Possible psionics

[sirdanile]

Hello all, with the mod being focused on the dreaming dark and encountering psionics on a more regular basis (psionics bonus to skills via the degenev illusion show) I took the time to write up how I believe the soulknife class should be added to this game.


Soulknife: Hit dice d8
BAB/Fort/Ref/Will saves / Other
1. 1/0/2/2 Weapon focus: Mindblade, Wild talent
2. 2/0/3/3 Throwing blade
3. 3/1/3/3 Psychic strike 2/day 1d8
4. 4/1/4/4 Quickdraw, Shape Mindblade
5. 5/1/4/4
6. 6/2/5/5 Speed of thought
7. 7/2/5/5 Psychic strike 3/day 2d8
8. 8/2/6/6
9. 9/3/6/6 Bladewind, Greater weapon focus: Mindblade
10. 10/3/7/7 Metal 1
11. 11/3/7/7 Psychic strike 4/day 3d8
12. 12/4/8/8
13. 13/4/8/8 Knife to the soul
14. 14/4/9/9
15. 15/5/9/9 Psychic strike 5/day 4d8
16. 16/5/10/10 Metal 2
17. 17/5/10/10 Multiple throw
18. 18/6/11/11
19. 19/6/11/11 Psychic strike 6/day 5d8
20. 20/6/12/12 Increased base blade damage.

How the mindblade would work: Utilizing the area where casting classes such as the wizard select there spells the soulknife can change his blade here at a shrine, He can select any combination of enhancement bonus (1-5) and special prefix and suffix abilities (such as pure good and holy) that add up to his level. (keeping the weapons appropriate for his level is important for game balance) A Soulknife cannot take conflicting alignments (Anarchic of true law) or take conflicting elements (Fire and ice) and cannot take stat damage, bane or psionic enhancements without spending a feat on it, and cannot take transmuting or metalline. At level 10 and 16 the Soulknife can add different metal types to his blade (such as silver and adamantine, if this needs balancing you can have it cost a feat or some other restrictions, such as paying the soulknife trainer to be able to switch the metal type.)

At level 1 the Soulknife gains a feat that allows him to call this weapon into existance, it is by default a shortsword and you can change it to any weapon you are proficient with at 4th level, you can change the base weapon at any shrine as long as you are proficient with the weapon, to take an exotic weapon you have to take both the normal exotic proficiency and a psionic proficiency to be able to make an exotic blade. The Two weapon fighting line of feats will affect the blade in that you can choose to create 2 of them at a hit to the highest level enhancements you can put on them, main hand weapons can only get up to min level 18 and off hand weapons can only get to min level 16 instead of min level 20.

WIld talent grants the Soulknife 2 power points and access to any psionic feats.

Throwing blade allows the soulknife to be able to customize and summon a seperate throwing weapon blade for 1 power point.

Psychic strike: adds your wisdom bonus to hit and damage on the attack and deals an additional xd8 damage. If this ability fells a living creature the Soulknife gains xd8 temporary hitpoints for 1 minute per x. (according to level x can be 1-5 + feats) Think of a paladin's smite ability. Also this strike doesn't need to be mindblade exclusive.

Speed of thought grants a 15% speed increase

Bladewind grants the Soulknife the ability to make a cleave attack without a pause after using, actually making this a net gain in dps on a 10 second cooldown, this can fill the place of cleave when counting for prerequisites on feats or enhancements.

Knife to the soul reduces any enemy casters casting stat by 1d2 damage per xd8 of psychic strike when using a psychic strike.

Multiple Throw is basically a manyshot with a thrown weapon and can be added to the game as a regular feat, costs 1 power point to start.

The increased blade damage increases the soulknifes weapons damage to resemble a greensteel item.


Other notes:

Feats: Name/prereqs/effect

Psionic exotic weapon/Exotic weapon proficiency/Allows the user to shape a mindblade into the exotic weapon of choice.

Bane of X (where X is a general type of enemy to allow multiple banes to be chosen, examples would be outsider bane [evil, lawful, chaotic], humanoid bane [includes monstrous humanoids])/Level 12 Soulknife/Grants ability to add bane properties and stat damage to your blade.

Psionic weapon enhancements/Soulknife level 8/Grants acces to the Collision, paralysis, (great) Dislocation, mindfeeder, psychic, psychokinetic (burst), and soulbreaker enhancements. (see below)

Mind Cleave/Cleave (or bladewind) and psychic strike 1d8/ If you fell a foe with a psychic strike you gain the use of that strike back.

Mind empowerment/Mind cleave/ If you fell a foe with psychic strike your next use of psychic strike the damage dice are doubled.

Focused Mindstrike/psychic strike 1d8/Increases psychic strikes damage by 1d8, can be taken multiple times and is counted as a fighter feat.

Imp critical: Mindblade/(as the other improved critical feats)



Psionic weapon enhancements: (Name/prefix or suffix/effect)

Collision/prefix/deals 5 extra damage on a successful hit.

Paralysis/suffix/on a critical hit dc 27 will save or be paralyzed as if hit with a paralyzing weapon.

(great) Dislocation/suffix/on hit prevent enemies from teleporting for 1 minute.

Mind feeding/Suffix/(like body feeder) On a critical hit the user gains temporary power points that dissipate in 1 minute or until used.

Psychic (can be adapted to an arcane version as well)/prefix/Depending on your current percentage of power points remaining (or spell points) you gain more to hit and damage, up to +5 to hit and +10 damage when out of power. (mana)

Psychokinetic (burst)/prefix(suffix)/On a successful (critical) hit you deal 1d4 points of extra damage. (1d6 for x2, 2d6 for x3 etc)

Soulbreaking/suffix/On a successful critical hit there is a 50% chance to afflict the target with 1 negative level.

