The Soulborn and the Divine Mind?

[Empedocles]

Why do the soulborn and divine mind suck so badly?

I'd appreciate more in-depth answers then...well...then I'm expecting :smallwink:

[JoshuaZ]

Why do the soulborn and divine mind suck so badly?

I'd appreciate more in-depth answers then...well...then I'm expecting :smallwink:

The soulborn doesn't have enough essentia at all. The chakra bind and soulmeld numbers progress way too slowly to make up for it. The class features just don't make up for it enough. And they don't have great soulmeld options even when they do get them. Soulmelds aren't like spellcasting in power level, so the power level from their soulmelds is less than the level that say a ranger gets from a similar progression for spellcasting. And there's very little ability to customize features.

It would probably be considered ok were it not printed right alongside the totemist and incarnate.

I'm curious to hear more about why people have such a negative view of the Divine Mind. I really don't like the fluff, but I've never paid enough attention to its mechanics to really say anything.

[tyckspoon]

I'm curious to hear more about why people have such a negative view of the Divine Mind. I really don't like the fluff, but I've never paid enough attention to its mechanics to really say anything.

The Divine Mind takes the worst parts of the Psychic Warrior and the Wilder and tries to make a class out of them; like a PsyWar, you get very few power points. Like a Wilder, you get a painfully restricted number of powers known (9 powers over 20 levels, selected from just 3 mantles.) And that's not all- your Manifester Level is (Class level -4), like a Paladin or Ranger's casting.. but Paladins and Rangers generally use spells that aren't too CL-dependent. Psionic powers don't work that way. You need Practiced Manifester just to use your powers as well as a real manifesting class. Your access to higher-level powers is horribly delayed, and you don't even get a special power list for yourself with the levels adjusted to compensate like most partial casters- you use the same powers as the Ardent, who is learning 3rd level powers at the same time as you get your very first and only 1st level power. And, just to add insult to injury, you're the Psionic equivalent of a Paladin and you only have medium BAB.

So what's supposed to make up for this giant pile of suck? What does a Divine Mind bring that you couldn't do better with a PsyWar or a Wilder? You get.. auras. Auras that are largely underwhelming- the default ones can provide a Morale bonus to attacks, to AC, or to Initiative, Listen, and Spot (now, I won't deny these are *useful* bonuses. But they don't come anywhere near justifying the horribleness of the first paragraph.) These start at +1 at level 1 (2 for the Init/senses one) and scale up at +1/5 levels, so they're +5/+6 at level 20. Or, you can use the aura associated with your Mantle, some of which are pretty cool. The kicker here.. you also select your powers from those Mantles, so you often have to decide if you want a useful aura or you want useful powers.

Oh, and until about 7th level your aura range is punishingly short, and until 10th you can only use one at a time, and until 8th you can even really flip auras to meet the situation, because it takes an *hour* to change it until you get a class feature to make it faster.

[eggs]

The Divine Mind's contributions are small static bonuses that don't have any reasonable ways of being increased. The increases themselves are negligible and way too fiddly, with their tiny radii and the Divine Mind's required mobility as a melee-oriented class. As a melee class, it lacks on account of its low BA. And in terms of its power mechanics, Mantles leave it too rigidly structured to play with much flexibility.

But that said, the class is much stronger than it's normally credited as, illustrated through Practiced Manifester + Astral Construct or Metamorphosis - I'd call it easily on the same footing as the Rogue.

Soulborn suffers from an array of systemic problems. The one thing it has going for it is its smite, which it can do more often than basically anything (excepting the Ordained Champion). Its main problem is probably a result of how highly WotC valued that occasional damage boost.

Its problem is that as a meldshaper, it sucks. Its offensive options grant saves and allow spell resistance, but it doesn't have the tools to overcome those defenses. It is able to get some sizable bonuses in a few valuable rolls (trip, intimidate, charge damage, smites, weapon damage various BSF-related skills) and some valuable abilities from its melds (Crystal Helm, Impulse Boosts), but it lacks the utility abilities and essentia cap increases that give Totemist and Incarnate their low-level dominance and high-level relevance.

I consider the Soulborn to be pretty average for a noncaster - it's able to specialize in several ways, and be relatively useful in them, and able to somewhat capably take on other roles when the situation demands it. This is more than can be said for the really exceptionally bad classes like the Samurai, Soulknife or straightclassed Swashbuckler, which only have maybe 1 useful ability which can be used in 1 way.

Neither is a strong class by any standard, and both are downright disappointing in contrast to the rest of their associated subsystems, but I think they both sit pretty comfortably in tougher weight classes than they're normally labeled (though those are still pretty close to the bottom).

[Empedocles]

So would it be that unreasonable to call a soulborn and divine mind low tier 4? They seem at least balanced with the barbarian...

[JoshuaZ]

So would it be that unreasonable to call a soulborn and divine mind low tier 4? They seem at least balanced with the barbarian...

Soulborn is low T4 or high T5 probably.

[Empedocles]

and divine mind?

[tyckspoon]

Low 4, I'd say, if you're careful to cherrypick the best powers. Their 1-5 or so is just terrible, and I don't think there'd be much disagreement on tier 5 for that range.

[Empedocles]

True, true.

And you could easily just bump them to full BAB?

[sonofzeal]

I should note that I've gotten some mileage out of Divine Mind, as part of a build geared towards providing oodles of overlapping passive buffs to the whole party. A +1 to saves for one target is not worth a standard action and a +1 to saves for the whole party is probably not worth a standard action either. But it's certainly worth a swift action, and doubly-so if the swift action can be taken before combat even begins.

Buffs that affect multiple targets, don't consume actions, and apply even during the enemy's surprise round in the first combat of the day? Yeah, I think they're underrated.

This is not to say the class is good by itself. It generally lacks effective actions in combat. But as part of a multiclass, even a DM-heavy multiclass, it works very well.

[Red_Dog]

Just a quick note on soulborn.

Soulborn CAN charge due to BAB. It can take shocktrooper leap attack chain, BUT he has no bonus feats and NO charging gimmicks [even paladin has charging gimmicks. Yes its not in core, but big whoop.]

Just out of curiocity lets square of Soulborn Vs Hexblade[who is known T4 member].

Shtick = Spells trump melds. Simple. And if it wasn't bad enough, you get an actually useful effect at lvl8 and not lvl4. When Hexblade gets lvl2 spells.
*Hexblade spells, while few, are from a very very decent list. Hexblade can't truly pull illumian Gish as they actually LIKE having charisma, but with or without the strange linguists, they have some bonus spells. Soulborn melds are the worst list out of 3, and its access is limited to hell. The access also can't be widened with anything short of a feat to my memory*

Skills = Seriously one drunken fall away from a "fighter's Halloween costume" for a skill list. Though both sets aren't amazing, Hexblade wins if only for full social set and charisma synergy.

Class features = One "ok-ish alignment tied immunity and only 3(!) "ok" feats" Vs no save untyped debuffs, save or suck massive untyped debuffs, more untyped debuffs & and freaking Mettle[there is also knock off of the Paladin's win at saves]! Its really hardly a contest. Incarnum feats ARE nice, but soulborns have NOTHING special to use them on. To my memory they use them to get the damn abilities they should have had in the first place.

So can soulborn do what a NPC "warrior" class can do? Yes. Can they do what they claim to? NO. Can they do something special? NO. Do they at least try? somewhat. Middle of T5 it is. a C+ in T5 category for trying.

Now... take the soulborn, and take away an ability to measure up to an NPC warrior[the fullBAB] and you get the divine mind...

EDIT I was WRONG. Soulborn Can not take shape soulmeld with thier bonus feats! Wow... they have to choose between the class abilities they suppuse to have or a shock trooper chain that lets them actually fight things. This means a FIGHTER, is a FAR better soulborn than a soulborn as he/she can use bonus feats to do the fightings thingy while stacking incarnum feats with natural feats. Wow... worse than I though....

[eggs]

I'd back T4 Divine Mind, T5 Soulborn.

A couple of the Divine Mind's ACFs (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/psm/20070629a) make me want to call it T4 even at low levels. But I get the feeling that the big one (Ectopic Ally) is only worthwhile because the designer wasn't sure how Psi-like abilities work.

