And now we're back to the same dismissive scornful bullshit we always wind up at. "Go away." "Play something else." "Leave the table." Every variation of 'you don't deserve a seat here' one can come up with.
Whatever happened to "in D&D you can attempt anything you can imagine", hm?
When you’re upset because you can’t touch the ball with your hands, you don’t insist they need to change the rules of soccer, you go play basketball instead.
With due respect, in that statement, you are essentially saying that the rule that DM's can homebrew somehow breaks the game. This is not soccer. This is not chess. The rules are much more complex and not actually so rigid.
With due respect, those are two separate issues. It is not about individual rules or exceptions, it’s about the conceptual framework the system is built on. D&D is designed around the idea that powers are discreet packaged and defined effects; a DM is free to redefine the effects or fiddle with the packaging of course, but if one class instead simply takes a statement like “you can move things with the power of your mind” and leaves it to the player and DM to determine what that actually means for play on a spur of the moment case by case basis then yes, you are breaking the game, insofar as you’re essentially creating an entire separate set of core rules and systems for certain players. I’m not saying there’s a law of the universe that makes such a thing fundamentally impossible- much like it’s not literally impossible that soccer could be reworked to allow laying hands on the ball- but you’re going to alienate the majority of people who like the system as it is, particularly if this is paradigm shift is only applied to a small segment of the game. No, D&D is not as rigid as those other examples you gave, but within the scope of TTRPGs rather than making comparisons that are tangential at best it is a very rigid system, and that rigidity is a deliberate feature. Introducing a single class that ignores this would massively warp table dynamics, and I sincerely doubt it would be for the better if everyone else is working off defined features while one person is working off the power of their imagination and a few rolls. You’d literally need to build a whole new system from the ground up to make this concept fit, at which point you’re hitting the other side of the Ship of Theseus question: how much can you remove functions and replace them with ones that operate differently before you’ve created a new product altogether. Thus, the recommendations that if one desires this system, they should look into the products that are specifically made to provide it rather than demand an apple tree give them peaches.
So now you seem back to insisting that since there is no finished product to discuss, discussions should never start that could lead to a finished product. Circular.
No, I’m saying that a discussion that involves introducing a class that interacts with the core system in such a fundamentally different way is a non-starter.
And now we're back to the same dismissive scornful bullshit we always wind up at. "Go away." "Play something else." "Leave the table." Every variation of 'you don't deserve a seat here' one can come up with.
Whatever happened to "in D&D you can attempt anything you can imagine", hm?
When you’re upset because you can’t touch the ball with your hands, you don’t insist they need to change the rules of soccer, you go play basketball instead.
With due respect, in that statement, you are essentially saying that the rule that DM's can homebrew somehow breaks the game. This is not soccer. This is not chess. The rules are much more complex and not actually so rigid.
The rules in 5e are like a sponge; squishy, twistable and they can change their relative texture due to the environment they exist in.
That having been said they will never be a cybertruck because that is simply beyond the parameters of the reality that they exist in.
Hence why one of my ongoing refrains when people complain about how the rules are what they are I direct them to other systems that are more in line with what they have expressed an interest in; Aeon Trinity has both Cyberpunk and Psionics as parts of it's core aesthetics so I truly believed that giving this to her as a suggestion was in her best interest.
Why, exactly? Where in the rules does it say that? So... the laser weapons and antimatter rifle in the DMG are really magical? Where, exactly, does it say this?
You are treating your own preferences and tolerances as some sort of mechanical limiters.
The point is not whether not they are magical, the point is that they do not fundamentally change how someone makes a weapon attack or receives damage from that attack. When you hit the BBEG with one, you don’t then say “because I hit them in the chest, they’re now going to die in several days because I tore up and cauterized their intestines”. They’re hit, they take the appropriate damage as with any weapon, and the game moves on.
