Tasha's Cauldron of Everything introduced the Telekinetic and Telepathic Feats as well as psionic subclasses Psi Knight (Fighter), Soulknife (Rogue), and Abberant Mind (Sorcerer).
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Canto alla vita alla sua bellezza ad ogni sua ferita ogni sua carezza!
I sing to life and to its tragic beauty To pain and to strife, but all that dances through me The rise and the fall, I've lived through it all!
I don't use Psionics as they are done in 5e... I use Matt Coleville's gemstone dragon Psionics from Strongholds and Followers. I created a custom feat, based on the abilities of his Gemstone Dragonborn, that I opened up to all PCs after they went to the Astral Plane and encountered psionic attacks themselves. This allows anyone to do a limited version of the abilities the gemstone dragons can do (they can't do the big stuff, but they can do the smaller stuff).
So, I agree, I like it being a feat...but because I don't like how 5e does "psionics," I don't use the 5e system.
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The problem you say you have with psionics as a class doesn’t really make sense to me. You can say the same thing about magic. With luck, anybody could have magical ability! Honing that ability into something mechanically relevant is represented by taking levels in Wizard (or whatever).
I don’t mind the idea of psionic feats, the same way we gave Magic Initiate (and we do have those, as Ophidimancer brought up). But psionics should be a power just as developed as (both in terms of in-character time and training and out-of-character design resources) but mechanically distinct from the magic system, or else it’s either nothing of substance or it’s just magic, neither of which is meaningful or interesting.
Saga is almost excruciatingly correct. In a rigid class-based system like D&D, things that affect your adventuring capabilities typically take the form of class levels. Sure, recently D&D has been opening that up some and coming up with a bunch of variations on things you add to a sheet outside of class progression to represent Special Stuff (Supernatural/Dark Gifts), but for the most part the game expects that if you have a random superpower, you took class levels to get it.
Treating psychic abilities as "magic, just more purple" is pointless - at that point you are actually factually wasting your time, as well as pissing off literally everyone who enjoys psychic abilities as a character trope/archetype. Psychic abilities/psionics deserves its own mechanical framework, independent of the spell system. A telekinetic badass should be meaningfully, mechanically different than an Alteration wizard. As it stands we're all kinda stuck with the worst of all worlds - generally poorly designed subclasses that lean on the spellcasting system except with weird, janky prerequisites that make them strictly worse than just being spellcasters, feats that are difficult to justify taking for most characters because the system in general is so hostile to the idea of psychic abilities that someone spontaneously developing a psychic knack is just weird, and no overarching design principles or mechanical structure for psychic abilities at all - but we have Sykik Powerz now, and so anyone who wants to play a psychic character is disallowed to build out a class/subclass of their own and instead shoehorned into one of the terrible subclasses instead.
Anyone who wants to play a character whose power derives entirely from their psychic abilities, as opposed to "Psychic but also sneaky and stabby (Soulknife)" or "Psychic but not really, actually a Jedi ('Psi' Warrior)", is told to play an Aberrant Mind sorcerer. Doesn't matter if their character concept had absolutely nothing to do with the Outer Planes, aberrations, evil slime or tentacles - now they're a tentacle slime monster PC whether they wanted top be or not, and their "psychic powers" are just "take spells that sortakinna mimic psychic abilities, but be strictly worse as a spellcaster than a regular sorcerer because you're not allowed to pick up other spells every sorcerer should have cuz you're 'psychic'."
It's an absolute travesty, and an actively terrible way to do the whole Psionics thing...but it's where we're at now.
So yeah. If you want to homebrew psychic powers as a series of progressive feats people can't take anyways because your game disallows feats? Do it up. I'd be curious to see what you come up with. Can't be any worse than what Wizards came up with.
Anyone who wants to play a character whose power derives entirely from their psychic abilities, as opposed to "Psychic but also sneaky and stabby (Soulknife)" or "Psychic but not really, actually a Jedi ('Psi' Warrior)", is told to play an Aberrant Mind sorcerer. Doesn't matter if their character concept had absolutely nothing to do with the Outer Planes, aberrations, evil slime or tentacles - now they're a tentacle slime monster PC whether they wanted top be or not, and their "psychic powers" are just "take spells that sortakinna mimic psychic abilities, but be strictly worse as a spellcaster than a regular sorcerer because you're not allowed to pick up other spells every sorcerer should have cuz you're 'psychic'."
I went and took another looks at Aberrant Mind and I think the origins are a bit more flexible than that, even inside the constraints of the suggested ones:
Aberrant Origins
d6
Origin
1
You were exposed to the Far Realm’s warping influence. You are convinced that a tentacle is now growing on you, but no one else can see it.
