Yeah a lot of the "psionics are broken op" comments I saw for 3/3.5 were because of people flagrantly disregarding the rules. "The party lv 1 psion blew all his power points and augmented mind thrust into one shotting the boss!" Yeah that wasn't possible without igoring the rules limiting how many points you could spend at once. Heck in 3.0 I would argue they were underpowered, 3.5 I thought they were pretty balanced. Demonstrably weaker than standard casters but given that CoDzilla was a thing that's maybe a point in their favor. I don't remember hearing anything about them in 4e other than monk being a weird fit mrchanically in the power source. (Granted, my always fairly minor online community interaction was even moreso most of 4e because I had moved away from my dnd group at the time.)
5e most of what I've seen is "not fantasy enough/too anime" which... if that's the hill you want to die on go you I guess? And "what can it do without stepping on the wizard's toes" when the wizards realm of influence is roughly "everything but healing and hitting things with weapons. Sometimes those too."
If one desires psychic abilities, or for psychic characters to be fun and satisfying to play, one had best hope that Wizards about-faces on their usual policies and disregards community feedback completely.
That's really a request for "pay attention to my feedback, but not his", because the response to "no feedback" is "clearly no-one wants this thing, so let's toss it". The main problem with implementing psis as a sorcerer subtype is that sorcerers are bad, and that doesn't have anything to do with psi per se.
Psionics has always left a bad taste in the mouth of the majority of players, and even a larger percentage of DM's who have had to deal with any psi-based chars. It is far far better for WOTC to simply kill off the entire concept.
Which shows Yurei's point to be more "Pay attention to the feedback from the people who want the feature" as opposed to the "feedback of those who don't want anyone to have it".
5E is still supposed to be the streamlined, keeping it simple, edition of D&D. I’d like to see psionics as much as the next person, but not necessarily as some kind of spellcasting module to be slotted into the mechanics without context. Provide some background, embed it in a setting and I’m all for it, but if it’s just supposed to fit into say, the Forgotten Realms without contextualization I’ll certainly expect it to be a somewhat bland and generic I-can’t-believe-it’s-not-magic mechanic devoid of interesting features.
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Yeah a lot of the "psionics are broken op" comments I saw for 3/3.5 were because of people flagrantly disregarding the rules. "The party lv 1 psion blew all his power points and augmented mind thrust into one shotting the boss!" Yeah that wasn't possible without igoring the rules limiting how many points you could spend at once. Heck in 3.0 I would argue they were underpowered, 3.5 I thought they were pretty balanced. Demonstrably weaker than standard casters but given that CoDzilla was a thing that's maybe a point in their favor. I don't remember hearing anything about them in 4e other than monk being a weird fit mrchanically in the power source. (Granted, my always fairly minor online community interaction was even moreso most of 4e because I had moved away from my dnd group at the time.)
5e most of what I've seen is "not fantasy enough/too anime" which... if that's the hill you want to die on go you I guess? And "what can it do without stepping on the wizard's toes" when the wizards realm of influence is roughly "everything but healing and hitting things with weapons. Sometimes those too."
Had a DM in 3.5 who regularly let the party druid use all 15 bolts of call lightning storm in one round. FYI, I was the barbarian.
If one desires psychic abilities, or for psychic characters to be fun and satisfying to play, one had best hope that Wizards about-faces on their usual policies and disregards community feedback completely.
That's really a request for "pay attention to my feedback, but not his", because the response to "no feedback" is "clearly no-one wants this thing, so let's toss it". The main problem with implementing psis as a sorcerer subtype is that sorcerers are bad, and that doesn't have anything to do with psi per se.
It doesn't make sense to ask for feedback for a new system/feature from people that don't want that thing to exist. People who cook meat don't ask vegans for feedback on their meals. If WotC actually wanted to have psionics (that is, real psionics), they should have only asked/acknowledged feedback from those that wanted psionics.
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It doesn't make sense to ask for feedback for a new system/feature from people that don't want that thing to exist.