[Red_Dog]

=>eggs

Meh... So you effectively play an ok golem for very little amount of time that will contribute to the party far more than the actual character will. I don't see it as T4 worthy. = \

I mean you can spin it as a nice character concept in terms of "cool story", but its... really just a limited version of leadership is it not?

Hell Soulknife 1 + Divine mind 1 both give you hidden talent ACF at lvl1. Maybe a worthy dip lol. ^^ I am jesting of course ^^

[tyckspoon]

Just a quick note on soulborn.

Soulborn CAN charge due to BAB. It can take shocktrooper leap attack chain, BUT he has no bonus feats and NO charging gimmicks [even paladin has charging gimmicks. Yes its not in core, but big whoop.]


That's not entirely true; a Soulborn can take Cobalt Charge as a bonus feat and they have sole native access to the Thunderstep Boots, which are an excellent meld... it just happens to be trivially easy for anybody else to pick that up with a feat expenditure, and most of the characters that would do that can use it better than the Soulborn can.

[eggs]

=>eggs

Meh... So you effectively play an ok golem for very little amount of time that will contribute to the party far more than the actual character will. I don't see it as T4 worthy. = \
Under that reasoning, would you consider Summoners and Malconvokers to be sub-Samurai?

The Divine Mind is the worst first-party manifester, but it's still a manifester.

One Divine Mind can summon monsters that can show up Fighters and Monks, drop mind control on the weak-willed, flash around the battlefield in its swift actions, and manifest polymorph effects, all while maintaining party buffs. Doing all of those things regularly does involve some investment, but so does a Barbarian who wants to reliably deal with opponents who don't just stand still, waiting to be axed. The abilities the Divine Mind gets past ECL 5 go way past the powers available to T5s like Soulknife, Swashbuckler or Ninja.

Compared to the Hexblade, the Divine Mind's powers (when they come online) have more brute force, and its base abilities [with Hidden Talent/Ectopic Ally] aren't any worse. Its greatest fault is rigidity, which isn't accounted for on Jaron's scale.

[willpell]

SB and DM are clear casualties of the "OMG Weapon Focus is so powerful because it's +1 to hit" mentality. Which I understand and even wish was true, but it just isn't. I haven't checked DM but at best it seems likely to resemble an Ardent/Marshal multiclass, only instead of being one and then the other you spend five levels being neither and then gradually become both. LG Soulborn, on the other hand, is at the very least strictly worse than Paladin at levels 2 and 3 (okay you can get immunity to fear one level earlier, but the paladin's boosted will save will usually negate that edge anyway), and while soulmelds might - might! - be slightly preferable to divine spells, you still get so few of them and so little e to put into them that it isn't even close. I've got a pair of test characters that have been trying it out, and the only advantage the SB has is the ability to use Soulbound items that are a little bit better than normal ones as long as you can spare your Essentia - which you can because you hardly have any soulmelds. I was up to level 5 or so before this even began to show, and at level 8 it's still pretty marginal; if the paladin in question was optomized to have more Charisma for more healing and undead-turning, it wouldn't even be close. And nobody considers the paladin strong in the first place.

[Lans]

True, true.

And you could easily just bump them to full BAB?

A full BAB Divinemind blows the barbarian out of the water, unless it has pounce and whirling frenzy, getting +2 to strength for 1 round a battle or weapon focus, +2 to strength for 2 rounds, and a static +1 to attack and damage that also benefits your allies, vs rage 1/day and running fast.

[Answerer]

The Divine Mind also makes a complete and utter travesty of Psionic fluff. Psionic power comes entirely from within; it's the power of one's own mind, willpower, and concentration.

The Divine Mind can somehow lose this power if they fall.

[Kuulvheysoon]

EDIT I was WRONG. Soulborn Can not take shape soulmeld with thier bonus feats! Wow... they have to choose between the class abilities they suppuse to have or a shock trooper chain that lets them actually fight things. This means a FIGHTER, is a FAR better soulborn than a soulborn as he/she can use bonus feats to do the fightings thingy while stacking incarnum feats with natural feats. Wow... worse than I though....

I'm not the first to crunch the numbers, but there's no way a vanilla fighter with Incarnum feats can be a better meldshaper than a soulborn. Mainly because they have no good way to keep up with both their essentia pool or soulmelds shaped/bound.

Incarnate 14/Fighter (Dungeoncrasher) 6 with Shape Soulmeld (Thunderstep Boots) is a much better Soulborn than a Soulborn, however.


The Divine Mind also makes a complete and utter travesty of Psionic fluff. Psionic power comes entirely from within; it's the power of one's own mind, willpower, and concentration.

The Divine Mind can somehow lose this power if they fall.

I tend to view it more as belief; they believe that the power comes from the gods, so when/if they fall, they fool themselves into thinking that they can't use their powers anymore.

It's more of a psychological thing, IMHO.

[Answerer]

Yeah, but that's dumb, and also sort of flies in the face of the necessity of getting Atonement.

[sonofzeal]

Yeah, but that's dumb, and also sort of flies in the face of the necessity of getting Atonement.
Did you know, in the real world, getting an exorcism is an effective treatment for several diagnosable mental ailments? Belief is a powerful thing, and a ritual atonement could very easily function in exactly this sort of context.

[Answerer]

Did you know, in the real world, getting an exorcism is an effective treatment for several diagnosable mental ailments? Belief is a powerful thing, and a ritual atonement could very easily function in exactly this sort of context.
Oh, yes! I did know that, actually. That's why I didn't object to Atonement working.

But what I'd said is that it makes no sense that Atonement is necessary, i.e. it's the only solution.

[sonofzeal]

Oh, yes! I did know that, actually. That's why I didn't object to Atonement working.

But what I'd said is that it makes no sense that Atonement is necessary, i.e. it's the only solution.
It depends. Let us assume for the moment that the Divine Mind has such deep control of their mind and faith that they can psychosomatically give themselves psychic powers. Given that premise, do you really think it's implausible that they could tell themselves (or be told and choose to internalize it, which amounts to the same thing) that Atonement was the only way to get it back, and thus have it be true?

It follows the same logic, too. If their powers were from their god, then Atonement would be necessary. And I do think that Divine Minds believe their powers are from their gods, even if it's all just particularly potent psychosomatic manipulation. Thus, it only makes sense that they'd believe that Atonement was necessary - and if deep enough belief is what allows them to use their powers in the first place, then that same belief would restrict them to needing an Atonement to restore that power.

I don't see the logical contradiction there.

[Answerer]

And if this psychic manipulation was so thorough... why not Psychic Reformation to undo it? Or just counseling.

Besides, even if you can explain it, it never should have been. Powers from their god is exactly what I originally said: a travesty. A Psionic character can be religious, but their powers come from within.

Not every subsystem needs a Paladin-analogue. The Paladin was an awful class to begin with; we didn't need four of them. And Psionics is the #1 first choice for a subsystem wherein a Paladin-analogue makes no sense.

Complete Psionics is the book about Psionics written by at least one author who admitted that he really didn't like Psionics. It shows in the work.

[sonofzeal]

And if this psychic manipulation was so thorough... why not Psychic Reformation to undo it? Or just counseling.
In essence, Divine Minds are powered by psychosis. Their (false) belief is what enables them to use their power in the first place. PsyRef or Councelling could help with that, but then they wouldn't have access to that power at all. Not as a Divine Mind at least. They could try to unlock that power manually, but that'd mostly just involve multiclassing into a more conventional psi class.

Or, heck with it, a god is granting their psi powers. There's precedence in the Mental Pinnacle (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/psionic/spells/mentalPinnacle.htm) spell. Magic can grant psi powers by canon. So are you really going to claim that a God can't reach down and do something similar to a suitable believer? Is it that hard to believe that a deity can overcome the limits of a 6th level Sor/Wiz spell?

[Answerer]

As I said: OK, sure, you can make a case for why it would be possible.

I still have the opinion that the addition of the Divine Mind weakens the system overall. Even if you can explain it, it doesn't add anything and I really, really detest the ramifications of them.

My argument was less "this could never make any kind of sense" so much as "this is a terrible idea that never should have been added."

[sonofzeal]

As I said: OK, sure, you can make a case for why it would be possible.

