[3.P] Sharpening the Mind: A Guide to the Pathfinder Soulknife

[Psyren]

Sharpening the Mind: A Guide to the Pathfinder Soulknife

Author Note: this guide is considered defunct, and the contents may be used freely to produce an updated guide to the PF Soulknife with all the newer and exciting material that has been produced for the class since its publication. Thank you!

http://i1135.photobucket.com/albums/m633/PsyrenY/Soulknife.jpg

Being an optimization guide to the Pathfinder iteration of the Soulknife. Links, contributions, suggestions, and critiques are of course welcome.

Contents
Under construction.

Links

Saph's 3.5/Pathfinder Handbook (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?p=7607321) - Required reading!
The Pathfinder Soulknife (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/psionics-unleashed/classes/soulknife) - at the PFSRD.
For informational/completeness purposes: the D&D (3.5) Soulknife (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/psionic/classes/soulknife.htm) and Sydonis' 3.5 Soulknife Handbook (http://community.wizards.com/go/thread/view/75882/19872658/The_Soulknife_Handbook) from Gleemax.
See also the psionic links in my signature.

Ratings

Saph's rating system - used with permission. (Slightly modified as I enjoy the color purple :smallwink:)

Red: Awful.
Orange: Situational.
Black: Okay.
Blue: Good.
Purple: Excellent.

[Psyren]

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Why The 3.5 Soulknife Was So Bad

Credit for this subsection goes to Sydonis, which I shall quote in its entirety.


The main concept behind the Soulknife is that it can create and magically imbue his own weapons. However, the weapons that the soulknife can manifest are supbar to weapons that other characters of the same level will have. As well, the enchantments that a Soulknife may imbue are far beyond subpar. While any other character could essentially gain a +10 weapon by level 15 at the earliest, a soulknife only gains a +9 weapon by level 20.

The class itself was created to be a combat-oriented class with good maneuverability, but the core mechanics of the class do not agree with this. The class has moderate BAB, low fortitude saves, and can only wear light armor, so he doesn't serve as a very good tank. The soulknife has a high amount of hit points, which would allow him to serve as a solid "protector" type of class, had it the proper proficiencies with heavier armor types and shields.

This said, the class fulfills more of a striker/scout role in the party, like the rogue. This is reflected in the good reflex saves, great battlefield maneuverability, and Psychic Strike. Unlike a rogue however, who's Sneak Attack can be used automatically against anyone vulnerable to precision damage if they are caught flat-footed or flanked, the Soulknife must constantly sacrifice move actions to gain this additional damage. This is difficult on a class needing as many actions as possible just to keep its head above water. As well, a rogue has a great deal of skills and skill points, which a Soulknife is severely lacking.

Finally, the Soulknife being psionic is merely a fluff aspect. Nothing else. I know you psionics-lovers cringe at reading this, but it's true. Every psionic class, even the fighter-type, has a power point progression and can manifest powers. The only thing that makes a Soulknife psionic is Wild Talent, which is, in my opinion, is not enough to make a class psionic. The only things that this ability grants the soulknife is access to psionic feats, and the ability to manifest his psi-blade. Which is just another thing the Mind Blade needs, another restriction.

The highly restrictive nature of the Soulknife's level advancement creates a very powerful "straightjacket" effect, which punishes players if they want to multiclass into non-soulknife prestige classes or other base classes. However, in order to build the soulknife into any sort of great class, it requires multiclassing for certain builds and to enhance its general performance.


Takeaways from the above breakdown:

- The Soulknife was intended for melee, but not very good at it.
- The main benefit of their class is easily replicated by WBL, and at a faster rate besides.
- Their bonus damage mechanic forces them to do the very thing they were designed NOT to do, i.e. stand around in melee.
- Their class features are a catch-22 - the blade bonuses punish multiclassing, but the weakness of everything else punishes staying in-class.
- They were "psionic" in name only. (Literally; the book says "this is a psionic class" because otherwise you'd have no way to tell, other than the charity feat that makes any class psionic.)

DSP did a great deal to address these issues, enough so that I can confidently recommend the new Soulknife to anyone. We'll be delving deeper to find out why, but first an overview on the new Soulknife itself.

Overview
The Soulknife enjoys an infamy almost identical to that of the monk; being simultaneously one of the most beloved and most maligned base classes in WotC history. What was once a wonderful concept marred by horrible execution has been uplifted by the psionics masterminds at Dreamscarred Press. On top of the excellent base they provided in Psionics Unleashed, the class has received a number of new goodies in the form of additional archetypes and class features in psionics expanded, that push it even further ahead.

The Soulknife's Role
The base Soulknife's role, as it was in 3.5, is the skirmisher - a melee damage platform with decent mobility/positioning. By receiving an autoscaling weapon with some unique abilities, this allows them to focus their WBL on defense, or to shine in low-wealth/fixed-loot campaigns. Their adaptability allows them to overcome a variety of obstacles - including diverse damage reduction, incorporeality, energy resistance, precision-damage resistance, ranged enemies, foes that sunder/disarm etc.

Having said that, combat is still really the only thing they can do well, perhaps with a smattering of stealth or scouting ability. They don't have the skills necessary to be a true skillmonkey (though thanks to PF they aren’t awful at it either), nor do they excel at a party face role. Also, while they can broaden their loadout with psionic feats, the base soulknife doesn't get the utility that powers provide. I would say the new Soulknife is T4: "Capable of doing one thing quite well, but often useless when encounters require other areas of expertise." A step up from their 3.5 counterparts perhaps, but still not suitable for high-power campaigns. There are however additional archetypes found in Psionics Expanded that give them a little more punch - we’ll talk about those, and any subsequent changes in tier, in the Archetypes/PrC section.

The base soulknife does, however, serve one more function I consider vital - they are a way to "wet your DM's feet" in psionics. They get power points, which they can put to use depending on your race, archetype, feats or even a multiclass dip. They get a psionic focus. They can qualify for various psionic feats and even some psionic PrCs. They can put psionic enchantments on their blade. If your group is leery about psionics, the Soulknife is an excellent way to warm them up to the concept without them having to deal with a full-blown manifesting class out of the gate. Play the Soulknife in one campaign, then graduate to a Psywar, Psion or Psychic Rogue/Cryptic in a subsequent game. For this reason, being the weakest psionic base class can actually be a point in their favor. And unlike the D&D Soulknife, you are a still strong enough to contribute to most campaigns without feeling like dead weight.

[Psyren]

http://www.wizards.com/dnd/images/cpsi_gallery/96348.jpg

Class Features and Changes

Here I will focus not only on the features of the new Soulknife, but I will highlight any differences from the 3.5 one. As the vast majority of these changes are upgrades, I'll be using the color blue.

Chassis



Full BAB (Finally!)
Medium Armor Proficiency
Skills: Acrobatics (which means Balance), Autohypnosis, Climb, Craft, Intimidate, Knowledge (Psionics), Perception (which means Search), Profession, Stealth, and Swim. Still 4+Int.
Bonus Feat: You now have a choice; instead of just Weapon Focus (Mind Blade), you can also grab Power Attack or Two-Weapon Fighting instead, to start customizing your soulknife from day one.
Wild Talent: This feat serves the same purpose it did in 3.5, i.e. making Soulknives count as psionic. If you become or already are psionic through some other means (e.g. race, or multiclassing), this automatically converts to Psionic Talent instead.
Weapon Proficiencies: Simple + their Mind Blades, as before.
Shield Proficiency (no tower shields.)



The Mind Blade

Every mind blade has two mechanical parameters: Shape and Type.

Shape


Shapes can be chosen at 1st-level (instead of 5th as with the 3.5 Soulknife.)

Assuming a Medium Soulknife:

- Light (1d6) <-- you can form two of these to dual-wield from the get-go.
- 1-handed (1d8)
- 2-handed (2d6)

Adjust damage accordingly for different sizes, including temporary changes. The damage now also auto-adjusts for Powerful Build and similar abilities.

Type


Your mind blade doesn't actually have to be a blade at all. This means you are no longer restricted to slashing or piercing.

- Slashing
- Piercing
- Bludgeoning

Regardless of form, Mind Blades have base stats of: hardness 10, 10 HP, and crit on 19-20/x2.

So now you can form a Psychic Hammer, or a pair of Mindspikes, or whatever else your character can conceive of. The visual shape of your mind blade is purely fluff based and is up to the character; however, the shape must reflect the damage type in some way (e.g. a "slashing" mind blade would have a sharp edge on it, a "bludgeoning" one would look blunter or thicker at the business end, and a “slashing+piercing” one would be swordlike with sharp edges and a sharp point etc.) This gives an observer a chance at predicting what type of damage your mindweapon will do.

Once these parameters are chosen, your blade will come out this way every time you form it, until you reconfigure it later. This means you no longer have to start with the basic mind blade and reshape it every single time. Soulknives in 3.5 would typically waste the first round of combat doing this, even after they got Free Draw.

When you do need to reshape it, you only need a full-round action, easy to do between combats.


Enhancements

The Mind Blade's main benefit is that it is a cost-free, scaling, mutable magic weapon keyed to your character’s needs. You don't care if it gets disjoined, sundered, disarmed etc, as you are always free to simply make another; you are also free to take combat feats that benefit a particular weapon since you’ll generally have no reason to want a different one. I'll discuss the enhancements themselves in a later post, but for now I'll cover the change to the enhancement system itself.

In 3.5, the Soulknife had two enhancement tracks: One was the weapon's basic enhancement bonus (+1 to +5), and one was the enhancement "pool" that could be allocated to various special abilities like Ghost Touch, Keen, or Psychokinetic Burst. For instance, a level 8 Soulknife in D&D had a +2 enhancement bonus and a +1 enhancement pool - he could thus create a +2 Merciful Mind Blade.

In Pathfinder, the two tracks have been combined to remove the confusion surrounding the word "enhancement." Now when you refer to a Mind Blade's enhancement bonus, you refer both to its flat bonus to attack/damage, and its pool to allocate to additional effects.

This doesn't mean you can have a +5 Weapon at level 11, however. Soulknives have a limit on how much of the bonus they get can be allocated to sheer enhancement; any amount over that limit must be allocated to secondary magical effects, or else wasted. Going back to the level 11 Soulknife example - he has a total enhancement of+5, but a maximum enhancement bonus of +3. A Soulknife 11 can therefore have a +3 Flaming Burst mind blade, but not a +5 mind blade or a +4 Ghost Touch mind blade (both of these fail due to having more than +3 in the enhancement bonus side.).

The important qualities to note about this ability are as follows:

- The mind blade enhancement still functions as it did in 3.5: the only difference is that the DM only has to track the total enhancement now, which should hopefully lessen confusion.
- Starting at level 3, and every 3 levels after that, the PF Soulknife's enhancement cap is increased by one.
- Your blade must have a minimum of +1 as a flat enhancement before you can assign any abilities to it, just as if you were crafting a magic weapon.
- The enhancement cap only applies to the blade's basic enhancement bonus, not to blade abilities. The PF Soulknife can, for instance, have a +1 Brilliant Energy mind blade (a +4 ability) at level 11. This results in a much more mutable blade than that of the 3.5 Soulknife, who would have to wait until 18 for a Brilliant Energy weapon, when they have a +4 mind blade to put it on. The player thus has much more control over what their blades can actually do in Pathfinder, and can access certain helpful enhancements much more quickly.
- The PF Soulknife's enhancement track is one level faster than the regular one's. Referring again to the above example, a 3.5 Soulknife would have to wait until level 12 to get a +3 Flaming Burst mind blade.
- In Pathfinder, higher enhancement bonuses allow you to mimic special materials for the purposes of overcoming damage reduction. This means that a PF Soulknife can overcome silver, cold iron and adamantine DR without needing special feats to do so.
- Rearranging enhancements is harder than changing your blade's shape and type. You must rest or concentrate for at least 8 hours (use the latter if your race needs less sleep or no sleep) before you can exchange the enhancements on your blade.
- As with the 3.5 Soulknife, splitting the blade in two means each component blade has an enhancement bonus of 1 less. Using the level 11 Soulknife one more time, he can split his +5 Mind Blade in two, and each component blade will have a maximum total bonus of one less, +4. The enhancement cap of +3 still applies, however, and he would be forced to assign at least +1 from each mind blade to an appropriate ability.
- When you split your blade, you must use the same ability or abilities on each component blade. You cannot, for instance, make one blade Anarchic and one Axiomatic.

One last use for the enhancement bonus system - the enhancement bonus represents your increased connection with your mind blade. Mechanically, this is represented by a bonus to the will save to maintain your mind blade in a NPF/AMF equal to its current enhancement bonus. However, even if you succeed in maintaining the blade, it is downgraded to simply being masterwork quality (like any other magic weapon in an AMF.)

Psychic Strike: The soulknife's signature bonus damage technique has gotten some nice buffs in Pathfinder.

- Charging your Psychic Strike works just like it did in 3.5 (i.e. a move action.) However, a Soulknife can also charge her mind blade as a swift action by expending psionic focus.
- When dual-wielding, you can now charge each mind blade with a psychic strike, spending the necessary number of actions to do so, and discharge them both on the same target. If you reshape your mind blade to a single weapon while both are charged, the single weapon will only have one charge however (the other one is lost.)
- Psychic Strike now goes off only when you want it to, not on the first eligible target you strike.
- Psychic Strike can now be used on any creature with a mind (read: Int score) even if they are immune to mind-affecting effects, e.g. a vampire, lich or other sentient undead. It also bypasses protections like Mind Blank. The only way to be safe from Psychic Strike now is to not have an Int score at all. It still works on creatures immune to sneak attacks/criticals, as it is not precision damage.

Other Features

Throw Mind Blade: You now get this a level earlier. The base range increment has been shortened - though this can be mitigated with the right Blade Skills.

Quick Draw: The Soulknife Free Draw ability has been renamed but otherwise stays the same.

Mind Blade Mastery: The capstone is a bit lackluster; you no longer have to make will saves to sustain your blade in an AMF (but sadly, it still loses its powers.) In addition, you can reconfigure the blade completely with a full-round action, including enhancements, rather than resting for 8 hours first. It’s not terrible and it’s better than what the 3.5 Soulknife got (i.e. nothing), but I’m not sure it’s a worthy reason to go to Soulknife 20 - especially when compared with the awesome capstones the other psionic classes got.

Blade Skills

This class feature is the meat of the new soulknife - the real reason for not PrCing out of the class. Blade skills, like Rogue Talents and Barbarian Rage Powers, allow you to customize your Soulknife to play differently than someone elses. These abilities are involved enough to deserve their own section. I’ll be covering the full list (including the new ones added in Psionics Expanded) in greater detail - with ratings - in the next section.

[Psyren]

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Bladeskills

Overview: A Blade Skill is a special technique, shape or property a Soulknife can apply to her mind blade. They take advantage of the blade's inherently mutable nature (and its connection to its owner), letting you do things with it that are not possible with more conventional weapons. These are also where you'll find the other Soulknife abilities you may remember from 3.5, such as Knife to the Soul and Bladewind.

Some Blade Skills form "chains," i.e. you must take a specific prerequisite Blade Skill to have access to the later version. Where applicable, I will note those as well. A base Soulknife will have 10 different Blade Skills by level 20. You can only take a Blade Skill once.

* = has a prerequisite bladeskill.
{F} = Must expend Psionic Focus.
{PS} = Must expend Psychic Strike. (Note - these are all red for the Gifted Blade/Cutthroat.)
(#) = Level required to take this skill.

Absorbing Blade {PS} - A great ability - expend your psychic strike and you can flat out ignore any spell, power, SLA or PLA that allows SR, even area attacks. If you’ve ever wanted to cut through a fireball, or if you’ve ever been jealous of a Warblade IHS’ing a Dominate, this blade skill is for you. This is yet another reason to dual wield on a Soulknife - the more psychic strikes you have saved up, the more spells you can negate. this is a great use for one of them. Pity it won’t stop supernatural abilities - no cutting through dragonbreath for instance. I see no reason to avoid this on any Soulknife. (8th)

Additional Configurations - This bladeskill lets you store a backup setup for your blade - handy if there is a second, more situational type of enemy you might run into on a given day, but you don’t want to spend the 8 hours switching back and forth each time. In most campaigns I think one configuration and a night’s sleep are all you need, but being able to swap elements, or keep a more situational enhancement like Merciful/Ghost Touch/Brilliant Energy in reserve for the perfect time it will be needed is handy. Having said that, I think the Fluid Form line is a better way to access this kind of versatility. (However, if you have a reduced enhancement progression - e.g. by taking Armored Blade - this is the better option.)

Advanced Talents - see the Cutthroat archetype.

Alter Blade - This bladeskill gives you two abilities: (1) the ability to change your mind blade's shape every time you form it, instead of it being "locked in" to your last shape and needing a full-round action to change, and (2) you get a new dual-wield option, i.e. 1H+light instead of just light+light. Generally you won’t be changing your blade’s shape in combat too much (e.g. a 2-hander soulknife is unlikely to switch to dual-wielding and vice-versa), and 1H+light hurts your chance to hit for very minor benefit, so all in all I wouldn’t consider this to be very worthwhile. Mind Daggers is usually a better choice if you want an alternate shape you can switch to quickly, and it has other benefits of its own besides.

Bladestorm* {PS} - As Bladewind, except you throw the blades at every enemy in a 30 ft. radius without taking range increment penalties. The blade must not be in 2-hander form. No matter how many attacks you make, you only provoke an AoO as if you had made one. Requires Bladewind. This has potential but comes online a bit late for my tastes - you may be better off getting a long-reach mindblade and sticking with Bladewind.(16th)

Bladewind{PS} - This is mostly identical to the 3.5 Soulknife ability: you split your mind blade up into fragments, allowing you to attack all enemies in reach with one full attack. An added ability allows you to expend a psychic strike charge to reroll one of the attacks if it misses.You also get access to this a level earlier than the 3.5 Soulknife would. I would like this better if it didn't require you to be in the middle of a pack of enemies to be effective, but it’s at least much, much easier to pick up than Whirlwind Attack. With the right rider effects on your blade (e.g. elemental damage or Wounding), the AoE potential can be quite nice against a mass of weaker foes. Prereq for Bladestorm. (8th)

Combat Slide - This gives you two things: (1) An immediate 5-foot step if you hit someone in melee (even if you've already moved that round - like a normal 5-foot step, this is a non-action), and (2) as an immediate action, you can take a 5-foot step if someone misses you in melee. You can never have enough 5-foot steps - more to the point, this gives you a use for your immediate action as early as level 2. A must-pick, for melee and ranged soulknives alike.

Dazzling Blade - As a standard action, you can dazzle all enemies in 30 feet. Dazzle sucks and so does this, and it’s fort negates to boot. Pass.

Deadly Blow - Increase your critical multiplier by 1. (to x3 in most cases.) Would be better if you could take it more than once. May be of interest to a crit-fishing build, but all others should skip. (10th)

Deadly Shield - see the Shielded Blade archetype.

Deceptive Blade - interesting ability; lets you form your blade while feinting, and even form your blade and charge it while feinting if you have improved feint. Also gives you Bluff as a class skill. Feinting isn’t the best combat style out there, but if you were going to feint anyway this makes you better at it. Consider this for the Cutthroat.

Disrupting Strike - whack every enemy next to you and they take a penalty to damage rolls until your next turn. Unfortunately, this specifies “adjacent” (as opposed to “within reach,” like Bladewind) so you get no benefit from having a long mindblade with this. This does have the potential to soften dangerous blows, particularly vs. monsters with a lot of attacks, but my personal take is that you’re better off using that full-round action to withdraw so you’re not surrounded anymore, than to stay there and get wailed on. Black for Armored Blade.

Dual Imbue - You gain a second Psychic Strike charge option; you can use one action to charge both blades simultaneously (even with the swift-action-expend-focus method); however, the strike in each blade is 1d8 lower than it would normally be. You can still charge your blades separately for the full amount if you have the time and wish to do so. If you're dual-wielding and using psychic strike this is a must; if not, skip it.

Dueling Blade {F} - if an enemy misses you while you’re fighting defensively or using combat expertise, you can expend your focus to get a free AoO on them, with none of the penalties for either. The need to expend focus to use this hurts it a lot (i.e.you can typically only do it once), and you likely have better uses for yours. It can be handy if you’re fighting one hard-hitting foe though, as you can fight defensively as a standard, regain your focus with your move actions and get a free attack every time he misses you. Black for Armored Blade, and should stack with Trade Blows as well for another attack.

Emulate Melee Weapon - This bladeskill is just what it sounds like; you can transform your mind blade into a specific weapon, gaining its various benefits like special abilities and damage types in exchange for the more mutable and amorphous nature of the standard mind blade. Each time you take this you can emulate another weapon. Where this bladeskill is really nice is that you always have proficiency, even if you emulate an exotic or racial weapon, so this can save you a valuable feat. If there’s an exotic weapon you’ve been dying to try out, or there’s one with just the right combination of abilities for your concept, this bladeskill is for you. This one is also handy for getting an odd weapon into any campaign, like an eastern weapon into a western campaign or vice-versa.

Emulate Ranged Weapon - see the Soulbolt archetype.

Enhanced Range - Double your range increment with the thrown blade. This could come in handy for a thrower build since they nerfed it on the base blade. Personally I would use Mind Daggers for ranged fights instead - or if you plan on being primarily ranged, consider using the Soulbolt/Soul Archer.

Energized Shield* {F} - Let’s count the ways this is terrible, shall we? Requires the mediocre-at-best Mind Shield - check. Requires the corresponding elemental bladeskill to do that type of damage (instead of something simpler and more accessible, like say, your active energy type) - check. Requires an immediate action AND your psionic focus - check. Melee-only - check. Does poor damage after all that - check. To its credit, this goes off on your attacker whether or not they actually hit you, but that’s not enough to save it in my eyes. There are better uses for your immediates and focus alike.

Evasion - see the Cutthroat archetype.

Expand Shield* - You can turn your Mind Shield into a tower shield for one turn. This imposes a penalty on your attacks but carries the other standard tower shield benefits - high AC, providing cover, blocking AoE originating from one side of your square etc.The downsides are that you can only use this technique while fighting defensively (and the penalties stack) or while using the total defense action. You also don't get proficiency by RAW since this isn't coming from your blade. Tower Shields have nice benefits but this is not the way to get them - go with Tower Mind Shield instead, and then only if you're a Shielded Blade (who gets it for free anyway.)

