RPG Superstar 2009 Top 32
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So, the feat Chakra Initiate grants a "pool that holds 3 points of serpentfire ki"; and there's a monk archetype that gives that as a bonus feat. So you get a "serpentfire ki pool" which is kind of like a "ki pool".
Does either of these count as prerequisite for anything requiring a "ki pool"? I'm leaning towards no, but I'd like to know if there's a consensus or official answer on this.
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- It's hard to argue that a pool containing ki isn't a ki pool. Howover, most of the related feats ask for "ki pool class feature", with only Deny Death, Gliding Steps, and Ki Stand merely asking for "ki pool". All three have both a passive effect when you have at elast 1 ki in your pool, and an active effect which is indubiously not activatable with Chakra Initiate as it explicitly says that you can use the serpentfire ki "only to open or maintain chakras". I don't see a harm at letting people access the passive effect vie Charka Initiate. The feat Perfect Style interacts exactly like that.
There're but two prestige classes related to ki pool, with Champion of Irori outright granting a pool (bypassign the issue), and Student of Perfection explicitly only interacting with ki pools form class features and Perfect Style.
I think this is the RAW, and looks perfectly balanced to me (by comparison with Perfect Style). Not sure about the intend, but if the above two align, I don't see a reason to care about intend.
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One: having a ki pool is a prerequisite for opening chakras, and the ability to open chakras is a prerequisite for taking the Chakra Initiate feat. So the only case possible is if you are getting the Chakra Initiate feat as a class feature that bypasses prerequisites. And the only way to get that is the Serpent-Fire Adept archetype.
Two: The Serpent-Fire Adept gets a ki pool at 4th level. 3rd if Unchained. So that narrows down the situations where this question could occur even further: a character with at least one but less than four (or three) Serpent-Fire Adept levels.
Three: I have actually had face-to-face conversations with Paizo employees in the design and development groups about this very archetype. The chakra system was interesting enough to publish but impossible for PCs to use. The Serpent-Fire Adept was intended to make it possible for PCs to use chakras. If you look through the other class features it’s obvious that the Chakra Initiate feat had to be granted at first level. I can with a great deal of confidence state that the idea of using a level of Serpent-Fire Adept as a dip to qualify for abilities that require a ki pool never occurred to the developers. If it had, they would have closed it off with a line like “the Serpent-Fire Adept does not count as having the ki pool class feature until he gains it at his normal level.”
Four: If your group really wants to let a pool of serpent-fire ki count as the ki pool class feature, go ahead. I mean, you can get a ki pool with a two-level rogue or ninja dip anyway.
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RPG Superstar 2009 Top 32
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Two: The Serpent-Fire Adept gets a ki pool at 4th level. 3rd if Unchained. So that narrows down the situations where this question could occur even further: a character with at least one but less than four (or three) Serpent-Fire Adept levels.
Yes, the intent is to dip one level of monk.