What IamSposta means to say, is that psionics should work thematically and mechanically different from spellcasting for a very broad list of reasons that have been covered already, going back to the earliest editions of D&D. To say that Psionics should be a reskin of Spellcasting, is to say that Spellcasting should be a reskin of weapon attacks.
Eh, basically everything a psion can do is on the sorcerer spell list. Just take a sorcerer, take subtle spell as one of your metamagics, and choose your spells to match a tk theme.
Psions aren't reskins, they're their own unique niche. Occultists aren't reskins, they are their own niche. Can other subclasses borrow from their flavor?
The fact that you mention 'flavor' is why they're reskins. A reskin adjusts the flavor of a class without meaningfully changing its mechanics.
Um, no. Paladins have their own flavor, but they aren't reskins. Classes have unique mechanics and flavor that can be borrowed.
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Please check out my homebrew, I would appreciate feedback:
Eh, basically everything a psion can do is on the sorcerer spell list. Just take a sorcerer, take subtle spell as one of your metamagics, and choose your spells to match a tk theme.
And what should a Psion be able to do that a sorcerer cannot? And should sorcerers be nerfed just to make room for psions?
What do you see as a viable solution?
Please don't start this again. Dead horses have rights, too.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
A fool pulls the leaves. A brute chops the trunk. A sage digs the roots.
Eh, basically everything a psion can do is on the sorcerer spell list. Just take a sorcerer, take subtle spell as one of your metamagics, and choose your spells to match a tk theme.
And what should a Psion be able to do that a sorcerer cannot? And should sorcerers be nerfed just to make room for psions?
What do you see as a viable solution?
Why should Sorcerers get nerfed to make room for another class?!? That makes no sense whatsoever.
A spellcaster, but with less focus on spells, but instead creates magical effects like the "Cloak of Flies" invocation, or adds abilities to themselves the "starry form" variant of wild shape, or a barbarian's rage.
You basically just described a Psionicist the way I have been describing the whole time. A “Magic User” that creates magical effects and/or adds abilities to themselves instead of casting spells.
You do realize the D&D was born from a tactical miniatures wargame. Right?
And moved WAY beyond that, if not in the original white box, definitely in AD&D and the original Basic rules.
But that doesn’t mean that the core premise should be abandoned just because it was expanded on. D&D can be both tactical and mechanical, and still also be story driven as well.
My theory at least, is that a good RPG, a good group, and a good campaign must all stand on the same three legs:
The Narrative
The Game
The Table (the people there, not the physical table itself)
Go set up a tripod and make one leg twice as long as the other two. What happens?
That doesn’t mean that narrative, game, and table all need to be in perfect exact rigid balance. It just means that the three of them have to be close enough in balance to keep the thing from falling over. As long as it’s still standing, you’re good.
Some people enjoy “playing the game” as much as or more than “telling the story.”
If a character has nothing to do whatsoever with what's written on the sheet and everything to do with What's In Your Heart(C), then man. I have wasted entirely too much money buying a shitload of unnecessary books just to try a new variation of something I've been doing for twenty years. Never once in my life have I needed dice to play a writing game, and I sure as shit don't need 'em now. But it is a different style I've been enjoying trying out, simultaneously a lot more and a lot less work than pure freeform.
But lemme give you a nugget from someone who's been doing just exactly that - playing without dice of any sort, no hard and fast system rules, just a group of folks inventing stories on the Internet together. We still created rules. We still ensured characters functioned very differently. We'd all spend many an hour fine-tuning the precise nature and function of each capability we awarded a character, and even if those rules were prosaic and narrative rather than numerical, they were followed and obeyed. Because they made the game better, and without a framework of agreed-upon rules, shorthands, and common assumptions, there was no story to be made.
