The concept of a psychic power is that it should largely be "always on", then you can do something stronger or more intense or whatever with it for a while every now and then, maybe the basic form turns off for a while after maybe it doesn't. So when you select a psychic power, it would be something like "At will, you can act as though you had cast Mage Hand. For you, it is invisible, it's range is your line of sight, and it is not affected by effects that would dispel magical forces like Antimagic Field, though any movements you make with it would still be blocked by effects such as Wall of Force." Probably the ability to use it as an attack some number of times per Long Rest, maybe Proficiency Bonus times. Then at various levels, you'd unlock the ability to use it to affect multiple and heavier objects.
But with effects like this, I'd imagine the list of actual Class Features would be pretty small, as each of the psychic powers would probably grow to be almost like a subclass itself. Maybe that's going to be the most unique thing about such a Psionic class, it doesn't have true subclasses. But you can pick several different power sets that are sort of like smaller but more focused subclasses, at various levels in the class.
You basically just described something very similar to something myself and some others have been working on for some time as a homebrewed Psionicist.
But how exciting does Tasha's Cauldron of Everything look! Im an artificer fan through and through, and I am SO keen for just a tiny sprinkle more than just a De-Eberroning the text, like CFVs for example and hopefully a few extra spells that I'm surprised werent on the list to begin with.
Anyone else looking forward to/hoping for Lurker in the Depths Warlock? And with what changes?
Also Im going to struggle keeping my player from looking in the traps, puzzles and environments section (just as my DM will probs not want me to look there too haha)
Im lucky that most of my players dont really purchase things for themsevles and get most of their stuff through me lol. I am a sl*t for puzzles and create a lot of my own already but having some that i can just pick and add maybe with a little bit of reskinning will be probably my favorite part of this book.
I don't particularly like Detect Thoughts as a spell. Nor do I like Telekinesis as a spell. Those abilities do not make sense as Magical Spells. Many of these fundamentally psychic abilities are implemented as spells, which makes it very difficult to make psychic characters mechanically distinct from spellcasters. If you're using spells to create effects by providing spell components, utilizing spell slots as fuel for those spells, you are not a psychic character no matter what sort of skin you put on those spells. You. Are. A. Spellcaster. And that lack of mechanical distinction, the idea that all mental powers are just more purple-er magic and all mentalists are just shitty, oddly picky mages with weird spell lists that don't make any sense for their class, is maddening.
I think that's a bridge too far, in certain context.
To me, these psychic spells are the attempts of non-psychic individuals to use magic to replicate actual psychic abilities. Someone who is actually psychic would have the effects of the spell Telekinesis as an always on effect, that they don't have to do anything to activate and they can do basically all the time, unlike a Wizard that has to cast it and then recast it when the duration runs out. As they get stronger they'd have other uses that the spell can't replicate. Same thing with telepathic abilities. At lower levels, a true telepathic character would only be able to communicate in a similar fashion to a Kalashtar or a GOOlock. But as they level, they'd eventually be able to maintain the effect of Telepathic Bond indefinitely.
So in the context of those spells existing, they don't bother me at all, and frankly, it's mechanically healthy for the game and the lore that they exist. But in the context of "but you can already play a psychic character!" you're absolutely right, it's probably the most blatant of an insult someone can give, given the state of things.
The only major mechanical change I can think of with this is that all Mind Flayer MM entries would need their statblocks edited to the new psychic system, instead of the spellcasting but mind spells concept, since the entire point of the Mind Flayer racial lore is that they find arcane magic to be an inferior plaything for such simple creatures as brain-cattle to be able to use it. The exception is the Alhoon, which is a Mind Flayer that has abandoned that notion and become a Lich that uses a spellbook and arcane magic.
Im lucky that most of my players dont really purchase things for themsevles and get most of their stuff through me lol. I am a sl*t for puzzles and create a lot of my own already but having some that i can just pick and add maybe with a little bit of reskinning will be probably my favorite part of this book.
The luxury of content sharing through D&DB. My players get the features, I can keep a few secrets, haha.
Posting from my phone instead of sleeping, pardon slowness and typos.
