This trading generality for power is a terrible idea because no one much cares about flexibility. You’ve got other party members to take care of those roles. If you are playing the specialist, you’ve already decided that that focus is what you want to do.
This trading generality for power is a terrible idea because no one much cares about flexibility.
People should be able to decide to be a specialist and not feel that they've arbitrarily weakened themselves for theme. It just shouldn't be such a large benefit that people feel obligated.
Frankly, for psi, it barely even qualifies as a limitation; the number and variety of spells that can be reasonably treated as psi is large enough that you can create a psi-themed character without any meaningful compromises. If I create a 10th level aberrant mind sorcerer with a spell list of (* indicates a psionic spells feature)
am I really meaningfully worse off than a sorcerer who decided to ignore themes? Sure, there are spells it might be nice to have, but that's an entirely playable and useful character.
This trading generality for power is a terrible idea because no one much cares about flexibility.
People should be able to decide to be a specialist and not feel that they've arbitrarily weakened themselves for theme. It just shouldn't be such a large benefit that people feel obligated.
Frankly, for psi, it barely even qualifies as a limitation; the number and variety of spells that can be reasonably treated as psi is large enough that you can create a psi-themed character without any meaningful compromises. If I create a 10th level aberrant mind sorcerer with a spell list of (* indicates a psionic spells feature)
am I really meaningfully worse off than a sorcerer who decided to ignore themes? Sure, there are spells it might be nice to have, but that's an entirely playable and useful character.
Your claim was "trading generality for power is a terrible idea because no one much cares about flexibility". That statement is, honestly, just straight up false; if people didn't care about flexibility they wouldn't complain about theme builds. The questions are "how much flexibility is worth how much power" and "how much flexibility are you actually sacrificing", and the point of an example is to note that the actual sacrifice for a psi-themed character is not large.
It's worth noting that having versatility/general power is one of the main appeals of playing a wizard; you will certainly have specialities and such, but there is an appeal and an advantage to being able to learn your whole god damn spell list even if you can't have it ready to go on a moments notice.
That having been said, doing so is a long and expensive slog.
Okay, we're talking about two different kinds of flexibility. You are talking about day-to-day flexibility and I'm talking about flexibility in character creation.
You're the one who's arguing that standard casters or highly-rigid subclasses are the only viable path to psychic characters.
If you want them to be equal to spellcasters and get the same support spellcasting does - yes, using the spellcasting system is the only viable option. My "willingness" has nothing to do with that, it's just basic pattern recognition.
It's lot like trying to make a fire mage. You end up with all the interesting fire spells, and then more attack spells than you actually need, because that's all there is. Lots of the generally useful spells are outside your scope. You can either take them and compromise your concept, deliberately make your character weaker, or do unsatisfying rechroming. ("I counter your spell... WITH FIRE! No, no... it doesn't do any damage or anything. It's just a counterspell.") If you could choose to only pick fire powers, and actually get something for it, likely access to better fire spells that only fire mages have, you'd be all over that. But that ain't how it works.
You might find the "rechroming" unsatisfying, but that's a problem with your own mindset. Personally, I'd be fine if my fire mage's Misty Step made them disappear in a flash of brimstone, or their Shield spell is composed of concentrated ash, or their Haste spell caused them to redshift to onlookers. Tasha's explicitly allows us to do this.
It's lot like trying to make a fire mage. You end up with all the interesting fire spells, and then more attack spells than you actually need, because that's all there is. Lots of the generally useful spells are outside your scope. You can either take them and compromise your concept, deliberately make your character weaker, or do unsatisfying rechroming. ("I counter your spell... WITH FIRE! No, no... it doesn't do any damage or anything. It's just a counterspell.") If you could choose to only pick fire powers, and actually get something for it, likely access to better fire spells that only fire mages have, you'd be all over that. But that ain't how it works.
You might find the "rechroming" unsatisfying, but that's a problem with your own mindset. Personally, I'd be fine if my fire mage's Misty Step made them disappear in a flash of brimstone, or their Shield spell is composed of concentrated ash, or their Haste spell caused them to redshift to onlookers. Tasha's explicitly allows us to do this.
