[DnD 3.5] Incarnum-based Healer?

[theonesin]

So someone in our group is going to give DMing a try by running a module. The party, as far as I know of, consists of a Warlord(from Pathfinder, I think), a Barbarian, a Psychic Warrior, and another player who hasn't picked yet(I thought I heard Fighter mentioned). We're starting at level 1.

I've always wanted to give Incarnum a try, but kept getting sidetracked before. I'd like to try it now, but I've never played it before and so I'm unsure what, if any, healing abilities they have(I know I read about one soulmeld that lets you heal an ally while dealing damage to yourself).

Do any of the Incarnum classes make a good healer?

If not, any suggestions for a better class to handle it, other than a Cleric(just don't feel like playing one)?

Thanks.

[T.G. Oskar]

The soulmeld you're speaking is Lifebond Vestments, which allow you to heal up to 1 hp/meldshaper level, +5 per point of essentia (so a 7th level incarnate heals between 7-12 points of damage), with you taking half damage. Binding it to your arms allows you to heal at a distance, which isn't so bad. You have to wait for an hour to do so.

If you have lay on hands (Paladin, or a few levels in Hospitaler), you can get the Azure Touch feat to treat your class level as if it were higher based on how many points of essentia you add (so, if you add 2 points, you treat your level as 2 higher). You might want to ask if the Cleric ACF of Complete Champion counts as lay on hands for this purpose, since it works pretty nicely.

If you have healing magic (i.e. you are a cleric), binding the Therapeutic Mantle to your shoulders increases the caster level of any healing spell you cast, which is only moderately useful.

Aside from that, incarnum-based healing is pretty limited. Self-healing can be possible, with Phoenix Cloak (bound to shoulders IIRC allows you to heal from fire attacks) and the Healing Soul feat (which allows self-healing based on essentia expended).

Healing inside of battle is not very effective, though, so your best bet is to seek if any of your allies has UMD and get wands of Cure Light Wounds, wands of Lesser Vigor and Healing Belts after you get your first thousand gp. The Healer (from Miniatures Handbook) is great at healing, but boring anywhere else (very few buffs if none, limits you to non-metallic armor with simple weapons which means you'll be the heal-bot around); Ardents are nice healers if you take the mantle of Healing, and even more if your DM agrees to let you enter the Sangehirn PrC (it's online, so you can show him). Bards can cover up the healing and also do some fine buffing while at it, and also work as the face of the group so you won't be too bored. However, once again: healing isn't very effective inside of battle, so attempt to look on reducing damage (buffs to AC for your allies, and later on nudge them to items that grant miss chance to enemy attacks) instead of healing. If you're intent on healing, the above ideas are nice enough.

[Psyren]

At early levels, your best bet to heal as an Incarnate is via items; use the Mage's Spectacles meld to UMD wands and such, as well as the Therapeutic Mantle to power up their effect.

Lifebond Vestments is the soulmeld you were referring to, and it can be very good for healing (especially combined with Vitality Belt) but that takes a long time to really take off; before your Heart chakra opens at Incarnate 16/Totemist 17, the cooldown is just too long to be truly practical.


Ardents are nice healers if you take the mantle of Healing, and even more if your DM agrees to let you enter the Sangehirn PrC (it's online, so you can show him).

Note that Sangehirn and the Life Mantle are largely redundant with each other; take one or the other, not both.

[theonesin]

Yeah, from what I was reading, it did seem Incarnum was fairly lacking in healing, but I needed to be sure.

The Warlord in the party is apparently a buffer, and can give out temp HPs. I don't think I want to add another buffer to the party though.

[Gotterdammerung]

I know you won't hear this very often but,
if you want to play an interesting healer...
play a truenamer.

Keep your UMD high and use a wand of Healthful Rest.
Why?
Well, because
Healthful rest does this
Conjuration (Healing)
Level: Bard 1, Druid 1,
Components: V, S,
Casting Time: 10 minutes
Range: Close (25 ft. + 5 ft./2 levels)
Target: One creature/level, no two of which can be more than 30 feet apart
Duration: 24 hours
Saving Throw: Will negates (harmless)
Spell Resistance: Yes (harmless)

Healthful rest doubles the subjects' natural healing rate.
Each affected creature regains twice the hit points it otherwise would have regained during that day, depending on its activity level

Well why is that important?

