For anyone who has an interest in injecting Magic of Incarnum into the AoW, let's discuss how to do it.
(As an aside, I'm not a power-gamer, nor do I think the MoI rules are "sweet" for making cartoon superheros. I am, however, a sucker for new rules systems, and picked up MoI out of passing interest. I always think my campaigns could stand to benefit from new/old/"lost" magics, and want to see how it could be done.)
- I'm leaning towards a light touch with incarnum, and want to tweak a few things here and there to add meldshaping foes and elements (I'm also tweaking things at about the same rate for psionics). The grimlock cleric in 3FoE will be a totemist (his penchant for beast trophies seems to beg it) and I'm thinking about making a few random grimlocks Lost as well. More will come as I review the adventure path further (and get my MoI book back from the player of the azurin in the party).
Naturally, the psychic ills of an imrisoned demi-god and the poison of his followers could certainly taint the soul-energy of a campaign. I've had no concrete ideas beyond a general sense of wrongness with soul energy in certain locations in the the campaign (the Dark Cathedral etc.) Any ideas?
I'll pipe in my thoughts when my copy comes in the mail. (Hopefully in a couple days).
WaterdhavianFlapjack
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I picked MoI up over the weekend and haven't had time to peruse it all just yet...But an incarnate has joined a psychic warrior at the top of my "to play" list. Hopefully I'll get to play either/both in the next two years :)
At the moment I'm more concerned with tying incarnum into the campaign setting, and letting my players know it exists, than getting it into the Age of Worms. That's probably because it took me three months to get the group to Diamond Lake (we'd started playing before AoW started, then I read the Whispering Cairn and knew I HAD to run it!).
The meldshaper classes fit in really well with how I've set up the setting's pantheon (one "true god" for each alignment), so I don't think its going to be too difficult. So for me, the incarnates are going to be tied to the neutral good/evil/lawful/chaotic deities, the soulborn to the extreme alignments, and totemists to the true neutral nature/balance deity. I hadn't yet written up the death aspect of the neutral evil god of shadows (Erebus, totally knicked from my favourite issue of dragon ever, the one just before the revamp), so I think that he is going to be responsible for the destruction of the Primal Font and the release of incarnum. It would tie in with Erebus wanting to return the Matieral Plane to the Primal Void, it just didn't turn out how he expected!
My players have already encountered a semi-recurring villain in the shape of an evil psychic warrior, who I'm hoping will escape their second fight (power stone of psychic teleport, me thinks, then I'll let them kill him at some point in 3FoE), so they are used to non-core classes, with abilities they don't understand, turning up. I might try and sneak in an evil incarnate goon to the psychic warrior for his third appearance...
People's thoughts on fitting incarnum into the campaign path would be really handy for me too.
Cheers
Ukos
Well, there's been a slight upset in clever plan to play-test incarnum rules... after reviewing the book, the player of the azurin opted to not take the Cobalt Power feat, feeling that the added essentia point from the feat was wasted. Not wanting him to feel slighted in his choice of character (which was from a randomly-drawn "campaign option" card he received), I suggested the Shape Soulmeld feat to get his character something more substantial to use (I don't generally allow takebacks on feats, but our first two sessions have involved no combat, so I decided it could happen). So he has an incarnum-shaped magical battleaxe that returns to his hand (Incarnum Weapon) and now he's the center of attention. We'll see if the other players can control their dismay/greed and undertand that "the rules are balanced, man." We shall see.
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Well, there's been a slight upset in clever plan to play-test incarnum rules... after reviewing the book, the player of the azurin opted to not take the Cobalt Power feat, feeling that the added essentia point from the feat was wasted. Not wanting him to feel slighted in his choice of character (which was from a randomly-drawn "campaign option" card he received), I suggested the Shape Soulmeld feat to get his character something more substantial to use (I don't generally allow takebacks on feats, but our first two sessions have involved no combat, so I decided it could happen). So he has an incarnum-shaped magical battleaxe that returns to his hand (Incarnum Weapon) and now he's the center of attention. We'll see if the other players can control their dismay/greed and undertand that "the rules are balanced, man." We shall see.
Is the player's character an incarnum class?
If so, I would of thought that they'd want to get their hands on as many points of essentia as possible. Even if it can't be put to good use immediately, at higher levels I would think its quite difficult to fill every single one of a character's soulmelds, feats, etc, to capacity. Maybe not for a soulborn, though, they get far fewer soulmelds than an incarnate.
Ho hum, player's choice, I guess.
