PF: Magic of Incarnum

[Lastgrasp]

I just picked up Magic of Incarnum and I like the concept behind it. Thinking of using the material in a Pathfinder game. Might use them as a villain organization.

Just curious on a few things, how do the classes stack up the PF ones? Too weak? Too strong?

Any other 3.X sources that have Incarnum in them?

[GoatBoy]

Magic Item Compendium has some items in it which can be bound to chakras. There are a few options on the WotC site, too.

Interestingly, the one other supplement with Incarnum support is the Thief of Life prestige class in Faiths of Eberron, who can gain one free essentia when killing something, which lasts an hour.

The new Pathfinder classes are pretty well-balanced compared to what has come before, so the Incarnum classes won't throw any major wrenches into the works.

[sonofzeal]

Incarnate and Totemist should fit in reasonably into a PF campaign. The Soulborn will need a serious boost to compete though.

[MeeposFire]

Incarnate and Totemist should fit in reasonably into a PF campaign. The Soulborn will need a serious boost to compete though.

True. Notice that soulborn are similar to paladins, so take the PF paladin and its variants and pick the parts that make most sense and replace spells with the soulborn progression for soulmelds.

[Essence_of_War]

Soulborn? What's that? :smallwink:

It's a shame they didn't manage to get a full BAB incarnum using base class into MoI. Person_Man has great ones here (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=119121), and here (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=156441). The soulborn is basically stillborn if played out of the box without significant optimization. A commoner with carefully chosen feats has a MUCH better meldshaper progression.

In all seriousness, with a little thought, the totemist usually ends up in the tier 4 range, the Incarnate usually in the 3-4 ish range. They will be thoroughly overshadowed by optimized full casters in the last game, but should fit in nicely with anyone else.

There are additional dragon related soulmelds in 3.x's Dragon Magic.

[Glimbur]

Interestingly, the one other supplement with Incarnum support is the Thief of Life prestige class in Faiths of Eberron, who can gain one free essentia when killing something, which lasts an hour.

There are also some psionic/incarnum soulmelds and a class in an online WotC article (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/psm/20060217a).

There's a fair amount of homebrew incarnum around, check my sig for mine.

Some soulmelds provide significant bonuses to combat maneuvers... the Sphinx Claws, for example, in 3.5, give bonuses to Str checks i.e. trips and such. This becomes more powerful in PF where they tightened down the special maneuvers. Grapple is particularly possible to build quite high... I have heard of a +70 grapple check on a 20th level totemist. That's enough to wrestle dragons. These sorts of things don't usually happen in PF, but besides that Incarnum should play nicely.

[Essence_of_War]

In this vein, the Soulborn actually has one really relevant soulmeld on its list. Mauling Gauntlets. As Glimbur mentioned, in PF where it is harder to get high trip checks, shaping Mauling Gauntlets and cramming it with as much essentia as possible can be an excellent method to get high trip checks.

Alternatively, any other Incarnum class can take "Shape Soulmeld" and steal it :smallsmile:

[Psyren]

Interestingly, the one other supplement with Incarnum support is the Thief of Life prestige class in Faiths of Eberron, who can gain one free essentia when killing something, which lasts an hour.

There's a bit of Incarnum stuff in Dragon Magic too, IIRC.

As for getting them into Pathfinder, just tweak the skill lists; only the Soulborn will need a real overhaul. They'll get stronger due to that and having more feats.

I would also give the races a boost; maybe give Azurins +2 any like Humans, then give all the rest +2 con in addition to their other stuff (resulting in Dusklings having a beefy +4, perhaps.)

[Andreaz]

My PF table is gestalt since we first heard of that alternative, and this time around we have quite a few Incarnum users. There's a cleric//esper knight (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=169532), and a wizard/swiftblade//incarnate.

For the soulmelds that boost things like trips and grapples, nothing changed. They still boost only those specific maneuvers. For skills we just went with the condensation (i think there were one or two melds that became basically the same with it). Feats are largely unchanged too.

As with anything in the table, we don't abuse whatever exploit we didn't figure out in the conversions.

[Essence_of_War]

How is the Esper Knight working out? I always thought it looked like a really cool use of Essentia w/o soulmelds to create force abilities.