Incarnum interest level?

[WizarDru]

For this week's game, I had been struggling with a certain concept...and Merric's character example above and the Incarnum system filled the gap I needed. In essence, an evil demi-god (Zinkman ad'Zol, first emperor of the Suel Empire) has ripped open a portal the Far Realms above the Lendore Isles in Greyhawk. Far Realmsian horrors have been steadily pouring into the world; though the Prime has natural defenders in the form of beings called Judges, the elves of the Lendore isles have been also involved in the battle for their homeland. Some of the elves have been absorbed by the realmsian horrors and...changed.

Seeing MerricB's Azurin Incarnate above gave me what I needed. Now I have dominated elven hosts, turned into Incarnates by the Realms horrors that have attached themselves to their bodies. Imagine some of the bizarre neon creatures from the deep sea trenches of the oceans, semi-ghost like, having attached themselves like psychic leeches to their hosts (which would be the soul-melds visual aspect).

This should throw my players for a loop. Especially facing them by the dozen.

 

[MerricB]

The Necrocarnates will be playing a large part in my upcoming Ulek campaign. (See my notes on the Fhoi Myore on Canonfire, and there's a parallel with WizarDru's Far Realm invaders).

Cheers!

 

[I'm A Banana]

I understand entirely how the flavour doesn't engage you. I find it such a small part of the book, however. Oh, and it fits in with my view of D&D very well, as I find the struggle between Good and Evil (as modified by Moorcock's Law vs Chaos and Gygax's Gord books) to be an important part of D&D.

For me, flavor is a bigger issue, and I think from a reviewer standpoint, it deserves to be a big issue. It won't nessecarily affect all games, but it's a danger that needs to be called out.

My grade for MoI was largely based on 50% crunchiness, 50% flavor. Since that leaves one star in limbo on a five-star scale, that star is the overall effect of the book. The crunchiness of MoI is entirely solid (it earned the two stars!), but for this reviewer, the flavor and language frustrated me enough to not only not score, but to get rid of that limbo-star, too.

But it's not equally important to everyone. The players and DMs who love the crunchy bits will still be perfectly happy. And that is WotC's big strength as a publisher...that and the production values. I still think they need to hire a designer with a proper fantasic imagination, though.

 

[skippy_the_witch]

See? Totally awesome. Now go ask WotC why they chose "neon soul energy" claptrap over this coolness.

Thanks! I must admit though that there is a certain "neon energy" effect when the incarnites have to mainfest into an actual psuedo physical effect, such as a mist cloak or whatever they call the flaming cloak...but again these are insubstantial. Also, I did incorporate some of the ideas about a "collective unconscious" or like knowledge. Basically, while the incarnites draw their power from the Force or whatever, they have been based on for a couple millenia from parent (especially mother) to child, and a bit of the parents and all of their ancestors knowledge/self/whatever sort of "sticks" to the incarnates. Thus, with the proper magic/soulmeld, an incarnate can call upon the knowledge/abilities of his ancestors. I am thinking of developing further soulmelds/feats/spells that will allow one to commune with the ancestors.

Again, I see no need to change the totemist, and consider that many of those primitive tribes somehow found a different way to touch upon the Force/Incarnum through the worship of magical beasts. So most of the tribes with totemist would not have incarnites in them (unless they are made up of a lost tribe of mesadans or the like).

Lastly, while I know it is not RAW, I restrict classes/races combinations based on background, backstory and the like. There are some other representatives of races other than modified humans who have been infected with incarnites, but they are very rare and very sterile, since the incarnites were originally developed for the use with the mesadan physiology. As a matter of fact, mesadan blood can kill a non-mesadan, as the incarnites go crazy trying to "correct" the alien physiology of their new host. This is NOT a practical issue, as it takes at least a pint of mesadan blood and a transfusion to cause this to happen, and there are much easier ways to kill a person if you have them strapped to a table. Using the ever so useful Chaositech Mutation rules, anybody infected with Incarnites must make multiple fortitude saves, first against the incarnites, then against deformity, then against mutation, and finally to see if they "took". Human or half-human breeds only need to make the first save, and if they fail it, they suffer from deformity, but also gain access to incarnum classes. Since this is so new, and it hasn't come up yet, I don't know what I will do when a non-mesadan/totemist/incarnum user asks to be able to take a incarnum feat or a prestige class that uses incarnum. For feats, I will probably allow it, and say that some sort of ritual had been developed to allow limited interaction with incarnites within the Federation, i.e. these specific incarnites have been reprogrammed and "dumbed down" so that they perform but a single task. Same would hold true of someone who got the feat that allowed a SINGLE soulmeld to be formed.

skippy
The GM of the Cursed Earth Campaign

 

[JoeGKushner]

Still messing around and trying out a few ideas in character form.

The alignment restrictions on the different abilities is a bit of a bummer since there aren't a ton of them to begin with.

 

[JoeGKushner]

So it's been a couple of weeks.

Anyone using this in their campaigns?

I'm using some of the ideas in the background of my Shackled City campaign like the Warriors Eternal. I'll also be using the encounter with the incarnum necromancer right from the book when the party is a little higher in level.

Some other bits will be used here and there but since no players are dead and few are really into multi-classing, looks like the majority of the book won't be used. Ironically enough, I'll still be getting use out of it as a GM.

 

[Kanegrundar]

I'm getting to the point where it will be used in my Dungeon Bash mish-mash game. I'm curious to see how well it works.

(Edit: I've played only a Totemist so far, I want to see how the rest works.)

 

[JoeGKushner]

I'm getting to the point where it will be used in my Dungeon Bash mish-mash game. I'm curious to see how well it works.

(Edit: I've played only a Totemist so far, I want to see how the rest works.)

How did that work out? To me, the totemist is the greatest core class in terms of flavor and some of the totem soulmelds look very impressive. The soulborn on the other hand seems a good steady class with few surprises.

 

[Kanegrundar]

It's pretty well balanced and the mechanics worked out fine. I'm just working on ways on further deveoping their place in the world. Our game is mostly random dugneon delving with a quest to go along and put it together (that's all we have time for), but I like to have a feel to the world and write up descriptive portions to quests to give the feel of an encompassing world to take a bit of the hack and slash edge off. So far, Incarnum feels a bit tacked on (to my world), so my initial foray into MoI was only a couple dugneons with a Totemist in the party until I can flesh it out better.

As far as rules go, I just had to add new areas for the MoI classes to train (house rule) and make other minor additions to the rules to accommodate them further. Since they can use items like any other core class, there wasn't much to add to the treasure tables to fit them in.

 

[Haffrung Helleyes]

Incarnum

I'd like to add my vote to those who love the mechanics, but hate the flavor presented in this book.

I also have a nagging concern that the totemist may be overpowered. Of course, if I play one that's less of an issue ;-)

Ken