[3.5] Question About Incarnums

[Zertryx]

I'm planning on making an character using the Magic of Incarnum book but was wonder are the classes in it any good, and what are some decent builds that can be done?

[Weezer]

It's generally accepted that the Totemist is the strongest of the three, closely followed by the Incarnate and that both of them are pretty good at what they were intended to do. Soulborn on the other hand is seen as pretty weak overall.
As for more specific build/feat/meld choice have a look at the Incarnum Handbook and the Totemist Handbook, both are pretty good at giving an intro to what's good in Incarnum.

[Dusk Eclipse]

Incarnum Handbook

A quick resume of the clasess

Incarnate: a paragon of his aligment, they have access to most chakra binds relatively easy, and they are able to pump checks (attack, skill, etc) to insane levels, never played one, but they seem really popular.

Totemist: Natural Attacks galore, this is basically build your own monster class, most souldmeld from this class give or improve natural attacks, some souldmeld also offer monstrous abilities (like blink, trample, breath weapon) they are as tough as they can get.... oh yeah totemist can be serious grapplets, IIRC there was one totemist build that could out-grapple the Tarrasque.

Soulborn:.... and here is the one who nobody likes, the soulborn is considered weak as it is a half-melder, very much in the same vein as a apaladin, I don't really know much about them, but I know some soulborn exclusive sould melds, are really goos (thunderstride boots, come to mind)

One thing I have seen, is that the book is quite complicated at a glance, I took a couple of readthroughs to fully understand it, so you may want t consider that, if your DM is not familiar with MoI

[The Rabbler]

Note: when he says that the totemist is natural attacks galore, he isn't kidding. I managed to work out a build that landed something along the lines of 20 claw attacks and also throwing around ~30 sneak attack damage each attack.

Also, Totemists make the best archers in the game, IIRC. The Manticore Belt (I think) gives 1 ranged attack for each essentia invested, giving you around 8 attacks with the same source. Throw in Thayan Gladiator (I think that's the one) and you can get upwards of 30 pretty easily. Gestalt that with a swift archer build and you're going to be throwing around a LOT of d6s.

[Zertryx]

Thank you, this was really helpful. I'd probably would want to play an Incarnate because I don't like to be the best always but not to sucky either, and the totemist gives me a kinda barbaric feeling which i usually like to play spell casters / ranged or skillful characters.

[The Rabbler]

Thank you, this was really helpful. I'd probably would want to play an Incarnate because I don't like to be the best always but not to sucky either, and the totemist gives me a kinda barbaric feeling which i usually like to play spell casters / ranged or skillful characters.

you'll have to make absolutely sure that you know what alignment you want to play, then. Incarnates don't allow for much ambiguity.

[Zertryx]

Yea i noticed that, usually I like playing CG or CN but I may have to play LN from what I read it is one of the better choices and CN seem's to be the worst.

[The Rabbler]

you might want to simply re-fluff the totemist then. I find the totemist to be a much more free-flowing class than the incarnate, as you can have a new attack option much more easily than you could as an incarnate.

[Zertryx]

Yea I will have to look into each more, what Tier would you consider the Incarnate and Totemist in? I looked at the Tier listings but they were not on it.

[Godskook]

Roughly tier 3, for Totemist/Incarnate, and tier 5 for Soulborn, based on their hype.

Totemist and Incarnate won't be game-breakers compared to sorcerers and wizards, but they're quite powerful and have the full class's versatility at their long-term disposal.

Soulborn, on the other hand, is compared unfavorably with the paladin, and the paladin is tier 5.

[Tael]

Meh, unless you really know incarnum well, Totemist will probably be mid/low tier 3, Incarnate can range from tier 3-6, but is most often tier 4, and soulborn is tier 5.

[Keld Denar]

Really, slap on Incarnate Weapon, juice it up with as much essentia as you can muster, and go to town. Everything else on there is pure support. Spend your rounds focusing your incarnum weapon and attempting to stunlock foes. Improved Soulmeld Capacity (class feature and feat) and you can get pretty silly DCs. Doesn't scale too well past low levels though.

If you want to get REALLY stunhappy, be a LN Dorf and go into Ironsoul Forgemaster. They have a really badass stun attack, assuming you have the stats to back it up.