Exploding Critical {F} - This lets you expend your psionic focus after confirming a critical to get a free psychic strike. It also works if you don’t have one charged - which means you can use this even after you’ve hit a foe with your psychic strike already and zap them a second time. It’s great when it goes off but crits tend to be infrequent - unless you’re a crit-fishing build, in which case this becomes blue. (12th)

Extended Strike - You can extend your reach by 5' for a single attack. Requires a standard action, so no full-attack, cleave, AoO etc. It does work with the Twin Strike blade skill, but that's not enough to save this one in my eyes. If you want reach, either emulate a weapon that has it, or pick up the far superior Reaching Blade instead. (12th)

Fire Blade {F} - This lets you turn all of your mind blade’s damage into fire damage, whenever you want. Who needs Pyrokineticist? By RAW this converts bonus damage too (such as from Str, sneak attack, and even psychic strike) and you can even expend your psionic focus for an additional d10. This can be done on the fly so it’s a nice option, but consider choosing an element that is less easily resisted. (8th)

Firestorm* {F} - If you took the “expend focus” option above when using Fire Blade, you do an extra 1d10 fire damage to the target and each enemy within 10 feet at the end of their turn if they’re still next to you. While it’s nice that this avoids allies (good use of psionic flavor), the damage doesn’t scale at all and that makes this extremely poor. It also relies on the enemy not moving - a single 5-foot step will ruin this. There are better uses for your bladeskills.

Fluid Form {PS} - This gives you limited ability to reconfigure your mind blade enhancements as a swift action, without resting first. You can either remove one property to add that value to its enhancement bonus, or add one property and reduce your enhancement bonus. When you're done, the blade then gets a -1 enhancement penalty until you get 8 hours of rest. You can't remove a property that would take you over your EB cap with this, nor can you keep adding them until you end up under +1 (including the penalty, if it would bring you below +1.) The penalty is also cumulative, so it's unlikely you'll be able to do this more than once in most cases without resting first. until you rest. Still - the freedom to add, say, ghost touch or axiomatic to your weapon at a moment's notice for a tricky foe can be useful, or dump a costly enhancement to overcome DR.

Fluid Form, Improved* {PS} - As above, except you can change all the properties on the blade at once, instead of one at a time. The penalty will only increment once per total reconfiguration, rather than once per ability swapped. With this, if you don’t mind your blade being 1 point behind in enhancements, you can actually start each morning with a totally blank blade and configure it based on what you expect to fight each day. Combine with Metaphysical Weapon or GMW to overcome the drawback and you can approach each fight with a lot of flexibility. Requires Fluid Form.

Flurry of Fists - Turn your soulknife into a monk! But... why? This is useless for most soulknives (including the base one) since your enhancements and other abilities don’t work unarmed - unless you have the Deadly Fist archetype. in which case this is black.

Flurry of Fists, Improved* - see Flurry of Fists. Once again, black for Deadly Fist. (6th)

Flurry of Fists, Greater* - see Flurry of Fists. Once again, black for Deadly Fist. (11th)

Focused Defense - While fighting defensively, using Combat Expertise or the Total Defense action, you get your Wis bonus to AC as long as you maintain psionic focus. This is meh for most Soulknives, except Gifted Blade, who loves it. Combos well with Trade Blows.

Focused Offense - Wis to attack and damage? While standard Soulknives may not care too much, this is mandatory for Gifted Blade; Deadly Fist likes it too if he goes for a dip in monk, and Soulbolt is eyeing it furtively as well. This bladeskill singlehandedly enables the Wisknife.

Full Enhancement - Your enhancement bonus isn't lowered when you split your mind blade into two items. All but required for TWF, and note that this affects the Shielded Blade as well. (Note that you technically don’t need this for Mind Daggers, so if that’s your only form of dual-wielding - or you don't plan on dual-wielding at all - feel free to skip this.)

Furious Charge - You get +2 damage to every attack made at the end of a charge (in most cases, one.) This is lessened to +1 for off-hand attacks, but raised to +3 if you're using the 2-hander mind blade. Not too fantastic by itself, but is required for a much better ability (see below.)

Furious Charge, Improved* {PS} - You get another main-hand attack at the end of a charge, albeit at a steep penalty (-5.) Can only be used once, even if you have multiple psychic strikes charged. If you're dual-wielding and have Twin Strike, you get an extra off-hand attack too, but that one also eats a -5 penalty. Psywars still rule the roost when it comes to Pouncing, but 1-2 extra attacks can be handy even at a penalty (especially if your blades have some nasty secondary abilities.) Requires Furious Charge. If you could get this one by itself I’d rate it purple. (8th)

Grasping Shield - see the Shielded Blade archetype.

Gruesome Riposte {F} - You can immediately attack an enemy who hits you in melee. Their attack lands first, so you may not be able to take advantage of this. (For instance, if they knock you out/kill you.) If this required maintaining focus rather than expending it, it would be much better, though still not great. (10th)

Ice Blade {F} - Similar to Fire Blade, this lets you convert all your blade’s damage to a single energy type, in this case cold. This is however much better than Fire Blade because the “expend focus” effect, instead of just adding a die of damage, cuts your foe’s move speed in half until your next turn - with no save no SR. Combined with Combat Slide this can make it very hard for a target to escape you and get at your allies. Cold is also not an easily-resisted element so this is useful just for that reason. Note that this works for Soulbolts too, letting you pelt enemies with cold while keeping them at bay. Highly recommended! (8th)

Freezing Ice* {F} - Like Firestorm, this is a follow-up to its corresponding element blade that freezes an enemy in place if they are still next to you after you’ve used the “expend focus” ability in Ice Blade. This also has no save or SR, making it great one-two punch to lock down an enemy - or two, if you have two foci. It functions by reducing their speed to zero - which means they can still attack or cast spells, but it also means this is not a paralysis effect and therefore paralysis immunity won’t save them. The enemy can simply move away from you (at half-speed of course) to keep themselves from freezing, but if they don’t you can simply keep them locked down indefinitely until one of you is dead. Though less useful for ranged soulknives due to the need to be adjacent, tanks and flankers will love it. Combine with Step Up to keep enemies from 5-footing away and you’ve got them stuck for life.

Improved Armor - See the Armored Blade archetype.

Improved Enhancement - Just as it sounds, your enhancement increases by 1. This can raise you above the enhancement soft cap imposed by your Soulknife level (though not above the hard cap of +5), but more importantly, this gives you additional room for abilities - remember, your ability pool is not capped, so every +1 there lets you cram more properties onto the blade. This can also help offset the penalty for using Fluid Form. Even used for nothing else, It's basically a much better version of Weapon Focus. Recommended. (12th)

Improved Evasion - See the Cutthroat archetype.

Improved Mind Shield - your Mind Shield’s shield bonus increases by 1. This really isn’t worth a blade skill in my opinion. Black for Shielded Blades.

Interrupting Throw - see the Shielded Blade archetype.

Knife to the Soul {PS} - Interestingly, the 3.5 version is actually stronger - now, you can convert no more than half of your PS dice to KtS damage per strike. In addition, despite the other psychic strike changes, being immune to mind-affecting will protect your target from this, just as in 3.5. However, this was indirectly buffed by the other Pathfinder changes - for starters, becoming immune to mind-affecting (e.g. through Mind Blank or shapeshifting) is much harder, and preparing more than one psychic strike at a time is much easier due to bladeskills like Dual Imbue and Exploding Critical. You also get it a level earlier than the 3.5 Soulknife. This is much more useful to a TWFer (who can charge two psychic strikes at a time, and thus do up to 4 points of ability damage per attack, more with certain abilties) and thus it does give a high-level soulknife additional options for dealing with certain monsters. Animals and Magical Beasts in particular will drop quickly to this (e.g. if you target their Int score), and it’s pretty dangerous for casters too since there is no save or SR. Soulbolts in particular love this as they can feeblemind casters standing at the back row. An iconic soulknife ability that actually plays pretty well now. (12th)

Lightning Blade {F} - Like Fire Blade, only electrical. This one’s “focus-burst” applies a penalty to attack and damage to the target that increases slightly if they’re wearing metal armor. This is slightly better than Fire Blade - electricity is a good element - but the effect is weak, so stick with Ice Blade or Thunder Blade if you want one of these at all.

Lightning Arc {F} - Like Firestorm, this applies a rider effect to the “focus burst” of its corresponding elemental blade if the target is still next to you at the end of their turn. In this case, lightning arcs out of them at a nearby enemy for 3d6 and they are dazzled. Dazzle sucks (a lot) and the lightning arc, on top of being weak, is Reflex half. Skip this and don’t look back.

Mark of the Challenger - As a standard action, you can melee attack a target and make it take a minor penalty against other targets until your next turn. The idea of course is to make it focus on you. This is terrible since keeping the mark up prevents you from full-attacking, it’s difficult to mark multiple enemies, and the penalty itself is pretty weak. There are much better abilities (like Freezing Ice, Reaching Blade and Combat Slide) if you want to “tank.”

Mental Power - See the Gifted Blade archetype.

Mind Blade Finesse - You can finesse with the Mind Blade regardless of form. This is aimed at Dexknives, but usually they don’t care since they aren’t shaping a 2-handed form anyway. Where this shines is with Emulate Melee Weapon, allowing you to finesse with weapons that are normally un-finessable. The mental image of finessing with a Battle Ladder or Scythe is worth it by itself, and Cutthroats would no doubt enjoy finessing with a Mind Garotte. Strengthknives and Wisknives can skip this.

Mind Daggers - You get an extra shape for your mind blade - a pair of "daggers." that do 1d4 each. I put "daggers" in quotes because you can still choose slashing, piercing or bludgeoning for these. (Mind Claws? Mind Knuckles?) The daggers get a 30ft. range increment, further even than the light blades form, and you can also switch between your normal blade and the dagger-shapes at any time (free action), even in the middle of a full attack, and back again, without limit. Using this shape lets you form as many daggers in a round as you want. The kicker is that this shape carries the full enhancement of your normal blade - an exception to the rule that forming multiple items lowers the blade’s enhancement bonus. This shape is obviously meant to be thrown, what with the buffed increment, and best of all the ability to create multiples even during an attack routine means you get iteratives - effectively getting you access to Multiple Throw very early. It isn't as easy to switch between these and the 2H form, so these are definitely intended for a Dexknife.

Mind Shield -You get a +2 shield bonus to AC as long as you have a hand free. This is useless for anyone not using the 1H shape, and it’s not great even then since the “shield” carries no bonuses, can’t be improved beyond the other mind shield bladeskills and can’t be used with any of the sword-and-board feats. Your hand is still technically free though, so this is a way to get a shield bonus (albeit a small one) onto an einhander build. If you want to sword and board that badly, go with Shielded Blade, who gets a better version of this for free. Don’t take this if you plan on skipping (or don’t see yourself getting to) Tower Mind Shield.

Multiple Throw - as the regular Soulknife ability (but you can get it 3 levels earlier.) Note that the way this is worded means you get more throws if you're dual-wielding (since you also get more attacks.) Between Mind Daggers and Soulbolt I see no reason to get this. (14th)

Powerful Strikes - Increase your Psychic Strike (all of them, if you can charge more than one) by 1d8. This can offset the damage nerf for utilizing Dual Imbue. This is a must if you plan on Psychic striking at all. Combos very well with Knife to the Soul.

Ranged Shield Block - see the Shielded Blade archetype.

Reaching Blade {F} - You can extend your reach by 5 feet until your next turn (i.e. will work for all your attacks and AoOs.) You can even still attack adjacent enemies too, and it will stack with the reach of any weapons you are emulating. Finally, it works with dual-wielding. Why would anyone take Extended Strike over this? If only it didn't require expending focus it would be exceptional - as it is, it’s very good.(8th)

Reaper's Blade - This is basically Mind Cleave from CPsi; reducing an enemy to 0 or less with a melee attack automatically recharges your Psychic Strike. Doing this with an already-charged blade Empowers it, causing your next Psychic Strike to deal 1.5x damage. Very nice. (Interestingly, it doesn't specify that your target can't be mindless, so you could charge your Psychic Strike with this using a normally illegal target, like a skeleton.) (10th)

Reflective Blade* {PS} - As an immediate action, you can reflect a spell or power that requires a touch attack back at the caster. This gives you a way to deal with some spells that your Absorbing Blade can’t handle, like orbs or shards, that bypass SR. However, the level of spell/power you can return is capped at your Psychic Strike dice (e.g. 5th-level, 6th with Powerful Strikes.) This works particularly well with powers since their level doesn’t change no matter how high they are augmented, and many dangerous spells are found at 6th-level and below as well. This is a nasty trick to have in your arsenal, though slightly less useful than Abosrbing Blade due to the level it comes in at and the cap limitation. Still, between the two of these and you can become quite the mageslayer. (14th)

Rending Blades - This sprouts hooks from your blade that do two things: (1) +1d6 bleed damage on a critical, and (b) competence bonus on Climb checks equal to the blade's enhancement. Not worth it at all.

Rogue Talent - see the Cutthroat archetype.

Shield Block - see the Shielded Blade archetype.

Thunder Blade - This elemental blade has a very hard-to-resist element (sonic), and a truly great “focus-burst” effect (stagger.) The stagger effect is unfortunately Fort negates, though the DC scales fairly well (10+BAB, so you can end up forcing a DC 30 fort save at maximum.) Stagger is great against mages since they have to choose between casting or moving away from you, and they lose the ability to 5-foot-step. Not as good as Ice Blade in my opinion but this is a good alternative if you expect cold resistance in your campaign. I like it, but it’s not quite blue due to your damage being halved for using it and being susceptible to hardness.

Resounding Thunder - Adds some sonic damage to the “focus burst” technique on Thunder Blade, if the opponent doesn’t move away. Like Firestorm and Lightning Arc before it, the damage is negligible and not worth a bladeskill.

Toppling Strike* - If your mind blade has Trip, this gives you a special attack that lets you (a) make a single attack and deal damage normally, and (b) attempt a free trip attack that does not provoke an AoO if (a) hits. Requires Weapon Special (Trip). Useful for tripping builds, or if you want to try your hand at tripping before getting Improved Trip (since this negates the AoO.) This also allows you to damage an enemy while tripping them, so you can at least do some damage even if the trip fails.

Toppling Strike, Improved* - as above, except if you successfully Topple your foe, you can make a trip attempt against an adjacent foe, then another if that one succeeds etc. This is basically Trip-Cleave. Combine with Reaching Blade and/or Ice Blade for a nice lockdown build. If you like to trip (particularly if you're big or have Powerful Build) this is venice. If you already have the other two in the chain, you may as well get this one too.

Tower Mind Shield* - this is the much better version of Expand Shield - letting you convert your Mind Shield into a Tower Shield as a move action, and best of all leave it that way as long as you want. This form carries all the benefits of a real tower shield, including the ability to block attacks from one edge of your square. So why did I rate it poorly? Because it still doesn’t grant you proficiency. Leave this one to the Shielded Blade (who gets it for free anyway.)

Trade Blows - While performing a Total Defense action, you can make free attacks (at -4) against any enemy that attacks you, whether they hit or not. This is one of the few ways to attack while using Total Defense. You get one attack per enemy who takes a swing at you this way. This is great for a tank/lockdown build since you can just stand in the middle of a bunch of enemies and keep tripping them over and over if they attack you. I definitely prefer this to Gruesome Riposte. Note that this should also stack with Dueling Blade. (10th)

Trapfinder - See the Cutthroat archetype.

Twin Strike: - Whenever you make single, standard-action attack while dual-wielding, you can attack with both blades simultaneously instead. This includes AoOs, but not other special attacks. This works with a couple of the other Blade Skills (see above.) Dual-wielders may want this early on, since it lets you unload both psychic strikes at once and recharge them with your move action to repeat.

Two-Handed Throw - This lets you throw your mind-blade while in 2-hander form - but the range increment is only 10 feet, hardly worth it. Just get reach instead. Tossing a glowing greatsword has to be worth some style points at least. Anyway, Strengthknives don’t really care about throwing and Dexknives don’t use the 2-hander, so this doesn’t have much to offer anyone.

Weapon Special - You can assign one of the following specials to your mind blade when you shape it: brace, trip or disarm. This is the only blade skill that can be taken more than once (so taking it 3 times gets you access to all three at once.) Combine with Reaching Blade and congratulations, you're a Spiked Chain tripper again, Pathfinder style. Trip is the main benefit of this but the other two aren’t bad as well.

Whiplash - see the Shielded Blade archetype.

Wing Clip - A special attack that locks an enemy in place for a number of rounds = 1+Str mod. Fort negates; the save DC is 10 + your BAB. This attack deals no damage. Interestingly, the effect is neither a stun nor paralysis, so it should be effective against enemies that can resist those conditions. You’re better off tripping or using Freezing Ice in my opinion, but this at least works against enemies that are immune to cold and tripping, and (if you can land it successfully) lasts multiple rounds without further input by you. Blue for Strengthknives.

[Psyren]

http://www.wizards.com/dnd/images/cpsi_gallery/96349.jpg
Soulknife Archetypes

With the release of Psionics Expanded, the Soulknife has all kinds of new toys to play with - most notably archetypes, which let you remix your soulknife to fit a variety of concepts that the original could only attempt poorly, if at all. While the base Soulknife is generally aimed at being a mobile skirmisher with a smattering of bonus damage and other techniques, the archetypes open up all kinds of conceptual space for your characters. Whether you want a soulknife that focuses on ranged combat, or one that creates shields or armor (or both) in addition to a blade, or if you want a soulknife that takes lessons from rogues, monks or psywars. archetypes are the way to open these options up for you.

Before I begin, I'll borrow a leaf from another of my favorite handbooks: Cieryn's Archetype Combos. All of the Soulknife archetypes can be combined with at least one other, and the right mix can help you refine a desired concept even further. Here is Cieryn's format:


There are two special things to note:
Italics means the class feature is modified instead of replaced, though it still means it can't be replaced or modified a second time.
Striked Out Archetypes mean that, while possible, it's not recommended to combine these archetypes, due to trading class features that make combining them fairly useless, like Qinggong Martial Artists or Master Broodmasters.

With that, here are the Soulknife Archetype Combinations:


Archetypes that don't Combine with others: None

Armored Blade
Features Replaced: Form Mind Blade, Shape Mind Blade, Enhanced Mind Blade (all)
Valid Archetypes to Combine with: Cutthroat, Gifted Blade, Shielded Blade

Cutthroat
Features Replaced: Weapon/Armor Proficiency, Bonus Feat, Psychic Strike
Valid Archetypes to Combine with: Armored Blade

Deadly Fist
Features Replaced: Bonus Feat, Form Mind Blade, Shape Mind Blade, Throw Mind Blade, Quick Draw
Valid Archetypes to Combine with: Gifted Blade

Gifted Blade
Features Replaced: Psychic Strike
Valid Archetypes to Combine with: Armored Blade, Deadly Fist, Nimble Blade, Shielded Blade, Soulbolt

Nimble Blade
Features Replaced: Weapon/Armor Proficiency, Bonus Feat, Bladeskills (2nd, 10th), Enhanced Mind Blade (7th)
Valid Archetypes to Combine with: Gifted Blade

Shielded Blade
Features Replaced: Bonus Feat, Bladeskill (2nd)
Valid Archetypes to Combine with: Armored Blade, Gifted Blade

Soulbolt
Features Replaced: Bonus Feat, Form Mind Blade, Shape Mind Blade, Throw Mind Blade, Bladeskills (all), Enhanced Mind Blade (all)
Valid Archetypes to Combine with: Gifted Blade

Triple Archetype Combinations: Armored Blade + Shielded Blade + Gifted Blade


If you’re wondering why I didn’t advise Cutthroat + Armored Blade, it’s because the two have very little to offer one another despite being miscible. Cutthroat wants to be sneaky with high dex, so right off the bat it is dismissing the medium and heavy Armaments (chain and splint mail respectively) which impose a low dex cap. None of the Armored Blade enhancements help you to be covert either - as of this writing, there’s no Glamered, Shadow, Slick, Creeping etc. So even though you can get a “free” Chain Shirt out of Armored Blade, you can’t put the kind of enhancements on it that a rogue-ish type would find appealing; worse, you’re hobbling your blade’s enhancement to do it. You’re better off sticking with a full-powered blade and simply buying sneaky armor with all the WBL you’re saving on your weapon(s). It’s possible Ultimate Psionics will add in a few more sneaky options for the Armored Blade, but until then your best bet is not to combine them. (However, see the tips and tricks section under Armored Blade.)

The other archetypes mix just fine, some in very unique ways. I’ll explore/rate the archetypes themselves first, then rate the combinations. In addition, there are some bladeskills that can only be taken by a certain archetype - I’ll analyze those here as well.



Armored Blade

Synopsis: By diverting power from your blade(s), you can form armor as well.

Description:
This archetype lets you divert some of your blade’s power into making armor. The main benefit here is getting access to Masterwork Splint Mail (+7 AC, -6 ACP) at level 1, making you quite a tank early on for little cost. Despite it being heavy armor, you are still proficient as well. Even moreso than regular soulknives, Armored Blades do well in low-wealth or low-magic campaigns - able to arm and armor themselves in high-quality gear without any sufferance from the DM.

The price you pay for this independence is dilution - your mind armaments (blade and armor) advance more slowly than the blade of a standard soulknife. Together, they cap at a total enhancement of +7 instead of +10, creating a greater tradeoff between enhancement bonus and abilities. You can offset this somewhat by allocating the majority of your pool to abilities, and making up the base enhancement deficiency with something like Greater Magic Weapon or Metaphysical Weapon.

Overall, this archetype fits best with a Strength-based Soulknife - giving you the protection of heavy armor very early in the game and letting you start with a lower Dex than a regular Soulknife might be comfortable with. If you go this route, consider focusing your bladeskills and feats around a 2-handed style (e.g. get feats like Power Attack) to get the most out of your strength. Note also that, despite being formed from your mind, Mind Armaments weigh just as much as the real thing (“identical in all ways except visually”) which further underscores the benefit of high strength. If your strength isn’t very high - say, you plan on focusing on Wis later - consider sticking with the medium Chainmail form (+6 AC) so you have some carrying capacity left over. The major advantage to this archetype is that you can put on and take off your armor at a moment’s notice no matter how heavy it is, letting you for instance not have to worry about needing the Endurance feat to sleep, or needing someone to help you get dressed in the event of an emergency.

This is not to say that you can't use this archetype with a Dex-based Soulknife - a masterwork chain shirt isn’t a bad start for a skirmisher at all. However, the enhancements granted by an Armored Blade are geared more towards a tanking style than a hit-and-run or high
mobility combat style. If you want a Dexknife that can form his own armor, consider skipping this archetype altogether and instead multiclassing Aegis, with the aim of entering the Metaforge PrC; Aegii get more dex-friendly properties on their astral suits than Armored Blades do. However, iif you do want to combine this with a Dexknife, consider the Improved Armor bladeskill (discussed further below) which will remove your chain shirt's dex cap and ACP completely.

Class Features:
Form Mind Armaments: The main class feature, which counts as Form Mind Blade for prerequisites; this lets you, as before, form your blade with a move action. In addition however, with a separate move action you can form mind armor, choosing light (Masterwork Chain Shirt), medium (Masterwork Chainmail) or heavy (Masterwork Splint Mail) each time. Note that by RAW, Quick Draw applies to both weapon and armor (“Mind armor is treated like a mind blade in all other ways”) so once you hit Soulknife 5 you can become fully-armed and armored with a moment's thought, prior even to taking your turn’s worth of actions. You can also dismiss your armor as a free action, which can help you avoid hazards like drowning, and rearmor yourself at the end of that turn or on a subsequent turn. As with the mind blade, you are always proficient in mind armor, regardless of the form you choose.

