I was kind of hoping that I wouldn't make myself look bad by making another thread about the mechanics of soul knives, but here we are...
I'm still working a bit on my gifted blade that I intended to have go into the primarch prestige class, but the prereqs has me a bit confused.
Now, in Primacy of the blade which the primarch gets at level 1 it mentions that gifted blade manifestation progresses as normal, so I'm pretty sure that that archetype is meant to work as base for this prestige class. But getting the metal awakening and progression requires the blade skill Telekinetic edge which is entirely useless when you don't have a psychic strike, but okay, the Primarch gets a small psychic strike ability a couple of levels in and I can accept a mostly useless kinda-sorta feat tax.
But then one gets to the actual feat prereqs that are weapon focus (fair enough) and swift imbuement, which has psychic strike as a prereq, which the gifted blade doesn't get...
Am I missing something here? or is it just impossible for a gifted blade to get into a prestige class that makes specific note about how their manifestation levels progresses?
The general statement of progressing the various abilities advance upon taking the presige class shouldn't be interpreted as something that implies that all options of your base class/archetypes are 100% compatible with all options of the prestige class.
Unless you get a specific contradiction from the developers (Jeremy and /or Andreas), I would suspect that they wanted the Metal epiphany to exclude gifted blades.
Some choices you take may exclude other choices as you progress.
I would look to see if you can get the psychic strike ability back in some way if you want to keep your manifesting ability. (I do not know of any off the top of my head, but I haven't theorycrafted Soulknives as much as I have other manifester classes).
The only way around this, that I can think of, would be to multi-class with a native manifester class with soulknife instead of taking gifted blade.
The Telekinetic edge requirement isn't really the part that I'm most bothered by. It's just kinda useless until the Primarch gets the psychic strike ability at 3rd Primarch level, it seems entirely possible to take it without actually having psychic strike, so it's just dormant for a while.
Perhaps I should have clarified a bit about the manifester level progression though, it very specifically calls out gifted blade for that:
"If the character possesses manifesting from being a gifted blade, then
each level of primarch advances his manifesting as a gifted blade."
This is why I'm so convinced that the archetype is compatible with the prestige class, or should be at least. So it's either an oversight on the developer's part or I'm missing a piece of the puzzle, and I'm fairly sure that it's the latter, but I'm not sure where to look for it and I'm also not sure on how I would go about asking the developer for clarification.
The problem with taking Primarch is that being a gifted blade means you *never* gain psychic strike. Even if another class ability grants it. This is pretty restrictive.
Re-read your quote again: "If the character possesses manifesting from being a gifted blade", it progresses as if you had another level in gifted blade.
It does not say that all choices of abilities that the prestige class grants are automatically optimal with prior options you have taken.
It is compatible with the prestige class overall -- it just isn't optimal for the choices you want -- given that you can't have the psychic strike ability -- ever.
Most prestige classes don't mesh 100% with every option.
Sorry, there seems that a point I was trying to make has been lost somewhere. I realize that not every option is perfect, that's okay even if one of the prereqs is effectively dead weight with that particular path.
Let's see if I can make this clear though.
We're in agreement that text in the primarch indicates that a gifted blade would be able to take the class, yes?
Here's the problem though.
One of the feat prerequisites for entering Primarch is "Swift Imbuement." A feat that lets someone charge their psychic strike as a swift action. However, the feat has a prerequisite of being able to form a mindblade and having psychic strike +1D8.
A gifted blade cannot get psychic strike.
By extension they cannot take swift imbuement which is a feat prereq for entering the class.
Yet the class has text that indicates that a gifted blade can enter it.
Perhaps it's just because I am quite tired, but it looks really strange to me that the class has specifications for a gifted blade's progression when the gifted blade can't take the feat that is needed to enter the class.
Ok, that is a little clearer. What you are missing, however is the history. The reason that the text is the way it is, is because prior to this text being developed, soul knifes and their archetypes got the short shrift when it came to prestige classes. So, DSP, came up with this standard prestige class text so that, provided that the soul knife otherwise qualified for the prestige class, no prior option would be left out of progressing. Which opened up the number of options soulknifes could qualify for. Although, some choices might be sub optimal.
I wouldn’t take the progression standard text to imply anything other than what it says. If you want to see if DSP feels differently, dreamscarred.com forums is the place to go.
I guess that does make sense. Though it's a pity because I thought that it'd be fun to play that archetype/prestigeclass combination.
I think I'll take you up on the advice and head over to dreamscarred press and see if they have any input though, hope's the last thing to die after all.
there is a blade skill that grants psychic strike, but only if you can't have it normally (gifted blades for example). The was in one of the psionics augmented soulknife releases.
Other ways a gifted blade can get psychic strike: Dark Tempest prestige class.
there is a blade skill that grants psychic strike, but only if you can't have it normally (gifted blades for example). The was in one of the psionics augmented soulknife releases.
Other ways a gifted blade can get psychic strike: Dark Tempest prestige class.
Yep, there is a blade skill on Pg 6 of the Psionics Augmented: SoulKnife book called.. psychic strike. It requires 4th level, and to not previously possess the psychic strike class feature.
I think it's a bit iffy, but this may be a way the developers intended gifted blades to progress into the prestige class you are looking at.
It won't hurt to ask.
Unfortunately I haven't been able to make an account on dreamscarred.com, every time I try to get the confirmation email sent there seems to be some sort of error on their end.
Which is kind of a pity, really, because I was also curious on if one can use the Alter blade and Emulate martial weapon blade skills together or if one is locked to the base forms mentioned in Alter blade.
No, you can’t use them together. Alter blade references the base mind blade form only. If you do an emulation, you are no longer in the base form. It was an interesting idea though.