5e Magic of Incarnum (alpha 2)

[Goober4473]

I started updating Magic of Incarnum to 5e right around the end of the playtest and the release of the PHB, but abandoned it for a while. Recently, I picked it up again and revamped the whole thing.

The current version is an alpha, with a full class writeup, but only a few soulmelds: https://drive.google.com/open?id=0Bwir5V4Ifx5dVGJPZF8zMS1QblE

Here are some design notes, so everyone can be on the same page:

• I've merged all of the classes into one, inspired by the Mystic playtest that was released in Unearthed Arcana. The original classes, in 3.5, had very few class features besides the soulmelds, so I felt this was a much cleaner way to handle it. Like mystics, you select your subclass (Incarnation) at level 1, and it determines the list of soulmelds you can choose from.
• The breakdown of soulmelds for each subclass was chosen to give each of them around 20 options; enough to have a wide variety, but not so many that it's overwhelming or overpowered.
• Following the 5e design standard of large choices, rather than small fiddley numbers, I've turned essentia into a binary choice: a soulmeld has essentia invested in it or it doesn't.
• I initially wanted to let essentia be moved around freely as a bonus action, but it was too restrictive to the design of soulmelds, since they could only then have passive effects based on essentia and never per short rest abilities. My solution was to allow incarnates to invest essentia as a bonus action, so they can choose which soulmeld to invest in as they need them, but the essentia can't then be moved until they take a short rest.
• I agonized over how to handle chakras for a long time. I found that it was too hard to create enough abilities to keep soulmelds relevant at all levels if you had to bind individual soulmelds to chakras, but limiting them to one or two chakras each meant that some soulmelds would become obsolete, or be much less useful until high level. That, and it felt odd to have some soulmelds providing only their basic, level 1 effect, while others provided powerful high level effects. Ultimately I opted instead to make chakras passive, allowing for a more uniform increase in the power of soulmelds that is tied to class level rather than character level. This also allowed for an easy scaling of the effects of essentia.

I'll likely add races, multiclassing, and a feat that lets you gain some bit of meldshaping later as well.

 

[Goober4473]

I've updated the document, now version alpha 2. The main changes are additional soulmelds (6 per subclass now), and a modification to totemists. They can now manifest totem weapons, rather than selecting a soulmeld as a totem.

At this point, I'm pretty solid on the core design, but I'd love some feedback on the smaller details. Individual soulmeld effects, balance concerns, etc.

 

[Bleys Jackson]

It might just be me, but it feels like some of the totemist AoE abilities are way to powerful to be at-will.