D&D 5E The Mystic on the Mountain (A UA Mystic Build Exercise)

Hi everyone. Almost 2 full days after the 3rd, and nearly complete, version of the Mystic dropped, and the main thread is already at 15 pages. I'm not yet done fully digesting the Mystic myself, but it really has me thinking. I may be running an all mystic game soon, with a party of characters on a journey to find a fabled Grand Master. It's the Grand Master that I've thought of, and I'd like to see if we can build it together.

The Grand Master is going to be a 20th level Human Mystic. The crux of his abilities are as follows:

Psionic Body (level 20) for "You no longer age", "you are immune to disease, poison damage, and the poisoned condition".
Adaptive Body discipline, "Environmental Adaptation" and for "while focused on this discipline, you don't need to eat, breathe, or sleep. To gain the benefits of a long rest, you can spend 8 hours engaged in light activity, rather than sleeping during any of it.). For 2 PP for 1 hour, the Grand Master will be able to ignore the effects of heat and cold. For 16 hours, that's 32 PP.

With these three abilities, the Grand Master can meditate on a mountain top in nothing but a simple robe and survive for eternity. But wait, "light activity" isn't a specific term in 5E, but long rests do state "if the rest is interrupted bya period of strenuous activity - at least 1 hour of walking, fighting, casting spells, or similar adventuring activity - the characters must begin the reast again to gain any benefit from it. The exhaustion track will have them dead in 6 hours (7 hours, after Environmental Adaptation wears off).

So, with the 1 hour duration, the Grand Master couldn't get through an 8 hour long rest without freezing to death. A silver or white dragonborn could get around this, but that makes them a little too exotic.

An elf could survive the 3 hours of cold a night (1 hour with Environmental Adaptation active), suffering 3 ranks of fatigue, but those can be cured with 3 uses of Restore Vigor from Psionic Restoration (I kind of like the idea of half freezing to death every night, and then curing yourself with 21 PP). They'd spend 40 PP keeping warm during their wakeful hours, and 21 PP curing their exhaustion, for 61 of their 115 a day; a small price to pay for enlightenment.

A Soul Knife Mystic could use "Consumptive Knife" to kill an enemy every hour to gain 2 PP. They'd never need to take a long rest with that, just kill something and then cast "Environmental Adaptation". But they'd need 24 enemies a day to keep this up, and they'd need to be enemies whom they could kill without taking more than 2 damage. Are they meditating near a portal to the elemental plane of air or the demiplane of cold, where a weak little beasty trickles out every hour? They'd be able to do 3d8+str/dex damage with one hit (against AC 10 to boot), so as long as the beasty doesn't have significantly more than 18-36 HP (an elemental animal?), they'd be likely to kill it without taking any damage. That's a pretty awesome contemplative life, the contemplation of battle.

Alternatively, as I'm the DM, I could be flexible with the Environmental Adaptation power. Hunter's Mark and Hex are 1st level spells (2 SP if you use spell points) that last for 1 hour. As a 3rd level spell (5 SP), they last 8 hours. As a 5th level spell (7 SP), they last 24 hours. The same could be applied to Environmental Adaptation and let them cast it for 7 PP to last for 24 hours.

Once we figure out how best to let this Grand Master survive, I can begin fully statting it. What do you think?

1) Magic Items. Ring of Warmth or Boots of the Winterlands would solve the cold issue.
2) 16 Constitution is reasonable for a 20th level mystic. Swap his proficient saving throw to Con, he'll have a +9 to Con saves, which means he'll never fail the DC 10 Con save against extreme cold.

TwoSix said:

1) Magic Items. Ring of Warmth or Boots of the Winterlands would solve the cold issue.
2) 16 Constitution is reasonable for a 20th level mystic. Swap his proficient saving throw to Con, he'll have a +9 to Con saves, which means he'll never fail the DC 10 Con save against extreme cold.

Click to expand...

I like the second option. I'm wanting to avoid magic items for this character.

I'm thinking of a quest where the players are coming to visit, and then there's a quest to find something the Grand Master's been missing, something to fulfill them.


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I am so in. I posted a thread in Talking the Talk about doing an all Mystic game, but I didn't really want to DM it. You can go post there, if you like. I've already got someone interested.

If you want to cheat the hell out of it:

Wu Jen, Arcane Dabbler, Leomund's Tiny Hut. 5 psi points lets your hermetic sage spend his nights in comfort.

Help me with the math on this. Psionic Restoration, Restore vigor refills hit point max.

Adaptive body costs 2 psi to be resistant to Cold weather.

Spend 2 psi (from HP) to be immune to cold weather.

Spend 7 psi (from hp) to return max hp to normal*

spend 1 psi (medn Wounds from Psionic Restoration) to heal 1d8+1

Repeat.

How long can this continue? requires at least level 10, both for Consumptive power, and to spend 7 psi on a discipline.

*requires DM adjudication, does the reduction in HP happen after the spending, or during?


EDIT: Just reread consumptive power, can only be used 1/long rest, never mind on this.

He has a Divine Blessing that either lets him ignore the harsh cold, or makes it so Environmental Adaptation no longer counts as strenuous activity, depending on how many points you want to free up.

I'm leaning to the elf nearly killing himself every night.


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Ok, so looking at the 'science' of this.

The rules say "1 hour of strenuous activity, including...casting spells..."

I'd say casting one spell every hour doesn't count. Simply burning two psi points should not constitute strenuous activity. So, in my mind, he could just burn two psi points every hour, and be done with it.

Or, you could go with the Psionic Mastery, and have him use those special 11 Psi points solely on Environmental Adaptation. That gives five uses of it, which will last him most of the night. And he can use that four times a day at level 20, which is 20 hours of continuous Environmental Adaptation. The other four hours can be done during the day with normal psi points.

This way, he can just focus on not eating or breathing or sleeping, and constantly have Environmental Adaptation up, and not even have to burn more than 8 actual psi points.

tglassy said:

Ok, so looking at the 'science' of this.

The rules say "1 hour of strenuous activity, including...casting spells..."

I'd say casting one spell every hour doesn't count. Simply burning two psi points should not constitute strenuous activity. So, in my mind, he could just burn two psi points every hour, and be done with it.

Or, you could go with the Psionic Mastery, and have him use those special 11 Psi points solely on Environmental Adaptation. That gives five uses of it, which will last him most of the night. And he can use that four times a day at level 20, which is 20 hours of continuous Environmental Adaptation. The other four hours can be done during the day with normal psi points.

This way, he can just focus on not eating or breathing or sleeping, and constantly have Environmental Adaptation up, and not even have to burn more than 8 actual psi points.

Click to expand...

Spending power points through a long rest doesn't seem right. When would you regain the pluses of Psionic Mastery?


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