I'm getting awfully goddamned close to done trying to convince people there are good ******* reasons why greater depth of character design and greater differentiation of abilities is vitally important for any TTRPG's long-term success, though. Just...******* god damnit. Why are you all even here, buying 5e stuff on DDB, if you all despise this edition so much and do all of your games from 0e? I know I give this edition plenty of grief, and I would honestly rather be using a different system, but the digital toolset doesn't exist for anything else. All y'all people who swear you never run a game on anything but P&P and haven't updated your toolkits since 1983?
Okay, but when one person’s Fun is “telling a story” and another person’s Fun is “playing the game” and yet another’s Fun is “an enjoyable communal activity with friends” then D&D has to be all three of those because without the game, someone isn’t having Fun. Someone like Yurei, Mezz, Third, or myself for instance. For us, the game is fun, so it matters.
And what should a Psion be able to do that a sorcerer cannot? And should sorcerers be nerfed just to make room for psions?
What do you see as a viable solution?
Psion is a sorcerous origin. Done (as for the self-buffing psion, that's basically the 3e psychic warrior, not a psion, and it's a gish subtype and fits into the general discussion of fixing gishe
What IamSposta means to say, is that psionics should work thematically and mechanically different from spellcasting for a very broad list of reasons that have been covered already, going back to the earliest editions of D&D. To say that Psionics should be a reskin of Spellcasting, is to say that Spellcasting should be a reskin of weapon attacks.
Spellcasting and weapon attacks actually have different effects. Psionic powers and spells do basically the same things. Pretty much everything in clairsentience, psychokinesis, psychoportation, telepathy, and metapsionics is not interestingly different from existing spells in the sorcerer or wizard lists. Psychometabolism has some healing that would need the bard or cleric lists.
I liked when psionics were available to anybody with luck. You didn't have to have a certain race, class, origin. If you had the right stats and a little luck, you could be Dr. Mindbender. 5e has done away with the randomness of previous editions for the sake of validity.
I'm not exactly certain that Psionics needs it own class. They are basically spells that aren't spells. So you can't detect them with detect magic and can't dispel or counterspell them. And of course they would function fine if your PC was naked in an anti-magic field.
Maybe if they were Feats that built upon each other. Then I could have my F/MU/T with Psionic Blast.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
"Sooner or later, your Players are going to smash your railroad into a sandbox."
-Vedexent
"real life is a super high CR."
-OboeLauren
"............anybody got any potatoes? We could drop a potato in each hole an' see which ones get viciously mauled by horrible monsters?"
Eh, basically everything a psion can do is on the sorcerer spell list. Just take a sorcerer, take subtle spell as one of your metamagics, and choose your spells to match a tk theme.
Psions aren't reskins, they're their own unique niche. Occultists aren't reskins, they are their own niche. Can other subclasses borrow from their flavor?
The fact that you mention 'flavor' is why they're reskins. A reskin adjusts the flavor of a class without meaningfully changing its mechanics.
Myself and others feel that psionic powers should not be represented by Spellcasting or spell slots. To me, Yurei, Third, Mezz, and many others, having Psionics as separate from Spellcasting is quintessential to our enjoyment of it as a concept.
Every time you dismiss that as unimportant, you’re telling us our fun is wrong.
Eh, basically everything a psion can do is on the sorcerer spell list. Just take a sorcerer, take subtle spell as one of your metamagics, and choose your spells to match a tk theme.
Psions aren't reskins, they're their own unique niche. Occultists aren't reskins, they are their own niche. Can other subclasses borrow from their flavor?
The fact that you mention 'flavor' is why they're reskins. A reskin adjusts the flavor of a class without meaningfully changing its mechanics.
Myself and others feel that psionic powers should not be represented by Spellcasting or spell slots. To me, Yurei, Third, Mezz, and many others, having Psionics as separate from Spellcasting is quintessential to our enjoyment of it as a concept.
Every time you dismiss that as unimportant, you’re telling us our fun is wrong.
That hurts our feelings, please stop.
