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View Full Version : Is the Soulknife a better fighter than, well, the Fighter?



Mr. Friendly
2007-10-19, 01:54 PM
I never really gave much thought to Soulknives until recently. I remembered them from 3.0 and they really sucked. Now though... they are not so bad. In fact, they look better than the fighter honestly, which brings me to the point of this discussion:

Is the Soulknife a better fighter than a Fighter?

I am thinking he is and here is why:

While he has lower BAB than the fighter, he gets that free focus which give him parity for several levels.

Versatility. The Soulknife can change his blade into different weapons, give it various magical powers and even throw it with no penalty. Duplicating all these tricks will take the fighter a lot of gold or a lot of feats.

Free magic weapons. The Soulknife's mindblade gets better with every passing level with no cash involved. This makes a Soulknife Vow of Poverty build very appealing.

You can't be disarmed, sundered or whatever. Well you can, but you regain your weapon(s) as a free action.

Obviously both classes are not as good as CoDzilla, Batman, other pure casters, however, as fighters.... I think the Soulknife is just a better fighter than the Fighter.

What do you think?

Starbuck_II
2007-10-19, 01:58 PM
Versatility. The Soulknife can change his blade into different weapons, give it various magical powers and even throw it with no penalty. Duplicating all these tricks will take the fighter a lot of gold or a lot of feats.

Throw it once/round or multiple attacks at level 17.
Yeah, 1/round really outbeats a fighter. A Returning weapon sounds exactly like the Mindblade. And by level 17, I hardly count it as helpful.


Free magic weapons. The Soulknife's mindblade gets better with every passing level with no cash involved. This makes a Soulknife Vow of Poverty build very appealing.

True, but VoP means you can't use the extra cash.



You can't be disarmed, sundered or whatever. Well you can, but you regain your weapon(s) as a free action.

Obviously both classes are not as good as CoDzilla, Batman, other pure casters, however, as fighters.... I think the Soulknife is just a better fighter than the Fighter.

What do you think?

Soulknife's AC will be lower, hit will be lower, and cash to make up the difference will make that lower.

Now he has a decent Skill selection to help though.

BardicDuelist
2007-10-19, 01:59 PM
Actually, forgoing VoP for the extra cash by level (weapons cost quite a bit to upgrade), is perhaps one of the better things.

Do they get UPD as a class skill?

Sucrose
2007-10-19, 02:05 PM
Soulknife, on the whole, is generally regarded as a weak class.

I've never played one myself, but I do agree with the arguments that I've seen on the 'net before, so I'll repeat them.

Fundamentally, a Soulknife is a crappy, rich Fighter. He has lower HD and BAB (which is good for things beyond attack rolls, such as grappling), his class feature is a magic weapon (and he can't pick the good ones like a greatsword, a guisarme, a lance, or a glaive), and he lacks heavy armor proficiency, giving him a bit of MAD.

Throwing weapons generally is a waste. If they're close enough to throw a weapon at with any real accuracy, then they're close enough to close with and attack. Disarming is a poor focus, since it provokes AoO unless you have Improved Disarm, and you encounter nonhumanoid enemies frequently enough that that's a waste, so usually you don't have to worry about opponents trying it. If you do, then odds are they're trying to capture you nonlethally, which makes things both less dire and less hopeful, since odds are they outlevel you.

And...versatility? No; one of the Fighter's best points is the ability to specialize in a given fighting style, with enough feats left over to at least be competent in others.

Now, the Psychic Warrior... that is a better fighter than the fighter.

Jasdoif
2007-10-19, 02:24 PM
The major problem with the soulknife is that it's centered around subpar weaponry. Your mind blade is weaker then a magic weapon you can afford at the same level, and your myriad of class abilities are tied to using this weaker weapon. And it doesn't have full BAB progression, so you get more and more behind on your attacks with the weapon you need to work with. Basically you end up hitting less with a weapon that does less when it hits.

The concept is cool, but the implementation...is not.



Do they get UPD as a class skill?Nope.

Slander
2007-10-19, 02:28 PM
Soulknives are generally considered one of the weaker classes, but I've never found that to be very true. Part of the problem, I think, is that people tend to play soulknives as a "rogue lite" when what they are is fighter-bombers. They're good at swooping in, dropping some massive melee damage on one or two opponents, then swooping back out to reload before doing it over again. Once they get the knife to the soul ability, they're very effective at bringing down spellcasters.

That said, they're very limited. Their best damage-dealing ability (psychic strike) is mind-affecting, meaning that undead and constructs have nothing to fear. They're limited to three slashing weapons for mind blade forms, medium armor, and simple weapons. If there's one good thing Complete Psionic did, it was expanding options for soulknives. The illumine soul prestige class allows them to psychic-strike undead, among other things. The Mind Cleave feat allows them to automatically recharge a psychic strike if they drop a foe using that class feature.