2
A psychic wind from the Astral Plane carried psionic energy to you. When you use your powers, faint motes of light sparkle around you.
3
You once suffered the dominating powers of an aboleth, leaving a psychic splinter in your mind.
4
You were implanted with a mind flayer tadpole, but the ceremorphosis never completed. And now its psionic power is yours. When you use it, your flesh shines with a strange mucus.
5
As a child, you had an imaginary friend that looked like a flumph or a strange platypus-like creature. One day, it gifted you with psionic powers, which have ended up being not so imaginary.
6
Your nightmares whisper the truth to you: your psionic powers are not your own. You draw them from your parasitic twin!
#2, #5, and #6 seem like fairly standard fantasy psychics with mystical, whimsical, and dark angles, respectively. Also the Jedi are psions, so .....?
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Canto alla vita alla sua bellezza ad ogni sua ferita ogni sua carezza!
I sing to life and to its tragic beauty To pain and to strife, but all that dances through me The rise and the fall, I've lived through it all!
Ok so this is just my opinion, but I don't think psionics needs a robust mechanical system in D&D. Weird mind powers in a fantasy setting seems like an odd quirk or a surprising trick that some characters can pull out of their pocket as a gotcha sometimes, not something that needs the narrative emphasis or focus as much as magic. As such, I'm satisfied with what Tasha's gave us.
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Canto alla vita alla sua bellezza ad ogni sua ferita ogni sua carezza!
I sing to life and to its tragic beauty To pain and to strife, but all that dances through me The rise and the fall, I've lived through it all!
Seconded. Psionics always felt weird and bolted-on, the only reason they were even added was because psychic stuff was all the rage in science fiction in the 80s.
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"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
Ok so this is just my opinion, but I don't think psionics needs a robust mechanical system in D&D. Weird mind powers in a fantasy setting seems like an odd quirk or a surprising trick that some characters can pull out of their pocket as a gotcha sometimes, not something that needs the narrative emphasis or focus as much as magic. As such, I'm satisfied with what Tasha's gave us.
That may be true of some settings, but in Dark Sun or Eberron, psionics is built into the settings as something already has the narrative emphasis and focus of magic. The mechanics of the game should support those stories.
Anyone who wants to play a character whose power derives entirely from their psychic abilities, as opposed to "Psychic but also sneaky and stabby (Soulknife)" or "Psychic but not really, actually a Jedi ('Psi' Warrior)", is told to play an Aberrant Mind sorcerer. Doesn't matter if their character concept had absolutely nothing to do with the Outer Planes, aberrations, evil slime or tentacles - now they're a tentacle slime monster PC whether they wanted top be or not, and their "psychic powers" are just "take spells that sortakinna mimic psychic abilities, but be strictly worse as a spellcaster than a regular sorcerer because you're not allowed to pick up other spells every sorcerer should have cuz you're 'psychic'."
I went and took another looks at Aberrant Mind and I think the origins are a bit more flexible than that, even inside the constraints of the suggested ones:
Aberrant Origins
d6
Origin
1
You were exposed to the Far Realm’s warping influence. You are convinced that a tentacle is now growing on you, but no one else can see it.
2
A psychic wind from the Astral Plane carried psionic energy to you. When you use your powers, faint motes of light sparkle around you.
3
You once suffered the dominating powers of an aboleth, leaving a psychic splinter in your mind.
4
You were implanted with a mind flayer tadpole, but the ceremorphosis never completed. And now its psionic power is yours. When you use it, your flesh shines with a strange mucus.
5
As a child, you had an imaginary friend that looked like a flumph or a strange platypus-like creature. One day, it gifted you with psionic powers, which have ended up being not so imaginary.
6
Your nightmares whisper the truth to you: your psionic powers are not your own. You draw them from your parasitic twin!
#2, #5, and #6 seem like fairly standard fantasy psychics with mystical, whimsical, and dark angles, respectively. Also the Jedi are psions, so .....?
I think this recitation does more to support Yurel's complaint than mitigates. I'd go so far as to say Aberrent mind as written narratively/flavorly is much more constrictive than any other subclass in the game. Aberrant doesn't just mean "different" and veers hard from the connotation of "exceptional", the connotation it conveys is problematically pejorative, conjuring (so to speak) "freakishness" and "madness from beyond" ... aberrant was even used as one of the evil alignments in Palladium's old school system (used as a sort of middling between miscreant and diabolical, though a continuum/spectrum to D&D isn't exactly how that system played out). The origins Wizards offers are sort of loaded given the recent VRGtR conversations.
