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About a year ago, I braved my fears and picked up a copy of the Expanded Psionics Handbook. I was immediately hooked on psionics. I loved the new and different approach to magic, and from then on I've probably played more psions than wizards. When I first heard about Magic of Incarnum, I thought to myself, "Oh no, Wizards is coming out with some stupid splatbook no one is ever going to want to use."

Then one of my players became intrigued, and bought a copy. He told me about it, and convinced me to buy it. Few D&D books have as much creativity as this completely new approach to magic. First, I have to warn you, this book is not for everyone. Magic purists who just say "Let it be" will not be impressed, nor will people who simply can't see the point in using souls in their game. For everyone else, this book is an excellent foray into a new idea that has never been tried before (to my knowledge).

The book opens with an introduction, as every official D&D sourcebook does. It explains the three primary concepts of the system, which I'll descibe here. I'll be using these terms throughout the review, so become at least vaguely familiar with them.

• Soulmelds: A soulmeld is a form of magic item built by a meldshaper, or incarnum-user, out of pure soul energy. This energy is known as incarnum. They grant many varied effects to the shaper. These take an hour to shape, like preparing spells, but last until the shaper unshapes them.
• Essentia: Essentia is a character's personal store of incarnum. They can invest essentia as a swift action however they like. They can put it into soulmelds, granting them scalable benefits, they can put it into feats, and they can put it into some class features. You do not run out of essentia unless you take essentia damage.
• Chakras: A chakra is a center of power on the body. They occupy the same places as magic items. Soulmelds must be placed on a chakra, though they do not close it to magic items. However, if you bind a soulmeld to a chakra, you gain additional benefits, but close the slot to magic items.

After the introduction, the book enters the actual meat of incarnum.

Chapter 1: Races

The first chapter is on the races with the natural gift of meldshaping. These are okay, but are not the best races ever.

The first one is the azurin. An azurin is a human who is gifted from birth with incarnum. Azurins are essentially humans stat-wise, but they trade in some human features for an essentia pool of 1.

The second is the duskling, fey from the Outer Planes with a tie to incarnum. Nothing too special here, though they are the only race whose favored class is totemist, one of the two primary meldshaping classes.

The last two are the rilkans and skarns. Both come from a race known as the mishtai, who were obsessed with what they called "perfection of form". The rilkans believe that this was useless, and have instead learned to live life to the fullest. The skarns, however, continue to try to achieve perfection. Both races have the favored class of incarnate, the core meldshaping class. (That is, the psion and wizard of incarnum).

Chapter 2: Classes

The next chapter delves into the three base classes which use incarnum. These are the incarnate, soulborn, and totemist. Each one handles their soulmelds slighly differently.

Incarnates are the clerics and wizards of incarnum. They are tied strongly to the NG, LN, CN, and NE alignments, and gain abilities related to that. They have the fastest progerssion of soulmelds, essentia, and chakra binds of any of the classes as well. Unfortunately, the Incarnum Radiance class feature ia bit broken in evil's favor, and should probably be house-ruled out. They are excellent at shaping, reshaping, and investing essentia into soulmelds.

Soulborns can best be equated to paladins or psychic warriors. They are tied to the LG, CG, LE, and CE alignments. They have a full Base Attack Bonus progression, but very poor meldshaping progressions. In addition, they gain paladin-like abilities and alignment-based defenses.

The totemist is best equated with the druid, as they draw their energy from nature. Flavor-wise, they are the best class in the book. They share the same meldshaping progression with the incarnum, and have a cleric Base Attack Bonus progression. In addition, they gain access to a unique chakra, the totem chakra, at 2nd level. This chakra cannot have soulmelds placed on it, but it does allow binds. Soulmelds bound to the totem chakra also have expanded meldshaper levels and essentia capacities.

Chapter 3: Character Options

The next chapter is split into three sections: Skills, Feats, and Substitution Levels. Each section is extremely well thought-out and executed.

The skills section basically states that Concentration, Knowledge (arcana) and Knowledge (the planes), and Spellcraft can be used with incarnum the same way it can be with arcane magic.

The feats section has 48 new feats, including one Divine feat, one Monstrous feat, and five Psionic feats. In addition, it introduces a new feat type, Incarnum, which allow essentia investment. Unfortunately, you cannot uninvest essentia from an incarnum feat for 24 hours. This, in my opinion, should be done away with. Most the feats simply improve upon multiclass characters abilities, such as Psycarnum Infusion which allows you to expend your psionic focus to fill an incarnum receptacle.

This book has the best substitution level section I have seen. Other than the ones that you knew were coming, like skarn monks and rilkan rogues, it also includes ones such as the halfling totemist, dwarf soulborn, duskling barbarian, and gnome incarnate. It even includes one for aasimar incarnates.

Chapter 4: Soulmelds

Chapter 4 digs into the actual powers of incarnum. It begins with brief but in-depth descriptions of meldshaping, essentia, chakras, chakra binds, and other aspects of incarnum usage. It then details the format for a soulmeld, and then begins listing them.