I still have the opinion that the addition of the Divine Mind weakens the system overall. Even if you can explain it, it doesn't add anything and I really, really detest the ramifications of them.

My argument was less "this could never make any kind of sense" so much as "this is a terrible idea that never should have been added."
The fluff is, admittedly, poor. I like the auras though, even if they're underwhelming most of the time. And as I mentioned above, I think they're generally underrated. Passive long-duration party-wide buffs don't need to be huge to be worthwhile. The only problem I see is that the radius is too small. Double the speed of progression, and I think you've got yourself a decent class.

[willpell]

The Divine Mind also makes a complete and utter travesty of Psionic fluff. Psionic power comes entirely from within; it's the power of one's own mind, willpower, and concentration.

The Divine Mind can somehow lose this power if they fall.

That actually makes even more sense - they invest their psionic power in their faith, and depend on their knowledge of that faith to be able to access their powers. If the DivMind knows he's betrayed his oaths and principles, he literally cannot allow himself to access his own abilities unless he convinces himself that his deity has forgiven him - whether his deity actually exists being irrelevant, since his belief is the important part. A Cleric whose deity is an actual person might not need to atone, because the deity could choose to grant forgiveness of its own initiative, or might withhold it even in the event of an atone spell, but for the DivMind the deity is just a stand-in for the DivMind's compartmentalization of his own mind - he locks the power away behind his god's name because he doesn't believe he can (or should) himself be capable of such things alone.

(Being a pseudo-intellectual spiritualist as I am, this is 100% true to my own feelings on the matter; if I had psionic powers, I wouldn't trust myself not to kill every person I get mad at unless I had an intermediary of some sort to restrict my own access. I would probably prefer to call that being an "overmind of my higher self" rather than a "deity", but potayto potahto.)

(EDIT: I posted in response to your post and then read the following posts, which it turns out said much the same thing but I swear I came up with my version independently.)

[Red_Dog]

Under that reasoning, would you consider Summoners and Malconvokers to be sub-Samurai?


Comparing Binding to Astral Construct is silly.
Its silly from numerical issues alone as Binding is permanent and lets you actually, with a bit of downtime, make a decent size "detachment" without leadership, cohorts and etc. Binding is also unbelievably more versatile as it has little to no restriction on what you can bind. HD as a restriction is laughable. It is infact pressuring you to get POWERFUL creatures as you can't bind "dumb High HD brutes", but can bind SLA spam platforms which are far more powerful.

Astral Construct however can somewhat be Squared of with Summon X or its derivatives only because its scales FAR better with multiclassing[due to funky manifesting rules being flexible]. However, it looses severely when it comes to versatility. And its not the "power's" fault. Its just Summon X chain got ludicrous amount of support thru MMs and other funky sources where poor psionics barley got ANY recognition.

So I guess, I'd have to concede by virtue Magic beats Fighting. Is sad that such a SMALL piece of magic as Astral Construct alone propels Divine mind to the T4. Even though Divine Mind is not capable of charging[no full BAB] and has no bonus damage track[no Sneak Attack] and no skill list to speak of... heh

==================================================>
Kuulvheysoon=>

Actually, I would have to disagree. You get less options, but the list you get your options from is infinitely better as its a combined list of all Incarnates.

Lets disregard the fact that one feat and one BAB point is far worse than a 2 lvl dip into ANYTHING[which means their couldn't be fighter20. Fighter18 maybe.].
You can cherry-pick few amazing melds[from any list YOU want] and open you chacras when YOU want[pre reqs do no require you to have chacras open, and you get them before soulborn does!] makes fighter a superior meldshaper. And don't forget, while you can cherry pick the system, you will still beat the ever living poop out of soulborn when it comes to wielding large pieces of metal. you have 10[11, but again, 2lvl dip into Incarnate or Totemist after lvl6 is just to hard NOT to do] feats to master any style you please and do it when it matters[Shock Chain or Trip chain by level 6? Sure!]. You also get golden ACFs that soulborn can't even begin to dream of. Your skill list is worse... but fear not! Thugfighter can fix it without loss of a Shock Chain.

So yeah... I like meld-shaping mechanics, but I would probably never play a soulborn for it. Its sad really, as Meldshaping is deliciously Gish oriented.

[Person_Man]

I have two homebrew fixes for the Soulborn (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=119121), here and here (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=156441). (The first is a straitforward increase in resources, the second combines the Soulborn with the Soulknife). So I've looked at how it plays level by level and have done my best to fix it.

Specific issues:

Lots of Dead-ish levels: For 12 out of 20 levels, you gain nothing but 1 additional use of Smite Opposition or Share Incarnum Defense or a point of essentia, all of which are very minor abilities. In particular, at 1st level you gain nothing but 1 use of Smite Opposition.
Profoundly slow incarnum progression. Soulborn 4 has 1 soulmeld, 0 points of essentia, and 0 chakra binds. Incarnate or Totemist 4 has 4 soulmelds, 4 points of essentia, 1 chakra bind. Literally 5 times as many resources.
Smaller essentia capacity: The Soulborn lacks the Expanded Essentia Capacity class ability (which the Incarnate gains at levels 3 and 15, and the Totemist gains for soulmelds bound to it's Totem chakra at levels 2 and 15). This may seem like a small matter. But it actually has a dramatic impact on the effectiveness of every soulmeld.
Most limited soulmeld list: The soulborn has basically 2 useful Soulborn only soulmelds (Mauling Gauntlets and Thunderstep Boots). Otherwise, it's list consists of a small sub-set of the Incarnate's soulmeld list.

[eggs]

Comparing Binding to Astral Construct is silly.You're shifting goalposts. My point is that your claim that the Divine Mind shouldn't count its summoning abilities in a Tier placement or power assessment is absolutely nonsensical. Summoning abilities are powerful. If they're a part of a class, and a meaningful aspect of that class's power (such as a Malconvoker or Summoner's summons), it makes no sense to omit them.


Is sad that such a SMALL piece of magic as Astral Construct alone propels Divine mind to the T4. Even though Divine Mind is not capable of charging[no full BAB] and has no bonus damage track[no Sneak Attack] and no skill list to speak of... heh
Seriously look at what a high-level Divine Mind can do - a level 20 DM of Fharlanghn with Tap Mantle (Natural World) can break the action economy via Temporal Acceleration, Anticipatory Strike, Hustle and Linked Power, can dominate almost any situation via Metamorphosis, Charm and Ectopic Ally, and still has power selections free. If it has a problem with endurance, the Psychic Meditation feats can solve that easily enough. And on top of that, its allies get +8 Initiative and +5 attack/damage/AC in every fight. Altogether, that's more brute power and more versatility than most T3s, without digging deeper than Mind's Eye or resorting to any seedy tricks.

You might find it sad for whatever reason that the Divine Mind would rely on one of its class features to be powerful at low levels, but that doesn't matter. Ectopic Ally's mechanics mean that a level 6 Divine Mind can, as a standard action, summon a 7 HD Large Construct with Pounce or Improved Grab (or both, with Boost Construct). You call that a minor power, but I'm sure that the Fighter playing alongside would disagree.

The only reasons I don't call the DM T3 are its handful of clearly terrible deity choices, its most powerful class feature's origins in a supplementary source (where the author may not have known how PLAs work), and its relatively slow maturation.

That said, Divine Mind is a crappy manifester. It may be the worst one published by WotC. Likewise, Soulborn is a terrible Meldshaper, but due to its built-in essentia, chakra binds and soulmeld progression, it still has the dubious honor of being better at its own schtick than a Fighter trying to take its job. (And if you're counting dips, Soulborn still does meldshaping better, due to its class features actually advancing those abilities.)

There's no need to default to hyperbole on these. Doing so weakens your point. Both classes are ****ty examples of their respective subsystems. But both can be ****ty without being complete ****.

[Bonzai]

Having actually played a Soulborn, I can dispell a lot of the misconceptions about them.

Myth 1: Soul Born don't have enough essentia to be effective.

