first pathfinder campaign, need help with a manifesting soulknife?

[Meagermantis1]

i posted once before, and got great responses. but, i never ended up playing that game (the group fell through  ) i've found a new one though, and would love some help!

i'm starting my first pathfinder campaign soon (after being fairly familiar with 4E, and dabbling in 3.5), and i was told to build an alternate character in case my first one (a dwarf urban barbarian) dies. with that in mind, i wanted to try the soulknife. but, i read elsewhere, that he's kind of lackluster mechanically speaking. thus, i figure giving him access to powers would be the way to go.

anyway, i could really use a hand making a build, because i'm not terribly sure of how to accomplish those things. my ultimate goal, would be to focus on TWF, and augmenting my abilities with powers. with that in mind, how would you build the character? (assume every source is available) but, try to keep things marginally simple for me, because i'm still pretty new to this system. thanks a bunch guys!

[Garryl]

Try playing a Psychic Warrior with the Soulbound Weapon ACF. It turns the Call Weaponry power into the whole mind blade thing, but stronger and more versatile, and you get 6th level powers and a half-dozen bonus feats on top of that. In short, it's everything you appear to be looking for short of writing "Soulknife" on your character sheet.

If you must play a Soulknife directly, make sure to take the Hidden Talent and Bonus Feats ACFs (same link as above), and strongly consider going into the Soulbow PrC. Soulbow means that you're attacking at range, you have improved accuracy (each arrow is a new weapon, so the normally 1/day Lucky property instead applies to all attacks), and you can still TWF probably (it's not as clear as I'd like, but most interpretations I've seen have read the having one hand free requirement of mind arrows as meaning it works with TWF to gain extra attacks if you have a second hand free). You only need 2 levels of Soulknife and 3-7 levels of Soulbow, so you can spend the remaining levels on something with manifesting, casting, or whatever you fancy. Ardent works particularly well, as with Practiced Manifester you still get a 9th level power with as much as Ardent 13/Soulknife 2/Soulbow 5 and its Wis-based manifesting goes great with the Zen Archery feat for Wis to both attack and damage rolls with mind arrows.

If you want more information about playing a Soulknife or a Psychic Warrior, check out some of the handbooks listed in the Handbook Index (under Base Classes -> Psionic Classes).

[Meagermantis1]

hmm... i'd rather not play the psychic warrior. i hear that they're fairly broken (though i'm not sure why? the lack of PP seems like it would keep them from being too over the top) and also, they just don't do the same thing for me in terms of flavor, or cool mechanics (i started off with the barb, so i could ease myself into the system, but i'd much rather play something that's more exciting.)

if possible, i'd rather not take the soulbow PrC: firstly, the GM is really story driven, meaning that during the character creation proccess i had to justify why my dwarf was a barbarian, before he'd let me choose that class (i get the desire to tell a story, but... really?) and trying to convince him of allowing that sort of thing is more than i'd want to deal with... secondly, it seems to be completely counter to the idea of a soulknife (a dude who has been making melee weapons this whole time, suddenly has an epiphany and decides to shoot them instead?) and further, standing back gets fairly dull IMO. so i'd like to really focus on that idea of TWF, even if it might be sub-optimal.

I WILL, however, definitely look into multiclassing into ardent. but, wouldn't that make the character fairly MAD (as i understand, the ardent is a CHA based class)?

[awaken_D_M_golem]

PF has a recently updated Soulknife.
http://www.d20pfsrd.com/psionics-unleashed/classes/soulknife

... i hear that they're fairly broken ...

All rumors on the internet are true.
Around here, PsyWar is Tier 3 and weaker than a Sorcerer.

... (though i'm not sure why? ...

Oh, the beginning of wisdom.  +1 to that.
The more questions you ask, the better.

... the lack of PP seems like it would keep them from being too over the top) ...

The force is strong in this young psiadawan.
 


edit --- misspelled beginning 

[Prime32]

Garryl's talking about the 3.5 soulknife. The PF soulknife written by Dreamscarred Press is still on the lower end of the power scale, but much more competent. It also has the Gifted Blade archetype which does what you're looking for. Oh, and the PF version of soulbow is soul archer.

And I'm not sure why anyone would consider the PsyWar broken, unless maybe they're misreading some of the psionics rules.

[Stratovarius]

Only thing I can think of is the old King of Smack builds, which were fairly handy. Compared to an optimized wizard, of course, they got their ass kicked.

[awaken_D_M_golem]

Human squeezing Soulknife 2 and Soulbow 2
into an Ardent 10 / PrC, with the standard tricks
at least keeps you on schedule with the big guys
has the flavor you want, has an obvious power scale
of Cleric, Druid or Wiz, but with half the "spells".
Back hack in some of the Quick Start Cleric Archer.

[X-Codes]

As someone who has, for the first time, met someone that at one point thought Psionics was overpowered, the reason for that line of thinking was that he didn't know that there was an upper cap on how many power points you could spend on a given power.

Next I'll just have to convince him of the same thing about the Gunslinger...

In any case, the Soulknives & PrC's thing should be more than just high Psionics, IMO.  The increase to the Soulknife's blade is minor enough that you really should just advance both the blade AND Manifesting when increasing your level.  As for PrC's to use to this end, the Phrenic Slayer and Elocator are default good choices.  If you want to be a bit more of a stealthy focus, then you're probably going to want to adapt the Unseen Seer (Complete Mage) and adapt it to be a Psionic Pathfinder class (WAY less difficult than it sounds).

[awaken_D_M_golem]

  ... an invisible white, fuzzy, sniper rifle.