Only paying attention to the fans of a concept is how you wind up with power escalation and every new class/subclass being more overpowered than the last. It is absolutely important to listen to criticism. Of course, it's important to use the right feedback for the right problem. Basically, you want a system that is appealing to fans, but is also not annoying to DMs and people who choose to not play psionic characters.
If one desires psychic abilities, or for psychic characters to be fun and satisfying to play, one had best hope that Wizards about-faces on their usual policies and disregards community feedback completely.
That's really a request for "pay attention to my feedback, but not his", because the response to "no feedback" is "clearly no-one wants this thing, so let's toss it". The main problem with implementing psis as a sorcerer subtype is that sorcerers are bad, and that doesn't have anything to do with psi per se.
It doesn't make sense to ask for feedback for a new system/feature from people that don't want that thing to exist. People who cook meat don't ask vegans for feedback on their meals. If WotC actually wanted to have psionics (that is, real psionics), they should have only asked/acknowledged feedback from those that wanted psionics.
I think we are agreeing. If the majority of the playerbase does not want psionics in the game, whatever the reason may be, then WOTC would be wise to not go down that road.
Allow me to make this clear. So long as I'm sticking my neck out here regardless, I may as well.
None of the people who have traditionally defended a more robust psychic abilities/powers/psionics system have asked for psionics. Wizards dangled a bunch of psionics out in UA, put their psychic concepts in our faces, and said "Hey! What do y'all think?" A few of us have tried to express exactly that. The majority opinion seems to be "get this stupid sci-fi weeb shit out of my GRITTY SWORDS-N-SORCERY GAEM DX", and yes - I firmly believe such feedback should be tallied up and then ignored. The only useful feedback one can glean from people who don't want a thing is whether or not you should introduce the thing. Once you decide you're going to do it anyways - and Wizards has - the people who gave the "GTFO" feedback no longer matter. Their opinion has been officially discarded, and the design process should move on to how to do the thing properly.
Nevertheless. We did not force this on anyone. Frankly, I really would rather have no psionics at all than the half-assed, poorly implemented shit stew we're liable to get. But that ship has sailed. Now that we're getting "psionic" subclasses, many of the people who didn't want them are actively attempting to sabotage them, make them even worse, to try and discourage their introduction and use. Those people are ********, and they will be dealt with in a manner befitting that appellate. Anything that gets printed should be the best version of itself it can be, because we will not ever get a second chance at making it better. No, errata does not count, and never has. Nobody pays attention to it, nobody uses it, and even Wizards of the Coast does not bother with it beyond pro forma Twitter releases twice a year or so.
If we don't want another 5e Sorcerer situation, then the mechanics should have been figured out and properly settled on before being introduced. They were not. Some of us are gonna be pissed about that for the next forever. But we didn't do it, nor are we sitting at people's tables with our magical advance copies of Tasha's Cauldron waiting to beat them over the heads of anyone who doesn't immediately adopt everything in the book.
Anyone giving folks the sass over demanding that Wizards "pay attention to me but not to them", or saying "but the 1/2e psychics from thirty years ago were bad and I hate them so psychic powers should never come back!" can just stop. Nobody cares what the game looked like several decades and editions ago both. And yes - the feedback from people who want the thing and are hoping to use it becomes more important than the feedback of the people who don't want it and won't. So just...stop. Okay?
The people who hate psionics can simply say 'no psionic characters in my game or world lore'. Simple as that. I personally have no interest in psionics, but I know a lot of people want them so I don't object to them being a part of DnD. Psionics has been part of DnD for many editions, so it seems odd to say that it has no place.
The vegan comparison is a good one. If you're cooking meat you don't ask for a vegans opinion of the meal.
I'm not sure how you're all already talking about a book that isn't even out yet and the leaks haven't gone into depth yet. We barely seen the classes and assuming it is all true I haven't really seen anything as terribly bad.
As for the two Psionic classes I personally think they fill a niche within D&D. I thought the idea behind them is interesting but it wasn't terrible felt a bit underbalanced if I could call it that. I honestly felt that the die system could use a small buff since all your abilities are loaded behind it for higher level campaigns it won't be as interesting since all your skills are on the same system but then again at 17th level you would have 12 of these psi dices.
