Incarnate Conundrum

[GutterFace]

So i need some help since its a lot to sort out and im at work and i cant do it effectively here. This is for a heavy RP campaign spanning from level 1-10.

here are the rules:

3.5 only (ebberon splash)
i play with new people so lets make this mid optimization at best
LOW on the cheese please. i want to mix into the group and not blow them away

Human, LE, Incarnate as a base and possibly Necrocarnate as a Prc

stats are as follows

Str-14
Dex-14
Con-18
Wis-12
Int-12
Cha-10

I will have to take Necroarum Acolyte as my bonus human 1st level feat.

Lets build!!!

[Psyren]

1) Swap your Con and Strength - 18 Con does nothing for you until level 16, and by then you can enhance it that high with items. Similarly, 14 Con will be just fine for you until level 7, by which time you should have an Amulet of Health +2 at least, which will suffice for 5 more levels.

2) Stat-ups should go to Str. You'll want to aim for a melee build with Incarnate Weapon, and as a ranged option you can shape Sighting Gloves+Keeneye Lenses and get a composite bow.

3) Consider a Totemist dip - since you're going Necrocarnate, you will unlock all the same chakras, plus have your Totem chakra and all the Totemist melds to choose from. Combined with your high Strength you can slap a choice meld onto your Totem and get even more attacks.

[Piggy Knowles]

As an aside, you can't be a lawful evil Incarnate. You must be either lawful neutral or neutral evil. If you're going Necrocarnate, then I guess neutral evil is your only real choice, although I'm personally a fan of LN Incarnates with Necro Acolyte to unlock all soulmelds.

[GutterFace]

As an aside, you can't be a lawful evil Incarnate. You must be either lawful neutral or neutral evil. If you're going Necrocarnate, then I guess neutral evil is your only real choice, although I'm personally a fan of LN Incarnates with Necro Acolyte to unlock all soulmelds.

Neutral Evil then :)

[GutterFace]

1) Swap your Con and Strength - 18 Con does nothing for you until level 16, and by then you can enhance it that high with items. Similarly, 14 Con will be just fine for you until level 7, by which time you should have an Amulet of Health +2 at least, which will suffice for 5 more levels.

2) Stat-ups should go to Str. You'll want to aim for a melee build with Incarnate Weapon, and as a ranged option you can shape Sighting Gloves+Keeneye Lenses and get a composite bow.

3) Consider a Totemist dip - since you're going Necrocarnate, you will unlock all the same chakras, plus have your Totem chakra and all the Totemist melds to choose from. Combined with your high Strength you can slap a choice meld onto your Totem and get even more attacks.

#1/#2 are sadly already locked in as of this morning :(

#3 is an excellent point. i should only have to dip 2 levels of Totemist right (if memory serves)?

[Psyren]

#1/#2 are sadly already locked in as of this morning :(

Well, it's not as though more hitpoints will hurt you, especially since Incarnates only get d6s. It's just that lots of people who play Incarnum classes (especially Incarnate) overvalue their Con score, even trying to get a starting score of 20 in some cases when it really doesn't do that much.

How is #2 locked in? Are you already level 20?



#3 is an excellent point. i should only have to dip 2 levels of Totemist right (if memory serves)?

Correct, 2 will get you Totem.

[Person_Man]

As Piggy says, you'll need to be Lawful Neutral or Neutral Evil. I suggest Neutral Evil, since you won't have to burn a Feat on Necrocarnum Acolyte.

I love Necrocarnate, but it's more of a high level PrC, since the earliest you can access it is ECL 8. If you do use it, be sure to play it "honestly" and only drain essentia from creatures your party kills - don't pour water on an ant hill or go around town killing NPCs or whatnot. It'll just piss off your DM.

I agree with Psyren that a Totemist 2 dip almost always makes an Incarnate more powerful, especially when you're planning on going into a prestige class. But if your party is completely unfamiliar with Incarnum and low-optimization, then I would probably just stick with strait Incarnate or strait Totemist, to keep things simple.

Note that the number of Soulmelds and your Essentia Capacity are limited by your Constitution score. You'll be fine starting with a Con of 14 if you like, as long as you get it up to 16 by mid levels.

Key soulmelds:

Mantle of Flame: Retributive fire damage.

Astral Vembraces: Impressive DR/magic. When bound to Hands chakra, you get 2 slam attacks. (Online material).

Elder Spirit or Mage's Spectacles: UMD bonus. At level +6 you should be able to auto-activate wands if you also invest in the Skill cross class and don't dump Cha.

