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.
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.
And you are more than welcome to homebrew a Psion class that meets whatever idiosyncratic requirements you wish for it to have.
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.
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.
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.
That's... probably not what Yurei asked for, though it's somewhat hard to tell because the actual request was almost completely devoid of detail. It sounded to me like a request for a power stunting system.
You can interact with the physical world with the strength of your mind instead of your body. You gain the following benefits:
Telekinetic Grappling: When you want to grab a creature or wrestle with it, you can use the Attack action to make a special melee attack, a grapple. If you’re able to make multiple attacks with the Attack action, this attack replaces one of them. The target of your grapple must be no more than one size larger than you and must be within a number of feet equal to your proficiency bonus times 10. You try to seize the target by making a grapple check instead of an attack roll: a Intelligence (Athletics) check contested by the target’s Strength (Athletics) or Dexterity (Acrobatics) check (the target chooses the ability to use). You succeed automatically if the target is incapacitated. If you succeed, you subject the target to the grappled condition. The condition specifies the things that end it, and you can release the target whenever you like (no action required).
You can move or carry the grappled creature up to 15 feet but should they be moved beyond your range, the grapple is broken.
A grappled creature can use its action to escape. To do so, it must succeed on a Strength (Athletics) or Dexterity (Acrobatics) check contested by your Intelligence (Athletics) check.
Additionally, grappling in this manner also requires the Psion to maintain concentrations as though concentrating on a spell.
Telekinetic Shove: Using the Attack action, you can make a special attack to shove a creature, either to knock it prone or push it away from you. If you’re able to make multiple attacks with the Attack action, this attack replaces one of them. The target must be no more than one size larger than you and must be within a number of feet equal to your proficiency bonus times 10. Instead of making an attack roll, you make an Intelligence (Athletics) check contested by the target’s Strength (Athletics) or Dexterity (Acrobatics) check (the target chooses the ability to use). You succeed automatically if the target is incapacitated. If you succeed, you either knock the target prone or push it 5 feet away from you.
Telekinetic Carrying Capacity. Your carrying capacity is your Intelligence score multiplied by 15. This is the weight (in pounds) that you can carry, which is high enough that most characters don’t usually have to worry about it.
Telekinetic Push, Drag, or Lift. You can push, drag, or lift a weight in pounds up to twice your carrying capacity (or 30 times your Intelligence score). While pushing or dragging weight in excess of your carrying capacity, your speed drops to 5 feet.
I have no idea what is going on with the formatting
You can interact with the physical world with the strength of your mind instead of your body. You gain the following benefits:
Telekinetic Grappling: When you want to grab a creature or wrestle with it, you can use the Attack action to make a special melee attack, a grapple. If you’re able to make multiple attacks with the Attack action, this attack replaces one of them. The target of your grapple must be no more than one size larger than you and must be within a number of feet equal to your proficiency bonus times 10. You try to seize the target by making a grapple check instead of an attack roll: a Intelligence (Athletics) check contested by the target’s Strength (Athletics) or Dexterity (Acrobatics) check (the target chooses the ability to use). You succeed automatically if the target is incapacitated. If you succeed, you subject the target to the grappled condition. The condition specifies the things that end it, and you can release the target whenever you like (no action required).
You can move or carry the grappled creature up to 15 feet but should they be moved beyond your range, the grapple is broken.
A grappled creature can use its action to escape. To do so, it must succeed on a Strength (Athletics) or Dexterity (Acrobatics) check contested by your Intelligence (Athletics) check.
Additionally, grappling in this manner also requires the Psion to maintain concentrations as though concentrating on a spell.
Telekinetic Shove: Using the Attack action, you can make a special attack to shove a creature, either to knock it prone or push it away from you. If you’re able to make multiple attacks with the Attack action, this attack replaces one of them. The target must be no more than one size larger than you and must be within a number of feet equal to your proficiency bonus times 10. Instead of making an attack roll, you make an Intelligence (Athletics) check contested by the target’s Strength (Athletics) or Dexterity (Acrobatics) check (the target chooses the ability to use). You succeed automatically if the target is incapacitated. If you succeed, you either knock the target prone or push it 5 feet away from you.
Telekinetic Carrying Capacity. Your carrying capacity is your Intelligence score multiplied by 15. This is the weight (in pounds) that you can carry, which is high enough that most characters don’t usually have to worry about it.
Telekinetic Push, Drag, or Lift. You can push, drag, or lift a weight in pounds up to twice your carrying capacity (or 30 times your Intelligence score). While pushing or dragging weight in excess of your carrying capacity, your speed drops to 5 feet.
