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DracoKnight
2016-01-15, 05:50 AM
So, a while ago, I read Submortimer's version of the soulknife, and I absolutely loved it. I thought it looked very fun and flavorful, and so I started doing some research into what the soulknife was in previous editions, and everything I read made me like it even more. I finally decided to make my own take on what the soulknife should look like in 5e, and I decided to use features unique to this incarnation, as well as unique fluff. So, here's the first draft of my 5e Soulknife (https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B66RprYE6_HHTFNzSk4xVXNrT1U/view?usp=sharing)!

EDIT: And, yes, I realize that the artwork's blade is much larger than a shortsword, but it best captured how I envisioned the manifested blade.

PoeticDwarf
2016-01-15, 11:16 AM
I don't think it is wrong you made this a monk subclass, but I want to say one thing.

The features are not enough focussed on the point of the soulknife, death ward for example isn't fluff wise that correct

Next to that, it is balanced and sounds fun

DracoKnight
2016-01-15, 11:26 AM
The features are not enough focussed on the point of the soulknife, death ward for example isn't fluff wise that correct

I know that it's not correct with the officially published fluff, but I was kind of building my own fluff for it as I planned out which features to give it, so that it would fit within my own world.


Next to that, it is balanced and sounds fun

Awesome!

GandalfTheWhite
2016-01-15, 01:14 PM
Okay, this is pretty awesome. I liked the soulknife in previous editions. Yes, this isn't the most faithful update, but holy hell, this looks like fun! And, the changes you did make, I like - they make sense (to me) for 5e! :smallbiggrin:

Requiemforlust
2016-01-15, 02:19 PM
Two points:

1) I love this. I agree with both Ender and Gandalf - this isn't a straight up port of the Soulknife. It's not a very faithful update, but oh my, does it look like fun. And I love the flavor you brought to it! I am interested to hear the differences in your world between someone's soul and their aura. I am quite thoroughly intrigued!

2) You've gotten way better about publishing content that is balanced on the first draft. Yes, this monk will deal higher damage than the other monk's (except maybe the Elemental Monk, oddly enough), but it only has two offensive abilities, the other two are very appropriate for their level:

- Flight of the Soul: it's a teleport, so it increases the monk's mobility, but you sacrifice flurry of blows for that round. It's not as limited as the way of shadows' teleport, but it's got a shorter range.

- Dark Night of the Soul: a single casting of death ward if you spend an entire long rest meditating. Not sleeping, not eating. Meditating. This balances out that feature, IMO. And death ward is something PCs have access to as soon as 7th level.

- Heart and Soul: I'm gonna comment on this one, just because I thought that it was broken, until I read the part about incurring exhaustion after a certain amount of uses.

All in all, like I said in my first point, I like what you've done here. It's quite magnificent! :smallbiggrin:

DracoKnight
2016-01-15, 02:35 PM
I am interested to hear the differences in your world between someone's soul and their aura. I am quite thoroughly intrigued!

In my world the soul is the innate life force breathed into a being by the gods when they are created. They are born with their soul, and many take it for granted, but few recognize it's importance, and value it. These are the Clerics, Favored Souls, Monks (more from a scholarly view), Paladins, and Warlocks (if only because they can use it to barter for power). Every now and then you'll run into someone outside of those groups who cares about the soul, but it's mainly those individuals.
. An aura is the magical energy generated by the soul. It can be unlocked and used by a few people - mainly Paladins (their aura abilities) and Monks (their ki). An aura is weaker than the soul itself, because only part of your soul is focused on channeling power to it.
. A soulknife's blade is powerful because they've figured out how to channel their soul directly, instead of channeling their aura. They know how to channel both, but they've mastered using their aura (ki) to unlock their soul for combat purposes. This doesn't harm their soul directly, as they've tempered it with meditation and practice.

Does that make any sense?


2) You've gotten way better about publishing content that is balanced on the first draft.

Thank you!

SterlingWren
2016-01-15, 05:20 PM
Do you mind if I use this in my game? :smallbiggrin:

DracoKnight
2016-01-15, 05:26 PM
Do you mind if I use this in my game? :smallbiggrin:

Go right ahead! :smallsmile:

Levism84
2016-01-16, 02:48 AM
Looking it over, I agree the death ward effect doesn't really fit the character of the archetype. If you wanted a similar ability with less mechanical issues, I would go Way of the Long Death and their spend ki to be reduced to 1 hit point instead of 0 hit points. Don't have the book with me, but I think they are the ones that get that (although it might be at a different level than your ability).