In effect, drag0n, you're exactly correct. What bothers me in particular most of all about this 'all psychic abilities are spells' nonsense is that any theoretical psychic characters are not any better at being psychic than a regular-ass wizard wirh a munchkin spellbook full of cherry-picked spells is.
A 'Telekinetic Warrior' should be able to cast Telekinesis at will. At low levels they can't manage the spell's full weight, but at higher levels they get double or more that weight. They can attack wirh telekinetic power. They can manipulate more than one object at a time. They can do things with telekinetic power that would make a wizard shit his mama's pants with envy, things that wizard will never be able to do even with Wish.
Why? How is that possibly balanced?
Because by the same level, the wizard probably has over a hundred different spells in their spellbook, possessing a diverse range of versatile abilities the telekinetic will never possess.
A psychic character should be better at being psychic than a magical character who is stealing psychic spells because munchkinism. If this is not true - and in every current UA psychic subclass, it is NOT - then there is no point in playing within the much sharper limitations of psychic ability.
Anyways. Well past bedtime. Sleepy ghosts need to wake up for work tommorow. Try not to explode before I get back
An interesting point arose in the artificer forums, with the so-called "tweaking" of the artificer as well as its general new-ness. Mainly: are there going to be CFVs for the artificer as well, which will go entirely untested due to the timing of the book and DDB's total inability to model CFVs, or is the artificer stuck as-is? I'm pretty sure the "tweaking" is going to amount to nothing more than culling any mention of Eberron or Eberron-specific ideas from the class, but I am rather curious how CFVs and artificers will interact, if at all.
I've thought of that as well, and I really doubt they'd create a weird asymmetry whereby every class except for artificer gets feature variants. I'd be more skeptical if they weren't re-printing the artificer, but the fact that they are is clearly an attempt to bring it more into the "core rules" than it is when it's just in a setting book. What I kind of expect (this is based on absolutely nothing) is that the feature variants will be in their own section. I.e., the artificer reprint will be as you say: just the artificer, and any "tweaks" will be to make it more setting-agnostic. But there will be artificer feature variants/enhancements in the feature variants/enhancements section.
i mean it is not like there is much in there that isint setting agnostic already, you would just have to remove the mention of dragonshards from the homunculus infusion and and the flavour text describing what war crimes each of the subclasses did during and after the last war, as well as the mention of house canith in the battle smith and the arcane science section of the artificer fluff, there are not any actiual mechanics that are dependent on ebberon
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i am soup, with too many ideas (all of them very spicy) who has made sufficient homebrew material and character to last an thousand human lifetimes
Would it be better to move the above discussion to a different thread for the proper visibility of that topic instead of buried in here? A few people have requested to return to the original topic.
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Human. Male. Possibly. Don't be a divider. My characters' backgrounds are written like instruction manuals rather than stories. My opinion and preferences don't mean you're wrong. I am 99.7603% convinced that the digital dice are messing with me. I roll high when nobody's looking and low when anyone else can see.🎲 “It's a bit early to be thinking about an epitaph. No?” will be my epitaph.
In D&D, telekinesis and mind reading are magic powers. End of. That's not up for debate. It will never be possible to publish Psi talents that will make you happy because you being happy with them is predicated on the nature of magic in D&D being fundementally different to what it actually IS.
So that's one gripe I have with the game as a whole. Certain aspects of lore get baked into the rules. And then you just have to homebrew hard to get around it. Until The Powers That Be decide that the baked-in lore is politically incorrect, and then they find ways to change the rules. Unfortunately for me, the parts of the lore that annoy me the most don't trouble other people too much.
But how exciting does Tasha's Cauldron of Everything look! Im an artificer fan through and through, and I am SO keen for just a tiny sprinkle more than just a De-Eberroning the text, like CFVs for example and hopefully a few extra spells that I'm surprised werent on the list to begin with.
Anyone else looking forward to/hoping for Lurker in the Depths Warlock? And with what changes?