I have no idea what is going on with the formatting
My response would be that this is a hard no.
You are effectively getting all the advantages of strength with none of the draw backs at level two and you can do this at range at no cost outside of concentration.
Maybe if you included a resource expenditure (IE the psi points you had proposed earlier) in order to maintain this for a short time this would be more in line but as it is this is just ridiculous.
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.
I wasn't changing the subject and they're absolutely balanced down. Spells don't require your limited attunement slots last time I checked, and even though they get extra ones as they level, their casting is truncated as a result. If anything, Artificers are on the weak end of the spectrum overall compared to full casters. If that's all you want psions to be, great, you're off to a good start, carry on with your proposal.
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.
Were you going to attempt to answer any of these?
The irony is that Wren, Ashla, Pantagruel and I actually have been. The class fantasy is that they cast without needing VSM components; I could go a step further and say they give up access to certain schools of magic (e.g. no summoning and very little buffing others) in exchange for the ability to heal and enhance themselves. We showed how Sorcerer achieves that fantasy in a balanced way, by devoting their daily resources to Subtle Spell, and that something like that should be the basis of a balanced psychic caster. That also answers the base class, subclass, and power acquisition questions. We're the ones forced to answer these because you all haven't been, all you want to do is complain about 5e instead.
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.
"Can be" does not equal "likely to be" and certainly does not equal "We cannot possibly do this because this because a Unicorn might be harmed."
And simply do not buy any books you do not like and you will be spared your printed books including books you do not like.
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.
That's... probably not what Yurei asked for, though it's somewhat hard to tell because the actual request was almost completely devoid of detail. It sounded to me like a request for a power stunting system.
This is what I was trying to do when I pointed out pure melee or melee or burning enemies with a torch vs using cantrips or other low end spells to do the same damage types and similar low levels of damage. You are overly dramatizing the importance of anything you think sounds like a spell to you being 'magical.'
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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.
And you are more than welcome to homebrew a Psion class that meets whatever idiosyncratic requirements you wish for it to have.
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.
So prove it is feasible. Build the class.
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.
That's... probably not what Yurei asked for, though it's somewhat hard to tell because the actual request was almost completely devoid of detail. It sounded to me like a request for a power stunting system.
What are you thoughts on this?
Mind Over Matter (2nd Level Psion Feature)
You can interact with the physical world with the strength of your mind instead of your body. You gain the following benefits:
You can move or carry the grappled creature up to 15 feet but should they be moved beyond your range, the grapple is broken.
A grappled creature can use its action to escape. To do so, it must succeed on a Strength (Athletics) or Dexterity (Acrobatics) check contested by your Intelligence (Athletics) check.
Additionally, grappling in this manner also requires the Psion to maintain concentrations as though concentrating on a spell.
I have no idea what is going on with the formatting
She/Her Player and Dungeon Master
My response would be that this is a hard no.
You are effectively getting all the advantages of strength with none of the draw backs at level two and you can do this at range at no cost outside of concentration.
Maybe if you included a resource expenditure (IE the psi points you had proposed earlier) in order to maintain this for a short time this would be more in line but as it is this is just ridiculous.
I wasn't changing the subject and they're absolutely balanced down. Spells don't require your limited attunement slots last time I checked, and even though they get extra ones as they level, their casting is truncated as a result. If anything, Artificers are on the weak end of the spectrum overall compared to full casters. If that's all you want psions to be, great, you're off to a good start, carry on with your proposal.
Were you going to attempt to answer any of these?
The irony is that Wren, Ashla, Pantagruel and I actually have been. The class fantasy is that they cast without needing VSM components; I could go a step further and say they give up access to certain schools of magic (e.g. no summoning and very little buffing others) in exchange for the ability to heal and enhance themselves. We showed how Sorcerer achieves that fantasy in a balanced way, by devoting their daily resources to Subtle Spell, and that something like that should be the basis of a balanced psychic caster. That also answers the base class, subclass, and power acquisition questions. We're the ones forced to answer these because you all haven't been, all you want to do is complain about 5e instead.
"Can be" does not equal "likely to be" and certainly does not equal "We cannot possibly do this because this because a Unicorn might be harmed."
And simply do not buy any books you do not like and you will be spared your printed books including books you do not like.
This is what I was trying to do when I pointed out pure melee or melee or burning enemies with a torch vs using cantrips or other low end spells to do the same damage types and similar low levels of damage. You are overly dramatizing the importance of anything you think sounds like a spell to you being 'magical.'