Necrocarnate fix?

[Wrex]

So, we all know the Necrocarnate is a pile of rubbish. If you don't, it's as to an incanate, as a blighter is to a druid: You abandon your casting progression for a handfull of tricks. Much worse, however, is that you Are then intended to rely on the corpses of your foes for the few powers you have.. That's like being only able to prepare spells after someone dies, making you utterly useless in the first few encounters of the day, beyond simple zombie puppetiering.

Now, my idea for a quick fix would be to simply add full meldshaping into the class, and allow the "X/Times per day" abilities to function at-will. (As far as I know, the only one is "Add number of soulmelds to your saving throws") As well, the extra chakra binds the class grants would stack with the ones typically avalible. This fix would, obviously also mean that the infinite essentia abuse strategies would no longer work.

So, if you have some familiarity with Incarnum, would this work, and would it be too powerful, or not powerful enough?

[lans]

For 1 gp a day you can have 1/2 levelx100 essentia, you it really doesn't need fixing

[Wrex]

See, I'm trying to make it usefull without relying on the whole livestock abuse thing. If that becomes a problem, I could just put a HD cap on what they can drain.

[lans]

Would an intelligence floor be more appropriate?

[Wrex]

Probably, but I see nothing wrong with draining a dead tarrasque, as useless as that thing is. Perhaps if it has say, less than 5 HD, an Int score of 4 or something would be required. That, and making a swarm count as one creature for the purposes of harvesting Necrocarnum should curtail most abuse.

[X-Codes]

Honestly, essentia only does so much.  Sure, you can *have* unlimited essentia, but what are you going to *do* with it?

I think the Necrocarnate class should actually have it's own meldshaping instead of just advancing some other meldshaping class, with the levels providing about 1/2 Essentia per level, a number of melds/binds/capacity increases on par with an Incarnate, and then change it's "infinite essentia" ability to give a different bonus.

For example, when you kill a creature you can harvest it's soul for use at a later time.  Souls are essentially highly-concentrated essentia, so you store the creatures soul and can later "expend" it as a swift/free action to gain bonus essentia for a minute based on the HD of the creature.  This doesn't actually consume the soul, the soul escapes when the minute is over.  Also, there should be a cap on the number of souls you possess based on Constitution.

At higher levels, maybe add some extra uses to the souls.  For example, at 6 you could use the creature's soul and corpse to make a better Necrocarnum Zombie (maybe give it it's supernatural abilities back in addition to Ex or whatever) for a minute or so, and as a capstone give the option of fully consuming the soul for extra bonuses, and requiring wish/miracle to bring the critter back to life.  Of course that's evil as hell, so there should be repercussions for someone who uses that ability frequently.

[Wrex]

Of course that's evil as hell, so there should be repercussions for someone who uses that ability frequently.

Considering that necrocarnum is the coalesced agony of the eternal pain inflicted upon good aligned souls, a Necrocarnate is already slightly less evil than Asmodeus.

That said, a good suggestion, will definitly take it into account.