Shape Mind Armaments: As with the Shape Mind Blade class feature this replaces, you can reshape your armor as a full-round action; if you don't, the blade and armor will always take the shape you chose when you first formed them. This lets you, for instance, downgrade to light form if you’re about to do something that requires a bit more finesse (like tumbling, running or climbing) without exposing yourself completely or losing a valuable enhancement - then rebuild to heavy when mobility is no longer needed. (In most cases like this though, it might be better to dismiss the armor entirely, do what you need to do, then resummon it as a free action before ending your turn.)

Enhanced Mind Armaments: This class feature governs which enhancements you can put on your armor and how fast you get them. As far as your blade, it gets all the abilities of the standard soulknife, however with the lower cap you will have to wait longer to put some of them on. Note that the general rule of needing a minimum +1 enhancement bonus to apply special abilities is still in effect here, which slows your access even more than the table indicates. This, plus the general weakness/narrow application of many of the enhancements themselves, means the primary benefit of the archetype is in the (free) armor itself, rather than the abilities it grants.

The new enhancements you get are:
- Light fortification (25%) (+1, 6th level) - Fortification is always useful, particularly against rogues or large numbers of attacks.
- SR 13 (+2, 8th level ) - SR is nice, but by 8th level enemies should have little trouble getting through it if it's this low - an equal-level enemy needs to roll a 4 or lower to fail, and most dangerous enemies are higher than you. Consider it minor concealment for spells, but sadly, it only gets weaker as you go along from here.
- Energy Resistance (10) (+3, 11th level) - 10 may not be a ton, but it does apply to every attack - and monsters that use elements tend to spam. This is particularly useful because, unlike actual energy resist armor, you can choose the element whenever you configure this.
- Ghost Touch (+3, 11th level) - a massive AC boost vs. incorporeal enemies, especially for a Strengthknife. You can get 7-9 more AC vs. incorporeal touch attacks from this alone.
- Invulnerability (DR 5/Magic) (+3, 11th level) - by this level every enemy should be using magical attacks. Too little, too late; such a cool name for such a lackluster enhancement.
- Moderate Fortification (50%) (+3, 11th level) - As with light fortification, this protects you from painful crits and precision damage.
- SR 15 (+3, 11th level) - +2 SR, +3 levels later - this doesn’t bode well. An enemy must now roll a 3 or lower to fail.
- Improved Energy Resistance (20) (+4, 13th level) - 10 more points for 2 levels, this is a good boost.
- SR 17 (+4, 13th level) - this stays level with the last grade, but that's not a compliment as it's still 3 or less to fail for an equal-level enemy - not even a speedbump.
- Heavy Fortification (75%) (+5, 15th level) - Powerful protection, but at a steep cost and late in the game. Unless you're taking on a thieves' guild, Moderate should be enough protection.
- SR 19 (+5, 15th level) - I think I've said all I need to on the spell resistance mods.
- Greater Energy Resistance (30) (+5, 15th level) - Ever wanted to wade in lava? This is powerful protection, but expensive. Still, it is the best of the +5s.

Armored Blade-only Bladeskills:
Improved Armor: This is a must-pick - it will improve whichever armor you’ve chosen to a more beneficial type for free. The effects are as follows:
- Light form: you are now treated as though you’re unarmored, while still getting the masterwork chain’s armor bonus to AC. This has a lot of benefits, some of which are not readily apparent - for one, you can multiclass monk and get the monk’s Wis bonus to AC while still getting a +4 armor bonus on top of that. It also means that you no longer have a cap on your dexterity bonus to AC, plus you lose all armor check penalty. There is a sneaky trick with this form - see the tips & tricks section.
- Medium form: you are now treated as wearing masterwork breastplate. The benefits here are minor (10lbs. less weight, 1 less ACP, 5% less ASF) but the +1 to max dex bonus is helpful. Still, as before I advise you go either heavy or light with armored blade, and leave medium armor to regular soulknives.
- Heavy form: you are now treated as wearing masterwork full plate. This gives you +3 more AC (+2 from armor, +1 from Dex bonus) along with -1 ACP. The best part naturally is how fast you can put it on relative to real full plate, effectively making you Savnok.

General Strategy: Armored Blades, as the name suggests, want to be in the thick of things. You’re likely to have a massive amount of AC at first level, particularly if you combine with Shielded Blade, so make the most of it and wade into battle. You also have d10 hd for added beef. In addition, having a free weapon and armor (and possibly shield) means you have a lot more freedom with your WBL - you can pick up accessories like rings, bracers and amulets, as well as various helpful wondrous items, sooner than many of your martial counterparts, or simply throw your gold back into the pot for the casters in exchange for some helpful magic weapons and magic vestments. Your downsides are that your blade and armor both advance slowly (likely, slower than your WBL even) despite having a huge head start over most other fighter-types. In addition, you won’t be very mobile wearing such heavy armor out of the gate, so rely on reach and defensive tactics to win fights rather than chasing the enemy all over the battlefield.

Tips and Tricks:

- There’s a fairly sneaky trick possible with the Improved Armor bladeskill - it causes your light armor form to be treated as if you’re unarmored. Since you’re unarmored, this means you should be able to wear something else over it, such as say some leather armor. The AC won’t stack of course (you still have an armor bonus to AC) but any other special abilities should, since for mechanical purposes you are only wearing one suit of armor. This can be a way for a sneaky armored blade to get access to properties like Slick or Shadow while also benefiting from the “unarmored” bonuses provided by your not-chain-shirt, like energy resistance and ghost touch. You can also this way allow all your AC to come from the Soul Shirt itself.

- The Additional Configurations bladeskill will work with your armaments as well, due to the “functions like a mind blade” clause. A good one to store in your alternate is Ghost Touch on both your armor and weapon, so that if you face incorporeal foes you can skyrocket your AC at a moment’s notice. If you have Shielded Blade, you can Ghost Touch that too. (Who ya gonna call?!) More importantly, because Armored Blade lowers/slows your enhancement progression, it makes Fluid Form less attractive.

- The elemental blades (especially Ice Blade) are particularly useful for the Armored Blade because they don’t have as large an enhancement pool to allocate to special abilities, so every bit of mileage you can get out of bladeskills helps. Ice Blade is particularly useful for helping your likely-slower Armored Blade keep enemies from running away.

- Because this archetype is best suited to a strength-based soulknife, consider eschewing a Psychic Strike focus (which works better dual-wielding) for a more traditional 2-hander power attack build, and pick up Gifted Blade alongside instead.

Overall rating: Strengthknife, Dexknife, Wisknife



Cutthroat

Synopsis: You trade Psychic Strike for Sneak Attack. You also gain access to some sneaky bladeskills, letting you be a fighter/rogue type.

Description:
Soulknife/Rogue combinations have been tried since the XPH debuted, but this archetype is the first in my mind to truly pull it off. If you are familiar with the Thug Fighter from UA in 3.5, the Cutthroat's full BAB and d10 HD will give it a familiar feel, but you also get 6+Int skills and various other rogue abilities (like Trapfinding) through your bladeskills. However, you are a bit less versatile than a pure rogue, missing out on a number of their more useful skills - most notably Diplomacy (needed to Gather Information in PF), Escape Artist, Knowledge-local and UMD.

This choice strips down your soulknife chassis a bit - you lose your armor and shield skills, your bonus feat and of course your psychic strike. However, you also gain access to new bladeskills, including ones that give you rogue abilities. The major synergy here is your mind blade itself - giving you a "rogue" that can use all kinds of exotic arms without spending feats to do so. Even a more mundane setup like mind daggers gain the advantage of perfect concealment. Between your full sneak attack, access to psionic feats and the mind blade itself, Cutthroats have generally higher damage potential than a rogue of the same level and wealth.

If you've ever read the soulknife and thought "this would be a cool assassin", or imagined yourself putting a hand on someone and forming a blade inside their heart (more on that later), Cutthroat is the archetype for you.

Class Features:
Covert Training: In exchange for your medium armor and shield proficiencies, you gain 6+Int skills instead of the Soulknife's 4. Note that this does not give you any new skills however.

Cunning: You gain Bluff as a class skill - you also gain a competence bonus to both Bluff and Stealth while psionically focused. You can also expend your focus on a single check to double the bonus,

Sneak Attack: The main reason to go cutthroat, you gain full sneak attack (though only while psionically focused) in exchange for psychic strike.

Cutthroat-only Bladeskills:
Evasion: You're slightly sturdier than a rogue, but reflex saves can still get painful. Be sure to get this. (Amusingly, Soulknife evasion works in medium armor, despite the Cutthroat losing the proficiency.)

Improved Evasion: This doesn't hurt, but it's still less useful since you're unlikely to fail a reflex save at this point. (10th.)

Rogue Talent: Sadly you only get access to rogue talents from a small list, but that list includes the great Fast Stealth and Slow Reactions, as well as the useful Sniper's Eye, so this is still a good choice.

Advanced Talents: This is also a small list. Confounding Blades is... confounding to me, since it seems worse in every way than Slow Reactions. Crippling Strike is nice since you can stack it pretty fast. Stealthy Sniper is great on a thrower build.

Trapfinder: Not only do you get Trapfinding, you also get Disable Device. Vital if you expect traps to be a problem.

General Strategy: There's not a whole lot to say here - play the Cutthroat like you would play a fighter/rogue. It should go without saying that the Cutthroat is most-suited to being a dexknife - sneak attack works best for a mobile and stealthy attacker, the loss of armor proficiencies prioritize dexterity as a means of protection, and precision damage helps to compensate for the lower damage from strength. You certainly can combine it with strength, and sneak attack with a powerful 2-hander, if that fits your concept of course.

Note that if you go for a TWF style, you start out slightly behind relative to a standard soulknife since your free TWF feat is eaten up by Cunning. Focus on feats and items that provide a benefit while you maintain your psionic focus, because you'll be keeping it up anyway to land sneak attacks. Finally, be sure to get a psicrystal - they are great companions for any skillmonkey or sneak. You're likely tougher than a rogue - you have more hitpoints, and more WBL to allocate to defensive items - plus you're likely to do more damage due to full BAB, psionic feats and your magic blades, so take advantage of that to get rough. As I said above, you're closer in playstyle to a Thug Fighter than a true Rogue.

The mind blade gives you an advantage over regular rogues - throwing. Thanks to Mind Daggers (and later, Multiple Throw) you can toss magic projectiles left and right without running out. You also aren't constrained on damage type like a bow or crossbow would be, e.g. you can throw bludgeoning and slashing just as easily as piercing, without spending a penny.

Tips and Tricks:

- Consider a dip in Assassin; you should easily qualify. and death attack works quite well with a class that can form weapons out of thin air as a free action. This should fulfill the longstanding fantasy of Soulknife players to form a blade inside someone. Simply study for 3 rounds, place your hand on them, and during the surprise round, you'll get both a sneak and death attack. Combine with Twin Strike, and you can use both hands and get two sneak attacks and two death attacks, all in the surprise round.

- Mind Finesse and Emulate Weapon combine exceptionally well, letting you finesse with 2-handers and all kinds of exotic weaponry, all of which you'll be proficient with thanks to your mind blade.

-


Overall rating: Strengthknife, Dexknife, Wisknife



Deadly Fist

Synopsis: You channel your psychic power into your fists, becoming a Soulmonk. (Why didn't they call this Soulfist?)

Description:
As the Cutthroat was the Soulknife-Rogue, the Deadly Fist is the Soulknife-Monk. This was another oft-envisioned (or oft-requested) combination during 3.5 - expressed in Eberron via the flufftastic Atavist PrC, as well as piecemeal in Dragon Magazines. But where the Atavist was tied to a specific race and the Dragon Mag offerings were a handful of disparate abilities, the Deadly Fist offers an end-to-end monk/soulknife hybrid that will let you enhance your punches from the start.

Note that unlike a Monk, the Deadly Fist gets to wear armor and even use shields. If you've ever wanted to make an armored brawler this class can do well for you, but do consider a monk dip as an alternative.

As with the Cutthroat vs. the Rogue, there are some drawbacks here compared to the Monk, such as the lack of Escape Artist and Sense Motive as class skills.

Class Features:
Empowered Strikes: This ability is the "Form Mind Blade" for the Deadly Fist, except rather than form a blade, you infuse your body with energy. This carries most of the effects of the mind blade itself, such as: letting your fist count as magic for DR purposes, letting you change the damage type like a mind blade (s/b/p), improving your US damage to 1d6, and letting you use mind blade abilities like psychic strike. What you cannot do is change the form of your mind blade, which means effects like Emulate Melee Weapon or Mind Daggers don't work for the Deadly Fist. On the plus side, your fists can't be disarmed or sundered either.

Enhanced Strikes: Like Enhanced Mind Blade, this lets you put abilities into your fists. Note that unlike a regular soulknife, TWFing with a Deadly Fist does not reduce your enhancement bonus, because you aren't actually forming any items. (Note however that you need the Flurry of Fists bladeskill to TWF.)

Psychokinetic Discharge: This basically lets you “throw” your unarmed strikes - though to be more accurate you are shooting them, since you get 10 range increments instead of 5. Unfortunately, without Multiple Throw you won’t get iteratives. (Note that this IS explicitly an unarmed attack despite being ranged, so it will work with things like Flurry of Fists... once you get Multiple Throw that is.)

Quick Empower: Quick Draw for your fists. Since Empowered Strikes has no duration, you can simply leave your fists charged up all the time (there doesn’t seem to be a visual effect either), but this is here if you need to depower and repower in a hurry for some reason.

Deadly Fist-only Bladeskills:
Flurry of Fists: You get it for free, so there’s no need to take it. This is vital if you plan to TWF since it will save you a boatload of feats. Note also that, like a Monk's flurry, you get full Str bonus to each attack.

Improved Flurry of Fists: This is ITWF for you. Take it as soon as you have the BAB to benefit.

Greater Flurry of Fists: This is GTWF for you. Take it as soon as you have the BAB to benefit.

General Strategy: The Deadly Fist is a cool archetype at first blush but has some tough problems to overcome. The main one is damage - the archetype pushes you away from a strength build since you can't 2-hand with your unarmed strikes, but you also lack the bonus damage to really benefit from a dex build. Psychic Strike works with your punches, but because you aren't forming two blades like a regular soulknife, you can only charge one strike at a time. For that reason, you may be better off dropping Psychic Strike for Gifted Blade.

Strongly consider multiclassing - the Soulknife capstone does nothing for you anyway, so you might as well. A monk dip works well, granting you Wis to AC and bonus feats. See the Tips and Tricks section for good monk archetypes to combine with a Deadly Fist. The triad synergy of Deadly Fist, Monk, and Gifted Blade is formidable indeed, particularly once you add in the Focused Offense and Focused Defense bladeskills.

Tips and Tricks:

- Since Deadly Fist gives you IUS and Flurry on its own, monk archetypes that replace one or both of those two things give you the most bang for your buck. Sohei, Tetori, and Master of Maneuvers are examples of archetypes that work well.

- A monk dip combined with Focused Offense and Defense will give you powerful AC.


Overall rating: Strengthknife, Dexknife, Wisknife



Nimble Blade

Synopsis: The Nimble Blade archetype is a collection of abilities that emphasize dexterity and flexibility.

Description:
The main benefit of Nimble Blade is the powerful combination of the Mind Blade Finesse bladeskill and the Agile weapon property. Together, these two abilities give you Dex to both attack and damage regardless of the shape you use for your mind blade. You can even emulate 2-handed or exotic weapons, and still gain Dex to both attack and damage. Finally, the Nimble Blade gains a "floating bladeskill" which you can use to make a key change to your build on the fly. If you plan on being a Dexknife, strongly consider either Nimble Blade or Cutthroat to increase your SAD.

Class Features:

Weapon Finesse: You get this feat for free. Naturally, Dexknives make great Nimble Blades.

Mind Blade Finesse: Not only do you get this bladeskill for free, you get it at first level, i.e. before any other soulknife can pick it up.

Piranha Strike: In exchange for your first bladeskill, you get this ability for free. This is basically power attack for light weapons, and rewards you for keeping your mind blade(s) in light form or emulating a light weapon. Combined with the Agile property, you can get decent damage out of a high-dex build.

Agile Blade: This gives you the useful Agile property, which soulknives don't otherwise get normally. Though it replaces one of your blade enhancements, the property itself is worth +1 anyway, and furthermore doesn't actually count towards your blade's enhancement pool. (You "treat your blade as though you had it" - it doesn't actually take up any enhancement space.) A Nimble Blade therefore has a total enhancement 1 lower than normal. Note that you don't get this until 7th level, so if you're starting at level 1, don't neglect strength completely.

Adaptive Form: By spending an immediate action and your focus, you can add a free bladeskill (whose requirements you meet) to your build indefinitely. You can then swap that bladeskill for another by repeating this process anytime you want. There are some powerful tactics you can pull off with this - see the Tips & Tricks section.


Nimble Blade-only Bladeskills: None

General Strategy:
As stated above, you'll want to stick with a Dexknife for the Nimble Blade. They lose shield and medium armor proficiency, so most of your protection will have to come from Dex, and light armor. However the benefits are significant - you become nearly Dex-SAD, and Adaptive Form grants you a lot of freedom with your build. It works particularly well with Bladeskills that grant you a changeable or modular benefit - for instance, Emulate Melee Weapon normally only gives you a specific weapon shape each time you take it, but by using your floating bladeskill you can change its shape anytime you want.

Be careful if you are starting from a low level - you don't get your Agile mind blade until 7th level, so neglecting strength entirely before then can harm your build. If you can buy one earlier, consider doing so and selling it later.

Tips and Tricks:

- Nimble Blade combos extremely well with Gifted Blade - specifically, the combo of Adaptive Form + Mental Power, which lets you pick up any power on the Gifted Blade list for free at any time as an immediate action. This opens you up for all kinds of situational powers, like Immovability, Body Purification, Synesthete and Float. You even refresh the 2 PP each time, though I'd advise against trying that part of the trick lest your DM become wroth.

-


Overall rating: Strengthknife, Dexknife, Wisknife



Shielded Blade

Synopsis: Divert some of your blade's power into your mind shield, enhancing its effectiveness greatly and making it count as a true shield.

Description: This archetype is aimed at a sword-and-board Soulknife. The main benefit here is that you can now use Pathfinder's sword-and-shield feats; in addition, you can now add bonuses to your mind shield and make shield bash attacks with it. Note that unlike a regular shield, you keep the shield bonus to AC even if you bash with it, encouraging a more aggressive combat style. However, your shield counts as a heavy shield, i.e. one-handed instead of light, so if you plan to TWF with weapon and shield be aware of the increased penalties.


Class Features:

Form Mind Shield:

Improved Shield:

Shielded Blade-only Bladeskills:

Deadly Shield: This allows you to apply your shield's enhancement bonus to attacks rather than AC. It's unclear how you switch between the two, but a safe bet is that this is chosen on formation, in which case Additional Configurations will be handy to let you keep an "attack shield" and "defense shield" shape. If you plan on shield bashing this is highly recommended as it will let you overcome DR and add other nasty abilities to your shield bashes. If you don't plan on attacking with your shield you can skip this.

Grasping Shield:

Interrupting Shield:

Shield Block

Ranged Shield Block

Whiplash

General Strategy:

Tips and Tricks:

- {Note - look into sword and shield feats.}



Overall rating: Strengthknife, Dexknife, Wisknife



Soulbolt

Synopsis:

Description:


Class Features:

Manifesting:

Gifted Blade-only Bladeskills:

Mental Power:

General Strategy:

Tips and Tricks:

-



Overall rating: Strengthknife, Dexknife, Wisknife

[Psyren]

http://www.wizards.com/dnd/images/cpsi_gallery/96348.jpg
Races and Multiclassing


PF Soulknives share one problem in common with their 3.5 counterparts; with the notable exception of the Gifted Blade, being psionic is almost purely cosmetic for them. Thus, unlike the other psionic classes, soulknives function roughly as well whether you choose a psionic race or a non-psionic one, unless you plan on multiclassing into another manifester later; the extra power points do nothing for you, and simply being a Soulknife gives you access to the psionic feats you would normally have wanted the race for. Your primary considerations then should be racial abilities, stat bonuses and favored class bonuses.

Note 1: There is a campaign variant in Psionics Expanded (High Psionics) that lets you replace all instances of Wild Talent with Unlocked Talent, the PF version of Hidden Talent. If this variant is in play, or if Unlocked Talent exists in your games at all, upgrade the psionic races a step.

Note 2: If you're using the Gifted Blade, upgrade the psionic races another step, and be sure to take the "power point" favored class option.

Note 3: In my first version of this guide, I had a lot of 3.5 info mixed in here simply because Psionics Unleashed offered very little in the way of options for soulknives. With the release of Psionics Expanded, there is a lot more pure PF material to focus on, so I'll be removing the 3.5 information from this section. If I have space/time, I may add a section at the end with recommendations on what to bring in for a 3.P game, but covering the PF material takes precedence.


Core Races - Psionic

Blues: With the one-two punch of being small and having a strength penalty, these guys are middling base soulknives due to the low damage output. The right archetypes can help with this; they are also speedy for their size. They make great Nimble Blades, Cutthroats, and Soulbolts. No Favored Class bonus. +2 Int, +2 Dex, -2 Str.