However, the only grammatical issue I would fix is in the first ability, changing "a minute" to "1 minute" to keep in line with other published content and clarifying the rules.

DracoKnight
2016-01-16, 04:34 AM
the only grammatical issue I would fix is in the first ability, changing "a minute" to "1 minute" to keep in line with other published content and clarifying the rules.

Thank you for catching that! I totally missed it :smalltongue:

Requiemforlust
2016-01-16, 04:58 AM
Looking it over, I agree the death ward effect doesn't really fit the character of the archetype. If you wanted a similar ability with less mechanical issues, I would go Way of the Long Death and their spend ki to be reduced to 1 hit point instead of 0 hit points. Don't have the book with me, but I think they are the ones that get that (although it might be at a different level than your ability).

Mechanically the ability is balanced, and I've been PMing with DracoKnight, and the ability does fit with how the Soulknives function in the world he's created. Is it the best representation of the classic soulknife? No. Does it make sense with the fluff that he has presented to me? Yes.

PoeticDwarf
2016-01-16, 10:31 AM
I know that it's not correct with the officially published fluff, but I was kind of building my own fluff for it as I planned out which features to give it, so that it would fit within my own world.



Awesome!

Well, then I don't see a problem :D

Khrysaes
2016-01-16, 10:36 AM
I always thought of the Soul Knife, being more Warlock like, particularly in 3.5 when Soul Knife was thematically great, but mechanically crap.

Turn it into a warlock like class, eldritch blase becomes the weapon of choice, invocations become your bladewind and bladestorm and whatnot.

To me it just fit better.

PoeticDwarf
2016-01-16, 10:41 AM
I always thought of the Soul Knife, being more Warlock like, particularly in 3.5 when Soul Knife was thematically great, but mechanically crap.

Turn it into a warlock like class, eldritch blase becomes the weapon of choice, invocations become your bladewind and bladestorm and whatnot.

To me it just fit better.

Well I also thinks that fits better, but it works perfect on a monk

WarrentheHero
2016-01-16, 12:00 PM
The only problem I have looking at this is the fact that it does the same damage as your Unarmed Strike, so without pumping extra Ki into it, it doesn't really do anything at all besides change your damage type to Radiant, which Sun Soul gets for free (iirc). It also costs a full action, so your ability to do any combat at all on your first turn is out of the question.
Granted, you can throw more Ki into it to make it better than any other weapon in the game, but the fact that it's an action if you want to manifest it and it starts low damage, from a number-crunch perspective it doesn't really do any wonders.
I could see something along the lines of manifesting it as a bonus action on your turn for no Ki, or as an action in your turn you can manifest it at higher Dice by expending Ki for a total of 2 Ki for 3 Dice.
Not the best fix, but it's what came to mind.

Additionally, Flight of the Soul seems too strong. The Way of Shadows has limits on their teleport, but Flight offers you a 2nd-level spell (Misty Step) for free, unlimited use.

Beyond all that (which is probably just me imposing my own design philosophies on your class anyway), it looks pretty darn nifty and I love the alternative lore you've provided/created.

GandalfTheWhite
2016-01-16, 02:41 PM
The only problem I have looking at this is the fact that it does the same damage as your Unarmed Strike, so without pumping extra Ki into it, it doesn't really do anything at all besides change your damage type to Radiant, which Sun Soul gets for free (iirc). It also costs a full action, so your ability to do any combat at all on your first turn is out of the question.
Granted, you can throw more Ki into it to make it better than any other weapon in the game, but the fact that it's an action if you want to manifest it and it starts low damage, from a number-crunch perspective it doesn't really do any wonders.
I could see something along the lines of manifesting it as a bonus action on your turn for no Ki, or as an action in your turn you can manifest it at higher Dice by expending Ki for a total of 2 Ki for 3 Dice.
Not the best fix, but it's what came to mind.

Personally I don't think that the feature needs to be fixed, since the Soulknife's blade will already deal some of the highest damage in the game. Don't forget that at 2nd level they get Flurry of Blows, and at 5th they get Extra Attack. And if you pump 3 Ki into it, you're dealing 3xMartial Arts Die on every single hit. I think it's fine as is. You're sacrificing your action for that round to deal decent damage.


Additionally, Flight of the Soul seems too strong. The Way of Shadows has limits on their teleport, but Flight offers you a 2nd-level spell (Misty Step) for free, unlimited use.

