Quote Originally Posted by Ashe View Post
It's certainly never been useful to kite enemies, act first or get to use your core ability when fighting an enemy on your own!

Not sure if I'm using blue text correctly but you get the idea, to say that soulknife is breaking new ground but ignore what swashbuckler can do is deliberately ignoring what other subclasses can do for you to try and make a point.
Huh. That's an interesting takeaway. Did you stop reading at some point? Or did I sufficiently obfuscate my meaning with layers of silliness? Either way, a correction is in order.

I actually brought it up as a point of comparison because I'm pointing out that the soulknife isn't really doing anything new in that regard, just different from core assumptions. I think in that same post I say that they're in the same conceptual vein for expanding the instances in which one can sneak attack. I think they compare favorably, as the ability reads in Tasha's; they both increase the instances in which a character can sneak attack, making the ability more flexible. "I can sneak attack when dueling someone" vs "I can sneak attack disarmed and bucknekkid." There's parity there.
I do think the soulknife is breaking new ground; the psychic knives aren't it, though. It's not the psychic knives that're class defining; the theme is psychic, not knives. The emphasis is on *soul*, not knife. Knife might be in the name, but just wait till you find out Champion doesn't give you any abilities that demonstrate you are the very best good boy from the American Kennel Club.
(I also don't use the blue text, so I'm likewise unsure if I'm using it right; everything I say and write is so tinted by mirth that maybe I should be using it exclusively? But also, now I want to play a character that is the very best good boy from the American Kennel Club, so does it really qualify as sarcasm?)

But the idea that the Soulknife somehow doesn't get to use most of their rogue features without opportunity attacks? Nah, dawg. Context of the base rogue chassis doesn't support that position in the least, and the context provided by their near peers don't really support that, either. It's a perfectly viable ability as it is. It gives you a pew-pew that you can use without penalty in melee range that you're always armed with; it puts darts to shame, and makes dagger ranged attacks look like weaksauce when you take into account the action economy required for drawing them. You can kite with it almost as well as a shortbow, but getting stuck in melee with it doesn't impart disadvantage, *and* you can attack twice a round sans a deep multi-class. You don't ever need to drop it, you can never be disarmed, you don't even need to wield it if the situation doesn't call for it, and your murder weapon can never really be traced to you so long as you ice the witnesses because it ceases to exist the moment it's done the dirty work. You can take the clothes of whoever you subdued to incorporate into your new disguise with impunity because you've left zero marks and spilled zero blood, and when they find your victim whoever is investigating will have a devil of a time identifying how they were killed, let alone who killed them. Also, it does psychic damage.
The whole package is solid. It doesn't *need* the upgrade to be a serviceable ability; it serves remarkably well already, even without benefiting off turn sneak attacks. It's got solid mechanical boons and "ribbon" applications that make it compelling without totally obviating all other possible options, which I think is generally good design.

In short, I think it's balanced as it is. And if you really need to benefit from doing off turn sneak attacks, the "I drop my dagger, pew-pew, and pick it up again as my interact with object so Owen the Order Cleric can let me off turn sneak attack" is just as easily depicted as the supremely badass "I flip my dagger in the air, hurl a blast of psionic energy against a distant foe across the room, take two steps to jab another fella in the gut with a psionic fist while the tossed dagger lands in my other outstretched hand, only to seamlessly bury it in someone when Owen the Order Cleric yells a warning at me."

The "absurd" sequence is pure Jedi smoothness when you aren't obsessed with labeling it absurd; Jedi are absurd, yeah, but some people find that sort of absurd cool. It's an attack sequence you simply can't do with a bow. It's a sequence that would be impossible to do with a brace of daggers without a specific fighting style for any other rogue; losing a level to multi-classing or an ASI to a feat. It's a sequence that is *uniquely* in the wheel house of the Soulknife. Yeah, you must carry a dagger to be perfectly optimized (or a short sword, or a rapier, whatever; daggers - as Roxette would say - got the look), but optimized isn't a requirement. A character can abstain from carrying a dagger and be perfectly fine just relying on the ability provided by the subclass, but are even better at the action movie shenanigans than most rogues - except maybe the swashbuckler - just by picking up a knife and flipping it in the air.

I suppose most of what I wrote was a bit more oblique, but the ability in the context of what other rogues can do is perfectly fine. As it is. No upgrade needed.

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Further, many of the complaints about how it doesn't ever upgrade when compared to using magic weapons aren't addressed by making it compatible with opportunity attacks; the soulknife is still better served by carrying that magic dagger for much of their career, anyway. Fixing that "issue" would require a total rethink of the class, one where the soul loses out to the knife. I doubt I'd like the result as much.
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As for "who would play a spy-thriller with D&D," maybe the same people who used it as a mechanism to explore dynastic responsibility and obligation, and the nature of state level power?

Regardless, it's a much easier proposition when characters can be in multiple locations, doing multiple things, while still being in perfect communication with each other; soulknife gets that, no one else does. To me, that's subclass defining because it naturally opens up a whole style of gameplay that would otherwise be difficult.
The knives? The knives are the ribbon.