Soulknife help

[keeper2161]

I am playing a gestalt character and one side will be soulknife. Is it worth being a Gifted blade? My other class will be psychic warrior or magus. There are a lot of really good blade skills that rely on on psychic strike.

[Psyren]

Gifted Blade is an upgrade to the regular Soulknife. With Psychic Warrior on your other side, not only will you get even more power points in your pool, but you will be able to double dip on your Wisdom score for bonus points (just like a Wizard//Witch gestalt would have bonus spell slots on each side.)

[Mehangel]

I am playing a gestalt character and one side will be soulknife. Is it worth being a Gifted blade? My other class will be psychic warrior or magus. There are a lot of really good blade skills that rely on on psychic strike.

If you have Psionics Augmented: Soulknives I-III, you may find ways to regain your Psychic Strike class feature (or never even lose it to begin with).

[the_archduke]

First off, gestalt with Psychic Warrior. Magus would be a terrible idea. Bad stat synergy. Magus requires a one handed weapon and keeping the other hand free.

Second, is Path of War stuff allowed? If so, use Warsoul (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/psionics-unleashed/classes/soulknife/archetypes/dreamscarred-press/war-soul-soulknife-archetype/) instead.

If this is the protoss zealot idea, you can get access to Thrashing Dragon, the TWF school of Path of War with the Warsoul. Psychic Warrior will give you plenty of manifesting.

Psychic Strike is pretty bad imho, so don't worry about losing it. It only works on one attack before you have to recharge it. Terrible for TWF. If you still miss it, Warsoul can get it back with a blade skill (Sleeping Goddess Empowerment)

[keeper2161]

Yes this is the protoss build. I like the Psychic Strike for the blade skills not the actual use of the ability. Particularly Absorbing Blade. I like the fact of denying spells for the cost of a move action. It makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside when spell casters are stopped in their tracks.

[digiman619]

You also get access to the Sleeping Goddess discipline (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/path-of-war/disciplines-and-maneuvers/sleeping-goddess-maneuvers/), which lets you augment your maneuvers like powers.

[legomaster00156]

Yes this is the protoss build. I like the Psychic Strike for the blade skills not the actual use of the ability. Particularly Absorbing Blade. I like the fact of denying spells for the cost of a move action. It makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside when spell casters are stopped in their tracks.
Again, the Psionics Augmented series solves this. In fact, you can get Psychic Strike back for the low cost of one blade skill.

[Ualaa]

The protoss are a psionic race.

The Gifted Blade is the archetype to make the Soulknife psionic.
You can go with the dual-wield style, and through Force Screen still have a 4ac shield bonus; that's the equivalent of a +1 Heavy Shield with the Shield Focus feat.

The Gifted Blade doesn't get a lot of psionic powers, but there's a lot of useful powers there regardless. The precognition line or expansion, chameleon if you want to be a scout/stealthy character...

Plus, if you go Psychic Warrior, you're getting power points from two classes which is a fairly decent benefit considering neither is a full caster so neither has a ton of power points. Extra is nice.



War Soul and Gifted Blade both require trading away the same feature (the Psychic Strike), which while you can get back as a Blade Skill (easy choice, take one of these archetypes if you can... essentially at the cost of a half-feat blade skill), because they require trading away the same feature they're mutually exclusive.

If you have access to Path of War material, any PoW character is going to do ridiculous damage compared to any martial character who is not using PoW material -- not unbalanced damage, just at half the power of an equivalent level caster instead of 15-20% like a typical non PoW martial build.

If you've got the option to go War Soul, it's categorically superior to Gifted Blade.

[Sagetim]

Yeah, I have to third going Warsoul in this situation. After all, you're not going Aegis into Metaforge (is that the name of the prestige class) for the purpose of being psychic tony stark with ranged attack and armor that lets you fly by level 8 or so.

In my own experience with maneuvers, it's rarely a bad idea to bolster your known maneuvers with the Advanced Study feat. You can use it to pick up out of discipline maneuvers, or just grab ones that you don't have enough picks to have. And if you can find a way to make Weapon Group Adaptation work with your mind blade(s) you can add in things from broken blade like Bronze Knuckle for mind blades that slice through all that nasty dr that normally requires special materials.

If you took Weapon Group Adaptation for Light Blades, would that cover mindblades in short sword form?

