That's debateable. After all, the soulmeld is simply "Incarnate Avatar." The alignment restrictions on soulmelds are that you can't shape any that are not of your alignment. As such, the LE Soulborn can use the Lawful or the Evil version with the same feat.
Hmm, rereading the class feature it looks like it IS debatable. While both the Incarnate and the Soulborn have a class feature called "Aligned Soulmelds," they do appear to work differently. I made the mistake of thinking they worked the same way.
So a Lawful Evil Soulborn CAN potentially play catch up to a barbarian.
Thank you for catching that, and my apologies for Ians for my own wrong-ness.
The thing is, that's still not a Soulborn-specific ability. Anyone can do that.
Actually, only people with essentia pools of 4 or more can do that
...which anyone can do.
Shape Soulmeld
Bonus Essentia x2
In that order.
or
Lawful Evil Azurin Commoner 3
Feats:
1. Shape Soulmeld [Incarnate Avatar]
Az. [Incarnum Feat]
3. Bonus Essentia
1 essentia from Azurin
1 essentia from any Incarnum feat
2 essenta from Bonus Essentia
Illegal build is illegal. It also gets into opportunity cost, 1 feat vs 4 feats or 3 feats and a race.
What?
I'm not playing a forum game, I'm making a point. Magic of Incarnum includes feats that allow non-MoI classes to gain meldshaping ability.
If you can get up to four capacity (which is a matter of time) and you spend the feats ANYONE but an Incarnate can get +4/+8 attack/damage out of Incarnate Avatar.
For the record, if you want to "duel builds" or whatever, your original suggestion was nothing but a feat. The soulborn class brings nothing to it at all. So you used the same tools to make a point that I did, only you failed to make yours.
The soulborn class gets Essentia at the same level that you can take the Bonus Essentia feat. The soulborn class
never gains an increase to soulmeld capacity, so it has to spend a feat for that too. You cannot invest 4 essentia in Incarnate Avatar until a certain level without the Expanded Soulmeld Capacity feat or the class features of a Totemist or Incarnate. So, the Soulborn has more essentia than a commoner, but a commoner and a soulborn who invest the same amount into meldshaping will be just as good with Incarnate Avatar.
Bonus Essentia can't be taken more than once. Would be nice if it could.
I'll amend my post.