I find that an interesting response because I'm not really familiar with psionics in early editions other than hearing people discussing it after the fact. But my thing is, I think the psionics-inspired subclasses we have in 5e are overall quite good. I'm wondering if you're referring to them as abominations because you don't like how they play, or because they do a poor job of replicating what was fun about psionics in earlier editions?
Sposta and I both despise the fact that psionics, psychic powers, and the strength of an awakened mind were rebranded as just Mostly Shittier Spellcasting - that any wizard can use Majik to do what a psionic character is supposed to be able to do as well as using Majik to do ordinary magic. "Spells" like Detect Thoughts and Telekinesis shouldn't exist, and psychic characters should be distinct and different from mages instead of simply being Mages with Shittier, More Restrictive Spell Lists and Also No Advantages Whatsoever.
The Soulknife and Psi Warrior are weird, janky half-assed attempts at 'psionic' characters that don't really work right, and also come with the weird rules everybody was so deathly afraid of implementing for psychic characters. The Aberrant Mind is not "psychic", it's an ordinary mage with a brain parasite. You can play it as a 'psychic' character, but doing so is strictly disadvantageous. You're just giving up ninety percent of your spell list to take Brane Majik-flavored stuff and getting nothing for it, anyone who plays their Aberrant Mind that way is playing strictly suboptimally and they know it.
The objection is that psychic characters are not god damned spellcasters and should not be using the spellcasting rules. A proper psychic character would act more like a spell-less warlock of sorts - you gain a much smaller overall number of powers, but you can use those powers freely a'la most (worthwhile) eldritch invocations. My wizard has sixtyish spells in her spellbook, she can prepare twenty of them a day, and that's in addition to her cantrips. She also has twentyish spell slots to use for all that crap. A psychic character of the same level might - might - have five distinct psychic abilities, but she could use them all freely to at least a basic level and would never be "out" of psychic power.
Except...now we have psychic characters that have only one or two powers they can use once or twice a day, and a "psychic" spellcaster that's just a strictly worse wizard in every conceivable way if it tries to actually play with powers of the mind rather than bog-standard spellcasting. And any time we protest this, we get told "5e is about simplicity, don't add systems that don't need to get added, what's wrong with casting spells?!"
Nothing's wrong with casting spells if you're a ****ing spellcaster. If you're an awakened mind? Everything is wrong with casting spells.
I at first was going to make a response that I would be okay with how they dealt with psionic abilities in 5e if every class had a subclass version for it... than I saw this post and it got me thinking.
I mean out of all the three options we have the only decentish one is the Soulknife rogue and there are tons of drawbacks to even that class... I originally saw a psion monk homebrew (which used the mystic unearthed arcana for most of its builds) and I gave up running on that just because I couldn't build it to make it work with our setup (and if I used it as is, having fifty zillion papers and what not I officially would have been called out for being OP) but I still like the concept of having more things based off psionic energy.
I do hope (and I admit it's probably far fetched) that at the big reveal which is probable 5.5e that we get one or two new full classes and maybe one of those could either be a psionic class or else something that could be made so that we could tweak it to be a psionic class.
I think if 5.5 stuck to the "backward compatibility" pledge so that Psionics beyond the present subclasses were an optional bolt on through a new class would be great signal for 5e. Begs the question as to whether 5.5e sees itself more as an expansion or a revision, though what you're talking about can be seen as a little of "both."
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Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
I'm not really concerned with how psionics worked in previous editions of D&D. From all accounts I've heard, the answer is "poorly".
In the massive bulk of popular media, from which D&D siphons like a lamprey on the asscheek of a blue whale, psychic ability is wholly different from magical aptitude. In fact, in most cases I've encountered where both exist at all, having a talent for one means you're actively blocked from the other. Magically active people are, or grow, psy-null, and awakened minds lose the ability to touch the mana field.
Treating psychic abilities as nothing more than crappy also-ran spellcasting with absolutely no advantages and a myriad of weaknesses and drawbacks over traditional spellslinging spits in the face of all the popular Psychic Character tropes, and does it so flagrantly that it's essentially unrecoverable. I cannot make a psychic character in D&D 5e. Not one that feels like an awakened mind instead of a jank-ass dodgy spellslinger with weird hang-ups. The closest I've ever gotten is not an Aberrant sorcerer, not a Soulknife or Psi Warrior or any of that crap. The closest I've ever gotten is an Arcane Trickster rogue treating its various spells as minor psychic talents, and even that felt weird and distinctly Left of Right.
I don't care if psychic characters have to deal with magic resistance and the like. That's fine, nobody's arguing that psychic abilities should be unresistable. I care a lot that psychic characters have nothing whatsoever going for them because they use the spellcasting rules for no good god damn reason.
We may actually see a return to psionics if/when Dark Sun comes around in 5e. They already resuscitated the nightmare beast and there's a braxat miniature on the way. After looking at the options on that big feedback survey, who knows.
As for why no mystic? I can speak for myself in saying that my negative feedback was centered on the mystic being duplicative. The mystic UA articles were like 10% flavor, 10% new features, and 80% copying and pasting the text of existing spells into psionic disciplines. I disagreed with the notion that spells couldn't be a good expression of psionics. I have no problem with psionic powers using the same spell system, maybe by using points or some alternative slot system like the warlock, but ultimately whether a spell is accomplished by waving your hands around and speaking words or by twitching your forehead muscles and thinking real hard doesn't matter to me. If I see an alternative system that really speaks to what a psion is, maybe I'll change my mind, but that hasn't happened.