Also Im going to struggle keeping my player from looking in the traps, puzzles and environments section (just as my DM will probs not want me to look there too haha)
It looks very exciting and I can’t wait for it but my attention is more on ID:ROTFM at the moment. It is understandable considering my main character is a circle of land Arctic Druid. If there were cold spells in there I would be more excited or even if there were arctic beasts that I can wildshape into instead of reskinning, I would be excited for it. But yea, I will be more excited for it after ROTFM is released as I will have gotten to play with and seen the cool new winter themed stuff(which I am at least hoping for arctic beasts to be able to wildshape into).
IDK why people are arguing over psionics this much? I can honestly see both points. Some don’t want to be forced to take the effort to resin or homebrew content to make it psionics based, and want actual mechanics, but some want a more streamlined rules without psionics, that doesn’t involve a singular psionics class that goes “Lol haha DM more work for you, research my own complex class rules too or your game goes brrrrrrrrrrrrrr.” Overall, I am neutral on this and I am just excited for more content! Personally I love homebrew and reskinning so this isn’t so bad for me! :D
I'd try and explain it to you, but I've sort of already done that three separate times in this thread alone. Other people are sick of hearing about it. That and we're kinda sick of Kotath et al. telling us we're terrible horrible awful people who're bad and should feel bad for wanting two different things in this game to actually be two different things. So...sorry, Nano. Gonna have to skip the fourth explanation of why psionics and psychic abilities are so contentious. I recommend reading the thread, starting around roughly page 8, to catch up.
“Lol haha DM more work for you, research my own complex class rules too or your game goes brrrrrrrrrrrrrr.”
This is what I don’t understand. Why do people assume that it would have to be that complex?!? It could be as simple as any other class’s class features.
The Lineage system, or at least its implications, are being discussed in another thread already. One I saw you were familiar with, including how depressing it is.
If, however, you're asking for theories on how it might mechanically function?
I'll admit, part of me is hoping (vainly, but hoping) that it's an expansion of the Variant Point Buy system, in which different abilities or attributes are given different costs and a player can trade in bits of their species trait package that don't make sense for their story for extra character budget to buy things that do make sense for their story. An orc who was taken in as an infant by a kindly old priest after her orcish village was burned out by adventurers could trade in the orcish language and the Aggressive trait for, say, the Dwarvish language of her surrogate parent and proficiency in Religion, instead. A human character who's fluffed as an impossible strongman, this huge hulking mass of muscle that regularly competes with orcs or goliaths - and wins - could trade his bonus feat for Powerful Build and Expertise in Athletics, perhaps. Whatever happens to fit in his expanded Point Buy budget.
Of course, I don't actually think that's going to happen. What I think will happen is a set of very basic rules explaining how to trade things one-for-one to more closely model one's story. Language is super simple - did your elf not grow up in Elfland? Trade Elven for whatever language people speak where you did grow up. Frankly, DMs that don't allow that sort of thing as it is are wrong, and DDB should have already made it much easier to trade out "genetic" languages than it is. Elsewise I imagine it'll be a case of "trade things one for one, and when there is no one-for-one trade, such as when evicting Elf Weapon Training from the elf that didn't grow up in Elfland, come up with something approximately the same and trade for that instead." It'll be oversimplified and restrictive in its own way, but still much better than what we've currently got.
The Lineage system is the part of the book I am most intrigued by and concerned about. It seems fairly straight forward on the surface, but is something that can be broken so easily if handled wrong. Of course without ANY clue as to what they have created it is hard to have any meaningful discussion about the mechanics of it.
(oh god that thread is depressing and I refuse to see how it progressed)
I imagine you're right, it probably will be just a one-for-one trade of equivalent traits, but I would love if there were a list of alternate traits both generic and specific to each race one could pick and choose from, either via point buy or some other method that allows that level of customization.
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Gonna be a hard no, friend.
You basically just described something very similar to something myself and some others have been working on for some time as a homebrewed Psionicist.
Creating Epic Boons on DDB
DDB Buyers' Guide
Hardcovers, DDB & You
Content Troubleshooting
Im lucky that most of my players dont really purchase things for themsevles and get most of their stuff through me lol. I am a sl*t for puzzles and create a lot of my own already but having some that i can just pick and add maybe with a little bit of reskinning will be probably my favorite part of this book.
Oh please dear God yes.