I'm wondering PsyrenXY, if you've noticed the same ironic trend with the proponents of Psionics; that most of the problems that they seem to think prevent their psionic class from functioning are down to ones that exist in their minds; they lack the fluidity of interpretation to see that what they want already exists and that if they truly want to unlock psionic classes in the game they need only abandon the rigidity of their thoughts and ascend to a higher state of understanding.
That is to say that the people opposed to psionics are actually closer to the mental state that in game psions would have then those who are so ardently fighting for them.
My first official character for 5e was Calo Stallion, a rock gnome evoker and member of the Zhentarim who had the megalomaniacal dream of the entire sword coast being united under one set of laws, one culture and one Government in order to ensure that the whole region was able to shut down any and all would be calamities before they ever got started. Said gnome's spells were literally a series of devices that he had cobbled together and bombarded his foes with; Flaming Sphere was a bowling ball covered in kherosene, Burning hands was a microwave with the door propped open, Shatter was a boombox playing dub step with way too much base, Fireball would have been something akin to an RPG-7...
most of the problems that they seem to think prevent their psionic class from functioning are down to ones that exist in their minds; they lack the fluidity of interpretation to see that what they want already exists and that if they truly want to unlock psionic classes in the game they need only abandon the rigidity of their thoughts and ascend to a higher state of understanding.
Again "If they just agree with us not to want what we think is good enough for them rather than what they actually want, they will be fine.
How is that philosophy not similarly one that exists in your mind? What makes the ideas that exist in your mind better than those that exist in theirs?
My first official character for 5e was Calo Stallion, a rock gnome evoker and member of the Zhentarim who had the megalomaniacal dream of the entire sword coast being united under one set of laws, one culture and one Government in order to ensure that the whole region was able to shut down any and all would be calamities before they ever got started. Said gnome's spells were literally a series of devices that he had cobbled together and bombarded his foes with; Flaming Sphere was a bowling ball covered in kherosene, Burning hands was a microwave with the door propped open, Shatter was a boombox playing dub step with way too much base, Fireball would have been something akin to an RPG-7...
Flavor is free and it always has been.
That is not free flavor in that if you are in a campaign with microwaves, there are actual flamethrowers and automatic weapons. Kerosene is not going to stick to a bowling ball.
So all you are saying there is that if the DM just runs a free form campaign where anything goes and does a good enough job of it, you do not need these concerns, but in such a campaign, you do not need anything from 5e
My first official character for 5e was Calo Stallion, a rock gnome evoker and member of the Zhentarim who had the megalomaniacal dream of the entire sword coast being united under one set of laws, one culture and one Government in order to ensure that the whole region was able to shut down any and all would be calamities before they ever got started. Said gnome's spells were literally a series of devices that he had cobbled together and bombarded his foes with; Flaming Sphere was a bowling ball covered in kherosene, Burning hands was a microwave with the door propped open, Shatter was a boombox playing dub step with way too much base, Fireball would have been something akin to an RPG-7...
Flavor is free and it always has been.
That is not free flavor in that if you are in a campaign with microwaves, there are actual flamethrowers and automatic weapons. Kerosene is not going to stick to a bowling ball.
So all you are saying there is that if the DM just runs a free form campaign where anything goes and does a good enough job of it, you do not need these concerns, but in such a campaign, you do not need anything from 5e
This was in horde of the dragon queen which I can assure you is not a modern campaign setting. The GM simply chuckled at the absurdity of it and we moved on because at the end of the day everything was still conforming to the mechanics of the actual game.
Again "If they just agree with us not to want what we think is good enough for them rather than what they actually want, they will be fine.
How is that philosophy not similarly one that exists in your mind? What makes the ideas that exist in your mind better than those that exist in theirs?
Again "If they just agree with us not to want what we think is good enough for them rather than what they actually want, they will be fine.
How is that philosophy not similarly one that exists in your mind? What makes the ideas that exist in your mind better than those that exist in theirs?
The difference is that they'd be playing as a psionic class instead of complaining about how they don't have one.'
Hell I've done it with the dirty, dirty Aberant Mind sorcerer where it was equal parts ammusing, flavorful and effective.
