Unlike the Drunken Master Monk, the Soulknife, since its introduction in Tasha's Cauldron of Everything, has often been considered among the best Rogue subclasses - it's certainly one that I have wanted to play (I've never played a Rogue of 3rd level or higher in D&D, only getting to try out my Dhampir Rogue concept in the House of Lament, which ends with the party hitting 3rd level).
Given WotC's emphatically reiterated goal of making the 2024 Core Rulebooks backwards compatible with all previously-existing 5E books, I thought it would be good to pass through some of the various subclasses from books past and see how well they would work with the latest UA versions of each class.
The most recent playtest Rogue was way back in June, but thanks in large part to the very cool new Cunning Strike feature, I think the reception was very positive, and it's one of the classes that went to internal testing and refinement.
As with the Drunken Master, we're going to go subclass-feature by subclass-feature and see how each works with the new Rogue.
Level 3:
Psionic Power:
This is the base psionic ability that the class builds on, and while it shares a lot of mechanics with the Psi Warrior Fighter, it's ultimately kind of a closed system (though I'd allow a Fighter/Rogue multiclass to use the Psionic Energy Dice they get for each subclass to fuel either set of features).
Rogues are still going to be making skill checks and have a reason to like getting telepathic communication, so I think this is all fine.
Psychic Blades:
Ok, to be fair, this feature already had an existing problem, which is that you couldn't get magical versions of your Psychic Blades. It's the old Monk problem, but not solved with things like the new +X Wraps of Unarmed Mastery. I'm hoping the new DMG will have items that can boost the power of summoned weapons (including the Path of the Beast Barbarian natural weapons).
But Psychic Blades also runs into a new problem, which is that Rogues, along with basically every other class that has any reason to use a weapon (except the latest Monk - the one sour note in an otherwise very welcome buff,) get Weapon Mastery.
While the Psychic Blades do the damage that a Shortsword and a Dagger would (though they deal Psychic instead of Piercing damage) they don't actually have an official weapon type. And because of that, they won't have any Weapon Mastery.
This doesn't technically break the subclass, but I do think it is somewhat punishing, as all the other Rogues are going to be happily benefitting from things like Nick (particularly useful given that Rogues like having a spare bonus action) and Vex (getting tons of advantage and thus Sneak Attacks? Sign me up!)
I think there's a fix you could make here where you classify the weapons as a Shortsword and a Dagger with altered properties, but that will require some errata.
Soul Blades:
At level 9, you can start spending your Psionic Energy dice to boost the attack rolls of attacks that miss, but this only works with your Psychic Blades. In other words, you're forced to choose between whether part of your subclass works or part of your class works. The teleportation aspect of this should work just fine, as while it thematically uses your psychic blades, it's really just a flavor thing.
Psychic Veil:
Your 13th level ability to turn invisible should continue to work fine.
Rend Mind:
Once again, we have a feature that requires you use your Psychic Blades. Here, doing so can allow you to stun a target. This is somewhat similar to the "Knock Out" Cunning Strike option gained at 14th level, but they use different resources, so I think there's enough difference to keep it from being redundant.
So, ultimately, we're just seeing a bit of an exacerbation of the issues with the summoned weapons that are at the core of this subclass. Giving up the potential for magic weapons was something less of a cost, especially because Homing Strikes (part of Soul Blades) could make up for the lack of a +1 bonus on a magic weapon and Rogues naturally care a little less about damage bonuses because so much of their power comes from Sneak Attack.
But Weapon Masteries could potentially be huge game changers for Rogues. Dual-wielding has always been very powerful for Rogues, and so the Nick mastery is going to be extremely attractive. And then Vex can potentially make Sneak Attack much more reliable.
Nothing here is technically "broken," in the sense that it doesn't work anymore or is rendered redundant by a new class feature. But we can see that the Soul Knife is being pulled in too directions by incompatible features.
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