Soulknife help for a challenged Player

[JohnnyArkham]

I have a new player in my campaign who suffers rather mightily from dyslexia. It limits the amount of game knowledge he can absorb and, while he's a trooper, it places additional constraints on the other players and myself as DM.

This, however, is not the purpose of my posting, but rather some background as to why I'm hoping to 'cut to the chase' here.

He's rather smitten with the IDEA of the Soulknife for his new character.
He has not read the class in depth for reasons I relayed above.
I am personally not a bit fan of the class, and am well aware of the numerous 'fixes' and variants to be found on various fan forums.

What I'm looking for, if it pleases the community, is a cut-and-dried summation of 'the best' version of the soulknife available, whether that's in a printed book, pdf file, forum post, or something else.

I'm hoping, frankly, that some of the research has been done for me.

I don't mind bucking up and paying for something that comes highly recommended. But I really don't have the time to balance and playtest these multiple variants AND attempt to verbally explain it all to my player.

As an aside, he also liked the IDEA of the Soulbow...so that's another hurdle down the road.

Can anyone help direct me towards something solid?

Thanks so much for your help,
Arkham

[Kvantum]

Dreamscarred Press's Untapped Potential: New Horizons in Psionics is probably the best overall revision. Given that they were the same authors of the version that's been floating around from the WotC boards for the last few years (IIRC), this is probably the thing your player might want to check out. Ups the Soulknife to 6+Int skill points, along with more class skills, gives more options on just how to distribute the mind blade bonuses, and lowers the hit die to d8.

They have another book, High Psionics: Soulknives which you might look at as well, three different variations on the Soulknife theme (greatsword, dual wield, throwing), as well as a "Soularmor" type. Depending on what your player's going for, Dreamscarred probably has a variant class for it.

Note: Untapped Potential has much more in it than just one revision of Soulknife, there's tons of new feats and powers, as well as racial paragon classes for the psionic races that made it to the SRD. Psionic tiems and monsters, too. It does lead to a higher cost than HP: Soulknives, but I'd say it's the better choice, all in all, with a LOT of useful psionic goodies for DM and player alike, unless your player is going for a dual-wielding or tanking style of soulknife.

[JohnnyArkham]

Excellent and informative! Thanks so much.
Additional question; how well does the Untapped Soulknife qualify for/blend with the Soulbow from Complete Psionic?

Thanks again Kvantum

[Kvantum]

JohnnyArkham wrote:

Excellent and informative! Thanks so much.

Additional question; how well does the Untapped Soulknife qualify for/blend with the Soulbow from Complete Psionic?

Thanks again Kvantum

I'd probably just recommend giving Soulbow the same class skills and 6+Int skill points, as well as lowering the class HD to a d8, like the UP Soulknife. As far as blending the two, it looks to me like you just have to treat the soulbow's mind arrow enhancement (+X bonus equivalent) and +X mind arrow as being all "+X mind arrow" abilities, allowing your player to distribute the plusses between actual enhancement bonus and special abilities as they desire. Seems to me, at first glance, that it would blend together fairly easily.