Psionics in 3.5 were notoriously busted. Granted that was almost twenty years ago now, but I'm seeing very similar themes with this new wave of psionic-inspired goobery.
It’s admittedly been a long time since I looked at 3.5 so it’s entirely possible I’m mis-remembering, but I thought 3.0 was the terribly broken version and 3.5 was decent. You know, assuming people remembered to follow the rules, I do remember a bunch of complaints that were basically answered with “they can’t actually do that, read about their spending limits.”
I don't particularly think they've done anything to terribly unbalanced yet. Aberrant Mind is a strong, reliable class, but other than the perhaps unnecessary natural armor (I like that another sorcerer has natural armor but I feel that it was already good without this feature), I don't think it's too bad.
One of my players in my home-brew campaign has been playing it for about 3 months now and I can't say I've seen any issues other than him using the Invasive Thoughts thing a bit too much, but functionally it doesn't do much to alter the game too much in his favor. At most it just winds up being used for intimidation or quiet communication in tense environments, and more often it's just a cheap joke to scare peasants. I mean, GOO Warlocks get a very similar if not identical feature at level one as well, and the other abilities sound overpowered, but in practice so far they've been pretty niche. Psychic resistance is great but he's not gunna run into that any time soon, etc.
**edit**
Ok, so I was completely unaware that they released new UA classes and that this post was referring to solely the aberrant mind sorcerer. It wasn't showing up when I googled new UA stuff, but I saw a youtube video for it with a link to the PDF, so uh...
Well, I enjoy the concepts, at the very least. I particularly enjoy the concept of Psychic Warrior, almost gives me Jedi vibes, in a way. That being said, it doesn't seem terribly overpowered or underpowered to me, but I don't have any experience with the old psion classes from older editions as I'm fairly new to DND.
I remember the Psionicist from 2e and had been excited about their return. But the V3 Mystic was so poorly received as a whole by the community that WotC decided to scrap it and start over. They sifted through for what they could salvage and started two different projects sometime back in (early-mid?) 2018. One of those projects was to develop a new psionic Sub for each PHB Class, that is what has been published recently through UA.
The other project was Mike Mearls starting over basically from scratch with a new “Psion” Class. He was keeping the general idea of the Awakened and the Nomad as Subs but actually giving them each a clearer concept. He was also developing two new additional Subs that would also have clearer character concepts. His new Psion would have switched from Talents and Disciplines to a “more user friendly” Cantrip/Spell mechanic more inline with everything else in D&D, but they would have all been completely unique to the Psion, and Psions would have been able to spend their Spell Slots to actually cast their versions of Cantrips at higher levels. (He was trying to figure out something that would have satisfied us old heads who remember playing Psionicist back in the day, but wouldn’t be too different from the existing magic mechanics so as not to “intimidate” newer players into not buying the product. I’m personally not sure that particular combination is possible since, as everything else in 5e has proven, there is no way to make everyone happy at the same time.)
The most recent thing I saw about it was on YouTube towards the end of last year. Then the whole “Zac fiasco” hit and no one has heard anything since about the Psion, and people have barely heard anything at all from Mearls either since he used his reaction to take a semipermanent Hide action. (Lead game designer class feature I think. Here is a link to everything he had been working on up until he pulled the proverbial blanket over his head.
3.5e psion was just fine compared to casters. Psions were restricted by their choice of discipline and couldn't just "lol I beat you" like they could before when it was basically impossible to defend against psioncs without using your own psionic powers.
It still had the problems inherent with the rest of 3.5e but that wasn't unique to psions.
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Psionics in 3.5 were notoriously busted. Granted that was almost twenty years ago now, but I'm seeing very similar themes with this new wave of psionic-inspired goobery.
"The Epic Level Handbook wasn't that bad, guys.
Guys, pls."
It’s admittedly been a long time since I looked at 3.5 so it’s entirely possible I’m mis-remembering, but I thought 3.0 was the terribly broken version and 3.5 was decent. You know, assuming people remembered to follow the rules, I do remember a bunch of complaints that were basically answered with “they can’t actually do that, read about their spending limits.”
I don't particularly think they've done anything to terribly unbalanced yet. Aberrant Mind is a strong, reliable class, but other than the perhaps unnecessary natural armor (I like that another sorcerer has natural armor but I feel that it was already good without this feature), I don't think it's too bad.
One of my players in my home-brew campaign has been playing it for about 3 months now and I can't say I've seen any issues other than him using the Invasive Thoughts thing a bit too much, but functionally it doesn't do much to alter the game too much in his favor. At most it just winds up being used for intimidation or quiet communication in tense environments, and more often it's just a cheap joke to scare peasants. I mean, GOO Warlocks get a very similar
if not identicalfeature at level one as well, and the other abilities sound overpowered, but in practice so far they've been pretty niche. Psychic resistance is great but he's not gunna run into that any time soon, etc.**edit**
Ok, so I was completely unaware that they released new UA classes and that this post was referring to solely the aberrant mind sorcerer. It wasn't showing up when I googled new UA stuff, but I saw a youtube video for it with a link to the PDF, so uh...
Well, I enjoy the concepts, at the very least. I particularly enjoy the concept of Psychic Warrior, almost gives me Jedi vibes, in a way. That being said, it doesn't seem terribly overpowered or underpowered to me, but I don't have any experience with the old psion classes from older editions as I'm fairly new to DND.
It's ok Ranger, you'll always be cool to me.. Unless druid gets another use for its wild shape charges.
I remember the Psionicist from 2e and had been excited about their return. But the V3 Mystic was so poorly received as a whole by the community that WotC decided to scrap it and start over. They sifted through for what they could salvage and started two different projects sometime back in (early-mid?) 2018. One of those projects was to develop a new psionic Sub for each PHB Class, that is what has been published recently through UA.
The other project was Mike Mearls starting over basically from scratch with a new “Psion” Class. He was keeping the general idea of the Awakened and the Nomad as Subs but actually giving them each a clearer concept. He was also developing two new additional Subs that would also have clearer character concepts. His new Psion would have switched from Talents and Disciplines to a “more user friendly” Cantrip/Spell mechanic more inline with everything else in D&D, but they would have all been completely unique to the Psion, and Psions would have been able to spend their Spell Slots to actually cast their versions of Cantrips at higher levels. (He was trying to figure out something that would have satisfied us old heads who remember playing Psionicist back in the day, but wouldn’t be too different from the existing magic mechanics so as not to “intimidate” newer players into not buying the product. I’m personally not sure that particular combination is possible since, as everything else in 5e has proven, there is no way to make everyone happy at the same time.)
The most recent thing I saw about it was on YouTube towards the end of last year. Then the whole “Zac fiasco” hit and no one has heard anything since about the Psion, and people have barely heard anything at all from Mearls either since he used his reaction to take a semipermanent Hide action. (Lead game designer class feature I think. Here is a link to everything he had been working on up until he pulled the proverbial blanket over his head.
Creating Epic Boons on DDB
DDB Buyers' Guide
Hardcovers, DDB & You
Content Troubleshooting
3.5e psion was just fine compared to casters. Psions were restricted by their choice of discipline and couldn't just "lol I beat you" like they could before when it was basically impossible to defend against psioncs without using your own psionic powers.
It still had the problems inherent with the rest of 3.5e but that wasn't unique to psions.