Tell me about incarnum

[thirdkingdom]

As part of a series of 'zines I'm writing I've been converting 3.x and newer classes over to Old School Essentials. I've already done the Binder and am thinking about doing an incarnum-based class, but don't know much about incarnum other than having the book and reading it once or twice. So, is it a good system? Are there things to avoid? I'm a little leery of using the "chakra" system since it is drawn from real-life belief, but am not sure how important that is to incarnum itself.



Thanks!

[Tzardok]

I never played a meldshaper before, but from what I've heard it's a bit underpowered. Attempts to cheese it usually involve using a feat to gain access to a specific soulmeld on a character that otherwise doesn't use incarnum instead of involving meldshaper classes.

"Chakra" is just a fancy word for "item slot". If you don't like the implications of it, just replace it with slot.

Incarnum isn't as complicated as it's sometimes said to be, you just need to get past the terminology. If you want, I can give a condensed run-down of the *snerk* essentials.

[Seerow]

As part of a series of 'zines I'm writing I've been converting 3.x and newer classes over to Old School Essentials. I've already done the Binder and am thinking about doing an incarnum-based class, but don't know much about incarnum other than having the book and reading it once or twice. So, is it a good system? Are there things to avoid? I'm a little leery of using the "chakra" system since it is drawn from real-life belief, but am not sure how important that is to incarnum itself.



Thanks!


Chakra Binds are an integral part of incarnum. Something easy enough to rename if you'd like since when you bind a chakra you're effectively making a pseudo Magic Item, it even takes over the equivalent magic item slot. So even reflavoring the whole thing into some sort of artificer-like thing would be pretty easy.

Short version of how Incarnum Works:

-You get a certain number of Soulmelds that you can shape. Each morning you choose which melds you want to shape. At the start of the day you can change soulmelds. Each meld is shaped to a specific slot, but does not prevent you from using a Magic Item in that slot, and gives you abilities.

-You get a smaller number of Chakra Binds. As mentioned above, these Chakra binds effectively turn your Soulmeld into a magic item, locking you out from using a magic item in the same slot you have a bound Soulmeld. When you Bind a Soulmeld, you get another ability, depending on which Chakra the soulmeld was bound to. Different Chakras unlock at different levels, with higher level unlocked Chakras typically unlocking more powerful abilities.

-You get a pool of Essentia, which is essentially magic points you can shift between your Soulmelds at will. There is a level based limit for how much Essentia you can put into a single Soulmeld, the more essentia you put into the Soulmeld, the more powerful the effects of that Soulmeld's abilities.


It is honestly a fairly convoluted system that never really caught on due to a combination of being badly written/needlessly complex and not really having the power level there to be worth taking the time to understand. Sad as it is, but if it were considered a power level on par with the Wizard, everyone around here would be an 'expert' on Incarnum rather than it being a weird side thing that pops up from time to time.


One of the more interesting parts of the System is the ability to pick up the ability to Shape Soulmelds and even Bind Chakras through feats. So anyone willing to invest some character resources can cherry pick a couple of abilities that are pretty well outside the scope of what non-magical characters can typically do (notably things like flight and short range teleportation can be cherry picked out pretty early). Not sure how that would work with an OSSR adaptation of the material.

[DivineOnTheMind]

One thing that seems rough with an oldschool conversion is that most of the classes' effects are tied directly to the skill system.

I think that if you're trying to do this, the focus should be on the Totemist, because the other two classes frankly don't really work.

Incarnate is built to be a Wizard analog, but the thing is that it doesn't really get spells, and instead it gets a narrow band of proactive options that are gated by alignment. It does get decent passive defenses, but it has some Monk syndrome in that it doesn't do much. There are ways to bend over backward (https://www.enworld.org/threads/incarnate-by-the-numbers-todd.471394/) and make a Law Incarnate have a big +Melee Attack bonus, an Evil Incarnate have a big +Melee Damage bonus and a Chaos Incarnate have a big +Ranged Attack numerical bonus, but you're basically putting that on the Commoner chassis, and usually using a feat or two to make it work, which takes a reasonable investment to catch up to a Warrior chassis. It's pretty hard to pin down a role that it fills beside "Skillmonkey, without actual skill points" and it's a really tough class to play because it's basically a toolbox without offensive punch, and it usually is mostly usable as a 2-level dip before one of the Caster-Incarnate or Psion-Incarnate Theurge PrCs.

Soulborn is built as the Paladin analog, with slow-building incarnum powers on a melee chassis, but unlike Paladin, it lacks the frontloaded powers to dip, so it looks more like a Samurai, basically skating on proficiencies and high base attack for the first couple levels, and then getting a couple singular soulmelds to assist it. It actually gets a couple decent powers for a combat-oriented character, but not many and it doesn't have the essentia capacity to use them very well.

