Café de Nuit

Has anyone read the accessory Magic of Incarnum? What did you think of it?

It's interresting, but I've never found use for it. I've also never had a player who wanted to use it, so I can't tell you how it holds up against other classes. I think it looks a little weak in comparison to its base class counterparts.

I say the same. It's an interesting and well-presented system, but nearly of no use for practical gaming...

Well, I was thinking about using it because of an idea I had. Someone else was talking about having a Kargat agent overseeing the Grand Conjunction adventures, so I was thinking about having a Kargat agent posing as a translator for the outlander party. And then I thought of making him a necromancer vassalich in disguise or something, but I figured Ravenloft's already got those coming out of the woodwork, so I decided I should make him something completely unheard of. And then, Magic of Incarnum came to mind.

Basically, an evil incarnate from one of those prime material worlds that only serve as mist-fodder ends up in Darkon. There, his strange abilities get noticed by Azalin and he gets conscripted into the Kargat. After showing his abilities, he gets assigned to manipulate some adventurers into fulfilling Hyskosa's Hexad. His abilities won't see much use undercover, but once he's unmasked, it'll be fun watching the players try and figure out what they're fighting.

I don't know much about RL so most of you plan went over my head. Magic of Incarnum is different, but not confusing to others and their special abilities aren't all that great. Perhaps Tome of Magic might fulfill your need better.

If the party is surrounded mostly by normal classes, a warlock can be a major surprise. I recently sent a party against a warlock with Fly and the Enervating Shadow ability which grants full concealment in areas without bright light. The second time they were confronted by her all but one ran away. Also, if the challenge can be high enough, the warlock can have quicken spell-like ability, which really throws people off guard.

Yes, I considered Tome of Magic and the Warlock as well. Personally, I don't like the Binder or Truenamer. Also, the Shadowcaster is definitely something you'd find in the Fraternity of Shadows, not the Kargat. Warlock was tempting, but it doesn't seem to have the firepower to stand up to a full party in a fight.

Warlocks can be weak if their all by themselves. Make him a few levels higher than the party, give him a Greater Chasuble of Fell Power, and pick your battleground and invocations carefully.

If you're looking for something really bizarre, my boyfriend had a suggestion. I'll let him type for a moment...



If you are looking for odd, the Impure Prince from the Magic of Eberron offers decent abilities. It uses symbiots and exploits their bonds with him. Symbiots are good for a couple reasons: 1) They have an improved version of the familiar's Share Spells ability that allows the bearer to cast some fairly useful spells on them. 2) There are several of them that take up no body slot and thus you can carry infinite numbers of them 3) With the Impure Prince's abilities and a bit of spell cleverness you can get each symbiot for about 100 gp a piece. That means lots of little critters crawling all over him.

For further details on this, http://boards1.wizards.com/archive/inde ... 63976.html . There is a lot of info on creation and playing with it.

Another possibility is the Fleshwarper from the Lords of Madness. He is basically an Artificer type character dedicated to the creation of grafts. He also has spellcasting to help with his lethality. The Dread Necromancer from Heroes of Horror offers a selective spellcaster that eventually transforms into a lich. The Tainted Scholar PrC from the same book also offers an interesting spellcaster with a variety of abilities. I can't attest to the lethality of these but they could offer other options for you. Well, back to the real Fuzzball.


...um, yeah...I have no idea how he finds these things. Hope it's helpful.

Oooooh, never heard of Impure Prince before. And the Fleshwarper certainly hadn't occured to me.

Well, the Fleshwarper would definitely throw the party for a loop, but there's no way it would be able to go undercover without some serious illusion magic. The Dread Necromancer is a pretty neat idea, though. I'm sure huge explosions of negative energy aren't quite the first thing you expect when fighting a necromancer. The beefed up warlock sounds good. I need him to be able to take on the whole party singlehandedly, and since by the end of the GC series, the party's already taken down a level 20 Necromancer, this guy is gonna have to be either ungodly strong, or have some really good tricks.