Spellward Shirt: Fairly impressive Spell Resistance. If you invest in a Feat and/or a magic item to boost it, you should be able to resist 70-90%ish of most spells.

Necrocarnum Circlet bound to Crown chakra (level 2): Probably your most important soulmeld and chakra bind. As you probably already know, this lets you summon a necrocarnum zombie at will with no cost, who can be used as a tackle dummy to lock down enemies or as a mount. It's worth mentioning that it has a range of 30 feet (unlike Animate Dead, which has a range of touch) and that Necrocarnum Zombies can actually be quite potent (unlike normal Zombies).

Planar Chasuble: Energy Resistance. When bound to your Brow chakra, it increases your Incarnum Radiance. Once you hit 7th level, this can give everyone in your party a fairly large bonus to To-Hit, Damage, AC, or Movement (depending on your alignment).

Theraputic Mantle: Increases the effectiveness of any "spell or effect that heals hit point damage" on you by Spell Level + (2*essentia invested). The overlooked trick with this soulmeld is that it specifically works on any effect that heals hit points, and not just spells. Which means you can stack it with Divine Spirit, a Vampiric Weapon, Fast Healing, etc, making you very hard to kill.

[GutterFace]

Interesting....i can animate as a mount. ive looked over the template and built an Excel template for whatever we kill. i can dump it into the template and it will adjust the ac,hp, based on the size and hd etc. needs some tweaks.

can Share soulmeld be used with the zombie or is it black and white for companions and familiars only?

[Psyren]

can Share soulmeld be used with the zombie or is it black and white for companions and familiars only?

Companions and familiars only. Your DM may give you some leeway with a Soulspark Familiar but that isn't RAW.

Concerning Necrocarnate - remeber that the essentia you get from draining foes lasts a full 24 hours. Don't just reset your total when you go to bed, especially if you drain a corpse during your last fight of the day. Actively track the time and, if you have enough fights, you can stay at full essentia investment around the clock.

Other tricks for more Necrocarnate essentia - get a wand of Soul Boon and use your Mage's Spectacles to activate it. This should give you enough essentia to max out one or two soulmelds, especially when added to the essentia you naturally got from Incarnate and Totemist. By allocating all of that to offense, you should be able to kill a weaker enemy fast and get some energy out of it.

Person_Man mentioned the psionic soulmelds - in addition to Astral Vambraces, Psion's Eyes is great if you have psionics in your campaign. Buy some dorjes of quintessence and use them to fill a bag of holding. Now you can store fresh corpses (preferably Small or Smalle ones) indefinitely - when you need more essentia, pull out a dead body (for whom no time has passed) and feast. Combined with the real-time tracking above, and you should have little trouble keeping all your soulmelds fully-invested, even while you sleep.

[GutterFace]

yea we are going to follow the Share Soulmeld feat to the letter so no on the zombie. but man the zombie template looks good. very solid.

[GutterFace]

Companions and familiars only. Your DM may give you some leeway with a Soulspark Familiar but that isn't RAW.

Concerning Necrocarnate - remeber that the essentia you get from draining foes lasts a full 24 hours. Don't just reset your total when you go to bed, especially if you drain a corpse during your last fight of the day. Actively track the time and, if you have enough fights, you can stay at full essentia investment around the clock.

Other tricks for more Necrocarnate essentia - get a wand of Soul Boon and use your Mage's Spectacles to activate it. This should give you enough essentia to max out one or two soulmelds, especially when added to the essentia you naturally got from Incarnate and Totemist. By allocating all of that to offense, you should be able to kill a weaker enemy fast and get some energy out of it.

Person_Man mentioned the psionic soulmelds - in addition to Astral Vambraces, Psion's Eyes is great if you have psionics in your campaign. Buy some dorjes of quintessence and use them to fill a bag of holding. Now you can store fresh corpses (preferably Small or Smalle ones) indefinitely - when you need more essentia, pull out a dead body (for whom no time has passed) and feast. Combined with the real-time tracking above, and you should have little trouble keeping all your soulmelds fully-invested, even while you sleep.



and this is confusing in the book = how much essentia can i hold in my characters pool at any give time?

how much is the Max essentia i can invest in any meld at a time?

[Psyren]

and this is confusing in the book = how much essentia can i hold in my characters pool at any give time?

how much is the Max essentia i can invest in any meld at a time?

Your pool is on your class table - if you multiclass Totemist, just look up the essentia values for each of your classes and add them together. For example, an Incarnate 5/Totemist 3 would have (5+2) = 7 essentia.

