Soulknife (PF) tricks and thoughts.

[Segev]

Just wanted to share a small revelation I had, and figured I'd put a few Soulknife musings in here.

The revelation is about the Augmented Blade archetype. I've been trying to figure out what, exactly, the point of the Augmented Blade is. It has some interesting things it can do, but it seems to give up a great deal of what makes a soulknife a soulknife to get it, and I keep finding ways the soulknife can come pretty close to, if not outright out-do, what the Augmented Blade can do. Especially if you consider the opportunity cost of other archetypes.

But then I noticed that there is a subtle but crucial difference between the enhancement bonuses soulknives get and that of Augmented Blades (though I invite people to correct me if I'm just missing something; I've been known to stare at the same text over and over and miss a crucial detail). While Soulknives need to spend 8 hours in meditation to change out their enhancement bonuses and abilities in their mind blade (barring certain Blade Skills which have their own costs), the Augmented Blade can literally change the entire enhancement alotment every time he applies his psicrystal to a weapon. Even the same weapon, if he pulls it off and reapplies it. This reduces the time to a move action, or even a free action once per round at higher level!

A weird aside: despite the focus on not making blades out of nothing but mental power, nothing prevents an Augmented Blade from picking up Mind Shield (the Blade Skill, not the archetype; the archetype overlaps).



As a second observation, there's some potentially interesting interaction between the Occultist and the Soulknife. For one thing, the Occultist could theoretically use his Mind Blade as his Implement for Transmutation, thus ensuring that he can't ever have that one taken away. This has further synergy in that Legacy Weapon closes an interesting gap in the Soulknife's flexibility: it can apply ANY enhancement-equivalent to the weapons it's used on, and it stacks with whatever's already there. So the Soulknife's enhancement bonus provides the +1, and now the Legacy Weapon focus power can apply bonuses that the Soulknife normally can't access. And can do it on-demand, unlike the Soulknife's need for 8 hours of meditation (barring, again, particular Blade Skills, which are not as needed when they can choose a good underlying assortment and leave the specialty stuff to Legacy Weapon).

Not to mention that benefits of having +2 or more to a physical stat every time they activate their mind blade.

With the right archetype (Armored Blade, Shielded Blade) or Blade Skill (Telekinetic Armor, Mind Shield), the Soulknife/Occultist could also use his mind armor or mind shield as an Abjuration implement.

I think that's the extent of what they could get away with, there, though.



Gifted Blade is an odd archetype, in that the only thing it gives up is Psychic Strike for an admittedly-limited psi power progression. But Psychic Strike can be re-acquired as a Blade Skill. So essentially, the Gifted Blade is a Blade Skill.

[Psyren]

Not really seeing a question/discussion topic here but some other things you might want to think about also:

- Crystal Hilts give regular soulknives a bit more of the on-the-fly customization they lack baseline. They count as magic weapons and stack with your mind blade, so you should be able to put properties on them that might otherwise be more situational like Ghost Touch. Alternatively, if your GM rules they can only do raw bonus, just keep a +3 in your bags and use it to offset the penalty from using your Fluid Form blade skill.

- Augmented Blade gets Weapon Training as Fighter, so they qualify for some of the neat Advanced Weapon Training options in WMH. These provide benefits like additional skills and saving throws.

[Segev]

Not really seeing a question/discussion topic here but some other things you might want to think about also:No, this is the kind of discussion I was looking for. Soulknives are interesting in PF, but they're a little fiddly and have odd options that are not immediately obvious. The Augmented Blade thing just really jumped out at me when I finally noticed it; it's not called attention to as different, but it's a major shift.


- Crystal Hilts give regular soulknives a bit more of the on-the-fly customization they lack baseline. They count as magic weapons and stack with your mind blade, so you should be able to put properties on them that might otherwise be more situational like Ghost Touch. Alternatively, if your GM rules they can only do raw bonus, just keep a +3 in your bags and use it to offset the penalty from using your Fluid Form blade skill.Interesting; I hadn't found those yet. THe notion of using one to merely offset the Fluid Form Blade Skill is particularly clever.


- Augmented Blade gets Weapon Training as Fighter, so they qualify for some of the neat Advanced Weapon Training options in WMH. These provide benefits like additional skills and saving throws.Hm, good point. I kept ignoring that part, but it's not irrelevant. The Fighter AWTs are nontrivial in their own right. I should probably re-examine the PF Fighter to see just how much they really add to that class.


I haven't done a thorough investigation of the relation between Occultist and Soulknife, so I don't know how useful the opening post's observations are, but it is neat that the two have synergy at all. I don't really see much synergy between psionics and psychic magic in general. What's also interesting and a little disappointing to me is that the psionic writers expected there to be synergy between soulknife and aegis enough to make a PrC for it, but the two really don't seem to complement each other well. They're both too dependent on their own progressions, and the PrC suffers the same problem early-3e dual-caster classes did: too little, too late for catchup.



...huh. Fluid Form costs you +1s to your Mind Blade and associated armor/shield (if you've got them/the archetype)...but do Mind Bolts count as distinct for that purpose, or does Fluid Form on your Mind Blade cause your Mind Bolts to also lose enhancement? Can Crystal Hilts help with that?

And, while we're here...what is the point of Mind Daggers? I can see it for the Soulbolt: it's a faster swap than Telekinetic Blade, and can be gotten at level 2 (rather than waiting for level 4). But...what good are they to a normal soulknife?

[Psyren]

Crystal Bow is the mind bolts/soulbolt equivalent to the crystal hilt.

The primary benefit to Mind Daggers is their much, much larger range increment than even the light blades form. It's the ideal form for a thrower or switch-hitter soulknife. Notably, you can "throw" them out of their crystal hilts without launching the hilts themselves.

Not familiar enough with Occultist to really comment on that part.