And now we're back to the same dismissive scornful bullshit we always wind up at. "Go away." "Play something else." "Leave the table." Every variation of 'you don't deserve a seat here' one can come up with.
Whatever happened to "in D&D you can attempt anything you can imagine", hm?
When you’re upset because you can’t touch the ball with your hands, you don’t insist they need to change the rules of soccer, you go play basketball instead.
With due respect, in that statement, you are essentially saying that the rule that DM's can homebrew somehow breaks the game. This is not soccer. This is not chess. The rules are much more complex and not actually so rigid.
The rules in 5e are like a sponge; squishy, twistable and they can change their relative texture due to the environment they exist in.
That having been said they will never be a cybertruck because that is simply beyond the parameters of the reality that they exist in.
Hence why one of my ongoing refrains when people complain about how the rules are what they are I direct them to other systems that are more in line with what they have expressed an interest in; Aeon Trinity has both Cyberpunk and Psionics as parts of it's core aesthetics so I truly believed that giving this to her as a suggestion was in her best interest.
Why, exactly? Where in the rules does it say that? So... the laser weapons and antimatter rifle in the DMG are really magical? Where, exactly, does it say this?
You are treating your own preferences and tolerances as some sort of mechanical limiters.
The issue is that the fundamental underlying mechanics of D&D don't work the way that Yurei and others have inferred they want them to and there are other, better systems for this.
Out of curiousity, have you played other Pen and paper RPGs? Ones that didn't utilize the D20 system?
And now we're back to the same dismissive scornful bullshit we always wind up at. "Go away." "Play something else." "Leave the table." Every variation of 'you don't deserve a seat here' one can come up with.
Whatever happened to "in D&D you can attempt anything you can imagine", hm?
When you’re upset because you can’t touch the ball with your hands, you don’t insist they need to change the rules of soccer, you go play basketball instead.
With due respect, in that statement, you are essentially saying that the rule that DM's can homebrew somehow breaks the game. This is not soccer. This is not chess. The rules are much more complex and not actually so rigid.
With due respect, those are two separate issues. It is not about individual rules or exceptions, it’s about the conceptual framework the system is built on. D&D is designed around the idea that powers are discreet packaged and defined effects; a DM is free to redefine the effects or fiddle with the packaging of course, but if one class instead simply takes a statement like “you can move things with the power of your mind” and leaves it to the player and DM to determine what that actually means for play on a spur of the moment case by case basis then yes, you are breaking the game, insofar as you’re essentially creating an entire separate set of core rules and systems for certain players. I’m not saying there’s a law of the universe that makes such a thing fundamentally impossible- much like it’s not literally impossible that soccer could be reworked to allow laying hands on the ball- but you’re going to alienate the majority of people who like the system as it is, particularly if this is paradigm shift is only applied to a small segment of the game. No, D&D is not as rigid as those other examples you gave, but within the scope of TTRPGs rather than making comparisons that are tangential at best it is a very rigid system, and that rigidity is a deliberate feature. Introducing a single class that ignores this would massively warp table dynamics, and I sincerely doubt it would be for the better if everyone else is working off defined features while one person is working off the power of their imagination and a few rolls. You’d literally need to build a whole new system from the ground up to make this concept fit, at which point you’re hitting the other side of the Ship of Theseus question: how much can you remove functions and replace them with ones that operate differently before you’ve created a new product altogether. Thus, the recommendations that if one desires this system, they should look into the products that are specifically made to provide it rather than demand an apple tree give them peaches.
So now you seem back to insisting that since there is no finished product to discuss, discussions should never start that could lead to a finished product. Circular.
Who said the discussion should never start? Clearly, the discussion started forty-nine pages ago. Those on my side have given you multiple reasons why what you want can't be done. Yet, you insist that it can. The only place to go from here is to have you prove us wrong. The only way to do that is for you to build the damned class already.
I would argue that if he could cite a framework using the game's mechanics that would be a good start for this; something that could work as a proof of concept as opposed to just arguing that we're just closed minded.
