I have a player in a pbp that has been using it as is. It seems to hold up just fine.
Me, I always thought the incarnum classes were a bit weak. Very versatile, but tragically weak by comparison to most 3.5 core classes.
Since Pathfinder upgraded (most of) the core classes, I would think the disparity becomes even greater.
If nothing else, make sure the classes' hit dice match the Pathfinder methodology.
Beyond that, I truly didn't do more than read through the book a couple times and once I made a mid-level NPC who went his own way after he decided he was too weak to be a proper adventurer... So, I may not be the best voice to actually try to suggest enhancements to the classes - but I still stand by my earlier assessment that they looked and felt a bit weak to me, and they should likely only be weaker compared to Pathfinder core classes. IMO.
I'm curious to see what other people what other people feel is needed. I read through it but wasn't impressed. I did find a way to make a sorcerer who could cast all of his spells as Empowered at 1st level (Incarnum Human Varient + an Incarnum Feat + Empowered).
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well I just wrote a massive essay on the Magic of Incarnum for you... and realized I was referring to the wrong book!
Do I feel like a goober or what?! lol
Have Incarnum, bought it by accident (thought it was another book) and have not cared for what I read at first, so picked at it and forgot it and I think it is lying somewhere are around here. Might be a chew toy for the pit bull! lol
:)
Incarnum was a tragically poor book. The flavor of it is fantastic and I love it for that, but the presentation is awful: key concepts aren't introduced until late in the book, which makes it very confusing on the first read. It does turn out to be pretty simple and intuitive after a couple of passes, but that doesn't help the first impression.
And melds take up a magic item slot. While it was good flavor, the mechanics did not hold up: many melds were as powerful as an equivalent class feature or an equivalent magic item, I don't think a single one was as powerful as both together.
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This book gave me headaches for several sessions. I perceived it as being an especially egregious source of power creep. I adjusted AC and HP (sometimes on the fly) of opponents to make it fun for me again. My justification for this was that encounters were/are supposed to use a <insert correct percentage here> amount of player resources. So I fudged it to the point where they were.
I borrowed the player's copy one week, and I felt it cost too much for the amount of material within.
Instead of Incarnum, I might point enthusiasts who want to expand their magic options to some of the Malhavoc Books. Eldritch Might, Divine Might, Spell Treasury, Arcana Evolved/Unearthed.
And melds take up a magic item slot. While it was good flavor, the mechanics did not hold up: many melds were as powerful as an equivalent class feature or an equivalent magic item, I don't think a single one was as powerful as both together.
No, Chakra binds take up a Magic Item slot.
Still you can bind Chakras: you can both a soulmelf and a magic item in same slot (it even says so in the rules specifically). It is in the Soulmeld section.
I love the incarnum casting feat (requires to use incarnum spells)+ incarnum spells but unless your a cleric with Incarnum domain (every Deity has it) it is kinda hard to get.
I have had it used in a couple of game I've run. It works pretty well. It requires a bit of bookeeping at times, but he powers are useful, especially the some of the unusual ones.
Disenchanter Mask is a good example. It gives you a 10 range detect magic effect as a standard action. For every essentia point in it, you increase the range by 10 feet.
If you are a tomtemist and bind it to the "totem" chakra, you can use the mask to suppress magical items.
The Pegasus Cloak gives a constant feather fall effect and a +2 bonus to Jump checks. The bonus increases by +2 per point of essentia.
Bind it to the shoulder chakra and you gain flight. You do lose the cloak item slot. Totem bind it instead and you get limited flight (must land at the end of movement), but you keep the cloak slot free.
I've always liked MoI quite a bit for the fluff. The crunch of the classes and the melds themselves have always left me struggling to find a way to use them. Other than the Totemist, it's very hard to use the classes as written.
The Incarnate gets lots of melds but most of them don't do anything offensive. You're basically a wizard with nothing but buff spells. The melds are cool and useful in a passive/defensive manner, but an Incarnate doesn't replace a primary or even secondary spellcaster.
The Soulborn doesn't get meaningful melds until mid-level. Until then you're a paladin with nothing useful to do.
In my opinion Incarnum needs two things: the classes need a rebuild so that they're capable of being used in place of existing classes in the traditional four-character party, and additional melds need to be created for the Incarnate such that it can actually do something active instead of purely passive.
I may get around to either or both of these projects in the future as I'd really love to play some Incarnum.
I completely agree with you. The Incarnate is the one who needs the most help, imho. The Totemist can almost be converted as it's written, as it was a very well-designed class. It seemed to get all of the love from the developers.I would propose that you give the Incarnate 3/4ths BAB, a redesigned complement of skills, and then some actual "combat" soulmelds. There have been some really great ones that people have designed--I'll dig them up when I have the time. Those are just my starting suggestions. I also developed an extra class ability that basically let Incarnates (and only Incarnates) "shift" a chakra bind to an open chakra. I'll post that here when I find where I put the write up lol.
