[3.5] Making the Incarnate Tribal...

[Zovc]

As I was driving home from work today, I thought about the little bit of reading I did about Incarnum in my free time. Incarnum is essentially soul magic, if I understand right, seeing as it is the essence of all those living, dead, and unborns.

I'd like to play a support-type character using the Incarnate, I assume that Good is best at this (I also was hoping for a good character, regardless). The overall theme of the character that I was hoping for was tribal.

"It is not only my ancestors I am calling upon, but everyones', I also call upon those who will come after us."

I was thinking of multiclassing with Savage Bard for style, but it requires one to be chaotic (of course, it's possible DM would waive that). What support classes are there that would better synergise with the incarnate?

The end result I'd like is mostly a jack of all trades with a focus on support, and some frontline survivability. I'd expect 'character to start off with a spear, and would like to give them the feat that lets them fight at 10' and 5' with one. Knowledge (Nature) and Survival are worth bonus points.

For the record, I haven't overlooked soulmelds yet, I'm about to do so.

[Gpope]

Incarnate is a good jack of all trades, but it doesn't have an awful lot in the way of support. Once you start getting more of your binds it does have some buffs that can be shared with allies, but that can take a while, especially compared with other support-oriented classes.

It can be a very worthwhile dip, especially if you're going into soulcaster or sapphire hierarch to advance spellcasting (probably weaker than a single-class spellcaster, but better balanced and more enjoyable in my opinion), but if you want support I would not rely on it as a main class (relying on it as a main class is not always a great idea period.)

[Zovc]

(relying on it as a main class is not always a great idea period.)

So then what is the Incarnate's niche? What is it used as a stepping stone for, usually?

[Zincorium]

Spirit shaman (or druid)/incarnate/sapphire heirarch would be the best support character- but you're getting the support part from divine casting, not soulmelds.

Same deal with savage bard. The incarnate portion, aside from your aura, really isn't a support type character- it's a rogue type or a fighter type or maybe both, with a whole bunch of tricks up their sleeve. While there are options involving healing for soulmelds, they are almost offensively underwhelming compared to book-standard divine casters.


Also- a tribal incarnum user is present in the book already. As the totemist. Refluffing exists, of course, but don't be surprised if you get asked more than a few times why you're not using that class instead.

[Zovc]

(In response to Zincorium)

This just doesn't sound like what I want flavor-wise.

"As a totemist, you have close ties to nature similar to those of a druid or ranger, but your power is drawn from incarnum rather than divine magic. Your soulmelds primarily serve to give you new capabilities in combat, mostly new melee attack forms. Several soulmelds increase your defenses and a few improve your ranged attacks, but in general you belong in the front lines of combat, slashing your opponents with displacer beast tentacles before teleporting away like a blink dog."

Then again, this doesn't exactly sound like a nature-borne healer working for the greater good, either.

"Incarnum is a tool you can use to manipulate the physical manifestations of moral and ethical forces and wield them in righteous pursuit of an ideal. Whether you are holy and righteous or corrupt and evil, you literally come to embody one cause or alignment, adding the distilled essence of good, evil, law, or chaos into your soulmelds."

If there's a problem with posting this, feel free to slap me on the wrist and I will take it down.

[Gpope]

Well, that's kind of the thing: it doesn't really have a niche. It's not a terribly effective class on its general merits, although it does have some cheesy things to do (especially at low levels) and it can keep up in a mediocre sort of way.

Incarnates are primarily utility characters. They have some difficulty keeping up with pure spellcasters (who doesn't?), but they do have the advantage at low levels of being able to do most of their tricks all day long. They have a lot of self-buffs, so they can pump up their combat abilities and go to town, although generally they don't have the juice to seriously compete in battle. The two areas where their buffs excel are in defenses (for a d6 hit die class they can make themselves awfully hard to put down) and skill boosts (they can perform quite well as skillmonkeys, although they don't get access to trapfinding until level 4.)

In a lot of ways the incarnate resembles the monk in practice; they have some goofy movement powers, lots of defenses, some great skillmonkey capacity, but are really hurting for ways to seriously contribute to the party. At low levels they do have some really potent abilities (Dissolving Spittle can make warlocks jealous at low levels), but they just don't scale well at all. The most common use is to take the boosts that the incarnate can give themselves and multiclass into something else that can make better use of them. If you want to play healbot, a couple levels of incarnate can help you stretch your healing resources out a loooooong way.

Totemists have some overlap in the skillmonkeying department, but they're more of a primary combatant, with better HD and BAB and lots of soulmelds that grant natural attacks (and boost natural attacks.)

[Zovc]

Okay, so where would you put the Incarnate in terms of the commonly cited tier list? I imagine, by that description a low tier 3 or a high tier 4.

...and the Totemist seems to be in line with what I thought it was.


If you want to play healbot, a couple levels of incarnate can help you stretch your healing resources out a loooooong way.

And what are you referring to when you say that?

