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View Full Version : Incarnum Design Logic: Any Advice?



wayfare
2011-03-26, 01:07 AM
I love Incarnum, though my gaming group is a bit less than enthused about my plans to run a Incarnum-focused campaign (no arcane or divine magic allowed, psionics also nixed. Binders are in, though).

Their complains amount to the following

1) Nothing in Incarnum does any damage.

Ok, this is just untrue, but it persists nonetheless. I guess its because there are only a few direct damage melds (Lightning Gauntlets, Acidic Spittle, etc). Does anybody have any suggestions or guidelines for designing direct damage soulmelds?

2) Incarnum doesn't do healing very well.

From what I can tell, this is pretty true. I was thinking about a few ways to make healing work in incarnum: Namely fast healing and limited burst healing.

Healers Hands
Descriptors: Healing
Classes: Incarnate, Soulborn
Chakra: Hands, Heart

A diaphanous pair of azure gloves slide over your hands, trailing mist with every motion. When tending to wounds, your hands seem to move of their own accord, patching up wounds with superior skill.

You gain a +4 bonus to Heal checks

Essentia: For every point of essentia you invest into this meld, you gain an additional +2 bonus to heal checks.

Chakra Bind: Hands

As a standard action , you may touch an ally to grant him Fast Healing 1 for a number of rounds equal to your Constitution modifier.

Essentia: Every point of essentia invested increases the Fast Healing effect by 1

Chakra Bind: Heart

Once per day, you may cure a touched target of all ability damage, 2 points of ability drain, and 1 point of level drain.

Essentia: You can manifest this effect an additional time per day per point of essentia invested.

That might work, to start. Maybe. Any ideas on how to make incarnum healing better without making it "free healing for everybody?"

Random Idea: Maybe something that allows a heal check to restore a wee bit of health, but you can make the check multiple times?

3) But We're Gonna DIE!!!

So, resurrection is lacking in incarnum. As above, taking suggestions on how to fix this.

Random Idea: A meld that can be unshaped for a day to manifest raise dead?

Any help with these issues is much appreciated!

Thanks

--Wayfare

Tacitus
2011-03-26, 02:06 AM
Have you much looked around for other homebrew for Incarnum? I know The Demented One has some, and I can probably scrape together a few links if you haven't seen them. My favorite is probably the eberron flavored bow. It fires laser beams! Well, sorta. XD

Really, the only way you're going to get resurrection is by Gating in something with Planar Chasuble if you go Incarnum only.

Benly
2011-03-26, 02:47 AM
The problem here is that one design guideline which you can readily extrapolate from existing soulmelds is "incarnum is not a per-day resource". The mechanical theme of incarnum is resource allocation, not resource expenditure. It's very difficult to fit healing into that scheme in a way that doesn't amount to unlimited healing out of combat - Lifebond Vestments have one way to do it, but even there the once-per-hour limitation feels weirdly out of place.

Resurrection and any other effect that's a single big burst of amazingness will face the same problem. With pretty much every existing soulmeld, if it lets you do something once, it lets you do it as often as you like. That's how they work, and a homebrew soulmeld that doesn't respect that is going to feel out of place and awkward among the canon soulmelds.

Thomar_of_Uointer
2011-03-26, 02:55 AM
It seems like your players are plainly telling you what they want. You're a very, very lucky GM. :smallbiggrin:

I'd recommend you go ahead and run a normal campaign with psionics, arcane, and divine allowed. Don't try to force in new stuff the party doesn't want. HOWEVER, let them each pick one soulmeld for free from the Incarnum book, and give them one free essentia point. Maybe give them an additional soulmeld as a quest reward a ways into the campaign. If it goes well, maybe they'll warm up to it.

Regarding the other stuff you've mentioned, I'd recommend you use the Reserve Points (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/adventuring/reservePoints.htm) variant for healing. Incarnum already has some healing, but D&D really expects you to have a cleric or druid in the party. For resurrection, you could make special holy sites in your campaign world, where you can make an expensive (5000 gp) offering to a deity to bring back a dead character.

Incarnum looks cool on paper, but it's a supplementary ruleset, and it's very much designed to synergize with existing D&D material. You're alienating your players by forcing them to use it, and you're making them learn a new set of rules that they're not familiar with. I'd recommend that you not force it on your players.

Drowbane
2011-03-26, 07:15 AM
...10 lbs of wisdom in a 5lb sack...

Um, what he said. You could try using Gestalt and limiting the other "half" to an Incarnum class. Although you can probably still expect some whining.

Incarnum is cool, but it isn't made to stand alone. Can Binders heal?

RaginChangeling
2011-03-26, 07:23 AM
Um, what he said. You could try using Gestalt and limiting the other "half" to an Incarnum class. Although you can probably still expect some whining.

Incarnum is cool, but it isn't made to stand alone. Can Binders heal?

Yeah, Buer gives infinite free healing if bound. No burst though, and no resurrection.

I'd suggest just giving the healer hand's the ability to heal 1d6 damage per essentia invested with an additional 1d6 for every point invested. Then have the hand bind give ability and debilitation healing and the Heart give the equivalent of that Druid spell that lets you revive someone if you get to them within x+1 rounds of dying, X equaling the amount of essentia invested.

Feantar
2018-06-23, 12:50 AM
Use the Vitality Points variant, and healing salves (alchemical). It's enough. Most of your HP replenishes between combat, and the part that doesn't is small enough to be taken care of by the salve. Makes Craft(Alchemy) extra useful too, as well as heal for stabilisation and extra healing on rest checks.

