What if Incarnum is the only non-mundane thing?

[Particle_Man]

No arcane magic, no divine magic, no manifestors, no psionics, no ki, no whatever the heck I have forgotten about. If you don't use essentia you get nothing. Note this even rules out some of the split prestige classes in the book Magic of Incarnum! Heck, I might go so far as to only allow the three core classes for PCs that are in Magic of Incarnum and even ban the NPC Adept. This would be a setting pared to the blue bones!

How would a world like this function? How would characters within this very restricted setting function? Would it be easier to DM? Harder to DM? In what ways?

[Troacctid]

Incarnum is designed to interact with other magic systems, so you'd be throwing away a lot of content from the book itself. You'd also lose (or have to convert) a huge number of monsters that make heavy use of traditional magic. And since there are only three meldshaping classes, as opposed to like 20+ spellcasting classes, it might feel a bit samey after a while.

[MaxiDuRaritry]

So all NPCs with NPC classes are soulborns?

[torrasque666]

Incarnum is designed to interact with other magic systems, so you'd be throwing away a lot of content from the book itself. You'd also lose (or have to convert) a huge number of monsters that make heavy use of traditional magic. And since there are only three meldshaping classes, as opposed to like 20+ spellcasting classes, it might feel a bit samey after a while.


So all NPCs with NPC classes are soulborns?

Fighters, Spell-less Rangers, Spell-less Paladins, Knights, Marshals, Initiators (except maybe Swordsage and some Prestige Classes), Rogues, Barbarians, etc seem like they'd all still be there and available. Basically looks like any class that makes use of Spells, Spell-Likes, or Supernatural abilities would be carved out. Anything that doesn't should be fine in this setting.

Personally, I like the idea. Sort of like a proto-world. Though I do agree with Troacctid, you'd have to rip out a lot of monsters like Dragons, most Outsiders, a lot of Undead, etc. It'd really get pared down to animals, humanoids, monstrous humanoids, giants, maybe magical beasts and oozes, vermin, and possibly plants. Aberrations, Elementals, Fey, the previously mentioned sacrifices, Constructs, they'd all probably have to go.

[animewatcha]

If you delve into native americans kind of campaign and sterf, you could possibly pull this off.

[Malphegor]

Necromancy might get weird, since afaik incarnum magic is powered on unborn soul energy. So you'd get these totally-not-Bleach's-Reiatsu users already using souls from the getgo as the basis of all their magic.

So in such a setting, I'd imagine incarnating soul energy inside the vessel of a corpse to not necessarily be considered evil at first. Just the same thing as a normal birth except directed, I suppose.

[Troacctid]

Necromancy might get weird, since afaik incarnum magic is powered on unborn soul energy. So you'd get these totally-not-Bleach's-Reiatsu users already using souls from the getgo as the basis of all their magic.

So in such a setting, I'd imagine incarnating soul energy inside the vessel of a corpse to not necessarily be considered evil at first. Just the same thing as a normal birth except directed, I suppose.
Absolutely not. Necrocarnum soulmelds have the [Evil] tag for a reason. It is true that necrocarnum zombies are powered by the souls of good-aligned creatures past, present, and future. The corpse is infused with their soul energy. Then, as part of the animating process, said souls are horribly tortured and drained of their essence as they are forced into an agonizing existence of pain and endless death. See page 132.

[MaxiDuRaritry]

Then, as part of the animating process, said souls are horribly tortured and drained of their essence as they are forced into an agonizing existence of pain and endless death. See page 132.So it's just like being forced to watch the Twilight movies. Or the Star Wars prequels. Or M. Night Shyamalan's abomination horror movie The Last Airbender.

[The Viscount]

There are a number of monsters who operate under the assumption that you have access to things like break enchantment, spells to remove statuses, and so on. For example, the cockatrice can petrify you, but this can be undone by a simple stone to flesh. Very few of these can be replicated with incarnum, so you have to either change the rules or limit your monsters.

Incarnum carries essentially no ability to buff other party members (at least with melds), so by extension all classes are made weaker. The biggest impact I foresee is that the only means of bringing the dead back to life are level 19+ incarnates or 13+ necrocarnates using planar chasuble to gate in outsiders to do it for them.

[gkathellar]

It'd rule out a lot of story-breaker abilities, so that's nice as a DM. It also gives magic a much stronger utilitarian flavor, as anyone can pick up Shape Soulmeld, and incarnum in general has a very physical aesthetic. Since there's no conventional item crafting in such a world, and soulmelds can take up equipment slots, it might be appropriate to use one of those "get your item bonuses for free" homebrew systems that are running around.

[Analytica]

Great idea!

Didn't AmberVael actually post a setting like that here a decade ago? Based on Ancient Egypt? Only binding and incarnum for magic, something like that?

[liquidformat]

Seems like a pretty cool idea, the question is whether or not to strip magic from monsters. Personally I think it could be very cool and flavorful if monsters still have their magic it is just that humanoids have yet to learn it or are incapable of being taught arcane magic of dragons, druidic magic of nymphs, and the holy magic of planetars. Maybe look at the unearthed arcana rituals to replace some of the needed holes left by stripping out magic. Like ritual to turn stone back to flesh.

Also maybe turn soulborn into a easy access 10 level prc rather than a 20 level class. It honestly works better as a prc...

[Hackulator]

It's a game I would certainly play in, even if only because I've never bothered to learn the Incarnum rules system and this would make me do it lol. Because of that fact, I can't really say much about what it would be like.

[awa]

well you would definitely need to keep the magical beasts if nothing else.

You could even keep magic items by claiming they are kind of like permanent soul melds bonded to the item rather than a person.
If you keep the items then you can alleviate the problem of needing certain spells by providing items that can fix those problems.

[mabriss lethe]

It can be done, and it can be fun.

that said, you'd have to vet every single thing you put into the game to ensure compatibility. the whole game is built around the basic vancian casting system, and a lot of assumptions as to what constitutes an appropriate challenge take the capabilities of standard level-appropriate magic into account.

[Quertus]

So, much like e6, monsters are trump. My political rivals have no hope of becoming unstoned from my slave Medusa army; otherwise, Vow of Poverty is looking pretty tempting.

That about sum it up?

[ben-zayb]

Fighters, Spell-less Rangers, Spell-less Paladins, Knights, Marshals, Initiators (except maybe Swordsage and some Prestige Classes), Rogues, Barbarians, etc seem like they'd all still be there and available. Basically looks like any class that makes use of Spells, Spell-Likes, or Supernatural abilities would be carved out. Anything that doesn't should be fine in this setting.Spell-less Paladin will be stripped off all its abilities except aura of good and immunity to diseases, so it's arguably worse than a fighter or soulborn at that point. For initiators, Devoted Spirit, Shadow Hand, and Desert Wind maneuvers will be heavily nerfed.

[SLOTHRPG95]

I think this'd partially hinge on whether or not you're actually cutting out any and all non-incarnum Su abilities (as some have assumed) or not, at least for the viability of certain classes such as Paladin. This also plays into one of the biggest changes in such a system: how hard it is to heal/remove status conditions. People have already addressed issues such as petrification or death, but even simple hit point damage can leave you out of commission for a week or more when you have to rely on natural healing. If Su abilities are generally allowed, then Lay on Hands suddenly makes a big difference in recovery times. If not, then having everyone hit at least a +5 to Heal checks (so anyone can provide long-term care if the rest of the party needs it) becomes important.