Wizards of the Coast has revealed a bunch of choice updates for DnD‘s popular Soulknife Rogue subclass coming in the game’s upcoming new core rulebook – and it’s fair to say a lot of Dungeons and Dragons fans are pretty jazzed about it.
The news comes in an explainer video published on the 2024 Player’s Handbook, or PHB, that saw D&D’s lead rules designer Jeremy Crawford explaining the key changes made to the extremely popular, sneaky DnD Rogue class. He describes it as adding “new twists” to one of the most beloved DnD classes in the game’s history.
And few of those changes excited fans more than the boost Wizards is giving to the Soulknife – a Rogue subclass all about wielding psychic blades. Just watch back the video below, from around 7 minutes 30 seconds onwards, and you can see the chat go ballistic.
The major changes are all about upping the power and versatility of the Soulknife’s core Psychic Blades ability: in One DnD, they’ll have a dual range of 60 feet / 120 feet, rather than being limited to just 60 feet; they can now be used for DnD opportunity attacks; and they get the new Vex weapon mastery – which gives you Advantage on your next attack before the end of the following turn, after you hit and deal damage the first time.
It’s a major power upgrade versus the original Soulknife subclass we first saw presented in the 2020 DnD book Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything. Naturally, some DMs have reacted nervously to the buffs online – but, as with all the changes in the new 2024 core books, we’ll have to wait and see how the new game lands before finding out whether the Soulknife is in for a retroactive nerf.
The Soulknife isn’t the only bit of the Rogue in for changes, though – Wizards says all 48 subclasses in the new PHB have been rebuilt from the ground up following its Unearthed Arcana playtesting, and the video also summarises tweaks to the Arcane Trickster, Assassin, and others.
Crawford explains in the video that the team’s main goal in updating this historically solid class was to “not mess it up” – and that also includes a remodel to the core class rules for Rogues, aiming to ensure they offer the same damage and progression as the 2014 version. The overall class now gains new ways to spend Sneak Attack damage die and the aforementioned new access to certain Weapon Masteries.
How all this plays out in full won’t be known until the new PHB and its updated rules launch on September 17, but we can say Rogue fans initially seemed thrilled at this Soulknife update, with the entire chat chorusing a resounding “YESSSS”. It may only be a small rule change, but it’s clear that it’s a very popular one (for now).
Check out our DnD release schedule to see when all the new updates are due. Once you’ve got yourself excited for what’s upcoming why not browse our guide to all the DnD races and species. And, to keep up with daily updates, bookmark our DnD news page and follow Wargamer on Google News.