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Jan 12, 2013 -- 1:37PM, Asteron wrote:

I mentioned Incarnum to a friend of mine and he immediately cut in that it was "one of the most broken elements" of D&D.

I've skimmed through it and, aside from Psycarnum Infusion (which he doesn't even know about), I don't know where he gets that idea? Am I missing something with it?

I am just tempted to chalk it up his weird interpretation of what is OP/broken... he thinks that the Monk is OP after all!

There's no help for your friend if he thinks the monk is broken. Any basic arithmetic skill or gameplay experience will point out how bad they are.

Anyway. Incarnum.

Largely, it's a creative system that attempted to clear new ground in D&D. It clearly shows it was designed within 3.5, with ideas such as daily reconfiguring and swift-action management showing throughout the system. It's also the first "real" attempt to break the stranglehold "class level" had on progression ideas (while incarnum classes grant a lot more essentia and support features, the analogue to "caster level" - your essentia investment cap - is keyed to your character level first and foremost, so an incarnum dip or an incarnum-user splashing other classes can still be made to work. Compare to the earlier spellcasters (Thou Shalt Not Give Up Caster Levels) or to later martial adepts (who use a simpler system to scale their initiator levels)). Because of this design, it's very hard to break the game as an incarnum user at pretty much any level (although they do shine a bit when their earliest binds come online, which are often before other classes get their cool toys). At the higher levels, though, they also have an interesting take on opportunity cost scaling: you can't make use of a chakra bind and a magic item in the same body slot (without a separate feat for each slot). This got easier to manage with the Magic Item Compendium's cheaper multiple-common-effects-in-one-item rule, but it's still an issue, particularly for competitive body slots.

In terms of what it can do, it depends on the class you're working with. I'm in the process of re-reading and working with incarnates (as I'd previously given them too little credit, it seems), so I can't speak too much on them yet. I've got more experience with totemists, which are playable single-classed or work well in differing doses of smaller levels (a 2 level totemist dip is frequently used to grab natural weapons or specific melds; if you're taking more than that you're probably working for the Split Chakra (Totem) feat). Totemists are absolute beasts on the natural weapon front, but without true magic their strength is limited. This might explain why your friend thinks they're broken - a totemist can outperform a monk at the walk-up-and-flurry game on its own terms, without any serious optimization.  As for soulborns, just... don't. They're basically paladins, with all the connotations that usually carries - I don't know of anyone who's made potent soulborns.

The only way I know of that they could be considered "overpowering" in general is if you're playing a low-magic game and no one gets appropriate levels of magic gear, or no one brings spellcasting to the table. Even then, they're usually gravitating around Tier Four on most evaluations I've seen (totemist is usually highest, soulborn usually at least one full tier lower). There are specific stunts within incarnum (mostly based around Psycarnum Infusion, Midnight Metamagic, and perhaps specific totem binds) that might cause you to gape, but largely these are a product of incarnum providing leverage on a much more powerful class or ability.

Jan 12, 2013 -- 2:19PM, draco1119 wrote:

As usual, I can really only say "What Tempest said." I made a couple of builds using an Incarnate dip, but I haven't really played with the class too much recently. From what I remember, level 4 is one of the natural exit points, and it seems that NE incarnates get more and cooler toys than those of other alignments.

Depends what you're working with. I actually find Law the better choice in terms of raw numbers (accuracy is always appreciated), and I can probably find a way to make Chaos work. Evil has some fun stuff though (necrocarnum isn't terribly powerful but it does get some unique mechanics).

...THAT was something else that can be exploited, although it's obviously a loophole, with shades of the Bag O'Rats Fighter.  One level of necrocarnate plus some sacrificial animals (under some interpretations, even pouring your coffee down an anthill will work; in theoretical circumstances I've even seen people include commoners in the party strictly for Chicken Infested*) can give you basically unlimited essentia at the cost of the prerequisites for the class. This only takes a few minutes too (one minute per point of essentia). Even though the effects of most melds aren't all that powerful, this is poor balance, since it's available at level 8 and entirely better than the incarnate's 20th level capstone ability (once per day, 3+Wis round duration, and only affects soulmelds).

I also seem to recall some creative work involving tables 5-1 and 5-2, but most of this involved, again, using incarnum to leverage up something stronger - i.e. if you have a hands bind available (easy to get, as it's a Least chakra) and a metamagic rod, you can eke out one more caster level whenever you use the rod, which sometimes is all a caster build needs to hit a breakpoint.


* Show

Jan 13, 2013 -- 3:48AM, pigknight wrote:

The monk is a broken class. It doesn't do anything and has abilities that have zero or negative synergy.


Unless he means overpowered, in which case he must hate wizards.  

Heh.  Dude probably thinks druids, clerics and wizards are a little on the weak side.  Maybe he's from Bizarro world.

Jan 13, 2013 -- 11:34AM, Asteron wrote:

Thank you, Tempest, for the excellent explanation. I didn't take him seriously, both because I had read enough Incarnum and because of his skewed view of power levels in 3.5. I don't know why he thinks these things because he is a pretty intelligent person most of the time...

Hey, sometimes even intelligent folk make mistakes or hold incorrect opinions. In fact, there's a line of research in social psychology that suggests intelligent people who hold such beliefs are often more fixed in their beliefs, simply because they can come up with more or better rationalizations for such beliefs. (In most of these studies, they're ideologically challenging but empirically verifiable ideas; it doesn't usually matter which ideology, though. There does seem to be a slight "exception" among scientifically literate individuals, perhaps because these people tend to be more open to new information or to the possibility of being wrong - however, this isn't always the case.)

I hate to argue too vehemently against monks with him because we have one in our group and I don't want to offend her.

That's actually what the CO boards are here to help with, believe it or not. I could (easily, I wager) provide ways to improve this character were I to see the build. You can usually get everything you want on a monk-type character from a swordsage (Tome of Battle, not necessarily single-classed but nothing's wrong with that) or, occasionally, a Tashalatora build (that's the feat that hybridizes the best monk features onto a psionic class of your choice, typically psychic warrior or ardent). Rarely, you can even do things close to this using other classes in the spirit of the monk, but competely divorced from monk classes (see, for instance, the Edge of the Light build in my signature; all he needs is a two-hander, and the quarterstaff will work here even though it isn't the best choice).

And I wouldn't feel too bad about bringing it up - if it helps, my first long-term 3e character was a monk (and I managed to survive on the frontlines until level 6, when our cleric started to steamroll and the game broke up). I've improved a lot since then (and, in fact, I could easily redo him as a Tiger Claw / Diamond Mind swordsage and fit the feel perfectly), but I don't hide the fact that I made mistakes early on.  It's largely because of those mistakes that I learned what I could.