I've heard several people both on these messageboards and elsewhere say that the Magic of Incarnum classes are really powerful. Some even think that they are powerful enough to disrupt game balance. I recently acquired this book and have thumbed through it quite a bit, and I haven't seen ANYTHING really that powerful. In fact, I haven't even seen anything I thought was useful enough to incorporate. So enlighten me folks.....what am I missing?
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I'm just as stumped as you. I played an Incarnate / Cleric / Binder in a short-lived Age of Worms game, and all the two Incarnate levels gave me was a sucky base attack progression and a couple of extra Wis points from a chakra bind.
My stand on the whole Incarnum / Shadow magic / Psionics thing is that if you want to use them, either a.) use sparingly or b.) use that as the base magic system. Don't let your players go crazy. I mean, a dash of Psionics or Incarnum can be interesting, but I try to discourage it. F#~$ Shadow magic. Pact magic works well in most campaigns, though.
My two bits.
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I'm not sure about powerful, but Incarnum is certainly different. I have to say, I do like it, it's a nice change of pace from Wizards and Clerics. They're good role-fillers as well, an Incarnate can be a decent melee warrior, decent archer, or a pretty good skill-user given the right set of Soulmelds and Essentia investments. They also have a few really useful abilities at high-level, like unlimited Gate and (IIRC) true seeing.
I certainly wouldn't say that Incarnum is overpowered though, at best, it's a nice jack-of-all-trades type character like the Bard or the Factotum. As for the Soulborn, it kinda looks basically exactly like a Paladin, maybe a tiny bit better. And the Totemist, I'm not really sure.
Really, just use Incarnum if you feel like doing something different, I wouldn't worry too much about power levels with it, it's pretty balanced, I think.
I have a rogue 4/incarnate 2 in one game, and I can tell you about the only thing that really works well is my listen and spot checks using a bind. If done correctly I get close to a +11 on my checks. Outside of that done right, I have not found too many problems.
Thanks for the replies, guys. The funny part about this is that everything I looked at seemed UNDERpowered.
Flavor-wise, I'm all for variety. My campaigns feature magic, psionics, vestiges, invocations, whatever. I don't usually ban ANY class.....if somebody wants to munchkin, I munchkin an even worse monster for them to fight. They learn very quickly.
I myself am quite fond of both psionics and shadow magic.....as long as you use the updated shadowcaster from the Wizard board. My shadowcaster is doing some pretty good damage, and the stealth skills round the character out nicely.
I myself am quite fond of both psionics and shadow magic.....as long as you use the updated shadowcaster from the Wizard board. My shadowcaster is doing some pretty good damage, and the stealth skills round the character out nicely.
Your mention of an updated shadowcaster caught my eye. Is this something the author, Ari Marmell, posted on the WOTC boards? He had mentioned wanting to beef it up a bit b/c it RAW was a little underpowered. Do you have a link to this in any case? Would be much appreciated. Thanks.
Unfortunately, I do not have a link to the updated shadowcaster. It was never officially published, but Ari Marmell suggested a few fixes (on the Wizard messageboards) that I am trying out. I apologize if my previous post was misleading. I do remember that the only big difference was that you do NOT have to know all previous mysteries within a path to select a new mystery from that path. For example, to select "congress of shadows" which is a second level mystery of the Ebon Whispers path, you would have to know at least two first level mysteries, but those first level mysteries can be from ANY path, not just Ebon Whispers.
I believe Ari also suggested removing the bonus feats you get for knowing multiple paths, and instead award a bonus feat for each path completed. That way you're free to choose your known mysteries from as broad a range as you like, but there's still an incentive to complete a given path. I'm playtesting the build right now. I'm having fun with it so far, and it does not seem overpowered.
Unfortunately, I do not have a link to the updated shadowcaster. It was never officially published, but Ari Marmell suggested a few fixes (on the Wizard messageboards) that I am trying out. I apologize if my previous post was misleading. I do remember that the only big difference was that you do NOT have to know all previous mysteries within a path to select a new mystery from that path. For example, to select "congress of shadows" which is a second level mystery of the Ebon Whispers path, you would have to know at least two first level mysteries, but those first level mysteries can be from ANY path, not just Ebon Whispers.
I believe Ari also suggested removing the bonus feats you get for knowing multiple paths, and instead award a bonus feat for each path completed. That way you're free to choose your known mysteries from as broad a range as you like, but there's still an incentive to complete a given path. I'm playtesting the build right now. I'm having fun with it so far, and it does not seem overpowered.
Ok, thanks. Maybe I'll have to root around the old WOTC boards to find out the exact details. I don't know why Wizards just didn't let Ari do an erratum or web supplement to make the changes more official. Too bad for us.
There's always the totemist.
A totemist who binds landshark boots to grant them the ability to make a jumping attack with four claw attacks, who also has the girallon arms bound, which grants not only two extra claw attacks, but the ability to rend when two claw attacks hit, becomes a vicious thing indeed.
For my money, the totemist is where the real kick comes into the book.