In the old ADD system Psions could attack a magic user mentally first in every round thus stopping all of their spell casting. No defense at all. i believe it was called psychic attack. Who wouldn't take that psionic skill?
Plus effects like telekinesis could not be stopped except by another psion. Magic did not protect you and could not turn off the power.
Translated to 5e, Mind Blast would be an Int Save, Confusion would be a Wis Save, and Telekinesis would be an opposed Strength Check(like a grapple) and if they last more than 1 round, affected targets get rechecks every round.
In 3.5, spells that cleanse/dispel/remove/negate magic effects also work on psionic effects as they always should have. The only major difference was that Psionic Powers couldn't be countered because there was no psionic version of counterspell.
In 3.5, spells that cleanse/dispel/remove/negate magic effects also work on psionic effects as they always should have. The only major difference was that Psionic Powers couldn't be countered because there was no psionic version of counterspell.
Powers and spells with opposite effects apply normally, with all bonuses, penalties, or changes accruing in the order that they apply. Some powers and spells negate or counter each other. This is a special effect that is noted in a power’s or spell’s description.
That means you could use the 3.5e rules for counterspelling (ready a spell or power that negates or counters the power, including dispel magic or dispel psi) against psionics.
In the old ADD system psions could attack a magic user mentally first in every round thus stopping all of their spell casting. No defense at all. i believe it was called psychic attack. Who wouldn't take that psionic skill?
Plus effects like telekinesis could not be stopped except by another psion. Magic did not protect you and could not turn off the power.
That is not exactly correct. You'd have to get a bit lucky to get psionics in the first place. Then you'd have to get a random roll that gave you the 1(one) attack that affected non-psionic people. Then you have to have enough points to use it. Then hope your target has an Int and Wis total of 16 to 22. Because much higher or lower than that nothing happened. Oh and it only had a range of 60 feet. Dang. That's scary.
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"Sooner or later, your Players are going to smash your railroad into a sandbox."
-Vedexent
"real life is a super high CR."
-OboeLauren
"............anybody got any potatoes? We could drop a potato in each hole an' see which ones get viciously mauled by horrible monsters?"
In 3.5, spells that cleanse/dispel/remove/negate magic effects also work on psionic effects as they always should have. The only major difference was that Psionic Powers couldn't be countered because there was no psionic version of counterspell.
Powers and spells with opposite effects apply normally, with all bonuses, penalties, or changes accruing in the order that they apply. Some powers and spells negate or counter each other. This is a special effect that is noted in a power’s or spell’s description.
That means you could use the 3.5e rules for counterspelling (ready a spell or power that negates or counters the power, including dispel magic or dispel psi) against psionics.
No, you couldn't. You can only remove ongoing effects. You can't prevent the Psionic Power from being manifested.
A psionic power is not a spell, even though it works much like a spell. Important differences between powers and spells include the following:
A psionic power has no verbal, somatic, material, or focus components.
Using a psionic power is a purely mental action, albeit one that requires enough concentration to provoke attacks of opportunity.
A number of powers require the psionicist to expend some experience in addition to psionic power points. If so, this is noted in the power's description. You expend any required XP when you manifest the power. If the manifestation fails for any reason, the XP (and the psionic power points) you spent on the power are still lost.
A psionic power cannot be used as a counterspell, nor is it subject to counterspells.
A counterspell involves recognizing a spell as it is being cast, then quickly altering that same spell so as to create an opposite effect that cancels out the original spell. A psionic power taps the manifester's mental energy in a process unlike any spell. (Many powers have results similar to certain spells, but they achieve those results through different means.)
As noted earlier, most psionic powers are subject to dispelling (unless their descriptions say they are not). When a psionic power can be dispelled (as most of them are), one can effectively counter them with a dispel magic spell (or the dispel psionics power). While psionic powers are not normally subject to counterspells, dispel magic is not really a counterspell. When you use dispel magic as a counterspell, what you're really doing is quickly casting a targeted dispel effect at the correct moment to negate the enemy spell and not creating an opposite magical effect that cancels your enemy's spell.
In the old ADD system psions could attack a magic user mentally first in every round thus stopping all of their spell casting. No defense at all. i believe it was called psychic attack. Who wouldn't take that psionic skill?
Plus effects like telekinesis could not be stopped except by another psion. Magic did not protect you and could not turn off the power.