I would argue that if he could cite a framework using the game's mechanics that would be a good start for this; something that could work as a proof of concept as opposed to just arguing that we're just closed minded.
The player says 'My character is using this ability,' which names an ability their character has, and the effects of that ability are adjudicated by the DM, possibly (but not always, depending on the ability) involving a die roll on the part of the player, sometimes on the part of the DM, sometimes even on both their parts.
This "But it has to be magical" is simply not true, or else no one could so much as bap anyone or anything with a stick unless the stick was magical. It would not be possible to burn anyone with a non-magical torch.
There are spells that magically do the equivalent of bapping someone with a stick or burning them with fire. Such spells neither break non-magical methods, nor are mundane methods broken by the existence of such spells.
Everything else is just a question of scale, to be balanced. What limits on how often someone can be bapped or otherwise effected, are details to be worked out. Your objections are aesthetic ones, not limits to what mechanics work within the system.
Your bolded statement is saying you do not like the way they want to play, so they should have to play something else, despite not playing at any table you are playing at. That is clearly gatekeeping.
They can play whatever they want and so can you. That is why homebrew exists.
Out of curiousity, have you played other Pen and paper RPGs? Ones that didn't utilize the D20 system?
I have played rather a lot of other PnPRPGs. Non-D20 games I have played include GURPS (3d6 based), Middle Earth Roleplaying, Rolemaster, Runequest, Call of Cthulhu (all percentile based), Champions (many d6 based), as well as rather a lot of others. I don't even remember what dice were used for Ace of Aces or Aftermath or Twilight 2000 or Cyberpunk or Shadowrun or any of the White Wolf games... Cannot remember what dice were used for Tunnels and Trolls or for Bunnies and Burrows. I think The Fantasy Trip was 2d6 based, but I would not swear to that. Cannot remember what dice for Paranoia!.... Top Secret was percentile, as I recall.
Never have actually played any of the Palladium RPGs... a regret of mine, actually.
Probably at least a dozen more I am forgetting, but also other d20 games (including all versions of D&D/AD&D right from the White Box on).
Out of curiousity, have you played other Pen and paper RPGs? Ones that didn't utilize the D20 system?
I have played rather a lot of other PnPRPGs. Non-D20 games I have played include GURPS (3d6 based), Middle Earth Roleplaying, Rolemaster, Runequest, Call of Cthulhu (all percentile based), Champions (many d6 based), as well as rather a lot of others. I don't even remember what dice were used for Ace of Aces or Aftermath or Twilight 2000 or Cyberpunk or Shadowrun or any of the White Wolf games... Cannot remember what dice were used for Tunnels and Trolls or for Bunnies and Burrows. I think The Fantasy Trip was 2d6 based, but I would not swear to that. Cannot remember what dice for Paranoia!.... Top Secret was percentile, as I recall.
Never have actually played any of the Palladium RPGs... a regret of mine, actually.
Probably at least a dozen more I am forgetting, but also other d20 games (including all versions of D&D/AD&D right from the White Box on).
Thank you for posting this.
Now, with that having been said: are you sure that one of the other systems that you listed that moved away from the D&D model of dice mechanics wouldn't make for a better fit for a player who wants to play around with psionics?
Your bolded statement is saying you do not like the way they want to play, so they should have to play something else, despite not playing at any table you are playing at. That is clearly gatekeeping.
They can play whatever they want and so can you. That is why homebrew exists.
The relevance of unicorns in this discussion is that they are magic resistant. That is only relevant if they are enemies of the party. No moved goalposts.
Since you acknowledge one (as a DM) can homebrew anything one might wish then presumably no one has to go play something else. "Play something better suited to your goals" could well be 5e as it currently stands, plus a Psion class, even if said class does not fit with your personal sense of aesthetics.
