Handing Soulmelds to Other People [Feats]

[Amechra]

Soulcrafting [Incarnum][Item Crafting]
You have discovered how to shape your Soulmelds in a way that allows you to lend them to others.
Prerequisites: Must be able to shape at least 2 Soulmelds, Meldshaper Level 3rd
Benefits: Whenever you shape a Soulmeld, you may shape it as a Soulmeld Item, appearing at your feat as a solid item. As long as a Soulmeld Item exists, anyone can pick it up and use it as if it were a slotless magic item with a caster level equal to your Meldshaper level. Soulmelds that normally create a weapon, such as Incarnum Weapon, instead act as magic weapons when created as Soulmeld Items

The Soulmeld is still subject to effects that destroy soulmelds, and is additionally subject to effects which target magic items. If you shape the same soulmeld an additional time, either as a Soulmeld Item or as a normal Soulmeld, the existing Soulmeld Item is unshaped.

A Soulmeld Item does not count against the maximum number of Soulmelds a given creature is able to have at one time unless they are currently wearing or wielding that Soulmeld Item.

You cannot invest any essentia into a Soulmeld Item, and you cannot shape a Soulmeld Item that is bound to a Chakra.
Special: You gain 1 essentia. This feat counts as Craft Wondrous Item for the purposes of prerequisites.

Chakraic Panoply [Incarnum]
You have gotten better at manipulating Incarnum into forming Soulmeld Items.
Prerequisites: Soulcrafting, Meldshaper Level 6th, able to bind soulmelds to a Chakra.
Benefit: If someone with an Essentia pool is wearing or wielding one of your Soulmeld Items, they may invest Essentia into that Soulmeld Item or bind it to a Chakra as if it were a Soulmeld they had shaped themselves.

As soon as they are no longer wearing or wielding that Soulmeld Item, the essentia invested is divested from the Soulmeld Item and returned to the person who invested it, and the Soulmeld is unbound from that particular chakra.
Special: You gain 1 essentia.

Azure Technochorigisy[Incarnum]
You have experienced a breakthrough in soulmeld technology; namely, the ability to share with someone who does not have your advantages.
Prerequisites: Chakraic Panoply
Benefits: Whenever you invest Essentia into a Soulmeld Item that you created, you may choose to have the Essentia not return to you when it leaves your person. You may not change how much Essentia you have invested in a Soulmeld Item unless you are wearing or wielding it. As long as you still have at least 1 Essentia invested into a Soulmeld Item, no-one else may invest more Essentia into it.

In addition, if you have a Soulmeld Item bound to one of your chakras, you may choose to have it not unbind from that Chakra when it leaves your person; anyone who chooses to use that Soulmeld Item treats it as a magic item that takes up a body slot analogous to the chakra that the Soulmeld Item is bound to, and may not bind it to any other Chakras. You may not change what Chakra the Soulmeld Item is bound to unless you are wearing or wielding it.
Special: You gain 1 essentia.

Soul Aesthetics [Incarnum]
Your soulmelds just scream "you". Well, that's because you nabbed a bit of your own soul energy when creating them.
Prerequisites: The ability to shape a soulmeld.
Benefit: When you first take this feat, you may specify an aesthetic for your soulmelds to take on. From this point on, all of your soulmelds take on that aesthetic.

For example, if your aesthetic was "Basalt and Brass", and you shaped an Incarnum Weapon, it could form an imposing blade apparently made of basalt, shot through with brass tracery, rather than one made of blue glowing energy.

Any checks to determine that you are carrying or using a soulmeld have their DC increased by 10, because of the sharply different aesthetics of your soulmelds.
Special: You gain 1 essentia.

Form-Stealing Unshaping [Incarnum]
You have figured out how to convert essentia into magic items, now you have learned how to convert in the opposite direction.
Prerequisites: Chakraic Panoply
Benefit: Over the course of one minute, you may unshape any magic item that you own and are currently are wearing or wielding; doing so destroys the magic item, but adds it to the list of soulmelds that you may shape. It is treated as if it were a soulmeld on the class list of each of your meldshaping classes for the purposes of all effects.

When shaping the converted magic item as a soulmeld, it must be bound to the chakra that corresponds to the body slot that the magic item would normally occupy for it to grant any benefit; otherwise, it appears as a glowing blue mist hovering over the corresponding body slot. For the purposes of this feat, magic weapons correspond to the Hands chakra. The duplicate has cosmetic differences, matching the aesthetics of your other soulmelds; a Totemist might add blue fur trim to a pair of Bracers of Armor.

You may have a number of these unique soulmelds equal to your Constitution modifier. You may remove a soulmeld from this list as a full round action, causing the analogous magic item to appear at your feet.
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OK, so now you can create a sword out of SOULS, and hand it to the Fighter. And with Soul Aesthetics, you can just pretend that it is a random magic item you found!

What does everyone think?