That is not exactly correct. You'd have to get a bit lucky to get psionics in the first place. Then you'd have to get a random roll that gave you the 1(one) attack that affected non-psionic people. Then you have to have enough points to use it. Then hope your target has an Int and Wis total of 16 to 22. Because much higher or lower than that nothing happened. Oh and it only had a range of 60 feet. Dang. That's scary.
Your correct that you had to roll something like a 99 or 100 on a 100d.to even gain psionic powers. But exactly how many people would accept that in 5E? Not a single one. They want it a class with no restrictions on gaining the powers or limits on what powers they gain.
There are already people talking about subclasses and they do not even have a class for it yet. Make it simple and just dual class it already.
There already is a "Psionic Class" that was in play testing materials years ago called the mystic.
It was a hot mess of idea's and powers that had nothing incommon and had (much like your homebrews) derpy systems that overcomplicated the system and forced gm's to have to study the crap out of the UA article to be able to properly incoroporate this incredibly confusing class.
Also fun fact with why Psionics as a concept even exists: a bunch of Science fiction writers wanted to have magic in their stories but they were too self conscious to talk about space wizards or cosmic warlocks so they invented the term "psionics", so it coming back around and being just another kind of magic in High fantasy settings is actually just a case of the concept coming full circle.
Also those 2% of characters who totally and legitimately rolled that when no one was looking trust me guys wound up getting a bunch of powers that made them dramatically more powerful then there fellow players thus leading to serious balance issues with the campaign.
I've only skimmed it and certainly can't speak to its balance but this take on psionics from DM's Guild is interesting and also free to fully preview. It includes:
A psionic background for those who want to dabble with mental powers
Psionic feats for those who want to "level up" their limited psionic abilities
A fully developed psionics class for those looking to have a psionic specialization option in their campaign
Also Like I said the last time this topic cropped up like a month ago: it's absolutely trivial to simply reflavor the various classes to be Psionic; Like the paladin oath system could easily be described as someone who is deriving power from absolute dedication to an ideology and Monks were considered a psionic class back in 4th.
I am an unhinged psychopath unfit for the modern world who plays TOO much dnd, Baldur’s Gate 3 (Finaly beat it!) and Minecraft… Probably. I also read manga. Heh Heh Heh…..
I am also a home brewer who likes Thri-Kreen, Rangers and, of course death, destruction and unbounded chaos! Myrkridia Stat Block Here!
I mostly play 2e and 5e and really enjoy the 2e psionic optional character class and was just wondering to see if there was a 5e option for this, I'm sad there isn't and hope that one day wizards will integrate it
Wizards is on record as having no desire to revisit Athas/Dark Sun in 5e. Doing Athas justice would not be worth the hassle from both critics of the setting arguing it's too brutal and oppressive and proponents of the setting arguing it's not brutal and oppressive enough. They have no issue with people using the old material to do their own homebrew Dark Sun adventures, but an official redux of Dark Sun is not in the cards.
I mostly play 2e and 5e and really enjoy the 2e psionic optional character class and was just wondering to see if there was a 5e option for this, I'm sad there isn't and hope that one day wizards will integrate it
As this thread proves, the playerbase as an aggregate whole seems to hate and despise psionics or psychic powers, wanting quite firmly to relegate such characters to simply being unfun, poorly-performing and bizarrely over-limited versions of typical spellcasters. Most people seem to be carrying strange war wounds from earlier editions and are unwilling to listen to the actual desires of players who enjoy psychic characters and concepts, and they have yet to explain why beloved and iconic core D&D monsters such as mind flayers, beholders, and aboleths are able to have expansive psychic abilities without any issue, but the moment a PC can do more than lift one pebble one foot off the ground for one round once a day, the entire game implodes.
Unfortunately, the best course of action is to simply accept that other people will always ruin the thing you cherish and desire if the thing you cherish and desire isn't a tired, worn-out, overplayed and threadbare dupliclone of Tolkien's books. If Tolkien didn't write it seventy years ago, it doesn't deserve to exist in a Fantasy Game. No matter how insane, limiting, or awful that idea is.