Sure, Psi Knights (yes, Jedi) and Soul Knives (I say Sith) exemplify psionics (in very limited application) that can be garnered through focused growth and concentrated development, at least they're vague on where the talents come from. But for something a bit more broad raging, you have to be literally "touched" somehow (again, drawing into mental illness tropes I'm surprised made it by the reviewers WOTC evokes in applause solicitations). I mean does every Professor X type really have to go through a Carrie or Firestarter phase? Yes, Aberrant coincides with the notion of 'mutation' which again preloads cultural prejudice metaphors that anyone who reads comic books is familiar with, but why does that have to be Wizard's dominant narrative for mind powers? "Psychic" research of the Peter Venkman school didn't presume outright that preternatural perception or agency in one's physical environment meant something took hold of the subjects mind. Rather, while sure there's a lot of "madness" dreck tethered to psychic powers, there's also the notion that such powers can be achieved through focus study and/or unlocking next steps in evolution.
Hell, Starship Troopers was a broad satire of jingoistic prejudice and even that movie treated psionics with more deft sensitivity than Wizards landing of the broadest "psionic" power base in an aberrant mind. Each of the six RAW options conflate psychic development with far realm or other "from beyond" intervention manifesting as what folks outside the aberrant mind would deem hallucinatory or delusional experience. Personally, sure if your character concept wants to be all Legion and let your Mindfreak flag fly, go for it. But it needn't be that way for the many folks who have some imagination that intense study of the mind or deep meditation can unlock fantastic powers (psychics, like magic, are often metaphors for creativity, and the "mad genius" trope for creatives is just so tired and harmful ... and I say that as someone who yet again scored "Malkavian" on the Vampire personality test, which bugs me for "reasons" beyond me trying to both "be myself" in the test and trying to avoid that "diagnosis", kinda kidding, kinda not).
If I were to write a psychic class, I'd go exclusive class, and probably set itself up as something parallel to the Monk. It would be "weird" in that it's base stat could be, like the feats, based in INT/WIS/CHR (the psychic abilities being either manifestation of focused study, meditation, or will) and would avoid the spell slot conventions in favor of psi points like ki and maybe bring in the die mechanic from the Psi/Soul subclasses. The Monk is basically a physical adept (alas the class design means just a DEX adept, a STR adept would be cool). The Mentalist or Psionicist would be a mental adept, with the features that allow for a range of gentle/harmful telepathy (which would offer a path to mind control and blasting), telekinetics (with environmental/matter manipulation like pyrokinetics as advance class) and some of the more uncanny powers such as prophecy, psychometry, etc.
Coincidentally, did anyone see the Colville video a couple of days ago where he talks firearms and game design principles? It's very bare bones, I imagine, but also illuminating for folks like me who don't spent a ton of time thinking about mechanical design. It does have me thinking while the Psi Knight and Soul Knife are more like what some players may want in a psychic character, the Aberrant mind was a slapdash reskin effort with little consideration of what players think of as "the cool" with psychic powers (which is their motive for playing them). You can say two of out three ain't bad, but that meatloaf stinks when you recognize the bulk of psychic possibilities are put on the "meh to yuck" third, which is basically "weird touched" font of magic than psychic.
FWIW, claiming the Jedi are psions, I dunno. The Jedi and other Force users study the Force which is an energy field permeating reality that can be manipulated with practice ... sort of like the weave (probably why detractors of Star Wars call the franchise Space Wizards, not laser swords and mind powers). Some psychic tropes postulates the psychics access to a "hidden world" but more often locates the its "force" so to speak within the structure of the mind. It's a distinction worth recognizing.
I mean wasn't the Aberrant mind a renaming of a Sorcerer subclass that was more honestly Far Realm tied in UA?
EDIT: to speak to Wysperra's feat progressions, I'm actually surprised we don't in fact see feat trees like you've outlined be made more available. Eschewing ones ASI and other feat opportunities to focus on the path of a psychic has a good ring to it. I've actually toyed with doing something like that for Monk martial arts where a non Monk can get some Ki and get some of Monk features under their belt, so to speak. So given my read of the psychic as a "mental adept" analogous to the Monk's "physical adept" I could see such a tree possibly working even if there was a psychic class.
I'm actually really surprised a psychic monk wasn't introduced instead of the Sorcerer. I mean the Psi Knight gives the Githyanki players a boon to playing out how they're written in lore, the Githzerai,get left contemplating the lost potential....