I honestly think that "many" you call that didn't want them are more a minority it's just the louder of the two. Giving people choices is cool and even if some people don't like it it's totally fine to bring them out. After all it is up to the DM of your game to decide if you can play it in their game setting and in a situation they are weak or too strong he might tweak around with whatever ability seems to spill over. It's not like it is an entire new class but rather a few subclasses that carry these Psionic powers unless they also come out in the form of feats but again look at the DM or talk before with your group on "how to deal with Psionic powers and do we want this in our campaign" if that is a real issue to you.
Honestly, this whole argument could have been avoided this edition. Yurei got it right on the head that it started because WotC didn’t do the basic thing in feedback of asking players how receptive they were to the idea of psionics in 5E when they first brought it up. We will never know how much of this mess was because the actual majority didn’t want it, or if it was because the UA playtest material was too binary in response. We will never know if people receptive but cautious were lumped in with the “don’t want it” crowd to make a majority, all due to how feedback is analyzed.
If one desires psychic abilities, or for psychic characters to be fun and satisfying to play, one had best hope that Wizards about-faces on their usual policies and disregards community feedback completely.
That's really a request for "pay attention to my feedback, but not his", because the response to "no feedback" is "clearly no-one wants this thing, so let's toss it". The main problem with implementing psis as a sorcerer subtype is that sorcerers are bad, and that doesn't have anything to do with psi per se.
It doesn't make sense to ask for feedback for a new system/feature from people that don't want that thing to exist. People who cook meat don't ask vegans for feedback on their meals. If WotC actually wanted to have psionics (that is, real psionics), they should have only asked/acknowledged feedback from those that wanted psionics.
I think we are agreeing. If the majority of the playerbase does not want psionics in the game, whatever the reason may be, then WOTC would be wise to not go down that road.
Let's not forget that community feedback is also market research and integral to cost benefit analysis of investing resources for introducing a 5e psionic system into it publishing schedule. The sense I'm getting from this discussion are the bulk of the player base are either outright antagonistic to disinterested in a psionic system. The minority that are open to psionic are divided among whether resigning magic or another of the game's supernatural power systems or inventing a new mechanical system (and the arguments over what that would look like). Given all that I could see Wizards washing away any interest in introducing psionics into 5e, leaving that something definitely for the third party scene to fight over in a way that would benefit the third party bottom lines, but would be more a loss for the Wizards. So even from a strictly business point of view, psionics is about scale.
As to the Vegan analogy, and the claim "don't ask the vegans about psionics." Think of the publishing line more like a restaurant. And continuing the presumption that the bulk of Wizards base are anti psionic vegans are plant strong dieters. Would Wizards want its main patrons to beef, so to speak, about the meaty messy psionic smell preoccupying its kitchen, when what they really want are Dragon Rage Barbarians sustained on Goodberry? Let. a more specialized third party kitchen run with it.
Honestly, this whole argument could have been avoided this edition. Yurei got it right on the head that it started because WotC didn’t do the basic thing in feedback of asking players how receptive they were to the idea of psionics in 5E when they first brought it up. We will never know how much of this mess was because the actual majority didn’t want it, or if it was because the UA playtest material was too binary in response. We will never know if people receptive but cautious were lumped in with the “don’t want it” crowd to make a majority, all due to how feedback is analyzed.
I think it's more we never really see the analytic product that's produced internally by Wizards that guides the anti-psionic trajectory (it gets complicated when you found some qualitative comments that are presumably offered for internal use). And one of those self validating mini polls on D&D Beyond likely won't provide anything useful to extrapolate.
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Honestly, this whole argument could have been avoided this edition. Yurei got it right on the head that it started because WotC didn’t do the basic thing in feedback of asking players how receptive they were to the idea of psionics in 5E when they first brought it up. We will never know how much of this mess was because the actual majority didn’t want it, or if it was because the UA playtest material was too binary in response. We will never know if people receptive but cautious were lumped in with the “don’t want it” crowd to make a majority, all due to how feedback is analyzed.