Ratings: Base, AB, Ct, DF, GB, NB, SB, Sb

Dromites: Slightly worse than Blues due to being slower and having a bonus to a dump stat. They also have the same Str penalty but at least have +1 NA . They also have Scent, energy resistance and their 1/day ray. Cha is worse to boost than Int. Worst of all they have no use for PP from their race or class. I would stick with Blues if you want to be a small Soulknife. No Favored Class bonus. +2 Cha, +2 Dex, -2 Str

Ratings: Base, AB, Ct, DF, GB, NB, SB, Sb

Duergar: The Wis boost is nice with the right archetype and you can never have too much Con. Other than that though, there's not much helpful here and no use for your PP. They're also slow. No favored class bonus. +2 Wis, +2 Con, -2 Cha

Ratings: Base, AB, Ct, DF, GB, NB, SB, Sb


Elans: Now we're talking. Not only do we get TWO uses for your PP built right into the race, we get damn good ones - and a use for your swift actions even before you get Psychic Strike. Choosing where your ability score bonus goes is icing on the cake. An Elan Soulknife can soak a ridiculous amount of damage at low levels, and plays well with every archetype. They do particularly well with Gifted Blades since their racials help you with your power selection. Finally, the favored class bonus is nice for a crit-fishing build as it helps you confirm. +2 to any one ability score

Ratings: Base, AB, Ct, DF, GB, NB, SB, Sb

Half-Giants: The dex penalty means you probably won't be dual-wielding - but thanks to Powerful Build, you probably won't care. This is the best race for a 2-hander soulknife build, aka Strengthknife. They make great Wisknifes too. +2 Str, +2 Wis, -2 Dex

Ratings: Base, AB, Ct, DF, GB, NB, SB, Sb

Maenads: The scream is pretty meh, but Outburst and Inner Rage are great. A PP dump that lets you penalize two dump stats to boost your damage stat? I'll take two with fries. The favored class bonus is also pretty meh though. +2 to any one ability score

Ratings: Base, AB, Ct, DF, GB, NB, SB, Sb

Ophiduans: Natural armor, medium size and a dex bonus for dual-wieldy goodness. The Darkvision and bite are nice too. Due to having a Dex bonus and no Str penalty, they make great dual-wielders. They are great Wisknifes as well. The favored class bonus is great, since grapples and trips come up a lot. One of the best all-around races. +2 Wis, +2 Dex, -2 Cha

Xephs: A Str penalty rears its head again, but at least your weapons are regular-sized. The speed boost is nice (both the racial and the favored class) and so they make great mobile attackers.+2 Dex, +2 Cha, -2 Str

Core Races - Non-Psionic

Dwarves: Nothing special here. Going Soulknife at least qualifies them for psionic feats, helping them catch up to Duergar, but they are overall a worse choice. Slow speed and lack of favored class bonuses lead me to advise against it. +2 Con, +2 Wis, –2 Cha

Elves: The Dex bonus is nice for dual-wielding, and Int never hurts, but you pay for it with a Con penalty. The favored class bonus is unlikely to come up. +2 Dex, +2 Int, –2 Con

Gnomes: Aside from maybe Con, no good stats here. Your weapon is smaller too. No favored class bonuses either. Next! +2 Con, +2 Cha, -2 Str

Half-Elves: The floating stat bonus is nice but there's not a whole lot else here. They're decent at multi-classing though, and Soulknives definitely have the potential to play well with others. The favored class bonus is unlikely to come up often. +2 to any one ability score

Half-Orcs: The floating stat and Ferocity make them a solid non-psionic choice. The favored class bonus to psychic strike damage helps as well. +2 to any one ability score

Halflings: A better choice than Gnomes, but that's not saying much. Halflings get a helpful favored class bonus and are good with ranged builds. I put them slightly ahead of Dromites if you're not manifesting.. +2 Cha, +2 Dex, -2 Str

Humans: Floating stat, free feat and no drawbacks - as usual for 3.x, you can't really go wrong with a human. The favored class bonus is sheer dynamite. +2 to any one ability score

Other Races

There are of course many other options; I'll only do a few here.

Kalashtar - Along with a smattering of miscellaneous bonuses, you get more bonus PP from these guys from any other race, but no way to use them without Hidden Talent, racial sub or a dip. Even so, the sheer amount of ammunition can come in handy. The first racial sub level in Races of Eberron is also nice (see below.) Finally, Kalashtar have access to nice racial perks such as Host Feats, unique PrCs like Atavist and Quori Shards. All in all, not a bad choice. If porting to Pathfinder, try to convince your DM to allow them +2 to any stat like Elans and Humans get; if this is allowed, upgrade them to a blue choice.

Shifter: +2 Dex, -2 Int, -2 Cha. The stat adjustments are harsh, especially in Pathfinder, but thankfully the penalties are to stats you don't really care about anyway. The shifting buffs are all useful to a Soulknife, so this is another solid choice. If you can get the race a Pathfinder boost (at least a net zero stats, or stronger/more frequent shifting bonuses), this is another good candidate for a blue rating.

Changeling: There isn't a whole lot of mechanical synergy here. They're good at infiltrating, so being able to create powerful weapons out of thin air can probably come in handy for that, but in terms of actual numbers they don't get much to help (or hinder) you. Interesting RP-wise, but there are many more powerful options.

Warforged: Warforged are of course universally good at melee. +2 Con, -2 Wis, -2 Cha.; as with Shifters, it's a net negative but both are dump stats so you probably won't mind anyway. Their suite of immunities and defensive attributes all hold value for a Soulknife as well.


Prestige Classes

The Pathfinder Soulknife is much more friendly to multiclassing than its 3.5 cousin. Often in 3.5, even PrCs designed for the soulknife would advance only the blade's enhancement bonus - not its ability pool, much less Psychic Strike. And PrCs that weren't specifically meant for the Soulknife advanced nothing at all.

PsU changes that with a new ruling, introduced in Hyperconscious and leveraged for other DSP works like Untapped Potential. It states the following:

(Buffs have again been colored blue.)


Soulknives And Prestige Classes

Sometimes, a soulknife may qualify for a prestige class with “+1 level of existing manifesting class” as a class feature. This increased psionic training helps those who follow the path of the mind blade as well as the path of the manifester. At each level where a manifester level would increase by one, treat the soulknife as if he had gained a level of soulknife for the purposes of Enhanced Mind Blade. The soulknife does not gain any other benefits from an increased level (blade skills, etc.).

It’s less common, but sometimes a multiclass soulknife enters one of these prestige classes with a bit of manifesting talent. In high psionics games, for this special case, each indicated level of the prestige class advances both the soulknife’s Enhanced Mind Blade, as above, and his existing manifester level by one level. In games that are not high psionics, choose one or the other to increase, but not both.

Psionic Prestige Classes: Core

Cerebremancer: This is for casters, not for you. Moving right along.

Elocater: A decent choice, with 7/10 blade advancement. The requisite feats are much better in Pathfinder, and you can enter with a tiny dip or with Hidden Talent (if houseruled into your game.) In exchange for your Blade Skills, some BAB, and Psychic Strike, you gain a number of unique abilities: walking on walls and ceilings, flanking from almost anywhere, taking extra 5-foot steps, and even short-range teleportation a few times per day. In addition, Spatial Awareness can help overcome the damage lost from missing Psychic Strike, and all the flanking goodness makes you much more likely to hit your targets. This is still a much better class for Nomad-gishes, but the Soulknife gets some decent mileage out of it, particularly if you're not the only member of the party in melee. The biggest downside is that the Transporter ability is useless for you. If Hidden Talent is allowed, upgrade to blue.

Metamind: Nothing for you here either.

Phrenic Slayer: The 9/10 blade advancement and full BAB are very nice. You also gain powerful defenses against a single enemy type - even with a low Wis, you can get plenty of mileage out of these. Useful for a "hunter-type" SK. Effectively, you're trading versatility vs. many enemy types (and your reflex save, sadly) for supreme offensive and defensive capability vs. one.

Psion Uncarnate: The benefits are powerful, but you give up too much qualifying. Leave this one to the casters. 6/10 blade advancement.

Psychic Fist: The primary benefits of this monk-oriented PrC require that you use your fist instead of your mind blade. And you lose BAB to boot. Why are you a soulknife then? (Note: with sufficient shenanigans, you can make your mind blade count as an unarmed strike. If such is the case, upgrade this to Good.)

Pyrokineticist: Fantastic. This class has always meshed well with the Soulknife, and Pathfinder is no exception - with a special clause that allows your fire whip to benefit from all Blade skills and enhancements received thus far. If the class itself granted more enhancements it would get an even higher rating. If you want a dex-heavy, non-TWF soulwhip, this is the way to go, particularly with the alternate elements from Mind's Eye.

Thrallherd: The most powerful psionic PrC in the game nevertheless has little to offer you. Skip this.

War Mind: You give up your blade progression for a suite of Psywar powers and a use for your PP. With full BAB in the mix, this is a fantastic choice.

Psionic Prestige Classes: Splat

Under construction.

Prestige Classes: Core

Arcane Archer/Arcane Trickster: Nope.

Assassin: A brilliant fit, both mechanically and thematically. Take a normal assassin; now add on a base class with a full BAB chassis instead of 3/4, a "precision-damage" ability that does full damage to most sneak-resistant creature types, and best of all one that can create its (magic) weapon out of thin air, even after being searched by the king's guards. And because it's never a "hidden weapon" it creates this blade as a free action instead of a move action - i.e. you can "study your foe," make your blade, then full-Death-Attack. Ready to be the terror of the kingdom?

Dragon Disciple: Skip.

Duelist: An intriguing choice. Combine with the Mind Shield blade skill (your offhand is still empty) for some added defense. Keep in mind that you must shape the piercing mind blade for this to work.

Eldritch Knight/Loremaster/MT: No.

Pathfinder Chronicler: I don't see anything in this class to recommend it. It seems to be based around boosting everyone else's combat abilitiy instead of your own, which is not what a soulknife is about, but maybe someone can see something I don't.

Shadowdancer: Not a terrible choice, but doesn't offer all that much either. This can help you make a stealthy soulknife, but unlike Assassin and Duelist it doesn't help your damage output much, and damage is really the Soulknife's thing.

Prestige Classes: Splat

Under construction.

[Psyren]

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Useful Feats

In this section, I'll compile a list of handy feats for Soulknives, keeping in mind their melee focus, durability (or lack thereof) and above all their psionic nature. Though they don't actually use psionics for much, getting Wild Talent for free gives Soulknives access to psionic feats; an advantage that more mentally mundane martial classes (like Barbarians, Fighters, Monks etc.) do not share.

There are also a number of feats specifically designed for Soulknives - some good, some less than good. Where possible, I will highlight the treats (and traps) for what they are.

Psionic Feats

Under construction

Non-Psionic Feats

Under construction

[Psyren]

http://i1135.photobucket.com/albums/m633/PsyrenY/8cc99d56-1a41-4248-811b-8ca239140580.jpg
Appendix A: Gifted Blade Analysis

As the Gifted Blade is different enough to basically be its own class, I devoted an appendix to it, specifically to analyzing the powers it gets. This text is a placeholder until I can throw together something a bit more witty.

As a refresher - Gifted Blade is an archetype that trades out the Soulknife's Psychic Strike class feature for a manifester level and power progression from a unique list, turning you into a sort of Psywarrior-Lite, but with full BAB and a free weapon. This archetype is lightweight, i.e. it can be combined with nearly any of the others. You have ML = level - 2, so always grab the Psionic Knack trait if traits are allowed. If not, bite the bullet and get it with a feat (Additional Traits.)

While you get few powers known and PP relative to other manifesters (even less than Wilder and Vitalist, gah), you do share the Vitalist's neat mechanic of being able to swap them out every morning, giving you the freedom to pick up a more situational one for certain days. In addition, you have the Mental Power bladeskill (which can be taken repeatedly) to increase this number without cutting into your feats with EK, though keep in mind that any extra powers you learn via EK, MP, multiclassing or any other source cannot be "shuffled" like the 7 you get over your career as a Gifted Blade.

Standard gish advice applies:
- Prioritize powers that don't interfere with your standard actions, because typically you'll need those for attacks and maneuvers. Swift and Immediate powers are particularly valuable, and consider also metapsionic feats like Quicken Power and Hustle Power.
- Prioritize buffs, especially ones that last a long time (10 min./lvl or greater) and won't be redundant with your gear. Extend Power is helpful here. You're saving a decent chunk of change on your weapon relative to other classes so put that dough to good use.
- Avoid powers with saving throws. (Exception: Wisknives can pack a few of these since you'll be maxing Wis anyway, but don't go crazy because these typically require augmenting to keep the DC up, and that costs ammunition you don't have.)

A note on Mental Power: Gifted Blades have a unique Bladeskill that works just for them, which can be taken more than once - Mental Power. This basically functions like the Extra Power Known (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/psionics-unleashed/feats/extra-power-known-psionic) feat, giving you an additional power known up to your maximum power level, but only from your own list (as opposed to Expanded Knowledge, which can lift from any list.) This bladeskill can be taken multiple times, and also gives you 2 bonus PP every time you do, making it very handy for the PP-starved Gifted Blade. In addition to being limited to your own list with this power, you also cannot swap the power chosen with this bladeskill out every morning like you can with your regular repertoire, so choose wisely. As a general rule of thumb, use this bladeskill to pick up a few of the purple or blue choices below - powers (like Vigor) that you know you'll be using every day, thus leaving more slots in your general repertoire for the more situational things.

Okay, that's enough preamble - let's crack this sucker open and see what you get.

1st Level

Astral Traveler - If you ever need to do this, get a power stone of it - it's too situational to bother with otherwise.

Biofeedback -Weak but could be useful in a handful of situations. Generally you're better off with Vigor as your low-level defensive buff.

Burst - I'm a big fan of swift action powers; this is a good way to get some quick speed before a full-round action (e.g. charge, run, double move or withdraw.) However I did have to dock points: the speed boost is an enhancement bonus so it once you get buffs like Haste in every fight it becomes useless.

Call Weaponry - While decent for Psywars, you're a Soulknife - why would you ever need this? Skip.

Chameleon - For sneaky 'knives. Unfortunately this is unlikely to be you since GB doesn't stack with Cutthroat, but nevertheless it's here if you need it.

Conceal Thoughts - You're here to hit stuff, not be then face. For the saving throw bit just use Empty Mind.

Deaden Attack - Useful if you forgot to put Merciful on your blade that morning and need to knock someone out; also saves you the enhancement bonus capacity on merciful. It is situational, however.

Detect Psionics - this power has many uses, but really, someone else should be doing this. Again, your job is hitting things, and you have to spend precious PP on this while other classes get it for free.

Distract - Skip it, you're no face.

Elfsight: - Another one to skip.

Empty Mind - Very handy way to boost your will save in an emergency. Use it right when your DM says "make a will save" - then on your next turn, beat the hell out of whatever it was that was trying to mess with you.

Expansion - Your blade does more damage and you get more reach, what's not to love? Bump it down a notch for Dexknives but everyone else will want this. Mandatory for Strengthknives.

Float - Generally if there's water your DM will give you a way to deal with it, without having to burn a power.

Force Screen - More AC is great and it lasts all combat while still letting you dual-wield or 2-hand. Sword-and-board Soulknives need not apply.

Fortify - a solid buff, but won't stack with your gear (cloak.)

Grip of Iron - Extremely useful for Deadly Fist grapplers, especially with Expansion in the mix. Other soulknives can skip (soulknives rarely have both hands free and therefore generally shouldn't be grappling, plus they don't need to worry about being disarmed.)

Inertial Armor - Just wear normal armor and save the PP, you have the proficiencies. For low-wealth campaigns bump this up to green.

Metaphysical Weapon - Soulknives don't need this, though it can come in handy if you've piled your blade with attributes and would like more enhancement than you can allocate to it. Just keep in mind that, like Greater Magic Weapon, this won't help you beat DR.

My Light - Skip, torches are cheap and so is darkvision.

Precognition, Defensive - A solid choice that lasts all combat and will stack with most of your gear for those tougher battles. The swift action augment is expensive but well worth it later on.

Precognition, Offensive - Another one that stacks with your gear and blade. The swift version before a full attack can be pretty nasty, and lasts longer than Inevitable Strike.

Precognition, Tactical - the bonus is larger than Offensive Precognition but I prefer the other one since it works with all your attacks. This also won't stack with other enhancement bonuses like the Brawling property.

Prescience, Offensive - Good for crit-fishing builds (the damage bonus is static and therefore gets multiplied) and gives a little extra punch to Dexknives and their stream of attacks.

Prevenom Weapon - the poison DC doesn't scale, so you have better things to do with your actions and PP.

Skate - Same problems as BoS, only now it's a standard and you have to worry about slopes. Nah.

Synesthete - Perception bonus, and Blind/gaze immunity? Yes please. This one isn't a priority though (unless your DM is into that sort of thing..)

Thicken Skin - Until you get this from an amulet, this is an cheap way to boost your AC at low levels. This is a good one to extend as well.

Vigor - One of your best defensive buffs, cheap and never goes out of style. HP are great!


2nd Level


Body Adjustment - Self-healing is nice but if you're using Vigor proactively you shouldn't need this. Probably get it as a dorje so you can take care of your own out of combat healing as needed; it doesn't need to be a power known.

Body Equilibrium - Too situational. Get it in a stone if you need to run across water or webs. If you need to fall a long distance just pump up with Vigor first.

Body Purification - Lets you deal with ability damage (e.g. poison or disease) mid-combat until the healer can deal with it more permanently.

Cloud Mind - Saving throw, and mind-affecting to boot - pass. Wisknives can get some use here but the DC doesn't scale well for your buck.

Concealing Amorpha - Miss chance is useful but the Greater version has other benefits if you're willing to wait.

Defy Gravity - aka Psionic Levitate. Vertical flight isn't too useful most of the tiime. but throwers/Soulbolts can bump it up a notch for giving you a platform away from dangerous melee critters + higher ground attack bonus and shooting over cover.

Detect Hostile Intent - A great, underrated power. The surprise immunity may not work on anything, but any time it does you'll be happy. Drop it a rung if the DM rules they have to be within 30ft.

Dimension Swap - The good: gets you next to the enemy, which is where you should be. The better: gets ranged classes and casters away from the enemy, helping you fill your role of being their meatshield even better. The bad: It takes a standard action, preventing you from attacking or locking down once you get there.

Dissolving Weapon - One big hit per manifestation. While this is on paper much heftier than other damage boosters like Offensive Prescience, the need to cast it repeatedly limits its usefulness.

Endorphin Surge - Rage bad! No concentrate, no have rage powers, bonuses tiny. Soulknife skip.

Specified Energy Adaptation - A useful defense that autoscales. Unlike other manifesters you're not very likely to be using your active energy type for many other things too. The ability to manifest as an immediate makes it even better; combined with Vigor, you have very little to fear from area attacks.

Feat Leech - You can't leech feats from your psicrystal in PF, and using this on allies both robs them of their feats and creates a bookkeeping nightmare for the party and the DM. Meanwhile using it on enemies forces a save you're unlikely to beat, requires a touch and you can't be sure what you'll get. I find little here to recommend.

Heightened Vision - much better than Elfsight, but still unlikely to be worthy of a power slot. Get a dorje of it if you really need it, or better yet, get it Incarnated on you and then lose it.

Prowess - More AoOs are always good. Especially handy for Strength and Wisknives, who will have lower Dex. Dexknives can get by without it. Note that dodgy wording means you might be able to take two AoOs on the same person for provoking once.

Psionic Scent - Situationally useful. Don't go crazy to get it, but a stone might be handy.

Sustenance - Rations are cheap so 99% of the time you won't need this. If you ever find yourself on a desert isle or zombie apocalypse, simply rotate this one in until you have a more permanent solution, then lose it again.

Thought Shield - While this does give you an additional barrier vs. mind-affecting powers, the immediate action competes with the (imo) more useful and better-scaling Empty Mind. Note though that this does work on some saveless mind-affecting powers, so it isn't totally useless.

Wall Walker - Like levitate Defy Gravity but even more situational.

3rd Level

Concealing Amorpha, Greater - This doesn't last as long as its lesser cousin but has infinitely more use. In addition to just being generally more powerful (50% instead of 20%), this grants total concealment - which means you cannot be attacked or targeted by anything that can't see you. This is near-immunity to archery, rays, targeted spells, grapple attempts, AoOs, just about anything sufficiently nasty out there that has to be aimed at you specifically. And the shorter duration isn't a big deal either since by the time you get this it should be lasting for the entire fight anyway.

Dimension Slide - The moment you get this you should have the ML for the more powerful move action version. This allows you to 5-foot step out of harm's way and then hop away, while still leaving your standard and swift open for other things. A bit situational but still a handy one for the toolbelt.

Ectoplasmic Grapnel - This new power from UPsi is rather amusing, being essentially the Zelda hookshot. You can pull creatures (up to one size larger) to you with the drag maneuver, or pull yourself adjacent to them. You can also use it to harpoon up to walls, ceilings and ledges. You can also use it to yank unattended objects over to you. The uses are pretty endless and Strengthknives in particular can get a lot of utility out of this. Dexknives have less benefit here, both due to being physically weaker and due to typically not having the necessary hand free if they are dual-wielding.

Empathic Feedback - Mind-affecting, will negates, PR yes, and encourages you to do what you otherwise have no reason to be doing (getting hit.) Skip.

Escape Detection - Situationally useful, particularly if you have a way of becoming invisible. Psionics doesn't have many of these though so I would avoid.

Evade Burst - Grants temporary evasion. You have plenty of HP and Vigor (+ Share Pain, potentially) so just tank it.

Graft Armor - Just wear light armor (or mithral medium) and save yourself a power known.

Graft Weapon - I can see absolutely no benefit to this. You can't throw your blade anymore, you don't care about being disarmed, you don't care about natural weapons, and if your mind blade gets sundered you get to eat Con drain. Hell, even dismissing your blade might chop off your hand. Pass.

Hustle - One of the best powers in the game, bar none. You get it late, but still useful.

Mental Barrier - Immediate actions are good, immediate actions that boost your touch AC are even better, immediate actions that can potentially last multiple rounds are best of all. Note that this one also boosts your CMD.

Physical Acceleration - It's haste, what's not to love? You get it very late though, so someone else in the party might already have it (or you may have it from an item) but definitely pick it up if they don't. The built-in quicken option is icing on the cake.

Psionic Lion’s Charge - It's pounce, what's not to love? All psionic gishes want this.

Sharpened Edge - AKA psionic keen weapon. This won't stack with the keen property, but does allow you to drop that property from your weapon and put something else on instead. I wouldn't get this right away - you'll want a decent ML + Extend to keep it going all day - but once you can do so this becomes a viable option. Note however that dismissing your blade may cause this to fall off.

Ubiquitous Vision - Flank immunity is great for melee, and the perception buff is icing. Combos well with Synesthete to eliminate the gaze penalty.

Vampiric Blade - Sadly, this only heals half of base weapon damage, which means it doesn't scale at all.

4th Level


Energy Adaptation - Very useful as it protects against multiple energy types instead of just one. Prep this or the cheaper Specified version, but not both.
Fold Space - Psionic Dimension Door. Useful for getting around and taking others with you. By the time you get this you can probably afford the move action augment, which lets you manifest other things on your turn as well. This is extremely expensive though so use sparingly.
Immovability - By giving up your actions you also give up your ability to move. Pass. About the only useful thing here is the immunity to teleportation effects; apart from being a double-edged sword, most of those are will saves so you can just Empty Mind them.
Inertial Barrier - If you must have DR, use Biofeedback instead, or better yet ditch them both and stick with Vigor.
Psychic Reformation - Remember all those feats and Bladeskills you were stuck with while leveling and found out you don't need anymore? Me neither!
Slip the Bonds - aka Psionic Freedom of Movement. Say no to grapples, paralysis, entangle, web, solid fog, deep water, difficult terrain... the benefits just keep coming. Since your job is to get in melee and stay there, this is invaluable.
Steadfast Perception - Immunity to most illusions and lasts a long time - this is a great buff. Won't protect you from patterns and phantasms, but 99% of those are will saves anyway, and mind-affecting to boot.
Truevenom Weapon - You're well into the levels both where poison is ineffective and where 1d3 Con damage is unnoticeable. Moreover, the DC doesn't scale. Skip this.
Weapon of Energy - This adds energy damage to your weapon based on your AET. Not only does this stack with whatever is already on your blade (even the same energy type), it also gets boosted when you crit, making it fun for crit-fishing builds. (There's nothing quite like rolling handfuls of dice.) The short duration and the fact that this is tied to your weapon are off-putting to me though.

