[3.5] MoI for dummies thread

[Thurbane]

http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showp...3&postcount=43

There's an apparent need for a "Magic of Incarnum for dummies"-thread.


Crux of the matter though:
- Your race and class determine your essentia pool.
- Your class levels and feats determine how many Soulmelds you can bind.
- Your class levels determine how many of your Soulmelds can be bound to Chakras.

Then you:
- Choose which soulmelds you bind in the morning. You basically know all on your class list but can only bind as many as your class limit (or Con minus 10, whichever is lower) plus any Shape Soulmeld-feats you have.
- Choose which, if any, of the soulmelds to bind to Chakras for extra abilities (but taking that slot so you can't use a magic item there), up to your class maximum.
- Assign your essentia total between your soulmelds and any possible incarnum feats or other incarnum receptables. It's not spent, it's simply assigned to empower certain abilities and it's there until reassigned. Your essentia total is pretty much fixed; you can just assign the same pool in different ways.
- Your default maximum of essentia that can be invested to one essentia receptacle (soulmeld, feat, class feature, magic item or such) is 1 on levels 1-5, 2 on levels 6-10, 3 on levels 11-15 and 4 on levels 16-20. Some class features and feats increase this for specific chakras.

That's about it. Here's hoping at least someone finds Incarnum more accessible now.

Anyone care to expand on this? I, for one, would really like to learn the Incarnum system. I actually did own the book, but got it fairly early on in my 3.X experience. After a couple of flip-throughs, I decided it wouldn't be much use in our mostly "core only" games. I traded it in for a discount on a copy of Cityscape.

I have a much more solid grasp of the 3.5 rules now, and am very interested in the whole Icarnum system.

[demidracolich]

For the classes: soulborn sucks, incarnate is ok and totemist is awesome. Both incarnate and soulborn are really alignment based while totemist soulmeld copy magical beasts. Many of the binds give you natural attacks. Also incarnum classes are pretty SAD because they have con as primary ability score. Also you don't need nearly as much items as other classes so VoP might be a good choice.

[Gralamin]

http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showp...3&postcount=43



Anyone care to expand on this? I, for one, would really like to learn the Incarnum system. I actually did own the book, but got it fairly early on in my 3.X experience. After a couple of flip-throughs, I decided it wouldn't be much use in our mostly "core only" games. I traded it in for a discount on a copy of Cityscape.

I have a much more solid grasp of the 3.5 rules now, and am very interested in the whole Icarnum system.

Honestly thats about what you need to play, except for:
All Melds need to be shaped to a slot, and you normally cannot shape two melds to the same slot. The Totem chakra cannot be shaped on. Binding a Meld prevents magic items from being used on that slot.

For the classes: soulborn sucks, incarnate is ok and totemist is awesome. Both incarnate and soulborn are really alignment based while totemist soulmeld copy magical beasts. Many of the binds give you natural attacks. Also incarnum classes are pretty SAD because they have con as primary ability score. Also you don't need nearly as much items as other classes so VoP might be a good choice.

Incarnate is actually arguably better then totemist, just harder to build. Strength and Con are the two most important scores for most, making them more of a DAD build then SAD. VoP is however, plausible for an Incarnate. (Totemist to a lesser extent, because, IIRC, Totemist have harder access to flight.)

[demidracolich]

Mabye, but the fluff and the abilities of the totemist is what I like, no alignment based things.
Harder access to flight? Its called bind pegasus cloak, gives you wings with fly 10ft good maneuverability per point of essentia.

[Godskook]

What there really needs to be is an approximate level-based soulmeld/bind list.

For instance:

Totemists have 7 'chakra' levels, as follows:

1.No chakras, just shaping, starts at L1
2.Totem Chakra, starts at L2
3.Chakra(Crown, Feet, Hands), starts at L5
4.Chakra(Arm, Brow, Shoulders), L9
5.Double Totem, L11
6.Chakra(throat, waist), L14
7.Chakra(Heart), L17

These are the breaing points of the Totemist in terms of writing a guide about the class. What's 'good' at point #4 isn't good at point #7, neccessarily, and some help to filtering out level-inappropriate stuff would make the system a lot easier.

For:
#2 - Girillon Arms provides you with 4 natural attacks, and is porbably among the best totem binds you can get and make use of right away. Although Blink Shirt's move action teleport is tasty, at a level where no one else can teleport.

Point is, make a short list of the level-appropriate soulmelds, and make separate lists for 'good soulmelds for this level' and 'good binds for this level', cause meldshapers are going to need to shape soulmelds they can't bind, and finding a good shape-only meld is hard in the guides we currently have available mostly because there's no list anywhere to narrow things down to "level appropriate". That's what makes the system so much harder than Vancian casting, which makes it really easy(At L10, casters should be casting L5 spells) by comparison.

[Flickerdart]

Note that at some levels, you will gain new chakras, but have a limited number of chakra binds that mean you can't use these new ones without giving up existing binds.