Incarnum anyone?

[McTreble]

Flipping through my old 3e books, I came upon the Magic Of Incarnum. I never got a chance to use this book, but I read over it many times.

Anyone with experience using this book? Any thoughts of a 4e update? This would fit squarely under Unearthed Arcana on DDI, so the CB wouldn't support it, but it seems too interesting a concept to ignore.

 

[MerricB]

We played a campaign from 1st to 16th level with an incarnate as one of the main characters. It was a lot of fun, and the incarnate was awesome in play.

I've never really felt the need to update it for 4e. Probably the biggest problem is in the shifting of incarnum points between the powers, because although 3e thrived on having big differences between stats (although thrived isn't the best description of it), 4e runs a much tighter ship and so moving 8 points of incarnum into your stealth score to move it from +0 to +16 is, ahem, not really an option.

Likewise, moving a fireshield from "off" to 8d6 damage? Hmm...

Cheers!

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

You could emulate it pretty closely right now with boons. The 4e magic system is closer to working in a similar way already than the 3.5 one was. They could probably rework it somewhat and make it an interesting option. Who knows, almost anything could show up eventually. Wouldn't be the worst idea there could be.

 

[MerricB]

See also these classic (3e era) threads:
http://www.enworld.org/forum/genera...role-has-incarnate-played-magic-incarnum.html

http://www.enworld.org/forum/d-d-legacy-discussion/160337-20th-level-incarnates.html

http://www.enworld.org/forum/general-rpg-discussion/154948-how-have-you-tweaked-incarnum.html

http://www.enworld.org/forum/general-rpg-discussion/153241-incarnum-interest-level.html

Cheers!

 

[Vael]

The only real experience I got with Incarnum was a Incarnate follower (Leadership FTW), but I really loved the concept and some of the mechanics. The interaction with magical items looked to be really frustrating at higher levels, it seemed as if you would spend a lot of cash adding stat boosters to your Incarnum focus items. But I loved the idea of rebuilding your PC everyday (even midday), and the ability to shift essentia from various soulmelds.

Incarnum is something I've seen some homebrews for, and will occasionally brainstorm my own ideas for adapting it to 4e. The main challenge is that I want something like the Essentia investment idea from 3.5, but not sure how to balance it and streamline it.

 

[ppaladin123]

I loved the Incarnate and the Totemist (build your own monster!). The Soulborn was unfortunately terrible as were other classes built on the paladin chassis (divine mind!).

I'd love to see an update but I am not sure how'd they'd go about doing it.

 

[ceiling90]

So I was thinking...
I don't remember how Essentia actually worked, or how Incarnum actually worked per se. I know it emulated items and abilities, but as of right now; I don't have a clue how it worked.

But...

I was thinking that you could model it with something like Martial E-classes, or non-encounter psionic classes.

The Martial E-class style wouldn't have any dailies, but have very flexible at-wills that get stronger when you put an essentia point in it, and you can only put one point in any one power. So let's At-will X does something like maybe 1[W] + mod, but with a point of essentia, it does the same but with maybe an effect, or even just doubles the damage. The single, multi-use encounter power, makes it so that any power you use has basically two essentia in it, most likely giving a scaling bonus to damage and effect. Here's where it's different over all, the utilities. Like a wizard, you can learn two utilities when you learn any utilities. You then can invest a point of essentia to use be able to use a utility you didn't... prep.

The psionic style would pretty much be the same, but would have dailies instead that would de essentia your essentia'd powers until you had a short rest and no boosting encounter power.

So if this doesn't work to emulate it, I'm sorry; I don't really remember how it worked. These are just some thoughts.

 

[Dragonhelm]

There's a 4e conversion of Incarnum on WotC's boards. I'm not sure where it's at, though.

 

[Vael]

There's a 4e conversion of Incarnum on WotC's boards. I'm not sure where it's at, though.

Here are two conversions I've found:

Goober4473's Incarnum conversion is very ambitious, he has converted all Incarnum classes and races. It's not bad, it's a little wordy, but there are some nice ideas there. Basically, selecting a soulmeld locks you into certain encounter and daily attack powers, but there's a lot of jargon that can be a little intimidating. This attempt was also early in 4e's history, the Incarnate is a dual-stat attacker.

Cunning_Kindred's take isn't my cup of tea, though it does fit the original book. Soulmelds are set to magic item slots, and they can't be shaped where you have a magic item. Various powers have extra features if you have soulmelds in those magic item slots. Like Goober4473's version, there's a lot of added jargon, with Soulwields, Soulmelds, Soulweapons and Soulwarps, and it's a lot to try and
parse. I'm not entirely sure how the Incarnate functions and how some of the powers work.

Honestly, I think the main problem of these early attempts to convert Incarnum is that they're using a lot of words to still fit into the AEDU design scheme. You still end up with the same powers as any conventional AEDU class, but now with added words. A 5th level Warlord selects a 5th level daily attack, but a 5th level Incarnate in Goober4473's system is picking a "Sacral Chakra bind" to generate his daily attack power.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Yeah, in a lot of respects it seems more like you could do it as basically just AEDU powers and fluff it. Each power can be a specific type of thing. Maybe you could refine it a bit further as something very similar to Runepriest runestate mechanics, but with a longer duration. I'd also look at how vestiges work, as they have some similar concepts.