What does an Incarnate do?

[The Underlord]

Do incarnates have any particular role(trap-finder, skill monkey, healer etc) or can they do varitey of things. Also what tier are they?

[Amphetryon]

Do incarnates have any particular role(trap-finder, skill monkey, healer etc) or can they do varitey of things. Also what tier are they?

Incarnates are generally strong secondary tanks, with the ability to fill the skillmonkey role instead - or additionally - depending on which soulmelds they utilize. Most of the time I've seen them ranked as "high Tier 4/low Tier 3," as they can fill a variety of roles very well, but would be very hard-pressed to actually break the game.

[wayfare]

They have a great deal of options, but a focused build is required if you want to be effective: the Good Incarnate is a great Tank, the Lawful Incarnate is an off combatant. All around, the class can do all kinds of skillmonkery -- but a planned build is key.

[gkathellar]

They can do a lot of stuff very well, so long as you understand how to work the system. One of the things Incarnum does best is let you reach very high numbers in a variety of things, but never all at once.

The best way to summarize it is this: Incarnates are a functional combat class with a poor BAB, and a functional skillmonkey class with 2+Int skill points per level and a poor list of class skills. It wouldn't be a bad call to grant them average BAB and slightly more skills, but they don't need it to be quite effective.

Also Incarnum is so fun to play if you like micromanagement oh my god its beautiful.

[Dusk Eclipse]

Chaotic Incarnates made good archers IIRC....

The point is that Incarnate is probably the most non-casting/manifesting versatile character class, as it allows you to be at least passable at almost anything from front-ling to healing.

[Keld Denar]

The question isn't "What does an Incarnate do?", but "What do you want YOUR Incarnate to do?" Cause the answer for the first question is "whatever the heck they want to".