2 Qs: Essentia, LA

[GilesTheCleric]

First: I know nothing about essentia - I've never played anything from Incarnum, nor even read the book. It's quite a lot of reading to do, and each time I've glanced at it it has been utterly incomprehensible. I'm working through it, but in the meantime, I'd like to know some (hopefully easy) sources for getting more essentia. I need 10 points total, specifically.

Second: A few weeks ago in a thread here, a few people mentioned templates/races that would work together to make a +0 LA character. Specifically, there was one that "reset" LA, I think from Savage Species. I've gone digging through the interwebs, but haven't found it again. Are there some ways of reducing LA (from races and templates) other than buyoff?

[TuggyNE]

As far as I know, there's only one template that gives negative LA, and that's Incarnate Construct.

[sonofzeal]

First: I know nothing about essentia - I've never played anything from Incarnum, nor even read the book. It's quite a lot of reading to do, and each time I've glanced at it it has been utterly incomprehensible. I'm working through it, but in the meantime, I'd like to know some (hopefully easy) sources for getting more essentia. I need 10 points total, specifically.
Feats. Races. There's a few spells, too. But you shouldn't be expecting to fill up all your soulmelds, part of the point is using your swifts to shift around as-needed.


Second: A few weeks ago in a thread here, a few people mentioned templates/races that would work together to make a +0 LA character. Specifically, there was one that "reset" LA, I think from Savage Species. I've gone digging through the interwebs, but haven't found it again. Are there some ways of reducing LA (from races and templates) other than buyoff?
"Incarnate Construct" is an LA -2 template. Some people try to use this to cancel out LA from other templates. Opinion is divided on whether an Incarnate Construct Warforged with the Phrenic template is LA +0 or LA +2. I tend to go for the latter, personally. LA should never total to a negative, even temporarily; an "Incarnate Construct Warforged" is thus LA +0 to which you're applying an LA +2 template.

there's also Tauric and possibly some others, which give bonuses based on a form you can ignore the LA for. If you're a Tauric Human // Half-every-kind-of-dragon dire ape, you get the monstrous strength but not the LA from all those Half-dragon templates. Cheesy as heck though.

[Vaz]

Constructs are unplayable with only a couple exceptions;

Incarnate Dustform [playable base race], LA+0
Warforged LA+0
Renegade Mastermaker 10 level prestige, ECL15
Green Star Adept 10 level prestige, ECL16 IIRC

Of those Incarnate is only of use to the first one, the rest are playable anyway, and Incarnate Template loses all the goodies of being a Construct (Immunities etc). Neither does it reduce to lower than 0.

[KillianHawkeye]

Well if you need more essentia, taking [Incarnum] feats will help as they generally add 1 essentia in addition to whatever else they do. You can also take the Bonus Essentia feat if you are at least 6th level.

[sonofzeal]

Constructs are unplayable with only a couple exceptions;

Incarnate Dustform [playable base race], LA+0
Warforged LA+0
Renegade Mastermaker 10 level prestige, ECL15
Green Star Adept 10 level prestige, ECL16 IIRC

Of those Incarnate is only of use to the first one, the rest are playable anyway, and Incarnate Template loses all the goodies of being a Construct (Immunities etc). Neither does it reduce to lower than 0.
I played a Maug once. It wasn't ideal, but the game was low-Op and he ended up being the second most effective member of the party, after a Rogue who'd abused forgery to basically pentuple his starting wealth and had a staggering array of wands and potions and useful knicknacks for every situation.

An Incarnate Construct Maug would be totally reasonable, I think.

[Vaz]

Why play a construct if you throw away everything that a construct gives?

[Psyren]

Psycarnum Infusion is a great way to get "extra essentia." By treating one of your incarnum receptacles as if it is at maximum capacity for a round, you can allocate all your essentia away from it without losing its benefit. Best of all, unlike regular essentia allocation, you can do this even when it's not your turn, or while flat-footed - expending focus takes no action. (Note: if you're not psionic, you'll need to take a feat like Hidden Talent to be able to use this.)

