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evil-frosty
2009-07-22, 03:03 PM
In a campaign i want to run, i thought of using incarnum specifically totemists. Only problem is that i dont understand the system at all. I get the idea you get a certain number of soulmelds and essentia but i dont get the whole binding thing or the bonuses you get exactly. So can you helpful people of the Playground explain the system to me and the benefits?

Draz74
2009-07-22, 04:08 PM
Sure.

From Level 1, you can shape any soulmeld; there are no "higher-level" soulmelds. However, the soulmelds still have scaling effects based on how much essentia you put into them and what Chakras (aka body slots) you have "opened" via class levels or feats.

Any shaped soulmeld is "occupying" a body slot (aka Chakra). However, a magic item and a soulmeld can share a body slot, unless the soulmeld is "bound" to its slot. Barring feats that say otherwise, you can't have two soulmelds occupying the same slot, let alone Bound to it.

Essentia are "incarnum points." You have a limited amount of them, but barring certain specific anti-incarnum magic, they never "go away" or get destroyed, and they only get "used up" for the day if you put them "into" an incarnum Feat. If you "put them into" Soulmelds instead, which is their most normal use, then they remain freely available for you to move somewhere else, anytime you use a Swift Action to move them.

A lot of the bonuses listed under Soulmelds (i.e. pretty much all the cool effects) only happen when they are "bound" to a Chakra. Binding them is something you can only choose 1/day unless you have a feat or class feature that says otherwise. Binding them costs nothing except for making that body slot unavailable to magic items, but you have a limited number that you can "bind" in any given day. Oh, and you can only "bind" a Soulmeld to a Chakra if that Chakra has been "opened" (usually by class levels, sometimes through magic effects or Feats). (Merely "occupying" a Chakra with a Soulmeld does not require the Chakra to be "opened.")

Does that help? What's still confusing?

Sinfire Titan
2009-07-22, 04:12 PM
Adding to the above:


Each Soulmeld acts like a "larval" form of a magic item. The character's meldshaper level is the caster level of the Soulmeld for all purposes and intents (such as suppressing them via Dispel Magic), and Soulmelds react to spells the same way magic items do (the exception is Sundering or damaging them, Soulmelds have no HP and no Hardness, and are effectively impossible to break through Sundering or similar abilities).

Essenita is like the enhancement bonus you normally put on armor and weapons. Only every soulmeld grants something different for investing essentia into it. The meldshaper has an essentia pool (which is the total amount of essentia he has, including what's been invested in the soulmelds/items) and can use a swift action to "move" essentia between his pool and any number of his soulmelds or class features (he can't do this with feats, save for the Cobalt Rage feat, but that requires a prestige class to do). He has a limit to how much essentia he can invest in a single soulmeld. Typically, it's his Character level divided by 4, but some effects can improve this value (a feat, a magic item, and two class features).

The maximum essentia capacity a standard 20th level Incarnate or Totemist character can have is 8 (Totemists can exceed this value, but only temporarily). The meldshaper doesn't need to meet the maximum capacity in order to invest in a soulmeld (he can have as little in each soulmeld as he chooses, so long as he doesn't exceed the capacity).


Chakra binds are where the system gets a little tricky. Normally, shaping a soulmeld makes it hover above the corresponding magic item slot (the Bluesteel Bracers, for example, occupy the same slot that bracers of Armor do). While a soulmeld is not bound to a Chakra, the body slot is considered open. As long as it is open, you can gain the benefits of every soulmeld or magic item that occupies that slot without penalty (but you don't get the benefits for binding the soulmelds to that chakra).

Upon binding a soulmeld to a chakra, the meldshaper effectively closes that body slot for the next 24 hours. No other soulmeld or magic item may occupy that body slot unless the item says ignores the Chakra bind restriction or the meldshaper has the Split Chakra/Double Chakra feat. This is akin to donning a magic item (you can't gain the benefit of a Monk's Belt and a Belt of Giant Strength without a special item or feat being involved).

There's a limit to Chakra binds, however: No individual soulmeld may be bound to more than one chakra at a time. One class feature allows you to bypass this restriction, but even that is restricted in use.

There are 11 chakra slots. Crown, feet, hands, arms, brow, shoulders, throat, waist, heart, totem, and soul. Meldshapers gain access to new chakra slots as they gain levels. The most powerful slots (arguably) are the Heart, Soul, and Totem slots.

Each chakra slot corresponds to a magic item body slot (except the Totem):
Crown: Head or Helm
Feet: Boots
Hands: Gloves, or gauntlets
Arms: Bracers
Brow: Eye
Shoulders: Cloaks, capes
Throat: Necklaces, amulets
Waist: Belts, greaves
Heart: Vests
Soul: Armor

The Totem is an exception: it has no corresponding magic item slot. It can be anywhere you want it to be, but the soulmeld bound to it must be shaped on another chakra slot (binding a soulmeld to your Totem chakra does not cut off access to any other body slot).


If you have any other questions, or need help making a decent Totemist character/NPC, just read these two (http://brilliantgameologists.com/boards/index.php?topic=2943.0) threads (http://brilliantgameologists.com/boards/index.php?topic=551.0) and ask me about it.

lsfreak
2009-07-22, 04:28 PM
I'll throw in the same thing a secondthird time in a different way. I know how you feel, I just recently went through Incarnum to try and learn it.

Soulmelds - You essentially make magic items for yourself. They provide certain, fairly limited benefits as-is, but you can do other things with them (see below) and you get a lot of them as you level; you can also shape any soulmeld you want since none of them are bound by level. They use body slots just as magic items, but you may wear an item and a soulmeld on the same body slot. In general, you can have only one soulmeld bound to a single body slot, and a single soulmeld can only be bound once (i.e. if it is available to both arms and wrists, you can bind it only to one).

Chakra binds - You take the soulmelds and make them more powerful. You have a much more limited number of available chakra binds than total soulmelds, and you can only bind certain body slots as they open up from leveling. In doing this, you gain both the original benefit of the soulmeld, and the benefit of the chakra bind. However, you cannot share the body slot with magic items, and like non-chakra-bound soulmelds you cannot have one soulmeld on multiple spots.

The main exception is that totemists, which have a soulmeld taking up a regular body slot but is bound to the totem chakra, and at higher levels can have the item bound to both the body slot and the totem at the same time. For example, I have a soulmeld that takes an arm slot. I then bind it to my totem chakra, though it's still occupying my arm slot. At higher levels, I can bind it to both the arm chakra and the totem chakra.

Essentia - Every round as a swift action, you may take your essentia pool and invest it into your soulmelds. You have a limited essentia pool, and each soulmeld can only hold so much essentia. However, this essentia never goes away; you can reassign the entire pool every round without any losses.

For example, say you have a soulmeld that lets you fly, another one that ups your melee damage, and another that increases you AC. Starting combat you may want to have the increased AC as well as a little bit of added damage. When you then find out that you're going to be fighting in a copse of downed trees (rough terrain), you decide that flight will be more important and you switch to flying/melee damage so that you can charge. After your charge, you realize the guy you're fighting is a soft hitter but has some type of healing ability, so you go with a little AC but a lot of extra damage.

There are also ways of investing essentia into other things, such as feats. With feats, you invest it only once per day and the benefit lasts the entire day; that essentia is unavailable for reinvesting every round and you cannot invest further essentia into them.