Veilweaving - help a complete Newb decide if we want to replace Incarnum with it

[GrayDeath]

As the title says.

I ahve so far only read over the SRD parts once, back when it was first put there.

Now my Co-DM and I have been doing a 3.P game (well, actually 3, on and off) where we thought/tested a lot and used the not broken, easier to use version of the rules whenever possible.... but so far noone has played an Incarnum User.

I was pointed towards Veil Weaving in another of my question Threads, and a short talk with the other DM led to the realization that neither of us knows enough about it....yet.


So without further ado:

If the goal is to ahve the overall "better" System, with less bad editing/overlooked itneractions/exploits, which would you use, and why?

The extra effort for the new option is no argument against btw, as neither of us knows enough Incarnum Stuff "perfectly" to implement that without much work either, so...^^

[Efrate]

Veilweaving fixes a LOT of Incarnum's issues. For one all the veilweaving classes as Good in various ways. Especially if you include the city of 7 seraphs stuff. Radiant, Eclipse, Zodiac (Solar and Lunar), Stormbound, Nexus, and Rajah are all great classes and Guru gets a lot of help as a healy monk type with Unicorn's Feathering. Viziers become more wizard like and are what incarnate's should have been, and Daevic is a combination Soulborn/Totemist that is quite good as well. Same with akashic races, easy options to get a base Large PC, get native flight, and/or natural attacks that from level 1 can count as magic.

That being said, you run into the same problem of never enough essense to keep all your stuff full all the time, but you can pretty easily have out of combat veils that are utility and leave your combat empty until stuff happens. PrC's are not the greatest, but there are a lot of great archtypes and paths within each class to give a lot of variety and like most PF classes 1-20 is plenty good enough. Also akashic races have some pretty nice favored class bonuses.

Mostly, I think Akashic is better than Incarnum because you have a wider variety of effects that are more powerful and scale better than most incarnum. You can do BFC, Blast, Buffs, Debuffs, Skill boni, Minionmancy, Healing, Mobility, Comabt Maneuvers, Ranged Damage, Melee Damage, and there is a ton more variety. There isn't a strongheart vest, blink shirt, or airstep sandles available at level 1 and good enough for the entirety of your career, but you can get flight at level 1 with a race or veil (not perfect but solid), teleportation (limtied), concealment, and more. Most of the more abusive stuff incarnum has is gated behind higher level binds or is limited in scope. Skill boosters are not as potent at level 1 but scale better.

Strongheart vest as of a brief glance though veils is the only thing not easily replicatable. Shell out the cash for that wand of lesser restoration.

[noob]

Incarnum definitively have soul melds that are more useful than others.
However there is no ultra broken things that devastate balance as we know it: the strongest tricks are things like having a lot of natural weapons.
Soul melds have a rather simple mechanic that could fit a single manual page if they made more concision efforts.
Veilweaving is a rather direct recreation of incarnum with barely different mechanics that looks very similar.
You could even if you wanted put soul melds as veils and veils as soul meld.

[NomGarret]

Two of the biggest structural differences between incarnum and veilweaving are that with veilweaving binding doesn’t lock out magic item slots and feats rarely lock essence. These are two quality of life changes that generally make it more playable.