I'm still hoping I'll get to play an incarnate sometime soon. Throwing one at my players, as an NPC, will at least let me try building one and give a brief playtest of the mechanics, but I'd really like to see how they grow and develop over several levels...And I'd love a chance to try out as many soulmelds as possible.
Ukos
Is the player's character an incarnum class?
Ukos
No, the player has a variant paladin (CG Avenger) of Trithereon. Naturally, I tried to suggest that soulborn might be the way to go, but he understandably didn't want to jump into a core class with which he was completely unfamiliar. After briefly explaining what an azurin was during character creation, I suggested Cobalt Power (he was already planning on the Power Attack tree). With the Power Attack pre-req, that meant just one potential use for his 2 points of essentia (one wasted 'till 6th level or the acquisition of another feat or so).
Has anyone else noticed a lack of interest in essentia acquisition due to the level-based caps on investment? One could of course, plan for the future, but that rarely seems to happen with "dead" (unusable) feats. Perhaps comparable to a sorcerer taking Maximize spell at 1st level (technically possible) even though it couldn't be used until... what, 8th level? This seems to apply to a lot of the casual (non-meldshaping) uses of essentia, especially at under 6th level.
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The way I'm doing things is by having incarnum be something that was developed a long time ago by a variant gatekeeper sect (yes, I'm running AoW in Eberron). I figure that they were the most likely to be continuing to develop abilities like the totemist. Eventually, the knowledge of those techniqures spread, thanks to the Last War. The elders of this particular sect worried that the war was a sign to prepare for another planar invasion. But the teachings were very difficult to understand and most people couldn't harness the power of incarnum and so few place were able to pass the lessons along.
This means that around diamond lake, there are only three groups or people that know about incarnum. The first, is of course, Allustan. He's heard about it and has a few pages of notes stuffed somewhere in his library on it, but is doubtful if it is real or merely legends. The second is the Twilight Monastary. All of the monks have a fighting style that is based on the movements of certain magical beasts and animals and some have managed to understand the ancient teachings and through meditation have learned how to tap into incarnum claiming that they are merely channeling their own chi. The last group, the most knowledgable, is the Bronzewood Lodge. They were the first students of the blue dragon, Jhal'kru'azin'dasir. She was the first one to read the portion of the draconic prophecy that would lead to opening the well of souls in Xendrik, which was sealed when the Giants sealed off Eberron from Xoriat. This event was also what would later allow the warforged race to have souls (at least in my campaign).
I also make any character from Diamond Lake choosing to have incarnum based abilities have ties to one of these three
-Malkari
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No, the player has a variant paladin (CG Avenger) of Trithereon. Naturally, I tried to suggest that soulborn might be the way to go, but he understandably didn't want to jump into a core class with which he was completely unfamiliar. After briefly explaining what an azurin was during character creation, I suggested Cobalt Power (he was already planning on the Power Attack tree). With the Power Attack pre-req, that meant just one potential use for his 2 points of essentia (one wasted 'till 6th level or the acquisition of another feat or so).
Aaaah, I see. With two points of essentia, and only one vessel for it, it would feel like a waste. I suppose the character could of gone for taking another incarnum feat at 3rd..Except they'd then probably end up with a third point of essentia :)
Hopefully, your other players will get jealous enough of the incarnate weapon that they'll turn to incarnum too! Being able to invest that point of essentia, from being azurin (assuming the shape soulmeld feat allows a character to invest? I can't remember), must be a nice boost too.
Has anyone else noticed a lack of interest in essentia acquisition due to the level-based caps on investment? One could of course, plan for the future, but that rarely seems to happen with "dead" (unusable) feats. Perhaps comparable to a sorcerer taking Maximize spell at 1st level (technically possible) even though it couldn't be used until... what, 8th level? This seems to apply to a lot of the casual (non-meldshaping) uses of essentia, especially at under 6th level.
I think that incarnates and totemist would probably be the most interested in acquiring as much essentia as possible. Soulborn really don't get access to enough soulmelds, early on, to make having a massive pool worthwhile. Characters just dabbling in incarnum will probably have a similar attitude. But the ability to go beyond the level based cap, for incarnates and totemists, means that they can probably always find a use for more essentia.
I think that limiting the amount of investable essentia by level was an extremely smart part of the mechanics; it should stop certain effects from really getting out of hand. In particular, it makes Incarnate Avatar a less then must-have soulmeld, since it only provides a benefit with essentia invested.
Ukos