Except, apparently, it’s in. Whether it was resounding or grudging, the answer to the psionics question - as far as WotC is concerned- is yay, not nay. It looks to be implemented poorly, but it was implemented. The poor implementation might be due to those who’d have prefered a nay instead sabotaging the feedback process, definitely, but surely the people merely saying “do not want” didn’t get WotC to just tank a concept they’re putting in a published product nonetheless. Far easier to just leave well enough alone and maybe put out a statement to the extent of “we’re not prepared to go through with this yet” instead.
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I feel like this implementation is very minimalistic from what I’ve seen. Remove those subclasses that have Psionic powers, and implement your own modifications. I know some people have been working on their own Psionic class and the basics are there for Wild Talents and the like.
I am kind of expecting that they may do exactly this if Dark Sun is released.
Honestly, this whole argument could have been avoided this edition. Yurei got it right on the head that it started because WotC didn’t do the basic thing in feedback of asking players how receptive they were to the idea of psionics in 5E when they first brought it up. We will never know how much of this mess was because the actual majority didn’t want it, or if it was because the UA playtest material was too binary in response. We will never know if people receptive but cautious were lumped in with the “don’t want it” crowd to make a majority, all due to how feedback is analyzed.
Except, apparently, it’s in. Whether it was resounding or grudging, the answer to the psionics question - as far as WotC is concerned- is yay, not nay. It looks to be implemented poorly, but it was implemented. The poor implementation might be due to those who’d have prefered a nay instead sabotaging the feedback process, definitely, but surely the people merely saying “do not want” didn’t get WotC to just tank a concept they’re putting in a published product nonetheless. Far easier to just leave well enough alone and maybe put out a statement to the extent of “we’re not prepared to go through with this yet” instead.
Is it too much to ask that we wait to see the finished subclass and try playing it before passing judgment?
Honestly, this whole argument could have been avoided this edition. Yurei got it right on the head that it started because WotC didn’t do the basic thing in feedback of asking players how receptive they were to the idea of psionics in 5E when they first brought it up. We will never know how much of this mess was because the actual majority didn’t want it, or if it was because the UA playtest material was too binary in response. We will never know if people receptive but cautious were lumped in with the “don’t want it” crowd to make a majority, all due to how feedback is analyzed.
Except, apparently, it’s in. Whether it was resounding or grudging, the answer to the psionics question - as far as WotC is concerned- is yay, not nay. It looks to be implemented poorly, but it was implemented. The poor implementation might be due to those who’d have prefered a nay instead sabotaging the feedback process, definitely, but surely the people merely saying “do not want” didn’t get WotC to just tank a concept they’re putting in a published product nonetheless. Far easier to just leave well enough alone and maybe put out a statement to the extent of “we’re not prepared to go through with this yet” instead.
Is it too much to ask that we wait to see the finished subclass and try playing it before passing judgment?
I did say "looks to be", and frankly any implementation that relegates it to subclasses of an existing class is - in my utterly personal opinion - lacking. But sure, it might have been better had I added a few caveat to my earlier post.
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It doesn't make sense to ask for feedback for a new system/feature from people that don't want that thing to exist.
Only paying attention to the fans of a concept is how you wind up with power escalation and every new class/subclass being more overpowered than the last. It is absolutely important to listen to criticism. Of course, it's important to use the right feedback for the right problem. Basically, you want a system that is appealing to fans, but is also not annoying to DMs and people who choose to not play psionic characters.
That's total BS, Pantagruel. I can like something without wanting it to be overpowered. I am more than capable at giving good, constructive feedback for an introduced mechanic/class/subclass while simultaneously liking the feature and wanting it to exist. It is important to listen to criticism, I never said that it wasn't, but criticism saying "I hate this thing, so I don't want it to exist," is not good feedback and should not be listened to if WotC is going to publish that anyway. I don't want a system that is annoying, so stop with the insults and strawman arguments. A psionic system as simple as spellcasting would not annoy players, and the system would not be forced upon tables that don't want it (unless you play in Adventurer's League, in which case you have surrendered your DM agency, and have no one to blame for your dislike of type of play except for yourself).
Stop putting words that I never said into my mouth, please. I don't like being force-fed bullcrap.
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If one desires psychic abilities, or for psychic characters to be fun and satisfying to play, one had best hope that Wizards about-faces on their usual policies and disregards community feedback completely.