“So all you are saying there is that if the DM just runs a free form campaign where anything goes and does a good enough job of it, you do not need these concerns, but in such a campaign, you do not need anything from 5e”
If the DM isn’t willing to adjust the flavor of an existing class to enable you to play the character you want, what makes you think they’ll accept you playing a new class which reflects what you want??
Is this an Adventurer’s League thing where you are trying to compel DMs who are strangers to accept your character?
Again "If they just agree with us not to want what we think is good enough for them rather than what they actually want, they will be fine.
How is that philosophy not similarly one that exists in your mind? What makes the ideas that exist in your mind better than those that exist in theirs?
No one is stopping you from wanting. I want a unicorn to show up at my front door with a winning lottery ticket in its teeth.
(Well, somebody else's unicorn anyway - my HOA would probably frown on me building a stable.)
My first official character for 5e was Calo Stallion, a rock gnome evoker and member of the Zhentarim who had the megalomaniacal dream of the entire sword coast being united under one set of laws, one culture and one Government in order to ensure that the whole region was able to shut down any and all would be calamities before they ever got started. Said gnome's spells were literally a series of devices that he had cobbled together and bombarded his foes with; Flaming Sphere was a bowling ball covered in kherosene, Burning hands was a microwave with the door propped open, Shatter was a boombox playing dub step with way too much base, Fireball would have been something akin to an RPG-7...
Flavor is free and it always has been.
That is not free flavor in that if you are in a campaign with microwaves, there are actual flamethrowers and automatic weapons. Kerosene is not going to stick to a bowling ball.
So all you are saying there is that if the DM just runs a free form campaign where anything goes and does a good enough job of it, you do not need these concerns, but in such a campaign, you do not need anything from 5e
For the record, I wouldn't allow the kind of full-on high-tech flavor in Ashla's example here. But the general idea of "my spells are single-use devices I cobbled together during spell preparation" is a fine one, particularly for an artificer casting their spells through their tinker's tools. I would just bring it down a notch to steampunk/victorian or Archimedean rather than using modern RPGs.
As a Note: part of the appeal for me doing this with Calo was that Rock gnomes are also known as "tinker gnomes" and in various settings their devices are known to have wildly unpredictable side effects (IE an automatic screwdriver that fires screws like a rail gun). I simply transposed this trait unto spellcasting for narrative flair.
The reality of class-based RPGs is that you're not going to get exactly what you want unless you want exactly what the game offers, so you have to accept some reflavoring. That said, the core problem with demands for psionic classes with new mechanics isn't that existing classes give them exactly what they want, it's that creating exactly what they want is, from a game design perspective, a bad idea.
D&D is already a sprawling mass of excess complexity. It doesn't need more complexity, it needs less. That means, if at all possible, fit new concepts into existing mechanics, and if you absolutely have to use new mechanics, keep them short (and even with short mechanics, expect them to be undersupported in the future, look at warlock and artificer). The warlock is all of 6 pages long, some of which is fluff, and that's long for a core class, the average is 4 pages. So, consider that a hard cap -- say, 2 pages for the fluff, basic level-up tables, and so on, 2 pages for the new power mechanics, 2 pages for 3 subclasses. If you can do that without referencing existing spells, more power to you, but I have my doubts.
D&D power interactions and countering is already sufficiently overly complicated that it makes tier 3/4 games unplayable unless everyone agrees to ignore most of it. Adding a new system that doesn't interact with existing counters will start making even tier 2 unplayable. So, just live with psi powers being countered by defenses against magic, and magic being countered by psi defenses.
The reality of class-based RPGs is that you're not going to get exactly what you want unless you want exactly what the game offers, so you have to accept some reflavoring. That said, the core problem with demands for psionic classes with new mechanics isn't that existing classes give them exactly what they want, it's that creating exactly what they want is, from a game design perspective, a bad idea.