[Harrow]

Out of curiosity, what do you specifically need the 10 essentia for?

[GilesTheCleric]

Feats. Races. There's a few spells, too. But you shouldn't be expecting to fill up all your soulmelds, part of the point is using your swifts to shift around as-needed.


"Incarnate Construct" is an LA -2 template. Some people try to use this to cancel out LA from other templates. Opinion is divided on whether an Incarnate Construct Warforged with the Phrenic template is LA +0 or LA +2. I tend to go for the latter, personally. LA should never total to a negative, even temporarily; an "Incarnate Construct Warforged" is thus LA +0 to which you're applying an LA +2 template.

there's also Tauric and possibly some others, which give bonuses based on a form you can ignore the LA for. If you're a Tauric Human // Half-every-kind-of-dragon dire ape, you get the monstrous strength but not the LA from all those Half-dragon templates. Cheesy as heck though.

Ah-ha! Tauric was the one I was thinking of. Thank you. Incarnate construct has been in my mind, but I can't think of a way of getting around the cost at 1st level. Unless I can apply it without casting the spell?


Well if you need more essentia, taking [Incarnum] feats will help as they generally add 1 essentia in addition to whatever else they do. You can also take the Bonus Essentia feat if you are at least 6th level.

Is there a way from items, perhaps? Grafts? I have 25 feats I'm trying to stuff into this build already, so I'm not sure how many more I can reasonably get in without getting too cheesy.


Psycarnum Infusion is a great way to get "extra essentia." By treating one of your incarnum receptacles as if it is at maximum capacity for a round, you can allocate all your essentia away from it without losing its benefit. Best of all, unlike regular essentia allocation, you can do this even when it's not your turn, or while flat-footed - expending focus takes no action. (Note: if you're not psionic, you'll need to take a feat like Hidden Talent to be able to use this.)

I have no idea what any of those things mean, but they sound very promising - thank you! I really hope I won't have to make a new char sheet/revise my current one to accommodate for a receptacle. No action? Man, I need to find more of those for my builds. Swifts and Immediates are for chumps.


Out of curiosity, what do you specifically need the 10 essentia for?

Umbral Disciple's Embrace of Shadow. Just one part of my plan to bump a "rogue" from T4 to T2. With enough imagination, things can be solved without being a full caster. Go go gadget SLAs!

[Psyren]

Oh, I see - you want 10 essentia so you can get 100% concealment from Umbral Disciple's Embrace of Shadow ability. Unfortunately, it doesn't quite work that way - every receptacle for incarnum you possess (be it a feat, item, soulmeld, or even class feature like the Umbral Disciple ability) has a maximum amount of essentia you can invest in it, tied to your character level. This does increase over time, but you'll be well into epic before it hits 10 - the most you can hope for at level 20 is 4, for 40% concealment.

There are feats and class features that can raise this limit slightly, but none that will work on Embrace of Shadow, so you are stuck with a maximum of 40% concealment pre-epic.

[Harrow]

Edit: Swordsage'd

Ah, I was afraid of that. Same thing happened to be when I started trying to figure out incarnum.

There's a pretty stict cap on how much essentia you can invest in something based on character level, and that maxes out at 4 pretty late into the game. There's a feat that raises it by an additional one, a couple levels of Incarnate or Totemist raises the cap by one under specific circumstances, and I think both raise the cap a second time in late game.

Basically, there is no way to pump 10 essentia into one soulmeld/incarnum feat/class feature/what have you, even if you could gather all the essentia needed, which you pretty much need half a dozen levels of Incarnate or Totemist to do.

[GilesTheCleric]

Ah, I see. This is what I get for trying to use a cool ability in a subsystem I don't yet understand XD. Before I assume that I know what I'm doing, there's no hidden drawbacks to swordsages/Shadow Hand, right? I know about the 1/2 IL for non-martial classes, but I think that's the only thing that makes it a bit bumpy.