EDIT: Now, with the addition of Form-Stealing Unshaping, it literally CAN be a random magic item you just found!

[sirpercival]

I have been looking for something like this forever.  I absolutely love it, and will use it in short order.  Maybe a rework of Ironsoul Forgemaster to go along with it is in order?

A couple issues/questions:
~Do the crafted melds count against your normal # of soulmelds? If so, you should make that explicit.
~Do Chakraic Panoply items count against your normal # of binds? If not, I'm worried that you can make a bunch of CP melds, then wear them yourself to bypass chakra bind limits.

The other major comment I have is that having a warforged meldshaper cohort with these stashed in your bag of holding is now going to be super awesome.  He can make you a bunch of soulmelds then hang out in there to be protected while you reap the benefits.  (To really make this work, you want a way for him to donate you his essentia, too.)

[Amechra]

The question of whether or not it takes up your binds is one that I've been thinking of; my original draft of Chakraic Panoply boils down to "people wearing/wielding this Soulmeld Item can bind it as if they shaped it themselves."

Does that sound better? Maybe if I allow you to "pay the cost" to bind it so that other people can get the benefit...

In fact, I think I'll do that. I'll just throw on another feat that lets you invest Essentia/a chakra bind when creating the Soulmeld Item to let people use it with invested essentia and the proper Chakra bonds.

That sound good?

[sirpercival]

I like that, though this is getting very feat heavy... maybe break it down like this:
1) Base feat, no binding/investing essentia
2)   --> feat 2, user can bind/invest as if own soulmeld (using own ML or yours, whichever is better? or just yours or just theirs?)
3)   --------> feat 3, you can bind/invest for them, but it's not changeable.

[Amechra]

I like that set-up. Give me a sec to write everything up (I'm keeping Chakraic Panoply as a name because I like that name.)

[Amechra]

Fun fact: technochorigisy comes from technos (the Greek word for Art or Skill) and chorigisi (the Greek word for Giving)

I love coining new words.

[Arz]

Might want to change that slotless bit on Soulcrafting. Seems a bit out of the scope of a feat. If they wanted to create slotless items that would be totemist melds anyway, or other special melds. Seems open to abuse to me.

[Amechra]

Well, again, take a look at the benefits of Soulmelds when not bound to a chakra; that's what I meant, after all.

Do you think I should specify that they count towards the limit of how many soulmelds you can have shaped at once?

[TravelLog]

I do. Think about having like 8 Amulets of Girallon's Arms or other crazy stacks/combos that would otherwise be not possible by virtue of sharing the same chakras. This way, you could arguably be better than an actual Incarnum using class.

[Amechra]

But... damn it, can't the people who wrote the book predict something a random homebrewer wrote 8 years later?

I'm reasonably sure that the effects of multiple of the same soulmeld don't stack. Because that is one of the central things for D&D.

Oh well, I'll fix that.

EDIT: No, I won't. Because the Soulmelds don't stack by core rules of "bonuses from the same ability don't stack."

[TravelLog]

Well at least that's half the problem in that you can't stack the same soul meld. BUT you can still use otherwise illegal meld combination by virtue of: slotless items > melds that would otherwise bind to the same chakra.

[Amechra]

Well, here's the thing; as soon as you bind a soulmeld due to Chakraic Panoply, it takes up the slot as normal.

If you set up a soulmeld in pre-bound form via Azure Technochorigisy, it takes up a magic item slot analogous to the chakra slot that it would be bound to (thus taking up the slot, in a way that non-meldshapers can benefit from.)

The slotless magic item only applies to the basic form of the soulmeld. Those are never associated to a chakra; seriously, you can fill your entire "soulmelds shaped at once" allotment with stuff that could bind to your Feet chakra, say, and the system does not care.

In other words, this doesn't allow you to pull shenanigans in that direction either.

[Amechra]

To use one of sirpercival's soulmelds as an example, I've highlighted all of the stuff that the first feat can get you.

Necrocarnum Aura
Descriptors: Necrocarnum.
Classes: Incarnate.
Chakra: Shoulders, Soul.
Saving Throw: None.

Twisted, crackling necrocarnum extends from you, darkening the air around you with chill.

While you have necrocarnum aura shaped, all opponents within 10 feet of you suffer a -2 morale penalty on saving throws.  This is a mind-affecting fear effect.  Essentia: For every point of essentia invested in the necrocarnum aura, opponents affected by the aura suffer a -1 penalty on attack rolls.  This is a mind-affecting fear effect.

Chakra Bind (Shoulders)  Your necrocarnum aura affects all opponents with 30 feet of you.

Chakra Bind (Soul)  The penalties imposed by your necrocarnum aura are no longer morale penalties, becoming untyped -- however, they do not stack with penalties imposed by other necrocarnum auras.  In addition, the ability of the necrocarnum aura is no longer a mind-affecting fear affect.

