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Frog Dragon
2009-11-28, 01:28 PM
So. Incarnum. It's just damn confusing. I can't find a place to start from to get to understanding something about the system. It's thrown all over the book. I still haven't figured out how Essentia even works. So could someone, please give a little rundown on the basics of the system? It seems interesting. I just can't figure it out from the book.

Eldariel
2009-11-28, 01:38 PM
It's very simple. You have a bunch of essentia from race, feats and levels. You have a bunch of Soulmelds from class levels and possibly feats. You can spread your essentia allotment between the Soulmelds and feats you've got active (some feats benefit of essentia too) to empower them, but they do stuff with 0 essentia invested in them.

Then you have a bunch of Chakra Binds opened over class levels or through feats. They allow you to gain extra effects out of Soulmelds by binding one into them, but the catch is that you can't use magic item in the same slot you bound a Soulmeld to. There are few special chakras for each class that have special features and don't overlap with anything: Totem for Totemist, Heart for Incarnate and Soul for Soulborn.


And yeah...that's about it. The operative unit are Soulmelds, Essentia is something you spread around to decide how powerful each effect is and chakra binds allow you to gain extras out of the Soulmelds at the cost of magic item slots and being able to bind only one Soulmeld to each Chakra.

averagejoe
2009-11-28, 01:50 PM
Think of essentia as "points" you can put into your various abilities. You have an amount of essentia, and you can allocate this to the various essentia receptacles you have; mostly you'll use this on your active soulmelds, but there are also the incarnum feats which allow you to invest essentia in those.

So, say you have 4 essentia, and you also took the Sapphire Sprint feat. Now, remember that you can only invest a certain amount of essentia in receptacles depending on your level (see page 19), so let's say you're level 6. You can decide to invest 1 of your essentia into Sapphire Sprint, improving your movement speed by 5 feet, or you can choose to invest 2, improving your movement speed by 10 feet. In the first case you have 3 essentia remaining to invest in other feats or soulmelds, and in the second you have 2.

I don't quite remember the timing of this. I remember that, for the feats, you can't change the amount of essentia you invest for 24 hours, but I think you can otherwise allocate essentia as a swift action. Not sure about that, though.

Darrin
2009-11-28, 02:28 PM
So. Incarnum. It's just damn confusing. I can't find a place to start from to get to understanding something about the system. It's thrown all over the book. I still haven't figured out how Essentia even works. So could someone, please give a little rundown on the basics of the system? It seems interesting. I just can't figure it out from the book.

A "Soulmeld" is a little like your own personal magic item that you shape out of a piece of your soul. Once it's shaped, it stays on your character until you unshape it or it gets dispelled. There are roughly three power levels:

1) Basic Soulmeld: A basic ability or bonus that works all the time, a little like a continuous or use-activated magic item. A shaped soulmeld occupies a "Chakra", which is analogous to magic item slots (feet, hands, waist, throat, crown, etc.). Like magic items, soulmelds that affect certain stats are associated with certain chakras, but at the basic level you can shape a soulmeld in a particular chakra and still wear a magic item in that slot.

2) Invested Soulmeld: You can also pump essentia into a soulmeld, usually to increase the basic ability. Each soulmeld has a certain capacity, usually 1-4 essentia points, which is based on your character level. Certain feats and class abilities can increase this.

3) Bound Soulmeld: When you have a high enough level, you can "bind" a shaped soulmeld to a particular chakra for a more powerful effect/ability/bonus. The chakras are ranked roughly into power groups: hands, feet, crown are the least chakras; arms, brow, and shoulder are lesser chakras; throat and waist are considered greater chakras. Heart and soul chakras are a bit above that, but only available to high-level Incarnates. Binding a soulmeld is a lot like putting on a magic item, particularly because you can't bind a soulmeld to a chakra and also wear a magic item in the same location. Some bound soulmelds can be boosted further by investing essentia. The basic effect, bound effect, and any invested essentia effects all stack, so you get all those benefits at the same time.

Essentia is "chi" energy, life-force energy, or a bunch of midichlorians, whatever you want to call it. You get a few essentia points from an incarnum-using race, from incarnum classes, and from certain incarnum-related feats. With a swift action, you can distribute these essentia points into your soulmelds to increase their effects/bonuses/abilities. Essentia points aren't really "spent" and don't go away, when you're done using them they go back into your essentia pool and can be distributed again next round with a swift action. You know how the U.S.S. Enterprise redirects engine power from the phasers into the shields and whatnot? It's a little like that.

Incarnum feats work a little differently. Most of them give you a basic effect, something similar to Dodge or Power Attack, and they have an essentia capacity like soulmelds (1-4 points based on your character level), but incarnum feats can only be invested with essentia once every 24 hours, and the essentia stays in that feat until you've discharged the effect or are done using that ability for the day. Each feat gives you one essentia point that you can either invest in the feat, leave it in your pool, or invest it in another soulmeld.

Clear as mud, yes?

Pharaoh's Fist
2009-11-28, 02:36 PM
So. Incarnum. It's just damn confusing. I can't find a place to start from to get to understanding something about the system. It's thrown all over the book. I still haven't figured out how Essentia even works. So could someone, please give a little rundown on the basics of the system? It seems interesting. I just can't figure it out from the book.

You should give up on ever understanding it and mail your now useless book to me for proper disposal.

Random NPC
2009-11-28, 02:49 PM
You should give up on ever understanding it and mail your now useless book to me for proper disposal.

http://downlode.org/Creative/Writing/Notebook/Illustrations/itsatrap.jpg

The Dark Fiddler
2009-11-28, 02:58 PM
You should give up on ever understanding it and mail your now useless book to me for proper disposal.

Ignore him and mail it to me; it saves me 14 bucks. :smalltongue: