A mask representing a basilisk, a mantle of the displacer beast, boots of the landshark - these are the hallmarks of the totemist. You channel the soul energy of magical beasts to make your soulmelds and claim them as your totems to acquire a share in their power.

Like the incarnate, your primary class ability is meldshaping. You have your own distinct soulmeld list, however, and the ability to bind soulmelds to a unique chakra - your totem chakra. You gain special abilities related to your totem chakra, particularly the ability to quickly switch which soulmeld is bound to it.

MAKING A TOTEMIST

As a totemist, you have close ties to nature similar to those of a druid or ranger, but your power is drawn from incarnum rather than divine magic. Your soulmelds primarily serve to give you new capabilities in combat, mostly new melee attack forms. Several soulmelds increase your defenses and a few improve your ranged attacks, but in general you belong in the front lines of combat, slashing your opponents with displacer beast tentacles before teleporting away like a blink dog.

Like all meldshapers, your Constitution score determines how many soulmelds you can have shaped at once; it also sets the saving throw DC for your soulmelds that allow saves. A high Constitution score also increases your hit points, which is important in combat. Since you are likely to engage in melee frequently, a high Strength score is important to improve your attacks, while a high Dexterity increases your Armor Class.

Within all races, the groups most likely to produce totemists are those with relatively close ties to nature, who live by hunting and gathering or slash-and-burn farming rather than extensive agriculture. Dusklings are often totemists. Wood and wild elves also have a strong totemist tradition, and some groups of humans produce totemists as well. Only the wildest groups of halflings and gnomes include totemists, and this class is virtually unknown among dwarves. Half-orcs and members of the savage humanoid races are occasionally totemists as well.

Totemists can be of any alignment. Many gravitate toward neutrality like the magical beasts they revere, while others adopt more extreme alignments - the lawful good of blink dogs and lammasus, the chaotic good of pegasi and unicorns, the lawful evil of displacer beasts, or the chaotic evil of chimeras and lamias.

PLAYING A TOTEMIST

As a totemist, you most likely come from a culture that might be considered primitive by other peoples. You spent at least the early years of your life far more concerned with finding food and shelter than with formal education. You probably still think of the most basic needs before less essential desires, such as gaining treasure or taking revenge. Those are luxuries. It might be a personal goal of yours to reach a position in your life where you can afford luxuries, but in the meantime you function at a more basic level.

What are you doing in the towns and cities of civilized society? What has brought you from your home in the wilderness regions of the world? Why have you chosen to keep company with adventurers, and why these particular companions? Answering these questions will give an important handle on your character. Perhaps you have been banished from your people and taken up a life of adventure because it is the only way you can come close to fitting in to civilized society. Perhaps your elders sent you on a quest and you hope your adventuring companions can help you accomplish it.

Most totemists worship the spirits of magical beasts, invoking them through prayers even as they bind their power into their soulmelds. A few have adopted the worship of Obad-Hai or a similar nature deity, believing that he has authority over all nature spirits. A handful of others worship Kord or Erythnul because their people revere these gods.

Totemists relate well to barbarians and, to a somewhat lesser extent, to druids. In general, they gladly accept the company of any character who accepts them, rarely making quick judgments of any individual based on class. Incarnates and soulborns recognize that the techniques of totemists are related to their own, but vary in their responses to totemists. Incarnates in particular look down on totemists as savages who don't understand the correct use of incarnum, but most other meldshapers are intrigued by the uses to which totemists put incarnum and eagerly discuss their different thoughts and techniques.

Standing strictly on the basics (Hit Die, attack bonus, weapon and armor proficiency), you're a fair melee combatant comparable to a cleric. Your soulmelds expand your combat capabilities, however, making a position in the front lines of battle even more viable. You have a good mix of attack-enhancing soulmelds and those more focused on defense. With the right soulmelds in place, you can attack effectively without a weapon and stand up in melee without armor.

You also have a wide variety of special abilities to choose from. Do you want to roar like a dragonne, spit acid like an ankheg, trill like a frost worm, scare your enemies like a krenshar, petrify them like a basilisk, or grapple them like a girallon? Do you want to blink like a blink dog, be displaced like a displacer beast, phase like a phase spider, or fly like a pegasus? The special attacks and defenses you choose should give you plenty to do in any combat while ideally complementing the capabilities of your allies.

Most totemists declare that they did not choose their career - it chose them. You might have had a momentous encounter with a magical beast in the wild in your youth, one that left you close to death or simply feeling called. It might have been your community that recognized something in you and thrust the role of a totemist on you. Your initial training in the class probably consisted of a long period spent alone in the wilderness, fasting and communing with nature spirits to learn their secrets and invoke their blessings. After emerging from that retreat, you learned to form incarnum into your soulmelds.