If I wanted to make a psychic monk I would make an Astral Self monk (psychomanifestation of an idealized self image much?) and take one of the psychic feats.
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Canto alla vita alla sua bellezza ad ogni sua ferita ogni sua carezza!
I sing to life and to its tragic beauty To pain and to strife, but all that dances through me The rise and the fall, I've lived through it all!
I'd go so far as to say Aberrent mind as written narratively/flavorly is much more constrictive than any other subclass in the game.
I'd disagree? I mean I think "you have draconic ancestry" is fairly narrow a range of origins. With Aberrant Mind you have examples of being exposed to the Far Realm, being implanted by a mind flayer tadpole (BG3 tie in), or you were affected by an aboleth which yes all do leave you some sort of weird tentacle sorcerer, but then you have stuff like "you were touched by the universal subconscious" or "your childhood imaginings were so strong they gave you powers" or "you have a psychic umbilicus to your unborn twin" all of which are pretty generic and open to interpretation. The first two are almost just saying "you're psychic" or "you've been psychic since you were a kid."
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Canto alla vita alla sua bellezza ad ogni sua ferita ogni sua carezza!
I sing to life and to its tragic beauty To pain and to strife, but all that dances through me The rise and the fall, I've lived through it all!
My attempt at psionics is through a weird monk subclass which overhauls basically the whole thing, yet still keeps those old aspects while making them psychic.
Here it is in homebrewery format if the link doesn't work:
## Way of The Mind's Focus
The Way of the Mind's Focus dedicates themselves to mastering the art of psionics through intense training. Rather than dealing blows with raw punches, they focus their psychic power onto their opponents to attack them. Many different subvariations of this way exist. Those who follow the Order of the Avatar bring out extreme emotions in the people around them and the Order of the Awakened seek to unlock the full potential of the mind. The Order of the Immortal use psionic energy to modify their bodies, unlike the Order of the Nomad who quest to unravel the mysteries of the multiverse and connect their minds to the enviornment around them. The Order of the Wu Jen control the forces of the natural world.
### Psychic Mind
At 3rd level, when you choose this path you can choose to instead add your intelligence modifier to your ki save DC instead of your wisdom modifier. You can also replace your wisdom modifier with your intelligence modifier in terms of your armor class from the unarmored defense feature.
You can also spend 1 ki point to speak telepathically for up to 8 hours with creatures within 60 feet of you.
### Psychic Hold
At 3rd level when you follow this path, you have the power to focus your mind and psychic power onto an area around you. It takes the form of an invisible 5 foot wide cube of psychic energy known as your psychic hold, which can move through creatures and objects. You can summon it as a bonus action which then the psychic hold is centered on you. If you summon your psychic hold when you already have one summoned then the one you had previously dissapears. You can spend your movement speed to move your psychic hold in any direction. If your psychic hold is more than 60 feet away from you, it disappears.
Whenever you make an unarmed strike, you can instead have the strike target a creature within the psychic hold even if the target is not within range of the strike. If you attack in this manner, you replace your attack and damage rolls with your wisdom or intelligence modifier instead of your strength or dexterity modifier. On a hit, the strike also deals psychic damage.
### Psychic Path
At 3rd level when you take this path, you choose a specialty for your psychic abilities. Choose one of the options down below:
<br>
**Avatar.** As an action, you can spend 1 ki point to make a creature within your psychic hold to make a wisdom saving throw or be frightened of your psychic hold until the end of your next turn.As an action, you can spend 3 ki points to make a creature within your psychic hold to make a wisdom saving throw or be charmed by you until the start of your next turn.
**Awakened.** You can spend 1 ki point as a bonus action to give yourself truesight until the start of your next turn.
You can use your action to make any creatures of your choice in your psychic hold take an amount of psychic damage equal to your martial arts die. You can spend ki points on this action to deal an extra 2 rolls of your martial arts die for every ki point you spend. The maximum amount of ki points you can spend on this action is equal to your proficiency bonus.
<br>
**Immortal.** You gain resistance to acid, cold, fire, force, lightning, or thunder damage. You can switch this resistance on a long rest.
You can spend 1 ki point to give a creature of your choice including yourself in your psychic hold a number of temporary hit points equal to 2 rolls of your martial arts die. As a reaction, when you are hit by a weapon attack, you can summon your psychic hold by spending 2 ki points, which also gives you temporary hit points equal to your martial arts die, which does protect you from the triggering attack. Any temporary hit points made in this manner only last for 1 hour.