Off-List Power Recommendations

Here are some handy powers you should strongly consider picking up via Expanded Knowledge if possible.

Astral Construct The most versatile psionic power in the game, and yours will be just as strong as that of a Psion. Multipurpose mount, flanking buddy, disposable distraction - this thing does it all. Can be expensive though, especially if you need to max it out for more than one fight per day, or end up in a dispel/dismiss war with an uppity caster.

Share Pain - one of the best parts about being a Gifted Blade is having a ML, which means you can get a psicrystal, which means using this power + Vigor to get 10 extra HP with every PP spent. You have to wait quite a while to get it but it is still worth it.

[Psyren]

Reserved #9 (of 10)

[Psyren]

Last one - post away.

I wasn't kidding when I said help is welcome btw - melee is not my forté, so writing this is as much about my own edification as anyone else's. :smallsmile:

[Tokuhara]

Last one - post away.

I wasn't kidding when I said help is welcome btw - melee is not my forté, so writing this is as much about my own edification as anyone else's. :smallsmile:

I'll say this: PF Soulknife is 100% better than 3.5 Soulknife. Heck, almost every class is better in Pathfinder (minus Monk, who once again gets the shaft)

[The Glyphstone]

I'll say this: PF Soulknife is 100% better than 3.5 Soulknife. Heck, almost every class is better in Pathfinder (minus Monk, who once again gets the shaft)

Base monk, definitely. The Hungry Ghost Archtype on a crit-fishing build can, by reports I've had, be incredibly effective as far as melee combatants go.

[Dusk Eclipse]

Hmmm interesting; I am not too familiar with pathfinder; but I have read the PF Soulknife and I really liked what I saw.

[Ayra]

i tryed the 3.5 version, and was really disappointed (and eventually had my gm kill him of so i could make a new character..)
however I DO like the changes in pathfinder, and ill be happy to play the new version :D

[Person_Man]

Question about Psychic Strike: Aren't Undead et al still immune to ability point damage, and thus still immune to Psychic Strike? Or did they change that in Pathfinder?

Also, still seems like it's a high Tier 4 (or maybe a very low Tier 3) class. Full BAB, ok Skills/Armor/Saves, a free magic weapon or two (which is notably important for TWF builds, but not that big of deal for everyone else), a couple of bonus feats which are mostly mandated, and some Blade Skills. The Blade Skills are nifty, but most of the good ones require expending psionic focus or psychic strike, and in general they're a lot less impressive then maneuvers, soulmelds, psychic powers, or vestiges. I reminds me very much of their Monk fix - it adds a ton of stuff, but none of it is particularly impressive.

[Psyren]

Question about Psychic Strike: Aren't Undead et al still immune to ability point damage, and thus still immune to Psychic Strike? Or did they change that in Pathfinder?

Only Knife to the Soul incurs ability damage (and has been moved to a Blade Skill rather than a separate ability.) Psychic Strike is just additional HP damage.


Also, still seems like it's a high Tier 4 (or maybe a very low Tier 3) class. Full BAB, ok Skills/Armor/Saves, a free magic weapon or two (which is notably important for TWF builds, but not that big of deal for everyone else), a couple of bonus feats which are mostly mandated, and some Blade Skills. The Blade Skills are nifty, but most of the good ones require expending psionic focus or psychic strike, and in general they're a lot less impressive then maneuvers, soulmelds, psychic powers, or vestiges. I reminds me very much of their Monk fix - it adds a ton of stuff, but none of it is particularly impressive.

1) Monk fix was Paizo actually - Soulknife is Dreamscarred Press.
2) I never said it was T3. T4 is perfectly playable in most games. (See also: Warlock, Scout.) In high-power/high-OP games, you're better off with a SW Psywar bare minimum, and a Tashalatora Ardent for melee ideally.

[Tokuhara]

I could see a PF Soulknife/Samurai/Iaijutsu Master being very fun. The scene would be like the Cantina scene in SW Episode 4:

Thug approaches the character, picking a fight
Thug: "Get out of my Seat"
Character: "You don't want to fight me..."
Thug: "But you're unarmed..."
Character draws his mind blade and Iaijutsu slashes him for an Instant-Kill

[Psyren]

Core races (psionic and non-psionic) have been updated. I think for the "Other" races I'll stick with Faerun, Eberron and Planar Handbook, but I'll skip that for now and move onto PrCs.

Any feedback is appreciated, particularly if you disagree with any of my ratings. :smallsmile:

[Tokuhara]

Core races (psionic and non-psionic) have been updated. I think for the "Other" races I'll stick with Faerun, Eberron and Planar Handbook, but I'll skip that for now and move onto PrCs.

Any feedback is appreciated, particularly if you disagree with any of my ratings. :smallsmile:

Xephs have something to bring to the table: Feats. Xeph Bladestorm is exclusive racial feat for them. For Higher Levels, a Xeph PF Soulknife 10/Kensei 10 would be amazing

[Psyren]

Xephs have something to bring to the table: Feats. Xeph Bladestorm is exclusive racial feat for them. For Higher Levels, a Xeph PF Soulknife 10/Kensei 10 would be amazing

Good point; I had not, in fact, looked at any of the racial subs or feats when determining those ratings (as they are DM-dependent) but allowing them should tweak the ratings somewhat. More builds have room for them too since you get more feats in Pathfinder.

I'll add them in when I do the ACF section, and perhaps change to a dual-rating system - one for the base race, and one with everything allowed.

In addition, I'll throw in the Racial subs from Untapped Potential too, since it is written by the same authors as PsU.

[Lateral]

This is a great start to the guide. I'd just like to point out that the Duergar entry is misformatted.

[MeeposFire]

Does anybody see a reason why we still have to wait until 14th level to make a full attack at range with a mind blade? Also it still needs a better standard action attack option (but that is a standard problem in PF not just the SK).

I agree on the too many options but most don't do too much. I see the the blade stuff and my eyes just glaze over from too much info and not a quick way to cut through the chaff. So I really like you making this guide so I can more easily look up what I would do if I took this so thanks and good luck!

[Psyren]

Update: Core PrCs (both psionic and non-psionic) have been rated, and info on the Soulknife's Role has been added.


This is a great start to the guide. I'd just like to point out that the Duergar entry is misformatted.

Thanks, and fixed.


Does anybody see a reason why we still have to wait until 14th level to make a full attack at range with a mind blade? Also it still needs a better standard action attack option (but that is a standard problem in PF not just the SK).

I would honestly use the Soulbow, or wait for PsiEx's Soulbolt, to consider making the Soulknife range-focused. Throwing the mind blade seems to me intended to be an alternative attack for niche situations, rather than a dedicated build for the Soulknife. However, making the blade benefit from Powerful Build does open you up to a strength-based thrower (with the right PrCs.)

The base Soulknife can do range, even aoe range; but as you've pointed out, doesn't really get good at it for awhile.


I agree on the too many options but most don't do too much. I see the the blade stuff and my eyes just glaze over from too much info and not a quick way to cut through the chaff. So I really like you making this guide so I can more easily look up what I would do if I took this so thanks and good luck!

You're welcome!

I'm truly excited to see what new Blade Skills PsiEx will bring to the table. I don't think any will really push it to T3, but the right ones could really help with the core issues of the class (i.e. having to choose between mobility and psychic strike in most cases.)

[Rentaromon]

i made a group of lvl 8 heroes to challenge my group. they are all the most powerfull thing i could make in pathfinder. and one is a pure soulknife and i find it to be a real powerfull class.

i can easily deal 5d6 damage plus 6 per hit and bump that up by 2d6/2d8 on a big hit. i see it as a powerfull class, or maybe im just a good optimizer.

if you were wondering the mini/max party was:
a summoner with the fused archtype that has massive HP.
a cleric who summons about 60 HD worth of undead.
The soulknife.
A artificer that makes people explode from 6-7 squares away with a realy hard save.
And a psion, but the psion might get swapped out.

[Cieyrin]

Always been a fan of the Soulknife despite its flaws and good to see a handbook spreading the word that you can do fun things with it. My only point of contention is with the use of Orange in ratings, as I keep thinking its Gold as in Awesome like in other guides, which throws me off when I read the description on how subpar it is. Maybe that's just me but I thought I'd point it out.

[MeeposFire]

Update: Core PrCs (both psionic and non-psionic) have been rated, and info on the Soulknife's Role has been added.



Thanks, and fixed.



I would honestly use the Soulbow, or wait for PsiEx's Soulbolt, to consider making the Soulknife range-focused. Throwing the mind blade seems to me intended to be an alternative attack for niche situations, rather than a dedicated build for the Soulknife. However, making the blade benefit from Powerful Build does open you up to a strength-based thrower (with the right PrCs.)

The base Soulknife can do range, even aoe range; but as you've pointed out, doesn't really get good at it for awhile.



You're welcome!

I'm truly excited to see what new Blade Skills PsiEx will bring to the table. I don't think any will really push it to T3, but the right ones could really help with the core issues of the class (i.e. having to choose between mobility and psychic strike in most cases.)

Honestly I heart the soulbow :smallbiggrin: it is just so cool and it made a specific build of soulknife decent. Still for the life of me I still can't see what they were afraid of when they made throwing knives so long in coming? Am I missing something and this is stronger than I think it is or is this some strange restriction that lingers on with no balance (or really fluff) basis?

[Psyren]

Honestly I heart the soulbow :smallbiggrin: it is just so cool and it made a specific build of soulknife decent. Still for the life of me I still can't see what they were afraid of when they made throwing knives so long in coming? Am I missing something and this is stronger than I think it is or is this some strange restriction that lingers on with no balance (or really fluff) basis?

Your best bet is to PM Bacris, as he designed the fix :smalltongue: or wait for the Soulbolt, which I have no doubt will put the Soulbow to shame. (DSP is, for the most part, really good at what they do.)

Fluff basis I can actually somewhat see. The blade comes out of your mind, so sustaining it while it is not in contact with you should be pretty hard, like trying to read a book while it flies away from you. At least, that's how I'd see it. The blade always dissipates shortly after you let go, so clearly it must be actively maintained or at least be touching you in some way. "Throwing" one can't be easy, never mind several in succession.

Crunchwise, the Soulknife has an inherent advantage when it comes to thrown weapons - they can toss magic ones and not worry about them flying out the window, breaking etc. How many adventurers would toss their +5 dagger, let alone several in succession? 50,000gp per shot isn't cheap. How about a +5 shocking burst weapon?

In any event, it shouldn't be too hard to homebrew a feat that lets you ignore the level restrictions on Bladeskills, or let you take them earlier than normal; that would allow you to get Multiple Throw sooner.

[Psyren]

Update: Added Racial subs for the Kalashtar, Xeph and Half-Giant. Also added the two Mind's Eye ACFs, and rundowns on Soulknives from the four Eberron races. Next I will add feats from a variety of sources - PsU/XPH, CPsi, Hyperconscious, Untapped Potential, Dragon Magazine, Eberron books and any Faerun ones that occur to me.

I'm also kicking myself after reading Dragon 341 - the answer to the Soulknife knife-throwing conundrum was staring me in the face all this time. The Mind Daggers shape is designed to be the Soulknife's throwing weapon - it does little damage (1d4 medium) but can be formed unlimited times per round (allowing iteratives), has a full 30ft. range increment, and each pair formed carry the full enhancement bonus and assigned abilities of the standard blade. This lets you toss a barrage of, for example, Suppression daggers at a target, each of which would have a chance to dispel its protections.

You can go on to throw the regular blade once you get access to Multiple Throw at 14, but the daggers shape has no level floor.


Always been a fan of the Soulknife despite its flaws and good to see a handbook spreading the word that you can do fun things with it. My only point of contention is with the use of Orange in ratings, as I keep thinking its Gold as in Awesome like in other guides, which throws me off when I read the description on how subpar it is. Maybe that's just me but I thought I'd point it out.

I've seen Orange = awesome in a couple of other guides too and it throws ME off. I've registered your objection but I still don't like Orange so bad it shall stay. :smalltongue:

If it makes you feel better, I moved Purple (my favorite color) to "really really good." Well, it makes me feel better anyway :smallwink:

[Daernoth]

I just created a 9th level soulknife/1st psy warrior that can do big damage like this...

1. half giant wielding a large twohander
2. half giant casts expansion so he is now wielding a huge twohander
3. +2 holy weapon
4. power attack
5. 4d8 psystrike... coz of bladeskill
6. improved critical feat
7. vital strike feat

so when he is large his damage to an evil creature is:
8d6(4d6 base dam*2 for vital strike) + 2d6 holy + 4d8 psychic strike + 20(12 from str*1.5 + 6 pw attack + 2 weapon enh)
with a crit range of 17-20(x2)

If I understand the rules correctly, his crit would do 12d6 + 2d6 + 4d8 + 40.

I also use the feat that removes the pw attack penalty for the first attack. If I'm fighting something with really high AC that I'm unlikely to hit with my second swing I'll just use a move action every round to recharge my psychic strike and just swing once per round.

[Stone Heart]

Shouldn't Halflings be in the race section?

Also that build Daernoth put I kept trying out rolls for the crit and I did not get less than 100 damage for the crits, thats pretty awesome.

[Lunaris]

Hi there! I'm in need of some assistance and I wanted to have each of your opinion

The race I have is a +2 Strength, +2 Wisdom -2 Charisma homebrewed race that have a climb speed of 20(It's a sort of Earth Genasi) and a power similar to the Suli(character level/round per day elemental damage, 1d6 usually). I'm looking at making either a Sword and Broad Soulknife, or just a ballsout Two-Handed one.

I'm level 5. What do you suggest? I have /no/ clue what is good for a Soulknife in pathfinder. Bladeskills I'm looking at are Alter Blade, Combat Slide and Powerful Strikes.

I am also wondering about the Gifted Blade Archetype that came out in Unlimited Possibilities.

Also, for your guide, I think the Quick Draw the Soulknife get only apply to your Mind Blade.

The rest of the party is an Alchemist, Inquisitor, Holy Gun Paladin, Cleric, a Rogue and myself.

[Psyren]

Hi there! I'm in need of some assistance and I wanted to have each of your opinion

The race I have is a +2 Strength, +2 Wisdom -2 Charisma homebrewed race that have a climb speed of 20(It's a sort of Earth Genasi) and a power similar to the Suli(character level/round per day elemental damage, 1d6 usually). I'm looking at making either a Sword and Broad Soulknife, or just a ballsout Two-Handed one.

I'm level 5. What do you suggest? I have /no/ clue what is good for a Soulknife in pathfinder. Bladeskills I'm looking at are Alter Blade, Combat Slide and Powerful Strikes.

I am also wondering about the Gifted Blade Archetype that came out in Unlimited Possibilities.

My understanding of sword-and-board in Pathfinder is that it's somewhat more viable than in 3.5, but you either want to stick with that or 2H, but not both, because the feats and stats to make them good are different. But I'll let someone more versed in general Pathfinder melee field that issue.

Focusing on your bladeskill choices: Combat Slide is of course excellent as it lets you shift around the battlefield and full attack non-adjacent foes. Alter Blade... if you don't see yourself swapping between the 2H and the shield form often I would skip or at least postpone it. You could get Furious Charge instead (you'll be doing plenty of that early on anyway) so that you can get into Improved Furious Charge as soon as possible later. As for Powerful Strikes - Psychic Strike optimization tends to work better with dual-wielding in my opinion, but it certainly wouldn't hurt if you want to go that route.

Do note that Gifted Blade (which is fantastic) replaces psychic strike, so choose which you'd rather have.

Finally, I'll be updating all my Pathfinder Psionics guides after Psionics Expanded is complete; until then, there are other 3.5 guides I have in the works, particularly concerning Mind's Eye material.


Also, for your guide, I think the Quick Draw the Soulknife get only apply to your Mind Blade.

Thanks for the correction, not sure why I made that mistake.

[spookdragon]

Hello All,

I am working on a new Soul Knife with plans to go Pyrokineticist and was wondering how other would go about creating a Soulknife who manifests their weapon as a whip. I know that when you take the first level in Pyro you can manifest a whip with the Altered Blade skill, so I am looking for suggestions on how to make it at 1st level.

Thanks for any help and thank you for a very nice guide.

[Beta Sprite]

Hello All,

I am working on a new Soul Knife with plans to go Pyrokineticist and was wondering how other would go about creating a Soulknife who manifests their weapon as a whip. I know that when you take the first level in Pyro you can manifest a whip with the Altered Blade skill, so I am looking for suggestions on how to make it at 1st level.

Thanks for any help and thank you for a very nice guide.

That's funny. I was just doing the same thing, although I'm starting at level 2.

Personally, I'm going with the following (whip and board):

Elan Soulknife

Traits:
Dangerously curious (UMD is a class skill; +1 trait bonus to UMD)
Resilient (+1 fort saves)

Starting equipment:
Hide armor
Wooden heavy shield

1:
Cleave <standard>
Power attack <soulknife>
Resistance (Su): As an immediate action, an elan can spend 1 power point to gain a +4 racial bonus on saving throws until the beginning of her next action.
Resilience (Su): As an immediate action, he can reduce the damage he is about to take by 2 hit points for every 1 power point he spends.
Repletion (Su): An elan can sustain his body without need of food or water. If he spends 1 power point, an elan does not need to eat or drink for 24 hours.
Form mind blade
Shape mind blade
Throw mind blade
Psionic talent x2 (One from Elan, one from soulknife; gives 3pp)

2:
Combat slide <blade skill>

3:
Up the walls <standard>
Enhanced mind blade +1
Psychic strike +1d8

4:
Alter blade <blade skill>

5:
Great cleave <standard>
Enhanced mind blade +2
Quick draw <soulknife>


Once I get to level 6 and get the whip, I should be able to move, then use great cleave to hit many enemies from 15 feet away (yay power attack and touch attacks), and move 5 more feet for each enemy hit due to combat slide. Upgrading to some mithral armor and shield later to remove ACP is planned. If allowed, a lantern shield is good for the extra utility (lantern slot, scroll slot, wand slot) if you take the Dangerously Curious trait (makes UMD a class skill).

I've also considered only dipping into Pyro for 1 or 2 levels, as your weapon doesn't continue its progression, and the fire isn't my character's main focus. You can obviously choose which way you want to go. =)

[spookdragon]

Thanks for the input. I think the character idea looks solid.

What I am looking for though is suggestions on how to run the character as a whip user at 1st level. Since you can throw a mindblade at 1st and the blade can look like anything you want does it seem reasonable you could make it look like a whip? You would still have a range increment and without the disarm, trip ability you could not use those abilities, but I don't think it would be over powered especially if you limited it's range to 15'.

Any thoughts are welcome.

[Hylas]

Thanks for the input. I think the character idea looks solid.

What I am looking for though is suggestions on how to run the character as a whip user at 1st level. Since you can throw a mindblade at 1st and the blade can look like anything you want does it seem reasonable you could make it look like a whip? You would still have a range increment and without the disarm, trip ability you could not use those abilities, but I don't think it would be over powered especially if you limited it's range to 15'.

Any thoughts are welcome.

Dipping into the pyro costs the following: Autohypnosis 5 ranks, Craft (alchemy) 1 rank, Knowledge (psionics) 2 ranks, 2 skill points, 1 BAB, 1 HP, slower weapon enhancements and blade skills, can't power attack touch attacks.

Which grants the following: Ability to use a single 1d8 fire damage only touch attack at 15ft, manipulate existing fires.

Right now you can throw a light 1d6 mind blade 20ft with no penalty. Making it a 15ft whip would let you add things like tripping, cleaving, and whatever abilities which you can't do ranged, which is what you'll be wanting to do otherwise you'd just throw your mind blade (mechanically, I know the aesthetics are cool but we're doing mechanics). Now personally I would allow a 1d8 two handed weapon with reach off the bat because it's a reasonable trade off (and with mind daggers I guess you could threaten 5ft away too). Now if you're tripping and cleaving then you're already spending those feats, and I hate the idea of making melee spend lots of feats to be a one trick pony. So what I would do is let a blade skill give you a whip form. The damage would be somewhere around 1d4-1d8, depending on my mood. 1d8 may outshine the pyro's whip just by being so much cheaper to acquire, with the only difference being it's not a touch attack and it doesn't do fire damage. 1d6 is probably good.

tl;dr I'd allow a 1d6 15ft whip form (no touch) if you spent a blade skill on it.

[spookdragon]

Thank you kindly for the input. Yes that is about what I was thinking.
As for Pyro I am actually planning to go 10/10 SoulKnife/Pyro as the character's real focus is as an arsonist.


Dipping into the pyro costs the following: Autohypnosis 5 ranks, Craft (alchemy) 1 rank, Knowledge (psionics) 2 ranks, 2 skill points, 1 BAB, 1 HP, slower weapon enhancements and blade skills, can't power attack touch attacks.

Which grants the following: Ability to use a single 1d8 fire damage only touch attack at 15ft, manipulate existing fires.

Right now you can throw a light 1d6 mind blade 20ft with no penalty. Making it a 15ft whip would let you add things like tripping, cleaving, and whatever abilities which you can't do ranged, which is what you'll be wanting to do otherwise you'd just throw your mind blade (mechanically, I know the aesthetics are cool but we're doing mechanics). Now personally I would allow a 1d8 two handed weapon with reach off the bat because it's a reasonable trade off (and with mind daggers I guess you could threaten 5ft away too). Now if you're tripping and cleaving then you're already spending those feats, and I hate the idea of making melee spend lots of feats to be a one trick pony. So what I would do is let a blade skill give you a whip form. The damage would be somewhere around 1d4-1d8, depending on my mood. 1d8 may outshine the pyro's whip just by being so much cheaper to acquire, with the only difference being it's not a touch attack and it doesn't do fire damage. 1d6 is probably good.

tl;dr I'd allow a 1d6 15ft whip form (no touch) if you spent a blade skill on it.

[Fax Celestis]

I can't believe you didn't mention the Gifted Soulknife archetype.

[trazwald]

Hi everybody, I want to build a pathfinder soulknife, and I'm debating between a twf (probably xeph) and a 2-hander half-giant, with build orientations as follows: dex/boosting/probably some soul dagger throwing for the xeph, and power attacking/expansion/ basically Daernoth's build as below, maybe with some tripping worked in for the half-giant. I had also been considering that knockdown acf mentioned for half-giants.

the main questions I have are: Is it possible to manifest powers without dipping into another class via the hidden talent acf/psionic talent from playing a psionic race? And what is the feat that Daernoth mentions below? Thanks in advance!


I just created a 9th level soulknife/1st psy warrior that can do big damage like this...

1. half giant wielding a large twohander
2. half giant casts expansion so he is now wielding a huge twohander
3. +2 holy weapon
4. power attack
5. 4d8 psystrike... coz of bladeskill
6. improved critical feat
7. vital strike feat

so when he is large his damage to an evil creature is:
8d6(4d6 base dam*2 for vital strike) + 2d6 holy + 4d8 psychic strike + 20(12 from str*1.5 + 6 pw attack + 2 weapon enh)
with a crit range of 17-20(x2)

If I understand the rules correctly, his crit would do 12d6 + 2d6 + 4d8 + 40.

