Valenar Totemist

[Cwymbran-San]

Hello fellow playgrounders!

In our new campaign, i wanted to play a totemist. Just for the laughs, i never found the Incarnum system that powerful. As i was researching the concept and tried to fit it with the Eberron campaign world, i came up with an idea:

How about a Valenar elf totemist, which does not revere magical beasts but the spirits of his ancestors? And the soulmelds are actual gifts of the ancients in his quest for glory? Would that work? Or does one of the other incarnum-classes fit better into that background?

I would really appreciate this before i start refluffing the soulmelds and building ideas for that characters progression.

[GutterFace]

Think of the Totemist as the "barbarian" of the Incarnum system.
if you are getting ancestral 'gifts' then perhaps Incarnate is better for you, flavor wise.

it depends what you want to do, i have played both and Totemist is much easier to get rolling, damage wise. but you're illiterate and basically a solmelding savage.

Incarnate is more of a plan ahead type, i mean even alignment is really important for some of the melds.

[Psyren]

Elves aren't the best choice for incarnum classes due to the con penalty but ultimately you can make any class work on any race.

You could certainly refluff the totemist melds to not be beast-based, though for some of them (e.g. the ones that let you bite and claw at things) this might be a little tough to do.

[Cwymbran-San]

it depends what you want to do, i have played both and Totemist is much easier to get rolling, damage wise. but you're illiterate and basically a solmelding savage.


Well, savagery and looking for trouble would fit right with the Valenar, as far as i understand their background. They are basically a splinter force of the Aereni elves who revere their ancestors by doing what they did back in Xen'drik. And these guys fought against their giant opressors quite a lot...

[GutterFace]

Well if you go to the Totemist route, i know there are some nice Feats in Savage Species to help with all the natural attacks.

[Cwymbran-San]

I am listening, impress me :-)

[Zombulian]

I dunno about the Totemist for this idea. Incarnate is actually very tight in the flavor of being related to past heroes' souls. Just take that as every Incarnate meld you shape being related to a valenar of legend and you're golden.

[Lord Haart]

While some people apparently take the two classes' fluff close to heard, i'd say certainly go for it if totemist's mechanics fits the desired character better than being locked into a Neutral Non-Neutral alignment and using Incarnum Radiance. Fluff is mutable (and by the time of the later books, which include MoI, WoTC writers themselves somewhat realised this, as evidenced by, say, binder refluff suggestions in the Tome of Magic), and soulmels certainly don't have to be melded souls.

[Cwymbran-San]

On top of this, the Incarnate has a bad BAB. I still need to hit stuff you know...