Your fun is important to me! I will fight tooth and claw to make sure you have fun.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
“I will take responsibility for what I have done. [...] If must fall, I will rise each time a better man.” ― Brandon Sanderson, Oathbringer.
I liked when psionics were available to anybody with luck. You didn't have to have a certain race, class, origin. If you had the right stats and a little luck, you could be Dr. Mindbender. 5e has done away with the randomness of previous editions for the sake of validity.
I've heard of that psionics system from some who played that edition. I definitely dislike that concept. My main rule when it comes to character design is that all of your features should be choices, not random. You choose your stats with point buy or standard array, choose your race, background, and class. You don't roll it, that takes away the agency of the player. In my games, there is no randomness when a player of mine chooses who they want to play.
I liked when psionics were available to anybody with luck. You didn't have to have a certain race, class, origin. If you had the right stats and a little luck, you could be Dr. Mindbender. 5e has done away with the randomness of previous editions for the sake of validity.
I've heard of that psionics system from some who played that edition. I definitely dislike that concept. My main rule when it comes to character design is that all of your features should be choices, not random. You choose your stats with point buy or standard array, choose your race, background, and class. You don't roll it, that takes away the agency of the player. In my games, there is no randomness when a player of mine chooses who they want to play.
In a manner of speaking that's what I meant. GMs no longer have to worry about a players showing up with all the right luck rolls.
You don't have to be lucky or lie about good rolls in 5e. You show up with a character and anybody can create the same thing if they so wish - Validity.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
"Sooner or later, your Players are going to smash your railroad into a sandbox."
-Vedexent
"real life is a super high CR."
-OboeLauren
"............anybody got any potatoes? We could drop a potato in each hole an' see which ones get viciously mauled by horrible monsters?"
I liked when psionics were available to anybody with luck. You didn't have to have a certain race, class, origin. If you had the right stats and a little luck, you could be Dr. Mindbender. 5e has done away with the randomness of previous editions for the sake of validity.
First edition psionics were hilariously stupidly broken (because first level characters should be casting disintegrate....) and belong in the dumpster fire of bad concepts. As for feats, that's what Magic Initiate is for.
Myself and others feel that psionic powers should not be represented by Spellcasting or spell slots. To me, Yurei, Third, Mezz, and many others, having Psionics as separate from Spellcasting is quintessential to our enjoyment of it as a concept.
Every time you dismiss that as unimportant, you’re telling us our fun is wrong.
That hurts our feelings, please stop.
I don't think spellcasting should be represented by spell slots, and in general D&D doesn't do a good job of encouraging or supporting themed spellcasters. Psi behaves like spellcasting, and if holy miracles and arcane spells can both use the same system, so can psi.
The problem, Pantagruel, is that your proposal of treating any/all possible iterations of a psychically active/talented character as just a shitty Sorcerer is, again...how is this different from any other sorcerer that will have a better spell selection and something resembling actual class features? Saying "my sorcerer is psychic!" basically just means having to argue with your DM over why you're take damaging fire spells over Brain Teaser junk that hasn't worked for you in three levels because the DM keeps sending you after golems, all while the dragon sorcerer gets to cherry-pick The Best "Psychic" Spells alongside having full access to junk like Fireball, Counterspell, Polymorph, and all the other Cool Shit you're not allowed to take because you're psychic...alongside having dragon armor, dragon wings, extra HP, elemental damage resistance/boosts...
Why in Avandra's name would anyone ever decide to play a "psychic" sorcerer in that system, when the only thing that means is intentionally ultra-gimping a class already suffering from power anemia?
Myself and others feel that psionic powers should not be represented by Spellcasting or spell slots. To me, Yurei, Third, Mezz, and many others, having Psionics as separate from Spellcasting is quintessential to our enjoyment of it as a concept.
Every time you dismiss that as unimportant, you’re telling us our fun is wrong.
That hurts our feelings, please stop.