That's really a request for "pay attention to my feedback, but not his", because the response to "no feedback" is "clearly no-one wants this thing, so let's toss it". The main problem with implementing psis as a sorcerer subtype is that sorcerers are bad, and that doesn't have anything to do with psi per se.
It doesn't make sense to ask for feedback for a new system/feature from people that don't want that thing to exist. People who cook meat don't ask vegans for feedback on their meals. If WotC actually wanted to have psionics (that is, real psionics), they should have only asked/acknowledged feedback from those that wanted psionics.
I think we are agreeing. If the majority of the playerbase does not want psionics in the game, whatever the reason may be, then WOTC would be wise to not go down that road.
But, WotC wants psionics, proven by the fact that they ignored those comments, and decided to make "psionics" anyway. WotC owns the game, so if you don't like the features in the book, vote with your money. Don't buy it. The most effective way to let the designers of the game know if you support their content is with your wallet.
Don't try and veto my fun, please. It would not have hurt you in any way if a good, official psionics system had been published. It's both gatekeeping and being a jerk when you tell people that their fun is wrong. If WotC were to make a book full of anime character options and adventures, I would not buy it, as I'm not interested in that content. I dislike it, so I wouldn't buy it, it's really that simple. However, I would not go to online forums and whine about that book existing. I wouldn't go onto the UA surveys and try and sabotage the mechanics of that book because I don't want that content. Any decent human being would do the same. This is the equivalent of licking all of the cookies so someone else can't have them.
I think everyone here is missing an important point: the majority of players in D&D absolutely want Psionics in the game. The problem is that majority itself is split into two warring factions.
A large portion of the players that want Psionics are traditionalist that want it to be unique and distinct. They don't want it to be implemented through Spells or Spellcasting.
A (likely) equally large portion want Psionics to be a subsect of Spellcasting. They see Psionics the same way they look at Divine Casting, Arcane Casting, or "Primal" Casting (Druid, Ranger). To them, Psionic is just a tag, not a system.
And then there is the minority that do not want Psionics at all, no matter how they are implemented.
If we assume (and honestly we have nothing to go on here) that all 3 portions are equal, then it is clear that 2/3rds of the playerbase actually want Psionics in the game, which is why WotC pushed forward with it. We can assume that is why they started with Mystic.
Then when Mystic received Feedback, and the 2/3rds of the playerbase that didn't like it (the anti-psionic portion and the Psionic as Spellcasting portion), WotC went back and looked at that data to see what they should do next. They saw that a majority of the players wanted Psionics (true) but also saw that a majority did not want them to be as complex as Mystic (also true).
So WotC is left with a difficult dilemma. On one hand, the majority want Psionics. On the other, a majority (made up of a different combo of players) didn't want it to be complex and separate. So the obvious solution is to meet in the middle. Make Psionics as a subsection of other systems to provide Psionics to those that want it without offending those that do not. Problem is, that also has pissed off 2/3rds of the player base (the no Psionics at all crowd and the Psionics as a unique system crowd).
So WotC is in a no win situation. No matter what option they take, they will piss off 2/3rds of the fans in some capacity. At this point their only solution is to try and appease whatever small majority of the 3 different crowds they can, while causing the least amount of unrest from the other 2. Which has led to where we are now.
For what it is worth, I myself have always been in the Psionic Casting crowd. I couldn't care less if Psion was a full class, but I would implement that class as a Spell Caster with unique rules similar to Warlock and Artificer. I happily await my chance to play as an Aberrant Mind Sorcerer.
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Yeah a lot of the "psionics are broken op" comments I saw for 3/3.5 were because of people flagrantly disregarding the rules. "The party lv 1 psion blew all his power points and augmented mind thrust into one shotting the boss!" Yeah that wasn't possible without igoring the rules limiting how many points you could spend at once. Heck in 3.0 I would argue they were underpowered, 3.5 I thought they were pretty balanced. Demonstrably weaker than standard casters but given that CoDzilla was a thing that's maybe a point in their favor. I don't remember hearing anything about them in 4e other than monk being a weird fit mrchanically in the power source. (Granted, my always fairly minor online community interaction was even moreso most of 4e because I had moved away from my dnd group at the time.)