Creating Epic Boons on DDB
DDB Buyers' Guide
Hardcovers, DDB & You
Content Troubleshooting
I think that's a bridge too far, in certain context.
To me, these psychic spells are the attempts of non-psychic individuals to use magic to replicate actual psychic abilities. Someone who is actually psychic would have the effects of the spell Telekinesis as an always on effect, that they don't have to do anything to activate and they can do basically all the time, unlike a Wizard that has to cast it and then recast it when the duration runs out. As they get stronger they'd have other uses that the spell can't replicate. Same thing with telepathic abilities. At lower levels, a true telepathic character would only be able to communicate in a similar fashion to a Kalashtar or a GOOlock. But as they level, they'd eventually be able to maintain the effect of Telepathic Bond indefinitely.
So in the context of those spells existing, they don't bother me at all, and frankly, it's mechanically healthy for the game and the lore that they exist. But in the context of "but you can already play a psychic character!" you're absolutely right, it's probably the most blatant of an insult someone can give, given the state of things.
The only major mechanical change I can think of with this is that all Mind Flayer MM entries would need their statblocks edited to the new psychic system, instead of the spellcasting but mind spells concept, since the entire point of the Mind Flayer racial lore is that they find arcane magic to be an inferior plaything for such simple creatures as brain-cattle to be able to use it. The exception is the Alhoon, which is a Mind Flayer that has abandoned that notion and become a Lich that uses a spellbook and arcane magic.
The luxury of content sharing through D&DB. My players get the features, I can keep a few secrets, haha.
Absolutely my favourite warlock subclass to date. Tentacle friends are wholesome and pure.
Posting from my phone instead of sleeping, pardon slowness and typos.
In effect, drag0n, you're exactly correct. What bothers me in particular most of all about this 'all psychic abilities are spells' nonsense is that any theoretical psychic characters are not any better at being psychic than a regular-ass wizard wirh a munchkin spellbook full of cherry-picked spells is.
A 'Telekinetic Warrior' should be able to cast Telekinesis at will. At low levels they can't manage the spell's full weight, but at higher levels they get double or more that weight. They can attack wirh telekinetic power. They can manipulate more than one object at a time. They can do things with telekinetic power that would make a wizard shit his mama's pants with envy, things that wizard will never be able to do even with Wish.
Why? How is that possibly balanced?
Because by the same level, the wizard probably has over a hundred different spells in their spellbook, possessing a diverse range of versatile abilities the telekinetic will never possess.
A psychic character should be better at being psychic than a magical character who is stealing psychic spells because munchkinism. If this is not true - and in every current UA psychic subclass, it is NOT - then there is no point in playing within the much sharper limitations of psychic ability.
Anyways. Well past bedtime. Sleepy ghosts need to wake up for work tommorow. Try not to explode before I get back
Please do not contact or message me.
i mean it is not like there is much in there that isint setting agnostic already, you would just have to remove the mention of dragonshards from the homunculus infusion and and the flavour text describing what war crimes each of the subclasses did during and after the last war, as well as the mention of house canith in the battle smith and the arcane science section of the artificer fluff, there are not any actiual mechanics that are dependent on ebberon
i am soup, with too many ideas (all of them very spicy) who has made sufficient homebrew material and character to last an thousand human lifetimes
Would it be better to move the above discussion to a different thread for the proper visibility of that topic instead of buried in here? A few people have requested to return to the original topic.
Human. Male. Possibly. Don't be a divider.
My characters' backgrounds are written like instruction manuals rather than stories. My opinion and preferences don't mean you're wrong.
I am 99.7603% convinced that the digital dice are messing with me. I roll high when nobody's looking and low when anyone else can see.🎲
“It's a bit early to be thinking about an epitaph. No?” will be my epitaph.
So that's one gripe I have with the game as a whole. Certain aspects of lore get baked into the rules. And then you just have to homebrew hard to get around it. Until The Powers That Be decide that the baked-in lore is politically incorrect, and then they find ways to change the rules. Unfortunately for me, the parts of the lore that annoy me the most don't trouble other people too much.