I don't think spellcasting should be represented by spell slots, and in general D&D doesn't do a good job of encouraging or supporting themed spellcasters. Psi behaves like spellcasting, and if holy miracles and arcane spells can both use the same system, so can psi.
But Psi shouldn’t behave like spellcasting, that’s the point. It may be able to do many of the same things, but it shouldn’t do them the same ways.
Myself and others feel that psionic powers should not be represented by Spellcasting or spell slots. To me, Yurei, Third, Mezz, and many others, having Psionics as separate from Spellcasting is quintessential to our enjoyment of it as a concept.
Every time you dismiss that as unimportant, you’re telling us our fun is wrong.
That hurts our feelings, please stop.
I don't think spellcasting should be represented by spell slots, and in general D&D doesn't do a good job of encouraging or supporting themed spellcasters. Psi behaves like spellcasting, and if holy miracles and arcane spells can both use the same system, so can psi.
But Psi shouldn’t behave like spellcasting, that’s the point. It may be able to do many of the same things, but it shouldn’t do them the same ways.
Nope, nada.
The game is built around rolling dice, particularly a D20. There are exceptions (Invocations being one), but they are all part of a classes that depends on rolling those dice. If you want to create a class that is not based around rolling dice, as spellcasting is, then you go right ahead and create your game. If you want to create a entirely brand new game mechanic, independent of how every other non martial class works, knock yourself out.
Myself and others feel that psionic powers should not be represented by Spellcasting or spell slots. To me, Yurei, Third, Mezz, and many others, having Psionics as separate from Spellcasting is quintessential to our enjoyment of it as a concept.
Every time you dismiss that as unimportant, you’re telling us our fun is wrong.
That hurts our feelings, please stop.
I don't think spellcasting should be represented by spell slots, and in general D&D doesn't do a good job of encouraging or supporting themed spellcasters. Psi behaves like spellcasting, and if holy miracles and arcane spells can both use the same system, so can psi.
But Psi shouldn’t behave like spellcasting, that’s the point. It may be able to do many of the same things, but it shouldn’t do them the same ways.
Nope, nada.
The game is built around rolling dice, particularly a D20. There are exceptions (Invocations being one), but they are all part of a classes that depends on rolling those dice. If you want to create a class that is not based around rolling dice, as spellcasting is, then you go right ahead and create your game. If you want to create a entirely brand new game mechanic, independent of how every other non martial class works, knock yourself out.
Just don't call it D&D.
Psionics should be, I think, a mix of spell casting, non-spellcasting and psi points.
What IamSposta means to say, is that psionics should work thematically and mechanically different from spellcasting for a very broad list of reasons that have been covered already, going back to the earliest editions of D&D. To say that Psionics should be a reskin of Spellcasting, is to say that Spellcasting should be a reskin of weapon attacks.
Um, no. Paladins have their own flavor, but they aren't reskins. Classes have unique mechanics and flavor that can be borrowed.
Please check out my homebrew, I would appreciate feedback:
Spells, Monsters, Subclasses, Races, Arcknight Class, Occultist Class, World, Enigmatic Esoterica forms
Please don't start this again. Dead horses have rights, too.
A fool pulls the leaves. A brute chops the trunk. A sage digs the roots.
My Improved Lineage System
Why should Sorcerers get nerfed to make room for another class?!? That makes no sense whatsoever.
What is my viable solution? Here:
Tada!
Creating Epic Boons on DDB
DDB Buyers' Guide
Hardcovers, DDB & You
Content Troubleshooting
But that doesn’t mean that the core premise should be abandoned just because it was expanded on. D&D can be both tactical and mechanical, and still also be story driven as well.
My theory at least, is that a good RPG, a good group, and a good campaign must all stand on the same three legs:
Go set up a tripod and make one leg twice as long as the other two. What happens?
That doesn’t mean that narrative, game, and table all need to be in perfect exact rigid balance. It just means that the three of them have to be close enough in balance to keep the thing from falling over. As long as it’s still standing, you’re good.