Totemist is the one base class that actually works. It's made to be the Druid analog, and every day it picks a number of different aspects of Magical Beast-themed abilities to distribute. Again, it's mostly for a variety of shifting skill bonuses, but it also gets a signature ability from one of the beasts each day, like a sphinx's claws or ankheg's breath weapon or manticore's tail or girallon's arms, which can usually give it some offensive punch. Like the Incarnate, it's often mostly usable in 3.5 as a 2-level character dip, but unlike the Incarnate, sticking with the class is pretty easy to have a coherent mix of skills, defense and offense that can be reconfigured on the fly.

So Totemist is the only class that I think "works" without any qualifications or hemming or hawwing, and the key part of it is that it takes on an aspect of a magical beast every day that lasts a day. The smaller, fiddlier parts that seem more complicated for the OSR conversion are that it still relies heavily on the skill system and takes a lot of work to move a few small +# bonuses around between attack/defense/skills/saves/utility powers

I also saw this post (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?215723-Incarnum-and-YOU-a-reference-guide) by ShneekyTheLost, which seems to answer OP's question more comprehensibly than I'd planned.

[thirdkingdom]

That link looks great! Thanks for it and your answer.

[StSword]

Since you're converting systems anyway, you might want to take a look at the Pathfinder 3p successor- Akashic.

You can read about it for free, to see if it is indeed something you're interested in here (https://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic/variant-magic-rules/akashic-magic/), here (https://libraryofmetzofitz.fandom.com/wiki/Akashic_Classes), and here (http://spheresofpower.wikidot.com/akashic-mysteries).

It's been my experience that Akashic is generally considered a superior successor to incarnum by people, and there's been made a lot of content for it including some rather flavorful classes like the mecha pilot Helmsmen, the lovecraftian Promethean, and the convert veils into spells Spellweaver.

[Particle_Man]

I think of it a bit like Star Trek but an episode where they are low on dilithium crystals so hard choices have to be made moment to moment between power going to shields or weapons or engines or . . .

So you have these receptacles for the power points (essentia points), including feats, some magic items, etc. Feats are unusual in “locking in” the power points for 24 hours, but most receptacles are cool with you moving the points around every round.

One new type of receptacle is soul meld, which you can get with a feat or more commonly as a class feature. A soul meld semi-occupies a magic item slot.

If you get it from a feat, you get only that one soul meld. If you get soul melds as a class feature, you have a class list of about 30 to choose from and can switch them out every day. You can’t usually have two soul melds in the same magic item slot.

At the low power basic level, the soul meld doesn’t preclude you from using a magic item in the same spot. It gives some small benefit (sometimes not even needing power points in the receptacle). That said, putting power points in there helps by adding something new or increasing the basic power a bit.

The higher power level, called bindings, are harder to do (again, via feats or class features can do it, although some spells can do this temporarily (for 24 hours). This advanced power level does preclude using magic items in the same spot but gives a cool new power. Again, power points often make this power even better. There are some restrictions on which magic item slots you can open at what level (it is easier to open the foot one where magic boots would go than the waist one where a belt would go, for example)

There are limits to how many power points you can put in a receptacle, based on character level (again, class features and feats can alter this).

Hope that helps!

[thirdkingdom]

I think of it a bit like Star Trek but an episode where they are low on dilithium crystals so hard choices have to be made moment to moment between power going to shields or weapons or engines or . . .

So you have these receptacles for the power points (essentia points), including feats, some magic items, etc. Feats are unusual in “locking in” the power points for 24 hours, but most receptacles are cool with you moving the points around every round.

One new type of receptacle is soul meld, which you can get with a feat or more commonly as a class feature. A soul meld semi-occupies a magic item slot.

If you get it from a feat, you get only that one soul meld. If you get soul melds as a class feature, you have a class list of about 30 to choose from and can switch them out every day. You can’t usually have two soul melds in the same magic item slot.

At the low power basic level, the soul meld doesn’t preclude you from using a magic item in the same spot. It gives some small benefit (sometimes not even needing power points in the receptacle). That said, putting power points in there helps by adding something new or increasing the basic power a bit.

The higher power level, called bindings, are harder to do (again, via feats or class features can do it, although some spells can do this temporarily (for 24 hours). This advanced power level does preclude using magic items in the same spot but gives a cool new power. Again, power points often make this power even better. There are some restrictions on which magic item slots you can open at what level (it is easier to open the foot one where magic boots would go than the waist one where a belt would go, for example)

There are limits to how many power points you can put in a receptacle, based on character level (again, class features and feats can alter this).

Hope that helps!

Yeah, that's actually a super helpful way to look at it.

[Soranar]

Incarnum has a sweetspot: the abilities aren't bad before ... level 10? But they're not on par with spells. Some can be pretty powerful at early levels (accidic spittle + sneak attack) if you find a decent combo (share souldmeld so your familiar can use it).

