im currently looking for a new magic system, and so far shadow magic seems the most fitting for what im looking for, flavorwise. the whole, "reaching into a mirror plane and minipulating whats over there to get to whats over here" idea seems perfect.
my most major problems with shaodw magic, however, is that its limited to the shadow plane, which automatically lends to an evil tone. my first thought was to re-assocciate it to another "mirror" plane, like theethereal plane (or some equivalent), but that seemed much harder then just a flavor tweak. also, another problem i came across was the limited ways to use shadow magic; when i saw that it was only one spell per level, and you chose for three levels at once, i almost winced. the the way arcane magic is treated, with the idea of "one magic system, multiple approaches" really appeals to me. i dont want to give up the versatility of choosing between a wizard and a sorceror for just one class.
my second thought was incarnum, but im not very familiar with that, and i dont want to buy the book just for this, only to find out theres little way for me to work it in the way i like.
how comparable is shadow magic to incarnum? given what ive already described, any input would be nice....
Incarnum is basically as if classes had magic items as class features, only these items can't be destroyed and you can move special energy around between items to change how much their numeric components work and "binding" them to special points on the body to unlock new features of the soulmeld. Shadow magic is arcane magic that slowly evolves to the point at which certain abilities become supernatural. They are rather different, so mechanically it would be a stretch.
But are you asking flavor-wise? If you are, any system will work so long as you describe its flavor as doing exactly what you are talking about.
Sure. Picture Incarnum as 'calling and shaping Shadows to your form', and you've got the adaptation. I have Magic of Incarnum, and in my considered opinion disassociating incarnum from alignment is a necessary modification, but once you've done that it's just a matter of tweaking appearances.
Flavor wise, DeeL's fix works very, very well. mechanically, the two are extremely different. For advice on how to divorce alignment from Incarnum, replace every alignment based feature with an aspect. For a simple example, you could use the times of day:
Chaos = Dawn
Good = Day
Law = Dusk
Evil = Night.
When a player plays an Incarnate, he picks one aspect, which determines his class abilities, and a Soulborn picks too. Shaping a necrocarnum soulmeld should still be an evil act if necromancy is evil, but using necrocarnum's use shouldn't be restricted.