Purifier/Gifted Blade question

[Xuldarinar]

I've a simple question regarding the interactions of two Archetypes, the Gifted Blade (a soulknife archetype) and the Purifier (a paladin archetype).

Purifiers, among other things, have this:
Manifesting: At 4th level, the purifier gains manifesting as a gifted blade of one level lower. This replaces spells.

Now, my question is this: Do they stack, and if so, how?

That is to say, for example, someone had a character that was a Purifier 4/Gifted Blade 3, would they have manifesting as:
A 4th level gifted blade: They stack, and since both are the 1st level of gifted blade manifesting they stack to 2.
A 3rd level gifted blade and a 3rd level gifted blade: They don't stack, which at later levels means they have power points but at this point they only get the bonus power points.
or
A 6th level gifted blade: The logic being they stack as gifted blade levels for the purposes of manifesting.


For a 20th level character, split evenly, a Purifier 10/Gifted Blade 10 would have manifesting as either a gifted blade 15, gifted blade 9 and gifted blade 10, or gifted blade 19.

[Tulya]

By RAW, I don't believe independent sources of class features stack progression by default unless there's a general rule for that feature, or else the feature itself has explicit text to that effect.

But assuming you choose to allow stacking, I believe the phrasing would mean that as long as you have at least 4 levels in Paladin, you manifest as a Gifted Blade of [Gifted Blade Level + (Paladin Level - 1)]. Thus, if you were a Paladin 4 / Gifted Blade 3, you would have an effective Gifted Blade level of 6.

[Psyren]

Your power points would stack (i.e. form a single pool,) but nothing else. At the end of the day they are still separate classes. You would have two different manifester levels.

[Xuldarinar]

Normally, I know such things don't stack but I figured I would ask since both refer to the exact same thing for the purposes of manifesting, I could see one could argue they do stack. Certainly would be convenient.