What made the psion different in earlier editions was the different sorts of spells/powers they could cast, not that the system by which they could cast was different. Points vs spell slots is just not an interesting distinction to me. I also thought the mystic exhibited a few good ideas, such as the focus/concentration mechanic for non-spell purposes in the way that the 3e psion did. That was unfortunately a baby thrown out with the bath water.
Where the feedback went too far, in my opinion, was in the vitriolic hate for the psionic wizard subclass. I think an int-based caster is a fitting candidate to support a subclass representing the archetypal psion. Sue me if you disagree.
I think the key problem is that it's hard to make a psionicist original when you already have casters who can do the same things. Further, there is no "successful" psion from previous versions to piggy-back on. The 3e psion I mentioned was a redundant mess. The 4e psion was functionally the same as every other controller class. 2e was far too complicated.
Sposta and I both despise the fact that psionics, psychic powers, and the strength of an awakened mind were rebranded as just Mostly Shittier Spellcasting - that any wizard can use Majik to do what a psionic character is supposed to be able to do as well as using Majik to do ordinary magic. "Spells" like Detect Thoughts and Telekinesis shouldn't exist, and psychic characters should be distinct and different from mages instead of simply being Mages with Shittier, More Restrictive Spell Lists and Also No Advantages Whatsoever.
Reading minds and moving things remotely have been basic powers used by wizards in basically all fiction everywhere forever.
The Soulknife and Psi Warrior are weird, janky half-assed attempts at 'psionic' characters that don't really work right, and also come with the weird rules everybody was so deathly afraid of implementing for psychic characters. The Aberrant Mind is not "psychic", it's an ordinary mage with a brain parasite. You can play it as a 'psychic' character, but doing so is strictly disadvantageous. You're just giving up ninety percent of your spell list to take Brane Majik-flavored stuff and getting nothing for it, anyone who plays their Aberrant Mind that way is playing strictly suboptimally and they know it.
This is why the wizard subclass should have been preserved, given the current paradigm. The sorcerer is an underpowered caster and everybody knows it. That's a problem with the sorcerer, not the idea of psionic subclasses.
The objection is that psychic characters are not god damned spellcasters and should not be using the spellcasting rules. A proper psychic character would act more like a spell-less warlock of sorts - you gain a much smaller overall number of powers, but you can use those powers freely a'la most (worthwhile) eldritch invocations. My wizard has sixtyish spells in her spellbook, she can prepare twenty of them a day, and that's in addition to her cantrips. She also has twentyish spell slots to use for all that crap. A psychic character of the same level might - might - have five distinct psychic abilities, but she could use them all freely to at least a basic level and would never be "out" of psychic power.
You're describing what sounds to you like an obvious psionicist which has never existed in the history of D&D. Psionicists have ALWAYS had access to a ton of powers/disciplines/etc. Psionicists also run out of power. I could see a hybrid of your idea in a wizard subclass that is awarded the ability to cast nth-level spells ad infinitum, but it'd be tough to balance.
Except...now we have psychic characters that have only one or two powers they can use once or twice a day, and a "psychic" spellcaster that's just a strictly worse wizard in every conceivable way if it tries to actually play with powers of the mind rather than bog-standard spellcasting. And any time we protest this, we get told "5e is about simplicity, don't add systems that don't need to get added, what's wrong with casting spells?!"
You're straw-manning the other side here. The problem you identify is that there are not enough psionic options, not that there isn't a stand-alone class. Most of the arguments you're making would be addressed by a well-tuned wizard subclass, but I suspect that would make you unhappy.
I'm not really concerned with how psionics worked in previous editions of D&D. From all accounts I've heard, the answer is "poorly".
This is worth noting. Honestly psionic classes have never been well received in D&D. Every iteration has been controversial and none have pleased everyone. 5e is just continuing the age-old tradition.
As everyone else has said, an entire library of features that does what magic does but is not magic is kind of antithetical to the streamlined design concepts of 5e.
I do think they could do something. Like a class that gains base abilities and can choose ways to enhance those abilities in a way similar to how metamagic worked. That's kind of how the 4e psionic classes worked, but that got mixed reactions and if they were as stingy with the enhancements as they are with metamagic, it would probably not be very effective.
This thread again... ... You're straw-manning the other side here. The problem you identify is that there are not enough psionic options, not that there isn't a stand-alone class. Most of the arguments you're making would be addressed by a well-tuned wizard subclass, but I suspect that would make you unhappy.
Why do ALL psychic characters have to be nothing more than shitty terrible horrible also-ran spellcasters that don't get to do a single solitary god damned thing The Magic Guy can't do, but are left with a legion of things they don't get to do that The Mage Guy totally can?
Why do psychic characters have to bellow at the top of their goddamned lungs whenever they use their powers just because The Magic Guy has to provide verbal components for their spells? At what point in the history of fiction has a psychic character had to scream magic words at a hundred and sixty decibels to make their mental powers work? At most they have to quietly recite a focusing mantra, and even then the mantra is generally a placebo or focal aid more than a necessity.