This is wrong. Firstly, while they do get conciderably less essentia than the full meldshaper classes, they get a decent amount. Take a look at level 20. They only have 5 soulmelds to shape, and the max essentia they can invest without the expanded capacity feat, is 4. They get 10 essentia from their class, 3 more from bonus feats, 2 from the bonus essentia feat, and hopefully you started as an Azurian. Oh look.... 4 out of 5 melds can be maxed out. Second, when you take a hard look at what their melds actually do, you realize that many of them don't require much of an investment. Take something like Impulse boots for example. Shaped and bound, you get Uncanny Dodge and Evasion, which is good. The bonus to reflex saves is nice, but not a must have. It's perfectly fine to leave it just at that, unless you need that bonus, which brings me to the next point. If you need essentia points in something, it's only a swift action to move them. Sure, more essentia would be nice, but you in reality you have plenty to work with.

Myth 2: Soulborn are inherently weak.

This is subjective, but I would argue that they are not weak, just inherently balanced. They are not casters, so they are not God or Batman. People on these forums are obsessed with Tiers and as a Melee they are automatically lower. Soulborns are melee hybrids, so it's much more constructive to compare them to other melee hybrids; Paladins, Rangers, Psychic Warriors, etc.. In this company, they are fairly even if you stick with just the core books they are in. The problem is that all of these other classes have been around a lot longer, and have far more support. If there was a "Complete Incarnum", Soulborn probably would have been a bit closer to the others in overall power.

I would say that it's important to have a game plan with Soulborn going in. They can do some neat stuff, but not a lot at once. For example, lets say that you wanted to make a tripper build. Stat wise you only have to worry about Strength and Con, as having Con as your primary stat is wonderful. Then as a bonus feat you take Cobalt Expertise and you can shape Mauling Gauntlets. Without resorting to feats to expand them further, you can get up to a +14 on trip attempts from just those two things (you can add another +1 to it from Lucky dice with just the empty meld), and then you have the whole standard trip optimization enhancers to put on top of it. As you can see though, it does cost a some resources to excell at something, so you have to limit your focus a bit. For me, I was a charging, smiting, tripping, AC monkey (the Awesome Smite feat from Complete Champion bridged the gap nicely). I was a bit stretched for feats, but it was a decent build and did fine.

Myth 3: Soulborn are unplayable without X homebrew fixes!

A lot of the complaints about the class are from people who have never knuckled down and played one. I have, and I admit there was one thing that did frustrate me. The funny thing is, that it is something that is almost never brought up. You know what it was? It was their inability to re-shape a soulmeld pre-epic. Soulborns don't have a huge selection of Melds, but they do have a small selection of defensive melds that can be really handy in the right situation. For example, your party learns that they are going up against a Red Dragon, and a Flame Cincture would be pretty handy for some fire resistance. Unless you were already doing something gimmicky with the bound ability, it's not a meld that's worth keeping up all the time. So your choices are to either wait a day and slow the party down, or just go without. That was the only thing that really frustrated me about the class. A simple homebrew feat that lets you re-shape a meld once a day, and takes 10 minutes would have made me happy. Is it necessary though? Not at all. It's usually pretty easy to pick out the best melds in each slot, and with your limited number of melds per day, most of them should be pretty non-negotiable. Still, it does get annoying having the right tool for the job, and being unable to access it.

Anyways.... thats my two cents on Soulborn. If you want to compare them fairly, apples to apples, then they hold their own. They suffer from a lack of follow up support more than anything else. A solid melee class with some nifty buffs and tricks up it's sleave. Nothing more or less.

[Rubik]

I'd appreciate more in-depth answers then...well...then I'm expecting :smallwink:Um...congratulations on the new baby?

[Big Fau]

Having actually played a Soulborn, I can dispell a lot of the misconceptions about them.

Myth 1: Soul Born don't have enough essentia to be effective.

This is wrong. Firstly, while they do get conciderably less essentia than the full meldshaper classes, they get a decent amount. Take a look at level 20. They only have 5 soulmelds to shape, and the max essentia they can invest without the expanded capacity feat, is 4. They get 10 essentia from their class, 3 more from bonus feats, 2 from the bonus essentia feat, and hopefully you started as an Azurian. Oh look.... 4 out of 5 melds can be maxed out. Second, when you take a hard look at what their melds actually do, you realize that many of them don't require much of an investment. Take something like Impulse boots for example. Shaped and bound, you get Uncanny Dodge and Evasion, which is good. The bonus to reflex saves is nice, but not a must have. It's perfectly fine to leave it just at that, unless you need that bonus, which brings me to the next point. If you need essentia points in something, it's only a swift action to move them. Sure, more essentia would be nice, but you in reality you have plenty to work with.

Maxed out to 4, and it costs you feats and racial choices to do this. At 20th level, a low-DC Fear effect isn't going to help, 4d4 Sonic damage on a charge with no easy access to pounce isn't enough to care about compared to Power Attack benefits, and the penalties to your Meldshaper level are so bad that you cannot physically use any SR-Yes Soulmelds at all.

At the low levels you are no better than a Core Paladin in combat and you have only a marginal advantage over one thanks to your class skills. Even then, the party would be better off with the Paladin.


Myth 2: Soulborn are inherently weak.

This is subjective, but I would argue that they are not weak, just inherently balanced. They are not casters, so they are not God or Batman. People on these forums are obsessed with Tiers and as a Melee they are automatically lower. Soulborns are melee hybrids, so it's much more constructive to compare them to other melee hybrids; Paladins, Rangers, Psychic Warriors, etc.. In this company, they are fairly even if you stick with just the core books they are in. The problem is that all of these other classes have been around a lot longer, and have far more support. If there was a "Complete Incarnum", Soulborn probably would have been a bit closer to the others in overall power.

Core-only Pally and Ranger are two of the weakest classes in the game, and an XPH-only PsiWar is pretty much identical to the anything goes PsiWar (due to Psionics having such pathetic printed support), and the PsiWar is a significantly more valuable ally to a party than even a Pally/Ranger/Soulborn tristalt (barring splatbooks outside of the books the classes were printed in).

Splat support would make the Incarnate and Totemist better than the Soulborn anyway (not to imply they weren't all ready). And those two classes are Melee Hybrids as well (well, barring Ranged combat options, which all three of the classes have in some form or another).


I would say that it's important to have a game plan with Soulborn going in. They can do some neat stuff, but not a lot at once. For example, lets say that you wanted to make a tripper build. Stat wise you only have to worry about Strength and Con, as having Con as your primary stat is wonderful. Then as a bonus feat you take Cobalt Expertise and you can shape Mauling Gauntlets. Without resorting to feats to expand them further, you can get up to a +14 on trip attempts from just those two things (you can add another +1 to it from Lucky dice with just the empty meld), and then you have the whole standard trip optimization enhancers to put on top of it. As you can see though, it does cost a some resources to excell at something, so you have to limit your focus a bit. For me, I was a charging, smiting, tripping, AC monkey (the Awesome Smite feat from Complete Champion bridged the gap nicely). I was a bit stretched for feats, but it was a decent build and did fine.

And you could have done the same thing with a Paladin or Ranger, or you could have been a Totemist and been capable of far more than just Charging or Tripping (and can certainly put the smack-down on the enemies far better than a 5/day Smite attempt).


Myth 3: Soulborn are unplayable without X homebrew fixes!

A lot of the complaints about the class are from people who have never knuckled down and played one. I have, and I admit there was one thing that did frustrate me. The funny thing is, that it is something that is almost never brought up. You know what it was? It was their inability to re-shape a soulmeld pre-epic. Soulborns don't have a huge selection of Melds, but they do have a small selection of defensive melds that can be really handy in the right situation. For example, your party learns that they are going up against a Red Dragon, and a Flame Cincture would be pretty handy for some fire resistance. Unless you were already doing something gimmicky with the bound ability, it's not a meld that's worth keeping up all the time. So your choices are to either wait a day and slow the party down, or just go without. That was the only thing that really frustrated me about the class. A simple homebrew feat that lets you re-shape a meld once a day, and takes 10 minutes would have made me happy. Is it necessary though? Not at all. It's usually pretty easy to pick out the best melds in each slot, and with your limited number of melds per day, most of them should be pretty non-negotiable. Still, it does get annoying having the right tool for the job, and being unable to access it.

All meldshapers suffer that problem, not just the Soulborn. And while the Incarnate and Totemist have a way to remedy this, the ability to do so is not always relevant (for example, at the lower levels or in combat with multiple enemies that have large melee reaches or against casters).