[hydra_ex]

The main problem with the soulknife in DDO is has to do with his weapons.

In DDO, since it is an MMO, instead of an isolated pnp game, everyone should have equal capabilities. If every class has greensteal, the soulknife would have to have better weapons than greensteal, and it would be a strange balancing act...

For similar reasons, multiclass XP penalty does not exist (in my opinion, at least)

[sirdanile]

Well the Soulknife in some ways is better because it is easier to make your own custom weapon than try to find the same thing on an actual weapon which making bypassing damage reduction cake, but can be worse because they have to work harder to get the same base damage as that twf ranger.

Also I have yet to map out the enhancements and any suggestions or recommended changes to/for/about the idea are welcome...OR ELSE!!!!1!111!@

[Angelus_dead]

Hello all, with the mod being focused on the dreaming dark and encountering psionics on a more regular basis (psionics bonus to skills via the degenev illusion show) I took the time to write up how I believe the soulknife class should be added to this game.

Are you aware of how well Soulknife functions in D&D? It is universally derided as a class that should simply be a feat tree for a Psychic Warrior.

If the DDO developers wanted to add Soulknife, which is a reasonable thing to attempt, then the better path would be to make it an enhancement series, prehaps requiring Kalashtar race as a prerequisite. That way it would be usable by Fighters, Rangers, Rogues, and whatever other class is interested.

It would be terribly time consuming to try to come up with yet another melee combat class that's both distinct from and balanced with the existing Fighter, Ranger, Paladin, Barbarian, Rogue, and Monk. The effort would be enormously more difficult because as a non-weapon using class, a primary means by which DDO characters scale their capabilities would be denied. The most likely outcomes would be either
1. The soulknife is overpowered until the point when characters acquire really good weapons, and is balanced thereafter.
2. The soulknife is balanced until characters get good weapons, and then becomes underpowered.

Indeed, that's basically what happened to the Monk class in DDO, even though the developers mostly avoided it by adding Handwraps as a weapon type.

[Angelus_dead]

If I were adding a Kalashtar race to DDO, I'd try giving them Soulknife as a racial enhancement series something like the following:

The core Soulknife feature is to summon a glowy magic weapon which you can't trade or sell, and which disappears a few hours after being logged out. (Similar to a Paladin's Holy Sword) .

At level 3, 5, 7, 8, and 9 you can add +1 to the item. At level 2, 4, 6, 8, and 10 you can add Force Touch, Force Puff, Force, and Force Burst to the item. At level 4 and 8 you can upgrade it by +1 die size, and at level 13 you can add +1 critical multiplier. At level 4 you can instead get it as a returning dagger, at level 8 as a shield, and at level 6 you can learn the KEY feature: Imbue whatever effect is on your equipped handwraps into the summoned weapon (at the cost of it having less plusses).

Obviously there would have to be a lot of balancing into the costs of each feature and which ones you can use concurrently at each level. I won't get into all that. But an enhancement series would be a better implementation of Soulknife features than either a class or even a feat line.

[sirdanile]

I understand where you're coming from Angelus and agree it would be hard because its entirely possible the soulknife will shine at low levels and under perform at higher levels, any suggestions you have for fixing this would be welcome.

I was also looking at the psychic warrior as a class, but it seemed too much like a mix of bard (powers wise) and fighter (class...abilities wise) so I set it aside for a later date, eventually I want to get all of the "core" psionics classes at least written down to start the process of informational gathering and allow others to hit upon points i've missed.

Again we come to the enhancements, in essence if the way that i'm thinking the Soulknife will perform around the low level ranges will warrant it to have extremely underpowered enhancements until about level 12 where they will have to increase in power drastically.


EDIT: regarding your idea to make them a racial enhancement of the kalashtar while I see where you're coming from If it's something that intricate I don't see why it wouldnt just be a new class altogether, the uniqueness of a melee using a blade made from his own mental prowess is worthy of a new class IMO. With the idea of adding your handwraps enhancements to the blade wouldn't it be easy to mess up the coding and add monk fist damage to the blade and other buggy effects?

[Angelus_dead]

Well the Soulknife in some ways is better because it is easier to make your own custom weapon than try to find the same thing on an actual weapon which making bypassing damage reduction cake, but can be worse because they have to work harder to get the same base damage

If a class is good until you obtain items and then becomes bad, then the class is bad.

It's not a valuable character niche to say: "This class has less need for items"

[hydra_ex]

If a class is good until you obtain items and then becomes bad, then the class is bad.

It's not a valuable character niche to say: "This class has less need for items"

I completely agree.

However, it is viable to say that in many pnp games (depending on the type of campaign you're running), which, IMO, the soulknife class exists. But in monty haul DDO, that argument does not apply.

[sirdanile]

It's not that others obtaining items makes this class bad it's the fact that this class has to be balanced due to obtaining weapons FREE and thus the limiting factor on exotic weapons, such as the khopesh being the highest dps weapon in the game vs critable mobs will take 2 feats on a Soulknife instead of 1 thus balancing the fact that he gets it cost free.

The character niche is to be a versatile dps, he bypasses damage reduction more easily, like a ranger can twf more easily than other classes because he recieves those feats free, the Soulknifes advantage is having the right weapon for the job at the time it needs doing, you can compare it to the wizard who sacrifices casting speed and spell points to be more versatile.



Off the topic of the Soulknife i'm a little stumped on how to implement psionic focus in this game which is an important part of using psionic feats, and the ability to enhance your powers by spending extra PP is also another stumper, will there be a toggle to make the powers go full blast always or will it involve a dropdown menu a la energy resistance where theres 20 some selections for the same power.