"If Tolkien didn't write it seventy years ago, it doesn't deserve to exist in a Fantasy Game. "
I wouldn't agree with that. Exactly. My idea of D&D is more along the line of Merlin and the round table. Other races thrown in because of Tolkien. Even Tolkien didn't have the huge amount of sentient races we have now. If this game was anything like Tolkien we would have all the races disliking and distrusting each other
As for psionics i wouldn't mind them at all as long as they were limited just like magic is now.
Wizards is on record as having no desire to revisit Athas/Dark Sun in 5e. Doing Athas justice would not be worth the hassle from both critics of the setting arguing it's too brutal and oppressive and proponents of the setting arguing it's not brutal and oppressive enough. They have no issue with people using the old material to do their own homebrew Dark Sun adventures, but an official redux of Dark Sun is not in the cards.
I mostly play 2e and 5e and really enjoy the 2e psionic optional character class and was just wondering to see if there was a 5e option for this, I'm sad there isn't and hope that one day wizards will integrate it
As this thread proves, the playerbase as an aggregate whole seems to hate and despise psionics or psychic powers, wanting quite firmly to relegate such characters to simply being unfun, poorly-performing and bizarrely over-limited versions of typical spellcasters. Most people seem to be carrying strange war wounds from earlier editions and are unwilling to listen to the actual desires of players who enjoy psychic characters and concepts, and they have yet to explain why beloved and iconic core D&D monsters such as mind flayers, beholders, and aboleths are able to have expansive psychic abilities without any issue, but the moment a PC can do more than lift one pebble one foot off the ground for one round once a day, the entire game implodes.
Unfortunately, the best course of action is to simply accept that other people will always ruin the thing you cherish and desire if the thing you cherish and desire isn't a tired, worn-out, overplayed and threadbare dupliclone of Tolkien's books. If Tolkien didn't write it seventy years ago, it doesn't deserve to exist in a Fantasy Game. No matter how insane, limiting, or awful that idea is.
Thank you for that cool, impersonal, and objective analysis of the previous discussion.
But, seriously, as has been said multiple times, the biggest hurdle with a full on psionic class is how exactly one can make it the equivalent of a caster without also making it a Rube Goldberg-esque assemblage of alternate features. If you would actually look at the state of the game, you'll note that their are several explicitly psionic subclasses already (Aberrant Mind, Psi Warrior, Soulblade), as well as others that one can easily reflavor for a psionic basis (GOOlock, College of Whispers, about half the PHB Wizard subclasses). And the Telepathic or Telekinetic feats make it easy for any character to add some such powers to their repertoire; granted, the nature of the feat system for most of 5e does mean that they can't scale up into the flashy stuff simply based on feats, but given that there's no feat for gaining Extra Attack or otherwise giving casts of spells above 2nd level, this is hardly some specific vendetta against psionics and just a case of the feats not representing that degree of power in the game (and, notably, it's possible the new system could allow for a more in-depth psionics tree).
When you get right down to it, how much of what you want from a psionic class are you unable to have via Aberrant Mind? There's telepathy right off the bat, all sorcerers can already have the ability to cast without VS components and the subclass grants an additional way, and several of the most psionically themed spells are on the additional spells list.
As this thread proves, the playerbase as an aggregate whole seems to hate and despise psionics or psychic powers, wanting quite firmly to relegate such characters to simply being unfun, poorly-performing and bizarrely over-limited versions of typical spellcasters.
I don't hate psionics. I just recognize that it's magic with a paint job to make it look high tech. Handling psi poorly is a special case of handling all specialized spellcasters poorly. Which can mostly be blamed on people whining every time anyone tries to make wizards not be the I can do anything! class.
As this thread proves, the playerbase as an aggregate whole seems to hate and despise psionics or psychic powers, wanting quite firmly to relegate such characters to simply being unfun, poorly-performing and bizarrely over-limited versions of typical spellcasters.
I don't hate psionics. I just recognize that it's magic with a paint job to make it look high tech. Handling psi poorly is a special case of handling all specialized spellcasters poorly. Which can mostly be blamed on people whining every time anyone tries to make wizards not be the I can do anything! class.
It's arguably more a matter of Arcane getting a pool that includes most "psionic" stuff- there's a lot of overlap on the Wizard and Sorcerer options, and Magic Secrets makes it easy for a Bard to fill in the gaps if they so choose- along with the nature of throwing most magic effects into a general pool and then assigning them to whichever classes are deemed appropriate rather than a more tailored power system.