As someone who has played a Soulborn 1-20, I can assure you that the class does not play like a Meldshaper, and feels less like a Paladin than the Fighter does. I was damn close to giving up on Incarnum as a whole because of that class until I read the Incarnum Handbook. The class isn't as bad as the CW Samurai, but it is far and away worse than the Paladin.

Over half of the Soulborn's soulmeld list is utterly useless due meldshaping abilities being weak (either SR, Essentia capacity, or the meld being actually worthless), and the rest is either shared with the Incarnate or just barely worth writing down (and would be better on an Incarnate/Totemist anyway). The list of bonus feats they can choose from is pathetically weak and the number they get so limited that they make very little difference.

Given the 8 standard feats (7 from levels, 1 from Azurin) and the powers presented in the MoI, I could build a PsiWar that is a better Meldshaper than the Soulborn. I could probably do something similar with the Fighter, but I'm not good enough with Incarnum to do so on my own.


The entire class' trick can be replaced outright by two other classes in the same book, and both of them are far more flexible. There is no reason to play a Soulborn over an Incarnate or Totemist. None.

[Red_Dog]

eggs=>


There's no need to default to hyperbole on these.

Hyperbolas are more entertaining to write = P

Jokes aside, I've already conceded that Divine Mind deserves a place in T4, but if you want to get a bit more technical. Hexblade gets lvl4 spells exactly at the same time as Divine Mind gets his powers.
Divine mind gets higher level powers, but IMO suffers from drastic PP shortage, and powers known despite having few higher level powers. Where Hexblade knows twice as many spells and is capable of casting about as many or a bit more. Though bonus spells table is far harsher than bonus PP table.

With all that being said, Divine Mind is unlikely to be able to actually use many higher level powers which mean he/she will have to fall back on class's bones[HD, Skills, BAB] and class features... Which is where for me Divine Mind looses. This is why I "hyperbolize" him as his back up features besides his extremely neutered powers just aren't there. 6th lvl Powers are an extremely good argument for a place at T4 but the lack of base is my biggest issue with the class.

And as for T3 in general... The T3 list contains Factotum with his 20+ standard actions in a surprised round[not an abuse, an actual mechanic! Clearly he learned it by watching all those slow motions plays that were so popular in those times ^^] amazing features and etc., Initiators which are just no questions vastly superior in raw power, action & resources economy and party buffing and a Full Casters of Necromancy and Illusion[among other things] schools[Image line alone is so OP its stops being funny after lvl3 and just becomes unfair heh]. The 2 psionics that are in T3 are just as powerful as Initiators as they have an appropriate power pool, power known and loads of nice class features. I also don't know much about binder, but I would guess that he is just as ridiculous as the rest of them = ]

Otherwise, yes Divine Mind is better than Soulborn by miles and I changed my opinion on this issue ^^.
*And Just as a note, The Initiative aura is nice, but I think its only +5 at lvl20 with ectopic ally?*

P.S. And I have stated my arguments that[and than went to the book and stated one] Fighter with Incarnum feats is better than Soulborn and I stand buy it so far. ^^
My basic idea for Azurin Thug Fighter20 was=>
Normal feats =>Shape Soulmeld Twice at 1, Shape Soulmeld at 3, Open Least[feet I guess for flight?] at 6, Bonus Essentia at 9[total of 3], Open Lesser, Shape Meld or Extra Essentia or Open Greater for 15 & 18.
With about 2-3 right melds melds you should be able to get what you want as you can select of the entire list.
Alternatively not bothering with any bonus esentia and just taking Shape Meld and Open Chacra to put the big the money on binding effects which often do not need essentia at all to be amazing. Meanwhile all other normal things that fighters do are there for you and your skill list is actually pretty good^^
*I can't discuss exact choices as I am still learning the MoI, but by simple math of => "I can't re-shape so I need to choose carefully or I won't live to reshape, I can't divinate this, so I must choose all around options. I have a biggest list to chose from with using feats, I get feats at lvl1 => feats > third-arse meld shaper." I would choose feat Shaping over Soulborn*
The build however JUMPS the shark with totemist or incarnate 2 extremely hard with getting a whole list to play with, a free binding slot and free basket of essentia. But We won't discuss dipping I suppose ^^

[Bonzai]

Maxed out to 4, and it costs you feats and racial choices to do this. At 20th level, a low-DC Fear effect isn't going to help, 4d4 Sonic damage on a charge with no easy access to pounce isn't enough to care about compared to Power Attack benefits, and the penalties to your Meldshaper level are so bad that you cannot physically use any SR-Yes Soulmelds at all.

All true. You quickly learn to focus on self buffs when choosing melds. Not that you have a lot of SR type melds to begin with.


At the low levels you are no better than a Core Paladin in combat and you have only a marginal advantage over one thanks to your class skills. Even then, the party would be better off with the Paladin.
Core-only Pally and Ranger are two of the weakest classes in the game, and an XPH-only PsiWar is pretty much identical to the anything goes PsiWar (due to Psionics having such pathetic printed support), and the PsiWar is a significantly more valuable ally to a party than even a Pally/Ranger/Soulborn tristalt (barring splatbooks outside of the books the classes were printed in).

Not all hybrids were created equal, especially since the systems they are representing aren't equal either. Psionics argueably trumps everything. Your a little harsh on Pally's though. I have seen some pretty potent mounted builds. But that's neither here nor there.


Splat support would make the Incarnate and Totemist better than the Soulborn anyway (not to imply they weren't all ready). And those two classes are Melee Hybrids as well (well, barring Ranged combat options, which all three of the classes have in some form or another).

Possibly. But a slew of useful melds and incarnum feats would go a long way to help the class.


And you could have done the same thing with a Paladin or Ranger, or you could have been a Totemist and been capable of far more than just Charging or Tripping (and can certainly put the smack-down on the enemies far better than a 5/day Smite attempt).... Given the 8 standard feats (7 from levels, 1 from Azurin) and the powers presented in the MoI, I could build a PsiWar that is a better Meldshaper than the Soulborn. I could probably do something similar with the Fighter, but I'm not good enough with Incarnum to do so on my own.

I would say no, as it would cost you additional feats, and you would still be behind on essentia (unless you were dipping Incarnate, in which case you would take a hit on BAB and HP). A paladin or fighter attempting to do the trip trick I mentioned above, would have to pay for Cobalt expertise, and shape soulmeld. If they were azurian, and got bonus essentia, they would be able to max out Mauling Gauntlets, but not the Cobalt Expertise. So they would be for points behind the Soulborn.

All meldshapers suffer that problem, not just the Soulborn. And while the Incarnate and Totemist have a way to remedy this, the ability to do so is not always relevant (for example, at the lower levels or in combat with multiple enemies that have large melee reaches or against casters).[/QUOTE]

Granted, but there are times where you have a few minutes to prepare for an encounter, and it would be nice to have some method of swapping out melds.


As someone who has played a Soulborn 1-20, I can assure you that the class does not play like a Meldshaper, and feels less like a Paladin than the Fighter does. I was damn close to giving up on Incarnum as a whole because of that class until I read the Incarnum Handbook. The class isn't as bad as the CW Samurai, but it is far and away worse than the Paladin.

I only got to lvl 15 with mine. I'll admit, there was a suprising learning curve to the class, and I also made some mistakes on my build. Thankfully, my DM took pity on me and allowed me some retraining. After that, things went much better. I guess it comes down to mind set. All I was expecting was a fighter with a splash of incarnum flavor, and thats what I got. There were a fair share of kinks to work out, but nothing that couldn't be overcome.

I will admit though... there is some serious tedium in playing a Soulborn. You get acess to all your melds all at once, so you really don't have a whole lot to look forward to as you level. A chakra bind here and there are about it. No shiney toys to look forward to, just more of the same stuff each level. I was looking forward to new gear and feats more than any class feature. It can get boring, and I commend you for sticking with it all the way to lvl 20.


Over half of the Soulborn's soulmeld list is utterly useless due meldshaping abilities being weak (either SR, Essentia capacity, or the meld being actually worthless), and the rest is either shared with the Incarnate or just barely worth writing down (and would be better on an Incarnate/Totemist anyway). The list of bonus feats they can choose from is pathetically weak and the number they get so limited that they make very little difference.

