MoI Rules Question

[ja.phoenix777]

Okay, I'm kinda new here, so forgive me if I've put this in the wrong section.

I was looking over the feats in MoI, and of course there's Shape Soulmeld, which lets you (surprise, surprise), shape a particular soulmeld, even if you do not have levels in an incarnum class, meaning that you basically get an extra soulmeld slot dedicated specifically to the particular soulmeld.

My question, however, is about the Open Chakra feats. It seems to me that it does not act like Shape Soulmeld, in that it does not give you an extra chakra bind dedicated to a specific body slot. Rather, apparently you already need to be able to bind soulmelds to chakras in order to gain the main benefit of this feat. Am I correct in my interpretation of this feat? Thoughts?

 

[Glimbur]

It's not clear. I would argue that the design intent is that you get an additional chakra bind which can only be used on the chakra which you open via the feat. That makes the feat pretty good, but you don't get that many feats. This does make it a more limited version of the Epic feat which flat-out gives you an extra chakra bind, and the Epic feat doesn't open a Chakra so the non-epic feat is sort of better.

You've already mentioned the other common interpretation, which is that you are now allowed to bind to the chakra but you do not get an extra chakra bind so you must already have one. That makes the feat mostly useful for people who dipped a meldshaper class and now want a higher level chakra. To me, part of the beauty of MoI is that you can dabble or specialize, so I don't like this interpretation as much.

You can get a fair amount of argument on this point, and if you really pressed me for a Rules As Written answer I'd go with the more restrictive answer, but I don't like it as well.