A Soulknife Prestige Class

I offer up my humble attempt at injecting some ranged ability into the soulknifes arsenal. Feedback requested.

Ranged Soulknife

Hit Die: d8

Requirements
To qualify for ranged soulknife, a character must fulfil all the following criteria
Feats: Point Blank Shot, Psionic Shot
Special: Mind Blade class ability
Special: Throw Mind Blade class ability
Special: Shape Mind Blade class ability

Class Skills
The ranged soulknife’s class skills (and the key ability for each skill) are Autohypnosis* (Wis), Climb (Str), Concentration* (Con), Craft (Int), Hide (Dex), Jump (Str), Knowledge (psionics)* (Int), Listen (Wis), Move Silently (Dex), Profession (Wis), Spot (Wis), and Tumble (Dex).
Skill Points at 1st Level: (4 + Int modifier) x4.
Skill Points at Each Additional Level: 4 + Int modifier.

Ranged Mind Blade (Su): As an extension of the Shape Mind Blade ability, as a full round action you may shape your mind blade into a shortbow or longbow of size appropriate to you. This bow provides its own ammunition all you have to do is draw it and an appropriate arrow composed of mental energy fills it.

Multiple Shot: You may make a number of ranged attacks with your mind blade equal to the number of melee attacks you could make.

Seeking Shot: By expending psionic focus you may make a single attack that ignores cover and concealment.

Psychic Strike: Stacks with other abilities of the same name.

Splintered Shot: As a full round action, by expending focus you may make an attack against a number of targets within range equal to you class level at your full attack bonus.

Fell Shot: You gain Fell Shot as a bonus feat even if you do not meet the prerequisites.

True Shot: By expending focus you gain a +5 insight bonus to hit on all attacks for 1 round.

Mighty Shot: As a full round action and by expending psionic focus you may make a single attack that combines the effects of the Fell Shot feat with a psychic strike without first having to imbue the mind blade with the psychic strike.

Interesting. It's good to see more prestige classes for the soulknife. It's the red-headed stepchild of the XPH.

I think I'd like to see something less optimal as a feat pre-requisite, something that involves some power trade-off.

The problem with the feats is that at 6th level (which is where I was aiming for this class to be taken) a non-human character only has three feats. As I wanted Psionic Shot to be a prerequisite I also had to include Point Blank Shot, which doesn’t fit the flavour very well as the idea of this class is to add longer range to the soulknifes abilities, and I did not want to remove all individual customization from the players hands and end up with all Soulknife 6/Ranged Soulknife 1's being carbon coppies.

Piratecat said:

I think I'd like to see something less optimal as a feat pre-requisite, something that involves some power trade-off.

Click to expand...

I think the loss of the Soulknife's progressive weapon enhancement takes care of that pretty well.

The loss of a soulknife's increasing enhancement to his mind blade is the main problem with this class, IMO. It's even worse than a paladin or monk's multiclass restriction because even though you can't return to the class after multiclassing, the abilities you get from the class can still synergize with those from other classes.

On the other hand, the soulknife's class features mainly centre around getting a nifty mind blade. Step out of the class for a few levels, and your mind blade isn't as nifty as the magic weapon you found on your last adventure. As such, the tendency is to play either pure-classed soulknives or something else entirely.

In my view, the way to get around the problem is to separate the ability to create a mind blade from the ability to enhance it so that the enhancement can apply to any weapon. That way, a few levels of soulknife can still be a benefit: an ordinary +1 longsword can be a +2 keen longsword when you wield it. [Plug]For an elaboration of what I mean, click on the Blade of Pure Thought PrC in my sig.[/Plug]

As for the PrC, it looks fine to me. It basically gives up mind blade (mind bow?) enhancement for better BAB and a few ranged attack benefits. This PrC probably works best with a spellcaster friend to cast greater magic weapon.

Why not just make the ranged soul knife as a base class. It doesn' t make much since in my opinion to make the ranged oriented version a PRC and the melee oriented version a base class.
It's sorta like the paladin being a base class and the black guard being a PRC. Which doesn't make any sense at all.
In both cases in my opinion both classes should either be PRCs or base classes.

As far as balance goes it looks fine.