Well Because

fast healing
A creature with the fast healing special quality (extraordinary) regains hit points at an exceptionally fast rate, usually 1 or more hit points per round, as given in the creature's entry (for example, a cave troll has fast healing 8). Except where noted here, fast healing is just like natural healing (see page 146 of the Player's Handbook). Fast healing does not restore hit points lost from starvation, thirst, or suffocation, and it does not allow a creature to regrow lost body parts. Unless otherwise stated, it does not allow lost body parts to be reattached.

A creature that has taken both nonlethal and lethal damage heals the nonlethal damage first.

Fast healing does not increase the number of hit points regained when a creature polymorphs.


Now go look up words of nurturing.

And then read Zaq's truenaming guide for a crash course in what to beg your GM to allow.

Also, worth noting.

in the back of the truenamer entry, in the adaption suggestion, it suggests allowing truenamers to make up their own feats.

I suggest pointing this out to your GM.

And then show him the math on Extend Utterance, Quicken Utterance, ect.

It is very easy to reverse engineer the math and create

Persistant Utterance
Prerequisites: Truespeak 15 ranks, Extend Utterance, ability to cast utterances

Benefit: Changes your utterances duration to 24 hours but adds +30 to the truespeak DC

Fun times.

Edit: In the grand scheme of things, +40 fast healing for 24 hours for all your party is not incredibly all powerful, but
A. that isnt all you can do.
B. it is a cool and interesting healer.
C. It is easy/boring to take strong and make broke, it is fun to take weak and make strong.

[Bonzai]

Incarnum classes aren't meant to be buffers. They are either melee or Awesome skill monkies. Sounds like they could use a skill monkey in that party. They are also fairly potent in combat early on, but tend to plateu quick. A 3rd lvl Incarnate can have a 3d6 lighting touch attack, 2d6 Fire Shield, and a 3HD Necrocarnum Zombie pet. Not shabby for 3rd lvl.

[Big Fau]

Incarnum classes aren't meant to be buffers. They are either melee or Awesome skill monkies. Sounds like they could use a skill monkey in that party. They are also fairly potent in combat early on, but tend to plateu quick. A 3rd lvl Incarnate can have a 3d6 lighting touch attack, 2d6 Fire Shield, and a 3HD Necrocarnum Zombie pet. Not shabby for 3rd lvl.

They have a bit of buffing going for them (Bluesteel Bracers, Share Incarnum Radiance), enough that they actually have it as a subrole. They aren't very good at it, but what do you expect from a tank class?

[candycorn]

Incarnum classes aren't meant to be buffers. They are either melee or Awesome skill monkies. Sounds like they could use a skill monkey in that party. They are also fairly potent in combat early on, but tend to plateu quick. A 3rd lvl Incarnate can have a 3d6 lighting touch attack, 2d6 Fire Shield, and a 3HD Necrocarnum Zombie pet. Not shabby for 3rd lvl.

Um... 3rd level?

A 3rd level Azurin Incarnate with Expanded Soulmeld Capacity Feat, with 3 essentia in Dissolving spittle, does 4d6 acid damage.

With wild talent and Psionic Shot, that'll go up to 6d6 acid as a ranged touch attack. Add on Incarnate Avatar, and possibly sighting gloves, and you're a level 3 character that can do decent damage repeatedly.

[tyckspoon]

Persistant Utterance
Prerequisites: Truespeak 15 ranks, Extend Utterance, ability to cast utterances

Benefit: Changes your utterances duration to 24 hours but adds +30 to the truespeak DC



That may be the one thing that would actually break the Truenamer, although the Law of Sequence would still be kicking you in the face until you get Speak To The Masses a couple of levels later. Truespeech does have a lot of pretty neat buffs in it that are mainly held back by their duration... like the one that gives Blindsense and Trueseeing, or Confound Resistance to grant Evasion and Mettle, or Magic Contraction on a friendly caster, or the Perfected Tool one that adds fortification to armor. Persisting those would give them a viable claim to being an excellent and unique buffer.