Why do psychic characters run out of juice after using their powers four or five times, just because The Magic Guy can't magic more than four or five times a day so even though he gets twenty times the spell count and versatility we do, we don't get any benefits whatsoever for restricting ourselves to the one or two spells per level that we can successfully convince a DM is Psychic-y enough?
An awakened mind has abilities and talents a magician cannot duplicate. 'Cannot duplicate' does not mean "can super-easily duplicate basically for free with just a handful of pissant spells that costs the Magic Guy absolutely nothing at all while also having a ton of other cool stuff the dumb psychic guy will never be able to do because Majik is cooler than Brane Powers."
I've noticed that a feature of a lot of the psion-inspired subclasses and feats are the ability to cast spells without verbal or somatic components... like, if you take the telekinetic feat you can cast mage hand requiring no components and it's invisible, which seems like a simple solution, since the ability to pick up objects with your mind would probably need to be balanced under about the same restrictions as the mage hand spell. The Aberrant Mind Sorcerer gets a unique feature where they can cast spells using Sorcery Points instead of spell slots, and doing so means they can cast spells without verbal or somatic components...
So the fantasy of being able to cast spells with pure Mind Power seems to be hard-baked into a lot of the psionic-based features in the game. I don't know how well it's done... I've never played as one of these subclasses, but that part of the complaint seems to be addressed about as well as I think you could without creating a wholly independent class that has its own form of "spellcasting".
Why do ALL psychic characters have to be nothing more than shitty terrible horrible also-ran spellcasters that don't get to do a single solitary god damned thing The Magic Guy can't do, but are left with a legion of things they don't get to do that The Mage Guy totally can?
Why do psychic characters have to bellow at the top of their goddamned lungs whenever they use their powers just because The Magic Guy has to provide verbal components for their spells? At what point in the history of fiction has a psychic character had to scream magic words at a hundred and sixty decibels to make their mental powers work? At most they have to quietly recite a focusing mantra, and even then the mantra is generally a placebo or focal aid more than a necessity.
Why do psychic characters run out of juice after using their powers four or five times, just because The Magic Guy can't magic more than four or five times a day so even though he gets twenty times the spell count and versatility we do, we don't get any benefits whatsoever for restricting ourselves to the one or two spells per level that we can successfully convince a DM is Psychic-y enough?
An awakened mind has abilities and talents a magician cannot duplicate. 'Cannot duplicate' does not mean "can super-easily duplicate basically for free with just a handful of pissant spells that costs the Magic Guy absolutely nothing at all while also having a ton of other cool stuff the dumb psychic guy will never be able to do because Majik is cooler than Brane Powers."
Before we continue, I'll emphasize that I am consciously not a member of this loudmouth club.
You're subtly straw-manning the argument again, and arguing past me. I have no problem with psionics introducing new mechanics. I just haven't seen a good slate of new mechanics. Waiving spell components is a trivial change if that's all it takes. As I understand, the crux of your argument is that you just don't like the Vancian spell slot system. Like I said, I don't mind if people have alternatives. My only comment on the matter is that point-like systems don't really make a difference when it comes to the feel of the psion, in my opinion. You're then arguing that the wizard sucks out the oxygen from a prospective psion because it can do too much. Well, I don't know what to say. Wizards have always been able to do a TON of things with magic, constrained only by their knowledge. That's what makes wizards what they are.
Why does the psion run out of power? Because there needs to be balance in the game. If you don't like the configuration of the spell slots available to a wizard, that's a different issue. One could imagine other configurations that give 20 uses of a first-level spell, and fewer uses of higher-level spells. Spell slots are one way of enforcing a limit that preserves balance. There are others, I'm sure, but I don't see this scaffolding behind the scenes as being something that needs to fundamentally change insofar as it doesn't change the fiction of the game. You obviously disagree.
Now why should the psion run out of power in the fiction? Take any number of examples in media and literature. Jedi restrict their use of the Force because it is a moral obligation on their part, and Luke Skywalker killed himself through exertion. Sith are limited by the strain the dark side takes on their bodies. Eleven passes out if she over-exerts herself, and once so badly that she cut herself off from her power indefinitely. Mewtwo runs out of PP for its psychic attack. Most people in reality who perform complex calculations and creative thought find it exhausting.
At what point in the history of fiction has a psychic character had to scream magic words at a hundred and sixty decibels to make their mental powers work?
Okay, this is ki in the fiction, but I couldn't resist.
Psionics as abilities separate and distinct from "Magic" needlessly complicates the simplified rules design philosophy of 5e.
The things that a psion could do socially with powers are just as easily represented by creating new "Psionic Spells" ala Chronurgy and Graviturgy in the Wildemount book and making them only accessible to the Aberrant Mind / whatever you deem as "psionic"
The fact that they are "spells" vs "special snowflake powers" doesn't make a difference mechanically. As the DM / Player just flavor it however you want. You are an aberrant mind whose "spells" come from some crazy mental abilities that you starved yourself on top of a mountain to get. Great. You are an aberrant mind whose "spells" come from a Mind Flayer putting a tadpole in your brain stem. Also great. Mechanically there is and should not be zero difference between those two characters though.
In the massive bulk of popular media, from which D&D siphons like a lamprey on the asscheek of a blue whale, psychic ability is wholly different from magical aptitude.
Most popular media doesn't have both, though it's pretty common to just give abilities such as telepathy to magicians, or conversely, reveal that the 'magic' abilities of some strange group are actually psychic powers. The most accurate way to handle psychic powers is "any spellcaster can call themselves psychic. The effects of doing so are purely cosmetic."
