The Soulknife is my favorite Rogue subclass, and so I'm fairly excited to see the subclass getting a revision in this year's Player's Handbook (I'll be sad if this means the Swashbuckler gets cut - honestly, I wouldn't shed a tear if the Assassin got cut instead, though I think the Assassin really deserves a good rework to be an actually good subclass).
The Soulknife is super cool, but there are some rules hiccups and balancing issues caused by the way that the rules are written.
Let's talk about the big one first:
Soulknives are built around Psychic Blades, which are effectively hybrid melee/ranged conjured weapons that deal a damage type that very few things resist (Psychic) and from which the Soulknife cannot be disarmed. It also doesn't leave visible wounds, allowing for some great plausible deniability if the Rogue needs to go take down an NPC without leaving any evidence. With a flat 60-foot range, you no longer suffer disadvantage that you might from throwing a dagger at a similar distance, as well, and the main-hand one does a d6.
The weapons are conjured when you take the Attack action - and this is where the first big problems come up. The weapons vanish after they hit or miss, which means that after you've made your attack, your hand is once again empty. Because it takes the Attack action to conjure the blades, this means that you won't be able to have those Psychic Blades in hand for any reaction-based attack - most obviously an Opportunity Attack, but also in situations such as if you have a Battle Master with Commander's Strike.
The fix here is easy, though: simply have the blades appear whenever you make a melee attack and are not carrying a weapon (or, probably better to say you "can" have the blades appear, as you might have some reason to want to make an Unarmed Strike). Another option would be to say that the blades persist indefinitely, and can be dismissed at no action cost.
The next issue is one that I think could be solved with special magic items:
We've already seen Monks receive an item, the Wraps of Unarmed Prowess, which correct the lack of +X weapons for their unarmed strikes. But as far as I know, there aren't equivalents for subclass-derived weapon attacks, such as the Natural Weapons (which aren't technically unarmed strikes) for the Beast Barbarian or the Psychic Blades for the Soulknife.
I'll contend that this is less of an issue for Soulknives, given that at least in terms of damage, they're relying less on their modifiers to the damage roll than other classes. But in terms of their accuracy, it would be good to let them keep pace with other Rogues (and not have to rely on Homing Strikes to make up for this deficit).
These two changes I think are all that are needed to fix the clear problems with the subclass.
But let's dream a little bigger:
Cunning Strikes is a new Rogue feature that allow you to sacrifice dice from your Sneak Attack hits to fuel additional effects. A few of the subclasses for the Rogue introduced after this addition also gain new Cunning Strike options. In my mind, this feels like a great way to give every subclass a way to interact with this very cool feature.
High-level Soulknives can potentially stun a target with their Psychic Blade sneak attacks, but I could also see this transforming into a Cunning Strikes option (though perhaps that would be too powerful without a resource limiter). But I could see doing things like Dazing targets, maybe inflicting a confusion-like effect, or other mind-altering hinderances.
And there we have it - I'm really looking forward to the new core books, and I hope we'll get some hints at what kind of tweaks are coming in the next few days.
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