Thank you for that cool, impersonal, and objective analysis of the previous discussion.
You're welcome.
But, seriously, as has been said multiple times, the biggest hurdle with a full on psionic class is how exactly one can make it the equivalent of a caster without also making it a Rube Goldberg-esque assemblage of alternate features.
Warlock Invocations. To Gehenna with the Mystic, that's not what people who enjoy psychic characters want. Also: nobody wants to make a psychic character "the equivalent of a caster." That's the problem - everybody treating psychic characters as just shitty less-capable casters. The Invocation system is an easy framework - a psychic character gets [X] psychic talents at their given level, they have to fulfill whatever requirements those talents have, and the talents work however they say they work. In general, a psychic character has fewer talents than a spellcaster has spells and those talents are not as broadly applicable, but the psychic character's talents are more readily available and not limited to only firing once or twice a day like a typical spellcaster.
If you would actually look at the state of the game, you'll note that their are several explicitly psionic subclasses already (Aberrant Mind, Psi Warrior, Soulblade), as well as others that one can easily reflavor for a psionic basis (GOOlock, College of Whispers, about half the PHB Wizard subclasses). And the Telepathic or Telekinetic feats make it easy for any character to add some such powers to their repertoire; granted, the nature of the feat system for most of 5e does mean that they can't scale up into the flashy stuff simply based on feats, but given that there's no feat for gaining Extra Attack or otherwise giving casts of spells above 2nd level, this is hardly some specific vendetta against psionics and just a case of the feats not representing that degree of power in the game (and, notably, it's possible the new system could allow for a more in-depth psionics tree).
I could tell you what the issues are with each of these. In fact, here's the short version:
Abberant Mind: godawful dogshit flavor, need for extensive non-psychic abilities Psi Warrior: barely counts as 'psychic', abilities are so minor and with such sharply limited use counts character is effectively a blunt Soulknife: weird Psylocke expy with a janky version of telepathy that doesn't make any sense. Still probably the closest to "psychic" in your list, and frankly the Arcane Trickster with a curated spell list is almost better at the job. GOOlock: just poorly designed and unfun to play; warlock default chassis is also not conducive to psychic characters even if the Invocation system provides a template for the answer. College of Whispers: excuse me huh? Since when is this a "psychic" character? Whispers bard is janky shadow magic, not psychic abilities, and once again - the bard base chassis actively fights against attempts to create a 'psychic' character. Wizard subclasses: because playing a class whose entire balance paradigm rests on having wide and diverse access to every spell effect imaginable (and thus has nothing else whatsoever going for it) with a small, tightly limited set of abilities just sounds like such a good idea.
But even though everybody already knows all this, the naysayers don't care. They just don't want extra rules in their game, even if they're free to ignore those rules. To the naysayers it doesn't matter that all of their ideas result in a character with dramatically less capability to contribute to the game and their party than a 'normal' PC; all they care about is pointing to various vaguely-purple options and saying "See, you can already do the thing you want!"
We know. The options presented are bad. They don't feel good in play, they don't lead to a good table experience. For either the player using the bad option, or the other players forced to work around the bad option. For a forum as dedicated to constant balance wars, telling people "you can do what you want so long as you commit to making your character actively unfun and terrible!" sure seems like a dogshit copout answer.
When you get right down to it, how much of what you want from a psionic class are you unable to have via Aberrant Mind? There's telepathy right off the bat, all sorcerers can already have the ability to cast without VS components and the subclass grants an additional way, and several of the most psionically themed spells are on the additional spells list.
The Aberrant Mind's requirement for drinking the Far Planes Kool-Aid and being a gross nasty scuzzleech covered in tentacles, eyeballs, and thirty pounds of mucus is kinnasorta a big turn-off right from the start. It is also a sorcerer, a class well known for being the "I wanna play with the big kids!" whiny little brother of the wizard, with less than half the spellcasting power and no class features worth mentioning to make up the deficit. The freaking bard gets better spellcasting than the sorcerer while also getting access to basic spellcasting, Inspiration, and a suit of non-spellcasting class features to round itself out. Telling a sorcerer player to ignore ninety-four percent of their spell list - to the point of leaving half their leveled spells unselected because there's simply nothing for them to take - in order to Do A Psychic is just disingenuous moose manure and you know it.
