Playing my Wizard, and finally getting to play one in a long campaign, I've decided that my next character might be a Rogue. I'd intended to play an Artificer (Armorer specifically) in another campaign, but that crashed and burned a couple sessions in as the DM got way too busy with work. I do want to play that character, but he's in a bit of a limbo, where I wouldn't want to play the same build in some other campaign only for this one to start up again.
Now, it's not like DMs are knocking down my door with offers to run games - of my friend group, I'm already in the game of one of them who DMs, and the other is the aforementioned overbooked busy person.
But, the point is, the subclass I'm most excited to play is the Soulknife. Mechanically and flavor-wise, it seems like a ton of fun. I like the idea of playing someone who was experimented on to turn them into some kind of psionic assassin, and that they're trying to break free of the people who wanted to use them as a weapon.
Here's the thing:
Subclasses like the Soulknife, as well as the Beast Barbarian, run into the following problem:
As other characters get fancy magic weapons - a +2 Greatsword, or a Holy Avenger Longsword, or anything like that - your subclass is centered around weapons that are conjured up with the subclass features. The Soulknife, for example, only gets to use Honing Strikes or Rend Mind if they're attacking with their Psychic Blades.
These are good weapons - sort of like a shortsword with the thrown property and a dagger that have no disadvantage for tossing at long range and deal psychic damage (something only rarely resisted) - and in a campaign without any magic items, they'll usually be better than any mundane weapons.
But they can never be upgraded.
Still, my rationale has tended to be that, while yes, a +1 weapon would be nice to have, Honing Strikes and the fact that Rogues rely far more on Sneak Attack for their damage than their actual weapon damage winds up reducing the impact of magic weapons other than for getting around damage resistances, as compared with, say, a Fighter, who's getting almost all of their damage out of the weapon hits themselves.
But, a new complication arises:
Weapon Mastery is good. I know some people are complaining that it doesn't close the gap between martials and casters, but I think Rogues in particular are going to be getting a ton out of it (actually, the impact for Monks is also not something to ignore either). Vex is amazing for a Rogue, but Nick is also really good, giving you more chances to land your hit and get sneak attack. (Well, to be fair, Nick more accurately saves you a bonus action to do things like hide or run).
Psychic Blades are not, however "shortswords with the thrown property" or "daggers" made of psychic energy. They're unclassified simple weapons and thus, if Weapon Mastery makes it "live" with the 2024 books, which I'm very confident it will, the Soulknife is going to be forced to decide whether to use their built-in weapons or ignore a big chunk of their subclass features to gain all these benefits.
The earlier problem - the lack of scaling with any kind of magic items - has plagued the Monk since 2014. While a Monk is free to use their Attack action with any magic weapon they have proficiency with, and thus gain the benefits that way, their unarmed strikes - which are meant to be their balance against the damage output potential of other martial classes - fall behind.
And while Weapon Mastery is going to apply, again, to the attacks Monks make with actual weapons, their Unarmed Strikes are going to fall behind even further without some kind of mastery effect.
Now, there is one element of Unarmed Strikes that does sort of work as a buff to the Monk - shoving and grappling, while neither involves an attack roll, are still under the banner of Unarmed Strikes, and so I think a Monk should be able to do these as a martial arts bonus action. But that's not huge - everyone can, I believe, swap out an attack for one of these, and unlike weapon hits with masteries, you don't get the damage and the effect - the Push mastery is clearly a lot better than the Shove option.
The Soulknife is not one of the PHB subclasses for the Rogue (in fairness, I think the ones they have chosen - the Thief, Assassin, Arcane Trickster, and Swashbuckler, are the best choices for the "classic Rogue archetypes.") So I don't expect to get any update to the subclass.
But I would love to see at least some new magic items that buff things like unarmed strikes or conjured weapons.
And it would be great if there was an errata that buffed the Psychic Blades by letting them count as specific weapon types. It might be harder to do, conceptually, but doing the same for Beast Barbarian weapons would also be great.
And then, well, just give the Monk some buffs (though I'd err more on survival than damage output).
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