I also use the feat that removes the pw attack penalty for the first attack. If I'm fighting something with really high AC that I'm unlikely to hit with my second swing I'll just use a move action every round to recharge my psychic strike and just swing once per round.

[Fax Celestis]

Preorder people have previews for the upcoming PsiEx. There's a lot of soulknife stuff in there. I'll give a brief rundown here: you can add and judge as you like, Psyren.

PsiEx: Find the Mark
Soulbolt - you trade your ability to form a mind blade for the ability to form what amount to arrows. You gain access to a different enhancement availability list and some unique blade skills.

PsiEx: Unlimited Possibilities
Gifted Blade - you gain limited manifesting ability starting at 3rd level. You choose your powers known off your list daily, plus additionally known powers (via Expanded Knowledge) stick around. Your ML is soulknife level -2. This ability replaces psychic strike. You gain up to 4th level powers off a limited list, mostly psywar stuff.

PsiEx: Master the Battle
Armored Blade - you can form armor the same way you form your soulknife. There's a slower enhancement bonus table, but the reshaping and enhancing features also apply to the armor. Also, your armor has an independent enhancement pool from your weapons, so giving your armor fortification doesn't mean you have to pull flaming off your blade.

Deadly Fist - you don't get a soulknife: instead, you get to imbue your fists with psionic punchiness. Enhancement progression still applies to your fists, too. You trade your bonus first level feat for IUS, but you also get the Flurry of Fists blade skill for free.

Shielded Blade - you get to form a shield the same way you form a soulknife. You get the Mind Shield blade skill free, but you also get to treat your mind shield as a heavy steel shield, so you can bash and things with it. It gains an enhancement bonus at the same rate as your mind blade, but you take a -1 enhancement bonus penalty for having both out at once. At 2nd, you get either Improved Mind Shield or Tower Mind Shield free. For this, you trade your first level bonus feat and your second level blade skill, which awesomely means that this is fully compatible with Armored Blade. Yes, you can now have a character that, as a full round action, can create armor, a shield, and a sword from nothing.

[Psyren]

I can't believe you didn't mention the Gifted Soulknife archetype.

I wrote this guide a couple of months before PsiEx's first release. My plan is to wait until PsiEx is complete (and preferably, up on the PFSRD) before updating the guide again, as there's a couple more 3.5 guides I felt like doing while it's still (mostly) relevant. The same goes for my general PF Psionics guide.

[eggs]

Deadly Fist - you don't get a soulknife: instead, you get to imbue your fists with psionic punchiness. Enhancement progression still applies to your fists, too. You trade your bonus first level feat for IUS, but you also get the Flurry of Fists blade skill for free.Silly Atavist Soulfist builds aren't constrained to 3.5? I seriously loved those.

[Rblock]

Hey, I'm thinking of creating a two weapon fighting Soulknife in pathfinder myself. It'd be to replace a Divine Hunter (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/classes/core-classes/paladin/archetypes/paizo---paladin-archetypes/divine-hunter) I was playing. We're lacking a melee style class (It's a two person campaign) and the whole paladin thing didn't really work out for me flavor wise.

The GM doesn't have any of the expanded books, so I'd be using just Psionics Unleashed, none of the other archetypes would be available to me.

I'd be starting second level, so this is the build I'd have planned


Human Soulknife
1st Two Weapon Fighting (Soulknife bonus feat)
1st Double Slice (Human bonus feat)
1st Dodge (1st Level Feat)
2nd Alter Blade (1st Blade skill)
3rd Psionic Dodge (3rd Level Feat)
4th Full Enhancement (2nd blade skill)
5th Weapon Focus (Mind Blade) (5th level feat)
6th Duel Imbue (3rd Blade Skill)
7th Improved Two weapon Fighting (7th level feat)
8th Combat Slide (4th Blade Skill)


More or less this campaign would go on as far as it could. I'm unsure of my stats but there would be ways I'd be able to get them high enough for feats (Flaws system), so I'm not too worried about that in particular. Are there any suggestions or does this seem sound? Also; are there any feats that allow you to take an extra blade skill? Ala Extra Arcana feat for the Magus. At like 5th level for an example I'd rather take something like that so I could get Combat Slide earlier.

[Hylas]

...I'd be starting second level, so this is the build I'd have planned...

(I'm assuming 8th level for the following) I would use Twin Strike because then you can imbue both weapons and attack with each of them once as a full-round action. You start the fight with both weapons imbued. With twin strike you can charge and attack with both for 1d6+1d6 elemental+3d8+STR. Without twin strike you only attack once. During the fight you can imbue both weapons as a move action for +2d8 and attack with both as a standard. Or you could do a full attack action and deal 1d6+1d6 at -5 BAB twice. I'd take the easier 2d8 over the harder 2d6 personally. Twin strike might lose out if you have a boatload of STR and DEX.

[Rblock]

Would it be worth it to pick up Twin Strike Earlier? I went for Alter Blade for the versatility (+ the ability to use 1d8 + 1d6 for damage) but it seems like Twin Strike would be more efficient in that case. Getting Alter blade seems like it can wait for awhile, if anything.

Edit:


Human Soulknife
1st Two Weapon Fighting (Soulknife bonus feat)
1st Double Slice (Human bonus feat)
1st Dodge (1st Level Feat)
2nd Twin Strike (1st Blade skill)
3rd Psionic Dodge (3rd Level Feat)
4th Full Enhancement (2nd blade skill)
5th Weapon Focus (Mind Blade) (5th level feat)
6th Combat Slide (3rd Blade Skill)
7th Improved Two weapon Fighting (7th level feat)
8th Duel Imbue (4th Blade Skill)

Duel Imbue's damage really doesn't help until 7th, but combat slide seems really nice. Is it better to get 1d6+1d8 (Alter Blade) or the extra mobility (Combat Slide)?

[Beowulf DW]

Thanks for the guide. I'm looking for an excuse to use a soulknife right now.

[Hylas]

Duel Imbue's damage really doesn't help until 7th, but combat slide seems really nice. Is it better to get 1d6+1d8 (Alter Blade) or the extra mobility (Combat Slide)?

You have to be 8th level to take Twin Strike.

Having a 1d8 vs 1d6 is 1 damage on average. I'd probably take extra mobility between those two choices, but it's your decision.

[Rblock]

You have to be 8th level to take Twin Strike

:smalleek: Completely forgot that while I edited my post.

Thanks again for the help.

[lockgar]

no update on this?

[GrimoireM]

Unfortunately necessary but relevant necro! Posting a build!

A build I've come up with for throwers is 18 Soulknife/2 Soul Archer. I do use the Gifted Blade archetype (Referencing the DSP forum post here: http://dreamscarredpress.com/dragonfly/ForumsPro/viewtopic/t=1134.html), mainly to get Fold Space later on to qualify for the Dimensional Agility line of feats. The energy blade line of blade skills Dreamscarred Press has posted to the Pathfinder OGC are very nice, allowing you to convert your damage on the fly, while having the added benefit of tacking on an extra ability on one attack you've hit if you expend focus as a swift action. Here's what I have thus far:

Levels | Progression
1|SK 1| Ft: Two-Weapon Fighting(SK), Weapon Finesse
2|SK 2| BSk: Alter Blade
3|SK 3| Ft: Point Blank Shot
4|SK 4| BSk: Mind Daggers
5|SK 5| Ft: Precise Shot
6|SK 6| BSk: Full Enhancement
7|SK 7| Ft: Two-Weapon Fighting, Improved
8|SK 8| BSk: Twin Strike
9|SK 9| Ft: Psionic Meditation
10|SK10| BSk: Ice Blade
11|SK11| Ft: Two Weapon Fighting, Greater
12|SK12| BSk: Enhanced Range
13|SK13| Ft: Improved Precise Shot
14|SK14| BSk: Multiple Throw
15|SK15| Ft: Dimensional Agility
16|SA 1| RBSk: Thousand Blades
17|SA 2| Ft: Dimensional Assault, Clustered Shots (SK)
18|SK16| BSk: Thunder Blade
19|SK17| Ft: Dimensional Dervish
20|SK18| BSk: Mental Power: Slip the Bonds

Skills: Rank up Autohypnosis, Stealth, Perception, and Acrobatics every level. If Int modifier permits, Use Magic Device and Survival are the next best things to pump.

Rank| Powers Known
1 | Chameleon
2 | Hustle
3 | Vampiric Blade
4 | Fold Space, Slip the Bonds

Alternative Options include skipping Weapon Finesse and grabbing the Focused Offense blade skill. This would allow earlier access to Improved Precise Shot, but is ultimately more MAD, due to the heavier dex requirements of the feats. If you want the extra PP from pumping WIS, it's a solid option. Remove Enhanced Range or Mental Power for it.

Another nice feat to grab, if you could, would be Returning Throw; it allows you to make iterative attacks with your mind blade if you could enhance them with the returning or teleporting weapon properties. I don't believe you can, unless DSP has given soul knives the enhancement in something they have yet to release to the OGC. For other throwing builds it's very solid to avoid breaking the bank.

If any other builds come to mind I'll post some, a whip based tripper (Pyrokinetic optional), switch hitter, and Monk without Monk levels all seem doable out of the box. Experiment away!

[Onixknight]

Hey Psyren, I have a question for ya,
So Im playing a Deadly Fist Archetype for the soulknife, (where your unarmed attacks are enhanced by your mindblade, kinda like a monk variant for the soulknife, you even get Improved Unarmed attack at lv.1) and I was wondering, can you take this blade skill and essencially get a +2 ac bonus with no drawback of actually having a sheild?

Mind Shield - This has been errata'ed;You get a +2 shield bonus to AC as long as you have a hand free. This is now useless for anyone not using the 1H shape; although you could simply use the 2H shape and take a hand off it at the end of your turn for an AC boost? Anyway, sword and board is bad, and therefore so is this. (Worse in fact, since you can't put any helpful buffs on your "shield.")

Also, this is my build so far, if anyone would like to give some pointers that would be great too!
1st level feat- Combat expertise
2nd level Blade skill- Focused Offense
3rd level feat- Up the Walls
4th level Blade skill- Focused Defense
5th level feat- Combat reflexes
6th level Blade skill Deadly Psysic strike

And thats all I've got so far, some help building the rest would be much appreaited! I kinda wanna go for a tanky type that can still dish out some respectable dmg. ^_^

[Scizor]

Focused Offence
As long as the soulknife maintains psionic focus, she adds her Wisdom modifier to her attack and damage rolls instead of her Strength modifier.
(Emphasis mine)
Does Focused Offence Count for Soulbolts too? (The archetype with ranged minblades). Because by my reading, the Soulbolt uses ranged attack rolls, thus making use of Dexterity, not Strength. I cannot find anything on the SRD that says what this means for Soulbolts.
I'm asking because I'm going for the Soul Archer PrC, which adds your Wis to damage with it's mind arrows (not the same as mindbolt). Having a bit more SADness would be nice.

[Maquise]

What would you say the most important mental attribute for this class would be?

[Pime Taradox]

If you're a Gifted Blade, you want Wis as main mental stat(as it is tied to Manifesting/PP).

If you aren't a Gifted Blade, I'd say you can pick between Intelligence(more skillpoints) or Wisdom(better Will saves), with little reason(qualifying for Eldritch Heritage or Unlocked Talent) to choose Charisma.

[Feint's End]

Great to see you took up editing again. Gonna roll a Soulknife up for an upcoming game soon so this guide was a great help so far.

By the way. Along the way I came across some pretty decent combinations ... I am pretty sure you are aware of them but I'm just gonna write them down for completeness reasons.
One Level Monk + Focused Defense + Focused Offense makes for a pretty decent melee build (double wis to ac if you use combat expertise) but it really gets stupid if you mix in Tashalatora (if your dm allows 3.5 of course) -> one level monk and 19 levels Soulknife get you the unarmed damage of a level 20 monk ... now add all the soulknife goodies and 1d6 extra damage on top of that. Use an Amulett of Natural Attacks +5 if you want the +5 bonus on top of your normal Soulknife enhancements ... or just stack other boni on it for +19 unarmed attacks pre epic.

Gets even more stupid if you can use the Shiba Protector for another wis to hit and damage.
If you go this route I'd also take Gifted Blade for Inertial Armor and Expansion (alongside the great wisdom synergy).

[Hunter Noventa]

An excellent guide, I wish it had been around when I played my Gestalt PF Soulknife/Swordsage. that and all the extra blade skills, I'll have to look into playing one again sometime.

[Jon Read]

I just realized that soulbolt could possibly be used to replicate spiderman through use of Emulate Ranged Weapon(Lasso) and duel wielding. Lasso also sets a precedent for the grappling hook to include rope as part of it, making it another possible weapon choice for utility.

I am also contemplating making a soulknife who has Emulate Weapon(Garrote).

[Psyren]

Great to see you took up editing again. Gonna roll a Soulknife up for an upcoming game soon so this guide was a great help so far.

By the way. Along the way I came across some pretty decent combinations ... I am pretty sure you are aware of them but I'm just gonna write them down for completeness reasons.
One Level Monk + Focused Defense + Focused Offense makes for a pretty decent melee build (double wis to ac if you use combat expertise) but it really gets stupid if you mix in Tashalatora (if your dm allows 3.5 of course) -> one level monk and 19 levels Soulknife get you the unarmed damage of a level 20 monk ... now add all the soulknife goodies and 1d6 extra damage on top of that. Use an Amulett of Natural Attacks +5 if you want the +5 bonus on top of your normal Soulknife enhancements ... or just stack other boni on it for +19 unarmed attacks pre epic.

Gets even more stupid if you can use the Shiba Protector for another wis to hit and damage.
If you go this route I'd also take Gifted Blade for Inertial Armor and Expansion (alongside the great wisdom synergy).

Thank you :smallsmile: yes I've been neglecting this one too long. Though the Occultist is starting to draw my attention away from psionics for a bit...

Shiba Protector and Tashalatora were immediate thoughts for me as well, but given the amount of content PsiEx added for the Soulknife I'm going to focus on PF-only material for now. I may drop some 3.5 suggestions in the last reserved post or something.

Gifted Blade + Deadly Fist + Monk Dip + FO/FD is one of the most Wis-SAD builds I can think of in PF right now.


An excellent guide, I wish it had been around when I played my Gestalt PF Soulknife/Swordsage. that and all the extra blade skills, I'll have to look into playing one again sometime.

I appreciate your appreciation :smallbiggrin:
Note that the ratings (particularly for the bladeskills) are up for debate. And I've revised a few of them as I reconsidered, so I'm definitely open to feedback there.


I just realized that soulbolt could possibly be used to replicate spiderman through use of Emulate Ranged Weapon(Lasso) and duel wielding. Lasso also sets a precedent for the grappling hook to include rope as part of it, making it another possible weapon choice for utility.

I am also contemplating making a soulknife who has Emulate Weapon(Garrote).

Emulate Garrote on a Cutthroat could get pretty nasty indeed, especially with an Assassin dip. It would be mean on a Dex-SAD Nimble Blade as well.

The Lasso was an amusing thought I had as well. In fact, it could be interesting to Emulate a utility form (e.g. a lasso, net, or battle ladder) and also keep your regular blade form or mind daggers to fight with.

[Feint's End]

I have a few questions/problems. There are some parts in your guide I do not agree with your interpretations or your writting of the class. First I have to say that I just have access to the online SRD of Pathfinder so if the wording is different in the books forgive me.

First is Quick Draw: I can't see why the PF Soulknife gets the feat instead of just the ability to create the mindblade as a free action. The name of the Classfeature is Quick Draw but it states nowhere the Knife gets the feat.

Second is about resting/reshaping: You mention a few times that you can just take the 8 hours of resting to reshape (referring to readjusting the enhancement boni here) your mindblade but it explicitely states these 8 hours can't be the same 8 hours to readjust your mindblade. So you had to rest 8 hours and readjust it another 8 totalling in 16.

You should mention the size increase dilemma for Reaching Blade. I feel it was badely worded because what happens if you increase your reach and use expansion then? Then your range would be 20ft since it doubles but if you use expansion first and then reaching blade your range would just be 15ft. I'm not sure that was intended or not.

Combat Slide is problematic for me because by RAW you can't do a 5 ft step and then use your Combat Slide but you can use your Combat Slide first and then your regular one (though even that might be wrong if you take the one 5 ft step rule literally)

Bladestorm is great with expansion to huge and reaching blade (if you use the favourable ruling) .... effectively turning you into a living Fireball (without the annoying save/SR thingy) and without the way worse Bladestorm Blade Skill.

That's everything I could think of now but if I find something else I'll let you know.

edit: If you haven't though about it yet add the following tip to the Gifted Blade Archetype

Feats: Spend your 3rd Levelfeat on Psicrystal Affinity (take Nimble for flavour and power in one package) and Share Pain via Expanded Knowledge at Level 11. Typcial Tanktrick for Psions it's now also availabe to the Soulknife.

[Jon Read]

Emulate Garrote on a Cutthroat could get pretty nasty indeed, especially with an Assassin dip. It would be mean on a Dex-SAD Nimble Blade as well.


It sadly does not apply sneak attack damage, making such a build quite a bit tougher.

[Deanthelis]

I must say, I am absolutely glad you've gone back to work on this thread. It's concise, to-the-point, and very thorough in the areas that are complete. It neither shows significant bias toward a particular playstyle or build, nor does it sugar-coat the things that are outright terrible (Firestorm, I'm looking at you!). Overall, 8/10 - the only things I find to be missing are, well, the parts that simply aren't there.

However, two posts above me are some very valid points - especially the Quick Draw one, which appears to me that you may perhaps have seen it on the class' table of features and made the very reasonable assumption that it would be the Quick Draw feat - after all, PF has, from what I and others can tell, fewer oversights in its material in terms of identically-named features and reprints than 3.5 did (Improved Natural Attack, for example, is found in five different books), so there would be no logical reason to bother reading it.

TL;DR, Good Job!

[Psyren]

Yeah my bad on Quick Draw. Updated.

[DethBySquirl]

It occurs to me that that if you shift the Soulknifes WBL advantage back into offensive ability, a Deadly Fist is potentially capable of some really high damage output, because of the number of ways to increase the damage of unarmed attacks.

At level 12, a Deadly Fist has basically free +5 fists, worth 50,000 gp. If you were to take that gold saved on buying a weapon and reinvest it into a +3 Amulet of Mighty Fists, +1 Crystal Gauntlets, and armor with the Brawling property, you could essentially be wielding +11 fists. If you put all of the enhancement bonus into special abilities, a friendly caster at level 12 can imbue your fists with Greater Magic Fang, netting a +3 bonus at CL 12.

So at normal WBL and with the aid of a friendly druid, you've got effective +5 fists with +9 worth of weapon enhancements. By this level, you'd also have Greater Flurry of Fists, giving you 6 attacks with a staggering amount of enhancements behind them, not even counting Psychic Strike damage.

Useful enhancements for your fists are things like Linked Striking, which is essentially an adaptable Bane property, Collision for extra raw damage, and Impact which, when combined with a Monks robe, would increase the unarmed strike damage dice to 2d6.

Improved Unarmed Strike also opens up style feats, notably things like Dragon Style, giving you 1.5 times your Strength bonus on your unarmed attacks, with a 2x Strength bonus on your first attack of the round.

[Fax Celestis]

Rereading this again.

Doesn't Enhanced Range apply to your Mind Daggers? If you're going to go with a thrower Soulknife, it's a very good choice.

Also a slight argument on Firestorm: I think it's a good choice for grappler soulknives, which is a thing that can be done (considering you can use your soulknife in a grapple).

[Psyren]

Doesn't Enhanced Range apply to your Mind Daggers? If you're going to go with a thrower Soulknife, it's a very good choice.

It certainly can, but I guess my thought process was - do you really need 60' increments? In most combats you're only saving yourself -2 to attack at most. It's not actually bad, but if I have Mind Daggers already there are more important bladeskills to grab first.



Also a slight argument on Firestorm: I think it's a good choice for grappler soulknives, which is a thing that can be done (considering you can use your soulknife in a grapple).

Well... grappling is hard enough in PF and the Soulknife (even the Deadly Fist) gets very little to support that tactic. And even if you optimize it, I'd say Freezing Ice is still better so that you can lock them in place, plus less monsters are cold resistant/immune. (e.g. just about every fiend has some kind of fire mitigation.) The damage doesn't scale either.

[Fax Celestis]

It certainly can, but I guess my thought process was - do you really need 60' increments? In most combats you're only saving yourself -2 to attack at most. It's not actually bad, but if I have Mind Daggers already there are more important bladeskills to grab first.

Sure, but you can also take Ricochet and other things (mostly PsiEx) to get some truly ludicrous ranges going.

[StreamOfTheSky]

So, I have two questions...

If you use a 2H mind blade and Focused Offense (replace str with wis for attack and damage), you WOULD get 1.5x wis to damage, yes? Since unlike Agile and Guided weapon properties, there's no text saying you're capped at 1x...

I assume Emulate Melee Weapon lets you mimic *all* properties of a melee weapon? Including being able to attack at reach, having the blocking property, crit range, etc...?

[Psyren]

So, I have two questions...

If you use a 2H mind blade and Focused Offense (replace str with wis for attack and damage), you WOULD get 1.5x wis to damage, yes? Since unlike Agile and Guided weapon properties, there's no text saying you're capped at 1x...

I assume Emulate Melee Weapon lets you mimic *all* properties of a melee weapon? Including being able to attack at reach, having the blocking property, crit range, etc...?

1) Yes. Basically you take all instances of [Str] in an attack or damage context and replace it with [Wis]. This is the wording I wanted ErrantX to go with for his Dex feat in Path of War.

2) Also yes; "functions in all ways as the chosen weapon" is pretty unambiguous :smallsmile: This includes special uses, such as a Mind-Garrote being usable to strangle or a Mind Sap doing nonlethal.

[Greenish]

2) Also yes; "functions in all ways as the chosen weapon" is pretty unambiguous :smallsmile: This includes special uses, such as a Mind-Garrote being usable to strangle or a Mind Sap doing nonlethal.…Mind Wooden Stake to kill vampires? :smalltongue:

[Psyren]

…Mind Wooden Stake to kill vampires? :smalltongue:

Don't you have to leave it in there? Mind Blades vanish after a round if you let go of them.

[Dusk Eclipse]

IIRC you have to stake them and then cut their heads, so you could keep your mind blade inside the Vampire's chest while your party cut it's head off.

[Person_Man]

Also a slight argument on Firestorm: I think it's a good choice for grappler soulknives, which is a thing that can be done (considering you can use your soulknife in a grapple).

Please correct me if I'm wrong, because my PF optimization is not great. But my reading of the Pathfinder Grapple rules is that they are terrible, and that making a Grapple build is a trap choice.

