Incarnum interest level?

[Vraille Darkfang]

I picked it up.

Really regretted buying it on an intial read through. Seemed hokey and silly. Alignment restrictions that I couldn't understand. Visual effects/manifestations that seemd like Incanum is just Neon. I put it away.

Then I read it. Really read it, paying attention to the game mechanics & ignoring the silly fluff. The mechanics are sound. It's the flavor that is off.

Since I've had a 'magic' sytem in my game for several years my players only know as "Blood Magic" (or Soul Magic, though they didn't catch that term), I see the mechanics (aside from that alignment silliness) mesh close to the effects my players have seen from "Blood Magic" (which has entirely been DM Fiat, Storyline, no rules what-so-ever; which is why I've never sent a 'Blood Mage' against the party, I've never worked out the rules).

The rules work (aside from the whole, "you refuse to work with anyone of 7 of the possible 9 alignments). The fluff just really, really, does absolutley nothing for me (esp the glowing neon lights all Incarnum seem to have all over themselves). Actually, it does do something for me, it just wasn't positive.

So, I'm going to use it. I'm just ignoring all the fluff parts (which as its a good chunk of the book) makes this a No recommendation from me.

 

[I'm A Banana]

Then I read it. Really read it, paying attention to the game mechanics & ignoring the silly fluff. The mechanics are sound. It's the flavor that is off.

This is entirely true.

I've thought of different ways to conceptualize it, and they almost universally seem better than the system's default. For instance, in the right campaign, you could adapt it as mechanization rather than soulstuff -- each day, you can install bits and pieces of arcane machinery to grant you special abilities and enhance you powers. This would work especially well for the Warforged meldshapers out there, but any world with Golems could probably tolerate it.

If they would've presented it like that, I probably would've LOVED the system rather than derided it. Because my greatest problems with MoI can be summed up in two statements:

1) Here are some rules that exclude powers based on alignment! Nothing like locking characters into stereotypes to foster creative gameplay!
2) If you shape the subtance of souls of the athletic and agile and bound it to you flesh, you....gain +2 to climb and jump! I bet that's worth it!

And these are almost entirely flavor issue. It's just harder to file the numbers off of the alignment. Not impossible, if you're already rewriting the flavor, just more difficult than it should be.

 

[was]

Not particularly interested in it.

 

[MerricB]

2) If you shape the subtance of souls of the athletic and agile and bound it to you flesh, you....gain +2 to climb and jump! I bet that's worth it!

Are you purposively trying to misrepresent the book, or have you truly not read it?

Let's say you have a 1st level Incarnate character. One of the distinguishing things about the class is that it has low basic abilities: poor Base Attack, d6 HD, and only 2 skill points per level (and a poxy collection of class skills).

However, by using Soulmelds, the character can vary their abilities for each day.

A 1st level Incarnate can put 1 point of Essentia into their skill-promoting Soulmeld when it becomes important (redistributing it away from the combat soulmeld), and gain an extra +2 on those skills. So, suddenly it's a +4 to the skill. Without any ranks. Hang on a moment... this is like having 4 ranks in it. (And yes, most of the melds that give you these bonuses also allow to use them untrained).

If the Incarnate spends a feat on Increased Soulmeld Capacity, then the total bonus can increase to +6. Interesting. It's a bit like having the "Athletic" feat as well, but you're not limited to that for the rest of your life.

By the time you have a high-level Incarnate character, your Soulmelds will have a capacity of 6 or 7. So, that total bonus has moved up to +16. You're *not* quite at the level of a dedicated character, but you have the versatility. (Mind you, a few cross-class ranks...)

This isn't a +2 bonus and that's it.

Of course, it's the combat soulmelds that are more useful to the average Incarnate, and the sample builds I've been creating for Incarnum characters seem to be extremely effective. (Indeed, low-level totemist builds may be overly strong...)

Cheers!

 

[Acid_crash]

It's a pretty weak book in my opinion. I will not be using it, or encouraging its use. In many ways, the whole concept of the book seems quite a reach to me. Is the creative well running dry? I hope the forthcoming spellbook is good.

First ya say it seems quite a reach (like it's not creative enough), then you ask if the creative well is running dry???

Man, some people are pretty stingy on what is creative and what is not. Incarnum is the most creative THING that has come out of WotC is the last four years, except for Eberron of course. Just because it's different than the norm doesn't mean it's not creative. Seems like anything that is 'different' than what is 'CORE' isn't creative enough for some folks in this world.

'different' is creativity... the complete class books are less creative than Incarnum, which is totally new and fresh.

If you think Incarnum isn't good or cool, just have a Barbarian/Totemist teleporting 20 feet a round with Power attack and Cleave and then Raging... It's BRUTAL. And oh so fun.

I will say this though... the new races in Incarnum are lacking, that is something I will agree with, but to say that the idea of Incarnum, and how it is executed isn't creative, well, either you haven't read it yet, played in a game with it executed well yet, or just are scared of trying something different than what is "CORE".

 

[I'm A Banana]

A 1st level Incarnate can put 1 point of Essentia into their skill-promoting Soulmeld when it becomes important (redistributing it away from the combat soulmeld), and gain an extra +2 on those skills. So, suddenly it's a +4 to the skill. Without any ranks. Hang on a moment... this is like having 4 ranks in it. (And yes, most of the melds that give you these bonuses also allow to use them untrained).

If the Incarnate spends a feat on Increased Soulmeld Capacity, then the total bonus can increase to +6. Interesting. It's a bit like having the "Athletic" feat as well, but you're not limited to that for the rest of your life.

