Soulknife

[Aerendil]

Was thinking about this one lastnight, as the Dreaming Dark / psionics are whispered to be a focus for the next Mod. And the soulknife is perhaps the easiest of the psionic classes to be implemented in DDO, as they aren't overly psionic - so no worries there about having to code a whole new "magic" system some consider to be "broken". The only tricky part would be the mindblade itself, but I'll talk about that in a minute. But for reference purposes, I'm using the 3.0 Soulknife for build / comparison (found here - http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x...040402a&page=2).

Let's see - it's a d10 hps, 3/4 BAB class with proficiency in simple weapons, light armour, shields, and their own mindblade, of course. Skill sets they're familiar with are already in the game for the most part (Climb, Hide, Jump, Listen, Spot, Move Silently, Tumble). Taking a look at their abilities:

- Weapon focus / greater weapon focus (mindblade). Easily implemented.

- Speed of thought - again, easily implemented. For all intents and purposes, it's Barbarian speed (+10%) but only functions in light or medium armour.

- Psychic strikes - shouldn't be too bad if done as a "clicky" much like Rogue haste, Ranger sprint, etc, etc. Useable X times per day for a 1-shot boost (similar to Paladin smites, I guess). Nice "burst dps" for those pesky hard hitters you want to take down asap, and not overpowered by a long shot.

- Bladewind - free whirlwind attack at 9th level, either on a cooldown timer or useable X times per day.

- Throw mindblade - same as your typical throwing weapon (dagger, hammer, etc.)

- Knife to the soul - converts all psychic strike damage to stat damage, either of a stat of the player's choosing (perhaps like the human versatility line - but would be a LOT of clickies to choose from which isn't ideal), or make it to all stats, or perhaps even just damage the target's main stat (so on a mage, it would do INT damage; on a troll it might do STR or CON damage). Whichever works. Testing obviously required here, but with the upcoming changes to stat damage, I can't see this being horribly overpowered.
Useable X times a day just like psychic strike, and share their cooldown timer and use/per day limit. So if you had 5 clickies, using 3 knifes to the soul and 2 psychic strikes would deplete you until you hit a shrine. At level 19, this ability maxes out at a -5 stat hit, which is nice for a quick 1-shot "burst stat damage" class. Clearly the ability to enhance this, or obtain more clickies per day, is an option for class enhancements here.

Now, the slightly tricky bits:
- the actual mind blade. This will require some coding to make them "unique". And well they should - they're the class-defining feature of the Soulknife class. Some sort of "glowing" effect would certainly be a plus, and some customization as well, perhaps at character creation (i.e. choose a colour for your mind blade - chooseable from in-game special effects / colours, or even the dice roll colors that are already customizable. Imagine the dice "alien" pattern on your mind blade?).

- shape mind blade and mind blade enhancement features: these could be either a new tab in the Character information, or added in the Spells tab. Useable only at shrines, this would allow the Soul Knife some versatility (as per the PnP rules) to alter their mindblades mid-quest by changing the weapon type (bastard sword, longsword, dual shortswords) and enhancements (catering the enhancements to upcoming key fights, much like how a Wizard swaps out his swaps at shrines). Players could choose from a list for both the shape and enhancement and simply "drag and drop" them into the spell box, much like how spell preparation/memorization works, and could even have greyed-out enhancements that are not yet available (as they improve with level). This could also be a future PrE or even just class enhancement option here, offering additional shapes or enhancements to choose from.

- further to the enhancements, aside from "psychokinetic" / "psychokinetic burst" (treat as force damage), defending, keen, vicious, and bodyfeeding, most of the Soul Knife enhancements are not yet implemented in DDO, which could cause a problem. I would propose that the devs simply use pre-existing weapon enhancements as their list, which would also offer the Soulknife the chance to add critical DDO abilities such as ghost-touch, disruption, greater banes, transmuting, etc. to their mind blades (which in PnP are not enhancement options). Without those, the Soulknife would be hard-pressed to compete with the current weapons available to all other classes, especially considering your end-game melee character will have several weapons of each of the above to swap from while the Soulknife is limited to their mind blades only (unless you want to swap to simple weaponry).
The only major catch here is that greensteel weaponry completely gimps the mind blade, and some sort of crafting-based solution should be considered here for balance..

- future feats - would love to see the Flowing Blade feat (from Blades of the Quori dragonshard - http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/ebds/20050110a) make it in, allowing further mind blade shape customization, as well as the Soulblade Warrior feat from Races of Eberron (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x...050407b&page=2), which treats the mind blade as if the soul knife were 2 levels higher (allowing pure soulknifes a stronger mindblade earlier, or allows them to splash 2 levels of something else without gimping their main weapon).

Thoughts? Criticisms?

[KKDragonLord]

so no worries there about having to code a whole new "magic" system some consider to be "broken".

In PnP Psionics are the most balanced power system in the game, anyone who says its broken does so out of ignorance about it.
(obs: there are specific threads in the wotc forums clarifying that.)

Other than that i agree, it should be fairly doable.

[Aerendil]

Yeah, I don't feel psionics is broken at all. But some people do, and I think part of that prejudice comes from 1 or 2 psionic abilities in PnP that were somewhat overpowered, leading to some really crazy builds. But those won't translate well into DDO anyways, so I'm not too concerned.
But for every person who loves psionics, I seem to see another say how "broken" it is. /sigh.

Anyways, yes, would love to see this class put in.

I'd also love to see Kalashtar, as they shouldn't be too difficult to adapt. They essentially look like Humans, so some minor visual tweaking is all that's required (much like Drow vs. Elf). Racial enhancements would be your typical fare with bonuses to certain skills, maybe offer a boost to spell points if caster-based, and have mind blades as the racial weapon enhancement lines.

Soulknife PrE lines could include Atavist and (Quori) Nightmare, just to name a few. That could be interesting...

In PnP Psionics are the most balanced power system in the game, anyone who says its broken does so out of ignorance about it.
(obs: there are specific threads in the wotc forums clarifying that.)

Other than that i agree, it should be fairly doable.

[BlackRage]

I'd also love to see Kalashtar, as they shouldn't be too difficult to adapt. They essentially look like Humans, so some minor visual tweaking is all that's required (much like Drow vs. Elf).

Because sometimes it DOES take a Kalashtar!

[Roziel_Longblade]

In PnP Psionics are the most balanced power system in the game, anyone who says its broken does so out of ignorance about it.
(obs: there are specific threads in the wotc forums clarifying that.)

Other than that i agree, it should be fairly doable.

By around lvl 16 my Psion/Warrior/Illithad Hunter could put out 250 to 350 damage per round, depending on the number of crits, if I remeber correctly. However Psionics was not more broken than 3.5 polymorph - that is to say not broken, but definitely open for creative abuse.

[Happosaai]

I would love to see psionic classes added to the game, as well as Druid and the Gnome, Half-Elf, Half-Orc and Shifter races as well. Might be a bit too much to ask for, but I think having more Ebberon specific races/classes in the game would add some good value to the game.