D&D is already a sprawling mass of excess complexity. It doesn't need more complexity, it needs less. That means, if at all possible, fit new concepts into existing mechanics, and if you absolutely have to use new mechanics, keep them short (and even with short mechanics, expect them to be undersupported in the future, look at warlock and artificer). The warlock is all of 6 pages long, some of which is fluff, and that's long for a core class, the average is 4 pages. So, consider that a hard cap -- say, 2 pages for the fluff, basic level-up tables, and so on, 2 pages for the new power mechanics, 2 pages for 3 subclasses. If you can do that without referencing existing spells, more power to you, but I have my doubts.
D&D power interactions and countering is already sufficiently overly complicated that it makes tier 3/4 games unplayable unless everyone agrees to ignore most of it. Adding a new system that doesn't interact with existing counters will start making even tier 2 unplayable. So, just live with psi powers being countered by defenses against magic, and magic being countered by psi defenses.
To expand on this: If you were to create a whole new class with whole new mechanics fully divorced from those that already exist then you are going to create a serious problem not only by virtue of adding another system to the game (because this is what Psionic enthusiasts want) but also creating intense balance issues since none of the pre-existing content was built with these possibilites in mind.
Like even accounting for how the powers of a psion would be somehow limited in scope (which borders on ridiculous as a term when we are talking about a character who has a power like telekinesis) the way people have described wanting to have it (no VSM) means that it lacks counterplay options which is a hurdle that every other class needs to deal with; the barbarian needs to be persistently hitting or getting hit, the fighter needs weapons, the mage needs VSM, The ranger relies on his bow... while the Psion merely needs to be conscious (and sometimes that doesn't even need to be a thing given that dream walkers are a thing) to be able to do whatever the hell he wants and by virtue of him not being magic from a mechanical standpoint completely bypasses the defenses of multiple creatures that rely on this to present an actual challenge to players.
This is why in the decade that 5e has been a thing we as players have received precisely 1 new class in the form of the artificer and even it was built largely using the established mechanics of 5e as opposed to something cut from whole cloth.
edit: I swear to christ I am not trying to get top of the page with every post.
The reality of class-based RPGs is that you're not going to get exactly what you want unless you want exactly what the game offers, so you have to accept some reflavoring. That said, the core problem with demands for psionic classes with new mechanics isn't that existing classes give them exactly what they want, it's that creating exactly what they want is, from a game design perspective, a bad idea.
D&D is already a sprawling mass of excess complexity. It doesn't need more complexity, it needs less. That means, if at all possible, fit new concepts into existing mechanics, and if you absolutely have to use new mechanics, keep them short (and even with short mechanics, expect them to be undersupported in the future, look at warlock and artificer). The warlock is all of 6 pages long, some of which is fluff, and that's long for a core class, the average is 4 pages. So, consider that a hard cap -- say, 2 pages for the fluff, basic level-up tables, and so on, 2 pages for the new power mechanics, 2 pages for 3 subclasses. If you can do that without referencing existing spells, more power to you, but I have my doubts.
D&D power interactions and countering is already sufficiently overly complicated that it makes tier 3/4 games unplayable unless everyone agrees to ignore most of it. Adding a new system that doesn't interact with existing counters will start making even tier 2 unplayable. So, just live with psi powers being countered by defenses against magic, and magic being countered by psi defenses.
To expand on this: If you were to create a whole new class with whole new mechanics fully divorced from those that already exist then you are going to create a serious problem not only by virtue of adding another system to the game (because this is what Psionic enthusiasts want) but also creating intense balance issues since none of the pre-existing content was built with these possibilites in mind.
Like even accounting for how the powers of a psion would be somehow limited in scope (which borders on ridiculous as a term when we are talking about a character who has a power like telekinesis) the way people have described wanting to have it (no VSM) means that it lacks counterplay options which is a hurdle that every other class needs to deal with; the barbarian needs to be persistently hitting or getting hit, the fighter needs weapons, the mage needs VSM, The ranger relies on his bow... while the Psion merely needs to be conscious (and sometimes that doesn't even need to be a thing given that dream walkers are a thing) to be able to do whatever the hell he wants and by virtue of him not being magic from a mechanical standpoint completely bypasses the defenses of multiple creatures that rely on this to present an actual challenge to players.
This is why in the decade that 5e has been a thing we as players have received precisely 1 new class in the form of the artificer and even it was built largely using the established mechanics of 5e as opposed to something cut from whole cloth.
edit: I swear to christ I am not trying to get top of the page with every post.