Like the incarnate, you have a large variety of options available to you in your soulmelds. You have access to a long list of soulmelds from the start of your career. Some totemists identify strongly with a specific magical beast and prefer to bind a related soulmeld to their soul chakra, or they focus on a small number of soulmelds they frequently bind to that chakra. Others prefer to remain completely flexible in their soulmeld choices, using the rapid rebinding ability to quickly bind different soulmelds to their totem chakras.

TOTEMISTS IN THE WORLD

In the real world, people of different cultures esteem animals as exemplars of qualities that they seek to emulate. The totemist is an extension of this principle into the D&D universe: similar to animals but more powerful, magical beasts are a natural choice for totems. Totemists use incarnum to channel the power they see embodied in magical beasts and claim it for their own.

In their native lands, totemists serve as spiritual leaders for their people, mediating between the mundane world and the spirit world of totem beasts. They are also war leaders, embodying the strength and power of magical beasts in the forefront of raiding parties and armies. They are part of two worlds, the material world and the spirit realm, and fully belong to neither. They live as outsiders even in the midst of their communities.

Totemists appear here and there in the legends of different peoples as folk heroes. The legendary duskling Tavannath Durimarrasha is sometimes called the Totem Bringer, for he is said to be the first totemist. Areil Woodwarden is a wild elf totemist of modern times, known for mobilizing the magical beasts of her forest home to repel a gnoll invasion. Gayadari the Dreamer is a human totemist from a remote land, known as a great hunter of dragons.

Totemists as a rule do not form organizations. Many totemists are part of tight tribal structures in their native lands, and totemists who leave those lands are such anomalies that they rarely find compatriots to form guilds or schools. Some totemists have been known to join organizations that support druids, while others claim membership in societies that cater to foreigners in civilized lands. In general, however, totemists are loners at heart, rejecting any organization larger than an adventuring company.

Totemists claim positions of respect (even if it is mingled with fear) among their own people and members of other societies that are familiar with their ways. A member of a culture that includes totemists has at least a friendly reaction to any totemist, even one native to a different culture. Even though they are friendly, however, such people are more likely to give concrete aid and escape the totemist's presence quickly rather than engage in casual conversation.

People whose native cultures do not have a place for totemists range from indifferent to unfriendly toward totemists, depending on their feelings about foreigners in general and a specific totemist's own culture specifically. A lizardfolk or orc totemist is unlikely to find a warm reception in human lands, though he might be well received by wild elves who recognize his totemist status.

TOTEMIST LORE

Characters with Knowledge (the planes) or Knowledge (nature) can research totemists to learn more about them.

DC 10: Totemists worship magical beasts and have some ability to mimic their powers.

DC 15: Totemists wield a soul-energy called incarnum, which they draw from magical beasts and shape into objects almost like magic items. They have some limited ability to change their shape to gain properties of the magical beasts they revere.

DC 20: Totemists shape incarnum into soulmelds that are related to various magical beasts. By claiming different soulmelds as a totem, a totemist can take on physical characteristics of different magical beasts. They can also bind soulmelds to the power centers of the body to gain different abilities.

DC 30: Information about notable totemists, drawn from the section above.

TOTEMISTS IN THE GAME

Like the soulborn, the totemist is an important but not central part of the incarnum system. They are an example of how to model an existing fantasy and mythological archetype, similar to the druid and the spirit shaman, using incarnum rather than divine magic. You might consider revising your campaign history so that certain existing druids or spirit shamans are actually totemists instead, or you can posit that totemists are either a new arrival in the world or part of a distant culture that is only now arriving on the world stage. See Incarnum Campaigns for more advice about incorporating incarnum into your campaign.

Totemists have close ties to an existing fixture of almost all D&D worlds - the magical beasts that make up common encounters in most games. For this reason, a player with a totemist can easily feel an important and meaningful part even of a campaign that otherwise makes little use of incarnum. Even if a totemist character never sees another character or creature that uses incarnum and never acquires an incarnum-based magic item, he still has a place in the world and a unique relationship to the magical beasts all around him. As a result, running a game that includes a totemist character requires little special attention.

With significant modifications or expansions, the totemist could be recast with ties to different creature types. By renaming and tweaking their melds, totemists could invoke aberrations, fey, or dragons instead of magical beasts.

NPC totemists might be encountered as leaders of small bands of savage humanoids in the wilderness, serving as opponents with unusual powers to challenge the PCs.