But what good are magically appearing blades if you can’t throw them and teleport to the spot where they land. Good luck to anyone who tries to tie you up with rope. These hidden blades are always at your disposal and there’s nothing anyone can do to take them away. Because you’re also getting the titular soul knifes, or psychic blades, at third level. Now you’re saying, “Surely that’s it for third level, that’s already better than some subclasses out there.” Not even close. Every single time you fail a check in a skill you are proficient in you should be getting this bonus (unless you’re running low on psionic dice). This is practically unheard of, and means that you don’t have to ever worry about risking a wasted die.

You only expend the die if you end up succeeding on your check! That’s fun, but it would be a waste if you still end up failing after expending your psionic die, right? Wrong! Also at 3rd level, you can add a roll of the psionic die to a failed skill check that you are proficient with. This ability completely trumps just about every other method of gaining telepathy in 5e, and it comes to you at 3rd level as soon as you take this archetype. Where most telepathic abilities are one-way communications, this ability functions like a walkie-talkie.įor a number of hours equal to the roll of your die, you and a number of creatures equal to your proficiency bonus can mentally communicate with each other over as far a distance as one mile.Įven if you can only keep this ability going for an hour you’re going to be able to stealthily infiltrate whatever stronghold you’re headed into without having to utter a single word to any of your allies. The telepathy isn’t your typical 5e telepathy either. On that list of abilities are the telepathy, teleportation, and skill checks mentioned above, amongst other things. So what is this “Psionic Energy”? Your psychic powers give you a pool of dice that you can use to activate abilities.

Even then the psychic blades are only made more powerful by the Psionic Energy. The abilities always (hopefully) synergize well, but they are distinct enough to talk about them in their own light.įor this subclass, every single ability that you can get could be argued to be class-defining, but realistically, they all fall under the two umbrellas of Psionic Energy and Psychic Blades. Normally, we look at three or four class-defining abilities. It’s no wonder that these special rogues are highly sought after as spies and assassins for any number of groups.Īrmies, governments, religious orders, and every thieves guild out there is desperate for a master of deception that has everything they need right between their ears. The magical blade that just deftly slips into existence as the dashing rogue takes a stab at his victim is such an amazing image that gives me chills. If you haven’t been under a rock for the past decade, you’ve probably seen Loki do something very similar to this in the Thor movies. These blades are so amazing they don’t even leave any marks, just a whole lot of damage. You can throw it or make a normal finesse attack with it and all of that damage is going to be magical psychic damage. Instead, whenever they make an attack they conjure up a blade made of pure psychic energy, which realistically can look like whatever you want. These rogues don’t need to carry around any physical weapons. I’ll get into the mechanics of all of the above as we progress through the article, but I need to immediately tell you how cool the namesake’s psychic blades are. No mere assassins, soul knife rogues harness this ability from within themselves to access magical powers like teleportation, telepathy and even invisibility.Ĭompared to the psi warrior subclass of fighter, these psychic abilities complement the rogue’s already amazing knack for stealthiness and subterfuge. These rogues possess astonishing psionic abilities that allow them to conjure blades of pure psychic energy, along with a whole host of other powers. Their namesake are their special weapons, the likes of which only pact of the blade warlocks can come close to. While they might sound like a restaurant in New Orleans, they are serving up a lot more than fried fish and black-eyed peas. Soul knife rogues are an incredibly powerful subclass with a theme that might just rank them as my favorite roguish archetype. Brain Blades, Psychic Swords, Mental Machetes.Black Citadel’s Ranking and Tier System.

Encode thoughts 5e