Essentia?

[SlashRunner]

Greetings everyone!
Upon perusing these forums, I have found numerous references to "essentia". Now, I am very new to D&D. I've grasped the basic rules, but none of them contain anything pertaining to essentia. If someone could explain it to me, I would be most grateful.

[Jarian]

Essentia is the "fuel" to an alternate system, Incarnum, from Magic of Incarnum.

[SlashRunner]

Ok...how does this Incarnum system work? Is it some kind of replacement for magic or something?

[Kalaska'Agathas]

It's an alternative to magic, rather than a full-stop replacement. It even has some Prestige Classes that offer dual progression with Magic and Meldshaping. It's a bit too complex to explain how it works without the book, and I think a full run down of the rules would violate Wizards' copyright.

[Darth Stabber]

It is a part of Magic of Incarnum, and has no use outside the context of that book. That being said, Magic of Incarnum is a ton of fun. Essentia is essentially moveable individual units of power. You can shift it between soulmelds, feats, and a few other miscellaneous things, and the power of one receptical increases and the other decreases.

[MeeposFire]

Ok...how does this Incarnum system work? Is it some kind of replacement for magic or something?

Incarnum works like this.

Soul energy derived from all souls past, present, or future can be used to create item like manifestations of power called soul melds that you "wear" on your body. These soul melds give you some sort of bonus such as a bonus to a skill. These soulmelds can be powered up by using soul energy called essentia. Each point of essentia gives additional bonus such as increasing the skill bonus given by the soul meld. Each soul meld can then be bound to your party which takes up your magic item slot on that part of your body which gives an extra bonus such as giving you evasion.

Incarnum cannot replace the traditional magic system though it can be used to replace certain themes. For instance you could replace the druid for the natural attack beastly warrior with the totemist class but it could not replace the druid for the divine spell casting especially for healing. I like it to augment magic and to better serve various themes and for being fun in and of itself.

[stainboy]

There are three 20-level incarnum classes. It's worth pointing out that Incarnum is super complicated. Incarnum classes are very difficult to play without reading the book carefully.


Incarnate - Lots of reconfigurable skills and utility magic. Decently high optimization ceiling, but they're not great out of the box. Find an Incarnate guide online if you want to play this, even in a low-op game.

Soulborn - Like paladins, but worse. Next!

Totemist - Natural attack powerhouse. Your party role is to grow like six sets of claws and then make a Pounce attack with all of them. The book repeatedly compares them to druids, which is part of the writers' plot to make sure no one knows how incarnum works. Totemists worship landsharks and four-armed monkeys, which sounds stupid but research has shown that it is actually awesome. See enclosed visual aid.

http://i978.photobucket.com/albums/ae264/KtoSobolev/Totemist.jpg

[Reluctance]

As a design idea, the developers were toying around with alternative magic systems late in 3.5's lifecycle. The weaknesses in the Vancian system were well-known and often commented on. Incarnum was just one of the systems they were testing out.

As a game mechanic, think of the psionic augment system. Except instead of spending power points that only come back the next day, you have a pool of augment points that you can shift around from round to round. (You'll generally have far fewer essentia than an equivalent level psionic character will have PP, so don't worry too much about getting option swamped.) Soulmelds are the ongoing powers you have operating (Incarnum really only focuses on ongoing effects), and Essentia is the augment pool you shift around between them.

[Veyr]

I will say that I don't think Incarnum is as complicated as people think. It's mostly that Magic of Incarnum is rather poorly-organized and it makes it very complicated to try to learn because various information you need is spread all over the book in different chapters, which is annoying.

[Kantolin]

I dunno - unlike most other systems, you have to have a pretty good understanding of most of your soulmelds to get a lot of oompf out of them. Most of them are somewhat specialized, so you have to know 'wait, there was a soulmeld for making me a tracker' and go find it in order to get the most out of your incarnate.

Although you can always, the next day, change your mind. ^_^

Incarnum is ridiculously fun, though!