It looks very exciting and I can’t wait for it but my attention is more on ID:ROTFM at the moment. It is understandable considering my main character is a circle of land Arctic Druid. If there were cold spells in there I would be more excited or even if there were arctic beasts that I can wildshape into instead of reskinning, I would be excited for it.
But yea, I will be more excited for it after ROTFM is released as I will have gotten to play with and seen the cool new winter themed stuff(which I am at least hoping for arctic beasts to be able to wildshape into).
Anybody know why there isn't a preorder option for Tasha's on dndbeyond yet?
Ha!
IDK why people are arguing over psionics this much? I can honestly see both points. Some don’t want to be forced to take the effort to resin or homebrew content to make it psionics based, and want actual mechanics, but some want a more streamlined rules without psionics, that doesn’t involve a singular psionics class that goes “Lol haha DM more work for you, research my own complex class rules too or your game goes brrrrrrrrrrrrrr.” Overall, I am neutral on this and I am just excited for more content! Personally I love homebrew and reskinning so this isn’t so bad for me! :D
I'd try and explain it to you, but I've sort of already done that three separate times in this thread alone. Other people are sick of hearing about it. That and we're kinda sick of Kotath et al. telling us we're terrible horrible awful people who're bad and should feel bad for wanting two different things in this game to actually be two different things. So...sorry, Nano. Gonna have to skip the fourth explanation of why psionics and psychic abilities are so contentious. I recommend reading the thread, starting around roughly page 8, to catch up.
Please do not contact or message me.
This is what I don’t understand. Why do people assume that it would have to be that complex?!? It could be as simple as any other class’s class features.
Creating Epic Boons on DDB
DDB Buyers' Guide
Hardcovers, DDB & You
Content Troubleshooting
This thread, and the eleven billion others it's been on...
Moving on, I'm intrigued by this so-called "lineage" system. How do folks think that's going to play out?
EDIT: DROP THE GODDAMN PSIONICS ALREADY, ALRIGHT?!?! LET'S MOVE ON!!!!
The Lineage system, or at least its implications, are being discussed in another thread already. One I saw you were familiar with, including how depressing it is.
If, however, you're asking for theories on how it might mechanically function?
I'll admit, part of me is hoping (vainly, but hoping) that it's an expansion of the Variant Point Buy system, in which different abilities or attributes are given different costs and a player can trade in bits of their species trait package that don't make sense for their story for extra character budget to buy things that do make sense for their story. An orc who was taken in as an infant by a kindly old priest after her orcish village was burned out by adventurers could trade in the orcish language and the Aggressive trait for, say, the Dwarvish language of her surrogate parent and proficiency in Religion, instead. A human character who's fluffed as an impossible strongman, this huge hulking mass of muscle that regularly competes with orcs or goliaths - and wins - could trade his bonus feat for Powerful Build and Expertise in Athletics, perhaps. Whatever happens to fit in his expanded Point Buy budget.
Of course, I don't actually think that's going to happen. What I think will happen is a set of very basic rules explaining how to trade things one-for-one to more closely model one's story. Language is super simple - did your elf not grow up in Elfland? Trade Elven for whatever language people speak where you did grow up. Frankly, DMs that don't allow that sort of thing as it is are wrong, and DDB should have already made it much easier to trade out "genetic" languages than it is. Elsewise I imagine it'll be a case of "trade things one for one, and when there is no one-for-one trade, such as when evicting Elf Weapon Training from the elf that didn't grow up in Elfland, come up with something approximately the same and trade for that instead." It'll be oversimplified and restrictive in its own way, but still much better than what we've currently got.
Please do not contact or message me.
The Lineage system is the part of the book I am most intrigued by and concerned about. It seems fairly straight forward on the surface, but is something that can be broken so easily if handled wrong. Of course without ANY clue as to what they have created it is hard to have any meaningful discussion about the mechanics of it.
She/Her Player and Dungeon Master
(oh god that thread is depressing and I refuse to see how it progressed)
I imagine you're right, it probably will be just a one-for-one trade of equivalent traits, but I would love if there were a list of alternate traits both generic and specific to each race one could pick and choose from, either via point buy or some other method that allows that level of customization.