I was looking at this, and I think that from a design stand point it is balanced, and here's why. The Way of Shadows does have limits on their teleport, but they also have a much greater range. And WotC is shaky at best with their philosophy on teleports. Just look at the Shadow Sorcerer in the Unearthed Arcana they published a couple of months ago. It's got 120ft. teleport as a bonus action at will (admittedly at 14th level). When the two existing subclasses that get an at will teleport have 2 and 4 times the range that this one does, I don't mind it. Now, I am not the designer, so I can't say if that was his thought process or not, but that's how it seems to me, that the logic would work.

DracoKnight
2016-01-17, 08:18 AM
I was looking at this, and I think that from a design stand point it is balanced, and here's why. The Way of Shadows does have limits on their teleport, but they also have a much greater range. And WotC is shaky at best with their philosophy on teleports. Just look at the Shadow Sorcerer in the Unearthed Arcana they published a couple of months ago. It's got 120ft. teleport as a bonus action at will (admittedly at 14th level). When the two existing subclasses that get an at will teleport have 2 and 4 times the range that this one does, I don't mind it. Now, I am not the designer, so I can't say if that was his thought process or not, but that's how it seems to me, that the logic would work.

Exactly this.

EDIT: But my thought process could have been flawed.

Requiemforlust
2016-01-17, 09:42 PM
The only problem I have looking at this is the fact that it does the same damage as your Unarmed Strike, so without pumping extra Ki into it, it doesn't really do anything at all besides change your damage type to Radiant, which Sun Soul gets for free (iirc). It also costs a full action, so your ability to do any combat at all on your first turn is out of the question.
Granted, you can throw more Ki into it to make it better than any other weapon in the game, but the fact that it's an action if you want to manifest it and it starts low damage, from a number-crunch perspective it doesn't really do any wonders.
I could see something along the lines of manifesting it as a bonus action on your turn for no Ki, or as an action in your turn you can manifest it at higher Dice by expending Ki for a total of 2 Ki for 3 Dice.
Not the best fix, but it's what came to mind.

Additionally, Flight of the Soul seems too strong. The Way of Shadows has limits on their teleport, but Flight offers you a 2nd-level spell (Misty Step) for free, unlimited use.

Beyond all that (which is probably just me imposing my own design philosophies on your class anyway), it looks pretty darn nifty and I love the alternative lore you've provided/created.

Logical points...

Hmmmmmmm...maybe a better feature would be...

Starting at 6th level, when you have manifested your ki blade, you may use a bonus action on your turn to spend 1 ki point to gain advantage on your next melee attack.

DracoKnight
2016-01-17, 10:04 PM
Starting at 6th level, when you have manifested your ki blade, you may use a bonus action on your turn to spend 1 ki point to gain advantage on your next melee attack.

Hmmmm...I like this. Fluff-wise they would be using their control over their soul's energy to make their attacks more focused.

DracoKnight
2016-01-17, 10:44 PM
I've updated the link in the OP, and I made the changes that Requiem suggested.

SterlingWren
2016-01-18, 04:39 AM
Okay, now that I think about it, this is more balanced than it was before :smallsmile:

PoeticDwarf
2016-01-18, 07:27 AM
Hmmmm...I like this. Fluff-wise they would be using their control over their soul's energy to make their attacks more focused.
For 1 point you can also get 2 attacks as bonus action

This is so bad and weak now D:

DracoKnight
2016-01-18, 02:25 PM
For 1 point you can also get 2 attacks as bonus action

This is so bad and weak now D:

What would you recommend for its 6th level feature?

PoeticDwarf
2016-01-19, 02:25 AM
What would you recommend for its 6th level feature?

Maybe something with reaction. If you are damaged you can spend a ki point to gain advantage on a weapon attack against that creature (maybe make this little bit better)

DracoKnight
2016-01-19, 02:42 AM
Maybe something with reaction. If you are damaged you can spend a ki point to gain advantage on a weapon attack against that creature (maybe make this little bit better)

Okay. I think that this works :smallsmile:

GandalfTheWhite
2016-01-20, 07:18 PM
Maybe something with reaction. If you are damaged you can spend a ki point to gain advantage on a weapon attack against that creature (maybe make this little bit better)


Okay. I think that this works :smallsmile:

Yes, this works.

PoeticDwarf
2016-01-21, 03:03 PM
You didn't change the link yet and Soul focus is still a bonus action!

DracoKnight
2016-02-10, 06:33 AM
You didn't change the link yet and Soul focus is still a bonus action!

My apologies, I will get that changed here soon :smallsmile: