Soul Knife Question.
- Thread starter fauntix
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Nifft
Penguin Herder
In general, Soulknife (the 3.5e class) sucks. It's better than the 3.0e PrC, but that's not saying much, since almost everything Psionic in 3.0e sucked.
You can make one that's playable, but only if you focus on your strengths. There's basically only one way to play a Soulknife, and that's as a hit-and-run skirmisher.
You get good HP and decent skill points from a good skill list, but you can't slog it out in melee, and you can't pass for a skill monkey either. You even suck at mid-range (since you can't make a ranged attack and move).
One fix for this is the Soulbow PrC. It's one of the few things to come out of Complete Psionic which doesn't make the game worse. (Don't buy Complete Psionic, the whole PrC is reproduced in the linked article.) It gives you faster enhancement progression, and you can choose from a better set of enhancements: shock + flaming + frost = hell yeah.
Better yet, you can keep a nice Bastard-sized Mindblade in one hand and fire Mind Arrows from your other hand, so not only does your range increase, your ability to deal with sudden enemy charges also improves.
What else can you do? Power Attack + Psionic Meditation + Deep Impact = massive damage every round. You can't do this until you hit BAB +5, and it costs four feats, but it's well worth the investment vs. highly armored monsters, like dragons. You'll need a good Str and Wis, but you'd want those anyway.
Psionic Body will make every [Psionic] feat toughen you up a bit, and you ought to be taking a lot of those, so it will add up.
In terms of stats, you need a decent Str, Dex, Con and Wis. You want to enhance your Dex as much as possible. Once you get into Soulbow, you will also want to enhance your Wis. Con goes without saying, every PC needs hp. Str is important until Soulbow or Deep Impact, at which point you care more about Dex & Con (both for staying power).
Cheers, -- N
You can make one that's playable, but only if you focus on your strengths. There's basically only one way to play a Soulknife, and that's as a hit-and-run skirmisher.
You get good HP and decent skill points from a good skill list, but you can't slog it out in melee, and you can't pass for a skill monkey either. You even suck at mid-range (since you can't make a ranged attack and move).
One fix for this is the Soulbow PrC. It's one of the few things to come out of Complete Psionic which doesn't make the game worse. (Don't buy Complete Psionic, the whole PrC is reproduced in the linked article.) It gives you faster enhancement progression, and you can choose from a better set of enhancements: shock + flaming + frost = hell yeah.
Better yet, you can keep a nice Bastard-sized Mindblade in one hand and fire Mind Arrows from your other hand, so not only does your range increase, your ability to deal with sudden enemy charges also improves.
What else can you do? Power Attack + Psionic Meditation + Deep Impact = massive damage every round. You can't do this until you hit BAB +5, and it costs four feats, but it's well worth the investment vs. highly armored monsters, like dragons. You'll need a good Str and Wis, but you'd want those anyway.
Psionic Body will make every [Psionic] feat toughen you up a bit, and you ought to be taking a lot of those, so it will add up.
In terms of stats, you need a decent Str, Dex, Con and Wis. You want to enhance your Dex as much as possible. Once you get into Soulbow, you will also want to enhance your Wis. Con goes without saying, every PC needs hp. Str is important until Soulbow or Deep Impact, at which point you care more about Dex & Con (both for staying power).
Cheers, -- N
pawsplay
Hero
The soulknife is a little behind the curve, but like the fighter or swashbuckler, with some basic attention, they can pull their own weight. Since basically your main ability is a free magical weapon, probably the first thing to figure out is where to spend the extra money you have. The Soulbow is touched on above, so I am going to talk about a straight up Soulknife. The approaches I see are basically:
- Focus on the mindblade, and so use the extra cash on ability boosters and defenses
- Take advantage of the extra cash to have a second weapon and go TWF. While less hard-hitting, you'll be more versatile, and you have a chance to move out of the standard attack ghetto. This is better than splitting your mindblade, for the most part, as your overall bonuses and enhancements will be better, and you can use oils and such.
- Own a really good buckler.
In any case, your main strength is being able to sink all of your weapon-specific feats into one weapon (your mindblade, or alternatively, into a "shortsword" if you want to go TWF). That means W Focus and Improved Critical. Apart from that, you'll want to pick a strategy and kind of stick with it, whether that's TWF or Spring Attack or what have you.
There are a couple of decent multiclass options to consider.
Fighter 4/Soulknife X is not going to excel at damage dealing, but you get a slightly better BAB and can take advantage of W Focus and W Spec to boost your overall effectiveness. Plus, you get armor and shields.
Rog 2/Soulknife X gets you evasion, 1d6 sneak attack, and some good skills, allowing you to open up with a bang and allows you to use your mobility for extra damage if there's another melee guy in the group.
- Focus on the mindblade, and so use the extra cash on ability boosters and defenses
- Take advantage of the extra cash to have a second weapon and go TWF. While less hard-hitting, you'll be more versatile, and you have a chance to move out of the standard attack ghetto. This is better than splitting your mindblade, for the most part, as your overall bonuses and enhancements will be better, and you can use oils and such.
- Own a really good buckler.
In any case, your main strength is being able to sink all of your weapon-specific feats into one weapon (your mindblade, or alternatively, into a "shortsword" if you want to go TWF). That means W Focus and Improved Critical. Apart from that, you'll want to pick a strategy and kind of stick with it, whether that's TWF or Spring Attack or what have you.
There are a couple of decent multiclass options to consider.
Fighter 4/Soulknife X is not going to excel at damage dealing, but you get a slightly better BAB and can take advantage of W Focus and W Spec to boost your overall effectiveness. Plus, you get armor and shields.
Rog 2/Soulknife X gets you evasion, 1d6 sneak attack, and some good skills, allowing you to open up with a bang and allows you to use your mobility for extra damage if there's another melee guy in the group.
pawsplay
Hero
What style interests you?
There may be a way using a feat from Dragon #341. In it, there is a feat that lets you reshape your blade into a weapon with which you are proficient, and you can take it multiple times. There is another that lets you form multiple daggers for throwing, and another that lets you form a shield.
Its a little of a stretch, but if I were DMing it, I'd let you use that first feat to reshape your mindblade into multiple armor spikes.
Even if your DM doesn't like that, point to that feat and the others and ask for a HR feat along the same lines that lets you do this.
Either way, I can't really see this as being abusive.
