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3 years ago ::
Jul 21, 2010 - 12:45PM
#11
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Date Joined:
Jun 20, 2009
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Psionic Focus
Free Action - Arcane
Encounter - Personal
Trigger: You hit with an attack using your mind blade.
Effect: You deal an additional 2d6 psychic damage. This damage increases to 3d6 at 11th level and 5d6 at 21st level.
Special: You regain the use of this power when you spend a healing surge to regain hitpoints.
This accomplishes several things: First, it reduces the damage dealt. Surge value is a lot of damage past 5th level or so, far more than any other striker's damage ability, and it favors the Con-based build. This is roughly on the same level as the Rogue. Second, it can't be overused when the party expects a short adventuring day--you still need to use powers which allow you to spend surges in order to keep using this power. Third, it can be used roughly as often by both builds: the Wis-based build gets Durable, which roughly makes up for the Con build's higher surge count.
That's a pretty laughably weak striker damage mechanic. On your own you'd be able to use it exactly twice during an encounter, and recharging it would take a standard action in most cases. Even with a leader in the party, you're wasting his heals to allow a striker to do damage. Intelligent monsters would simply avoid dealing the Soulknife any damage to make him (a) waste healing resources trying to keep his damage high or (b) have him deal no striker bonus damage.
Second, while "surge value" damage is very high for a striker mechanic, at also eats up a daily resource. A level 30 dragonborn with 16 starting con pumped every pissible level will have a surge value of around 70 and around 15 healing surges (depending on his class) By comparison, a ranger gets about 13.5 damage out of his surge value each time he uses it at epic, but can use it every atack with no resource expendature. In a 4 encounter workday with 8 rounds per encounter, this means he'll be dealing 432 with his feature over a normal day. A soulknife will be dealing about twice that, 1050 damage, but will use every healing surge he has to do so. If we assume he uses half his surges for keeping himself alive (reasonable) the damage is more-or-less equivalent.
That said, I don' think them getting bonus damage for surges spent/not spent is appropriate, and I feel having a class feature so wrapped up in surge value and # of surges should be Con primary, so all builds have a fair shake.
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3 years ago ::
Jul 21, 2010 - 5:37PM
#12
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Why not have implements as ki foci (makes sense) and turn the attuned blade into a striker feature? The normal soulknife/soulbow was notable for being able to steal weapon enchants without buying items to do so. Getting a weapon ability and a ki focus ability at once is an interesting, if nigh-unbalanceable striker feature.
How about this: they get a relatively boring striker feature (d6es like rangers) but they get to choose a keyword that it applies to the damage/attack. Your weapon is "flaming" if it's dealing fire, "frost" if it's dealing cold, "vampiric" if you add invigorating...you'd probably want a specific list, rather than allowing any and all keywords. This would make an otherwise boring striker feature have interesting flavor.
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3 years ago ::
Jul 22, 2010 - 12:04AM
#13
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Date Joined:
Oct 26, 2004
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What if we give them a flat bonus to damage when using their psi-blade, like how the sorc gets a damage boost to arcane spells, base it off the modifier for whichever secondary ability score the build favors, and then let the build stack up extra damage with its powers.
For instance a two-blade build would be pretty easy to stack up damage with, just add stabbing.
A heavy weapon build might get burst attacks, shockwaves, yadda yadda.
------------or----------
Give one or more of the at-wills that grant psionic focus or some equivalent and then the attack powers that don't grant focus turn around and do something extra special nasty when you use them while focused.
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3 years ago ::
Jul 22, 2010 - 12:08AM
#14
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Date Joined:
Jun 20, 2009
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Why not have implements as ki foci (makes sense) and turn the attuned blade into a striker feature? The normal soulknife/soulbow was notable for being able to steal weapon enchants without buying items to do so. Getting a weapon ability and a ki focus ability at once is an interesting, if nigh-unbalanceable striker feature.
How about this: they get a relatively boring striker feature (d6es like rangers) but they get to choose a keyword that it applies to the damage/attack. Your weapon is "flaming" if it's dealing fire, "frost" if it's dealing cold, "vampiric" if you add invigorating...you'd probably want a specific list, rather than allowing any and all keywords. This would make an otherwise boring striker feature have interesting flavor.
Huh, ineresting concept. Here's what I'm thinking would work well, building off the idea I presented earlier.