Also the artificer was an established class in 3rd edition, or at least 3.5, and is a fairly critical class to one of the established campaign settings. Although funny enough, that same campaign setting is also the one where psionics is the most established.
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This trading generality for power is a terrible idea because no one much cares about flexibility. You’ve got other party members to take care of those roles. If you are playing the specialist, you’ve already decided that that focus is what you want to do.
That is sort of like saying "It will work as long as we change the criteria until they work."
But then it is no longer the desired rose that you are selling, but something else by another name.
People should be able to decide to be a specialist and not feel that they've arbitrarily weakened themselves for theme. It just shouldn't be such a large benefit that people feel obligated.
Frankly, for psi, it barely even qualifies as a limitation; the number and variety of spells that can be reasonably treated as psi is large enough that you can create a psi-themed character without any meaningful compromises. If I create a 10th level aberrant mind sorcerer with a spell list of (* indicates a psionic spells feature)
am I really meaningfully worse off than a sorcerer who decided to ignore themes? Sure, there are spells it might be nice to have, but that's an entirely playable and useful character.
It seems that you’ve completely missed my point.
Your claim was "trading generality for power is a terrible idea because no one much cares about flexibility". That statement is, honestly, just straight up false; if people didn't care about flexibility they wouldn't complain about theme builds. The questions are "how much flexibility is worth how much power" and "how much flexibility are you actually sacrificing", and the point of an example is to note that the actual sacrifice for a psi-themed character is not large.
It's worth noting that having versatility/general power is one of the main appeals of playing a wizard; you will certainly have specialities and such, but there is an appeal and an advantage to being able to learn your whole god damn spell list even if you can't have it ready to go on a moments notice.
That having been said, doing so is a long and expensive slog.
Okay, we're talking about two different kinds of flexibility. You are talking about day-to-day flexibility and I'm talking about flexibility in character creation.
If you want them to be equal to spellcasters and get the same support spellcasting does - yes, using the spellcasting system is the only viable option. My "willingness" has nothing to do with that, it's just basic pattern recognition.
You might find the "rechroming" unsatisfying, but that's a problem with your own mindset. Personally, I'd be fine if my fire mage's Misty Step made them disappear in a flash of brimstone, or their Shield spell is composed of concentrated ash, or their Haste spell caused them to redshift to onlookers. Tasha's explicitly allows us to do this.
I'm wondering PsyrenXY, if you've noticed the same ironic trend with the proponents of Psionics; that most of the problems that they seem to think prevent their psionic class from functioning are down to ones that exist in their minds; they lack the fluidity of interpretation to see that what they want already exists and that if they truly want to unlock psionic classes in the game they need only abandon the rigidity of their thoughts and ascend to a higher state of understanding.
That is to say that the people opposed to psionics are actually closer to the mental state that in game psions would have then those who are so ardently fighting for them.
Also re: "rechroming"
My first official character for 5e was Calo Stallion, a rock gnome evoker and member of the Zhentarim who had the megalomaniacal dream of the entire sword coast being united under one set of laws, one culture and one Government in order to ensure that the whole region was able to shut down any and all would be calamities before they ever got started. Said gnome's spells were literally a series of devices that he had cobbled together and bombarded his foes with; Flaming Sphere was a bowling ball covered in kherosene, Burning hands was a microwave with the door propped open, Shatter was a boombox playing dub step with way too much base, Fireball would have been something akin to an RPG-7...
Flavor is free and it always has been.
Again "If they just agree with us not to want what we think is good enough for them rather than what they actually want, they will be fine.
How is that philosophy not similarly one that exists in your mind? What makes the ideas that exist in your mind better than those that exist in theirs?
That is not free flavor in that if you are in a campaign with microwaves, there are actual flamethrowers and automatic weapons. Kerosene is not going to stick to a bowling ball.
So all you are saying there is that if the DM just runs a free form campaign where anything goes and does a good enough job of it, you do not need these concerns, but in such a campaign, you do not need anything from 5e
This was in horde of the dragon queen which I can assure you is not a modern campaign setting. The GM simply chuckled at the absurdity of it and we moved on because at the end of the day everything was still conforming to the mechanics of the actual game.