My understanding is that making a Grapple check is a Standard Action (unlike 3.5, where the Rules Compendium clarified that it's an attack action, and the Scorpion's Grasp Feat exists), and that once Grappled, you could only make 1 attack per round (or Pin, or Tie Up your enemy). Improved Unarmed Strike->Improved Grapple->Greater Grapple->Rapid Grappler (plus base attack bonus +9 or monk level 9th) can give you up to three Grapple checks per round by consuming all of your actions. But that's not particularly optimal when compared to most other actions.

I assumed I missed something?

[Psyren]

Oh sorry, it vanishes even faster than that apparently:


The moment she relinquishes her grip on her blade, it dissipates...

Since staking is a full-round action in PF, you won't have time to also decapitate it. Though it's possible someone else in the party could with a readied action or something if they move quickly enough.

[Psyren]

Please correct me if I'm wrong, because my PF optimization is not great. But my reading of the Pathfinder Grapple rules is that they are terrible, and that making a Grapple build is a trap choice.

My understanding is that making a Grapple check is a Standard Action (unlike 3.5, where the Rules Compendium clarified that it's an attack action, and the Scorpion's Grasp Feat exists), and that once Grappled, you could only make 1 attack per round (or Pin, or Tie Up your enemy). Improved Unarmed Strike->Improved Grapple->Greater Grapple->Rapid Grappler (plus base attack bonus +9 or monk level 9th) can give you up to three Grapple checks per round by consuming all of your actions. But that's not particularly optimal when compared to most other actions.

I assumed I missed something?

Your calculations are correct (skip to the "Grapple Rules" bit below if you want the breakdown), save for one instance - if the soulknife forms a weapon with the Grapple property (e.g. Mancatcher or Kusarigama) they can actually initiate the grapple as a free action on a crit. This lets you (full) attack and initiate a grapple all in one round, should one of the attacks crit. In addition, because you're using the weapon to perform the maneuver, the weapon's enhancement bonus will count towards the CMB check - which is very good news for a Soulknife.

Anyway, I wouldn't call grappling unoptimal per se; grappled is a really bad condition to be afflicted with (it effectively removes the enemy from the combat), and the more damage you can inflict to your target the faster you can get them out of the picture and move on to another. The problem is that Soulknives are not the best class to be trying for a grapple unless they shape their blade into a weapon that has the grapple property, and even then they have to crit-fish to make proper use of it. CMD rises so quickly in PF that feats and stats aren't enough to be good at a maneuver; you definitely need class abilities to help too, and the Soulknife's abilities all center around its blade (Gifted Blade aside).

With Gifted Blade however it's another story - you get great powers like Expansion and Grip of Iron to make you capable of grappling the Tarrasque. And again, if you combine these with a grapple blade form, you get all your enhancement bonuses to the CMB roll as well. (Be careful though, because the bonuses on your weapon and the bonuses from Grip of Iron are the same type, i.e. enhancement, so don't use the latter if you're using your weapon to perform the grapple.)

Anyway. Firestorm is incidental to all of that - and still sucks regardless because using it requires expending your focus and has piddly non-scaling damage - so you end up doing less damage than simply spending your actions to make the grapple checks and shank/clobber your opponent with the blade normally.


Grapple Rules

You are correct about Rapid Grappler - it lets you get up to 3 grapple checks per round while maintaining a grapple. Note however that if the first two fail you won't get the third one (the swift) at all.

Here are the normal grapple rules (ignoring the AoO/adjacent stuff):

1) Baseline: Initiating the grapple is a standard. Then each subsequent round as a standard, you roll another check (with a +5 bonus) to maintain the grapple, and if you succeed, as part of that action you get a free choice from the following list: Move, Damage, Pin, Tie-Up.

2) With Improved Grapple: Bonus to maintain increases by 2 (to +7.)

3) With Greater Grapple: Bonus to maintain increases by 2 more (to +9.) You can now maintain as a move, and get up to 2 maintain checks per round. You only need to succeed on one to maintain, and each success grants you an additional choice from the list above.

4) With Rapid Grappler: You still get two attempts to maintain, and if either one succeeds, you also get a third one by spending your swift. All three can be used to deal damage, or you can move someone, pin them and then damage them etc.

[StreamOfTheSky]

The grapple property is too random to base a build around, ESPECIALLY since every weapon that has it quite conspicuously has a threat range of...20.

Grapple is horrible in PF. It can be good if you have natural attacks with the Grab property, as then they're just free attempts during your normal damage routine. Even then, I don't think it's worth the action cost to maintain the grapples in following rounds, but just having the enemy grappled on his own turn is somewhat handy, so you could do a "catch and release" deal where you:

1. After hitting and doing damage, use Grab to establish a hold
2. Let them struggle to get out on their turn or eat the penalties and restricted movement
3. Opt not to maintain at the start of your turn and let them go
4. Attack normally again and establish a new hold via grab
5. Rinse, Repeat

That way you're inflicting grapple on them but not sacrificing one bit of your own offense to do so. You won't get to pin them, but...oh well. Main bennies of grappling are restricting movement and forcing obscenely high (and there's no difference in DC for pin vs. normal grapple) concentration checks on casters, anyway.

You can make a grappling eidolon using nothing but pincers (be bipedal and replace the claws; having all the same kind of weapon means they become primary weapons) and do pretty well with these tactics.

[Psyren]

I think it's more useful than you let on. For example, actually rolling to maintain the grapple does still let you damage the target, and against a high AC target this can be useful since you get that free +7 (up to +11 with the grapple feat chain) to "hit" on every attack. What's more, with Rapid Grapple you get three of these checks, and unlike iteratives your "to-hit" doesn't drop, so you end up rolling 3 "attacks" per round all at your max CMB +11. And of course, you can turn one of these into a pin or move the target instead of doing damage too.

What's more, that brief window in your strategy where you let them go does allow for an immediate action, like a spell (if the target is a spellcaster) that can ruin your plans. By keeping the grapple going, you can really mess up their attempts to cast their way out as the concentration check is pretty steep.

And again, a Gifted Blade makes a pretty good grappler even without a grapple weapon.

[StreamOfTheSky]

I think it's more useful than you let on. For example, actually rolling to maintain the grapple does still let you damage the target, and against a high AC target this can be useful since you get that free +7 (up to +11 with the grapple feat chain) to "hit" on every attack. What's more, with Rapid Grapple you get three of these checks, and unlike iteratives your "to-hit" doesn't drop, so you end up rolling 3 "attacks" per round all at your max CMB +11. And of course, you can turn one of these into a pin or move the target instead of doing damage too.

What's more, that brief window in your strategy where you let them go does allow for an immediate action, like a spell (if the target is a spellcaster) that can ruin your plans. By keeping the grapple going, you can really mess up their attempts to cast their way out as the concentration check is pretty steep.

And again, a Gifted Blade makes a pretty good grappler even without a grapple weapon.

For a lot of natural attackers, and *especially* eidolons, by the time they have Rapid Grappler, they have significantly more than 3 attacks they're giving up if they opt to maintain the grapple.

And in PF, unlike 3E, you either do something with the grapple OR do damage. In 3E, each successful grapple let you move the grapple, go for a pin, etc... *and* do damage. In PF, you get either-or. And your chances of success CMB vs. CMD are seldom going to be better than your odds of hitting vs. AC, too.

I will agree against a caster, it's probably better to forget about max dps and just maintain the hold.

[Psyren]

For a lot of natural attackers, and *especially* eidolons, by the time they have Rapid Grappler, they have significantly more than 3 attacks they're giving up if they opt to maintain the grapple.

True, but I wasn't talking about eidolons or natural attackers though (Soulknives are neither.)



And in PF, unlike 3E, you either do something with the grapple OR do damage. In 3E, each successful grapple let you move the grapple, go for a pin, etc... *and* do damage. In PF, you get either-or.

True again, but once you pin them or move them where you want them you can maintain and do damage them every round until they're done, all the while keeping them out of the fight.

I agree that CMD can be rough to overcome, which is why I advised that a regular soulknife not attempt this strategy. But a Str-focused Gifted Blade has a pretty decent shot at being a good grappler, even in PF. A Psywar is obviously better (especially with the right paths) of course.

[StreamOfTheSky]

A Gifted Blade needs Wis to make up for horrible base PP, though. Making him also strength-based introduces a fair amount of MAD to the build. If focused offense replaces strength on CMB (they are melee attacks, after all...) I could see it being decent.

[Psyren]

Good news everyone! Ultimate Psionics has been released for those who preordered. Expect big changes to the guide, especially now that the Occultist isn't consuming my free time :smallsmile:

Also, have some UPsi artwork:

http://i1135.photobucket.com/albums/m633/PsyrenY/PF-UP_Page_355_Image_0002.jpg

Go buy this book if you haven't already!


A Gifted Blade needs Wis to make up for horrible base PP, though. Making him also strength-based introduces a fair amount of MAD to the build. If focused offense replaces strength on CMB (they are melee attacks, after all...) I could see it being decent.

Sorry i didn't see this. It will replace Str on CMB checks that use the blade (e.g. Sunder and Disarm, but not Steal.)

[Tempestfury]

Wonder how long it'll take to be fully updated...

But besides that. I have an important question here.

Does Gifted Blade work well with TWFing Blade? I remember it being mentioned that TWF's power is the double-physic strike power.

[Eldaran]

Also, have some UPsi artwork:


I opened this thread hoping you'd be covering the Dark Tempest, and I see you're ahead of me. I really like that PRC, and it has the best artwork in the book.

[Tempestfury]

Dark Tempest? Sounds fun...

[Psyren]

Yes, I'm updating this and my Vitalist handbook during my free time.



Does Gifted Blade work well with TWFing Blade? I remember it being mentioned that TWF's power is the double-physic strike power.[/COLOR]

To be perfectly clear, Gifted Blade is always going to be more powerful (i.e. +1 tier) than Psychic Strike. The question is simply whether you prefer being a pseudo-psywar/tracking a daily resource like PP or not; some folks roll a class like Soulknife specifically to get away from things like that. T4 is still quite playable, just narrower in scope.

Note also that there are some fun bladeskills that require you to have psychic strike (e.g. Absorbing Blade and Fluid Form), and dropping it for GB will cause you to miss out on those.

[Greenish]

http://i1135.photobucket.com/albums/m633/PsyrenY/PF-UP_Page_355_Image_0002.jpgHey, it's the cover… person! Is it a robot/golem/warforged?

[Dusk Eclipse]

He seems to have humanoid hands, so I'm guessing (s)he is wearing a crystal mask (or however they are called in PF)

[Tempestfury]

To be perfectly clear, Gifted Blade is always going to be more powerful (i.e. +1 tier) than Psychic Strike. The question is simply whether you prefer being a pseudo-psywar/tracking a daily resource like PP or not; some folks roll a class like Soulknife specifically to get away from things like that. T4 is still quite playable, just narrower in scope.

Note also that there are some fun bladeskills that require you to have psychic strike (e.g. Absorbing Blade and Fluid Form), and dropping it for GB will cause you to miss out on those.

Hmmm... yeah, I do lose the bladeskills, but I think GB will by far be worth it.

Not to mention I'm pretty sure GB does much better as a Keyblade wielder than the normal soulknife... Keyblade wielders do cast spells, GB makes more sense to me.

[Sydonis]

I literally just discovered Pathfinder and all its amazingness, and am so glad to see that the creators altered the Soulknife to have so much versatility.

Anyway, your guide is indepth and excellent, and the mention was a pleasant surprise :smallsmile:

[Tempestfury]

Pathfinder really has improved a lot, haven't they?

[Dusk Eclipse]

I literally just discovered Pathfinder and all its amazingness, and am so glad to see that the creators altered the Soulknife to have so much versatility.

Anyway, your guide is indepth and excellent, and the mention was a pleasant surprise :smallsmile:

For what it's worth, the PF-Soulknife (and the core psionic stuff) wasn't updated by Paizo, but by Dresmscarred Press. And yes they did an stellar job with the Soulknife.


Pathfinder really has improved a lot, haven't they?

Is there a particular reason you choose to use blue text? I know not everyone use it, but a lot of people in this forum (including me) use blue text to convey sarcasm, so it might throw on some people at first.

[Tempestfury]

Is there a particular reason you choose to use blue text? I know not everyone use it, but a lot of people in this forum (including me) use blue text to convey sarcasm, so it might throw on some people at first.

Its a habit of mine.

[Dusk Eclipse]

Fair enough, but be prepared to have some people consider your post as sarcasm and thus react to that.

[MeeposFire]

Pathfinder really has improved a lot, haven't they?

Well actually this was not made by the guys who made Pathfinder. This was made by another company using the variant rules that are used for Pathfinder. The company that made this class is in my opinion overall better than Paizo but that would certainly be debated by others.

The important bit is that if you think this is an example of Pathfinder is improving then you need to reevaluate because these are made by an outside party.

[Tempestfury]

Details, details.

The and Paizo have both done well upgrading 3.5 to Pathfinder. This is how I would exemplify the psychic upgrades, but for Paizo's stuff, I'll point to the sorcerer's.

[Psyren]

The important bit is that if you think this is an example of Pathfinder is improving then you need to reevaluate because these are made by an outside party.

While it's true that Paizo wasn't involved with making anything in the DSP books, they did make several changes to the system that were beneficial to the DSP crew. For instance, by powering up the racial baseline for PF compared to 3.5, they gave DSP a lot more design space with which to finally fix the psionic races. (Poor Dromites and Blues.) Eliminating XP costs also forced DSP to rebalance those psionic powers that previously had them in very inventive ways.

The Soulknife in particular benefited from PF in two key ways - enhancements overcoming DR, and weapons being used to perform maneuvers (e.g. trip, disarm, reposition and sunder) getting to add the weapon's enhancement to the check. A Soulknife can be one of the best trippers in the game, particularly a Strengthknife or Wisknife.

[Tempestfury]

Well said, well said indeed.

As it is, you'll say on here when you've upgraded the guide with the new materiel from complete Psionic, right?

[Person_Man]

The Soulknife in particular benefited from PF in two key ways - enhancements overcoming DR, and weapons being used to perform maneuvers (e.g. trip, disarm, reposition and sunder) getting to add the weapon's enhancement to the check. A Soulknife can be one of the best trippers in the game, particularly a Strengthknife or Wisknife.

Agreed. For non-PF players who might be reading this, it's also worth reiterating that Size bonuses are only +1 per category in PF, and not +4 per category as they are in 3.5. And bonuses in general are far smaller and more granular in PF. So you can't just use augmented Expansion and call it a day. In this context, a strait +5 weapon enhancement bonus is actually a pretty big thing in PF.



Its a habit of mine.

Just to second what Dusk Eclipse noted, whenever I read blue text that isn't a bolded heading in a Handbook, I read it as sarcasm. So I thought you were trying to make a joke or insult people in all of your previous posts until you responded to Dusk Eclispe's question. And even now that I know that wasn't your intent, I'm having a hard time reading your comments without "hearing" a sarcastic tone of voice in my head. In particular, when you said "Pathfinder really has improved a lot, haven't they?" I honestly still can't tell if you're being facetious or not.

Not that my opinion should matter to you or anyone. Just thought you might want to know that posting in color may make it difficult for some people to read your posts.

[Tempestfury]

Bit of a bump, but when this is updated, as you going to include a Metaforge build?

As, Aegis with Soulknife is a powerful combination... a guy I'm playing with is Aegis 2/Soulknife 1, and is doing 3d6+15 damage with his two-handed sword.

That is a LOT of damage at 3rd level.

[Bom Ferro]

Thanks to the multiclassing feats from Psionics Augmented, Metaforge became alot better.


Sample build:

Soulknife 5/Aegis5/Metaforge 10

Add "Student of the Astral Suit"(+4 Aegis level for Customization points and Customization choices, up to HD) and "Fighter's Blade"(+4 Soulknife levels for enhanced mind blade and bladeskill choices)

And you have the mindblade of a 19th level SK and the Customizations of a 19th level Aegis.

[Tempestfury]

Well, you do lose a lot of Bladeskills... but you only lose 1 customization point compared to a 20 Aegis and no enchantment loss from Soulknife.

[fendrin]

FYI, the cutthroat does not, sadly, get full sneak attack:


A cutthroat of 3rd level gains the sneak attack ability as a rogue of half his soulknife level (rounded down) as long as he is maintaining psionic focus. (emphasis added)

So it is:


SK LvlEquiv. Rog LvlSA Dam (avg)PS Dam Lost (avg)
311d6 (3.5)1d8 (4.5)
63 2d6 (7)1d8 (4.5)
732d6 (7) 2d8 (9)
1053d6 (10.5) 2d8 (9)
1153d6 (10.5) 3d8 (13.5)
1474d6 (14) 3d8 (13.5)
1574d6 (14) 4d8 (18)
1895d6 (17.5) 4d8 (18)
1995d6 (17.5) 5d8 (22.5)

The per-hit damage favors Psychic Strike, but when you consider that it is much easier to get multiple sneak attacks per round than PS per round, SA is still higher damage.

[Melil13]

I am trying to decide what i want to do with my SK

How does Enchants work when you are using two mind blade?

I have 5 Blade Skill adding to my Enhancment bonus and will be starting a level 20 game.

So then i will make my two mind blades +3 with Linked Striking and Collison.

So (3 +2 +2)*2=14 Correct?

[Ethereal Gears]

Are there any plans on updating this guide to include some info on the currently blank soulbolt? I am curious as to whether a Soulbolt + Gifted Blade archetype combo might be viable and if there're any words of wisdom for me to heed regarding embarking upon such a class concept?

[Tempestfury]

Hopefully the guide will be updated, aling with the newest psychic book.

[Melil13]

Can anyone explain to me how enhancing your blade works for two blades?

Ie at level 12 your max blade is level 3 lowered to 2 for two blades. Now I have 5 enhancement points and they must mirror so

+2 enhancement on both not leaving me enough to do anything with the +1

Mind blade 1 +2
Mind blade 2 +2

1 enhancement unused due to not enough points

Is this correct?

[Feint's End]

Can anyone explain to me how enhancing your blade works for two blades?

Ie at level 12 your max blade is level 3 lowered to 2 for two blades. Now I have 5 enhancement points and they must mirror so

+2 enhancement on both not leaving me enough to do anything with the +1

Mind blade 1 +2
Mind blade 2 +2

1 enhancement unused due to not enough points

Is this correct?

You can split the +5 between both weapons while no weapon can have a higher enhancement bonus than 3 (note that it can still go up to +5 including properties).

For example you could have:
-fire mindblade +1 (overall a +2 weapon)
- mindblade +3 overall a +3 weapn)

Now you could shift the fire to the second weapon without problems making it a +4 weapon (still only has an enhancement of +3 which is the limit .... don't forget).


Note 2 things though:
-at that level you should have either the full enhancement blade skill or the mind daggers bladeskill so BOTH weapons enjoy the full bonus (meaning both can have a bonus of +5 each)

-at level 12 you should pick the improved enhancement bladeskill so your overall bonus per weapon increases by 1 (which can also be used to increase the enhancement bonus though the maximum enhancement bonus can not go higher than 5)

If you have both bladeskill you will have:
2 weapons with +6 each (of which a maximum of 4 can be enhancement bonus and the other points can be spent to add properties to the weapons)

For example you could have the following setup:
Weapon 1: corrosive (+1 property) fire (+1 property) collision (+2 property) mindblade +2 (enh.) .... overall summing up to a +6 weapon
Weapon 2: holy (+2 property) mindblade (+4 enhancement .... which is the maximum at that level) .... overall also summing up to +6



Hope that helped. If you need more explanations feel free to ask more

Edit: I was wrong on the first part .... but it shouldn't be relevant with the improved enhancement and full enhancement bladeskills

[Slithery D]

Can anyone explain to me how enhancing your blade works for two blades?

Ie at level 12 your max blade is level 3 lowered to 2 for two blades. Now I have 5 enhancement points and they must mirror so

+2 enhancement on both not leaving me enough to do anything with the +1

Mind blade 1 +2
Mind blade 2 +2

1 enhancement unused due to not enough points

Is this correct?

At level 12 your single blade form can have a total of 5 points of enhancement, but with a max Enhancement Bonus of +3. So you can have a +3 blade with another two points of special weapon abilities (e.g. keen) or you can have a +1 blade with four points of special weapon abilities.

Unless you have the blade skill that eliminates it, splitting your blade into two reduces your Enhancement Bonus by one on both blades. So you need to set your blade to +2 or +3 enhacement, plus special weapon abilities adding up to 5 total. But when you split it you'll have only a +1 or +2 enhacement, plus the special abilities as normal.

[Melil13]

Ok i am still confused.

+2 to enhancement and then
+2 for linked striking

For a total of 4 enhancement used
And then applying that to both blades


I thought you split the pool between the two blades

Spending +2 on one blade
Then +2 on the other blade

For a total of +4 enhancement bonus used

[Feint's End]

Ok i am still confused.

+2 to enhancement and then
+2 for linked striking

For a total of 4 enhancement used
And then applying that to both blades


I thought you split the pool between the two blades

Spending +2 on one blade
Then +2 on the other blade

For a total of +4 enhancement bonus used

OK it seems like you don't understand the basics so let's start here:

When you look at the soulknife-chart there are 2 separat things to track.
1.)mindblade maximum enhancement bonus (found on the right side): this describes how much of the enhanced mindblade class feature can be spent on the enhancement bonus of your weapon (for each point in enhancement bonus your to hit and dmg when using the weapon increase by 1).
Note that you always have to have at least an enhancement bonus of +1 on your weapon so it can hold other properties

2.)enhanced mindblade: this basically says how "psionic" your mindblade is. This is the sum of points you can overall spend to enhance your mindblade. It is also the sum of enhancement bonus (which is limited by above point) + properties.

you can find the cost for different properties at the chart

Let's take an example:
Let's say we are level 9. We have enhanced mindblade +4 (so the sum of enhancement bonus and properties can not be higher than that) and a maximum enhancement bonus of +3 (meaning we cannot spend more than 3 of the 4 points on the enhancement bonus of the weapon -> we have to spend at least one point in properties)

Possible combinations (depending on how you split the properties and enhancement bonus:
Mindblade +3 / +1 property
Mindblade +2 / +1 property / +1 property
Mindblade +2 / +2 property
Mindblade +1 / +2 property / +1 property
Mindblade +1 / +3 property
Mindblade +1 / +1 property / +1 property / +1 property

This is how the class essentially work. Not let's assume you split your mindblade into more than one weapon. Let's look under enhanced mindblade and ... "If shaped into more than one item then decrease the overall enhancement bonus by 1; both weapons have to have the same enhancements and properties" (shortened by me)

Ok so let's look at the example from before. While the maximum enhancement stays at +3 your enhanced mindblade classfeature is reduced to +3 too (before it was 4 - 1 from shaping more than one mindblade).