The list of melds is limited. It is made even worse by the the fact that there are obvious best choices in each slot. This is why more support was sorely needed. Lol, that was one of the things that made me angry about 4th edition. I was under the impression when I bought the book that it would be a fully supported subsytem like psionics. The feats I actually like for the most part, as they are great for classes dipping into incarnum, and are an important source of essentia.


The entire class' trick can be replaced outright by two other classes in the same book, and both of them are far more flexible. There is no reason to play a Soulborn over an Incarnate or Totemist. None.

The same logic can be said of pretty much any book. No one should ever play a core class baring Cleric, Wizard, or Druid, because they can make all the other classes obsolete. Same with Psychic warriors and Psions. I've never bought into that line of reasoning. It has it's point as far as it goes, but I think classes should be compared to their peers and not to a few classes that break the curve for everyone. Soulborn are designed to be the Paladin's of the Incarnum ruleset, which in your and others estimation sets the bar pretty low to start with. Do Soulborn do what they are intended to do? In my opinion yes. If that isn't what you were looking for, then obviously the class isn't the one you should take.

[Red_Dog]

Bonzai=>

You might to be confused about the purpose of this discussion. I for one never suggest to go T1 or even T2 as I find playing them is just to easy and becomes boring and borderline abuse to your friends as you outshine them as supernova outshines galaxies.

What I am, for example, suggesting is not to play an NPC warrior. I can make an NPC warrior work with Human Skill-knowledge[UMD] and shock chain. That does not mean that the NPC Warrior class is a good choice to play as. If you just want to do it, sure, who am I to stop you? But if you want to prove to me that it is a more logical choice, or at least that "its not that bad", I would have to disagree due to the avalanche of evidence to the contrary.


Psionics argueably trumps everything.

No, no they do not. Besides Erudite with his neat Spell-to-Power Arcane fusion abuse[which again, T1 due to ability to use spells], nothing comes close to magic. Nothing. Psionics were actually build to be balanced. Yes, because a lot of their powers copy spells, Psions still come out as the top choice out of the 2 books. But other classes presented there are actually more balanced and are not overpowered in the least. In fact, most psionics cluster in T3 for a reason. Its a sign of a balanced and well written system.

Furthermore, gishes should be measured against Psychic Warrior. Psychic Warrior was build as a Gish from the ground up, and is good at what it was meant to do. Its not over the top, and its not lacking. It has an ok learning curve and could be build differently. All and all, its one of the most balanced T3s.

This is why, when I argue that Paladins came a long way since the core release and now are T4[RoD, Complete Champion & SpC mainly gave 3 parts of a serious boost to the Paladin while Unearthed Arcane gave them options to not be LG. Their were other cool boosts too, but the crunch boosts were in the 3 books I mentioned], I do compare paladins to Psychic Warriors. With all the support, Paladins got to T4s top, but even with that are unlikely to cross for me.

Yes Soulborn has neet fluff, but due to awful writing and utter lack of support the class is barely outshines NPC Warrior = \ Funny enough however, the other Incarnum base classes are probably at low-mid T3. Totemist IMO has a solid place for sure. I can't speak with certainty for Incarnate as I am still tinkering with some builds.

*By the by, I am quite aware of some exploits in psionic system[manifesting bolts, share power loops, synchronicity loops]. I find that, much like chain gating, Efreeti farms, celerity fusion loops, and many more magic exploits they are easily fixed with a swift kick in the nuts to the player who tries them.*

[Big Fau]

All true. You quickly learn to focus on self buffs when choosing melds. Not that you have a lot of SR type melds to begin with.

Actually, about 1/6th of their melds allow SR (if you go by the "Save allows SR" interpretation of how Soulmelds work).


Not all hybrids were created equal, especially since the systems they are representing aren't equal either. Psionics argueably trumps everything. Your a little harsh on Pally's though. I have seen some pretty potent mounted builds. But that's neither here nor there.

You mentioned this:


Soulborns are melee hybrids, so it's much more constructive to compare them to other melee hybrids; Paladins, Rangers, Psychic Warriors, etc.. In this company, they are fairly even if you stick with just the core books they are in. The problem is that all of these other classes have been around a lot longer, and have far more support. If there was a "Complete Incarnum", Soulborn probably would have been a bit closer to the others in overall power.

Doing a straight-up comparison of the Soulborn to a Core-only Ranger/Paladin or an XPH-only PsiWar, the comparison really hates on the Soulborn. A Core-only Paladin is widely considered Tier 5, but it gets bumped up to Tier 4 outside of Core. Here's a level-by-level.

Level 1: Both classes suck at this level, and there really isn't much of a difference. Their Smiting abilities are the only real difference, and only because the Soulborn gets access to Sapphire Smite, and even that difference isn't much at this level.

Level 2: now you get into the big differences. The Paladin just got Divine Grace and Lay on Hands, and the Soulborn gets Incarnum Defense. However, Divine Grace can arguably protect the Paladin from everything the Soulborn's Incarnum Defense can (and a significant amount more than just 4 different penalties). The Lay on Hands doesn't matter much.

Level 3: The advantage here goes to the Soulborn, but only because neither ability the Paladin gets is very useful compared to something like an Incarnum Feat (limited though the list may be).

Level 4: Both classes just gained access to a major feature, but the Paladin has the edge. The spell list may be incredibly limited, but the Paladin can get more than just 1/day (2 bonus 1st level spells isn't that hard to do). The Soulborn has to be an Azurin in order to make good use of his Soulmelds, and those Soulmelds aren't going to amount to much at this level.

Level 5: The Soulborn gets another Smite attempt/day, whereas the Paladin gets that and a special mount. From this level onwards the Core Paladin is more useful than the MoI-only Soulborn. Seriously, it isn't even fair to the Soulborn.


Possibly. But a slew of useful melds and incarnum feats would go a long way to help the class.

Then you have to house rule them.


I would say no, as it would cost you additional feats, and you would still be behind on essentia (unless you were dipping Incarnate, in which case you would take a hit on BAB and HP). A paladin or fighter attempting to do the trip trick I mentioned above, would have to pay for Cobalt expertise, and shape soulmeld. If they were azurian, and got bonus essentia, they would be able to max out Mauling Gauntlets, but not the Cobalt Expertise. So they would be for points behind the Soulborn.

I was not referring to the Meldshaping at all in that part, but to the combat options. The Ranger has a lot more options once you step outside of Core, and the Paladin makes a better Charger/Tripper/Smitadin than the Soulborn could hope to be.

A PsiWar blows all three of them out of the water thanks to being a Tier 3 class, and the Totemist and Incarnate are vastly superior Meldshapers (which, in turn, allows them to replicate every ability the Soulborn has with twice the efficacy).


I only got to lvl 15 with mine. I'll admit, there was a suprising learning curve to the class, and I also made some mistakes on my build. Thankfully, my DM took pity on me and allowed me some retraining. After that, things went much better. I guess it comes down to mind set. All I was expecting was a fighter with a splash of incarnum flavor, and thats what I got. There were a fair share of kinks to work out, but nothing that couldn't be overcome.

And Red Dog just demonstrated that he could replicate the entire class with the Fighter, while still being capable as a Fighter (a few feats is all it takes to make a Charger).


The same logic can be said of pretty much any book. No one should ever play a core class baring Cleric, Wizard, or Druid, because they can make all the other classes obsolete. Same with Psychic warriors and Psions. I've never bought into that line of reasoning. It has it's point as far as it goes, but I think classes should be compared to their peers and not to a few classes that break the curve for everyone. Soulborn are designed to be the Paladin's of the Incarnum ruleset, which in your and others estimation sets the bar pretty low to start with. Do Soulborn do what they are intended to do? In my opinion yes. If that isn't what you were looking for, then obviously the class isn't the one you should take.

Only your comparison to Psionics holds up, but that's because the PsiWar is literally a lesser version of the Psion that is fused with about 2/3rds of the Fighter. It still ends up being more efficient to use the PsiWar for tanking than to use the Psion for it (not that the Psion can't, it's just a waste of the Psion's talents to do so).