5e most of what I've seen is "not fantasy enough/too anime" which... if that's the hill you want to die on go you I guess? And "what can it do without stepping on the wizard's toes" when the wizards realm of influence is roughly "everything but healing and hitting things with weapons. Sometimes those too."
Which shows Yurei's point to be more "Pay attention to the feedback from the people who want the feature" as opposed to the "feedback of those who don't want anyone to have it".
5E is still supposed to be the streamlined, keeping it simple, edition of D&D. I’d like to see psionics as much as the next person, but not necessarily as some kind of spellcasting module to be slotted into the mechanics without context. Provide some background, embed it in a setting and I’m all for it, but if it’s just supposed to fit into say, the Forgotten Realms without contextualization I’ll certainly expect it to be a somewhat bland and generic I-can’t-believe-it’s-not-magic mechanic devoid of interesting features.
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Had a DM in 3.5 who regularly let the party druid use all 15 bolts of call lightning storm in one round. FYI, I was the barbarian.
It doesn't make sense to ask for feedback for a new system/feature from people that don't want that thing to exist. People who cook meat don't ask vegans for feedback on their meals. If WotC actually wanted to have psionics (that is, real psionics), they should have only asked/acknowledged feedback from those that wanted psionics.
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Only paying attention to the fans of a concept is how you wind up with power escalation and every new class/subclass being more overpowered than the last. It is absolutely important to listen to criticism. Of course, it's important to use the right feedback for the right problem. Basically, you want a system that is appealing to fans, but is also not annoying to DMs and people who choose to not play psionic characters.
I think we are agreeing. If the majority of the playerbase does not want psionics in the game, whatever the reason may be, then WOTC would be wise to not go down that road.
Allow me to make this clear. So long as I'm sticking my neck out here regardless, I may as well.
None of the people who have traditionally defended a more robust psychic abilities/powers/psionics system have asked for psionics. Wizards dangled a bunch of psionics out in UA, put their psychic concepts in our faces, and said "Hey! What do y'all think?" A few of us have tried to express exactly that. The majority opinion seems to be "get this stupid sci-fi weeb shit out of my GRITTY SWORDS-N-SORCERY GAEM DX", and yes - I firmly believe such feedback should be tallied up and then ignored. The only useful feedback one can glean from people who don't want a thing is whether or not you should introduce the thing. Once you decide you're going to do it anyways - and Wizards has - the people who gave the "GTFO" feedback no longer matter. Their opinion has been officially discarded, and the design process should move on to how to do the thing properly.
Nevertheless. We did not force this on anyone. Frankly, I really would rather have no psionics at all than the half-assed, poorly implemented shit stew we're liable to get. But that ship has sailed. Now that we're getting "psionic" subclasses, many of the people who didn't want them are actively attempting to sabotage them, make them even worse, to try and discourage their introduction and use. Those people are ********, and they will be dealt with in a manner befitting that appellate. Anything that gets printed should be the best version of itself it can be, because we will not ever get a second chance at making it better. No, errata does not count, and never has. Nobody pays attention to it, nobody uses it, and even Wizards of the Coast does not bother with it beyond pro forma Twitter releases twice a year or so.
If we don't want another 5e Sorcerer situation, then the mechanics should have been figured out and properly settled on before being introduced. They were not. Some of us are gonna be pissed about that for the next forever. But we didn't do it, nor are we sitting at people's tables with our magical advance copies of Tasha's Cauldron waiting to beat them over the heads of anyone who doesn't immediately adopt everything in the book.
Anyone giving folks the sass over demanding that Wizards "pay attention to me but not to them", or saying "but the 1/2e psychics from thirty years ago were bad and I hate them so psychic powers should never come back!" can just stop. Nobody cares what the game looked like several decades and editions ago both. And yes - the feedback from people who want the thing and are hoping to use it becomes more important than the feedback of the people who don't want it and won't. So just...stop. Okay?