I can't think of a true game breaker though while casters or manifesters definitely have them.

You'll be a bit weaker than good tier 3 classes (bard, crusader, warblade, wildshape ranger) but definitely better than most tier 4 (say a rogue).

[Particle_Man]

That could leave open a campaign setting where incarnum exists and divine and arcane magic and psionics do not. On the one hand most soulmelds are “on” all day; on the other hand a lot of the staples parties usually rely on would be absent. On the third hand I guess it would be a linear party with no quadratic mage?

[thirdkingdom]

Incarnum has a sweetspot: the abilities aren't bad before ... level 10? But they're not on par with spells. Some can be pretty powerful at early levels (accidic spittle + sneak attack) if you find a decent combo (share souldmeld so your familiar can use it).

I can't think of a true game breaker though while casters or manifesters definitely have them.

You'll be a bit weaker than good tier 3 classes (bard, crusader, warblade, wildshape ranger) but definitely better than most tier 4 (say a rogue).

I'm writing this for Old School Essentials, which has a maximum level of 14, so the difference isn't quite so pronounced.

[Khedrac]

That could leave open a campaign setting where incarnum exists and divine and arcane magic and psionics do not. On the one hand most soulmelds are “on” all day; on the other hand a lot of the staples parties usually rely on would be absent. On the third hand I guess it would be a linear party with no quadratic mage?

I have run one of these (fairly briefly) as a post-apocalypse setting. Basically the ability to cast a spell or use psionics was a death sentence even to things normally immune to being killed.
As a result classes with SLAs and SUs were now the norm and races with such had become a lot more common. Use of spell-trigger items was painful (take the level of the spell cast squared as damage, minimum 1) so they wands of cure light wounds were used rather more carefully than normal

Healing was quite tricky to come by (hence CLW wands were used) and most of the continent was actually run by a cadre of Xovintaal dragons (the party found the nearest decent trading settlement was called "Public Hitching Post" as someone had messed up translating "Free Parking" from draconic - the dragons used it as neutral territory to meet and plot in.

I think the main options were:
Binders - can be built as healers once they hit the right level, none in my party
Warlocks & Dragonfire Adepts
Marshals & Dragon Shamen
Warblades, Crusaders & Swordsages - crusaders are useful for the healing
Wildshape rangers
Incarnates, Totemists & Soulborn

[pabelfly]

I have run one of these (fairly briefly) as a post-apocalypse setting. Basically the ability to cast a spell or use psionics was a death sentence even to things normally immune to being killed.
As a result classes with SLAs and SUs were now the norm and races with such had become a lot more common. Use of spell-trigger items was painful (take the level of the spell cast squared as damage, minimum 1) so they wands of cure light wounds were used rather more carefully than normal

Healing was quite tricky to come by (hence CLW wands were used) and most of the continent was actually run by a cadre of Xovintaal dragons (the party found the nearest decent trading settlement was called "Public Hitching Post" as someone had messed up translating "Free Parking" from draconic - the dragons used it as neutral territory to meet and plot in.

I think the main options were:
Binders - can be built as healers once they hit the right level, none in my party
Warlocks & Dragonfire Adepts
Marshals & Dragon Shamen
Warblades, Crusaders & Swordsages - crusaders are useful for the healing
Wildshape rangers
Incarnates, Totemists & Soulborn

Man, even with arcane, divine and psionics all banned, Truenamer still can't catch a break.

[Gnaeus]

Since you're converting systems anyway, you might want to take a look at the Pathfinder 3p successor- Akashic.

You can read about it for free, to see if it is indeed something you're interested in here (https://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic/variant-magic-rules/akashic-magic/), here (https://libraryofmetzofitz.fandom.com/wiki/Akashic_Classes), and here (http://spheresofpower.wikidot.com/akashic-mysteries).

It's been my experience that Akashic is generally considered a superior successor to incarnum by people, and there's been made a lot of content for it including some rather flavorful classes like the mecha pilot Helmsmen, the lovecraftian Promethean, and the convert veils into spells Spellweaver.

Second this. My group routinely plays with Akashic classes. At least the Dreamscarred press ones hover top of T4 to bottom T2.

[Nihilarian]

The Incarnate is supposed to be the best at meldshaping but all of their soulmelds are playing catchup to compensate for the class's dud chassis. It's still works out fine but i really don't want to spend my coolguy points on +attack when i could just play a class with higher BAB who also get cool stuff.

Totemist is an example of a class that gets better bab and also cool stuff. Also I think they are just cooler flavorwise; I'd rather shape the souls of monsters into monstrous equipment to give myself their unique abilities than shape the soul of Sailor Doug into a bracelet and make myself marginally better at swimming. Or whatever.