New SoulKnife prestige class

Soulknife Prestige Class

Concept – The soulknife makes a better prestige class than a Core class – should any first level character be able to project a Psionic blade ? nah.
Soulknife in XPH is one trick pony- he has a nice blade -
This concept is too cool to abandon.
I really liked the originals ability to fall back on Psionic powers if the blade was unsuitable, but am open to a different advancement if the one listed is too fast. I never really liked the Psychic strike – to much like the psionic weapon feat.

Requirements
BAB + 4
Skills: Knowledge (Psionics) 9 ranks
Psionics: manifester level 3rd +
Class Skills: Autohypnosis, Climb, Concentration, Craft, Hide, Jump, Knowledge (psionics), Listen, Move Silently, Profession, Spot and Tumble
Skill points: 4 + Int mod per level

Weapons and Armor: Soulknives gain proficiency in their own mind blade. They gain proficiency in light armor and shields (except tower shields)

Hit Dice - d8
BAB – as thief
Saves: will good

Special
1st – Mind blade, Throw blade (range increment 30)
2nd +1 mind blade, *
3rd free draw, shape mind blade
4th mind blade enhancement +1, *
5th +2 mind blade, weapon focus mind blade
6th Blade wind, *
7th mind blade enhancement +2
8th + 3 mind blade, *
9th knife to soul –
10th mind blade enhancement +3, *

* either +1 manifester level or +1d8 Psychic strike

Mind blade as listed in XPH except for advancement of power rates.
If psychic strike is abandoned there needs to be a new mechanic for
Knife to Soul –
any suggestions/comments ?

It looks a whole lot better than the one in XPH. I'll have to crunch some numbers to make a more indepth synopsis.

My thinking was to make the Mind Blade into a [Psionic] feat, and then have a Soul Knife PrC which was similar to the CompWar's Kensai class. However, it's not fully fleshed out yet.

Mind Blade [Psionic]
You can manifest a blade of pure will.
Prereqs:BAB 2+, Psionic Body and either Psionic Weapon or Psionic Fist
Benefit: As a move action, you can manifest a short sword composed of mental energy. You are proficient with the mindblade, and can treat it as a natural or manufactured weapon. The mindblade cannot be sundered. It is considered magic for the purpose of striking incorporeal foes and penetrating DR. If it leaves your hand, or you release it, it instantly disappears. The Mind Blade is a finessable weapon, but is not considered Light. Otherwise, it behaves exactly like a short sword.

Quicken Mind Blade [Psionic]
You can quickly manifest your Mind Blade.
Prereq: Mind Blade
Benefit: You can manifest your Mind Blade as a free action (instead of as a move action).

Throw Mind Blade [Psionic]
You can throw your Mind Blade.
Prereqs: Point Blank Shot, Mind Blade
Benefit: You can throw your Mind Blade with a range increment of 30 ft. If you can manifest Mind Blades as a free action, the number you can throw is limited only by your iterative attacks. Note that any shape Mind Blade you throw deals 1d6, 19/x2 damage -- the thrown blade reverts to its original short sword form when it leaves your hand.

Shape Mind Blade [Psionic]
You can emulate different weapons with mental energy.
Prereq: Mind Blade
Benefit: You can manifest your Mind Blade to emulate any of the following: normal short sword (1d6, 19/x2), long sword (1d8, 19/x2), bastard sword (1d10, 19/x2), or pair of short swords (1d6, 19/x2). If you choose to manifest a pair of short swords, the one in your off hand is considered Light. Note that for the purpose of Weapon Focus, Weapon Specialization, Improved Critical and the like, all three forms are considered to be the same weapon type (Mind Blade).



