The Incarnum Magic System is Neat but Remarkably Derivative

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Why do you give a crap about your post count?

 

[Samuel Leming]

2005: Continually reminded of my lame username by posters who assume I'm still a Star Wars fan, I begin to seriously wish I could change it without losing my postcount.

You can head over to the Meta forum and ask one of the admins to change the handle on your current account. This way you'd be able to keep your postcount. They've done this before.

Sam

 

[ForceUser]

Why do you give a crap about your post count?

[/hijack]I don't know. It's fun to know that it's in the thousands. It's indicative of the fact that I've been around ENWorld for years. It's fun to watch it go up. Plus, changing my name cuts me off from the community somewhat, because it takes time for people to figure out that the new handle is, in fact, the old poster. Like my RL surname, which I loathe, my ENWorld handle is part of my identity in this community. I don't like it very much anymore, but it's how I'm known around here, and it's better to be known than not known.[/hijack]

 

[The Shaman]

Ah! So a Prismatic Sphere is an onion?

Oooo, I like that!

And like ogres, onions.... (Stink?) Yes. No. (Make you cry?) No. (Left out in the sun, they get all brown and start sprouting little white hairs?) No, they both have many layers.

But what about parfaits? Everybody likes parfaits. You ever ask someone out for some parfait and they say "Hell no, I don't like no parfait!" ? Parfaits are delicious.

What was the question again?

Can I stay wit' you?

We can stay up late, tell manly stories, and in the morning? I'm making waffles!

 

[Von Ether]

Heh. I refer you to post #20, where I respond to Umbran's exact same question.

And man, if it weren't for my post count I'd ditch the handle ForceUser and get a new user name. It's actually been years since I've had much interest in Star Wars.

2001: SWd20 RPG comes out. Yay! I buy it, run a game for my friends, we all realize it's a hunk of crap and we never play it again. Before this occurs, though, I make an account on ENWorld.

2004: Star Wars is long-forgotten. Lucas has burned any interest in the series out of my skull with his awful, awful prequel movies.

2005: Continually reminded of my lame username by posters who assume I'm still a Star Wars fan, I begin to seriously wish I could change it without losing my postcount.

To parphase Milton

"Better to have a high post count in Hell than to have an accurate handle in Heaven?"


I apologize if I went a little overboard with the magic proliferation post, but sometimes gamers have a "perception" problem with their games. Once they get to be "elites" and always face appropriate challenges, they forget the rest of the setting and the little people who inhabit it. A challenge most GMs forget to consider.

I once ran a World of Darkness game where a player said, "Is everyone a supernatural critter or wizard in this town?!?" Where upon I had them eventually end up in medium sized club bar packed with dancing people. I had one artistic PC decide to equate the dance floor with local supernatural scene, the DJ being local vamp prince, etc.

Turned out that player could only name a total of 35 wizards and supernaturals that they knew. I said what if you wanted to be safe and say the city had 10 others for every one they knew, which would be a population of 350. A sign on the wall said the club's max capacity was 200. So two clubs in a city that had 20 clubs in a 60 mile radius could hold the entire supernatural population with room to spare. ...

So apply that to a DnD setting where commoners get the king's respect and suddenly those +1 items hanging around the PC look like a legend in the making.

 

[Von Ether]

[/hijack]I don't know. It's fun to know that it's in the thousands. It's indicative of the fact that I've been around ENWorld for years. It's fun to watch it go up. Plus, changing my name cuts me off from the community somewhat, because it takes time for people to figure out that the new handle is, in fact, the old poster. Like my RL surname, which I loathe, my ENWorld handle is part of my identity in this community. I don't like it very much anymore, but it's how I'm known around here, and it's better to be known than not known.[/hijack]

It's sort of indicative ... It leans more towards saying you post alot. Giving you an extra month, you clocked in 765 posts every year. If you round me down to a year, I won't break that. For some reaon, I lost my handle and old post count, but I was on EN World back before 3.0 came out.

