Can you "activate/deactivate" a soulmeld at-will?

[47948201]

I was reading over The Commoner Handbook (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?232822-The-Commoner-Handbook), and the wording of a certain part caught my eye.


*Incarnate Weapon: Create an aligned weapon. This feat is traditionally going to be more useful than Martial Weapon Proficiency in any scenario. You instantly summon a melee weapon to you that you’re proficient in which brings obvious pros & cons. Pro you’ll have a weapon much more elegant than a club or spear but for a con you’ll be in melee combat which is not where you want to be. If you are outfitting some commoners to be melee-based militia (Maybe some Orcs who will form a Joint Bullrush teamwork benefit) this can be a nice feat.
(The, uh, second emphasis...mine.)

I'm not too familiar with MoI, but don't you need to shape your soulmelds during the hour of meditation after resting, and then you can't unshape it until your next meditation session? At the very least, that's what I'd assume for if a commoner got this soulmeld from the Shape Soulmeld feat, meaning they don't have any class features that overrule regular meldshaping rules. So rather than "instantly" summoning a weapon, it's more like "you spend an hour to summon a melee weapon, and then you carry it around all day". But I could be totally wrong?

[RSGA]

I was reading over The Commoner Handbook (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?232822-The-Commoner-Handbook), and the wording of a certain part caught my eye.


(The, uh, second emphasis...mine.)

I'm not too familiar with MoI, but don't you need to shape your soulmelds during the hour of meditation after resting, and then you can't unshape it until your next meditation session? At the very least, that's what I'd assume for if a commoner got this soulmeld from the Shape Soulmeld feat, meaning they don't have any class features that overrule regular meldshaping rules. So rather than "instantly" summoning a weapon, it's more like "you spend an hour to summon a melee weapon, and then you carry it around all day". But I could be totally wrong?

The commoner handbook is just paraphrasing. Shaping Incarnate Weapon makes it into a, well, weapon that is a bit large and becomes magical with Essentia and is aligned to your alignment both at least in your hands. And it returns to your hand at the beginning of your next turn. But as for activating and deactivating, that's generally not a thing soulmelds care about. It's generally either shaped and does its thing or isn't shaped and does nothing, with a few exceptions that need essentia to do anything but look mysterious and (to a trained eye) magically delicious.

[Psyren]

As stated, there is no "activation." Once you shape an Incarnate Weapon, you have a physical weapon that you're toting around with you until you unshape the meld. If you drop it or lose your grip on it for any reason, you're holding it again next turn, and if that's impossible, it falls at your feet (but will try to return to your grasp again the following turn.) You're correct that you need 8 hours rest (or whatever the equivalent is for your race) followed by 1 hour of mediation before you can shape it, but you can leave it shaped for the rest of your life if you so choose.

One other thing to note - the soulmeld doesn't actually make you proficient in anything, you just don't take any nonproficiency penalties for using it. Most of the time this distinction doesn't matter, but it can if you're also trying to use or benefit from something else that requires you to be proficient in one of the weapons the soulmeld can take the form of.