The relevance of unicorns in this discussion is that they are magic resistant. That is only relevant if they are enemies of the party.
Well duh, they're monsters. In the Monster Manual. Of course they can be enemies of the party, just like literally everything else in that book can be. And again, the point is that Unicorns aren't obscure, they're in fact quite well-known both in and outside of a gaming context.
Since you acknowledge one (as a DM) can homebrew anything one might wish then presumably no one has to go play something else. "Play something better suited to your goals" could well be 5e as it currently stands, plus a Psion class, even if said class does not fit with your personal sense of aesthetics.
Sure, go nuts, whichever you prefer. As long as my printed books are spared from your bad ideas.
The reality of what is possible in D&D is usefully revealed by the UA process, which I know some people in this thread participated in. Look at the ideas they tried to introduce that were popular, and the ones that went down in flames. Now, take your class concept, whatever it is, and imagine it being injected into the UA process. How do you think it would fare?
If you don't think it would survive that process... it's really not in scope for a core D&D product. Worldbook is vaguely possible, bearing in mind that Wizards really isn't providing ongoing support for any of their non-FR settings; 3PP is more likely.
The people arguing with you disagree sometimes. This puts no obligation on anyone designing a psi class; they certainly don't need me and Kotath's approval.
Sure but like... if even the people who want it can't agree on even a general implementation (or any implementation) then how do you expect to convince anyone who doesn't?
I don't expect to convince you.
The question asked wasn't anywhere close to a general implementation. It was a broad principle, specifically:
Okay, so let's be general then. Do you agree that if psionic powers were to lack the drawback of needing VSM components, they would need to compensate for that lack in some way? See, no specifics, just a very general question.
It's certainly a principle one could use as a basis designing a psi system. I declined to agree that it was necessary.
No.
Or at least, not as you keep arguing. Psi powers should be balanced within their entire context, and that could include them being stronger than similar non-psi powers, while also not having the components.
Because it's not necessary. It's too short-sighted. It places a lack of a specific mechanism as important, rather than the in-game effects of that mechanism being one of the things one can tinker with to balance things out. Similar effects could theoretically be achieved through different mechanisms that better fit the class fantasy. But, as relatively minor balancing factors, they're not the place to start in design.
You keep asserting that, but it really didn't. There are lots of non-spellslot power frameworks, two of which are at the core of their class. But we've gone round on that one repeatedly already.
In first-party, there's either spell slots, pact slots (which are a form of spell slot), or things that aren't spellcasting and balanced down accordingly. That's it.
Are they balanced down? Many of them are not strong, but they're subclass powers, and one of the design principles of 5e appears to be class > subclass. (I don't necessarily agree with the principle, but it's defensible.)
Both the Artificer and Warlock have substantial power systems. Warlock has a weird casting system, with spells up to 9th, so we'll look at the artificer as it's simpler to analyze in comparison to other classes.
As a half caster, it cannot rely on spells to maintain competitiveness with other classes, especially at high levels. It has no particularly impressive martial capabilities. That leaves subclass features and class powers. The subclass features, while better than average, aren't out of line with the general world. They're more prominent, but that's because Artificer is a class like Monk, where the subclass gives you Your Thing.
So a lot of its competitiveness is coming from class features. And the meat of those features are the infusions. Attuning extra items is strong, don't get me wrong, but where do you get the right extra items to attune? Infusions.
(I don't agree with it about Warlocks, either.)
So no, I don't agree with the assertion that non-spell power systems are "balanced down accordingly". I certainly don't agree with the idea that they must be, even if they are.
Never mind. Whatever. I'll never be okay with "you don't deserve to play so shut up and leave", that will never be the answer, but there's nothing I can do to get you people to stop saying it.
So fine. Ban psi at your tables, like you already do. Campaign to ban psi from the books. Whatever floats your boats.
Enjoy.