The max capacity can be tricky to find; it's in a table on page 19. But a general formula for it is HD/6 (round down) + 1.

Then, class features and feats can raise this amount.

[GutterFace]

OK good thanks!

i thought somehow with the Prc i would be able to squeeze more into the melds than class essentia investment+expand capacity would allow

[Psyren]

i thought somehow with the Prc i would be able to squeeze more into the melds than class essentia investment+expand capacity would allow

You do. At Incarnate 3 you'll get +1 capacity to Incarnate soulmelds (including the Necrocarnum ones), and at Necrocarnate 9 you'll get an additional +1 capacity that applies only to Necrocarnum melds.

[Bonzai]

Early on, I love using lightning gauntlets Necrocarnum circlet, and mantle of flame. At 3rd lvl, thats 4d6 lightning touch attacks, 2d6 fire shield, and 3hd necrocarnate zombie. Pretty strong for it's level.

[GutterFace]

You do. At Incarnate 3 you'll get +1 capacity to Incarnate soulmelds (including the Necrocarnum ones), and at Necrocarnate 9 you'll get an additional +1 capacity that applies only to Necrocarnum melds.

Ah i love when things Stack :)

excellent!!!

[Person_Man]

and this is confusing in the book = how much essentia can i hold in my characters pool at any give time?

how much is the Max essentia i can invest in any meld at a time?

Yes, it is pointlessly confusing.

The essentia capacity for any soulmeld, Feat, class ability, spell, or psionic power, etc which allows you to invest essentia into it is based on chart 2-1: Essentia Capacity, on pg 19 of Magic of Incarnum. It's between 1-4 points, depending on your hit dice.

In addition:

Incarnates get an additional +1 at levels 3 and 15 to all Incarnate soulmelds (not all soulmelds, as clarified on pg 20 under the multi-classing rules).
Totemist get an additional +1 at levels 2 and 15 for soulmelds bound to their Totem chakra.
The Expanded Soulmeld Capacity feat gives you +1 essentia capacity to a single specific soulmeld. (You can take it multiple times for different soulmelds, but it's usually not worth taking).
You can buy an Incarnum Focus magic item (use the one in the Magic Item Compendium, which is better and cheaper then the older version in Magic of Incarnum) for any chakra slot except for Totem. Using this item does not prevent you from binding a soulmeld to that slot. The essentia capacity for any soulmeld occupying or bound to that chakra slot is increased by +1. It costs 15,000 gp each though, so I wouldn't bother with more then one or two unless you're a very high level build.
Necrocarnate gives you +1 to Necrocarnum soulmelds at level 9 (ECL 16). It explicitly stacks with the Incarnate bonus. Though by taking that many levels of Necrocarnate, you're basically giving up the +1 expanded capacity to all Incarnate soulmelds you could have gotten from Incarnate 15.


So your essentia capacity will generally be between 1-4 for everything but soulmelds, 1-6 for soulmelds, and as high as 8 for soulmelds if you invest a Feat and a magic item in it.

[animewatcha]

Theraputic Mantle: Increases the effectiveness of any "spell or effect that heals hit point damage" on you by Spell Level + (2*essentia invested). The overlooked trick with this soulmeld is that it specifically works on any effect that heals hit points, and not just spells. Which means you can stack it with Divine Spirit, a Vampiric Weapon, Fast Healing, etc, making you very hard to kill.

Slight sidenote but kinda related to well 'any' Fast healing not granted by spells. Would the mantle stack with the Fast Healing granted by the Feral Template in Savage species in accordance to the amount of essentia invested despite no spell level? On a more related note, how would it work with something like the Vigor-like spells?

[Psyren]

The Expanded Soulmeld Capacity feat gives you +1 essentia capacity to a single specific soulmeld. (You can take it multiple times for different soulmelds, but it's usually not worth taking).

It's absolutely worth taking - you seem to have misread it :smallsmile:


Benefit: When you shape your soulmelds, choose one soulmeld. Your essentia capacity for that soulmeld is increased
by 1 (up to a maximum of your Constitution bonus). Each time you shape your soulmelds, you can change the soulmeld that benefits from this feat.

In other words, you can change the soulmeld that gets the capacity boost every morning. Typically this will be your signature meld - the one with your primary natural attack on it if you're a Totemist, or your Dissolving Spittle/Incarnate Weapon etc. And even if you follow the "Con bonus" limit (which most DMs I've played with see as a typo and ignore), it takes a long time before most of your melds hit that cap.

Taking this feat lets your Totemist get a +3 weapon (or pair of weapons) at 2nd level.