The difference is that they'd be playing as a psionic class instead of complaining about how they don't have one.'
Hell I've done it with the dirty, dirty Aberant Mind sorcerer where it was equal parts ammusing, flavorful and effective.
“So all you are saying there is that if the DM just runs a free form campaign where anything goes and does a good enough job of it, you do not need these concerns, but in such a campaign, you do not need anything from 5e”
If the DM isn’t willing to adjust the flavor of an existing class to enable you to play the character you want, what makes you think they’ll accept you playing a new class which reflects what you want??
Is this an Adventurer’s League thing where you are trying to compel DMs who are strangers to accept your character?
No one is stopping you from wanting. I want a unicorn to show up at my front door with a winning lottery ticket in its teeth.
(Well, somebody else's unicorn anyway - my HOA would probably frown on me building a stable.)
For the record, I wouldn't allow the kind of full-on high-tech flavor in Ashla's example here. But the general idea of "my spells are single-use devices I cobbled together during spell preparation" is a fine one, particularly for an artificer casting their spells through their tinker's tools. I would just bring it down a notch to steampunk/victorian or Archimedean rather than using modern RPGs.
As a Note: part of the appeal for me doing this with Calo was that Rock gnomes are also known as "tinker gnomes" and in various settings their devices are known to have wildly unpredictable side effects (IE an automatic screwdriver that fires screws like a rail gun). I simply transposed this trait unto spellcasting for narrative flair.
The reality of class-based RPGs is that you're not going to get exactly what you want unless you want exactly what the game offers, so you have to accept some reflavoring. That said, the core problem with demands for psionic classes with new mechanics isn't that existing classes give them exactly what they want, it's that creating exactly what they want is, from a game design perspective, a bad idea.
D&D is already a sprawling mass of excess complexity. It doesn't need more complexity, it needs less. That means, if at all possible, fit new concepts into existing mechanics, and if you absolutely have to use new mechanics, keep them short (and even with short mechanics, expect them to be undersupported in the future, look at warlock and artificer). The warlock is all of 6 pages long, some of which is fluff, and that's long for a core class, the average is 4 pages. So, consider that a hard cap -- say, 2 pages for the fluff, basic level-up tables, and so on, 2 pages for the new power mechanics, 2 pages for 3 subclasses. If you can do that without referencing existing spells, more power to you, but I have my doubts.
D&D power interactions and countering is already sufficiently overly complicated that it makes tier 3/4 games unplayable unless everyone agrees to ignore most of it. Adding a new system that doesn't interact with existing counters will start making even tier 2 unplayable. So, just live with psi powers being countered by defenses against magic, and magic being countered by psi defenses.
To expand on this: If you were to create a whole new class with whole new mechanics fully divorced from those that already exist then you are going to create a serious problem not only by virtue of adding another system to the game (because this is what Psionic enthusiasts want) but also creating intense balance issues since none of the pre-existing content was built with these possibilites in mind.
Like even accounting for how the powers of a psion would be somehow limited in scope (which borders on ridiculous as a term when we are talking about a character who has a power like telekinesis) the way people have described wanting to have it (no VSM) means that it lacks counterplay options which is a hurdle that every other class needs to deal with; the barbarian needs to be persistently hitting or getting hit, the fighter needs weapons, the mage needs VSM, The ranger relies on his bow... while the Psion merely needs to be conscious (and sometimes that doesn't even need to be a thing given that dream walkers are a thing) to be able to do whatever the hell he wants and by virtue of him not being magic from a mechanical standpoint completely bypasses the defenses of multiple creatures that rely on this to present an actual challenge to players.
This is why in the decade that 5e has been a thing we as players have received precisely 1 new class in the form of the artificer and even it was built largely using the established mechanics of 5e as opposed to something cut from whole cloth.
edit: I swear to christ I am not trying to get top of the page with every post.
Also the artificer was an established class in 3rd edition, or at least 3.5, and is a fairly critical class to one of the established campaign settings. Although funny enough, that same campaign setting is also the one where psionics is the most established.