She does scream when she uses her more intense powers, which to be fair is mostly for drama, but anything beyond just basic telekinesis clearly takes some apparent effort beyond just furrowing her brow. She also needs material components for more complicated abilities... Like needing a sensory deprivation chamber to "astral project"
She does scream when she uses her more intense powers, which to be fair is mostly for drama, but anything beyond just basic telekinesis clearly takes some apparent effort beyond just furrowing her brow. She also needs material components for more complicated abilities... Like needing a sensory deprivation chamber to "astral project"
Neither Billy nor 001 need anything to astrally project. And she doesn’t “scream,” she kiais. 😉 😂😂
She does scream when she uses her more intense powers, which to be fair is mostly for drama, but anything beyond just basic telekinesis clearly takes some apparent effort beyond just furrowing her brow. She also needs material components for more complicated abilities... Like needing a sensory deprivation chamber to "astral project"
I don't think a sensory deprivation chamber is going to fit in that component pouch so easily...
Yes psionics in earlier editions was not what it could be or should be but I think at least 2&3e might have mechanics that can be drawn on to build something that be better than anything we’ve seen so far. The first thing is a basis for psionics outside of magic - no weave, no mana, Nyet. I have a few ideas - not really ready for prime time but here goes
1) when you move your body etc you think about it and it happens - psionics should be pretty much the same thing - no components, no somatics just the thought and maybe a vocal component ( like the Belariad- the will and the word) 2) psionics is direct manipulation of the world by the power of the mind - no mana/weave/ whatever as such it works even in magic dead zones. On the other hand natural or even magical resistances still work so a red dragon is still resistant to psionic induced fire just as it is to a bonfire or a fireball. 3) no devotions/sciences/powers all of the abilities get ranked into 10 levels and perhaps by their psionic categories. (since this is how DnD ranks it’s powers) . 4) we already have 3 subclasses (a rogue, warrior and sorceror) that would need some revamping but you could add at least 5 others - clairsentient, psychometabolic, telepathic, telekinetic, and psychoportive these would be somewhat like the Mage’s Arcane Traditions - areas of focus but not exclusive areas. I would also love to see subclasses for artificers and rangers. I can even see psionic “warlocks” with a patron granting them access and training. 5) attacks and defenses are developed as you level up along meta psionic abilities as parts of the base classes what else goes into them is still up in the air I haven’t though that thru yet.
Anyway that’s about as far as I’ve thought into what a 5-6e psion and psionics should be like.
there lots of really cool abilities listed in the 2e -4e manuals so while they will need some reworking to fit the 5e mechanics it shouldn’t be that hard
Still, I think Eleven is a good example of what players WANT from a psychic character. But I think there are some details about her that are important...
For one, it's clear that every time she uses her abilities, it's costing her something. Especially in the first season, if she did a psychic anything she got a nosebleed, even for minor things. It took a toll on her body, although we don't know exactly what that was. There is pretty consistently some kind of visual tell when she's using her psychic powers. Whether it's gesturing with her hands, grunting, groaning... there's usually something. This, I assume, is mostly done for the audience's benefit... if the actress wasn't doing anything it would be hard to tell that it's specifically Eleven that's doing something in any scene where she's using her powers.
For two... the scale of Stranger Things is much lower than most D&D campaigns. The ST Demogorgon is actually statted in an official 5e book, and it's a CR 4 Monstrosity with 60 Hit Points. I think you could realistically stat Eleven as a low-level Aberrant Mind Sorcerer and easily represent all of her abilities in-game. Even her ability to attack psychically without any visual component can be easily represented by using Sorcery Points to Subtle Spell... it's not something she can do endlessly all day long. If she does it too many times in a row she clearly gets tired.
All things considered, Eleven is probably one of the weaker psychic characters in fiction. Jean Grey could kick her ass from the X-Mansion to West Jersey without even tapping into the Phoenix Force. Even Todd the Vegan from Scott Pilgrim could probably blast her off the map as long as he avoids gelato.
That all said... if the main issue is that Eleven doesn't require any obvious components for her abilities, and if you focus on later parts of the story where the little stuff doesn't drain her the way it used to... that's fine up to a point, but at the end of the day from a gameplay perspective it doesn't quite work. If a player has an ability to deal damage to an opponent endlessly with no outward sign that they're doing anything, it can greatly unbalance the game. It can kind of be done... any sorcerer can spend a sorcery point to use Subtle Spell on Power Word Kill and someone can drop dead with no indication that it was the sorcerer who did it. But it at least costs a resource... spell slots, sorcery points... you can't just stand in a room with someone and hit them with Vicious Mockery all day long without someone realizing you're doing something. And that's not just for logical reasons... it's for gameplay.
Now that we've talked about it a bit more, I think that Sorcerer does the most to replicate the idea of a Psionic character. It just doesn't do a good job of capturing the flavor. Casting from CHA instead of INT? The one Subclass that is really geared toward the concept is flavored more like having a brain slug instead of being a "mutant"? Even if you have that subclass, you still need to take a feat just to move things with telekinesis? As much as I'm kind of focused on arguing against many of the pro-psionics points in this thread, ultimately I do agree that none of the "psychic warrior" subclasses that have been introduced really fulfill the fantasy. I even said before... I'd love to have a full-on Mystic class, and having it be over complicated and confusing, to me at least, would be a positive. I like figuring out stuff like that. But I also don't feel that psionics needs to be a fully separate system from Magic... ultimately I would prefer it to be just a flavor for magic rather than it's own thing.