Some people enjoy “playing the game” as much as or more than “telling the story.”
Creating Epic Boons on DDB
DDB Buyers' Guide
Hardcovers, DDB & You
Content Troubleshooting
I thought the pillars were :
Desire
Tolerance
Fun
"Sooner or later, your Players are going to smash your railroad into a sandbox."
-Vedexent
"real life is a super high CR."
-OboeLauren
"............anybody got any potatoes? We could drop a potato in each hole an' see which ones get viciously mauled by horrible monsters?"
-Ilyara Thundertale
If a character has nothing to do whatsoever with what's written on the sheet and everything to do with What's In Your Heart(C), then man. I have wasted entirely too much money buying a shitload of unnecessary books just to try a new variation of something I've been doing for twenty years. Never once in my life have I needed dice to play a writing game, and I sure as shit don't need 'em now. But it is a different style I've been enjoying trying out, simultaneously a lot more and a lot less work than pure freeform.
But lemme give you a nugget from someone who's been doing just exactly that - playing without dice of any sort, no hard and fast system rules, just a group of folks inventing stories on the Internet together. We still created rules. We still ensured characters functioned very differently. We'd all spend many an hour fine-tuning the precise nature and function of each capability we awarded a character, and even if those rules were prosaic and narrative rather than numerical, they were followed and obeyed. Because they made the game better, and without a framework of agreed-upon rules, shorthands, and common assumptions, there was no story to be made.
I'm getting awfully goddamned close to done trying to convince people there are good ******* reasons why greater depth of character design and greater differentiation of abilities is vitally important for any TTRPG's long-term success, though. Just...******* god damnit. Why are you all even here, buying 5e stuff on DDB, if you all despise this edition so much and do all of your games from 0e? I know I give this edition plenty of grief, and I would honestly rather be using a different system, but the digital toolset doesn't exist for anything else. All y'all people who swear you never run a game on anything but P&P and haven't updated your toolkits since 1983?
The hell is your excuse?
Please do not contact or message me.
Okay, but when one person’s Fun is “telling a story” and another person’s Fun is “playing the game” and yet another’s Fun is “an enjoyable communal activity with friends” then D&D has to be all three of those because without the game, someone isn’t having Fun. Someone like Yurei, Mezz, Third, or myself for instance. For us, the game is fun, so it matters.
Creating Epic Boons on DDB
DDB Buyers' Guide
Hardcovers, DDB & You
Content Troubleshooting
Um....they kind of are.
For many spells you have your attack stat, and you roll a d20 against AC. That's exactly like a weapon attack.
"Sooner or later, your Players are going to smash your railroad into a sandbox."
-Vedexent
"real life is a super high CR."
-OboeLauren
"............anybody got any potatoes? We could drop a potato in each hole an' see which ones get viciously mauled by horrible monsters?"
-Ilyara Thundertale
Psion is a sorcerous origin. Done (as for the self-buffing psion, that's basically the 3e psychic warrior, not a psion, and it's a gish subtype and fits into the general discussion of fixing gishe
Spellcasting and weapon attacks actually have different effects. Psionic powers and spells do basically the same things. Pretty much everything in clairsentience, psychokinesis, psychoportation, telepathy, and metapsionics is not interestingly different from existing spells in the sorcerer or wizard lists. Psychometabolism has some healing that would need the bard or cleric lists.
I liked when psionics were available to anybody with luck. You didn't have to have a certain race, class, origin. If you had the right stats and a little luck, you could be Dr. Mindbender. 5e has done away with the randomness of previous editions for the sake of validity.
I'm not exactly certain that Psionics needs it own class. They are basically spells that aren't spells. So you can't detect them with detect magic and can't dispel or counterspell them. And of course they would function fine if your PC was naked in an anti-magic field.
Maybe if they were Feats that built upon each other. Then I could have my F/MU/T with Psionic Blast.
"Sooner or later, your Players are going to smash your railroad into a sandbox."