What I want from a psychic character is for the character's powers and abilities to feel like a natural extension of the character and not some tacky aftermarket bolt-on they can only use once or twice a day. Not "here's your ammo supply for your fancy brain gun, you can shoot four times a day and then you get to sit in the back with a thumb up your ass," not "just play a spellcaster but without any spells, and make sure the rest of the party constantly emphasizes that you're just a regular mage with weird hang-ups LARPing as a brain goober." I said it before - a psychic character's abilities are as intrinsic and natural to them as a person's limbs. Yes, particularly strenuous applications of those abilities will require some sort of mechanical gas gauge, but that doesn't mean psychic abilities are spells. They are supernatural powers, like almost every creature in the DMG possess. Why is this so difficult to understand?
And before yet more garbage about "psionics" being sci-fi magic gets thrown at me, note that I've been using the terms "psychic powers" and "psychic characters", not psionics. One of the very first fantasy series I got deep into back in my youth was the Heralds of Valdemar series from Mercedes Lackey - a High Fantasy series wherein "true spellcasting" the way D&D players know it is rare to the point of myth and most hero characters get by with mind-magic 'Gifts' - psychic talents of varying number, strength and complexity, but which mostly fall into rough power levels commensurate with second-level spells or lower. This stuff very much exists in the fantasy lexicon; other people's hang-ups are no excuse to deny someone the chance to play what they want to play.
In general, a psychic character has fewer talents than a spellcaster has spells and those talents are not as broadly applicable, but the psychic character's talents are more readily available and not limited to only firing once or twice a day like a typical spellcaster.
The problem there is that you are essentially describing the current sorcerer, with much reduced spell slot limits.
The biggest problem with psionics is Clarke's Third Law: "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." Or, restated, magic is indistinguishable from sufficiently advanced technology. Since anything not explicitly stated as magical is deemed non-magical by RAW, many bardic abilities could be arguably psionic in nature. I do agree though that although Whispers' main abilities are mind based, they are annoyingly explicitly described as magical.
The second biggest problem with psionics is, in a world where there actually are gods and magic, why wouldn't they be another form of magic? Or, alternatively, to be racial in nature?
In general, a psychic character has fewer talents than a spellcaster has spells and those talents are not as broadly applicable, but the psychic character's talents are more readily available and not limited to only firing once or twice a day like a typical spellcaster.
The problem there is that you are essentially describing the current sorcerer, with much reduced spell slot limits.
I read it as something much more like if you had a warlock hybridized with a monk or battlemaster -- you get a selection of powers that you choose, and some of them have to be powered by a finite pool of resources.
It's not going to happen officially -- WotC really don't want to introduce a second magic system (which is also sorcerers' problem) -- but it's a completely viable framework, and not any more complex than the classes we have now.
(Thinking about it briefly, I like the battlemaster version. It lends itself nicely to the idea of overcharging your powers for extra effect.)
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Translated to 5e, Mind Blast would be an Int Save, Confusion would be a Wis Save, and Telekinesis would be an opposed Strength Check(like a grapple) and if they last more than 1 round, affected targets get rechecks every round.
In 3.5, spells that cleanse/dispel/remove/negate magic effects also work on psionic effects as they always should have. The only major difference was that Psionic Powers couldn't be countered because there was no psionic version of counterspell.
Yeah they could be.
That means you could use the 3.5e rules for counterspelling (ready a spell or power that negates or counters the power, including dispel magic or dispel psi) against psionics.
That is not exactly correct. You'd have to get a bit lucky to get psionics in the first place. Then you'd have to get a random roll that gave you the 1(one) attack that affected non-psionic people. Then you have to have enough points to use it. Then hope your target has an Int and Wis total of 16 to 22. Because much higher or lower than that nothing happened. Oh and it only had a range of 60 feet. Dang. That's scary.
"Sooner or later, your Players are going to smash your railroad into a sandbox."
-Vedexent
"real life is a super high CR."
-OboeLauren
"............anybody got any potatoes? We could drop a potato in each hole an' see which ones get viciously mauled by horrible monsters?"