Now your options are somewhat weaker compared to before:
2x (mindblade +3)
2x (mindblade +2 / +1 property)
2x (mindblade +1 / +2 property)
2× (mindblade +1 / +1 property /+1 property)

Hope that clears things up.
HOWEVER you can avoid the lower enhanced mindblade feature in one of 2 ways:

1. Take the "Full Enhancement" bladeskill. Basically you don't get a penalty anymore when shaping your mindblade into more than one weapon.
For example if you wield a two handed mindblade (mindblade +3 / +1 property) and you change to two weapons they will both also be (mindblade +3 / +1 property)

2. Take the "Mind Daggers" bladeskill. Mind Daggers are also two weapons but deal slightly less damage for higher throw range. Also you can swap between those and your other mindblade forms (like onehanded) as a free action even during a full attack (exception is the two.handed mindblade which still takes longer).
The real draw is that both daggers have the configuration of your regular mindblade meaning that they also do not suffer from the -1 reduction.
If you for example have a one handed mindblade with the following configuration ( mindblade +2 / +2 property) and you swap to mind daggers they both also will have a configuration of ( mindblade +2 / +2 property)

Quite neat hmm?

Now let's look at your original question. I assume now you did take the full enhancement bladeskill so the blades have the same configuration as your other forms.

I also assume you took the "Improved Enhancement" bladeskill at level 12 because it is a flat buff and every soulknife should have it.

So enhanced mindblade is (*looks at the class features) +5 at that level which increases by 1 through improved enhancement = +6 ( so the sum of your enhancement and properties can not be higher than 6)

Maximal enhancement bonus is (*looks at the chart) +4 at that level which also increases by 1 through improved enhancement = +5 ( maximum amount of your enhanced mindblade feature you may spend on the enhancement bonus itself)

Now some examples (not doing all this time because there are tons of possibilities):
2x ( mindblade +5 / +1 property)
2× ( mindblade +4 / +2 property)
.......
........
...........
2x ( mindblade +1 / +5 property)

So for example if you want to have the most enhancement bonus possible you would have 2 weapons with +5 to both hit and dmg and a property of your choice which has a value of +1


Hope I could help. I couldn't think of another way to make it more detailed

[Melil13]

That totally clears it up for me thank you. I ended up spending half my blade skills to increase my enhancement and split it b/w the blades. Now I don't have to do that lol I can take cool blade skills again

[Feint's End]

That totally clears it up for me thank you. I ended up spending half my blade skills to increase my enhancement and split it b/w the blades. Now I don't have to do that lol I can take cool blade skills again

You're welcome. Note that Improved Enhancement (the only bladeskill that really increases your bonus AFAIK) as all the other bladeskills can only be taken once. (some can be taken more than once but then those have some indication)
It makes very much sense since this way you get to a +10 weapon preepic (+9 standard from levels)

[Slithery D]

You're welcome. Note that Improved Enhancement (the only bladeskill that really increases your bonus AFAIK) as all the other bladeskills can only be taken once. (some can be taken more than once but then those have some indication)
It makes very much sense since this way you get to a +10 weapon preepic (+9 standard from levels)

I've always wondered if RAW can be argued to let you take a Crystal Hilt +3 to get +13 total bonus. Otherwise your Hilt becomes wasted at higher levels.

[Melil13]

Or linked striking? Increases ur enhancement by 2 as well

[Feint's End]

I've always wondered if RAW can be argued to let you take a Crystal Hilt +3 to get +13 total bonus. Otherwise your Hilt becomes wasted at higher levels.

yes you can become a +13 bonus however your maximum enhancement bonus ist still +5 ... so you could have +5 enhancement and +8 worth of properties. Of course there are other combinations that work as long as your enhancement bonus doesn't go over 5.


Or linked striking? Increases ur enhancement by 2 as well

also not a bad idea but still cannot increase your enhancement bonus beyond 5. However there are some nice things you can do if you don't mind your first attacks being somewhat weaker

lets look at level 20. You have +10 from levels and improved enhancement and +3 from crystal hilt:

put +3 in enhancement
put +2 in linked striking
put +8 in properties as desired (collision is a good one especially if you have a good crit range)

disadvantage over putting +5 in enhancement: first attack hits a little less precisely
advantage over putting +5 in enhancement: after first attack your attacks deal 2d6 more damage compared to above option. So overall more viable if you have decently strong enemies (actually all that die through more than 2 hits)

[Slithery D]

also not a bad idea but still cannot increase your enhancement bonus beyond 5. However there are some nice things you can do if you don't mind your first attacks being somewhat weaker

lets look at level 20. You have +10 from levels and improved enhancement and +3 from crystal hilt:

put +3 in enhancement
put +2 in linked striking
put +8 in properties as desired (collision is a good one especially if you have a good crit range)

disadvantage over putting +5 in enhancement: first attack hits a little less precisely
advantage over putting +5 in enhancement: after first attack your attacks deal 2d6 more damage compared to above option. So overall more viable if you have decently strong enemies (actually all that die through more than 2 hits)

On the Paizo forums a few weeks ago I found some convincing developer (Jacobs) talk that the Bane quality actually can increase your enhancement bonus over 5, so linked striking should, too.

[deuxhero]

Focused Offense lacks any clause stating there's no 1.5x wisdom damage when 2 handing (like Agile or Deadly Agility) so I assume it does. Ever been officially stated?


The question is simply whether you prefer being a pseudo-psywar/tracking a daily resource like PP or not; some folks roll a class like Soulknife specifically to get away from things like that. T4 is still quite playable, just narrower in scope.

And when War Soul is out, that goes away as a reason for keeping Psychic Strike

[Feint's End]

On the Paizo forums a few weeks ago I found some convincing developer (Jacobs) talk that the Bane quality actually can increase your enhancement bonus over 5, so linked striking should, too.

My bad ... temporary increases can indeed lift the limit above 5 so linked should work. You can have a +5 linked weapon preepic


Focused Offense lacks any clause stating there's no 1.5x wisdom damage when 2 handing (like Agile or Deadly Agility) so I assume it does. Ever been officially stated?

I couldn't find anything officially stated ... however there is something to consider. Agile has a very similar text to guided in that it replaces the str with dex/wis respectively. I think it is intended to be flat no matter how you use the weapon similar to guided.

By very strict RAW the bladeskill says you add your wisdom modifier instead of your str to hit and damage.
Multiplication upon using a two handed weapon still only applies to str since you this is not part of the deal.
Agile and Guided for example do not say this because it's a special case but to avoid confusion (my theory)

To sum it up. The multiplication on strength (both for two handed weapons and two single weapons) are exclusive to strength. Other boni are flat as long as they don't say otherwise. Agile for example says as part of the description that while it gets added to two handed weapons regulary (1=1) it still gets halfed on secondary weapons (which is a special case). Guided doesn't say anything until after the main part of the text (to clarify for those who do not know how this should be applied but it is not something exclusive to the property but rather just a clarification of the general rules).

[Psyren]

As written, Focused Offense simply slots in and replaces Str in damage calculations. So 1.5 * (Str) would become 1.5 *(Wis) and likewise 0.5.

I can ask Jeremy to be sure but I'm fairly confident this was intended.

[Feint's End]

As written, Focused Offense simply slots in and replaces Str in damage calculations. So 1.5 * (Str) would become 1.5 *(Wis) and likewise 0.5.

I can ask Jeremy to be sure but I'm fairly confident this was intended.

Hmmm I see. Would be great if you could ask him just so we are sure.

[Drelua]

I have a couple questions about the Mind Daggers blade skill, if someone wouldn't mind clearing it up a bit.

First, it says I can switch between my normal form and the mind daggers form as a free action even during a full attack. Does this mean I could attack with the one-handed form in my main hand, switch to daggers for my off-hand attack, then switch back to my one-handed form for my next main hand attack? That feels cheesy somehow, but I don't see why it wouldn't work according to the RAW of it.

I was also wondering if this lets me make a full attack by throwing mind daggers, in the same way as the multiple throw skill. The only real reason I suspect it might not be able to do these things is because of other blade skills, like multiple throw and full enhancement, being completely invalidated by mind daggers, which basically does what both of them do and more at the small cost of a 1 or 2 points of damage. That doesn't really seem balanced to me, which makes me suspect I might be missing something.

[Feint's End]

I have a couple questions about the Mind Daggers blade skill, if someone wouldn't mind clearing it up a bit.

First, it says I can switch between my normal form and the mind daggers form as a free action even during a full attack. Does this mean I could attack with the one-handed form in my main hand, switch to daggers for my off-hand attack, then switch back to my one-handed form for my next main hand attack? That feels cheesy somehow, but I don't see why it wouldn't work according to the RAW of it.

Yes you could by RAW. Make sure your DM is ok with it though


I was also wondering if this lets me make a full attack by throwing mind daggers, in the same way as the multiple throw skill. The only real reason I suspect it might not be able to do these things is because of other blade skills, like multiple throw and full enhancement, being completely invalidated by mind daggers, which basically does what both of them do and more at the small cost of a 1 or 2 points of damage. That doesn't really seem balanced to me, which makes me suspect I might be missing something.

This is a little more tricky. Essentially they work the same as 2 regular mindblades (except for the full enhancement) so what makes you think you could full attack throw them? You probably could make your point for swapping to mind daggers then throw one of them and swap back to a one handed weapon (even though one of the mind daggers was thrown) but nothing indicates you can multiple throw with them.

About them replacing full enhancement. This is not really that unbalanced. It's basically if you want slightly more damage (1 average) or slightly more throwing range (30 instead of 20). Oh and you can swap as a free action with mind daggers but since you will most likely just swap between one handed and mind daggers it's not really that big of a deal. I even dare to say that most players won't swap at all.
After level 16ish it probably is better to have the minddaggers because 1 average dmg is basically nothing but more reach on throws is really nice.

[deuxhero]

Guess it doesn't give 1.5 (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=17723673&postcount=1036)


Pair of interesting quirks for the Deadly Fist I noticed though
1: You get a blade skill at first level, so you can take extra blade skill at first level (potentially even twice)
2: Amulet of Mighty Fist stacks, as does Crystal Gauntlets. You can get a +18 equivalent weapon (!), but you are stuck with a 1d3 weapon (unless PoW is open then you can grab Greater Unarmed Strike).

[Feint's End]

Guess it doesn't give 1.5 (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=17723673&postcount=1036)


Pair of interesting quirks for the Deadly Fist I noticed though
1: You get a blade skill at first level, so you can take extra blade skill at first level (potentially even twice)
2: Amulet of Mighty Fist stacks, as does Crystal Gauntlets. You can get a +18 equivalent weapon (!), but you are stuck with a 1d3 weapon (unless PoW is open then you can grab Greater Unarmed Strike).

Thank you for asking. That is exactly what I thought the bladeskill was supposed to mean but I guess the wording was quite bad (they could have fixed more things in UP to be quite frank with you).

@2: Small nitpick ... it is a d6 weapon by default (if you are medium that is). Which would be replaced by GUS damage if higher. Otherwise this is a good idea. Pretty devastating since Deadly Fist is a strong Archetype to begin with (especially as a wis knife with Gifted Blade and/or a contemplative dip and going Dark Tempest afterwards).

edit: Just realised that Feral Heart should also be able to reach +18 (depending if you have a focus item for the claws). Feral Heart has the issue of scaling really bad though. You might have to go Contemplative/Dark Tempest and pick up some extra natural attacks via powers to keep up. Feral Transformation is nice though.

[PsyBomb]

Really is a pity that the Crystal Focus Items are so expensive, but good find on those stacking. I've been experimenting with a Deadly Fist splash in a couple of other builds, most of which completely dump Strength, and that extra bonus adds up QUICK.

[Tempestfury]

Imagine Deadly Fist in a Gestalt with Monk...

[Feint's End]

Really is a pity that the Crystal Focus Items are so expensive, but good find on those stacking.

Expensive? Considering that they basically can increase weapons preepic to 13 they are actually really, really cheap.

[Drelua]

Thanks, that clears that up. I guess you could still make four ranged attacks in a round if you started your turn with two weapons, threw them, then quick drawed a couple more and threw them, but of course you could already do that without mind daggers. I guess I figured that as long as you had one dagger you could reform your mind blade into it's one-handed shape and back into daggers, but I guess needing both daggers to switch back makes more sense.

Sorry, I've just got a game starting before too long where I'll be playing a Soulknife with a very experienced, high optimization group that lets a lot of cheese work so long as it's RAW, and I want to know what I'll be able to get away with.

[Feint's End]

Thanks, that clears that up. I guess you could still make four ranged attacks in a round if you started your turn with two weapons, threw them, then quick drawed a couple more and threw them, but of course you could already do that without mind daggers. I guess I figured that as long as you had one dagger you could reform your mind blade into it's one-handed shape and back into daggers, but I guess needing both daggers to switch back makes more sense.

Sorry, I've just got a game starting before too long where I'll be playing a Soulknife with a very experienced, high optimization group that lets a lot of cheese work so long as it's RAW, and I want to know what I'll be able to get away with.

Well to be fair there is no exact RAW on this since there is no real ruling what happens if you throw one of your two mind blades and then swap back to 1 mindblade and then back to the two blades. Are there 2 again? I would say yes to the swapping but no to them being 2 again since it wouldn't make a lot of sense.
If there are 2 again then of course you could full attack throw (though it would look quite funky with the swapping weapons the whole time) but I don't think this is RAI and since there is no RAW supporting it I'd just stay away from it (cheese is after all still using RAW).

So essentially there is no RAW answer but I also doubt that it would make sense. Maybe you can talk your dm into it but this would probably not be cheesy ... rather just make no sense (but who am I to judge .... its freaking mindblades)

[Sayt]

I also have a question about Strength/Wisdom and Focused Offense, namely in regard to Dragon Ferocity.

I'm putting together a Master of many Styles (Looking mostly at Dragon and Mantis)/Deadly fist. Dragon Ferocity gives you a damage bonus equal to half your strength modifier, does Focused offense change that to half your wisdom?

[Psyren]

Okay so, since Focused Offense keeps coming up in this thread, I dug up a rules quote.

"Focused Offence replaces Str, so 1,5 times with 2handed weapon, 0,5 times with offhand weapon." (http://www.dreamscarredpress.com/dragonfly/ForumsPro/viewtopic/t=3391/)

Also, while we're on the subject, Focused Offense lets you use Wis to CMB instead of Str. (http://www.dreamscarredpress.com/dragonfly/ForumsPro/viewtopic/t=2264/) (CMB rolls are attack rolls.)

Please apply the above to any corner cases you may come across. And yes, I am updating the guide (I'm actually working on several at the moment.)

[Feint's End]

No it wouldn't since the feat doesn't interact with the standard to hit / dmg bonus of strength which gets replaced by wisdom.

Also note that this feat seems to intend to make unarmed strikes to 2 handed weapons (at least for strength purposes) and this is something that doesn't exist when using focused offense (same bonus on two handed weapons as on one handed weapons).

In conclusion no ... dragonstyle would still give you half your str bonus on unarmed strikes

[Tempestfury]

I think I'll take the ruling link provided by the handbook creator.

[Feint's End]

I think I'll take the ruling link provided by the handbook creator.

Doesn't change the fact that by RAW it wouldn't let you apply 1.5 times your wis to unarmed attacks since dragon style specifically gives you a bonus to unarmed strikes which is equal to half your strength modifier.

So you'd have 1 time your wisdom modifier and 1/2- time your strength modifier to unarmed dmg.

[Feint's End]

Okay so, since Focused Offense keeps coming up in this thread, I dug up a rules quote.

"Focused Offence replaces Str, so 1,5 times with 2handed weapon, 0,5 times with offhand weapon." (http://www.dreamscarredpress.com/dragonfly/ForumsPro/viewtopic/t=3391/)

Also, while we're on the subject, Focused Offense lets you use Wis to CMB instead of Str. (http://www.dreamscarredpress.com/dragonfly/ForumsPro/viewtopic/t=2264/) (CMB rolls are attack rolls.)

Please apply the above to any corner cases you may come across. And yes, I am updating the guide (I'm actually working on several at the moment.)

How comes then that deuxhero asked too and got told that it works like deadly agility? Does not get multiplied upon use with a 2 handed weapon or a second weapon.

I heard 2 conflicting things from 2 people who should know now (maybe one of them is not as qualified as the other one so that might be the case) so it would be nice if we could find an answer we can agree upon to be the more accurate.

[Psyren]

Anytime you see "Strength modifier" in something that this might apply to, replace it with "Wisdom modifier." Whether that's half or 1.0 or 1.5, you just do that, but with Wis.

I have no clue what Deadly Agility is, is that from Path of War? You may need to talk with Gareth about that one.

[Feint's End]

Anytime you see "Strength modifier" in something that this might apply to, replace it with "Wisdom modifier." Whether that's half or 1.0 or 1.5, you just do that, but with Wis.

I have no clue what Deadly Agility is, is that from Path of War? You may need to talk with Gareth about that one.

Yes it is. It essentially let's you apply your dex mod instead of your str mod to dmg with finesse able weapons. It doesn't get multiplied upon using a two handed weapon but also doesn't get halfed on offhand weapons when TWF.

The answer wasn't given by Lord Gareth though but by another person (seems like one of the designers to me). Know what? I'll write pm deuxhero and ask him about the source and if we could get some kind of statement. Hopefully it will bring some light into this matter.

[Tempestfury]

Anyone know when Path of War is coming out?

[Feint's End]

Anyone know when Path of War is coming out?

3 classes are out already and a lot of feats with them so deadly agility is already "third party official".

[Tempestfury]

3 classes are out already and a lot of feats with them so deadly agility is already "third party official".

Really? Huh. Are they up in the SRD, or do I have to buy it to access it?

[Psyren]

Well, until I hear from Jeremy/Andreas I'm sticking with what they wrote in the quotes I provided. It's just simpler this way imo.

PoW may do things differently but I was honestly never interested in it to begin with.

[Feint's End]

Really? Huh. Are they up in the SRD, or do I have to buy it to access it?

No not yet but you can buy a subscription. This way you can get new material as soon as it is out.

Alternatively you can just buy one of the classes (about 5 dollar). In the class document they added all the feats currently out.
But getting it for free now isn't possible. I mean you can look at the playtest documents if you find them and use them because deadly agility didn't change as far as I know.

[Sayt]

I'm going to propose Psyren's reading to my GM, for now.

It's also worth noting that Deadly agility carries a specific rider about 2-h and off-hand damage, whereas Focused Offense does not.

I'm also pondering whether to dip Master of Many Styles for 2 or three levels. 2 gets me more Gifted Blade/Deadly Fist, but with a Monk's Robe, the third level gets me over a breakpoint for a bigger UAS die and monk AC bonus, as well as still mind (Which I plan on trading out for prayerful meditation from 3.5) and fast movement.

Edit: Can't believe that I forgot to say Thank you for this amazing guide! u.u

[Rasman]

Just wanted to hop in here and say that this guide really seems to be coming out very nicely. Can't wait until you get around to the feats since I really don't know jack about Psionics and think this could be a really awesome Ravenloft character concept.

[Tondrin]

Hi

I've been using your guide on and off for build suggestions for the past two months

Is there a chance you'll return to this project

if not is there a chance I could get some build advice, I fear I'm spreading my strength knife too thin.

[Psyren]

It's unfortunately very far down my priority list, there are other handbooks I'm more interested in now, plus there is another book in the works that would add even more options to the Soulknife that I'd have to comb through. If anyone else wants to do a Soulknife handbook they're welcome to (I gave several folks permission to build on mine via PM but nothing seems to have come of it yet) but my hands are full just with the first-party Paizo material getting churned out, never mind everything else.

[Mehangel]

Damn, yours was the best Soulknife handbook that I could readily find, and while I was personally going to wait for Psionics Augmented: Soulknife to get published before asking, I was really looking forward to this handbook being updated to include all the new content.

[Psyren]

Damn, yours was the best Soulknife handbook that I could readily find, and while I was personally going to wait for Psionics Augmented: Soulknife to get published before asking, I was really looking forward to this handbook being updated to include all the new content.

It will be - eventually. And thank you!

[Novawurmson]

What does the guide need most? Feats and Soulbolt analysis?

[Psyren]

Whatever folks decide is missing most. I haven't even read it in months.

[Mehangel]

Whatever folks decide is missing most. I haven't even read it in months.

There are quite a bit of code errors that could be updated, but for the most part I want to see the following:

o The new content of Psionics Augmented: Soulknife (when it comes out)
o Three spoiler boxes for STR-Knifes, DEX-Knifes, and WIS-Knifes summarizing archetypes and bladeskills that best support them.

Again, most of this has to wait for when the book is actually published.

[Nihilarian]

Shielded Blade wasn't finished either.

[Tedium]

If you are still going to work on this and have not seen some of the new stuff yet. I would highly suggest it. some of the playtest stuff was/is awesome :smallsmile:

[Vortenger]

Gotta add my vote to the 'please add Soulknife Augmented content to the guide' crowd. There's so much content in there that it changes the optimization meta surrounding the Soulknife completely. There's also a wonderful archetype for Soulknife in the upcoming Lords of the Wild release I'd be curious to see reviewed. Thanks in advance!

[Powerdork]

Hey, you know how Photobucket changed things so you need to pay a pricy fee to embed pictures off-site?
Also, yeah, soulknife metadota's shifted. Pls give love to this poor class.

[Psyren]

I'll add this to the OP to make it more visible, but the sad truth is that I'm no longer all that interested in this class or this guide; what little free time I have for handbooking is being spent elsewhere, and more than likely in Google Docs, which I can't access most of the day anyway. So if someone would like to do an updated guide with all the new stuff that has come out since mine was published, consider this post blanket permission to do so.

[80sSkeletor]

[CENTER]
Other Races

There are of course many other options; I'll only do a few here.

Kalashtar - Along with a smattering of miscellaneous bonuses, you get more bonus PP from these guys from any other race, but no way to use them without Hidden Talent, racial sub or a dip. Even so, the sheer amount of ammunition can come in handy. The first racial sub level in Races of Eberron is also nice (see below.) Finally, Kalashtar have access to nice racial perks such as Host Feats, unique PrCs like Atavist and Quori Shards. All in all, not a bad choice. If porting to Pathfinder, try to convince your DM to allow them +2 to any stat like Elans and Humans get; if this is allowed, upgrade them to a blue choice.

Shifter: +2 Dex, -2 Int, -2 Cha. The stat adjustments are harsh, especially in Pathfinder, but thankfully the penalties are to stats you don't really care about anyway. The shifting buffs are all useful to a Soulknife, so this is another solid choice. If you can get the race a Pathfinder boost (at least a net zero stats, or stronger/more frequent shifting bonuses), this is another good candidate for a blue rating.

Changeling: There isn't a whole lot of mechanical synergy here. They're good at infiltrating, so being able to create powerful weapons out of thin air can probably come in handy for that, but in terms of actual numbers they don't get much to help (or hinder) you. Interesting RP-wise, but there are many more powerful options.

Warforged: Warforged are of course universally good at melee. +2 Con, -2 Wis, -2 Cha.; as with Shifters, it's a net negative but both are dump stats so you probably won't mind anyway. Their suite of immunities and defensive attributes all hold value for a Soulknife as well.



There's also the Umbragen(Dragon Mag 330), which can switch out the first level Wild Talent for Stealthy which makes Soulknife Arcane due to the nature of the switch.