She does scream when she uses her more intense powers, which to be fair is mostly for drama, but anything beyond just basic telekinesis clearly takes some apparent effort beyond just furrowing her brow. She also needs material components for more complicated abilities... Like needing a sensory deprivation chamber to "astral project"
I thought that was more like something with the ritual tag.
Just want to insert, I think MCDM studios is still open playtesting (you don't have to be a patron anymore) of their Talent class, which is their take on the Psion. Yes, the docs are still available but the v2 survey is closed.
You say "MCDM" and my brain immediately translates it to "poorly designed BS written by a guy that wouldn't know game balance if it bit him in the butt." Colville's entire method of running a game is based on not even reading most of the rules to begin with then tossing out the handful he does know on a whim and changing everything on a regular basis. "But buy my books full of poorly balanced rules so you can ignore them just like I do!" He has the style of an infomercial host with less credibility.
As everyone else has said, an entire library of features that does what magic does but is not magic is kind of antithetical to the streamlined design concepts of 5e.
You want something that is explicitly Not Majik that does things that magic can do. And by the sounds of your rants, you want things to be removed from the existing magic classes and magic systems so they can be re-written into a completely different set of Not Majik rules that functionally do the same thing as magic does now but use completely different Brane PowRz (sic) rules for the exclusive reason of making it super clear that it's absolutely Not Majik. The game already has rules for the stuff you want your Not Majik to do: it's called magic and the rules for how it works can be found on pages 201-205 of the Players' Handbook. That's the reason you don't need extra rules for your Brane PowRz. The stuff already exists and you're just demanding "but no, it's different" when there is absolutely no rational reason, from a game design perspective, to add in a bunch of unnecessary junk to do something that already exists in a simpler form. Just cast magic missile and call it MIND BULLETS! (sic) and be done with it.
If psionics is just a flavor of magic then what is the point? If it’s present it should be something different, that’s really the point of it. What doesn’t fit is that it should be rare - maybe by requiring Int, wis,& Cha to all be 13+. While that wouldn’t actually affect its frequency as a character it would sort of establish it as relatively rare in the population at large. You could then use the stat bonuses as a base for power points - Int bonus at L1, + Wis bonus at L2, +Cha bonus at L3 then stat boosts as normal with additional points at selected levels or 1 or 2 points per level.
Okay. Let me make this unambiguously crystal clear to everybody, so I stop having to field this dumb response.
My issue with the whole "psychic powers should just beconsidered MAGIC because 5e!" thing is that currently, the Venn diagram of "Magic" vs "Psychic Abilities" looks like this:
Got it?
Good.
Now, tell me - who in their right mind would voluntarily play a psychic character given that the above diagram is true? You're giving up the vast majority of what makes a spellcaster fun, and in return you get to play...a strictly worse spellcaster. With absolutely nothing to show for taking ninety percent of your class's spell list and chucking it in the garbage. yes, sure, some people will still do it because They Wanna(C) and they don't care if their character is any good, simply that it's sticking to a theme. Not all of us are so blessed that we can tolerate intentionally making actively terrible characters just to try and live up to cool ideas in our head.
Tell me. Why would anyone play a psychic character in the above diagram. Why would you play one?
Every single player wanted to be a jedi. All of them.
Translate that to D&D. If being psionic was just a subclass of everything then who wouldn't want a little taste of it? As it is now every sub class gets a little magic ability eventually.
As for a full psionic character. Even if they could do everything a full magic user could they then had advantage over the MU. They never needed components of any kind and very few people had any defense against them.
By the time you balanced everything out they might as well just been Magic Users.
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I think if 5.5 stuck to the "backward compatibility" pledge so that Psionics beyond the present subclasses were an optional bolt on through a new class would be great signal for 5e. Begs the question as to whether 5.5e sees itself more as an expansion or a revision, though what you're talking about can be seen as a little of "both."
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
I'm not really concerned with how psionics worked in previous editions of D&D. From all accounts I've heard, the answer is "poorly".
In the massive bulk of popular media, from which D&D siphons like a lamprey on the asscheek of a blue whale, psychic ability is wholly different from magical aptitude. In fact, in most cases I've encountered where both exist at all, having a talent for one means you're actively blocked from the other. Magically active people are, or grow, psy-null, and awakened minds lose the ability to touch the mana field.
Treating psychic abilities as nothing more than crappy also-ran spellcasting with absolutely no advantages and a myriad of weaknesses and drawbacks over traditional spellslinging spits in the face of all the popular Psychic Character tropes, and does it so flagrantly that it's essentially unrecoverable. I cannot make a psychic character in D&D 5e. Not one that feels like an awakened mind instead of a jank-ass dodgy spellslinger with weird hang-ups. The closest I've ever gotten is not an Aberrant sorcerer, not a Soulknife or Psi Warrior or any of that crap. The closest I've ever gotten is an Arcane Trickster rogue treating its various spells as minor psychic talents, and even that felt weird and distinctly Left of Right.
I don't care if psychic characters have to deal with magic resistance and the like. That's fine, nobody's arguing that psychic abilities should be unresistable. I care a lot that psychic characters have nothing whatsoever going for them because they use the spellcasting rules for no good god damn reason.