**Nomad.** As an action, you can spend 1 ki point to teleport to your psychic hold.
You can also use your bonus action to peer through your psychic hold and see through it up to 30 feet with blindsight by spending 1 ki point. While you see in this manner you retain your usual sight.
You can also peer into the mind of another creature in the midst of battle. As a bonus action and at the cost of 1 ki point, you choose 1 creature within your psychic hold. The next attack roll you make against that creature has advantage.
<br>
**Wu Jen.** Whenever you deal psychic damage to a creature in your psychic hold, you can instead deal acid, cold, fire, lightning, or thunder damage.
You also know 2 wizard cantrips from the wizard spell list which can deal damage. Use your Ki Save DC as your spell save DC. The cantrip ignores range and you cast it without verbal or somatic components, however, the target or targets of the cantrip must be inside your Psychic Hold. These cantrips are not effected by counterspell, dispel magic, and antimagic.
### Revelation of Mind's Path
At 6th level, your contemplation into the mind has lead you to gain further psychic power from a revelation. You gain the feature shown below which matches with what you chose for your psychic path.
<br>
**Avatar.**
You can use your action to spend 1 ki point to invoke positive emotions and inspiration in battle within 1 creature in your psychic focus, by spending 2 or more ki points. When you do so, they gain a bonus to their armor class equal to 2 times the amount of ki points spent, as well as advantage on attack rolls until the start of their next turn.
<br>
\page
**Awakened.** You learn the **Mage Hand** cantrip. You can cast it without verbal or somatic components, and you can make the spectral hand invisible.
You can cast the **Detect Thoughts** spell by spending 1 ki point requiring no verbal, somatic, or material components. The spells from this feature are not effected by counterspell, dispel magic, and antimagic.
As an action, you can choose one object weighing 1 to 5 pounds within your psychic hold that isn't being worn or carried. The object flies in a straight line up to 90 feet in a direction you choose before falling to the ground, stopping early if it impacts against a solid surface. If the object would strike a creature, that creature must make a Dexterity saving throw. On a failed save, the object strikes the target and stops moving. When the object strikes something, the object and what it strikes each takes bludgeoning damage equal to 2 rolls of your martial arts die. You can increase this damage by spending ki points by 2 rolls of your martial arts die.
<br>
**Immortal.** You can enhance yourself with your own psychic abilities to be stronger in the heat of battle. As a bonus action, you can spend 1 ki point to have any attack you make until the end of your turn deal extra psychic damage equal to a roll of your martial arts die.
As a reaction, when you are reduced to 0 hit points, you can heal a number of hit points equal to your monk level + your intelligence modifier, which can protect you against the attack which would have made you fall to 0 hit points.
<br>
**Nomad.** As a bonus action, you can teleport up to 10 feet by spending 1 ki point. You can spend more ki points too to teleport up to an extra 10 feet per ki point spent.
Also, whenever you make a ranged weapon attack and miss (Including when you throw a projectile using your deflect missiles feature) you can spend 2 ki points to reroll the attack roll as you use psionic power to guide your projectile.
<br>
**Wu Jen.** You learn 2 1st level wizard spells of your choice which can deal damage in some manner. Use your Ki Save DC as your spell save DC. If a spell has a range, then that range is ignored, but the target of the spell must be inside your psychic hold. If a spell creates an area of effect, then that area of effect's origin is at the center of your psychic hold. You can cast these spells without verbal or somatic components. You can cast these spells by spending 3 ki points, and you can spend extra ki points to increase the spell's level by 1 for every extra ki point spent. These spells are not effected by counterspell, dispel magic, and antimagic.
When you take the attack action and deal damage with acid, cold, fire, lightning, or thunder damage, any spells you cast on your next turn that deals that damage type have a reduced cost of 1 ki point, and you add your intelligence or wisdom modifier to the spell's damage.
### Mental Expansion
At 11th level, your psychic power grows to focus your power even greater as well as assault your enemies with psychic power. Your psychic hold now takes the form of a 20 foot wide cube instead of your 5 foot wide cube.
Also, at the end of your turn, if you take the attack action or cast a spell, any creatures who took damage during that turn inside your psychic hold of your choice must make an intelligence saving throw against your ki save DC or be unable to take reactions until the start of their next turn.
You also gain resistance to psychic damage as your mind strengthens.
<br>
<br>
### Master of Psionics
At 17th level, you unlock mastery over your psionic abilities. As a bonus action, you can focus your psionic power and gain 1 special ki points which can only be used on abilities from Psychic Path, Revelation of Mind's path, or from this feature. You can have no more than 3 of these special ki points at once. You also gain a feature which matches what you chose for your psychic path.