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The people who hate psionics can simply say 'no psionic characters in my game or world lore'. Simple as that. I personally have no interest in psionics, but I know a lot of people want them so I don't object to them being a part of DnD. Psionics has been part of DnD for many editions, so it seems odd to say that it has no place.
The vegan comparison is a good one. If you're cooking meat you don't ask for a vegans opinion of the meal.
I'm not sure how you're all already talking about a book that isn't even out yet and the leaks haven't gone into depth yet. We barely seen the classes and assuming it is all true I haven't really seen anything as terribly bad.
As for the two Psionic classes I personally think they fill a niche within D&D. I thought the idea behind them is interesting but it wasn't terrible felt a bit underbalanced if I could call it that. I honestly felt that the die system could use a small buff since all your abilities are loaded behind it for higher level campaigns it won't be as interesting since all your skills are on the same system but then again at 17th level you would have 12 of these psi dices.
I honestly think that "many" you call that didn't want them are more a minority it's just the louder of the two. Giving people choices is cool and even if some people don't like it it's totally fine to bring them out. After all it is up to the DM of your game to decide if you can play it in their game setting and in a situation they are weak or too strong he might tweak around with whatever ability seems to spill over. It's not like it is an entire new class but rather a few subclasses that carry these Psionic powers unless they also come out in the form of feats but again look at the DM or talk before with your group on "how to deal with Psionic powers and do we want this in our campaign" if that is a real issue to you.
Honestly, this whole argument could have been avoided this edition. Yurei got it right on the head that it started because WotC didn’t do the basic thing in feedback of asking players how receptive they were to the idea of psionics in 5E when they first brought it up. We will never know how much of this mess was because the actual majority didn’t want it, or if it was because the UA playtest material was too binary in response. We will never know if people receptive but cautious were lumped in with the “don’t want it” crowd to make a majority, all due to how feedback is analyzed.
Let's not forget that community feedback is also market research and integral to cost benefit analysis of investing resources for introducing a 5e psionic system into it publishing schedule. The sense I'm getting from this discussion are the bulk of the player base are either outright antagonistic to disinterested in a psionic system. The minority that are open to psionic are divided among whether resigning magic or another of the game's supernatural power systems or inventing a new mechanical system (and the arguments over what that would look like). Given all that I could see Wizards washing away any interest in introducing psionics into 5e, leaving that something definitely for the third party scene to fight over in a way that would benefit the third party bottom lines, but would be more a loss for the Wizards. So even from a strictly business point of view, psionics is about scale.
As to the Vegan analogy, and the claim "don't ask the vegans about psionics." Think of the publishing line more like a restaurant. And continuing the presumption that the bulk of Wizards base are anti psionic vegans are plant strong dieters. Would Wizards want its main patrons to beef, so to speak, about the meaty messy psionic smell preoccupying its kitchen, when what they really want are Dragon Rage Barbarians sustained on Goodberry? Let. a more specialized third party kitchen run with it.
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
I think it's more we never really see the analytic product that's produced internally by Wizards that guides the anti-psionic trajectory (it gets complicated when you found some qualitative comments that are presumably offered for internal use). And one of those self validating mini polls on D&D Beyond likely won't provide anything useful to extrapolate.
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
Except, apparently, it’s in. Whether it was resounding or grudging, the answer to the psionics question - as far as WotC is concerned- is yay, not nay. It looks to be implemented poorly, but it was implemented. The poor implementation might be due to those who’d have prefered a nay instead sabotaging the feedback process, definitely, but surely the people merely saying “do not want” didn’t get WotC to just tank a concept they’re putting in a published product nonetheless. Far easier to just leave well enough alone and maybe put out a statement to the extent of “we’re not prepared to go through with this yet” instead.
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I feel like this implementation is very minimalistic from what I’ve seen. Remove those subclasses that have Psionic powers, and implement your own modifications. I know some people have been working on their own Psionic class and the basics are there for Wild Talents and the like.
I am kind of expecting that they may do exactly this if Dark Sun is released.
Is it too much to ask that we wait to see the finished subclass and try playing it before passing judgment?
I did say "looks to be", and frankly any implementation that relegates it to subclasses of an existing class is - in my utterly personal opinion - lacking. But sure, it might have been better had I added a few caveat to my earlier post.