Please do not contact or message me.
This thread again...
We may actually see a return to psionics if/when Dark Sun comes around in 5e. They already resuscitated the nightmare beast and there's a braxat miniature on the way. After looking at the options on that big feedback survey, who knows.
As for why no mystic? I can speak for myself in saying that my negative feedback was centered on the mystic being duplicative. The mystic UA articles were like 10% flavor, 10% new features, and 80% copying and pasting the text of existing spells into psionic disciplines. I disagreed with the notion that spells couldn't be a good expression of psionics. I have no problem with psionic powers using the same spell system, maybe by using points or some alternative slot system like the warlock, but ultimately whether a spell is accomplished by waving your hands around and speaking words or by twitching your forehead muscles and thinking real hard doesn't matter to me. If I see an alternative system that really speaks to what a psion is, maybe I'll change my mind, but that hasn't happened.
What made the psion different in earlier editions was the different sorts of spells/powers they could cast, not that the system by which they could cast was different. Points vs spell slots is just not an interesting distinction to me. I also thought the mystic exhibited a few good ideas, such as the focus/concentration mechanic for non-spell purposes in the way that the 3e psion did. That was unfortunately a baby thrown out with the bath water.
Where the feedback went too far, in my opinion, was in the vitriolic hate for the psionic wizard subclass. I think an int-based caster is a fitting candidate to support a subclass representing the archetypal psion. Sue me if you disagree.
I think the key problem is that it's hard to make a psionicist original when you already have casters who can do the same things. Further, there is no "successful" psion from previous versions to piggy-back on. The 3e psion I mentioned was a redundant mess. The 4e psion was functionally the same as every other controller class. 2e was far too complicated.
Reading minds and moving things remotely have been basic powers used by wizards in basically all fiction everywhere forever.
This is why the wizard subclass should have been preserved, given the current paradigm. The sorcerer is an underpowered caster and everybody knows it. That's a problem with the sorcerer, not the idea of psionic subclasses.
You're describing what sounds to you like an obvious psionicist which has never existed in the history of D&D. Psionicists have ALWAYS had access to a ton of powers/disciplines/etc. Psionicists also run out of power. I could see a hybrid of your idea in a wizard subclass that is awarded the ability to cast nth-level spells ad infinitum, but it'd be tough to balance.
You're straw-manning the other side here. The problem you identify is that there are not enough psionic options, not that there isn't a stand-alone class. Most of the arguments you're making would be addressed by a well-tuned wizard subclass, but I suspect that would make you unhappy.
This is worth noting. Honestly psionic classes have never been well received in D&D. Every iteration has been controversial and none have pleased everyone. 5e is just continuing the age-old tradition.
As everyone else has said, an entire library of features that does what magic does but is not magic is kind of antithetical to the streamlined design concepts of 5e.
I do think they could do something. Like a class that gains base abilities and can choose ways to enhance those abilities in a way similar to how metamagic worked. That's kind of how the 4e psionic classes worked, but that got mixed reactions and if they were as stingy with the enhancements as they are with metamagic, it would probably not be very effective.
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Why do ALL psychic characters have to be nothing more than shitty terrible horrible also-ran spellcasters that don't get to do a single solitary god damned thing The Magic Guy can't do, but are left with a legion of things they don't get to do that The Mage Guy totally can?
Why do psychic characters have to bellow at the top of their goddamned lungs whenever they use their powers just because The Magic Guy has to provide verbal components for their spells? At what point in the history of fiction has a psychic character had to scream magic words at a hundred and sixty decibels to make their mental powers work? At most they have to quietly recite a focusing mantra, and even then the mantra is generally a placebo or focal aid more than a necessity.
Why do psychic characters run out of juice after using their powers four or five times, just because The Magic Guy can't magic more than four or five times a day so even though he gets twenty times the spell count and versatility we do, we don't get any benefits whatsoever for restricting ourselves to the one or two spells per level that we can successfully convince a DM is Psychic-y enough?
An awakened mind has abilities and talents a magician cannot duplicate. 'Cannot duplicate' does not mean "can super-easily duplicate basically for free with just a handful of pissant spells that costs the Magic Guy absolutely nothing at all while also having a ton of other cool stuff the dumb psychic guy will never be able to do because Majik is cooler than Brane Powers."
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I've noticed that a feature of a lot of the psion-inspired subclasses and feats are the ability to cast spells without verbal or somatic components... like, if you take the telekinetic feat you can cast mage hand requiring no components and it's invisible, which seems like a simple solution, since the ability to pick up objects with your mind would probably need to be balanced under about the same restrictions as the mage hand spell. The Aberrant Mind Sorcerer gets a unique feature where they can cast spells using Sorcery Points instead of spell slots, and doing so means they can cast spells without verbal or somatic components...
So the fantasy of being able to cast spells with pure Mind Power seems to be hard-baked into a lot of the psionic-based features in the game. I don't know how well it's done... I've never played as one of these subclasses, but that part of the complaint seems to be addressed about as well as I think you could without creating a wholly independent class that has its own form of "spellcasting".
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Before we continue, I'll emphasize that I am consciously not a member of this loudmouth club.