I should warn you that if you only read the tables of soulmelds, you will immediately hate this book. Reading soulmelds with descriptions such as "+1 bonus on illusion spell DCs" and "+2 armor bonus to AC" aren't going to make you want to play a meldshaper.

However, if you actually read the soulmeld descriptions, you will find that they are very powerful, and surprisingly balanced. For instance, one of my favorites are the Lucky Dice, where the brief description says "+1 luck bonus on chosen rolls". The actual soulmeld description, however, groups together various types of rolls, and, as a swift action, you gain a +1 bonus on these rolls. If you roll a 7 on 2d6 when activating this, it applies to all rolls. These bonuses stack, and last for a number of rounds equal to 1 + 1/point of essentia. And the chakra bind gives these bonuses to allies within 30 feet.

Chapter 5: Magic

After the chapter on soulmelds, the book describes new spells, invocations, and powers which use incarnum. There are two new spell and power types, one which allows the caster to invest essentia into the spell, and the other which requires the feat Incarnum Spellshaping to use.

Quite frankly, there's not much of interest in this chapter. There is of course the Soulbanned Zone, which is the Antimagic Field of incarnum. Another one that I would hate to be the reciever of is Rend Essentia, which does significant damage to your essentia pool.

Even though I do not have Complete Arcane, I am glad to see warlock invocations in the book. It tells me that Wizards of the Coast has finally decided to start supporting all of their products in their books.

The chapter also describes new magic items which are incarnum powered. Most of these allow essentia investments, and some, souch as soulbound weapons, allow them to be bound to chakras.

Chapter 6: Prestige Classes

Before I start my rant on this chapter, I should say that the ten prestige classes in it are very well thought-out and very appealing to me. But my problem with this chapter lies in its page count. The chapter is 53 pages long, with only 10 prestige classes. This is because Wizards decided to use their horrible new prestige class format, which gives entirely too much world flavor, requiring DMs who play in settings of their own make or in published settings to do a significant amount of rework to make them fit.

Rants aside, I do like the prestige classes in the chapter. The necrocarnate is an evil meldshaper who - literally - steals the souls of the people it kills, in order to expand their essentia capacity. The soulcaster mixes arcane magic with incarnum, and the spinemeld warrior mixes the racial spines of the skarns with essentia. My personal favorite, however, is probably the totem rager, who mixes barbarian rages with totemist meldshaping.

Chapter 7: Monsters

The next chapter details the monsters that have incarnum abilities. First, it describes the new incarnum subtype, which is nothing special. It then describes how body shapes affect chakras, which is important, especially if you use creatures such as intelligent oozes or beholders in your game.

As for the actual monsters, there are a few that should recieve special attention. The incarnum dragon is a true dragon that uses incarnum to fight its foes. They can be any of the extreme alignments, LG, CG, LE, or CE. The totem giant is a new giant, with totemist-like melshaping abilities, including the totem chakra.

However, the best monster in the chapter is by far the lost. The lost is actually a template, applied to a creature who is experiencing an extreme negative emotion, and then is hit by a wisp of incarnum of that same emotion. For instance, one of the example lost is a commoner who saw his love, who he was to marry the enxt day, beaten to death by a group of thugs. He was filled with rage, and was hit by wrath-bound incarnum. He then became a lost. The implications of this template are what sets it apart, the idea that the party could return and find out that their favorite barkeeper had become corrupted by incarnum are mindblowing.

Chapter 8: Incarnum Campaigns

Fortunately, Wizards of the Coast realized that not all DMs will know how to add incarnum into their game. They prepared this chapter for those DMs. It first introduces the revisionist method, or the "it was always there but you just didn't know about it" method. Frankly, this never seems to work too well, so they included some campaign arcs too.

My personal favorite of these is the Opening the Wellspring arc. The players are sent out, for one reason or another, to destroy a great monolith known as the Wellspring, which sends souls to the planes. By finding and destroying it, incarnum now flows freely throughout the universe, allowing players to take on meldshaping classes.

The chapter also discusses eight sites and terrains with incarnum in them. These are interesting, and could provide a DM with good ideas for a incarnum-based encounter. In particular, a few lost within a dolmen circle could be a lot of fun. It also describes a planar touchstone called the Bastion of Souls (sound familiar?) which is located on the Positive Energy Plane. For those who do not have the Manual of the Planes, have no fear, for they have reproduced the Planar Touchstone feat here.

The chapter closes with the Pentifex Order, an example incarnum-based organization, centered around preventing incarum misuse.

Conclusion

As I said originally, this book is not for everyone. Not every DM will see the need to include a soul-fueled substance in their game, but those who do won't be breaking the balance of the game. The system is something new and different, but may even be good for teaching new players, as it is simple to understand and use.

I gave this book a 4 for Style because, overall, the soul-wielding flavor is very well done, and will give you a nice bit of added depth into your game world. However, they use blue, the color of incarnum, far too much. They really ought to have given incarnum other colors, so that its not always Cobalt this and Indigo that.

The 5 for Substance is given because the actual content of the book is superb. The classes are detailed and balanced, the feats are versatile and powerful, and the soulmelds are varied and cool. A player wishing to only boost his character's abilities with incarnum will be able to make his character more versatile and interesting.