-Vedexent
"real life is a super high CR."
-OboeLauren
"............anybody got any potatoes? We could drop a potato in each hole an' see which ones get viciously mauled by horrible monsters?"
-Ilyara Thundertale
Myself and others feel that psionic powers should not be represented by Spellcasting or spell slots. To me, Yurei, Third, Mezz, and many others, having Psionics as separate from Spellcasting is quintessential to our enjoyment of it as a concept.
Every time you dismiss that as unimportant, you’re telling us our fun is wrong.
That hurts our feelings, please stop.
Creating Epic Boons on DDB
DDB Buyers' Guide
Hardcovers, DDB & You
Content Troubleshooting
Your fun is important to me! I will fight tooth and claw to make sure you have fun.
“I will take responsibility for what I have done. [...] If must fall, I will rise each time a better man.” ― Brandon Sanderson, Oathbringer.
I've heard of that psionics system from some who played that edition. I definitely dislike that concept. My main rule when it comes to character design is that all of your features should be choices, not random. You choose your stats with point buy or standard array, choose your race, background, and class. You don't roll it, that takes away the agency of the player. In my games, there is no randomness when a player of mine chooses who they want to play.
Please check out my homebrew, I would appreciate feedback:
Spells, Monsters, Subclasses, Races, Arcknight Class, Occultist Class, World, Enigmatic Esoterica forms
In a manner of speaking that's what I meant. GMs no longer have to worry about a players showing up with all the right luck rolls.
You don't have to be lucky or lie about good rolls in 5e. You show up with a character and anybody can create the same thing if they so wish - Validity.
"Sooner or later, your Players are going to smash your railroad into a sandbox."
-Vedexent
"real life is a super high CR."
-OboeLauren
"............anybody got any potatoes? We could drop a potato in each hole an' see which ones get viciously mauled by horrible monsters?"
-Ilyara Thundertale
First edition psionics were hilariously stupidly broken (because first level characters should be casting disintegrate....) and belong in the dumpster fire of bad concepts. As for feats, that's what Magic Initiate is for.
I don't think spellcasting should be represented by spell slots, and in general D&D doesn't do a good job of encouraging or supporting themed spellcasters. Psi behaves like spellcasting, and if holy miracles and arcane spells can both use the same system, so can psi.
The problem, Pantagruel, is that your proposal of treating any/all possible iterations of a psychically active/talented character as just a shitty Sorcerer is, again...how is this different from any other sorcerer that will have a better spell selection and something resembling actual class features? Saying "my sorcerer is psychic!" basically just means having to argue with your DM over why you're take damaging fire spells over Brain Teaser junk that hasn't worked for you in three levels because the DM keeps sending you after golems, all while the dragon sorcerer gets to cherry-pick The Best "Psychic" Spells alongside having full access to junk like Fireball, Counterspell, Polymorph, and all the other Cool Shit you're not allowed to take because you're psychic...alongside having dragon armor, dragon wings, extra HP, elemental damage resistance/boosts...
Why in Avandra's name would anyone ever decide to play a "psychic" sorcerer in that system, when the only thing that means is intentionally ultra-gimping a class already suffering from power anemia?
Please do not contact or message me.
But Psi shouldn’t behave like spellcasting, that’s the point. It may be able to do many of the same things, but it shouldn’t do them the same ways.
Creating Epic Boons on DDB
DDB Buyers' Guide
Hardcovers, DDB & You
Content Troubleshooting
Nope, nada.
The game is built around rolling dice, particularly a D20. There are exceptions (Invocations being one), but they are all part of a classes that depends on rolling those dice. If you want to create a class that is not based around rolling dice, as spellcasting is, then you go right ahead and create your game. If you want to create a entirely brand new game mechanic, independent of how every other non martial class works, knock yourself out.
Just don't call it D&D.
Psionics should be, I think, a mix of spell casting, non-spellcasting and psi points.
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