You need the second feat to give anything else, in which case they must either:
1. Bind to the Soulmeld Item to a chakra, going through all the same requirements as if they had shaped it in the first place; takes up your limit on chakra binds, requires them to have access to that chakra, so on and so forth.

2. Use it as a magic item that takes up the slot that the chakra bind would anyway.

[Garryl]

The slotless magic item only applies to the basic form of the soulmeld. Those are never associated to a chakra; seriously, you can fill your entire "soulmelds shaped at once" allotment with stuff that could bind to your Feet chakra, say, and the system does not care.

Are you talking with the feat or normal Incarnum? Because normally, you can't shape more than one soulmeld on a given chakra, even if you don't bind it. You could not, for example, have both Impulse Boots and Airstep Sandals shaped on your Feet chakra, even though they aren't bound and are just giving the basic, unbound effect. As such, the slotlessness granted by Soulcrafting (Item Creation, not Item Crafting) is allowing certain combinations that would not ordinarily be possible without the Double Chakra feat (although Double Chakra does let you bind both of them, rather than just shaping both of them).

[Amechra]

Note: My brain just hit a 'click' as I remember that is actually the case. Sorry, TravelLog, for thinking you were wrong.

Now the question is whether or not it would imbalanced to leave it as-is. After all, the base abilities of soulmelds tend to not be powerful enough to create any real issues...

[Garryl]

Now the question is whether or not it would imbalanced to leave it as-is. After all, the base abilities of soulmelds tend to not be powerful enough to create any real issues...

Only in the sense that it becomes by and large the best method of performing such combinations. Power-wise, I can't possibly see illegal combinations of unbound soulmelds ever being too powerful (part of the reason I dropped those restrictions entirely when I made PoC). However, as I said before, this would be a feat that aren't meant to be done nearly as early or as easily, so even if it's not an imbalanced thing, it does invalidate existing options that are already the norm. If said options, norm or not, are sufficiently underpowered as to merit replacing, then go ahead, just make it clear that it's an intended part of the new feat (ie: spell it out), rather than being a hidden trick that looks like an unintended consequence.

[Amechra]

I might just include it as a footnote at the beginning, as a houserule.

[TravelLog]

Note: My brain just hit a 'click' as I remember that is actually the case. Sorry, TravelLog, for thinking you were wrong.

Bah. No worries. The interesting-ness of the Homebrew makes such mistakes forgiveable.

At least for now.

So keep at it!

[Arz]

Had some thoughts about making this more like other incarnum and item creation feats. Firstly, the bearer should deal with investing and binding with the caveat that it is normally bound as a magic item, not a soulmeld. Second, you need a limit(essentia in feat) and cost for creation(meldshaper level). Lastly, here is a write-up needing some editing...

Soulcrafting [Incarnum][Item Crafting]
You have discovered how to shape your Soulmelds in a way that allows you to lend them to others.
Prerequisites: Must be able to shape at least 2 Soulmelds, Meldshaper Level 3rd
Benefits: Whenever you shape a Soulmeld, you may shape it as a Soulmeld Item, appearing at your feat as a solid item. As long as a Soulmeld Item exists, anyone can pick it up and use it as if it were a slotless magic item with a caster level equal to your Meldshaper level. Soulmelds that normally create a weapon, such as Incarnum Weapon, instead act as magic weapons when created as Soulmeld Items

The Soulmeld is still subject to effects that destroy soulmelds, and is additionally subject to effects which target magic items. If you shape the same soulmeld an additional time, either as a Soulmeld Item or as a normal Soulmeld, the existing Soulmeld Item is unshaped.

A Soulmeld Item does not count against the maximum number of Soulmelds a given creature is able to have at one time unless they are currently wearing or wielding that Soulmeld Item.

You cannot invest any essentia into a Soulmeld Item, and you cannot shape a Soulmeld Item that is bound to a Chakra.
Special: You gain 1 essentia.

Once per day, you can invest essentia into this feat and choose a soulmeld that you can shape and craft it into a magic item taking up a slot corresponding with its chakra. You can craft a number of soulmelds equal to essentia invested in this feat. The save DC (if any) is based on your constitution. The meldshaper level is equal to yours minus the essentia invested in this feat. The meldshaper level for all your melds shaped are similarly reduced by essentia invested in this feat. Soulmeld magic items may have essentia invested by their bearer as normal but if bound to their corresponding chakra use the rules of binding magic items as found on MoI p108.

Special: You gain 1 essentia. This feat may be used in place of Craft Wondrous Item to qualify for a feat, prestige class, or other special ability.

I'd then look at making Forge Soulstone Ring that would allow you to create rings that could be bound as normal soulmelds. Maybe some other incarnum feats geared to anyone using magic items that can have essentia invested might work better than heaping it all on the creator of soul items.

This is looking like the feat that every Soulborn should take. (not a bad thing)

[Amechra]

I'm not sure I like that change, since it goes away from the intent of the homebrew.