[Veyr]

That is true, but that doesn't really make the system complicated, just means you have a lot of options. And again, Magic of Incarnum itself is annoying about organizing the Soulmelds so reviewing your options is difficult. But if we're talking about how the system works, it's pretty simple. The main thing that requires understanding is the distinction between shaping and binding a 'meld.

[Reluctance]

Actually, the biggest problem to the system is that taking advantage of its flexibility requires the player to memorize the effects of every soulmeld they have available. That's not an insignificant entry cost.

[Greenish]

Actually, the biggest problem to the system is that taking advantage of its flexibility requires the player to memorize the effects of every soulmeld they have available. That's not an insignificant entry cost.Well, you can get away with just knowing a few of the most useful ones, especially if you start at lower levels. Even taking that into account, the memorizations you'll need for the whole system come nowhere near those for prepared casters who know their whole list (like, say, druid and cleric).

Oh, and there's a handbook (http://brilliantgameologists.com/boards/index.php?topic=551.0), of course.

[Darth Stabber]

Totemist - My personal favorite 3.5 class, you are a master of natural weapons. Easier out of the box than Incarnate, while maintaining a high optimization ceiling. On an optimized level if you are not making at least 6 attacks per round by level 6, you're probably doing it wrong. Mixes very well with barbarian (and has a dual progression prestige class that rocks), and is one of only 2 illiterate classes. Any melee build in gestalt would love this class as a second half.

Incarnate - the primary incarnum class. At low op it is a reasonably reconfigurable skill monkey. At high op it is pretty scary. Also great in gestalt, since it's abilities rarely use actions, and are more passive in nature.

soulborn - If you allow it to gestalt with the also terrible soulknife, or really any other horrible class in a nongestalt game, it is quite reasonable (high teir 4), but beyond that it is a blight upon the player that chooses it. Soulknifeborn is a ton of fun and is unlikely to break any game, and actually develops optimizability as well. Soulborn//samurai and soulborn//healers work fairly well. Again that is only for an otherwise non-gestalt game.

All and all I would say that incarnum classes are really fun and playable (except soulborn). They are absolutely amazing in gestalt due to that system's unique action economy issues.

[stainboy]

Well, you can get away with just knowing a few of the most useful ones, especially if you start at lower levels. Even taking that into account, the memorizations you'll need for the whole system come nowhere near those for prepared casters who know their whole list (like, say, druid and cleric).

Oh, and there's a handbook (http://brilliantgameologists.com/boards/index.php?topic=551.0), of course.

Yeah, but druid and cleric are so powerful that even a player can contribute without knowing what more than 20% of the spells do. Incarnates can't get away with that. That's not really a design flaw of the incarnate, but there you go.

[Darth Stabber]

Yeah incarnates require a lot of rules mastery, both of the normal rules, and the specific incarnum rules, and you need solid knowledge of all of your soulmelds. Totemist requires less, but benefits very strongly. The Totemist's meld list is also slightly shorter, but since they all have multiple chakra to bind to, it makes little difference. Both classes are also really good dips if you have an in depth knowledge of that class's meld list. The other nice thing about incarnum from a dipper's perspective is that there is very little that keys off of meldshaper level, and the essentia capacity of soulmelds and incarnum feats is based on hit die, not meldshaper level. If you are going to dip, you probably want to dip 2 levels since that will get you the first chakra bind (either 1 least chakra for incarnate, or the utterly bad@$$ totem chakra for the totemist)

Oh, by the way, the key to abusing totemist is improved unarmed strike, since RAW you may make a full iterative of unarmed strikes and all of your natural weapons as secondaries on a full attack.

[Amphetryon]

Oh, by the way, the key to abusing totemist is improved unarmed strike, since RAW you may make a full iterative of unarmed strikes and all of your natural weapons as secondaries on a full attack.
Rapidstrike, which has slightly more onerous requirements to obtain, is also a good way to abuse those natural weapon iteratives.