I was also on message boards and yahoo groups back when MnM started and before Savage Worlds saw print, I'd be surprised if my post count has reach 1,000 if you added both boards together.

You only have to make 6 posts a day for a year and you'll be right back up to that old post count. LOL!

 

[FireLance]

Oh, the bit about being able to re-allocate essentia between your soulmeds from round to round reminds me of every starship captain that intones "Divert all power to shields!"

 

[danbuter]

Clever, but not particularly original in concept.

Why does everything have to be original? Why not use something that has been around for a while, and is proven to work?

 

[Merlion]

I think maybe the trouble here is not just that its unoriginal, but might be borderline redundant.


I havent seen the book but from what I can tell it seems to me an awful lot like this whole "Incarnum" thing is a way for WOTC to try and passify the people who dont like the magic item dependency inherent in standard D&D without really changing much.

Since it seems to mostly consist of using "incarnum" to create temporary magic items, or the same sorts of effects one gets from magic items.

 

[WizarDru]

I havent seen the book but from what I can tell it seems to me an awful lot like this whole "Incarnum" thing is a way for WOTC to try and passify the people who dont like the magic item dependency inherent in standard D&D without really changing much.

Since it seems to mostly consist of using "incarnum" to create temporary magic items, or the same sorts of effects one gets from magic items.

Yes and no. Incarnum is more than a magic item system and less than a magic/psionic system. It's solidly in between.

Incarnum is the power source, essentia is the personal capacity to tap that power source and soul melds are the physical manifestation formed from that power source. Essentia use is similar to the force, in that a user of Incarnum taps into their own personal ability to channel it to gain special abilities and effects. Where the Jedi may have a Force Jump, an Incarnum user might be able to channel some of his essentia capacity into his jumping ability, temporarily. The Jedi then decides to use the Force to make him faster...so to does the Incarnum user speed himself up...in fact if he's a duskling, it's a racial ability.

The analogy breaks down with soul melds. A jedi uses a piece of equipment as his chosen weapon, the lightsaber. The Incarnum user binds a soulmeld to his hand chakra, such as the Blademeld prestige class, which is primarily a fighter who can summon a magic sword composed entirely of Incarnum.

Now here's one of the big differences from other systems and, IMHO, a critical difference both mechanically and conceptually: they never run out. Incarnum is not consumed nor is it truly transformed. This sounds minor at first, but actually has some signifcant differences. As an Incarnum user becomes more skilled at creating melds and using his essentia, he gains more options, allowing him to transform his abilities and soulmelds. Unlike traditional spells, soulmelds stay in place until disrupted; a character could summon armor made from Incarnum and then keep it until he choose to dismiss it. In an emergency, he could change the soulmeld to something that might be more appropriate or useful.

Example: An incarnum character wishes to emulate the character of Beet the Vandel Buster from the anime series of the same name. That character can summon one of five weapons (powered by the souls of some powerful warriors) from within himself, to do battle with monsters. During a battle, it becomes clear that his spear is useless against the skeleton he's battling...so he changes the soul-meld into a hammer and resumes the battle. He realizes, however, that he needs more power, so he channels his essentia using a feat to increase his battle prowess...however, to do so, he's going to have to stop using it to increase his speed. He does so, smashing the monster handily. He then switches his essentia to temporarily increase his hit points as more monsters arrive, and so on and so forth.

Incarnum is NOT a replacement for a full-blown magic system. It lacks quite a bit of functionality that the traditional D&D magic system has (which is fine, as long as everyone realizes that some kinds of resources aren't going to be available). It could be a replacement for a traditional magic item system, but that practically requires most characters multiclass into one of the Incarnum classes or races to reap any real benefit (although some of the prestige classes, like the blademeld, don't have such requirements).

In short, I agree that essentia use (on several levels) is similar in style to the use of the Force. But it also is radically different in other areas. Adding in the concept of soulmelds and some of the various abilities, I think that it's more of a superficial resemblance...I tend to think of the Psionics system as much closer to the Force than Incarnum.