**Avatar.** You can peer into the minds of others and alter their emotions in the heat of battle. As a reaction, you can spend 4 ki points and choose a creature inside you psychic focus when they are making an attack roll, as you warp their sense of who antagonises them. The creature of your choice must make a wisdom saving throw against your ki save DC or have the attack miss or be directed at a different creature within range of your choice. You can also inspire and alter other minds for it to focus. When a creature in your psychic focus makes an attack roll, you can use your reaction to spend 3 ki points and give the attack advantage as well as a bonus equal to your intelligence modifier.
**Awakened.** Your telekinetic power and your mind become greater in power. You can now spend 5 ki points to cast the spell **Telekinesis** as your mind obtains greater power. You cast this spell without verbal or somatic components, and th spell is not effected by antimagic, conunterspell, or dispel magic. You also gain a bonus to initiative equal to your intelligence modifier.
**Immortal.** You can spend up to 6 ki points as an action to regain hit points equal to your monk level + your intelligence modifier.
**Nomad** Your mind can mystically move your body. Once on each of your turns, you can forfeit up to 30 feet of your movement to teleport the distance you forfeited. You must teleport to an unoccupied space you can see.
**Wu Jen** You learn 2 3rd level wizard spells of your choice which can deal damage in some manner. Use your Ki Save DC as your spell save DC. If a spell has a range, then that range is ignored, but the target of the spell must be inside your psychic hold. If a spell creates an area of effect, then that area of effect's origin is at the center of your psychic hold. You can cast these spells without verbal or somatic components. You can cast these spells by spending 4 ki points, and you can spend extra ki points to increase the spell's level by 1 for every extra ki point spent. These spells are not effected by counterspell, dispel magic, and antimagic.
Also, choose one of the 1st level spells you chose for Revelation of Mind's Past. You can now cast that spell at will.
I have a problem with Psionics as a class unto itself. This is probably because I'm old school where anybody with some luck could get psionics (1e).
Because I do not allow Feats in my games I overlooked them as an option. If Psionics were a Feat, then anybody could pick them up.
I envision them being something along the lines of one Feat building upon another.
Psionics 1 -
Psionics 2 - requires Psionics 1
Psionics 3 - requires Psioncs 2
Of course somebody probably already did all this.
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Tasha's Cauldron of Everything introduced the Telekinetic and Telepathic Feats as well as psionic subclasses Psi Knight (Fighter), Soulknife (Rogue), and Abberant Mind (Sorcerer).
Canto alla vita
alla sua bellezza
ad ogni sua ferita
ogni sua carezza!
I sing to life and to its tragic beauty
To pain and to strife, but all that dances through me
The rise and the fall, I've lived through it all!
I don't use Psionics as they are done in 5e... I use Matt Coleville's gemstone dragon Psionics from Strongholds and Followers. I created a custom feat, based on the abilities of his Gemstone Dragonborn, that I opened up to all PCs after they went to the Astral Plane and encountered psionic attacks themselves. This allows anyone to do a limited version of the abilities the gemstone dragons can do (they can't do the big stuff, but they can do the smaller stuff).
So, I agree, I like it being a feat...but because I don't like how 5e does "psionics," I don't use the 5e system.
WOTC lies. We know that WOTC lies. WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. We know that WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. And still they lie.
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The problem you say you have with psionics as a class doesn’t really make sense to me. You can say the same thing about magic. With luck, anybody could have magical ability! Honing that ability into something mechanically relevant is represented by taking levels in Wizard (or whatever).
I don’t mind the idea of psionic feats, the same way we gave Magic Initiate (and we do have those, as Ophidimancer brought up). But psionics should be a power just as developed as (both in terms of in-character time and training and out-of-character design resources) but mechanically distinct from the magic system, or else it’s either nothing of substance or it’s just magic, neither of which is meaningful or interesting.
Saga is almost excruciatingly correct. In a rigid class-based system like D&D, things that affect your adventuring capabilities typically take the form of class levels. Sure, recently D&D has been opening that up some and coming up with a bunch of variations on things you add to a sheet outside of class progression to represent Special Stuff (Supernatural/Dark Gifts), but for the most part the game expects that if you have a random superpower, you took class levels to get it.