However, the Incarnate is intended to be a tank (Incarnum Radiance), and the Totemist is intended to be a damage dealer. The Soulborn was intended to be both, but falls hideously short of either of it's sibling classes. A party in need of a tank would be better off with the Incarnate than the Soulborn, and a party needing a damage dealer would be better off with the Totemist. Those parties would undoubtably be better off with a PsiWar than a Soulborn too.

The Incarnate and Totemist are amongst the Soulborn's peers. And almost every peer the Soulborn has outclasses it.

[Suddo]

Psychic Warrior and Duskblade are good well balanced and interesting Gishes. Soulborn and Paladin are not.

[Red_Dog]

Well, after Illumians give Paladins's bonus spells from STR[and ability to mutliclass without being smacked for it], getting almost all of Paladin's spells off as a swift action[Battle Blessing] & a lot of new spells from SpC alone[and some from other places], Paladin's turn into a nice Gish in a Box.

Hell, with a campaign that you can actually use your mount in, you can get impressive multipliers when lvl6 comes around [spirited Charge + Lance + Rhino's Rush[make it into a wand, and shove it in a wand chamber[300gp]. I think the wand is like 1500gp. Very affordable.]]. All of this with a freedom to choose your alignment. And that's just for Pal20 with no ACFs but the Alignment swapping one[it does swap some abilities too though].
ACFs will let your shoehorn him/her into the role you really want him/her to be^^

[Kuulvheysoon]

Well, after Illumians give Paladins's bonus spells from STR[and ability to mutliclass without being smacked for it], getting almost all of Paladin's spells off as a swift action[Battle Blessing] & a lot of new spells from SpC alone[and some from other places], Paladin's turn into a nice Gish in a Box.

Hell, with a campaign that you can actually use your mount in, you can get impressive multipliers when lvl6 comes around [spirited Charge + Lance + Rhino's Rush[make it into a wand, and shove it in a wand chamber[300gp]. I think the wand is like 1500gp. Very affordable.]]. All of this with a freedom to choose your alignment. And that's just for Pal20 with no ACFs but the Alignment swapping one[it does swap some abilities too though].
ACFs will let your shoehorn him/her into the role you really want him/her to be^^

Hells, for more options, take the Serenity feat (Dragon Compendium) to key all of your Paladin abilities of off Wisdom.

[Red_Dog]

Kuulvheysoon=>

I was trying not to bring up Sir Wisdom the SAD to make my point...

But yes, to make matters far worse, there is also Sir Wisdom The SAD from Dragon Compendium & Mystic Fire Knight ACF from CV = ]

P.S. Also now as I think about it, for dungeon campaigns, a giant vermin from DotU would make a half decent All-terrain Omnidirectional mount. Could you execute ride by attack on a spider while going on a wall? I know you can't run while climbing even with climb speed, but charge? That escapes me at the moment.

[Answerer]

Psychic Warrior and Duskblade are good well balanced and interesting Gishes. Soulborn and Paladin are not.
Ehhh... Duskblade's pretty weak. Paladin gets some rather nice things outside of Core. It's more like Psy War > Duskblade ~= Paladin > Soulborn

[Bonzai]

Bonzai=>

You might to be confused about the purpose of this discussion. I for one never suggest to go T1 or even T2 as I find playing them is just to easy and becomes boring and borderline abuse to your friends as you outshine them as supernova outshines galaxies. What I am, for example, suggesting is not to play an NPC warrior. I can make an NPC warrior work with Human Skill-knowledge[UMD] and shock chain. That does not mean that the NPC Warrior class is a good choice to play as. If you just want to do it, sure, who am I to stop you? But if you want to prove to me that it is a more logical choice, or at least that "its not that bad", I would have to disagree due to the avalanche of evidence to the contrary.

Fair enough. I just take exception to people writing something off as worthless solely on what they have read as internet "wisdom", and or compare everything to the highest standard possible and writing it off when it doesn't measure up. I think I've tried to make clear in my posts, that Soulborn is a class that you need to go into with your eyes open. Are they amazing? No. Are they playable? Sure. Nuff Said.


No, no they do not. Besides Erudite with his neat Spell-to-Power Arcane fusion abuse[which again, T1 due to ability to use spells], nothing comes close to magic. Nothing.

I would disagree... but that is a debate for another post. The sheer flexability of psionics is amazing. Most of the the major spell effects are replicated by Psionics, and then you add versatility on top of it. Heck, a Psion can litterally change every power he knows to suit an encounter if he wants to.


*By the by, I am quite aware of some exploits in psionic system[manifesting bolts, share power loops, synchronicity loops]. I find that, much like chain gating, Efreeti farms, celerity fusion loops, and many more magic exploits they are easily fixed with a swift kick in the nuts to the player who tries them.*

Lol, I am sure this could be effective at more than the game table.

[Venusaur]

Ehhh... Duskblade's pretty weak. Paladin gets some rather nice things outside of Core. It's more like Psy War > Duskblade ~= Paladin > Soulborn

Duskblade is considered lowish tier three, just because it can dish out insane damage. Channeled Vampiric touch + arcane strike over a full attack on a reach weapon deals ridiculous damage. Throw on a quick cast disintegrate, and you can nova harder than anything in tier 3.

[Big Fau]

Duskblade is considered lowish tier three, just because it can dish out insane damage. Channeled Vampiric touch + arcane strike over a full attack on a reach weapon deals ridiculous damage. Throw on a quick cast disintegrate, and you can nova harder than anything in tier 3.

The Duskblade can also expand his spell list to get some rather useful utility spells.

[Lans]

Level 4: Both classes just gained access to a major feature, but the Paladin has the edge. The spell list may be incredibly limited, but the Paladin can get more than just 1/day (2 bonus 1st level spells isn't that hard to do). The Soulborn has to be an Azurin in order to make good use of his Soulmelds, and those Soulmelds aren't going to amount to much at this level.
.

Getting 2 bonus first level is actually incredibly difficult, you need a 20 in the stat. That means you need a racial boost, or an item, as well as throwing at least 14 points into the stat. For cure light wounds, protection from evil or something for 2 rounds/minutes.

Core paladins spell list just isn't that good.

[willpell]

Doing a straight-up comparison of the Soulborn to a Core-only Ranger/Paladin or an XPH-only PsiWar, the comparison really hates on the Soulborn. A Core-only Paladin is widely considered Tier 5, but it gets bumped up to Tier 4 outside of Core. Here's a level-by-level.

Level 1: Both classes suck at this level, and there really isn't much of a difference. Their Smiting abilities are the only real difference, and only because the Soulborn gets access to Sapphire Smite, and even that difference isn't much at this level.

When I did this comparison, the thing that stood out to me is that an LG Soulborn can Smite CN and CG foes, but has no Detect power whatsoever. The Paladin can always Detect Evil before Smiting so it never goes to waste; the Soulborn has to guess the target's alignment, though she has about a 50% chance in the abstract rather than a 1/3 chance (if you buy that all alignments are about equally common with perhaps a slightlyly greater percentage of neutrals).

[Lans]

I'm pretty sure taking time to use detect evil during combat is a waste of an action. Out of combat its way more useful.

Are you evil- no
Get whacked
whack
get whacked again
vs
smite -dud
gets whacked
kill the bad guy

[willpell]

Before combat was what I had in mind. If I'm a paladin and I've been attacked by bandits or something, who might be Neutral rather than Evil, I probably won't waste my smite attempts; I'll just trounce them, probably with nonlethal damage unless doing so is clearly going to get me killed (after all I can repent if I kill them, but can't continue defending the innocent if I'm dead - well okay, not on the PMP at least, save as a ghost and they're not very good at it what with being intangible). But the Soulborn has the option of checking before she pops out and ambushes the varlets; knowing whether they're True Neutral thieves who are simply dealing with today's economy as best they can manage, or Chaotic Neutral thieves who have the gall to enjoy it, is very important in such a situation. :smallbiggrin:

[T.G. Oskar]

A Core-only Paladin is widely considered Tier 5, but it gets bumped up to Tier 4 outside of Core. Here's a level-by-level.

Level 1: Both classes suck at this level, and there really isn't much of a difference. Their Smiting abilities are the only real difference, and only because the Soulborn gets access to Sapphire Smite, and even that difference isn't much at this level.