No one is telling you whether or not you deserve to play the game, just that your ask as you have presented it is not a feasible feature to integrate into a hard RPG system such as D&D, and that there are alternative softer systems that could let you scratch this roleplay itch.
Yurei's ask is absolutely feasible to implement into D&D. That TK power wouldn't even be hard.
Never mind. Whatever. I'll never be okay with "you don't deserve to play so shut up and leave", that will never be the answer, but there's nothing I can do to get you people to stop saying it.
So fine. Ban psi at your tables, like you already do. Campaign to ban psi from the books. Whatever floats your boats.
Enjoy.
No one is telling you whether or not you deserve to play the game, just that your ask as you have presented it is not a feasible feature to integrate into a hard RPG system such as D&D, and that there are alternative softer systems that could let you scratch this roleplay itch.
Yurei's ask is absolutely feasible to implement into D&D. That TK power wouldn't even be hard.
Having TK is quite feasible; that's why there's three different spells for it, several class features that interact with it or grant it, and a feat for it. Making description-based TK actions the backbone of your combat process is not, for many of the same reasons that "called shots" in weapon combat are not mechanically viable. D&D combat is a numbers game that wants everything to fit within certain ranges if it's going to run smoothly. Attempting to ad-lib combat moves on the spot almost always stretches already long combat sessions even further, and trying to adjudicate what's a fair effect on the fly is either going to stretch that process out even further or will skew back and forth between "too easy" and "too hard" as the DM ad-lib how to resolve the effect.
And, in point of fact, the current system does support some of their stated desires. If you want to, to use one of their earlier examples, doing a "TK slam", you can use Bigby's Hand- you either just spin the Clenched Fist option as the lift and slam if you just want damage from the action or you use the Grasping Hand option to seize them and then treat the bonus action damage option as slamming them.
Never mind. Whatever. I'll never be okay with "you don't deserve to play so shut up and leave", that will never be the answer, but there's nothing I can do to get you people to stop saying it.
So fine. Ban psi at your tables, like you already do. Campaign to ban psi from the books. Whatever floats your boats.
Enjoy.
No one is telling you whether or not you deserve to play the game, just that your ask as you have presented it is not a feasible feature to integrate into a hard RPG system such as D&D, and that there are alternative softer systems that could let you scratch this roleplay itch.
Yurei's ask is absolutely feasible to implement into D&D. That TK power wouldn't even be hard.
Yurei was utterly incapable of articulating how this would realistically work within D&D's framework, hence why I kept pointing out other systems that would give her a better expierience.
Christ, even when I tried to propose some sort of compromise that would give enthusiasts something that would function within D&D's rules that i even iterated on (if poorly in my articulation) using psionics from a previous edition.And all they did was snap back to the same complaints, the same talking points we've been going around and around on for some 45 pages.
Similar effects could theoretically be achieved through different mechanisms that better fit the class fantasy. But, as relatively minor balancing factors, they're not the place to start in design.
Are they balanced down? Many of them are not strong, but they're subclass powers, and one of the design principles of 5e appears to be class > subclass. (I don't necessarily agree with the principle, but it's defensible.)
Both the Artificer and Warlock have substantial power systems. Warlock has a weird casting system, with spells up to 9th, so we'll look at the artificer as it's simpler to analyze in comparison to other classes.
As a half caster, it cannot rely on spells to maintain competitiveness with other classes, especially at high levels. It has no particularly impressive martial capabilities. That leaves subclass features and class powers. The subclass features, while better than average, aren't out of line with the general world. They're more prominent, but that's because Artificer is a class like Monk, where the subclass gives you Your Thing.
So a lot of its competitiveness is coming from class features. And the meat of those features are the infusions. Attuning extra items is strong, don't get me wrong, but where do you get the right extra items to attune? Infusions.