Well, that's okay. I've built layered defenses into my build, so losing out on the 100% concealment I thought I would have should be fine anyway. At least this frees up 3 levels for other things, I guess. LA/RHD, even! It's amazing how things work out ^^

[Chronos]

Umbral Disciple is still a pretty good PrC for a rogue, at least for 3 levels. You might not get a guaranteed miss chance, but you do still get enough concealment to use Hide, plus Hide in Plain Sight. And the one level of Incarnate you're probably using to qualify for it can give you some decent skill bonuses via soulmelds.

[Wings of Peace]

If you're going for total concealment one option you might consider is using the Shoulder chakra bind ability of the Shadow Mantle soulmeld in conjunction with the ability to see in magical darkness (the easiest way to get this that I can think of would be taking the Planar Touchstone feet and using the Catalogues of Enlightenment to gain the Granted Power of the Baator cleric domain).

[Psyren]

Umbral Disciple is still a pretty good PrC for a rogue, at least for 3 levels. You might not get a guaranteed miss chance, but you do still get enough concealment to use Hide, plus Hide in Plain Sight. And the one level of Incarnate you're probably using to qualify for it can give you some decent skill bonuses via soulmelds.

You can also get into UD much quicker and more easily than the standard method of gaining HiPs, Shadowdancer. Both do gain the ability at roughly the same time, but UD doesn't need to burn as many feats.


If you're going for total concealment one option you might consider is using the Shoulder chakra bind ability of the Shadow Mantle soulmeld in conjunction with the ability to see in magical darkness (the easiest way to get this that I can think of would be taking the Planar Touchstone feet and using the Catalogues of Enlightenment to gain the Granted Power of the Baator cleric domain).

No need - Shadow Mantle itself will give you blindsight, though only within the bubble you create. Get close to your target, throw all your essentia into it and activate, then stay on him.

[Wings of Peace]

No need - Shadow Mantle itself will give you blindsight, though only within the bubble you create. Get close to your target, throw all your essentia into it and activate, then stay on him.

Don't forget that while you're giving blindsight you're not technically blind, it's the magical darkness that keeps you from seeing. This means that with this setup he could use something ranged like a Manticore belt. The bigger reason I suggest it is that I've known a lot of DMs who get weird about how your character picks targets when they can't see, so this would be a way around the "how are you moving towards people you can't see?" thing.

[undead hero]

Next time you pick up MoI just read the race, class, feats, and soulmeld section of the book.

Just get the crunch... Don't look at any fluff, even the fluff of the class features.

It becomes the best subsystem ever that way :p

Now if only I had the money to buy the rights to MoI and ToB...*sigh*

[Psyren]

Next time you pick up MoI just read the race, class, feats, and soulmeld section of the book.

Just get the crunch... Don't look at any fluff, even the fluff of the class features.

It becomes the best subsystem ever that way :p

Now if only I had the money to buy the rights to MoI and ToB...*sigh*

What's wrong with the fluff? I like MoI's fluff. What it needs more than anything is a good editor.

[Waker]

What's wrong with the fluff? I like MoI's fluff. What it needs more than anything is a good editor.

People are fine with dudes who reshape reality by reading books, bring back the dead by praying really hard, turn into a dinosaur that can cast spells, but sheathing yourself in spiritual energy is weird.

[Piggy Knowles]

I happen to like MoI's fluff, but I will confess, I was very tired of the color blue by the time I finished reading through the book.

[Kazyan]

MoI's fluff is love-it-or-hate-it; I don't think you can justify your opinion either way. I'm in the 'love' camp.

You want terrible fluff, take a look at ToB.

[Psyren]

I happen to like MoI's fluff, but I will confess, I was very tired of the color blue by the time I finished reading through the book.

How could you have gotten tired of it?? There were so many alternatives! Azure, Cobalt, Cerulean, Indigo, Sapphire...

[Waker]

How could you have gotten tired of it?? There were so many alternatives! Azure, Cobalt, Cerulean, Indigo, Sapphire...

So many colors in the Blue Rainbow.