By the time you have a high-level Incarnate character, your Soulmelds will have a capacity of 6 or 7. So, that total bonus has moved up to +16. You're *not* quite at the level of a dedicated character, but you have the versatility. (Mind you, a few cross-class ranks...)

Nah, Merric, you're missin' the point.

I am binding souls to my physical form. Living, dead, heroic, tragic, I contain the essence of being of people who have represented this in legend and in practice throughout all of history and future.

Getting a bonus to a skill check is nice. But it's not what I'd expect from manipulating the very essence of beings throught all of time and space.

What I'd expect is maybe to surpass a skill check, or to be able to achieve something truly remarkable, or at least gain some sort of class ability related to the souls of beings and what those beings had talent in.

That's part of why the Totemist actually does it's job -- it draws powers from actual creatures and puts them in your hand. A skill bonus? By binding spirits to my physical form? Powerful language for a mundane effect, yo. It's like describing 1 hp of damage by "He cuts off your head." There's a big disconnect, there.

 

[satori01]

I agree with Km on this one, the Totemist is the only class that really captures the flavor and brings it out mechanically. Even then alot of the Totemist soulmelds have duplicate powers, that overlap, I think there are at least 2 to 3 soulmelds for the Totemist that grant Evasion.

Reading the Incarnate powers, I really got the feeling that every that almost every Incarnate would pretty much carry the same "build" as any other one. While that can be said of all classes to some extent, it felt even more so for the Incarnate.

Above all it just did not feel like what Soul Magic should. There was nothing herioric about the soulmelds or class abillities that spoke to me strongly of manipulating the very substance of life.
Even worse I thought there was way to few Necrocarnum powers, if one cant abuse Soul Magic whats the point.

The Mechanics work fine for it but it just does not capture the imagination. I have never been a fan of Psionics but the Revised Psionics handbook has seen alot of use for me, it converted me against my will to appreciate it.

Incarnum will see scatered use but for me never more then that.

As an Aside I found the SoulCaster +1Arcane class/+1 Soulmelder Prestige Class to be potentially the most powerful +1/+1 "caster class" out there. First off, to qualify on the soulmeld side one only needs to be a second level Incarnate or Totemist. Given the number of HP boosting or armor boosting soulmelds, and the fact that at mid levels no Wizard character is going to have a magic item in every "slot", I could see this as a powergamers dream, 9th level spells, and plus free magic items ultimately.

 

[MerricB]

Nah, Merric, you're missin' the point.

I am binding souls to my physical form. Living, dead, heroic, tragic, I contain the essence of being of people who have represented this in legend and in practice throughout all of history and future.

Getting a bonus to a skill check is nice. But it's not what I'd expect from manipulating the very essence of beings throught all of time and space.

That's a lot like writing off feats because you don't think Alertness is interesting.

*You can do more with incarnum than just skill check bonuses*.

However, I do agree that it isn't much for big, flashy magic. That's psionics and regular magic. Did we need Yet Another system that was exactly the same? The difference between psionics and regular magic is... power points. Ooh.

 

[Dragonhelm]

I haven't had the chance to look over MoI as much as I would like, but here's my initial thoughts.

Races - I agree, I don't find these particularly interesting. Several of WotC's races lately aren't all that original. Many are "humans with a twist" (i.e. Elans, Maenads, Kalashtar, the two human incarnum races, illumians, etc.).

Classes - I need to look these over more, but they seem so-so. I know that some people don't like the alignment thing, but I think this was done to sort of counterbalance the druid. Druids are any neutral alignment (5 total). So going with the extremes captures the other four alignments.

Magic - It's interesting, but it doesn't wow me. I think the flavor could be a bit more. I know that some people think that psionics is just "spells with power points", but it comes across as a bit more, especially where all the crystal themes come in. So better background flavor would help.

That's just at a glance. I need to give it a more thorough once-over.

 

[JoeGKushner]

Just got this.

Races.... do they ever go into more detail about the 'father' of those two races in the races section?

The one race in here that's in essence human... I'm almost tempted to say 'm'eh' on that as we've already got the elan, illumians, mohj and other humans that are no longer human.

Some of the feats are nice. I'll a gree that there is a tremendous overuse of the theme though.

It looks like a few of the PrCs can be used by those who don't even have Incarnium use though like the Incarnium Soulblade and Incarnium Champion. The former looks pretty good at only five levels and has some nice abilities that they can give their weapon. might make for a damn fine combination between that an a Kensai from complete Warrior. I like the Warriors Eternal idea used here too.

Some of the mosnters are also pretty slick. At first I was wondering why they had multiples of some of the races in terms of write ups, but looking, see that they have some suggested encounters which tend to be leader-followers so again, good deal.

Haven't dug too deep into it yet. I do see what some people would be bothered by the alignment bits though. They should've included some sidebars about using this in settings iwthout alignments or changing some of the stuff here. (Unless it's there and I just missed it.)

Have they done any support for this in Dragon?

This, like Psionics, would probably benefit hugely if they opened it up. I've love to see some expansions and like spells or psionics, the more you have at your disposal, the better it is.

One thing I notice though, is that, if I'm reading it right, you lose the use of that 'slot' if you have a meld in that spot. Makes the characters pretty self reliant in some ways but at higher levels, sounds like a heck of a price to pay.

Do like how it has a lot of support though for various facets of play including epic level, substitution levels, etc...