Nifft
2018-06-23, 01:58 AM
Look at how the various no-resource healers do it:

- There's a [Reserve] feat which can heal a few points at-will by touch, but only up to half max HP.
- Dragon Shaman has an aura which heals everyone in the area a few points per turn, but only up to half max HP.

So, take those two together, and it seems mechanically unproblematic to create a soulmeld that can freely heal up to half max HP, as long as it's not very useful in combat.

Thought: the Tarrasque has pretty boss regeneration, so consider sticking some sort of healing effect on that Totemist meld (only up to half max HP of course).


Also, in terms of non-spell healing:

- Binders can heal 1 HP at will all day, or take an action with a cooldown to heal a few d8s as an action.
- Dragon Shamans have a pool of healing similar to Lay On Hands.
- Paladins have Lay On Hands and Remove Disease x/week.

So, maybe make an feat which requires a daily investment, and gives healing in the ballpark of Lay On Hands, something like...


Midnight Vitality [Incarnum]
Prereqs: non-evil, character level 3
Benefit: You can invest essentia in this feat once per day. After investment, the essentia is locked for 24 hours [I]blah blah. When essentia is invested in this feat, you gain a pool of healing much like a Paladin's Lay On Hands ability, except the pool of healing is a number of hit points equal to (2+essentia) x (2+meldshaper level). Any unused healing is lost when the essentia is deallocated and the pool's energy evanesces into a soothing ultramarine mist.
Special: Once you take this feat, you can never shape a Necrocarnum soulmeld, but you gain +2 to all rolls in the hay.

Morphic tide
2018-06-23, 03:49 AM
For resurrection, the Last Breath spell from Complete Divine lets you revive someone who has A.) Died in the last round, B.) Contains the 2e Death Effect clause and C.) Causes 1d4 damage to the caster per HD of the revived creature and gives a 50% chance for each spell slot to be lost, with the negative level not being removable by magic. The upside? No XP or material component cost, specifically raises ability scores to 1 from zero and is a fourth level spell. These are the sorts of downsides needed for a revival 'Meld, as it's much the same sort of thing. The only limit is non-permanent costs like HP and spell slots, nothing that's difficult to replace (except level loss, a standard side effect of resurrection magic) and thus ideal as a basis for "at-will" resurrection.

For healing, my own suggestion is to cover the characters in temporary HP so that they just take less damage. It's better than healing because it's preemptive, and thus able to be used to extend your work day right at first level (and also save from lucky crits), and having it be at-will isn't an issue because temp HP doesn't stack and damage that gets through sticks. For recovering from the scratch damage, effects that occur when a Soulmeld is unshaped (with no clause allowing you to unshape it yourself) are a useful substitute for the typical Cleric act of healing with every leftover slot at the end of the day, though whether it's a feat associated with a fairly sparse pool of healing and condition removal that heals you and adjacent allies upon a 'Meld being unbound or a 'Meld based on Essentia discharges is up in the air. Both have issues, as the former occupies a fairly sparse resource and the latter can be missed or ignored until too late.

Whatever the case, these healing abilities need to be separated from Alignment constraints, because every party needs healing and adding a large number of extremely absurd and tedious steps to the things low-level Evil parties need to do just to survive is bad game design. And Incarnum-based healing has nothing to do with Positive and Negative Energy (and Necrocarnum also has nothing to do with Negative Energy), it's all Essentia. That's why it works perfectly fine on Undead.

Quarian Rex
2018-06-23, 04:54 AM
Ever thought of taking a look at Akashic Mysteries (http://spheresofpower.wikidot.com/akashic-mysteries) (the Pathfinder version of Incarnum)? That links to the wiki that has all you need, including new melds/classes that are coming out as part of The Nexus & City of Seven Seraphs (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?534399-The-Nexus-amp-City-of-Seven-Seraphs-A-planar-metropolis-with-a-new-veilweaving-class) which are all pretty bloody awesome. It addresses most of your players concerns, balances things out, and makes both the classes and Veils (Melds) a lot more interesting. Have a look.

Another interpretation that I'm pretty fond of, from a more homebrew perspective, would be Power of Cybernetics: Sci-fi Incarnum (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?285976-Power-of-Cybernetics-Sci-fi-Incarnum) which was put together a few years earlier and scratched my Incarnum itch quite well. Most of that has a decidedly sci-fi bent (obviously) but it can be easily refluffed.

Hope that helps.

khadgar567
2018-06-24, 03:54 AM
Ever thought of taking a look at Akashic Mysteries (http://spheresofpower.wikidot.com/akashic-mysteries) (the Pathfinder version of Incarnum)? That links to the wiki that has all you need, including new melds/classes that are coming out as part of The Nexus & City of Seven Seraphs (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?534399-The-Nexus-amp-City-of-Seven-Seraphs-A-planar-metropolis-with-a-new-veilweaving-class) which are all pretty bloody awesome. It addresses most of your players concerns, balances things out, and makes both the classes and Veils (Melds) a lot more interesting. Have a look.

Another interpretation that I'm pretty fond of, from a more homebrew perspective, would be Power of Cybernetics: Sci-fi Incarnum (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?285976-Power-of-Cybernetics-Sci-fi-Incarnum) which was put together a few years earlier and scratched my Incarnum itch quite well. Most of that has a decidedly sci-fi bent (obviously) but it can be easily refluffed.

Hope that helps.
I agree with quarian rex akashic stuff has bunch of updatesand you can play akashic summoner right know by getting zodiac class from drivetrurpg.