[Gotterdammerung]

That may be the one thing that would actually break the Truenamer, although the Law of Sequence would still be kicking you in the face until you get Speak To The Masses a couple of levels later. Truespeech does have a lot of pretty neat buffs in it that are mainly held back by their duration... like the one that gives Blindsense and Trueseeing, or Confound Resistance to grant Evasion and Mettle, or Magic Contraction on a friendly caster, or the Perfected Tool one that adds fortification to armor. Persisting those would give them a viable claim to being an excellent and unique buffer.

under the effective spell level section is talks about raising the utterance spell level by adding 4 to the truespeak DC. (essentially truenamers get a wierd heighten for free).

Under the law of Sequence it says it is ok to use higher level versions of an utterance while lower lvl versions are active.

So by each time we tack 4 to the DC we bypass the law of sequences.

As far as affecting multiple people,

Chain utterance
prerequs: 9 truespeak ranks, any other meta utterance feat, the ability to cast utterances.

An utterance with a range greater than touch shoots of to target 1 more target per truenamer caster lvl blah blah blah the rest. +15 to the truespeak DC.

[Psyren]

If you're going to be homebrewing though, you may as well homebrew a buff to Incarnum healing also, and still skip Truenamer.

Anyhow, what's neat about Therapeutic Mantle+Mage's Spectacles - activating a spell item (like a wand) still counts as casting the spell, so Therapeutic Mantle's bonus will apply to it. At Incarnate 3 for instance, You could get a wand of Cure Minor Wounds for the paltry sum of 375gp, grab Expanded Soulmeld Capacity, and every charge of the wand would heal 7HP - a total of 350 HP from a cantrip. Once you open your Shoulders Chakra at 9, you can use Cure Light Wounds wands also, getting 1d8+13 HP per charge, for a total of 700-1050 HP of healing at a very cheap cost.

[tyckspoon]

under the effective spell level section is talks about raising the utterance spell level by adding 4 to the truespeak DC. (essentially truenamers get a wierd heighten for free).

Under the law of Sequence it says it is ok to use higher level versions of an utterance while lower lvl versions are active.

So by each time we tack 4 to the DC we bypass the law of sequences.

As far as affecting multiple people,

Chain utterance
prerequs: 9 truespeak ranks, any other meta utterance feat, the ability to cast utterances.

An utterance with a range greater than touch shoots of to target 1 more target per truenamer caster lvl blah blah blah the rest. +15 to the truespeak DC.

I wouldn't expect the Heighten thing to fly with most DMs, but then considering you're apparently proposing to successfully and regularly Utter with 30+ DC worth of additional effects in custom feats this hypothetical Truenamer probably has a +30 Competence Truespeech Item Familiar powering his checks and we're far into 'screw it, it's a Truenamer, what harm can it do?' territory.

(Apologies to thread for off-topic, but I don't have anything to contribute to the Incarnum thing besides repeating Psyren's advice about items + Mage's Spectacles.)

[Chronos]

One point to note about incarnum: Yes, there are some neat things you can do with it, but most things you can do with X levels in an incarnum class, you can do better with 1 level of Incarnate (or 2 of Totemist) plus X-1 (or X-2) levels of some other class. For instance, that 3rd level Incarnate that candycorn mentions could also be an Incarnate 1/Rogue 2, and do the same thing plus Sneak Attack.

On a related note: Incarnum can be good for a skill-monkey, but it has no practical way of giving Hide or Move Silently. Yes, there's Kruthik Claws, but those don't stack with the Shadow or Silent Moves armor properties, which almost every skill-monkey is sure to get. What you can do, though, is dip Incarnate for one level, and then go into Umbral Disciple for 3 levels, which gets you a bit more essentia, a concealment-granting ability, Hide in Plain Sight, and 6 skill points per level.

[Psyren]

One point to note about incarnum: Yes, there are some neat things you can do with it, but most things you can do with X levels in an incarnum class, you can do better with 1 level of Incarnate (or 2 of Totemist) plus X-1 (or X-2) levels of some other class. For instance, that 3rd level Incarnate that candycorn mentions could also be an Incarnate 1/Rogue 2, and do the same thing plus Sneak Attack.

The point of Incarnate 3 is that it expands the essentia capacity of all your soulmelds by 1. Coupled with the feat, you end up with a capacity of 3, which you would normally have to wait 3 more levels in another class to get.

[Chronos]

Oh, right, forgot about that. Still, the rogue is still doing the same damage as long as it's a sneak attack, and with damage that will go up faster with further levels. Plus, of course, all of the other rogue benefits (always-on trapfinding, a bunch of skills, always-on evasion, etc.).