[Sinfire Titan]

Okay, so where would you put the Incarnate in terms of the commonly cited tier list? I imagine, by that description a low tier 3 or a high tier 4.

...and the Totemist seems to be in line with what I thought it was.



And what are you referring to when you say that?

Three soulmelds deal with Healing and HP. I forget their names right now (AFB), but one improves the HP healed when you get targeted by a healing spell, and one of them gives you a limited Lay on Hands At Will.


(relying on it as a main class is not always a great idea period.)

Kind of. Totemist? Sure, go straight to 20 and never look back and you'll be fine, but multiclassing is also OK. Incarnate? You can stay to 19th easily if you know the right feats and have a Niche that needs semi-constant filling and don't mind a low damage output. But if you need to fill the Tank or Caster role, you will want to multiclass a little bit (even dipping into Fighter for 2 bonus feats is enough).

Soulborn should never be called a class. But both the Incarnate and Totemist are fairly solid to 20th (they end up being the same strength as other Tier 4/3 classes).

[Gpope]

I've seen some people put Incarnate as low as tier 5, but I think that's a bit harsh. Although they do suffer from some of the same problems as monks I think Incarnates are better than monks in most regards, so I'd say they're a solid tier 4. Tier 3 is reaaaally pushing it. For the most part, you're a rogue that trades some damage-dealing capability for survivability.

The healing revolves around the soulmelds Lifebond Vestments and Therapeutic Mantle. Lifebond Vestments lets you heal allies at the cost of your own HP, but you get to heal 2 HP for every 1 HP you spend. Therapeutic Mantle boosts the amount of healing you receive. If you sink a feat or two in order to be able to put two essentia into Therapeutic Mantle, then you regain 5 hitpoints from every Cure Minor Wounds spell on you, which you can turn around and use to give 10 hitpoints to an ally. That's 10 points of healing for level 0 divine cantrips.

[Glimbur]

The healing revolves around the soulmelds Lifebond Vestments ...

The drawback to this plan is you can't heal the same person more than once with Lifebond Vestments more than once/hour. This might or might not be fixed by binding it to your Heart Chakra... which is either ~17 levels in Incarnate or an Epic Feat.

[Zovc]

So an Incarnate isn't quite what I was looking for...

Perhaps a Cloistered Cleric is more in-line with what I'm thinking of? (Medium BAB, better hit dice, better support casting.)

I'd expect my character to use Divination spells a lot, particularly Quickened True Strike and Augury, as an attempt to represent communing with spirits, his ancestors, your ancestors, etc.
(Perhaps to help with the Quickened True Strike, I can play as an Azuran and use Midnight Metamagic?)

I would like to have Bardic Knowledge or a smiliar ability... Knowledge Domain does give me knowledge skills as class skills, but it's not quite there (it also boosts divination spells).

Is there a better way to heal than to use Cure Light Wounds at early levels? I mean, Healing one hit from a longsword only to have my ally hit by a longsword again is silly (and from what I understand is the problem with healing).

Also, I remember seeing a feat that lets a longspear threaten 5' and 10', but it wasn't in the complete warrior like I thought it was--does anyone know where this feat is, if it exists?

[BooNL]

Cloistered Cleric has low BaB actually, so not really what you're looking for either.

The feat Short Haft (I think PHBII?) lets you use a reach weapon in the 5' circle.

[Gpope]

Cloistered Clerics lose the BAB and HD; if you want combat abilities, go for regular cleric.

Bear in mind that you can mix-and-match. As noted, Incarnate makes a very useful dipping class, and if you can fit in a Lawful alignment there's a dual-progression PrC that advances both cleric and incarnate abilities. Also you may want to look at some of the incarnum spells, particularly the "______ Spirit" line of spells. They're buff spells that give insight bonuses (so they stack with a lot of other buffs), and while they're short-duration they have the advantage that you can pre-cast them hours ahead of time and then activate their effect as an immediate action. Their flavor seems to fit your concept as well (calling on spirits to lend their talents to the target.)

As for healing... there's the Lifebond Vestments trick if you're willing to splash in some incarnum use. There's also a crazy powerful divine feat in PHB II that lets you spend a turn undead use to heal 1d8+Cha to everything with 60', which for a cleric with a decent charisma score adds up to a hell of a lot more healing than you're going to get from CLW. Unfortunately it doesn't distinguish friend from foe, so unless you're fighting undead it's not very good combat healing.

[Zovc]

Cloistered Cleric has low BaB actually, so not really what you're looking for either.

The feat Short Haft (I think PHBII?) lets you use a reach weapon in the 5' circle.

You're right (d6 HD, too, I think. : /)... I could always throw in Fighter or Barbarian on top of the Cloistered Cleric, I suppose. Warblade doesn't have the most Synergy with CC, and I can't be a Neutral Good Crusader... ToB doesn't have that much for me, I don't think.

Indeed it is Short Haft! Hmm, that feat is more demanding than I thought it was... I may just use a regular spear.