[digiman619]

Yeah, I have to third going Warsoul in this situation. After all, you're not going Aegis into Metaforge (is that the name of the prestige class) for the purpose of being psychic tony stark with ranged attack and armor that lets you fly by level 8 or so.

In my own experience with maneuvers, it's rarely a bad idea to bolster your known maneuvers with the Advanced Study feat. You can use it to pick up out of discipline maneuvers, or just grab ones that you don't have enough picks to have. And if you can find a way to make Weapon Group Adaptation work with your mind blade(s) you can add in things from broken blade like Bronze Knuckle for mind blades that slice through all that nasty dr that normally requires special materials.

If you took Weapon Group Adaptation for Light Blades, would that cover mindblades in short sword form?

Why bother with Weapon Group Adaption when you can take the Discipline Blade Shapes blade skill and make your mind blade any weapon, ranged or melee that is a discipline weapon for one of your disciplines. Take that Emulate Melee Weapon and Emulate Ranged Weapon!

Heck, if you really want to be sneaky, you can trade one of your disciplines for Fool's Errand, Fool's Errand treats every weapon as a discipline weapon, so RAW you can form your mind blade into any listed weapon and you'll be proficient with it. For the love of Sarenrae, though, don't choose something from the Technology Guide. That's clearly not what they meant and will get PoW (or at least Discipline Weapon Shapes) banned in a heartbeat.

[keeper2161]

What bladeskill allows me to get back psychic strike? I looked and didn't see anything but I may just be blind.

[legomaster00156]

You will find the Psychic Strike blade skill in this supplement (http://dreamscarred.com/product/psionics-augmented-soulknives/). Note that you must not have the Psychic Strike feature (a.k.a. have an archetype that trades it away), and you must be at least level 4 to take it.

[Sagetim]

Why bother with Weapon Group Adaption when you can take the Discipline Blade Shapes blade skill and make your mind blade any weapon, ranged or melee that is a discipline weapon for one of your disciplines. Take that Emulate Melee Weapon and Emulate Ranged Weapon!

Heck, if you really want to be sneaky, you can trade one of your disciplines for Fool's Errand, Fool's Errand treats every weapon as a discipline weapon, so RAW you can form your mind blade into any listed weapon and you'll be proficient with it. For the love of Sarenrae, though, don't choose something from the Technology Guide. That's clearly not what they meant and will get PoW (or at least Discipline Weapon Shapes) banned in a heartbeat.

Ah, very handy things those. But this is all still assuming that path of war is available at all. If the thread op doesn't have that option and goes the Gifted Blade route, I just feel the need to point out that getting up to third level psionic powers is in keeping with the Soulknife's original format- a 3.0 psionics prestige class. Too bad you can't also get a sneak attack progression on par with a rogue. But at least you get decent hp (instead of a d6).

[digiman619]

Ah, very handy things those. But this is all still assuming that path of war is available at all. If the thread op doesn't have that option and goes the Gifted Blade route, I just feel the need to point out that getting up to third level psionic powers is in keeping with the Soulknife's original format- a 3.0 psionics prestige class. Too bad you can't also get a sneak attack progression on par with a rogue. But at least you get decent hp (instead of a d6).

Valid point. If PoW isn't on the table, Discipline Blade Shapes is moot. Though if you want sneak attack damage and were willing to trade Psychic Strike away anyway, you could go Cutthroat and get a sneak attack of a rogue half your level (so +5d6 at 20th). You also get 6+ Int skill points, Bluff as a class skill, and a competence bonus to Bluff and Stealth checks. You lose medium armor and shield proficiency, but since you're getting proficiency with everything other that exotic weapons and tower shields from the PsyWar half of the gestalt, who cares?

Going Cutthroat instead of Gifted Blade is especially worthwhile if you start at low level; you get nothing from Gifted Blade until 3rd, and then it's only a single 1st level power. By the time you've hit 10th, all you get from it is 11 PP and 4 1st or 2nd powers (that you can swap daily, which is something at least). I remind you that PsyWars have 4th level powers at this point, and a lot of the powers on the Gifted Blade list were available to PsyWars anyway. Going Cutthroat, on the other hand, gives everything but the sneak attack from level 1, and the sneak attack die stack from other sources, so if you dip a level or three into rogue, you can get it up even higher. It's worth noting that the Fighter's Blade feat will let you take up to 4 levels away from Soulknifde and keep your mind blade up to date. Dipping away from the Gifted Blade archetype stunts its power pression even more, and nothing can mitigate that.