The Magic of Incarnum: Viable for an Cross-Magical Campaign?

[wayfare]

One of my favorite books that was released in 3.5 was The Magic of Incarnum -- it was quirky, strange, and placed a huge ephasis on skills. I've never played it, mostly because psionics seemed easier to my players.

Now I'm considering intoducing incarnum magic into a 3.5 setting with magic and psionics. Will Incarnum ever comparer in terms of power? Or will it be a waste of space?

My impression of the Incarnum was that it was great as a stand alone sort of thing -- remove other types of magic from the world and replace with Incarnum. I'm not certain it can really stand on its own competing with standard clerics, mages, and psionic powers.

Thoughts?

[lsfreak]

Incarnum's biggest problem is that it requires a system mastery rivaled only by binders. You have to know what to shape, what works well together, etc. moreso than the other systems.

Once you get beyond that, it's roughly on par with non-cheesy psionics (i.e. no metamorphosis abuse), Tome of Battle, and the less broken Vancian systems (beguiler, dread necro). With the standard Vancian - clerics, sorcerers, wizards - it depends on playstyle a bit. It certainly shouldn't fair any worse than ToB/psychic warriors, and better than the Core melee classes.

[Pechvarry]

It's way harder than Binders. The only difficulty in Binders is that there's no quick list for searching through the vestiges.

--

Oh yeah, a topic. Assuming your players can wrap their heads around it, I'm under the impression incarnum functions fine with the rest. Some things to be aware of:

Totemists are where it's at, apparently. They have some of the best melds and some cool class features to boot.

Incarnates are functional, and make awkwardly good skillmonkeys (in addition to being deceptively good at toe-to-toe confrontation). Goooooo adjectives.

Soulborn are friggin' weak. I have a theory evil soulborns are actually at least as good as incarnates but I've yet to sit down and do a real build comparison.

As a DM:
-Use the MiC rules for magic items instead of the DMG
-Be ready to apply small buffs to Incarnate (maybe) and big buffs to Soulborn (definitely)

[JaxGaret]

Quick fix for Soulborn: Add +Cha to all saves as part of Incarnum Defense (like a Paladin) and change Smite Opposition from x/day to x/encounter.

This makes them much more durable and useful.

[Glimbur]

Incarnum plays well with other power sources in a build. Full casters, even if you don't want to spend the caster levels to qualify for an incarnum/casting PrC, can take feats for some soulmeld powers or extra metamagic powers. You can invest a little or a lot in Incarnum and you will get some results back.