-Ilyara Thundertale
No, you couldn't. You can only remove ongoing effects. You can't prevent the Psionic Power from being manifested.
https://web.archive.org/web/20060615204511/http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/rg/20060613a
Differences Between Spells and Psionic Powers
A psionic power is not a spell, even though it works much like a spell. Important differences between powers and spells include the following:
Using a psionic power is a purely mental action, albeit one that requires enough concentration to provoke attacks of opportunity.
A number of powers require the psionicist to expend some experience in addition to psionic power points. If so, this is noted in the power's description. You expend any required XP when you manifest the power. If the manifestation fails for any reason, the XP (and the psionic power points) you spent on the power are still lost.
A counterspell involves recognizing a spell as it is being cast, then quickly altering that same spell so as to create an opposite effect that cancels out the original spell. A psionic power taps the manifester's mental energy in a process unlike any spell. (Many powers have results similar to certain spells, but they achieve those results through different means.)
As noted earlier, most psionic powers are subject to dispelling (unless their descriptions say they are not). When a psionic power can be dispelled (as most of them are), one can effectively counter them with a dispel magic spell (or the dispel psionics power). While psionic powers are not normally subject to counterspells, dispel magic is not really a counterspell. When you use dispel magic as a counterspell, what you're really doing is quickly casting a targeted dispel effect at the correct moment to negate the enemy spell and not creating an opposite magical effect that cancels your enemy's spell.
Having a psionic class casting spells is the literal anithesis of Psions.
Couldn't find any that weren't derpy spellcasters or just single classes that should've been subclasses for something else, so I made one:
The Psion:
https://homebrewery.naturalcrit.com/share/3JjPrHpcJEkq
It has 6 subclasses and 23 Talents to choose from, in one document.
Let me know if ya like it.
Your correct that you had to roll something like a 99 or 100 on a 100d.to even gain psionic powers.
But exactly how many people would accept that in 5E? Not a single one. They want it a class with no restrictions on gaining the powers or limits on what powers they gain.
There are already people talking about subclasses and they do not even have a class for it yet. Make it simple and just dual class it already.
There already is a "Psionic Class" that was in play testing materials years ago called the mystic.
It was a hot mess of idea's and powers that had nothing incommon and had (much like your homebrews) derpy systems that overcomplicated the system and forced gm's to have to study the crap out of the UA article to be able to properly incoroporate this incredibly confusing class.
Also fun fact with why Psionics as a concept even exists: a bunch of Science fiction writers wanted to have magic in their stories but they were too self conscious to talk about space wizards or cosmic warlocks so they invented the term "psionics", so it coming back around and being just another kind of magic in High fantasy settings is actually just a case of the concept coming full circle.
Also those 2% of characters who totally and legitimately rolled that when no one was looking trust me guys wound up getting a bunch of powers that made them dramatically more powerful then there fellow players thus leading to serious balance issues with the campaign.
I've only skimmed it and certainly can't speak to its balance but this take on psionics from DM's Guild is interesting and also free to fully preview. It includes:
https://www.dmsguild.com/product/317663/Hooked-on-Psionics
Also Like I said the last time this topic cropped up like a month ago: it's absolutely trivial to simply reflavor the various classes to be Psionic; Like the paladin oath system could easily be described as someone who is deriving power from absolute dedication to an ideology and Monks were considered a psionic class back in 4th.
Ain't no need to reinvent the wheel.
Maybe they add it in 6e
(And Athas) cough cough
I am an unhinged psychopath unfit for the modern world who plays TOO much dnd, Baldur’s Gate 3 (Finaly beat it!) and Minecraft… Probably. I also read manga.
Heh Heh Heh…..
I am also a home brewer who likes Thri-Kreen, Rangers and, of course death, destruction and unbounded chaos!
Myrkridia Stat Block Here!
I mostly play 2e and 5e and really enjoy the 2e psionic optional character class and was just wondering to see if there was a 5e option for this, I'm sad there isn't and hope that one day wizards will integrate it
Wizards is on record as having no desire to revisit Athas/Dark Sun in 5e. Doing Athas justice would not be worth the hassle from both critics of the setting arguing it's too brutal and oppressive and proponents of the setting arguing it's not brutal and oppressive enough. They have no issue with people using the old material to do their own homebrew Dark Sun adventures, but an official redux of Dark Sun is not in the cards.