I've used soulknives both as NPC villains and as player characters. Mid-level is when they really begin to shine. Oh, and never discount the throw mind blade class feature. When you've dropped your last melee opponent and you've got an attack remaining, it's fun to toss your blade at an opponent some distance away, then reform it next round and charge them. (It's a situation that's come up for me more often than I care to recall.)

Also, I have to agree with the above statement: The psychic warrior is a much better fighter than the fighter.

Mr. Friendly
2007-10-19, 02:33 PM
He has lower HD and BAB

Lower BAB yes, but the same HD.

The Psychic Warrior has the lower HD.

Just sayin...

Person_Man
2007-10-19, 02:41 PM
IMO, the Soulknife is garbage.

3/4 BAB means that Power Attack is a poor option for damage, and you generally end up 1 iterative attack behind all the full BAB melee classes for much of your progression.

Your Mind Blade isn't reach weapon, making battlefield control difficult.

Psychic Strike doesn't scale particularly well, can't be used as part of a full attack, doesn't effect enemies immune to mind effecting effects, and its bonus dice of damage - which means that it can't be multiplied via feats or a crit like Smite Evil.

The Mind Blade progression is slower then the progression of a Kensai, who can enchant both sides of a double weapon, two fists, or multiple natural weapons of the same type. (Albeit the Kensai has to pay some XP for it, it ends up being much more efficient).

You only have light armor prof, making Tank builds difficult.

You don't gain Multiple Throw until 17th level, making a Master Thrower or Bloodstorm Blade build impossible.

Knife to the Soul is definitely a great ability, but since it depends on Psychic Strike it still scales poorly and can't be used on a full attack.


A simple fix would be to make the Mind Blade a melee weapon of any type, and give them full BAB. They'd then be a much more playable class.

Frosty
2007-10-19, 02:48 PM
Fighters make better fighter-bombers. It's called Charging while using Power Attack. You can do it once every two rounds, and with a relatively inexpensive item (Boots of the Battle-Charger from MiC I think), you can charge every round (twice per day) since you can charge as a standard action after activating those boots.

Reel On, Love
2007-10-19, 02:58 PM
Person_Man got it right; the Soulknife is crap. It's down at the bottom of the tiers with the monk. (The CWar Samurai is buried underground.)

Leicontis
2007-10-19, 02:59 PM
I've only played a Soulknife once, and I essentially played him as a combination rogue/fighter. There are certain tricks that soulknives can use to be very effective:

#1 - Psionic focus feats. Plenty of feats give benefits just for being psionically focused (heck, soulknives even get one as a bonus feat).

#2 - Soulbow. Full attack, at greater range. Bonus feats. If you are willing to sacrifice their Phase Arrow ability, you can deliver a Knife to the Soul at significant range, hosing casters or rapidly incapacitating other characters.

#3 - Concealment. A soulknife can appear totally unarmed, while possessing a deadly arsenal that they can call up in an instant. A soulknife assassin can be strip-searched, and even examined with powerful divination magic, and still not reveal the weapons he's carrying.

#4 - Versatility. Expect to be fighting undead? Swap out the Keen property on your weapon for something more useful. Soulknives don't save the cost of one magic weapon, they save the cost of a small armory full of various magical weapons, each suited to a different purpose.

TheOOB
2007-10-19, 03:15 PM
Spending twenty levels to get a magic weapon isn't worth it, anyone can get a magic weapon with a little cash, and you can get a better one then the soulknife gets (a +1 flaming frost, shocking wounding longsword with greater magic weapon on it is much better).

bugsysservant
2007-10-19, 03:17 PM
Soulknives are rubbish. I'm not going to rehash the old arguments, they have been covered above. In games with them there are several fixes that can bring them up to par, use them alone or in conjunction depending on where "par" is:

1. Full BAB. Makes it more fightery, and better overall in combat.

2. More Skill Points. Makes it more Roguey, and better overall out of combat.

3. Bonus feats. Whether limited to the fighter list or not, this will always help.

4. Allow the Soulknife to switch the magical abilities of their mindblades as a free/move/standard/full round action. Particularly good with #5.

5. Double the magical bonus progression of the mindblade.

6. Allow them to pick one weapon category at start ("blades" granting dagger, swort short, bastard sword, longsword, and greatsword. "Axes" grants battle axe, hand axe, throwing axe, Dwarven waraxe, and orc double axe, etc.) They get proficiency in all weapons, and can switch between any freely. Allow feats that can pick up additional categories.

Nerd-o-rama
2007-10-19, 03:39 PM
Things that are better fighters than fighters:

Warblades, Swordsages, Crusaders, Barbarians, Clerics, Druids, Favored Souls, some Swashbuckler/Rogue builds, Psychic Warriors.

Soulknives are not among these.

TheOOB
2007-10-19, 03:43 PM
Wizards with tensers transformation can be better then soulknives.