You're subtly straw-manning the argument again, and arguing past me. I have no problem with psionics introducing new mechanics. I just haven't seen a good slate of new mechanics. Waiving spell components is a trivial change if that's all it takes. As I understand, the crux of your argument is that you just don't like the Vancian spell slot system. Like I said, I don't mind if people have alternatives. My only comment on the matter is that point-like systems don't really make a difference when it comes to the feel of the psion, in my opinion. You're then arguing that the wizard sucks out the oxygen from a prospective psion because it can do too much. Well, I don't know what to say. Wizards have always been able to do a TON of things with magic, constrained only by their knowledge. That's what makes wizards what they are.
Why does the psion run out of power? Because there needs to be balance in the game. If you don't like the configuration of the spell slots available to a wizard, that's a different issue. One could imagine other configurations that give 20 uses of a first-level spell, and fewer uses of higher-level spells. Spell slots are one way of enforcing a limit that preserves balance. There are others, I'm sure, but I don't see this scaffolding behind the scenes as being something that needs to fundamentally change insofar as it doesn't change the fiction of the game. You obviously disagree.
Now why should the psion run out of power in the fiction? Take any number of examples in media and literature. Jedi restrict their use of the Force because it is a moral obligation on their part, and Luke Skywalker killed himself through exertion. Sith are limited by the strain the dark side takes on their bodies. Eleven passes out if she over-exerts herself, and once so badly that she cut herself off from her power indefinitely. Mewtwo runs out of PP for its psychic attack. Most people in reality who perform complex calculations and creative thought find it exhausting.
Okay, this is ki in the fiction, but I couldn't resist.
Psionics as abilities separate and distinct from "Magic" needlessly complicates the simplified rules design philosophy of 5e.
The things that a psion could do socially with powers are just as easily represented by creating new "Psionic Spells" ala Chronurgy and Graviturgy in the Wildemount book and making them only accessible to the Aberrant Mind / whatever you deem as "psionic"
The fact that they are "spells" vs "special snowflake powers" doesn't make a difference mechanically. As the DM / Player just flavor it however you want. You are an aberrant mind whose "spells" come from some crazy mental abilities that you starved yourself on top of a mountain to get. Great. You are an aberrant mind whose "spells" come from a Mind Flayer putting a tadpole in your brain stem. Also great. Mechanically there is and should not be zero difference between those two characters though.
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Most popular media doesn't have both, though it's pretty common to just give abilities such as telepathy to magicians, or conversely, reveal that the 'magic' abilities of some strange group are actually psychic powers. The most accurate way to handle psychic powers is "any spellcaster can call themselves psychic. The effects of doing so are purely cosmetic."
Here’s a famous peycher who clearly don’t need no “components” to do her thang:
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She does scream when she uses her more intense powers, which to be fair is mostly for drama, but anything beyond just basic telekinesis clearly takes some apparent effort beyond just furrowing her brow. She also needs material components for more complicated abilities... Like needing a sensory deprivation chamber to "astral project"
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Neither Billy nor 001 need anything to astrally project. And she doesn’t “scream,” she kiais. 😉 😂😂
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I don't think a sensory deprivation chamber is going to fit in that component pouch so easily...
Yes psionics in earlier editions was not what it could be or should be but I think at least 2&3e might have mechanics that can be drawn on to build something that be better than anything we’ve seen so far. The first thing is a basis for psionics outside of magic - no weave, no mana, Nyet. I have a few ideas - not really ready for prime time but here goes
1) when you move your body etc you think about it and it happens - psionics should be pretty much the same thing - no components, no somatics just the thought and maybe a vocal component ( like the Belariad- the will and the word)
2) psionics is direct manipulation of the world by the power of the mind - no mana/weave/ whatever as such it works even in magic dead zones. On the other hand natural or even magical resistances still work so a red dragon is still resistant to psionic induced fire just as it is to a bonfire or a fireball.
3) no devotions/sciences/powers all of the abilities get ranked into 10 levels and perhaps by their psionic categories. (since this is how DnD ranks it’s powers) .
4) we already have 3 subclasses (a rogue, warrior and sorceror) that would need some revamping but you could add at least 5 others - clairsentient, psychometabolic, telepathic, telekinetic, and psychoportive these would be somewhat like the Mage’s Arcane Traditions - areas of focus but not exclusive areas. I would also love to see subclasses for artificers and rangers. I can even see psionic “warlocks” with a patron granting them access and training.
5) attacks and defenses are developed as you level up along meta psionic abilities as parts of the base classes what else goes into them is still up in the air I haven’t though that thru yet.
Anyway that’s about as far as I’ve thought into what a 5-6e psion and psionics should be like.
there lots of really cool abilities listed in the 2e -4e manuals so while they will need some reworking to fit the 5e mechanics it shouldn’t be that hard
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Still, I think Eleven is a good example of what players WANT from a psychic character. But I think there are some details about her that are important...
For one, it's clear that every time she uses her abilities, it's costing her something. Especially in the first season, if she did a psychic anything she got a nosebleed, even for minor things. It took a toll on her body, although we don't know exactly what that was. There is pretty consistently some kind of visual tell when she's using her psychic powers. Whether it's gesturing with her hands, grunting, groaning... there's usually something. This, I assume, is mostly done for the audience's benefit... if the actress wasn't doing anything it would be hard to tell that it's specifically Eleven that's doing something in any scene where she's using her powers.