As this thread proves, the playerbase as an aggregate whole seems to hate and despise psionics or psychic powers, wanting quite firmly to relegate such characters to simply being unfun, poorly-performing and bizarrely over-limited versions of typical spellcasters. Most people seem to be carrying strange war wounds from earlier editions and are unwilling to listen to the actual desires of players who enjoy psychic characters and concepts, and they have yet to explain why beloved and iconic core D&D monsters such as mind flayers, beholders, and aboleths are able to have expansive psychic abilities without any issue, but the moment a PC can do more than lift one pebble one foot off the ground for one round once a day, the entire game implodes.
Unfortunately, the best course of action is to simply accept that other people will always ruin the thing you cherish and desire if the thing you cherish and desire isn't a tired, worn-out, overplayed and threadbare dupliclone of Tolkien's books. If Tolkien didn't write it seventy years ago, it doesn't deserve to exist in a Fantasy Game. No matter how insane, limiting, or awful that idea is.
Please do not contact or message me.
"If Tolkien didn't write it seventy years ago, it doesn't deserve to exist in a Fantasy Game. "
I wouldn't agree with that. Exactly. My idea of D&D is more along the line of Merlin and the round table. Other races thrown in because of Tolkien. Even Tolkien didn't have the huge amount of sentient races we have now.
If this game was anything like Tolkien we would have all the races disliking and distrusting each other
As for psionics i wouldn't mind them at all as long as they were limited just like magic is now.
Thank you for that cool, impersonal, and objective analysis of the previous discussion.
But, seriously, as has been said multiple times, the biggest hurdle with a full on psionic class is how exactly one can make it the equivalent of a caster without also making it a Rube Goldberg-esque assemblage of alternate features. If you would actually look at the state of the game, you'll note that their are several explicitly psionic subclasses already (Aberrant Mind, Psi Warrior, Soulblade), as well as others that one can easily reflavor for a psionic basis (GOOlock, College of Whispers, about half the PHB Wizard subclasses). And the Telepathic or Telekinetic feats make it easy for any character to add some such powers to their repertoire; granted, the nature of the feat system for most of 5e does mean that they can't scale up into the flashy stuff simply based on feats, but given that there's no feat for gaining Extra Attack or otherwise giving casts of spells above 2nd level, this is hardly some specific vendetta against psionics and just a case of the feats not representing that degree of power in the game (and, notably, it's possible the new system could allow for a more in-depth psionics tree).
When you get right down to it, how much of what you want from a psionic class are you unable to have via Aberrant Mind? There's telepathy right off the bat, all sorcerers can already have the ability to cast without VS components and the subclass grants an additional way, and several of the most psionically themed spells are on the additional spells list.
I don't hate psionics. I just recognize that it's magic with a paint job to make it look high tech. Handling psi poorly is a special case of handling all specialized spellcasters poorly. Which can mostly be blamed on people whining every time anyone tries to make wizards not be the I can do anything! class.
It's arguably more a matter of Arcane getting a pool that includes most "psionic" stuff- there's a lot of overlap on the Wizard and Sorcerer options, and Magic Secrets makes it easy for a Bard to fill in the gaps if they so choose- along with the nature of throwing most magic effects into a general pool and then assigning them to whichever classes are deemed appropriate rather than a more tailored power system.
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Warlock Invocations. To Gehenna with the Mystic, that's not what people who enjoy psychic characters want. Also: nobody wants to make a psychic character "the equivalent of a caster." That's the problem - everybody treating psychic characters as just shitty less-capable casters. The Invocation system is an easy framework - a psychic character gets [X] psychic talents at their given level, they have to fulfill whatever requirements those talents have, and the talents work however they say they work. In general, a psychic character has fewer talents than a spellcaster has spells and those talents are not as broadly applicable, but the psychic character's talents are more readily available and not limited to only firing once or twice a day like a typical spellcaster.
I could tell you what the issues are with each of these. In fact, here's the short version:
Abberant Mind: godawful dogshit flavor, need for extensive non-psychic abilities
Psi Warrior: barely counts as 'psychic', abilities are so minor and with such sharply limited use counts character is effectively a blunt
Soulknife: weird Psylocke expy with a janky version of telepathy that doesn't make any sense. Still probably the closest to "psychic" in your list, and frankly the Arcane Trickster with a curated spell list is almost better at the job.
GOOlock: just poorly designed and unfun to play; warlock default chassis is also not conducive to psychic characters even if the Invocation system provides a template for the answer.
