OK, this post is not for direct response to anyone. It is merely tossing out a few changes we may be making.

First, as has already been stated, the following enhancement rules will be added: A soulknife must have a level at least 3 times the enhancement bonus he wishes to apply to his mind blade (3rd for a +1, 6th for a +2, etc.). In addition, his level must be 3 times the effective enhancement bonus for any special ability he wishes to apply to his mind blade, even if he would otherwise have a high enough total enhancement to apply it.

Second, we are looking at a number of Blade Skills and how the pre-reqs are set up. jadeite, I actually owe you something of an apology. I apparently did not write up Trade Blows as intended. It should not have a pre-req of any one blade skill. We will likely be increasing it to require at least 2 DEFENDER skills (possibly 3), and it was always meant to require Defender skills. I was discussing Trade Blows with that assumption in my head.

Twin Strike will end up with the added pre-req of one other Skirmisher Skill (possibly two, though I'm leaning away from that).

I will try to come up with more Defender Blade Skills that don't require shield bashing. I am not going to add TWFing to the Defender Form Focus, as even with increased penalties, that's stepping on toes. Normal feats can be spent on that. (Which means some blade skills will likely be something like the Fighter's Armor Training, so that the Dex needed for TWF doesn't go to waste just b/c you want Heavy Armor.)

There will be other Blade Skill changes, but that's off the top of my head.

All per encounter abilities will be switched to Expend Psionic Focus abilities. Yes, this means you can use them more often. But you're using up actions that could be devoted elsewhere to do so.

We will look at the various Form Masteries, but I can't honestly say much one way or the other at this point.

Form Focus feats may end up allowing you to ignore Ability prerequisites, but that is all. However, this change would also come with the add-on that they qualify for those feats as those there BAB was equal to their soulknife level (only for the purpose of qualifying for the feats however).

Slayer's Blade will likely be removed. KttS is pretty much guaranteed to stay as is other than that, because then it will be the version that's always been here.

I will, of course, also work on cleaning up the wording. These are not the only things I'm looking at right now, but they're the big ones.

and some throwing mindblade blade skills? or is that al going into a prestige class down the road?

I like the proposed changes, it makes the blade skills feel a bit ¨cleaner¨ mechanics wise. It will still be possible to use different skill chains for any type of soulknife (defender, striker, skirmisher) but it would require you to specialice.

I must say that I really love what has been done with the soulknife. It possesses a greater degree of flexibility with its abilities than before and that lends itself well to the role of combatant.
Form focus: taking the ranger's weapon style class ability as a base and building on it is one the best things about this version of the class that I love. No problems here whatsoever.
Mindblade specialist: a needed boost from the original mind blade focus ability, as this enables the soulknife to specialize in their weapon without having to dip into fighter.
Blade skills: like the barbarian's rage powers (which I loved), this has the benefit of making a soulknife more practical while at the same time allowing the player to design something more to their liking and give the class more personality.
Enlightened mind: finally, a legitimate reason for the soulknife to have wild talent!
Hidden knowledge: see Enlightened mind.

However, with all that I love about the class there is one thing that I'm concerned about:

Knife to the soul/Slayer's blade: as it is currently written, I would never use Knife to the soul as it would be much more beneficial to use Slayer's blade in combat (the effects of the physical score damage would bring a quicker end to any battle than than the mental ones). But at the same time, I also don't have a viable alternative either...

I think i'm with Jeremy on the whole extra confusing math on the Mindblade bonuses. why not just make them level based instead ala the Blade Dancer PrC from Oriental Adventures?

Someone may have mentioned this but unless the psi-like abilities are changed some of the powers they gain through enlightened mind and hidden knowledge aren't useful because psi-like abilities are a standard action.

@mindbornlich: We will most likely streamline how a psi-like ability works to use the same wording as a spell-like ability, which means that it will take the same time to use as it would to manifest.

Lordmonkeysama wrote:

I think i'm with Jeremy on the whole extra confusing math on the Mindblade bonuses. why not just make them level based instead ala the Blade Dancer PrC from Oriental Adventures?

