A minor or major Soul knife issue.

[Midnight_v]

Here's my burning question.

If the soulknife looses wild talent (via feat leech, specifically) does it lose the ability to manifest a mind blade?


Wild Talent
A soulknife gains Wild Talent as a bonus feat. (This class feature provides the character with the psionic power he needs to materialize his mind blade, if he has no power points otherwise.)

Assuming of course he's not from a naturally psionic race?
Or is this a function of his class independantly despite what the feat says?
I run a game and my good friend runs a game (same general players, different dm's our schedules confict, so she and I get to game together almost never) and her campaign is psionics heavy...
So if you use Feat leech on a soul knife, who isn't naturally psionic... do they lose all mind blade powers?
Anyone ever come across this.
My initial response was "Wait, why are you letting them play that... at all" and non of them knew about the soulbound weapon so, while the discussion to change over is underway...
I'd wondered if anyone had any insight.

Thanks in advance for any consideration you can give the matter.

[wuwuwu]

Luckily, Wild Talent is a [General] feat, not a [Psionic] or [Metapsionic] feat, so it cannot be feat leeched away. However, if it were to lose the feat by any other means, it would lose the ability to perform most of it's class features.

[Flickerdart]

The actual Mind Blade ability doesn't say anything about needing power points. A completely unrelated ability should have no sway over it.

What this is, is a holdover from 3e psionics, where not only did you need a certain amount of spare PP to use the blade, progressive abilities needed more PP to use. Oh, and Soulknife was a Psychic Warrior PrC and was better off for it.

[FMArthur]

If the ability to create a Mind Blade is dependent on the existence of power points and you don't have them, then you can't do it anymore after you lose them. You probably don't lose a Mind Blade already materialized, but if you're looking for advice on making a DM judgment call on the matter, my advice is to not do anything that hoses Soulknives more than they already are. Just let them keep it.

[Midnight_v]

Luckily, Wild Talent is a [General] feat, not a [Psionic] or [Metapsionic] feat, so it cannot be feat leeched away. However, if it were to lose the feat by any other means, it would lose the ability to perform most of it's class features.

Ah thank goodness. I knew that the soulknife class was an example of terrible game design ....
but I was hoping that the raw handn't been completely borked like that.


If the ability to create a Mind Blade is dependent on the existence of power points and you don't have them, then you can't do it anymore after you lose them. You probably don't lose a Mind Blade already materialized, but if you're looking for advice on making a DM judgment call on the matter, my advice is to not do anything that hoses Soulknives more than they already are. Just let them keep it

Well we had a discussion a little while ago, about not letting our players choose from the worst classes, and WHY afterward. After seeing the above.

She just allowed it because of the player insisting he'd always wanted to play one (this is the one player that isn't in my group/likewise I have one that isn't in hers) and warned him that it was horrid in many ways, he now agrees, but it was just a raw error. Not a hurt the player error, and I let it be know that it was bad Dm judgement call to do that, both depower him "in that way" AND "letting him do that at all" but I understand the desire to let people tell the story they want.

I got a hold of him and linked him the soulbound weapon, and he said he'd be cool with that, but he didn't like the loss of skill points... so I said:
Play a rogue then, and I'll call jen and we'll give you the all the soulknives class features as 2 scaling feats. He agreed.
The other Dm agreed.

I really apreciate the help, you gents are the best.