Level 2: now you get into the big differences. The Paladin just got Divine Grace and Lay on Hands, and the Soulborn gets Incarnum Defense. However, Divine Grace can arguably protect the Paladin from everything the Soulborn's Incarnum Defense can (and a significant amount more than just 4 different penalties). The Lay on Hands doesn't matter much.

Level 3: The advantage here goes to the Soulborn, but only because neither ability the Paladin gets is very useful compared to something like an Incarnum Feat (limited though the list may be).

Level 4: Both classes just gained access to a major feature, but the Paladin has the edge. The spell list may be incredibly limited, but the Paladin can get more than just 1/day (2 bonus 1st level spells isn't that hard to do). The Soulborn has to be an Azurin in order to make good use of his Soulmelds, and those Soulmelds aren't going to amount to much at this level.

Level 5: The Soulborn gets another Smite attempt/day, whereas the Paladin gets that and a special mount. From this level onwards the Core Paladin is more useful than the MoI-only Soulborn. Seriously, it isn't even fair to the Soulborn.

I don't think that's a fair comparison, particularly if you drop the Special Mount for an ACF such as Charging Smite or Divine Spirit. I'd expand it a bit for purposes of fairness:
Level 6: The Soulborn gains its first point of Essentia, so that means it can improve some of the Soulmeld's abilities or further boost any of the Incarnum feats it chose. The Paladin gets its first official 1st level spell slot and Remove Disease. The mount doesn't progress, so both are roughly equal by now (unless you choose a dire bat or hippogriff; unicorns are limited by race and gender). A Charging Smite Paladin can only use its ability to deal very good damage twice in a day, whereas a Soulborn with Thunderstep Boots can do up to 2d4 sonic damage every time it makes a charge, which definitely goes more than 2/day. Cursebreaker isn't a very good replacement for Remove Disease, and nothing short than the Mystic Fire Knight's spellshatter ability makes justice to that, but it's a substitution level limited to FR and places that have Mystra as a deity. You need to jump a few hoops to make the Paladin shine.
Level 7: Soulborn gets another feat, which helps free some of the feat slots that the Paladin desperately needs (unless it nixes its whole spellcasting, in which case the Soulborn pretty much wins by default against anything except an Ubercharger [and even then it pulls ahead by a bit], the paladin gets nothing (unless you choose a 7th level mount, which can net you a giant eagle or pegasus)
Level 8: Soulborn gets one more soulmeld, one point of essentia and its first chakra binds (so options open once again), Paladin gets the chance to cast 2nd level spells and improvements to mounts gained at 5th level. Core-only they're kinda awful (barring Bull's Strength and Resist Energy, plus Shield Other if you want to remain being the meat shield); with SpC and others...moderately ahead (if you consider stuff like Divine Protection, Flame of Faith and Shield of Warding to be good).
Level 9: Soulborn gets nothing, Paladin gets nothing (or an improved mount if choosing a level 6 mount, or another use of spellshatter). An extra use of Remove Disease is as good as a daily use of Share Incarnum Defense IMO, tho :smallwink:.
Level 10: Soulborn and Paladin get both smiting abilities, Soulborn gets an extra point of essentia, Paladins get 1 2nd level spell (and a boost to mounts chosen at 7th level). Paladins are ahead, of course, because Soulborn get nothing new.
Level 11: Soulborn get their final bonus feat, the Paladin gets access to 3rd level spells (if their Wis is 16 or higher). Core-only 3rd level spells...well, there's Greater Magic Weapon, but you'll never get to use it fully powered, Cure Moderate Wounds which can be decent but not to expend a slot for, and Prayer...well, it's a nice stacking debuff a Cleric could use six levels ago. The bonus feat is slightly better, because a Paladin needs to have a very good Wisdom bonus to have access to it. Mounts chosen at 5th level get their second boost, whereas those chosen at 8th level finally get their first boost. Soulborn push ahead if only because you get more feat slots than Paladin, which are already suffering their feat starvation (and a need to define where can those slots go, between combat-oriented feats, divine feats and domain feats).
Level 12: Soulborn get an extra soulmeld and an extra point of essentia. Paladins get their 1st official 3rd level spell and an extra use of Remove Disease, which as I mentioned is not any good unless you switched it (preferably to Spellshatter). I believe that by this level Cursebreaker gets the far, far better Break Enchantment (which you get as a spell 2 levels later, BTW, and can use from scrolls pretty reliably earlier on).
Level 13: Another level in which neither class gets anything :smallwink:. Paladins with 7th level mounts get a second boost, so they push ahead only slightly.
Level 14: Soulborn get another set of chakra binds and an extra point of essentia, so more options open to them. Paladins with enough Wis can cast 4th level spells (but a base Wisdom score of 18 is basically stretching it), which really contains the Paladin's best spells, bar none (even in Core: Break Enchantment, Death Ward, Holy Sword, Restoration), and a second 1st level spell. Mount-wise, Paladins with mounts chosen at 5th level get their third boost, whereas those who chose their mounts at 8th get their second one. Definitely for the Pally.
Level 15: Soulborn and Paladin get their fourth use of smite, Paladins get their first official 4th level spell slot, and their mount improves to their max. Another win for the Pally.
Level 16: Pally gets their 2nd official 2nd level spell slot, Soulborn get an extra point of essentia and another soulmeld slot. From now on, Soulborn get 1 point of essentia every level, which I consider a tad too late. However, they push ahead if only because the ability to shift essentia between 4 soulmelds and 2 binds gives them the edge in comparison to a paladin whose spell slots cannot be exchanged once cast.
Level 17: Paladin gets its 2nd official 3rd level spell slot, Soulborn gets nothing (aside from the point of essentia...and Share Incarnum Defense. if you consider it worthwhile).
Level 18: Paladins get their final (until Epic) use of Remove Disease (if you consider it worthwhile OR you got Spellshatter), plus another 1st level spell slot. Soulborn get their final chakra binds, those you'd get from the Open Greater Chakra feat. So that's 4 soulmelds shaped, three binds and 8 essentia. Soulborn pushes again once more, but only slightly.
Level 19: Paladins get the motherload of spells here (one 2nd level, one 3rd level and one 4th level spell slot), Soulborn get...another point of essentia and Timeless Body (but the Soulborn has no need for mental stats, so it's pretty much useless by this point). Paladin definitely wins here.
Level 20: Paladins get their final 4th level spell slot and their final use of smite, Soulborn get their final soulmeld and their final point of essentia. I'd say they're mostly equal at this level.

Now, don't take this lightly: this doesn't mean a thing. It doesn't support one side more than the other, but showcases the following: while the Soulborn gets more abilities per level than the Paladin (aside from the mount's progression), the abilities are not that worthwhile. Both have abilities of equal worth (Share Incarnum Defense vs. Remove Disease, whereas one extends your immunity to a single ally temporarily, the other merely removes a disease and works per week) and both get their best progressions around the 15-20 level range (4th level spells vs. greater chakra binds) but are stunted because of the way they develop them (fewer binds, fewer soulmelds shaped and fewer essentia vs. halved caster level and very few spell slots).

I agree that the Paladin ends up better because of the wealth of options it has (Battle Blessing, the many ACFs built for them, the mount, the spells from SpC, the Holy Avenger), but in a way they're pretty similar: I wouldn't compare Divine Grace to Incarnum Defense; Aura of Courage would be a better comparison as both grant immunities, and there you can see the Paladin still edges out ahead if only because it has two immunities instead of one based on alignment, and because the way to extend its immunity can be done from a wand, instead of a daily ability. I also agree that the Soulborn has many issues, if only because it doesn't have a thing that makes it unique from an Incarnate other than full BAB and full Martial Weapon Proficiency (I find it odd that they didn't went the way of Incarnate Champion and made some of the class abilities hold essentia receptacles and bind-able, thus justifying more essentia). However, it all depends on the build and the resources. I find the Soulborn has a few more tricks than the Paladin, but none of those tricks beat up the special mount, which is why the Paladin eventually pushes ahead in Core; outside of Core the Paladin gets many more tricks that push it ahead with little effort, but making those builds (and therefore tricks) good is the challenge.

Oh, and Soulborn get a few more 'melds. Little support, but it has some support nonetheless. Just a nitpick.