Interesting, I also think the Soulborn should get to invest his essentia into a healing or damaging ability.
Has anyone either tried using this with Pathfinder as-is or tried converting it?
I usually use an Incarnate in my friend's pathfinder campaign and we tweak it a little. The tweaks that I mostly do is just use a cleric's skeleton and add bonus feats like a wizard. And like a wizard, the feats must be an Incarnum feat. With just those two minor adjustments your Incarnate shoudl play just fine. I don't know about the other two since I never use them though.
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If the Totemist was based off of a type of monster that had some coherent theme, like Undead or Dragons or Fey, I'd have loved the concept (although the mechanics didn't scale too well, IIRC).
The choice of Magical Beasts, which is some sort of generic dumping ground for any 'beast' that has a spell-like ability and doesn't count as an animal, kind of ruined any sense of theme about the concept, IMO.
If the Totemist was based off of a type of monster that had some coherent theme, like Undead or Dragons or Fey, I'd have loved the concept (although the mechanics didn't scale too well, IIRC).
The choice of Magical Beasts, which is some sort of generic dumping ground for any 'beast' that has a spell-like ability and doesn't count as an animal, kind of ruined any sense of theme about the concept, IMO.
I see your point, but I personally like the Magical Beast angle. That monster type gets no love and really is just a dumping group for animals with magic. The totemist gave them a cohesion they didn't have before.
I have a player that dabbles in incarnum for his mantle of flame. He gets hit all the time so its a perfect choice. I have three gnoll necrocarnate brothers as villains. Yes, that PrC is very weak, but it allowed me to throw 15th level NPC's at my players without worry (8 players, 10th level average).
Like anything it depends on how you want to use it. Don't want your players walking away from each encounter loaded with magic items? Incarnum is the answer! Want random monsters to have cool abilities they wouldn't normally have? Incarnum!
I've become a huge fan of the book recently because I designed bad guys around it. For translations, the Soulborn's smite works like a paladin's and it gains a bonus combat feat at 4th, 6th, 12th and 16th. The incarnate gains a bonus incarnum feat at 6th, 10th and 12th. The totemist gains wildshape at 4th and advances it at 7th, 10th, 13th and 18th. The totemist can only turn into animals and magical beasts. These additions are actually incredibly minor affects on the overall classes, but they help when compared against the cores. I really wish that was open content or an updated concept could be done. I'm a big fan.
I never really got the fluff, and the two classes that weren't Totemist never really ringed with me.
Totemist was awesome though. It felt like a proper, primal style character, taking on the aspects of various magical beasts or mysterious monsters. I saw totemist as the more martial side of the druid. The Magical Beasts made perfect sense - it's meant to be a primal wilderness style character, and magical beasts are exactly what you'd get from that.
Unfortunately, the mechanics were a bit...wonky. They weren't exceedingly hard to grasp, just sorta slippy. It didn't help that, as was mentioned before, they didn't just put the mechanics down in plain sight - you had to dig through the book to find everything. The book organization wasn't that great in general, to be honest.
Weird mechanical idea with two "What" classes and one really cool one, and bad book design.
We liked this book and still use bits from it. Mantle of Flame and Mage's Spectacles still see the most use.
My hubby played a totemist in for a while and had fun with it. We never tried Incarnate and Soulborn, though, due to their seeming weakness.
Both seemed to be trying to be the alternate alignment class to balance out the Paladin. I wish they'd succeeded. I wish I had the talent to redesign them. [Then again I also wish I'd win the lottery so I could quit my job.] I'm not sure which is more likely. :)
I've started trying to convert Incarnum into Mythic paths. I think it might work better that way.
I don't have access to my notes right now, but I'll post some of my ideas later.
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I personally ran a Soulborn through an entire campaign once with pretty much no conversion necessary. The Incarnate needs to have their BAB bumped up to 3/4 to be even a little competitive though, and their hit die increased to a d8 (I'm feeling like it's a d6). Everything else runs in pretty smoothly though.
The biggest problems with the classes and the mechanic is that they require a lot of constant math that can be hard for some people. When I ran my Soulborn I was re-allocating my incarnum points literally every round (sometimes multiple times in a single round) to keep my character dealing competitive damage and maintaining good defenses. The classes really are capable of equaling or exceeding core classes in similar roles, but it requires a pretty high degree of system mastery.
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I've started trying to convert Incarnum into Mythic paths. I think it might work better that way.
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We ran a campaign where that was almost exactly what we used the Incarnum levels for. There were no stat-boosting or purely numerical bonus based items available at all, but every couple levels you also gained a level in an Incarnum class you picked at character creation. It was pretty cool, and everybody pretty much had exactly the gear they wanted since they were creating it themselves :P.