You're right that infusions are powerful - but they're also magic / transparent to magic. Antimagic disables them, Detect Magic can reveal them, certain monsters can switch them off etc. The strongest ones are also limited by attunement, and they take up a sizeable chunk of the Artificer's power budget, reducing them to half-casters even on their subclasses that don't get Extra Attack like all the other half-casters do. If your intent is for some or all of those limitations to apply to psionics, I'm happy to talk about it.
Turning your damage spells to Psychic damage is kind of cool and removing Verbal and Somatic components from some spells is nice too. Not too bad for a Psionic Warlock. Still want a pure Psion, but this gives me hope for the other Psionic subclasses to be even better than they currently are.
Similar effects could theoretically be achieved through different mechanisms that better fit the class fantasy. But, as relatively minor balancing factors, they're not the place to start in design.
Where would you start then?
This is easy to answer, since I wrote it yesterday.
First: what is the class fantasy?
Next, make some decisions about the big questions, such as:
What does their resource cycle look like?
What should their power acquisition be like?
What should be base class and what should be subclass?
Are the subclasses power-based or activity-based?
Then develop, test, iterate, test, possibly back off and try something else, etc. Your supposedly critical questions will probably be decided by chrome decisions, and the mechanics may be adjusted slightly to balance them out, or to achieve similar goals in different ways.
Are they balanced down? Many of them are not strong, but they're subclass powers, and one of the design principles of 5e appears to be class > subclass. (I don't necessarily agree with the principle, but it's defensible.)
Both the Artificer and Warlock have substantial power systems. Warlock has a weird casting system, with spells up to 9th, so we'll look at the artificer as it's simpler to analyze in comparison to other classes.
As a half caster, it cannot rely on spells to maintain competitiveness with other classes, especially at high levels. It has no particularly impressive martial capabilities. That leaves subclass features and class powers. The subclass features, while better than average, aren't out of line with the general world. They're more prominent, but that's because Artificer is a class like Monk, where the subclass gives you Your Thing.
So a lot of its competitiveness is coming from class features. And the meat of those features are the infusions. Attuning extra items is strong, don't get me wrong, but where do you get the right extra items to attune? Infusions.
You're right that infusions are powerful - but they're also magic / transparent to magic. [...]
What's that got to do with anything?
You asserted that all power frameworks were either spell slots, or
things that aren't spellcasting and balanced down accordingly. That's it.
I dispute your claim with an example and you just try to change the subject. Yes, they're magical. They're still not spellcasting, and they're not balanced down.
No one is telling you whether or not you deserve to play the game, just that your ask as you have presented it is not a feasible feature to integrate into a hard RPG system such as D&D, and that there are alternative softer systems that could let you scratch this roleplay itch.
Yurei's ask is absolutely feasible to implement into D&D. That TK power wouldn't even be hard.
So prove it is feasible. Build the class.
No.
I'm not going to go to all the effort to build a class, even an untested one, for somebody who doesn't even want it, to try to score points in a forum argument. If Yurei or Lia_black were developing their ideas, I might pitch in some thoughts, but that's completely different.
Since it's not hard, I'll explain why the TK power isn't some rules nightmare that cannot be done in the framework of D&D:
It's object interaction and stat checks. Just at a distance.
If you can adjudicate Bobnar the Barbarian doing it in person, you can adjudicate Yurei doing it with telekinesis.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
No, I’m saying that a discussion that involves introducing a class that interacts with the core system in such a fundamentally different way is a non-starter.
The point is not whether not they are magical, the point is that they do not fundamentally change how someone makes a weapon attack or receives damage from that attack. When you hit the BBEG with one, you don’t then say “because I hit them in the chest, they’re now going to die in several days because I tore up and cauterized their intestines”. They’re hit, they take the appropriate damage as with any weapon, and the game moves on.
The issue is that the fundamental underlying mechanics of D&D don't work the way that Yurei and others have inferred they want them to and there are other, better systems for this.
Out of curiousity, have you played other Pen and paper RPGs? Ones that didn't utilize the D20 system?
