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5e magic of Incarnum (Beta)
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<blockquote data-quote="Goober4473" data-source="post: 7008330" data-attributes="member: 6675240"><p>In terms of fluff, I've sort of re-purposed the soulborn from a paladin that can be any corner alignment into more of "choose a cause and be all about that cause, whether it's your own personal goals, a god, a philosophy, or anything else" which is a little difficult to put into mechanics other than the immunity to being charmed or frightened they get at higher level. Their features of weapon/armor proficiency and extra attack aren't quite as flavorful as some of the others, but I think they're important to keep with the main theme of "more fightery incarnate" that they've always had going on, and it gives the impression of a more physically active, "perfecting the body in order to perfect the soul" sort of character. If I can come up with a good ribbon ability to give them, that might help. Perhaps I could give them back the "eyes change color" effect they used to have? Incarnum Defense ended up being too weirdly varied and too similar to Incarnum Radiance to keep, but the eye color thing was always cool.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>A big part of the divide in soulmelds comes from combining multiple classes into one, and trying to give soulborns their own identity. I wanted to sort of split the difference between having three full classes and having only one class, and I landed on using subclasses that are very different from one another. Of course, using the original three classes as subclasses leaves the "regular incarnate" with far too many options compared to the other two, and the soulborn with almost nothing unique, so I further split original incarnate into Incandescent and Necrocarnate, let soulborns have their own unique set of soulmelds, and paired down some of the excess totemist soulmelds since there was a lot of overlap, leaving 20 soulmelds for each of them with only a few that cross over.</p><p></p><p>It's been a tough call, and I redesigned the system from the ground up a few times before ending up here, but I think it's the best way to go in terms of making each of the subclasses feel unique and interesting, rather than just providing a few extra features. It does of course mean that updated characters will have to make some different choices, but such is the way of edition updates in general.</p><p></p><p>I may ultimately do a little bit more cross-pollination of the lists, but I think that will be mostly in response to playtesting, such as if I feel like one of the subclasses is lacking too much in a certain type of ability that another soulmeld would cover. Otherwise, for fleshing out a character, Diverse Meldshaping does net you three out-of-subclass soulmelds by 18th level. It's a long wait for the first one at 10, but I'm not sure I'd want to introduce that kind of complication to the class much earlier than that. Maybe I could add another one at level 6?</p><p></p><p>The included feat allows you to pick soulmelds from another subclass, but it doesn't let you use their higher level abilities, since that would make the feat much more powerful for Incarnates than for any other class. I could always make another feat that simply add more options, but that's not really a design pattern 5e ever uses, and it steps on the toes of the Diverse Meldshaping class feature.</p><p></p><p>As for differentiating by chakras, they really ever served to open up higher level powers. Soulborn got access to chakra binds later than incarnates in the same way paladins got access to higher level spells later than clerics. They didn't get them in say a different order or combination, just later (and sometimes bundled together for brevity's sake, IIRC). It didn't really differentiate the classes any more than "full caster" and "half caster," which isn't a divide I can really use for subclasses.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Goober4473, post: 7008330, member: 6675240"] In terms of fluff, I've sort of re-purposed the soulborn from a paladin that can be any corner alignment into more of "choose a cause and be all about that cause, whether it's your own personal goals, a god, a philosophy, or anything else" which is a little difficult to put into mechanics other than the immunity to being charmed or frightened they get at higher level. Their features of weapon/armor proficiency and extra attack aren't quite as flavorful as some of the others, but I think they're important to keep with the main theme of "more fightery incarnate" that they've always had going on, and it gives the impression of a more physically active, "perfecting the body in order to perfect the soul" sort of character. If I can come up with a good ribbon ability to give them, that might help. Perhaps I could give them back the "eyes change color" effect they used to have? Incarnum Defense ended up being too weirdly varied and too similar to Incarnum Radiance to keep, but the eye color thing was always cool. A big part of the divide in soulmelds comes from combining multiple classes into one, and trying to give soulborns their own identity. I wanted to sort of split the difference between having three full classes and having only one class, and I landed on using subclasses that are very different from one another. Of course, using the original three classes as subclasses leaves the "regular incarnate" with far too many options compared to the other two, and the soulborn with almost nothing unique, so I further split original incarnate into Incandescent and Necrocarnate, let soulborns have their own unique set of soulmelds, and paired down some of the excess totemist soulmelds since there was a lot of overlap, leaving 20 soulmelds for each of them with only a few that cross over. It's been a tough call, and I redesigned the system from the ground up a few times before ending up here, but I think it's the best way to go in terms of making each of the subclasses feel unique and interesting, rather than just providing a few extra features. It does of course mean that updated characters will have to make some different choices, but such is the way of edition updates in general. I may ultimately do a little bit more cross-pollination of the lists, but I think that will be mostly in response to playtesting, such as if I feel like one of the subclasses is lacking too much in a certain type of ability that another soulmeld would cover. Otherwise, for fleshing out a character, Diverse Meldshaping does net you three out-of-subclass soulmelds by 18th level. It's a long wait for the first one at 10, but I'm not sure I'd want to introduce that kind of complication to the class much earlier than that. Maybe I could add another one at level 6? The included feat allows you to pick soulmelds from another subclass, but it doesn't let you use their higher level abilities, since that would make the feat much more powerful for Incarnates than for any other class. I could always make another feat that simply add more options, but that's not really a design pattern 5e ever uses, and it steps on the toes of the Diverse Meldshaping class feature. As for differentiating by chakras, they really ever served to open up higher level powers. Soulborn got access to chakra binds later than incarnates in the same way paladins got access to higher level spells later than clerics. They didn't get them in say a different order or combination, just later (and sometimes bundled together for brevity's sake, IIRC). It didn't really differentiate the classes any more than "full caster" and "half caster," which isn't a divide I can really use for subclasses. [/QUOTE]
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