How old editions screwed up is not useful save as a "don't do this" guideline.
Then why in the name of Ilsensine are you trying to repeat their mistakes? Psionics not using / being opaque to Spellcasting is exactly such a "don't do this" guideline.
Because throughout all this I have drilled down to the primary, irreconcilable difference between psychic abilities and Spellcasting.
Psychic abilities have to be intuitive and natural. They need to feel like the character is flexing/making use of a natural extension of themselves, like the ability is intrinsically a part of them. Spellcasting is unacceptably, irreparably bad at this. Spellcasting - a spellcaster using a spell slot to cast a spell - gets one single big fancy concretely defined capital-E Effect, and that's it. The ability is so extrinsic to the character it is in fact sometimes painful. You're not flexibile a natural ability as a spellcaster, you're invoking a pattern that exists outside of yourself. You're not really using magic - you're summoning something else's magic to do a specific thing in a specific way in a specific place, and then the magic leaves.
This is utterly anathema to psychic abilities, and the two ideals cannot be reconciled. This is also why the sorcerer fails utterly - the sorcerer's "innate magic" is no more innate to the damned sorcerer than their pointy hat or the horse they rode in on. Their magic is as utterly separate from them as any other spellcaster's, and it's why they fundamentally fail as a class. If a proposed system cannot solve this? Then it fails as a psychic character/ability system.
Question: Would you consider the Warlock Invocation Mask of Many Faces to be a natural and intuitive type power? I'm just trying to calibrate what mechanically seems intuitive and natural here.
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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!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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Neither does stating that it is.
Question: Would you consider the Warlock Invocation Mask of Many Faces to be a natural and intuitive type power? I'm just trying to calibrate what mechanically seems intuitive and natural here.
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!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.