Soulknife PrC

Role: Melee Specialist

Prerequisites:
BAB: +4
Skill Ranks: Concentration 5+, Psicraft 5+, Tumble 3+
Feats: Mind Blade, Weapon Focus (Mind Blade)

Benefits:
HD: d6 -- but see below!
Skill Points: 4 + Int bonus / level
Class Skills: Autohypnosis (Wis), Balance (Dex), Climb (Str), Concentration (Con), Craft (Int), Hide (Dex), Jump (Str), Knowlege (Psionics) (Int), Listen (Wis), Move Silently (Dex), Profession (Wis), Psicraft (Int), Spot (Wis), Swim (Str) and Tumble (Dex).


Special Abilities:

• Manifester: Your Soul Knife levels stack with any single previous manifesting class that you choose for the purpose of manifester level and power point spending limit. You do not gain extra powers or power points, except via Feats.
• Psionic Talent: You gain this as a bonus feat at each level after first.
• Blade Enhancement (Su): Your Mind Blade gains the indicated enhancement bonus to attack and damage rolls.
• Psychic Strike (Su): When you use your Mind Blade in conjunction with the Psionic Weapon or Psionic Fist, or either greater version, you deal extra damage as indicated.
• Blade Ability (Su): While you maintain your Psionic Focus, your Mind Blade gains additional powers. You may add special abilites from the table below, up to the total indicated value (+1 at 3rd level, +2 at 6th, +3 at 9th). The specific special abilities are chosen at dawn (or whenever you regain power points). Changing the special abilities at any other time requires one minute of uninterrupted concentration and an expenditure of 17 power points. (For the purpose of resisting interruption, consider this the equivalent of manifesting a 5th-level Power with a manifestation time of 1 minute.)
  +1 Bane, Flaming, Frost, Ghost Touch, Keen, Merciful, Psychokinetic, Shock, Thundering, Vicious
  +2 Flaming Burst, Icy Burst, Mindcrusher, Psychokinetic Burst, Shocking Burst, Suppression, Wounding
  +3 Body Feeder, Mind Feeder, Speed, Soulbreaker

The idea would be that you could choose to be a PsiWarrior with a Mind Blade, and you enhance it with your Psi Warrior powers -- since they're so great at enhancing weapons anyway, and a Mind Blade is a weapon. Alternately, you could become a specialist in the Mind Blade by taking the Prestige Class, and give up power progression for abilities that can't be dispelled.

If you take all 10 levels of this PrC, you gain 9 Psionic Feats (+18 hp and at least +54 pp), a +7 weapon that can't be sundered (+4 enhancement, +3 flexible special abilities), and you can deal either +5d6 or +7d6 damage with a Psychic Strike (depending on whether you take the Greater Psionic Weapon/Fist feat or not).

Someone, please crunch the numbers. It looks balanced to me... but it's late, and I'm tired.

Thanks, -- N

Someone, please crunch the numbers. It looks balanced to me... but it's late, and I'm tired.

Thanks, -- N

Click to expand...

Will do. I get home in a couple of hours. After that I'll fire up my spread sheets.

Telperion said:

Will do. I get home in a couple of hours. After that I'll fire up my spread sheets.

Click to expand...

Aye! I'm waiting...

-- N

Ah...sorry...

Here comes...

*goes to crunch some numbers*

Okay, about the feat Mind Blade.

This thing does everything except bake your cookies and then toast them for you. Maybe you should divide into two feats? Basic Mind Blade isn’t considered magical, cannot strike incorporeal creatures and doesn’t penetrate DR.

Greater Mind Blade would have those abilities that were removed from the basic.

Other than that it seems okay. I did some numbers and they showed nothing that was way overboard. The trouble of course being that I haven’t seen a single player playing a SoulKnife so far in any format.

EDIT: substitute Psychic Strikes 1 PP to charge with "expend your psionic focus to charge".

Telperion said:

Okay, about the feat Mind Blade.

This thing does everything except bake your cookies and then toast them for you. Maybe you should divide into two feats? Basic Mind Blade isn’t considered magical, cannot strike incorporeal creatures and doesn’t penetrate DR.

Click to expand...

