Incarnate Construct Template -- When do you apply the -2 level adjustment?

[ApologyFestival]

Savage Species is a famously busted book. Incarnate construct is a busted template found inside the busted templates section. ****'s broken, mostly because of this line:


Level Adjustment: -2 (minimum 0).

When you're making an incarnate construct character that starts with 0 level adjustment, this can give you 2 "free" LA to play with, to apply other templates. This isn't news -- it's a well-known trick. The only downside is that the creature loses all special attacks and special qualities when the template applies.

Question is, Playground, in what order do you apply your templates to get 0 LA with as many goodies as possible? I'm going to use this template to make a few beefy big bads for my players, and for the sake of fairness I'd rather apply it in the way that the D&D 3e community has collectively decided is best. I'm not expecting a RAW answer for this, but it'd be great if one did exist.

All my searching suggests that the popular opinion for optimisers is the "Have your cake and eat it" approach: Apply incarnate construct first, taking your LA temporarily down to -2, then apply up to 2 LA of acquired templates, getting all of the abilities in those templates for no LA cost. For example, you start with a warforged, apply incarnate construct, then saint; you get all of the goodies of saint for 0 LA and lose very little.

My initial reading, however, is that templates must be acquired one-at-a-time, the creature must be rules-legal at every step, and the -2 LA is not "remembered" past the step where incarnate construct is applied because LA bottoms out at 0. So you would have warforged (0 LA), then apply incarnate construct (-2 LA, to 0 LA), then apply saint (+2 LA, to 2 LA). So, incarnate construct must be applied last, losing all special abilities in the process. This would mean that the best templates to apply are ones with beefy ability score bonuses, or additional modes of movement.

Sorry if I've explained this poorly. Any thoughts?

[Crake]

If you're using it for NPCs, you should largely ignore the LA section and instead look at the CR section, that's what matters for NPCs. That being said...


My initial reading, however, is that templates must be acquired one-at-a-time, the creature must be rules-legal at every step, and the -2 LA is not "remembered" past the step where incarnate construct is applied because LA bottoms out at 0. So you would have warforged (0 LA), then apply incarnate construct (-2 LA, to 0 LA), then apply saint (+2 LA, to 2 LA). So, incarnate construct must be applied last, losing all special abilities in the process. This would mean that the best templates to apply are ones with beefy ability score bonuses, or additional modes of movement.

Yes, this pretty much sums it up when using it for players. For an NPC though, a warforged's base CR is 1, so incarnate construct would reduce it to 1/2 (effectively -1 as you apply class levels to it), and the saint template, adds +2 CR, so overall an incarnate warforged saint's CR would be it's level +1, regardless of it's LA.

[Vizzerdrix]

The proper time to apply it is after you find a sturdy enough object to shield you from whatever the DM throws. :smalltongue:

[Rebel7284]

The thing is, there is no such thing as "temporary LA". You would set your LA to 0 and then the template would increase that. You would have to have your template first and THEN apply Incarnate Construct later, which you can do pretty easily by paying someone who can cast 9th level spells to cast a spell with the same name as the template. Of course, then you run into the clause or losing most of the abilities of your base race, which is suboptimal.

For further optimization, consider that there are two prestige classes that turn you into constructs, potentially allowing you to get -4LA or -6LA in early epic. Renegate Mastermaker and uh, what was that terrible one that eats starmetal [edit: Green Star Adept]? Of course I have yet to find good aquired templates to apply to a Warforged to actually be worth doing this.