For two... the scale of Stranger Things is much lower than most D&D campaigns. The ST Demogorgon is actually statted in an official 5e book, and it's a CR 4 Monstrosity with 60 Hit Points. I think you could realistically stat Eleven as a low-level Aberrant Mind Sorcerer and easily represent all of her abilities in-game. Even her ability to attack psychically without any visual component can be easily represented by using Sorcery Points to Subtle Spell... it's not something she can do endlessly all day long. If she does it too many times in a row she clearly gets tired.
All things considered, Eleven is probably one of the weaker psychic characters in fiction. Jean Grey could kick her ass from the X-Mansion to West Jersey without even tapping into the Phoenix Force. Even Todd the Vegan from Scott Pilgrim could probably blast her off the map as long as he avoids gelato.
That all said... if the main issue is that Eleven doesn't require any obvious components for her abilities, and if you focus on later parts of the story where the little stuff doesn't drain her the way it used to... that's fine up to a point, but at the end of the day from a gameplay perspective it doesn't quite work. If a player has an ability to deal damage to an opponent endlessly with no outward sign that they're doing anything, it can greatly unbalance the game. It can kind of be done... any sorcerer can spend a sorcery point to use Subtle Spell on Power Word Kill and someone can drop dead with no indication that it was the sorcerer who did it. But it at least costs a resource... spell slots, sorcery points... you can't just stand in a room with someone and hit them with Vicious Mockery all day long without someone realizing you're doing something. And that's not just for logical reasons... it's for gameplay.
Now that we've talked about it a bit more, I think that Sorcerer does the most to replicate the idea of a Psionic character. It just doesn't do a good job of capturing the flavor. Casting from CHA instead of INT? The one Subclass that is really geared toward the concept is flavored more like having a brain slug instead of being a "mutant"? Even if you have that subclass, you still need to take a feat just to move things with telekinesis? As much as I'm kind of focused on arguing against many of the pro-psionics points in this thread, ultimately I do agree that none of the "psychic warrior" subclasses that have been introduced really fulfill the fantasy. I even said before... I'd love to have a full-on Mystic class, and having it be over complicated and confusing, to me at least, would be a positive. I like figuring out stuff like that. But I also don't feel that psionics needs to be a fully separate system from Magic... ultimately I would prefer it to be just a flavor for magic rather than it's own thing.
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I thought that was more like something with the ritual tag.
You say "MCDM" and my brain immediately translates it to "poorly designed BS written by a guy that wouldn't know game balance if it bit him in the butt." Colville's entire method of running a game is based on not even reading most of the rules to begin with then tossing out the handful he does know on a whim and changing everything on a regular basis. "But buy my books full of poorly balanced rules so you can ignore them just like I do!" He has the style of an infomercial host with less credibility.
Well, Yurei, to put it quite simply...
You want something that is explicitly Not Majik that does things that magic can do. And by the sounds of your rants, you want things to be removed from the existing magic classes and magic systems so they can be re-written into a completely different set of Not Majik rules that functionally do the same thing as magic does now but use completely different Brane PowRz (sic) rules for the exclusive reason of making it super clear that it's absolutely Not Majik. The game already has rules for the stuff you want your Not Majik to do: it's called magic and the rules for how it works can be found on pages 201-205 of the Players' Handbook. That's the reason you don't need extra rules for your Brane PowRz. The stuff already exists and you're just demanding "but no, it's different" when there is absolutely no rational reason, from a game design perspective, to add in a bunch of unnecessary junk to do something that already exists in a simpler form. Just cast magic missile and call it MIND BULLETS! (sic) and be done with it.
If psionics is just a flavor of magic then what is the point? If it’s present it should be something different, that’s really the point of it. What doesn’t fit is that it should be rare - maybe by requiring Int, wis,& Cha to all be 13+. While that wouldn’t actually affect its frequency as a character it would sort of establish it as relatively rare in the population at large. You could then use the stat bonuses as a base for power points - Int bonus at L1, + Wis bonus at L2, +Cha bonus at L3 then stat boosts as normal with additional points at selected levels or 1 or 2 points per level.
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Okay. Let me make this unambiguously crystal clear to everybody, so I stop having to field this dumb response.
My issue with the whole "psychic powers should just beconsidered MAGIC because 5e!" thing is that currently, the Venn diagram of "Magic" vs "Psychic Abilities" looks like this:
Got it?
Good.
Now, tell me - who in their right mind would voluntarily play a psychic character given that the above diagram is true? You're giving up the vast majority of what makes a spellcaster fun, and in return you get to play...a strictly worse spellcaster. With absolutely nothing to show for taking ninety percent of your class's spell list and chucking it in the garbage. yes, sure, some people will still do it because They Wanna(C) and they don't care if their character is any good, simply that it's sticking to a theme. Not all of us are so blessed that we can tolerate intentionally making actively terrible characters just to try and live up to cool ideas in our head.
Tell me. Why would anyone play a psychic character in the above diagram. Why would you play one?
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Anyone ever play the RPG StarWars?
Every single player wanted to be a jedi. All of them.
Translate that to D&D. If being psionic was just a subclass of everything then who wouldn't want a little taste of it? As it is now every sub class gets a little magic ability eventually.
As for a full psionic character. Even if they could do everything a full magic user could they then had advantage over the MU. They never needed components of any kind and very few people had any defense against them.
By the time you balanced everything out they might as well just been Magic Users.