Want to start playing but don't have anyone to play with? You can try these options: [link].
That's total BS, Pantagruel. I can like something without wanting it to be overpowered. I am more than capable at giving good, constructive feedback for an introduced mechanic/class/subclass while simultaneously liking the feature and wanting it to exist. It is important to listen to criticism, I never said that it wasn't, but criticism saying "I hate this thing, so I don't want it to exist," is not good feedback and should not be listened to if WotC is going to publish that anyway. I don't want a system that is annoying, so stop with the insults and strawman arguments. A psionic system as simple as spellcasting would not annoy players, and the system would not be forced upon tables that don't want it (unless you play in Adventurer's League, in which case you have surrendered your DM agency, and have no one to blame for your dislike of type of play except for yourself).
Stop putting words that I never said into my mouth, please. I don't like being force-fed bullcrap.
Please check out my homebrew, I would appreciate feedback:
Spells, Monsters, Subclasses, Races, Arcknight Class, Occultist Class, World, Enigmatic Esoterica forms
But, WotC wants psionics, proven by the fact that they ignored those comments, and decided to make "psionics" anyway. WotC owns the game, so if you don't like the features in the book, vote with your money. Don't buy it. The most effective way to let the designers of the game know if you support their content is with your wallet.
Don't try and veto my fun, please. It would not have hurt you in any way if a good, official psionics system had been published. It's both gatekeeping and being a jerk when you tell people that their fun is wrong. If WotC were to make a book full of anime character options and adventures, I would not buy it, as I'm not interested in that content. I dislike it, so I wouldn't buy it, it's really that simple. However, I would not go to online forums and whine about that book existing. I wouldn't go onto the UA surveys and try and sabotage the mechanics of that book because I don't want that content. Any decent human being would do the same. This is the equivalent of licking all of the cookies so someone else can't have them.
Please check out my homebrew, I would appreciate feedback:
Spells, Monsters, Subclasses, Races, Arcknight Class, Occultist Class, World, Enigmatic Esoterica forms
I think everyone here is missing an important point: the majority of players in D&D absolutely want Psionics in the game. The problem is that majority itself is split into two warring factions.
A large portion of the players that want Psionics are traditionalist that want it to be unique and distinct. They don't want it to be implemented through Spells or Spellcasting.
A (likely) equally large portion want Psionics to be a subsect of Spellcasting. They see Psionics the same way they look at Divine Casting, Arcane Casting, or "Primal" Casting (Druid, Ranger). To them, Psionic is just a tag, not a system.
And then there is the minority that do not want Psionics at all, no matter how they are implemented.
If we assume (and honestly we have nothing to go on here) that all 3 portions are equal, then it is clear that 2/3rds of the playerbase actually want Psionics in the game, which is why WotC pushed forward with it. We can assume that is why they started with Mystic.
Then when Mystic received Feedback, and the 2/3rds of the playerbase that didn't like it (the anti-psionic portion and the Psionic as Spellcasting portion), WotC went back and looked at that data to see what they should do next. They saw that a majority of the players wanted Psionics (true) but also saw that a majority did not want them to be as complex as Mystic (also true).
So WotC is left with a difficult dilemma. On one hand, the majority want Psionics. On the other, a majority (made up of a different combo of players) didn't want it to be complex and separate. So the obvious solution is to meet in the middle. Make Psionics as a subsection of other systems to provide Psionics to those that want it without offending those that do not. Problem is, that also has pissed off 2/3rds of the player base (the no Psionics at all crowd and the Psionics as a unique system crowd).
So WotC is in a no win situation. No matter what option they take, they will piss off 2/3rds of the fans in some capacity. At this point their only solution is to try and appease whatever small majority of the 3 different crowds they can, while causing the least amount of unrest from the other 2. Which has led to where we are now.
For what it is worth, I myself have always been in the Psionic Casting crowd. I couldn't care less if Psion was a full class, but I would implement that class as a Spell Caster with unique rules similar to Warlock and Artificer. I happily await my chance to play as an Aberrant Mind Sorcerer.