Fixing the Soulknife?

[Coy]

This class seems doomed to be inherently underpowered. But novel, and i feel like suggesting it to a player the class, with a few fixes.

The most obvious would be to give the soulknife manifesting capability. Perhaps that of a Psy warrior, or maybe a bit less (Lets say an Erudite is a Wizard in terms of manifesting, a Psy warrior is a bard, then why not give atleast paladin/ranger manifesting?)

Perhaps giving some free bonus to the pool for weapon enhancments too?

It would be great not to feel like the only option is the Soulbow PrC.

Any more ideas?

[sonofzeal]

Try Psychic Rogue powers.

[Reynard]

Sorting out their screwed up weapon enhancement table could be a start. The sort of stuff they can put on their blades at a given level is weaksause compared to what most characters are going to be using.

Maybe giving them the option to shape the blade into any exotic weapon they have the feat for, instead of just bastard swords, on top of that as well.

[Runestar]

You may want to first decide what role you want it to fill in. As it stands, the soulknife seems like it could be a skirmisher, melee combatant or ranged artillery, save it sucks spectacularly at all of them.

It could simply be a feat chain for the psychic warrior or something.

[AslanCross]

The Soulbound Weapon Psychic Warrior is pretty much the fix for Soulknife. It reduces the entire class into an alternate class feature for Psychic Warrior.

Races of Eberron has a bunch of good synergistic feats and racial sub levels for Kalashtar Soulknife.

[Coidzor]

Allow the soulknife to manifest the mindblade as a wider variety of bladed weapons from the get-go. Say, include longsword(not balanced for TWF, so main-hand only unless penalties are taken) and greatsword(needs both hands) equivalents. Either have reach/ranged-weapons require a feat or be unlocked after a handful of levels. Or just pick out a handful of weapons, say, halberd, longsword, shortsword, guisarme, throwing axe.

Allow the soulknife to manifest as many mindblades as the soulknife has limbs to use them proficiently (so basically, the ability to dual wield mindblades).

Maybe make psionic strike something they have to expend their psionic focus in order to make it apply to all attacks in a round with the mindblade.

Shorten the amount of time it takes to reassign the "enchantments" on the mindblade. Say, make it an expenditure of psionic focus or make it something that takes 1-5 minutes of concentration if one wants to do it, say, between combats as opposed to having the option to do them in combats. Makes it much less of a "well, I chose wrong today, sorry guys my weapon's mostly useless now"

Give Multiple Throw at 6th level and give the class full BAB.

Decide what you're going to do about making their weapon magic and give them the +1 at either 2nd or 3rd level. I favor the idea of giving them a pool of +X equivalent to put on it. So if they had a +5 pool, they could make a +1 Keen(+1) Holy(+2) Ghost Touch(+1) Mindblade. Or so that a Mindblade automatically counts as at least a +1 weapon so the +X can be used to either bump it up to a +2-5 or just give it nifty enhancements without having one always going directly to making it magic.

[2xMachina]

I kinda like Soul Bow + Kensai.

Hello +1 +10 arrows fired from a +10 bow.

[Gralamin]

Allow the soulknife to manifest the mindblade as a wider variety of bladed weapons from the get-go. Say, include longsword(not balanced for TWF, so main-hand only unless penalties are taken) and greatsword(needs both hands) equivalents. Either have reach/ranged-weapons require a feat or be unlocked after a handful of levels. Or just pick out a handful of weapons, say, halberd, longsword, shortsword, guisarme, throwing axe.

Allow the soulknife to manifest as many mindblades as the soulknife has limbs to use them proficiently (so basically, the ability to dual wield mindblades).

Maybe make psionic strike something they have to expend their psionic focus in order to make it apply to all attacks in a round with the mindblade.

Shorten the amount of time it takes to reassign the "enchantments" on the mindblade. Say, make it an expenditure of psionic focus or make it something that takes 1-5 minutes of concentration if one wants to do it, say, between combats as opposed to having the option to do them in combats. Makes it much less of a "well, I chose wrong today, sorry guys my weapon's mostly useless now"

Give Multiple Throw at 6th level and give the class full BAB.

Decide what you're going to do about making their weapon magic and give them the +1 at either 2nd or 3rd level. I favor the idea of giving them a pool of +X equivalent to put on it. So if they had a +5 pool, they could make a +1 Keen(+1) Holy(+2) Ghost Touch(+1) Mindblade. Or so that a Mindblade automatically counts as at least a +1 weapon so the +X can be used to either bump it up to a +2-5 or just give it nifty enhancements without having one always going directly to making it magic.

I'd take it one step further. To me, the Soulknife seems like the Dragonfire Adept of Psionics. As such, I'd recommend giving it a bunch of at-will power-like abilities.

[lesser_minion]

This class seems doomed to be inherently underpowered. But novel, and i feel like suggesting it to a player the class, with a few fixes.

The most obvious would be to give the soulknife manifesting capability. Perhaps that of a Psy warrior, or maybe a bit less (Lets say an Erudite is a Wizard in terms of manifesting, a Psy warrior is a bard, then why not give atleast paladin/ranger manifesting?)

The biggest problem with the soulknife is actually a fluff issue. It's the fact that there isn't enough material for a base class.

The soulknife started life as a ten-level PrC, which was re-written to gain the exact same abilities over twenty levels in order to meet WotC's minimum badness quota.

The simplest fix for the soulknife is to either re-write it as a feat chain, use the original from the 3.0 psionics handbook, or use the psychic warrior alternate class feature.

Personally, I think the lack of manifesting is actually an important element of the class. None of the material provided actually implies that the soulknife should have manifesting, and the fact that it's in the XPH doesn't mean that it's required.

That also makes it a lot easier to reflavour the class to fit whatever you want, as opposed to being tied to whatever psionics represent in your campaign.

The soulknife's abilities beyond the mind blade generally fit with the same themes as psionic feats - personally, I'd focus on that. I'd also consider looking at the monk.

I did a simple re-write of the soulknife a few months ago. It's only around tier 4, since I tried to keep added fluff to a minimum. I put the enhancement bonus progression at +1 at first level, and an additional +1 for every four levels past 1st (basically, one better than a fully augmented Call Weaponry manifested by a psychic warrior of the same level as the soulknife).

[hewhosaysfish]

I kinda like Soul Bow + Kensai.

Hello +1 +10 arrows fired from a +10 bow.

Were you by any chance familiar with 3.0 before 3.5 came out?
Enhancement bonuses for weapons and ammo don't stack.

[2xMachina]

I just don't bother saying +10 equivalent. Heck, I don't think anyone actually goes +10 straight.

Your arrows can have lucky/bane, burst/burst/burst/holy/or whatever fired from a bow that give different effects.