Soul Blade Soulknife Feature
Flavor Text Here
Minor Action * Implement, Psionic, Conjuration
At-Will Personal
Effect: Chose a one-handed light blade with which you are proficient: you conjure a weapon of that type in a free hand. This weapon has the enhancement bonus of a ki focus you are attuned to, and the magic properties of any weapon enchantment of your level or lower that can be applied to the weapon.
- If the conjured weapon leaves your posession for more than one round, it vanishes.
- Once per round, when you use a Soulknife Power and you are wielding a soul blade, you can add the weapon keyword to that power. The power deals 1[W] extra damage if it hits.
- Increase this damage to 2[W] at 11th level and 3[W] at 21st level.
So it would be an implement class that uses W damage as it's mechanic. Like other strikers, they'd be able to spend a feat for a bigger damage die (rapier) but also for bonus features like high crit, brutal, or defensive.
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3 years ago ::
Jul 22, 2010 - 1:00AM
#15
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Huh, ineresting concept. Here's what I'm thinking would work well, building off the idea I presented earlier.
Soul Blade Soulknife Feature
Flavor Text Here
Minor Action * Implement, Psionic, Conjuration
At-Will Personal
Effect: Chose a one-handed light blade with which you are proficient: you conjure a weapon of that type in a free hand. This weapon has the enhancement bonus of a ki focus you are attuned to, and the magic properties of any weapon enchantment of your level or lower that can be applied to the weapon.
- If the conjured weapon leaves your posession for more than one round, it vanishes.
- Once per round, when you use a Soulknife Power and you are wielding a soul blade, you can add the weapon keyword to that power. The power deals 1[W] extra damage if it hits.
- Increase this damage to 2[W] at 11th level and 3[W] at 21st level.
So it would be an implement class that uses W damage as it's mechanic. Like other strikers, they'd be able to spend a feat for a bigger damage die (rapier) but also for bonus features like high crit, brutal, or defensive.
Just a little note. "Once per round, when you use a Soulknife Power and you are wielding a soul blade, you can add the weapon keyword to that power." - would be overpowered. You would have to say "Once per round, when you use a Soulknife Power and you are wielding a soul blade, you can replace the implement keyword with the weapon keyword." This would stop the implement/weapon crossover.
One example off of the top of my head would be to use superior implements with weapon powers, which shouldn't happen.
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3 years ago ::
Jul 22, 2010 - 1:09AM
#16
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Date Joined:
Oct 26, 2004
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Ok what if the soulknife wants to take an attack of opportunity?
Furthermore ki foci come with their own abilities and are designed with classes like the monk and assassin in mind. Why complicate everything by involving magic weapons at all?
If you must have a certain magic weapon property for your soulknife just convert a weapon enchantment to a Ki-focus.
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3 years ago ::
Jul 22, 2010 - 3:34PM
#17
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Date Joined:
Jun 20, 2009
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Huh, ineresting concept. Here's what I'm thinking would work well, building off the idea I presented earlier.
Soul Blade Soulknife Feature
Flavor Text Here
Minor Action * Implement, Psionic, Conjuration
At-Will Personal
Effect: Chose a one-handed light blade with which you are proficient: you conjure a weapon of that type in a free hand. This weapon has the enhancement bonus of a ki focus you are attuned to, and the magic properties of any weapon enchantment of your level or lower that can be applied to the weapon.
- If the conjured weapon leaves your posession for more than one round, it vanishes.
- Once per round, when you use a Soulknife Power and you are wielding a soul blade, you can add the weapon keyword to that power. The power deals 1[W] extra damage if it hits.
- Increase this damage to 2[W] at 11th level and 3[W] at 21st level.
So it would be an implement class that uses W damage as it's mechanic. Like other strikers, they'd be able to spend a feat for a bigger damage die (rapier) but also for bonus features like high crit, brutal, or defensive.
Just a little note. "Once per round, when you use a Soulknife Power and you are wielding a soul blade, you can add the weapon keyword to that power." - would be overpowered. You would have to say "Once per round, when you use a Soulknife Power and you are wielding a soul blade, you can replace the implement keyword with the weapon keyword." This would stop the implement/weapon crossover.
One example off of the top of my head would be to use superior implements with weapon powers, which shouldn't happen.
Ah, good call. Yes, it would be fairly broken to have both keywords.
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