Soulknife

[Booker Grimm]

Hi folks,

Just after a little clarification on 3.5/soulknife rules.

My Soulknife character has 2 psy points from her wild talent.

When creating her mind blade does she expend any or all of these points? I'm confused where she gets to add damage to the mind blade and if there is additional cost to creating different mind blades?

Psionic weapon deals an extra 2d6 and expends focus (?).

Psychic strike deals 2d8 points of damage with your mind blade. If I use this and psi weapon do I effectively add 2d6 and 2d8 to my damage for that attack? And I'm not clear on whether this cost psi points.

Hope that makes sense. Any clarification appreciated. Thanks.

[Spin-Man]

I'm going to pull these answers from the Expanded Psionics Handbook (EPH). If you're using another source, something may be off.

Creating the mind blade is a class feature that does not cost any psi points. The text in the Wild Talent class feature simply reinforces the idea that the character needs a psionic spark to become trained as a Soulknife. The feat also allows the character to take psionic feats such as Psionic Weapon.

You can stack the damage of Psychic Strike and Psionic Weapon, although you must spend a move action to imbue the mind blade with Psychic Strike and a full-round action to gain psionic focus (see page 37 of the EPH for the details of how to gain and expend focus). Yes, 3d6+1d8 (weapon+PS+PW) at 3rd level is a lot of damage, but it's not like you can do it every turn.

Neither Psychic Strike nor Psionic Weapon use psi points, but you must have at least one psi point to gain psionic focus. This means that as long as you spend the actions to prepare your abilities, you can use them as many times as you like. None of the soulknife's abilities use psi points, so you won't need to keep track of them at all unless you choose a separate character option that uses them.

[mrgrey]

Why would anyone using psionic focus regularly not take the feat that makes it a move action (thus allowing you to do it most rounds, provided you don't mind eating an AoO)?

[Spin-Man]

Why would anyone using psionic focus regularly not take the feat that makes it a move action (thus allowing you to do it most rounds, provided you don't mind eating an AoO)?Because they have other, better move actions. You can only do so much in a round. :) For example, a soulknife is usually better off entering a fight with psionic focus, and then using move actions to ready mind strike and attacking whenever possible. Spending two move actions to ready abilities in between every attack results in lower damage dealt overall.

I've always viewed psionic focus as something to establish in between encounters, rather than something worth doing while already engaged. Some abilities might make it worthwhile for certain characters, but most of the time you don't have an extra move action to spare and/or don't want to risk the opportunity attacks.

[mrgrey]

I've always viewed psionic focus as something to establish in between encounters, rather than something worth doing while already engaged. Some abilities might make it worthwhile for certain characters, but most of the time you don't have an extra move action to spare and/or don't want to risk the opportunity attacks.

I suppose it depends on the class. With the Psychic Warrior (the class I'm more familiar with because that's the one I'm currently playing as), once I'm already in melee I can either do a full round attack and hit twice if I'm lucky, or expend psychic focus to do nearly triple damage on a single attack. If I want to hit something with high AC but low touch AC semi regularly, then I can either do a full round attack and risk missing both attacks, or a single attack that's almost guaranteed to hit. No to mention that I have to expend it to use any meta-psionics. Also, I don't mind being hit by an AoO, because once I've taken at least 50 damage hostile empathic transfer is an excellent means of self healing.

Having said that, however, the Psychic Warrior and Psion can only really use move actions for movement, and pretty much everything a Psion is going to want to do in combat is probably going to be a standard action; re-reading the soul knife class, I suppose there's too many other things that a soul knife might want to use a move action for, and eating an AoO is more of an issue.