Incarnum and YOU: a reference guide

[Coidzor]

What were people's least favorite things about Magic of Incarnum? I feel like the primary complaint I've heard is about the way the system focused players to choose between their lot and their class abilities. Were there any other major complaints that anyone here is aware of?

Soulborn in its entirety. Some people weren't so hot about being locked into a certain build based upon their alignment or alignment restrictions in general. That's all I recall off the cuff.

[Chronos]

I have two major complaints about MoI, one fluff-based and one crunch.

First, I view the purpose of the rules to be to enable us to make characters like those in tales of old (or maybe of new, but characters from tales, at any rate). My general rule of thumb is that for any base class, you ought to be able to find at least three unconnected characters from history, fiction, or myth who are better represented by that class than by any other class that came before. For almost all classes in the game, this is easy. But for the MoI classes all combined, I have a hard time even coming up with one. It just doesn't fit.

Second, on the mechanics, I think it scales extremely poorly with level. Most of the basic abilities an incarnate ever has, they have right from level 1, and most of the basic abilities a totemist ever has, they have from level 2. And to the extent that they do scale, it's mostly based on character level, not class level. So a single level of Incarnate or two levels of Totemist are often very powerful for a build, but staying in either class past that just doesn't compare. And of course Soulborn is best for a zero-level dip, but that's a different issue.