College of Whispers: excuse me huh? Since when is this a "psychic" character? Whispers bard is janky shadow magic, not psychic abilities, and once again - the bard base chassis actively fights against attempts to create a 'psychic' character.
Wizard subclasses: because playing a class whose entire balance paradigm rests on having wide and diverse access to every spell effect imaginable (and thus has nothing else whatsoever going for it) with a small, tightly limited set of abilities just sounds like such a good idea.
But even though everybody already knows all this, the naysayers don't care. They just don't want extra rules in their game, even if they're free to ignore those rules. To the naysayers it doesn't matter that all of their ideas result in a character with dramatically less capability to contribute to the game and their party than a 'normal' PC; all they care about is pointing to various vaguely-purple options and saying "See, you can already do the thing you want!"
We know. The options presented are bad. They don't feel good in play, they don't lead to a good table experience. For either the player using the bad option, or the other players forced to work around the bad option. For a forum as dedicated to constant balance wars, telling people "you can do what you want so long as you commit to making your character actively unfun and terrible!" sure seems like a dogshit copout answer.
The Aberrant Mind's requirement for drinking the Far Planes Kool-Aid and being a gross nasty scuzzleech covered in tentacles, eyeballs, and thirty pounds of mucus is kinnasorta a big turn-off right from the start. It is also a sorcerer, a class well known for being the "I wanna play with the big kids!" whiny little brother of the wizard, with less than half the spellcasting power and no class features worth mentioning to make up the deficit. The freaking bard gets better spellcasting than the sorcerer while also getting access to basic spellcasting, Inspiration, and a suit of non-spellcasting class features to round itself out. Telling a sorcerer player to ignore ninety-four percent of their spell list - to the point of leaving half their leveled spells unselected because there's simply nothing for them to take - in order to Do A Psychic is just disingenuous moose manure and you know it.
What I want from a psychic character is for the character's powers and abilities to feel like a natural extension of the character and not some tacky aftermarket bolt-on they can only use once or twice a day. Not "here's your ammo supply for your fancy brain gun, you can shoot four times a day and then you get to sit in the back with a thumb up your ass," not "just play a spellcaster but without any spells, and make sure the rest of the party constantly emphasizes that you're just a regular mage with weird hang-ups LARPing as a brain goober." I said it before - a psychic character's abilities are as intrinsic and natural to them as a person's limbs. Yes, particularly strenuous applications of those abilities will require some sort of mechanical gas gauge, but that doesn't mean psychic abilities are spells. They are supernatural powers, like almost every creature in the DMG possess. Why is this so difficult to understand?
And before yet more garbage about "psionics" being sci-fi magic gets thrown at me, note that I've been using the terms "psychic powers" and "psychic characters", not psionics. One of the very first fantasy series I got deep into back in my youth was the Heralds of Valdemar series from Mercedes Lackey - a High Fantasy series wherein "true spellcasting" the way D&D players know it is rare to the point of myth and most hero characters get by with mind-magic 'Gifts' - psychic talents of varying number, strength and complexity, but which mostly fall into rough power levels commensurate with second-level spells or lower. This stuff very much exists in the fantasy lexicon; other people's hang-ups are no excuse to deny someone the chance to play what they want to play.
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The problem there is that you are essentially describing the current sorcerer, with much reduced spell slot limits.
The biggest problem with psionics is Clarke's Third Law: "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." Or, restated, magic is indistinguishable from sufficiently advanced technology. Since anything not explicitly stated as magical is deemed non-magical by RAW, many bardic abilities could be arguably psionic in nature. I do agree though that although Whispers' main abilities are mind based, they are annoyingly explicitly described as magical.
The second biggest problem with psionics is, in a world where there actually are gods and magic, why wouldn't they be another form of magic? Or, alternatively, to be racial in nature?
I read it as something much more like if you had a warlock hybridized with a monk or battlemaster -- you get a selection of powers that you choose, and some of them have to be powered by a finite pool of resources.
It's not going to happen officially -- WotC really don't want to introduce a second magic system (which is also sorcerers' problem) -- but it's a completely viable framework, and not any more complex than the classes we have now.
(Thinking about it briefly, I like the battlemaster version. It lends itself nicely to the idea of overcharging your powers for extra effect.)