Treating psychic abilities as "magic, just more purple" is pointless - at that point you are actually factually wasting your time, as well as pissing off literally everyone who enjoys psychic abilities as a character trope/archetype. Psychic abilities/psionics deserves its own mechanical framework, independent of the spell system. A telekinetic badass should be meaningfully, mechanically different than an Alteration wizard. As it stands we're all kinda stuck with the worst of all worlds - generally poorly designed subclasses that lean on the spellcasting system except with weird, janky prerequisites that make them strictly worse than just being spellcasters, feats that are difficult to justify taking for most characters because the system in general is so hostile to the idea of psychic abilities that someone spontaneously developing a psychic knack is just weird, and no overarching design principles or mechanical structure for psychic abilities at all - but we have Sykik Powerz now, and so anyone who wants to play a psychic character is disallowed to build out a class/subclass of their own and instead shoehorned into one of the terrible subclasses instead.
Anyone who wants to play a character whose power derives entirely from their psychic abilities, as opposed to "Psychic but also sneaky and stabby (Soulknife)" or "Psychic but not really, actually a Jedi ('Psi' Warrior)", is told to play an Aberrant Mind sorcerer. Doesn't matter if their character concept had absolutely nothing to do with the Outer Planes, aberrations, evil slime or tentacles - now they're a tentacle slime monster PC whether they wanted top be or not, and their "psychic powers" are just "take spells that sortakinna mimic psychic abilities, but be strictly worse as a spellcaster than a regular sorcerer because you're not allowed to pick up other spells every sorcerer should have cuz you're 'psychic'."
It's an absolute travesty, and an actively terrible way to do the whole Psionics thing...but it's where we're at now.
So yeah. If you want to homebrew psychic powers as a series of progressive feats people can't take anyways because your game disallows feats? Do it up. I'd be curious to see what you come up with. Can't be any worse than what Wizards came up with.
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I went and took another looks at Aberrant Mind and I think the origins are a bit more flexible than that, even inside the constraints of the suggested ones:
Aberrant Origins
#2, #5, and #6 seem like fairly standard fantasy psychics with mystical, whimsical, and dark angles, respectively. Also the Jedi are psions, so .....?
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Ok so this is just my opinion, but I don't think psionics needs a robust mechanical system in D&D. Weird mind powers in a fantasy setting seems like an odd quirk or a surprising trick that some characters can pull out of their pocket as a gotcha sometimes, not something that needs the narrative emphasis or focus as much as magic. As such, I'm satisfied with what Tasha's gave us.
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Seconded. Psionics always felt weird and bolted-on, the only reason they were even added was because psychic stuff was all the rage in science fiction in the 80s.
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
That may be true of some settings, but in Dark Sun or Eberron, psionics is built into the settings as something already has the narrative emphasis and focus of magic. The mechanics of the game should support those stories.
I think this recitation does more to support Yurel's complaint than mitigates. I'd go so far as to say Aberrent mind as written narratively/flavorly is much more constrictive than any other subclass in the game. Aberrant doesn't just mean "different" and veers hard from the connotation of "exceptional", the connotation it conveys is problematically pejorative, conjuring (so to speak) "freakishness" and "madness from beyond" ... aberrant was even used as one of the evil alignments in Palladium's old school system (used as a sort of middling between miscreant and diabolical, though a continuum/spectrum to D&D isn't exactly how that system played out). The origins Wizards offers are sort of loaded given the recent VRGtR conversations.
Sure, Psi Knights (yes, Jedi) and Soul Knives (I say Sith) exemplify psionics (in very limited application) that can be garnered through focused growth and concentrated development, at least they're vague on where the talents come from. But for something a bit more broad raging, you have to be literally "touched" somehow (again, drawing into mental illness tropes I'm surprised made it by the reviewers WOTC evokes in applause solicitations). I mean does every Professor X type really have to go through a Carrie or Firestarter phase? Yes, Aberrant coincides with the notion of 'mutation' which again preloads cultural prejudice metaphors that anyone who reads comic books is familiar with, but why does that have to be Wizard's dominant narrative for mind powers? "Psychic" research of the Peter Venkman school didn't presume outright that preternatural perception or agency in one's physical environment meant something took hold of the subjects mind. Rather, while sure there's a lot of "madness" dreck tethered to psychic powers, there's also the notion that such powers can be achieved through focus study and/or unlocking next steps in evolution.
Hell, Starship Troopers was a broad satire of jingoistic prejudice and even that movie treated psionics with more deft sensitivity than Wizards landing of the broadest "psionic" power base in an aberrant mind. Each of the six RAW options conflate psychic development with far realm or other "from beyond" intervention manifesting as what folks outside the aberrant mind would deem hallucinatory or delusional experience. Personally, sure if your character concept wants to be all Legion and let your Mindfreak flag fly, go for it. But it needn't be that way for the many folks who have some imagination that intense study of the mind or deep meditation can unlock fantastic powers (psychics, like magic, are often metaphors for creativity, and the "mad genius" trope for creatives is just so tired and harmful ... and I say that as someone who yet again scored "Malkavian" on the Vampire personality test, which bugs me for "reasons" beyond me trying to both "be myself" in the test and trying to avoid that "diagnosis", kinda kidding, kinda not).