[Chronos]

What's wrong with the fluff? I like MoI's fluff. What it needs more than anything is a good editor.
One of my standards for a base class is that I should be able to think of at least three separate characters from history, fiction (excluding D&D-based fiction), or myth for whom that class is a better fit than any of the other existing classes. For most classes, that's not too hard. For Magic of Incarnum, though, it is.

[Zweisteine]

By my math, the most essentia a first level (actual level, not effective level) character can have is 6. An Azurin Incarnate or Totemist with four Incarnum feats (1st level, 2 flaws, racial, each granting 1 essentia) will have 6.

Without items, spells, or other effects that temporarily grant essentia, the fastest path I can think of to ten essentia is Azurin Incarnate 4, taking as many essentia-granting feats as possible.

Level 1: Azurin feat, 1st level feat, Flaw feat, Flaw feat, Incarnate 1 (total 6)
Level 2: Incarnate 2 (total 7)
Level 3: 3rd level feat, Incarnate 3 (total 9)
Level 4: Incarnate 4 (total 10)



You want terrible fluff, take a look at ToB.

ToB has beautiful fluff (mostly)! It lets you do things like, "with a roar or fury, I throw of the constraints of the evil Lich's paralyzing touch!" or "I swing my sword faster than the eye can follow, rending my opponent limb from limb!"

[Zaq]

How could you have gotten tired of it?? There were so many alternatives! Azure, Cobalt, Cerulean, Indigo, Sapphire...

Da ba dee da ba die, da ba dee, da ba die . . .

[Venger]

Psycarnum Infusion is a great way to get "extra essentia." By treating one of your incarnum receptacles as if it is at maximum capacity for a round, you can allocate all your essentia away from it without losing its benefit. Best of all, unlike regular essentia allocation, you can do this even when it's not your turn, or while flat-footed - expending focus takes no action. (Note: if you're not psionic, you'll need to take a feat like Hidden Talent to be able to use this.)

Alternatively, OP could play as a naturally psionic race such as synad, elan, or half-giant (especially if totemist or evil incarnate)


There are feats and class features that can raise this limit slightly, but none that will work on Embrace of Shadow, so you are stuck with a maximum of 40% concealment pre-epic.

the default cap is 1 at the beginning. it increases by 1 at level 6, 12, and 18.

Incarnate gets the "expanded soulmeld capacity" ability at 3 and again at 15, allowing you to put 1 more essentia into a meld than your normal cap. this applies to all soulmelds. so for incarnates, your cap is 1 from 1-2, 2 from 3-5, 3 from 6-11, 4 from 12-14, 5 from 15-17, and 6 from 18-20 (assuming you take at least 15 lvls of incarnate)

there is also (confusingly) a feat called "expanded soulmeld capacity" and it raises the cap of one of your melds for that day one further. this stacks with your class feature of the same name. you're allowed to take this feat more than once (to a maximum of your con bonus)

unfortunately, both of these only apply to soulmelds and can't be used to overinflate feats, class features, or racial abilities

GilesTheCleric, which class were you considering playing as? totemist or incarnate? shneekythelost (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=215723) did an awesome guide on both classes (plus a list of all their melds with essentia and bound effects) which explains everything you need to know about what incarnum is, how melds/essentia/shaping/binding work, and specifics of playing the classes.

[Chronos]

Quoth Zweiseine:

By my math, the most essentia a first level (actual level, not effective level) character can have is 6. An Azurin Incarnate or Totemist with four Incarnum feats (1st level, 2 flaws, racial, each granting 1 essentia) will have 6.
You can make that 7, if you replace one of those incarnum feats with Bonus Essentia.

[Piggy Knowles]

You can make that 7, if you replace one of those incarnum feats with Bonus Essentia.

Actually, Bonus Essentia requires you to be 6th-level to take it, so you're unfortunately stuck with the 1 essentia feats until then.

[Zweisteine]

You'd go slightly faster as a Gestalt Incarnate//Toteemist as well, but that is going a bit far...