Nerd-o-rama
2007-10-19, 03:48 PM
Fighter-style is a really suboptimal choice for Wiz/Sorc, though. Clerics and Druids buff up for melee quite well, whereas Wizards have an easier time trapping and killing their foes from a distance with just spells. Also, Tenser's is crap, since it leaves you unable to cast. Does Divine Power turn off your spells? Nope.

Now, put a little more effort into a gish, and it will probably beat a fighter.

The_Snark
2007-10-19, 03:51 PM
Soulknives by themselves aren't all that good, but...


#2 - Soulbow. Full attack, at greater range. Bonus feats. If you are willing to sacrifice their Phase Arrow ability, you can deliver a Knife to the Soul at significant range, hosing casters or rapidly incapacitating other characters.

The Soulbow is a very solid archer choice. You add your Wisdom bonus to your damage; if you take Zen Archery, you're also adding it to your attack bonus. Most archers suffer from MAD; the soulbow doesn't have to. If you're, say, a soulknife 4/monk 1, you also get Wisdom to AC.

It gives you pretty much all the advantages the soulknife gets, except for psychic strike—and it gives you bonus feats every couple levels, which more than makes up for it.

0oo0
2007-10-19, 04:05 PM
Random idea:
How broken would it be to make a feat called Mindblade that basically gives anyone the ability to create a mindblade that progresses as a mindblades does? I just like the concept of a mindblade, but as the only real feature of the class, it is weak. Would it be possible to allow trowing/multiple throw as part of the progression instead of just acquiring magical properties?

osyluth
2007-10-19, 04:07 PM
i liked soulknives better when they where still a prestige class

Saph
2007-10-19, 04:15 PM
I'd say the Fighter wins out, due to his flexibility in design. You can make a reasonably decent Fighter by picking only the best feats, but the Soulknife gets no choice over his class features at all - like the monk, he's locked into one poor progression and can never change it.

- Saph

Sucrose
2007-10-19, 04:58 PM
Lower BAB yes, but the same HD.

The Psychic Warrior has the lower HD.

Just sayin...

Really? They get d10? I prefer Psychic Warrior in both crunch and fluff, so it's been a while since I looked at Soulknife. I stand corrected.

In the case of your second point, the Psychic Warrior can easily make up for the loss of HP: they get both heavy armor proficiency and access to psionic powers like Vigor and Biofeedback. Plus, it's only one step below, so, while a point against the psychic warrior, it isn't a horribly big one.

malcolm
2007-10-19, 06:25 PM
The soulknife isn't a great class but I spent a long time playing one and I thought it was fairly fun.

People have already listed most of the pros and cons. The big plus for me was versatility and the access to the psionic focus feats. Throwing your mindblade is usually a useless thing to do, but it can occasionally be useful when the terrain or altitude of your foe makes it impossible to melee.

On the negatives, you lose out on BAB and Saves, and it's fairly easy to cook up a more powerful magic weapon than the mind blade at the same levels, although the magic effects can't be changed as they can with the mind blade.

Soulknife: Terrible in an arena setting, hard to optimize, sometimes more versatile than a fighter when campaigning.

Nowhere Girl
2007-10-19, 06:47 PM
Also, Tenser's is crap, since it leaves you unable to cast. Does Divine Power turn off your spells? Nope.

Which, as an aside, is also why Tenser's Transformation doesn't render eldritch knights irrelevant, as some are fond of saying.

*mutters* They were just irrelevant from the very beginning, is all ...

As an aside, I'm not aware of a class called "fighter." You must mean psychic warrior? Or warblade? There's no class just called "fighter."

*plugs ears*

No fighter ...

Armads
2007-10-19, 07:50 PM
Free magic weapons. The Soulknife's mindblade gets better with every passing level with no cash involved. This makes a Soulknife Vow of Poverty build very appealing.

Vow of Poverty is terrible for a Soulknife. You can never fly now.

Soulknives could be good via the CPsi feats that let you recharge your mind blade via killing stuff + Knife to the Soul (dump some rats, get great cleave, full attack, unleash Knife to the Soul when you hit the enemy, charge Psychic Strike via killing rats).

The Soulbow's awesome, though. They make for some of the best archers, especially when combined with Zen Archery.

Skjaldbakka
2007-10-19, 08:12 PM
As an aside, I'm not aware of a class called "fighter." You must mean psychic warrior? Or warblade? There's no class just called "fighter."

*plugs ears*

No fighter ...

Nah, Fighter is a replacement level option. It only has two levels, and you get a bonus feat instead of your normal class feature progression.

:smalltongue:

Nowhere Girl
2007-10-19, 08:56 PM
Nah, Fighter is a replacement level option. It only has two levels, and you get a bonus feat instead of your normal class feature progression.

:smalltongue:

Oh, well ...

That's alright, then. :smallwink: