Well... There's nothing I can think off until you can afforded +1 Glamered armor, or want to wear the haramaki/silken ceremonial robes from Ultimate Combat. Is Inertial Armor on the gifted blade list? I can't remember.
I think there was a 3rd party feat that gave you increases dodge bonuses though. I'll go look.
Found it, and another that might help.
Agile Defense is like the Dodge AC bonus equivalent of Power Attack.
Osyluth Guile let's you add you CHA Mod to AC against one opponent when fighting defensively/using total defense action.
If you don't want to wear armor, just bite the bullet and dip a level into monk. Preferably Master of Many Styles or some other version that gives up flurry of blows. If your GM is against it, then just wear haramaki or mithral chain shirt and a buckler. There's no armor check penalty (once you get masterwork buckler) and it barely weighs anything; you could probably wear clothing over even the chain shirt if you're so dead-set on looking unarmored. Or do glamered armor.
Do note there is also Focused Defense to add wis to AC (and that would stack w/ monk's AC bonus). You have to fight defensively or expertise, which kind of crushes your attack bonus between that and the flurry-like thing deadly fist gets... On the other hand, that's good synergy with the Crane Style tree if you go that route.
Definitely also go with Gifted Blade if focusing on wisdom. The PP per day are utterly terrible and I admit the powers aren't that great (hustle is HIGHER level for you than a psychic warrior...wtf? that's a 6-level powers class!), but with high wisdom it's salvageable. And I just don't like psychic strike that much, it's too weak. I suppose late game with absorbing blade it can be nice...
Do ask for psionics-magic "transparency" in regards to the magical knack trait, so you have a manifester level of your gifted blade level instead of level -2.
Soulknife is Broken. With 2 blade skill you can get wis to hit+damage+CA even while still armored. With crane wing on top (since you are fighting defensively anyway) this just get ridiculus.
One other broken combo is knife on the soul with 2 weapon, 2w imbue and powerfull strikes, at 12 you can do 12 damage to a mental stat with a single full attack
If you want to use weapon soulknife damage isn't that bad with alter blade to get a 18-20 crit weapon and getting deadly blow for 15-20 x3 crits at level 10.
And you know the best of it? with human favored class and a bit of planning you can get all this broken combo on the same PC. Have fun.
OP, I honestly think Gifted Blade is worth it just for metaphysical weapon (augmented to max) to add even more enhancement to your fists (or blade, for a normal soulknife). Anything beyond that is just gravy. Though there are some other nifty low level powers, including some that don't need augmenting, to save your precious PP on. Meta Weapon is worth the cost since it lasts for hours. And it should work on unarmed strike, since unarmed strike doesn't count as a natural weapon when it really matters (Imp. Natural Attack feat). Otherwise, another reason to dip monk: so it can count as manufactured.
Soulknife is Broken. With 2 blade skill you can get wis to hit+damage+CA even while still armored. With crane wing on top (since you are fighting defensively anyway) this just get ridiculus.
One other broken combo is knife on the soul with 2 weapon, 2w imbue and powerfull strikes, at 12 you can do 12 damage to a mental stat with a single full attack
If you want to use weapon soulknife damage isn't that bad with alter blade to get a 18-20 crit weapon and getting deadly blow for 15-20 x3 crits at level 10.
And you know the best of it? with human favored class and a bit of planning you can get all this broken combo on the same PC. Have fun.
This is a joke post, right? Anything the soulknife can do is PITIFUL compared to what Psion, Wilder, or any magic caster can do. Hell, even Psychic Warrior is a plainly better class. It gets more feats and significantly better PP and power progression than gifted adept does, and a bunch of random +numbers to boot.
"Getting wisdom to attack and damage" isn't inherently any better than just using strength. Most warriors only care about Wis at all for Perception and Will, and they can shore those up by other means. Meanwhile, you do actually need some str to wear that armor you speak of and still move around unhindered, whether you use it for attacks or not. Adding mental stats to things is generally only truly good when a PRIMARY CASTER/MANIFESTER gets to do it, since they were already strongly inclined to max the s**t out of their mental stat and drop str, and frankly don't need to sweat a high dex or con either, due to not being expected to melee. And when doing so requires them to lose a couple caster levels (at least 2 into soulknife to get a blade skill and start taking feats for more)...it's still a massive de-powering for them.
I guess an optimized soulknife can get high AC. So what? Being hard to hit doesn't win fights. If the soulknife really is impossible to hit, the enemies will just kill the other PCs anyway. So long as the party's mantra is "we want to keep any PC from dying," in the end keeping your own PC safe doesn't matter that much to the group, and in extreme cases can end up being really selfish.
sots, you have a long history of trasforming any topic into a caster vs martial discussion, and once again you didn't let down. Stop comparing Soulknife with psion and start comparing it with other full bab class like fighters and cavaliers or barbarians, and maybe you'll get the point i was making. Otherwise, there are plenty of threads dedicated to whining about spells being better than full attacks.
Just being better than similar classes (which I would include psychic warrior in, and as I said psy war is also better than a soulknife) doesn't make something broken. I'm not even sure if Soulknife really is better than a Fighter. Might be able to pull a higher AC, but I'm pretty sure weapon training, weapon specialization, and gloves of dueling keep the fighter's damage pretty comparable to soulknife's.
Main offensive draw of soulknife isn't the damage, really. It's being able to do some minor battlefield control with things like the freezing blade.
In any case, this is a thread for soulknife advice, which I've been giving all along. YOU are the one that came in here solely to whine, whine, and whine some more about how broken a class is. Why don't YOU go find those other threads where people whine about class imbalance and complain about soulknife there?
This is probably too late to help Neopopulas, but I'll add it here for those coming late to the scene.
I suggest a dip into psychic warrior with the meditant archetype. This gives you Wisdom to AC, a power, and counts as monk for all effects and prerequisites.
If you spend more than one level in psychic warrior, you can pick up the fighter's blade feat (4 levels of blade advancement) or the soul warrior feat(2 levels of blade nehancement and 2 levels of psywarr maifesting advancement). Given other Paizo rulings, I don't think they stack with each other for soulknife advancement.
Dark Tempest is a prestige class that advances both casting and osulknife, so you could use that.
Soulknife is Broken. With 2 blade skill you can get wis to hit+damage+CA even while still armored. With crane wing on top (since you are fighting defensively anyway) this just get ridiculus.
One other broken combo is knife on the soul with 2 weapon, 2w imbue and powerfull strikes, at 12 you can do 12 damage to a mental stat with a single full attack
If you want to use weapon soulknife damage isn't that bad with alter blade to get a 18-20 crit weapon and getting deadly blow for 15-20 x3 crits at level 10.
And you know the best of it? with human favored class and a bit of planning you can get all this broken combo on the same PC. Have fun.
It is probably worth noting that Soulknifes have no class bonuses to attack or damage, so even with the Wisdom focus you won't be spinning any heads.
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Another powerful choice for your character that is very "monkish" is a warblade. The divine spell list mixed with the pummeling style is a very potent combination. Add in dragon or snake style and you can't have a very defensive, or offensive version of the same character.
Edit i meant the archatype sacred fist for the warblade