Taffeta
2010-03-08, 04:45 PM
I had a particularly bewildering conversation with one of my campaign-mates the other night about a class recommendation he'd made, and I found it just odd enough to use for conversation fodder.
This is for 3.5, primarily. It expands all over, but the terminology starts there.
Breaking down wizard spells, feats, nine swords maneuvers, magic items and the like into their component parts is something I've gotten used to doing reflexively, as I expect many of you have as well. 2nd level wizard spells can do X dice of Y size of Z element to A targets in a B area, or granting you C bonus on D, E, F checks, and the multitude of adjustments that can be made to remain within the same power signature.
I love me some homebrew, and this is a large part of being able to balance and craft homebrew content. Thus, knowing these elements, or at least the concept of the recognizable constituents, has become a vital part of my understanding of whichever class play style.
Here comes the crunchy part:
Totemists, a class from the Incarnum book, work on a different resource system, which I have managed to piece together with a reasonable degree of certainty. But... well, these resources are used to generate temporary magic items (soulmelds), which again are perfectly sane and easy to break down. Then comes the twist. Totemists, like most other incarnum users, have the option of 'binding' these magic item equivalents that they generate. Binding a soulmeld allows you to continue using it as normal, and provides the effect of an additional magic item, depending on where you bind it, which comes from a completely different power signature. And I haven't quite wrapped my head around how they did this, how one soulmeld associates one magic item effect to another magic item effect.
My companion recommended first, I just stop bloody homebrewing for a while and play something straight from the book. But I couldn't. Because until I break down how they go together, the list of soulmelds might as well be arcane writing. I don't get it. So instead he advised that totemist soulmelds are all based on magical beasts from the monster manual. This was actually somewhat helpful, giving me something I can grasp, beyond an abstract list of disassociated pieces.
I still haven't grown to fully comprehend the way this class is put together, but I'm getting there. And more meaningfully, it makes a very interesting study of how my brain works on a basic level, and how it has changed my initial, rather limited understanding of abstract D&D mechanics, to a very complex, well ordered structure.
This is for 3.5, primarily. It expands all over, but the terminology starts there.
Breaking down wizard spells, feats, nine swords maneuvers, magic items and the like into their component parts is something I've gotten used to doing reflexively, as I expect many of you have as well. 2nd level wizard spells can do X dice of Y size of Z element to A targets in a B area, or granting you C bonus on D, E, F checks, and the multitude of adjustments that can be made to remain within the same power signature.
I love me some homebrew, and this is a large part of being able to balance and craft homebrew content. Thus, knowing these elements, or at least the concept of the recognizable constituents, has become a vital part of my understanding of whichever class play style.
Here comes the crunchy part:
Totemists, a class from the Incarnum book, work on a different resource system, which I have managed to piece together with a reasonable degree of certainty. But... well, these resources are used to generate temporary magic items (soulmelds), which again are perfectly sane and easy to break down. Then comes the twist. Totemists, like most other incarnum users, have the option of 'binding' these magic item equivalents that they generate. Binding a soulmeld allows you to continue using it as normal, and provides the effect of an additional magic item, depending on where you bind it, which comes from a completely different power signature. And I haven't quite wrapped my head around how they did this, how one soulmeld associates one magic item effect to another magic item effect.
My companion recommended first, I just stop bloody homebrewing for a while and play something straight from the book. But I couldn't. Because until I break down how they go together, the list of soulmelds might as well be arcane writing. I don't get it. So instead he advised that totemist soulmelds are all based on magical beasts from the monster manual. This was actually somewhat helpful, giving me something I can grasp, beyond an abstract list of disassociated pieces.
I still haven't grown to fully comprehend the way this class is put together, but I'm getting there. And more meaningfully, it makes a very interesting study of how my brain works on a basic level, and how it has changed my initial, rather limited understanding of abstract D&D mechanics, to a very complex, well ordered structure.