Where to find prestige soulknife? 3.5

[frogglesmash]

I half remember having seen mention of a PrC version of the soulknife base class and would like to know
A: Does it actually exist?
B: Is it official WotC content?
C: Where can I find it?

[Flickerdart]

The prestige class version of Soulknife is from the Psionics Handbook - a 3.0 book that was technically superseded by the XPH, which contained the base class Soulknife.

[Thurbane]

The prestige class version of Soulknife is from the Psionics Handbook - a 3.0 book that was technically superseded by the XPH, which contained the base class Soulknife.

Wow, I was completely unaware that Soulknife had ever existed as a PrC.

Thank you both for bringing it to my attention!

[The Viscount]

There does exist a soulknife PrC in Dark Sun, which I believe is third party, but somewhat endorsed?

[Sagetim]

As mentioned, it was a prestige class in 3.0's psionics handbook. This was also the psionics ruleset where keeping your power points in reserve allowed you access to passive abilities that scaled with how much of your power points you...didn't spend.

So, for example, there was Inertial Armor. The Feat. You got 4 armor to your AC as long as you still had 1 power point. Then you could take Improved Inertial Armor multiple times to increase that AC by 2 each time, and also increase the amount of power points needed in reserve to keep that bonus by, what was it, 4?

Oh, and the prestige classes didn't give you 'progress power points as manifester class you are in' it instead gave you explicit values at each level. Which meant that if you wanted to take more than one prestige class you were screwing yourself on power points super hardcore.

And psionic attack and defense modes were still a thing separate from being powers unto themselves. And powers didn't have an augment option, instead you just had a lot of iterative powers that did exactly the same thing (Astral Construct 1 to 9, for example). And there were 0 level powers, but they were awful.

But let's come to the soulknife prestige class. Right out of the gate something is weird, and it's the requirements: 3 base attack bonus, 3 ranks of move silently, 3 ranks of knowledge psionics, and at least 9 base power points per day (no, bonus points from ability scores don't count). Which means that, among other things, you could play a fighter and keep dumping your regular feats into Talented or whatever it was called and eventually prestige into this...gem...of a prestige class. Which not only gained power points at each level, but also gained some powers ranging from 0 to 3. It has 4+int mod skill points per level, but not enough skills on the list to do much with them.

Soulknives gain proficiency with light armor, but not shields. Just what my psion needs...light armor proficiency and to Not progress his own powers known. The Mindblade feature is the strange man out here, as it rapidly progresses to being a +5 weapon across the 10 levels of prestige class, and unlike the base class it just doesn't get the ability to be enhanced with special abilities. At level 8 in the prestige class it upgrades to longsword status, but you need to have 7 power points in reserve to keep using it as a long sword.

Other class features include the ability to shove psionic attack modes into your blade, Imbed actual powers into it, and throw your mind blade. But you need to keep a power point reserve of at least 1 to throw your mind blade. You know, because it's not like you didn't already need to do that to keep your mind blade from turning into so much dust in the wind anyway.

The Imbed Power is potentially fantastic, since you pick a power you know of up to 3rd level, pay it's cost as normal, and as a Move action you imbue your mindblade with it. So you can imbue and attack in the same round. The next person you hit with your mindblade then gets hit by the power. No save. Let's reiterate that: No Save. Now, I dunno about you, but if I could have bestow curse as a psychic power, I know I'd be soul knifing people in the face with curses all over the place. "Bald!" "Impotent!" "Weak Muscles!" "Allergies!" and all kinds of other horrible things with No Save could be done. But of course this is 3.0 psionics, so that's probably balanced out by powers within that level range being terrible.

While Imbed Power is at 2nd level of the prestige class, Imbed Psionic Attack is at 4th level. Again a move action, again pay the normal cost. This time, the target gets no psionic defense (instead of no save) and they make their will save as if flat footed. Because apparently that...disadvantages them? Oh, and nonspionic characters making the save are counted as if they raised thought shield in particular.

This requires some explaining. Psionic Attack and Defense modes have this chart that they follow, giving you bonuses, penalties, or neutral based on what attack mode you picked and what defense mode they picked. The 'nonpsionic buffer' was a modifier to the dc of their saving throw. On the order of '-7 or 8' to everything except mind blast, which they ate a +4 against. Yep, that's right, we're talking about ADND style maths here. Thought Shield on the other hand, had (at best) a -4 against Ego Whip and at worst a +4 vs Mind Thrust, with -1's or -2's in between. So being stuck with Thought Shield was pretty damning compared to the 'I'm not psionic, neener neener' defense that regulars would normally have. We're not done though, that chart also has a flat footed row. If you're flat footed or out of power points, you have a +7 or +8 to all of the dc's to resist incoming psionic attack modes. So yeah, that flat footed modifier is insane.

You might be wondering what the consequences of psionic attack modes are, and that's fair. It mostly comes down to some amount of ability score damage. Ranging from 1d2 at the weakest attack mode, to 2d4 for the strongest. This becomes relevant later on in the soulknife prestige class.

Because at level 6 in the prestige class the Soul Knife gets Sever Life. This lets them override the normal ability damage that the attack would give, and make it Con damage. So that 2d4 just got a whole lot better. But they have to retain at least 11 power points in reserve to use Sever Life.

Level 6 is also when they get Free Draw, letting them draw their mind blade as a free action instead of a move action. As long as they have at least 13 power points in reserve. As mentioned they get to upgrade to longsword damage at 8.

The capstone ability at 10 is Knife to the Soul, reading "the knife to the soul ability resembles the server life ability (see above) except half the Constitution ability damage he deals is permanent." Oh, and it requires keeping 17 power points in reserve.

To help put these reserves into context, the soulknife grants 66 power points (added to your total) across it's 10 levels. The psychic attack modes cost between 1 and 9 power points, with Psychic Crush (the one that deals 2d4 wisdom damage, or 2d4 con for the soulknife) costing 5. Added to the 9 power points required to get into the prestige class, the 10th level soul knife would have at least 75 power points to stab people with, allowing for at least 10 attacks in a day to carry the 2d4 con damage (with half being permanent).

Again though, it's 3.0. So we've got terms like temporary ability damage and permanent ability damage and I can't recall if it's the same difference as 3.5 having ability damage and ability drain.