Magic of Incarnum Excerpt

[fbmf]

Under the category of "Who gives a damn?"

But there are some who might, so I thought I would point it out.

[Count Arioch the 28th]

Anyone give a damn? I'm interested in hearing from someone who does, since I'm not finding any.

[Crissa]

I tried, really I did.

But it just seemed to be new-synonym for magic and items that's otherwise the same as the previous several books on magic an items.

-Crissa

[Modesitt]

-Is this the first WotC class to use a physical stat as its spellcasting stat?

-Chakras don't seem very well-balanced. At the low end losing a magic item slot is utterly meaningless because most of them are empty anyway. At the high end every single chakra is a sacrifice and trade off because you're just swimming in magic items. With that big caveat in mind, the basic idea isn't a half-bad one. Imagine if all buffs were 1 round/level but if you were willing to give up a magic item slot it could last all day.

-The spells definitely sound interesting in the abstract. It sounds like they get they pick their daily buffs off a class-specific list and they're just on all the time. Then whenever they like they can make their buffs better by putting essentia into them. So you start the day with a bunch of low-level spells buffing you. Then, once you know what you're up against, you turn up the soulmeld best suited to the task at hand.

-Switching buffs on the fly sounds fun. Flexibility in what you can do is awesome, but it can cause the game to screech to a grinding halt while you decide what to do. You can certainly knock fighters for having nothing to do in combat, but they typically don't waste anywhere near as much time deciding what to do.

-The essentia limits sound really low. Three at level 15 for most of them?

-The soulmelds look pretty weak, but as they're all just the low-level ones, I'll wait before I pass judgement.

[Neeek]

I'll probably at least take a look when I can get my hands on it. Hey, it's not like they can possibly make it more broken than the stuff that's already out there (Yes, there are degrees of infinity, but I'm pretty sure they will never apply to DnD).

If it's even decently reasonable, maybe just nixing all normal magic is the way to go.

[RandomCasualty]

The whole essentia thing seems to reek of crazy bonus accumulation. They've got a ton of powers that say something like "for every point of essentia you invest gain a +1" and apparently there's no cap for how much essentia you can put into something. So it looks like it's the bonus whore's wet dream come true.

All it seems to be is the latest bonus accumulation garbage.

[Neeek]

1126770019[/unixtime]]The whole essentia thing seems to reek of crazy bonus accumulation. They've got a ton of powers that say something like "for every point of essentia you invest gain a +1" and apparently there's no cap for how much essentia you can put into something. So it looks like it's the bonus whore's wet dream come true.

All it seems to be is the latest bonus accumulation garbage.

I think that's in lieu of giving a bonus for the level of the spell.

[Maj]

Anyone give a damn? I'm interested in hearing from someone who does, since I'm not finding any.

Actually, I would love to get my hands on a copy of it. I'm pretty interested in alternative crap like this.

Aside from the god-awful names used in the book, and aside from the fact that it was published by unreliable WotC, my concerns for the system involve the relationship between this new type of magic and the wealth-by-level guideline. If the wealth guideline holds for this system, then I really don't see it as being very valuable at all - giving out item slots and powers associated with them seems an awful lot like giving out $$ as a class feature. Why on earth would you use a system like this that gives you - as class features - what you'd get for being a normal character, when you could just be a rogue who gets real class features and awesome stuff to fill item slots?

[RandomCasualty]

I actually don't have a problem with $$$ as class features, not in fundamental concept. Magic items can and do grant class features. For instance, certain items let us put a price on certain things. It can actually help make a balanced game to be able to keep the value of class features on the same track as the value of magical items.

I mean there's nothing wrong with saying that any class feature is just a slotless magic item that can't be taken away from you and pricing it as such. That way you can have a class that gets a magic sword ability, and saves money on a magic sword. Another class can get the ability to fly or whatever and save money on winged boots and so on. You can create a balanced game that way.

[Josh_Kablack]

1126770019[/unixtime]] and apparently there's no cap for how much essentia you can put into something. .

If there's no cap, then those totemist class features which allow you to invest more than the normal amount of essentia into various things are really stupid. And while it's totally possible the WotC would print something that crazy, I suspect that you just didn't read closely enough.

[Username17]

Incarnum can't possibly do other than unbalance things further. One gets Incarnum instead of magic items, and that means that its existence drives game balance further off a cliff.

Imagine for a second that Incarnum's relative costs for various abilities was somehow perfectly balanced internally - a tall order for something made during WotC's current "no playtest" production cycle, but let's pretend. Now we already know that the basic magic items are not internally balanced. If they were, we wouldn't have the bracers of many bonus types.

So that means that the relative costs of incarnum are going to be different than the relative costs of similar or identical effects off of magic items, right? And that means that in any particular party, people are going to end up paying different amounts for the same things. And that's imbalance in the most tangible and obvious form. In every single game that employs Incarnum.

The inherently unbalanced state of magic items can't be solved by introducing new magic items, no matter how balanced they are. It can only be done by getting rid of the old magic items and starting over.

-Username17