If I were to write a psychic class, I'd go exclusive class, and probably set itself up as something parallel to the Monk. It would be "weird" in that it's base stat could be, like the feats, based in INT/WIS/CHR (the psychic abilities being either manifestation of focused study, meditation, or will) and would avoid the spell slot conventions in favor of psi points like ki and maybe bring in the die mechanic from the Psi/Soul subclasses. The Monk is basically a physical adept (alas the class design means just a DEX adept, a STR adept would be cool). The Mentalist or Psionicist would be a mental adept, with the features that allow for a range of gentle/harmful telepathy (which would offer a path to mind control and blasting), telekinetics (with environmental/matter manipulation like pyrokinetics as advance class) and some of the more uncanny powers such as prophecy, psychometry, etc.
Coincidentally, did anyone see the Colville video a couple of days ago where he talks firearms and game design principles? It's very bare bones, I imagine, but also illuminating for folks like me who don't spent a ton of time thinking about mechanical design. It does have me thinking while the Psi Knight and Soul Knife are more like what some players may want in a psychic character, the Aberrant mind was a slapdash reskin effort with little consideration of what players think of as "the cool" with psychic powers (which is their motive for playing them). You can say two of out three ain't bad, but that meatloaf stinks when you recognize the bulk of psychic possibilities are put on the "meh to yuck" third, which is basically "weird touched" font of magic than psychic.
FWIW, claiming the Jedi are psions, I dunno. The Jedi and other Force users study the Force which is an energy field permeating reality that can be manipulated with practice ... sort of like the weave (probably why detractors of Star Wars call the franchise Space Wizards, not laser swords and mind powers). Some psychic tropes postulates the psychics access to a "hidden world" but more often locates the its "force" so to speak within the structure of the mind. It's a distinction worth recognizing.
I mean wasn't the Aberrant mind a renaming of a Sorcerer subclass that was more honestly Far Realm tied in UA?
EDIT: to speak to Wysperra's feat progressions, I'm actually surprised we don't in fact see feat trees like you've outlined be made more available. Eschewing ones ASI and other feat opportunities to focus on the path of a psychic has a good ring to it. I've actually toyed with doing something like that for Monk martial arts where a non Monk can get some Ki and get some of Monk features under their belt, so to speak. So given my read of the psychic as a "mental adept" analogous to the Monk's "physical adept" I could see such a tree possibly working even if there was a psychic class.
I'm actually really surprised a psychic monk wasn't introduced instead of the Sorcerer. I mean the Psi Knight gives the Githyanki players a boon to playing out how they're written in lore, the Githzerai,get left contemplating the lost potential....
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If I wanted to make a psychic monk I would make an Astral Self monk (psychomanifestation of an idealized self image much?) and take one of the psychic feats.
Canto alla vita
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ad ogni sua ferita
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I sing to life and to its tragic beauty
To pain and to strife, but all that dances through me
The rise and the fall, I've lived through it all!
I'd disagree? I mean I think "you have draconic ancestry" is fairly narrow a range of origins. With Aberrant Mind you have examples of being exposed to the Far Realm, being implanted by a mind flayer tadpole (BG3 tie in), or you were affected by an aboleth which yes all do leave you some sort of weird tentacle sorcerer, but then you have stuff like "you were touched by the universal subconscious" or "your childhood imaginings were so strong they gave you powers" or "you have a psychic umbilicus to your unborn twin" all of which are pretty generic and open to interpretation. The first two are almost just saying "you're psychic" or "you've been psychic since you were a kid."
Canto alla vita
alla sua bellezza
ad ogni sua ferita
ogni sua carezza!
I sing to life and to its tragic beauty
To pain and to strife, but all that dances through me
The rise and the fall, I've lived through it all!
My attempt at psionics is through a weird monk subclass which overhauls basically the whole thing, yet still keeps those old aspects while making them psychic.
Here it is for those who want to look! https://homebrewery.naturalcrit.com/share/1CWId1ogT_vXfchKQ3vbOwDxz-RWyePg1NU8qvbmzeI46
Here it is in homebrewery format if the link doesn't work:
## Way of The Mind's Focus