[GilesTheCleric]

Alternatively, OP could play as a naturally psionic race such as synad, elan, or half-giant (especially if totemist or evil incarnate)

-snip-

GilesTheCleric, which class were you considering playing as? totemist or incarnate? shneekythelost (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=215723) did an awesome guide on both classes (plus a list of all their melds with essentia and bound effects) which explains everything you need to know about what incarnum is, how melds/essentia/shaping/binding work, and specifics of playing the classes.

I'm playing a "rogue". So so far it looks like cleric, rogue, fighter, shadowlord, shadowdancer, death delver, jaunter, swordsage, hand of the winged masters, dread commando, and maybe sorcerer and/or some LA/RHD. Not in that order. I'm still working on exactly which ones to take and when (I haven't started on the skills points allocation schedule yet. Feats schedule is effectively complete). I'm not going for too much optimization, but rather a greater number of layered defenses and different options.

Unfortunately one of the other key feats in the build (momentary alteration) only gives alter self and not polymorph, which is lame. But I'm working around that - thinking about perhaps spellstitched or something else instead.

In terms of races, I'm looking at human (no particular variety as of yet), strongheart, warforged, or perhaps something undead; dragonborn perhaps if it's necessary to include (fighter). I'm probably going to skip on anthropomorphic.

[Venger]

I'm playing a "rogue". So so far it looks like cleric, rogue, fighter, shadowlord, shadowdancer, death delver, jaunter, swordsage, hand of the winged masters, dread commando, and maybe sorcerer and/or some LA/RHD. Not in that order. I'm still working on exactly which ones to take and when (I haven't started on the skills points allocation schedule yet. Feats schedule is effectively complete). I'm not going for too much optimization, but rather a greater number of layered defenses and different options.
Is that a list of possible classes you're looking at? because you can't have levels in all of those in 20 levels, and many of those do not complement each other well due to different specialities/MAD/etc.

what is your tentative build or what class do you want to focus on? are you talking about telflammar shadowlord?

have you discarded umbral disciple upon learning that it's not possible to have a 100% miss chance? even with a lower one, it's still a very good 3 lvl dip

none of these classes give meldshaping, so you will not have much essentia to shuffle around.

what kind of powers do you want your character to have?


Unfortunately one of the other key feats in the build (momentary alteration) only gives alter self and not polymorph, which is lame. But I'm working around that - thinking about perhaps spellstitched or something else instead.

In terms of races, I'm looking at human (no particular variety as of yet), strongheart, warforged, or perhaps something undead; dragonborn perhaps if it's necessary to include (fighter). I'm probably going to skip on anthropomorphic.

momentary alteration is, as you said, a terrible feat. you can easily replicate the effect (and more) with a simple wand of alter self and a few ranks in UMD (or not if it's on your list) you mentioned sorcerer (which has it on its list) had you thought about rolling soulcaster?

aside from regional feats, there's no difference in the flavors of humans. strongheart's ok if you don't want to focus in melee (a meldshaper's strength, unless you go chaotic incarnate)

dragonborn boosts con, which is good for meldshapers. also check out races of destiny's mongrelfolk in tandem with this for moar con.

don't go undead, since all incarnum feats require a con score, you'll be cheating yourself out of the only real way to gain moar essentia.

[Vaz]

Note; if going as an Sorcerer or any other Cha based character, and you're "limited" to Alter Self, take Metamorphic Transfer and any LA0 Outsider; either any of the RAW lesser planetouched from Forgotten Realms, or a Neraph.

Alter Self into a Visilight, get monstrous high Charisma. Have fun.

[GilesTheCleric]

A quick question, again on essential: If I take the Midnight Dodge feat, but don't have anything else that gives essentia etc, can I use that 1 point for anything that requires essentia (even eg. qualifying for Umbral Disciple)?

Venger, I might just PM you with the details of my build so far. It's in a pretty rough state, so I wouldn't want to confuse anyone who stumbles onto this later.

[Vaz]

Yes.

You can post if you want, however.

[GilesTheCleric]

Yes.

You can post if you want, however.

I would, but I know some other people in my group read this forum, so I wouldn't want to give away too many of my secrets (we occasionally spar). If you're interested, I can PM you too ^^.