Honestly, I'm missing what's so complicated about them. They're the exact same rules that apply to creating magic items (though I didn't realize it at the time, I stumbled upon that fact last night).

Unless I'm missing something, the skirmisher Form Focus feats are going to be problematic, because they will not meet the BAB requirements for Imp and Greater Two-Weapon Fighting at the point when they are listed. Is that intentional?

Because anytime you start talking about multiple caveats to get x, y, or z, you start implementing book work, cross referencing, or charts. Simple formula are to be desired more than complicated algorithms.

Quote::

First, as has already been stated, the following enhancement rules will be added: A soulknife must have a level at least 3 times the enhancement bonus he wishes to apply to his mind blade (3rd for a +1, 6th for a +2, etc.). In addition, his level must be 3 times the effective enhancement bonus for any special ability he wishes to apply to his mind blade, even if he would otherwise have a high enough total enhancement to apply it.

The above is clunky, plain and simple.

That being said, thinking about it... maybe it's the presentation that's the problem for me.

My suggestion is to boil it down to the simplest way of explaining it - because the way it's laid out now feels clunky.

Shisumo wrote:

Unless I'm missing something, the skirmisher Form Focus feats are going to be problematic, because they will not meet the BAB requirements for Imp and Greater Two-Weapon Fighting at the point when they are listed. Is that intentional?

There will be a change to take care of this problem. When Form Focus was originally written, the Mindblade Specialist functioned a little differently, and when we modified that, we didn't necessarily think to double-check how the change functioned with everything.

Jeremy.Smith wrote:

Because anytime you start talking about multiple caveats to get x, y, or z, you start implementing book work, cross referencing, or charts. Simple formula are to be desired more than complicated algorithms.

Level Requirement = Enhancement Bonus x 3

That's what the little paragraph boils down to. That said, the simplest presentation may simply be to add it to the chart.

Two suggestions - as you gain levels and chosen the Skirmisher path, you can form a mind double-blade or Longsword\Shortsword combination. Maybe larger if the Oversized two-weapon fighting feat possibly or if it gets released.

Since these are beta documents, are you going to tidy up the format a little more?

Anderlorn wrote:

Two suggestions - as you gain levels and chosen the Skirmisher path, you can form a mind double-blade or Longsword\Shortsword combination. Maybe larger if the Oversized two-weapon fighting feat possibly or if it gets released.

The double weapon will likely be included in the Beta (since a double weapon uses the same TWF mechanics as a two light weapons, it's no big deal). I don't foresee chaning it from the short sword/short sword combo that exists now. Being that Oversized TWF isn't OGL, I'm not saying anything one way or the other there. I'd love to see another version of that feat, but we'll have to wait and see on it.

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Since these are beta documents, are you going to tidy up the format a little more?

These aren't even Beta...They're Alpha. Yeah, formatting is going to be cleaned up, as is wording on a lot of the abilities.

Oops, I meant Alpha

Will we be able to look at the revised Psi-warrior-alpha?

I'm a bit confused on the enhancement = level x3 on one angle - can a soulknife not have an effective +10 weapon at 20th level? (+5 enhancement, +5 specials)? Because that's what I'm getting out of this.

Or, should it be specials or enhancement being level x3?

Either Enhancement or Specials cannot, by themselves, be higher than 3 times your level. So at 15th level, you can have either a +5 enhancement or +5 specials. At 18th level, that is +6.

Disciple-of-Sakura wrote:

I'm a bit confused on the enhancement = level x3 on one angle - can a soulknife not have an effective +10 weapon at 20th level? (+5 enhancement, +5 specials)? Because that's what I'm getting out of this. Or, should it be specials or enhancement being level x3?

Actually, this won't be an issue. The actual change is going to spell it out a little better instead of sticking the math in there (added 'required level' column for the abilities).

That said, without taking the right blade skill, a soulknife cannot have a +10 effective weapon, which is nothing new.

@A_A. No, it caps out at +5. No epic bonuses pre-epic levels. Otherwise, we're really gonna have some issues with the whole gold disparity thing.

Just read over the Alpha release. Does anyone find it funny that the psionic class soulknife doesn't get any psionic bonus feats?

Wraith428