6 weapon to overcome DR/Epic && telepathy && limited flight or Immunity to Nausea && Ignore Concealment && SR 29, all rebuildable on a daily basis, all from 3 or 4 levels), Ironsoul Forgemaster provides a solid platform for Incarnate/melee multiclasses (weaving Incarnate/ISFM with Warblade or Crusader works especially well, as all of the classes involved complement the others very nicely) and midnight augmentation/metamagic combined with the soul caster/sapphire hierarch/soul manifester classes make Incarnate one of the few multiclasses for a caster that isn't an overwhelmingly bad idea.

So while you're not wrong that really focusing on the direct offensive effects isn't really effective, and that most of the system is really heavily focused on defensive and noncombat abilities, there are definitely ways to use all of the classes as at least components in plausibly offensive builds. Well, except the Soulborn. Let's just forget about that guy. >_>

EDIT:
Also maybe worth noting that with feats and incarnum focus items, anybody can hit a 6 essentia capacity by high levels, and the Incarnate and Totemist each have ways of adding an additional 2 to their capacity before considering the temporary effects. So there's a good chance that the numbers you're looking at in each soulmeld are somewhat larger than you're estimating with the 4-5 essentia mentioned in the OP.

 

[Particle_Man]

Also, it would be a bit unfair for Incanates to be as good at being combat monsters as regular combat monsters, because incarnates have the versatility ability too (they can be skill-monkeys the next day, for example). So the price for jack of all trades is master of none.

 

[Vael]

True, but non-dipping Incarnates still need some diversity in their attack options. Also, I'd like some meld synergy that the Totemist can get. Ideally, I'd like some melds that provide spellcasting that works with Arcane Focus, for example, or a soulmeld that can enhance other soulmelds. I have a few homebrewed soulmelds somewhere, just got to find them, if there's interest.

 

[airwalkrr]

Well I am comparing the incarnate to the warlock because there is a similar vein in concept there: a limited number of abilities but stuff that is useable at will. Warlocks compensate for having a very limited number of invocations with being Cha-based + UMD (a knock spell, for example, is just as effective when cast from a scroll or spell). So I think the two are pretty similar there. The incarnate has approximately the same daily utility as a warlock, but he can change it from day to day and can reshape stuff on a limited basis. The trade-off is the warlock is better at using scrolls, wands, and staffs. So I think all of that is more or less balanced on utility. So I look at damage-dealing to somehow compare things. The warlock just seems to have the edge. The maximum damage I can see an incarnate dealing is 7d6 to a single target. A damage-focused warlock could be doing 9d6 (more with a warlock's scepter) to a massive area of targets while debuffing them at the same time (granted the warlock gives up some utility for this, but even single-target damage he wins on). And when you consider that the warlock is a middle-of-the-road class powerwise (a very popular one, but medium power-level nonetheless), I think there is something lacking there.

When I look at the incarnate and see its low HD, and low BAB, I expect caster-style utility plus some method of at least moderate damage-dealing. The utility is there, but the damage really doesn't seem to be.

Now the implications for multiclassing became obvious from the moment that I saw that essentia capacity was based on overall character level and not meldshaper level. That is an immediate multiclassing flag. But I am curious how they imagined a 20th-level incarnate working. And as for having access to necrocarnum, even if you aren't evil, you can use necrocarnum melds by taking a feat, so choosing another alignment isn't that big of a deal. It doesn't seem like a significant number of melds are alignment-based either.