I would argue that if he could cite a framework using the game's mechanics that would be a good start for this; something that could work as a proof of concept as opposed to just arguing that we're just closed minded.
The player says 'My character is using this ability,' which names an ability their character has, and the effects of that ability are adjudicated by the DM, possibly (but not always, depending on the ability) involving a die roll on the part of the player, sometimes on the part of the DM, sometimes even on both their parts.
This "But it has to be magical" is simply not true, or else no one could so much as bap anyone or anything with a stick unless the stick was magical. It would not be possible to burn anyone with a non-magical torch.
There are spells that magically do the equivalent of bapping someone with a stick or burning them with fire. Such spells neither break non-magical methods, nor are mundane methods broken by the existence of such spells.
Everything else is just a question of scale, to be balanced. What limits on how often someone can be bapped or otherwise effected, are details to be worked out. Your objections are aesthetic ones, not limits to what mechanics work within the system.
The goalpost you're attempting to move was "obscure" - not how "serious" (whatever that even means) they are.
They can play whatever they want and so can you. That is why homebrew exists.
I have played rather a lot of other PnPRPGs. Non-D20 games I have played include GURPS (3d6 based), Middle Earth Roleplaying, Rolemaster, Runequest, Call of Cthulhu (all percentile based), Champions (many d6 based), as well as rather a lot of others. I don't even remember what dice were used for Ace of Aces or Aftermath or Twilight 2000 or Cyberpunk or Shadowrun or any of the White Wolf games... Cannot remember what dice were used for Tunnels and Trolls or for Bunnies and Burrows. I think The Fantasy Trip was 2d6 based, but I would not swear to that. Cannot remember what dice for Paranoia!.... Top Secret was percentile, as I recall.
Never have actually played any of the Palladium RPGs... a regret of mine, actually.
Probably at least a dozen more I am forgetting, but also other d20 games (including all versions of D&D/AD&D right from the White Box on).
Thank you for posting this.
Now, with that having been said: are you sure that one of the other systems that you listed that moved away from the D&D model of dice mechanics wouldn't make for a better fit for a player who wants to play around with psionics?
The relevance of unicorns in this discussion is that they are magic resistant. That is only relevant if they are enemies of the party. No moved goalposts.
Since you acknowledge one (as a DM) can homebrew anything one might wish then presumably no one has to go play something else. "Play something better suited to your goals" could well be 5e as it currently stands, plus a Psion class, even if said class does not fit with your personal sense of aesthetics.
Well duh, they're monsters. In the Monster Manual. Of course they can be enemies of the party, just like literally everything else in that book can be.
And again, the point is that Unicorns aren't obscure, they're in fact quite well-known both in and outside of a gaming context.
Sure, go nuts, whichever you prefer. As long as my printed books are spared from your bad ideas.
The reality of what is possible in D&D is usefully revealed by the UA process, which I know some people in this thread participated in. Look at the ideas they tried to introduce that were popular, and the ones that went down in flames. Now, take your class concept, whatever it is, and imagine it being injected into the UA process. How do you think it would fare?
If you don't think it would survive that process... it's really not in scope for a core D&D product. Worldbook is vaguely possible, bearing in mind that Wizards really isn't providing ongoing support for any of their non-FR settings; 3PP is more likely.
I don't expect to convince you.
The question asked wasn't anywhere close to a general implementation. It was a broad principle, specifically:
It's certainly a principle one could use as a basis designing a psi system. I declined to agree that it was necessary.
Are they balanced down? Many of them are not strong, but they're subclass powers, and one of the design principles of 5e appears to be class > subclass. (I don't necessarily agree with the principle, but it's defensible.)
Both the Artificer and Warlock have substantial power systems. Warlock has a weird casting system, with spells up to 9th, so we'll look at the artificer as it's simpler to analyze in comparison to other classes.