Here's the issue with that: Mind Blade as a [Psionic] feat has to be better than Improved Unarmed Strike. The crit range is slightly better, but the move action to manifest balances that IMHO. So, the "considered magic" thing got put in to boost the Mind Blade. Note also that Mind Blade has feat pre-requisites, unlike Improved Unarmed Strike.

In that context, do you still think it's too strong?

Telperion said:

EDIT: substitute Psychic Strikes 1 PP to charge with "expend your psionic focus to charge".

Click to expand...

Hmm, the point was to let this damage stack with that provided by (Greater) Psionic Weapon. Maybe I should just say that you deal this extra damage when using the Psionic Weapon or Greater Psionic Weapon feat?

PS: Thanks for looking it over!

-- N

Hey telperion, how's the first version look balance wise?

as for Nifft's version
why the tumble prerequiste? no other psion gets tumble, this forces crossclass or multiclass. I like the idea of feats though. Moving: shape, quickdraw and throw to feats irons out the power progression.

and why not d8 or and a regular psp progression such as warmind?
crunches #'s - oh warmind advancement nearly identical up to 7th at least.
then Nift's falls behind -

Oh, and you should add longsword back to the list of shaped weapons.

Evilhalfling said:

as for Nifft's version
why the tumble prerequiste? no other psion gets tumble, this forces crossclass or multiclass. I like the idea of feats though. Moving: shape, quickdraw and throw to feats irons out the power progression.

and why not d8 or and a regular psp progression such as warmind?
crunches #'s - oh warmind advancement nearly identical up to 7th at least.
then Nift's falls behind -

Oh, and you should add longsword back to the list of shaped weapons.

Click to expand...

My idea was to make sure that the Soulknife could still manifest useful powers (note the "Manifester" ability at 1st level), just in case he wanted to fight with Inertial Armor or whatnot instead of leather. However, I did NOT want him to be as strong as the Warmind, since he gets no power progression outside of Expanded Knowlege.

Tumble is on the pre-req list for flavor reasons. It could be deleted without harming the power balance. You're right -- I should lower the requirements to 3+ ranks so it's viable to take as a cross-class skill.

You're also right about the Longsword form. I just forgot about it, since the Bastard Sword is just so muich better. Thanks!

The idea behind d6 HD + 9 "Bonus PP" feats + Manifester is to force hard but rewarding feat choices on the Soul Knife. Imagine that you qualify for the class ASAP -- you will NOT have been able to take every Mind Blade enhancement Feat! So, you can take Expanded Knowlege to boost your power list, or take Psionic Talent and seriously boost your number of PP/day, or take a Mind Blade enhancement feat, or take one of the many other cool [Psionic] feats. Does that make sense?

Now, to be fair: I think you've done a good job with your version -- I think you've successfully condensed the official XPH Soulknife into a 10-level PrC that's not unbalanced -- but I really, really hate the official XPH Soulknife, so it's hard for me to judge your version impartially. You make it back into a PrC, which is sane -- a new core class that's so focused is just stupid, IMNSHO. I hate "Knife to the Soul" -- remember, you can add "Wounding" to your Mindblade at +2 enhamcement equivalent, and that's 1 point of Con damage every strike -- MUCH more useful than blowing your wad on a single shot. I hate Bladewind. It's already a Feat, for cryin' out loud! I hate any 1/day super strong abilities for Fighter-types. 1/day power is a feature of spellcasters.

If you were to improve the official XPH Soulknife, I'd do the following:
- Grant a fixed PP/day bonus progression.
- Grant a Manifester level progression at every level except 1st.
- Grant some bonus Feats, so they could take Expanded Knowlege if they wanted.
- Put Knife to the Soul in as a bonus Power, which costs 11 Power Points to use as a Swift action.
- Put Bladewind in as a bonus Power, which costs a lot of Power Points -- maybe 17 -- to use as a full attack action.

(So long as you're requiring a manifester level, you might as well grant powers instead of stupid 1/day abilities that the player tracks separately.)

I hope that despite my bitterness I've been helpful!

-- N