As a half caster, it cannot rely on spells to maintain competitiveness with other classes, especially at high levels. It has no particularly impressive martial capabilities. That leaves subclass features and class powers. The subclass features, while better than average, aren't out of line with the general world. They're more prominent, but that's because Artificer is a class like Monk, where the subclass gives you Your Thing.
So a lot of its competitiveness is coming from class features. And the meat of those features are the infusions. Attuning extra items is strong, don't get me wrong, but where do you get the right extra items to attune? Infusions.
(I don't agree with it about Warlocks, either.)
So no, I don't agree with the assertion that non-spell power systems are "balanced down accordingly". I certainly don't agree with the idea that they must be, even if they are.
Yurei's ask is absolutely feasible to implement into D&D. That TK power wouldn't even be hard.
Having TK is quite feasible; that's why there's three different spells for it, several class features that interact with it or grant it, and a feat for it. Making description-based TK actions the backbone of your combat process is not, for many of the same reasons that "called shots" in weapon combat are not mechanically viable. D&D combat is a numbers game that wants everything to fit within certain ranges if it's going to run smoothly. Attempting to ad-lib combat moves on the spot almost always stretches already long combat sessions even further, and trying to adjudicate what's a fair effect on the fly is either going to stretch that process out even further or will skew back and forth between "too easy" and "too hard" as the DM ad-lib how to resolve the effect.
And, in point of fact, the current system does support some of their stated desires. If you want to, to use one of their earlier examples, doing a "TK slam", you can use Bigby's Hand- you either just spin the Clenched Fist option as the lift and slam if you just want damage from the action or you use the Grasping Hand option to seize them and then treat the bonus action damage option as slamming them.
Yurei was utterly incapable of articulating how this would realistically work within D&D's framework, hence why I kept pointing out other systems that would give her a better expierience.
Christ, even when I tried to propose some sort of compromise that would give enthusiasts something that would function within D&D's rules that i even iterated on (if poorly in my articulation) using psionics from a previous edition. And all they did was snap back to the same complaints, the same talking points we've been going around and around on for some 45 pages.
Where would you start then?
You're right that infusions are powerful - but they're also magic / transparent to magic. Antimagic disables them, Detect Magic can reveal them, certain monsters can switch them off etc. The strongest ones are also limited by attunement, and they take up a sizeable chunk of the Artificer's power budget, reducing them to half-casters even on their subclasses that don't get Extra Attack like all the other half-casters do. If your intent is for some or all of those limitations to apply to psionics, I'm happy to talk about it.
GOOLock doesn't sound too bad.
She/Her Player and Dungeon Master
Turning your damage spells to Psychic damage is kind of cool and removing Verbal and Somatic components from some spells is nice too. Not too bad for a Psionic Warlock. Still want a pure Psion, but this gives me hope for the other Psionic subclasses to be even better than they currently are.
She/Her Player and Dungeon Master
This is easy to answer, since I wrote it yesterday.
First: what is the class fantasy?
Next, make some decisions about the big questions, such as:
Then develop, test, iterate, test, possibly back off and try something else, etc. Your supposedly critical questions will probably be decided by chrome decisions, and the mechanics may be adjusted slightly to balance them out, or to achieve similar goals in different ways.
What's that got to do with anything?
You asserted that all power frameworks were either spell slots, or
I dispute your claim with an example and you just try to change the subject. Yes, they're magical. They're still not spellcasting, and they're not balanced down.
No.
I'm not going to go to all the effort to build a class, even an untested one, for somebody who doesn't even want it, to try to score points in a forum argument. If Yurei or Lia_black were developing their ideas, I might pitch in some thoughts, but that's completely different.
Since it's not hard, I'll explain why the TK power isn't some rules nightmare that cannot be done in the framework of D&D:
It's object interaction and stat checks. Just at a distance.
If you can adjudicate Bobnar the Barbarian doing it in person, you can adjudicate Yurei doing it with telekinesis.