Psion class (Mearls, Happy Fun Hour)

TheCosmicKid said:

Nah. But when they wish to hide themselves, they can cunningly disappear by living under their real surname and wearing the uniform robes of their order, within spitting distance of their sworn enemies' close relatives (who are also living under their real surname).

Click to expand...

Well, you've certainly talked me into Jet-Eye psions being based on Charisma instead of Intelligence or Wisdom.

SkidAce said:

Guy named "Benny" is their leader.

Click to expand...

You meam the music group benny and the jets.

Putting more thought into Psionic subclasses of Paladin, Ranger and Druid.

While one suggested they take the Divine Mind concept and put it in as the Paladin subclass, I always had the idea for an Oath of Madness/Fractured Reality that was generally tilted towards the Chaotic Neutral alignment, which was a Paladin whose Oath is about their own perception of reality that is different from the baseline reality of others, whether it was the result of trauma, dissociative disorders, the Far Realm, the Region of Dreams or knowing some sort of unknowable truth. It would probably be more slanted to telepathy as it's part of their oath to have others accept their version of reality, such as being recognized as the Princess of Imaginaria, all living things are masses of crawling worms or the fact that their murdered family is still very much alive.

The Ranger subclass could be about hunting bounties with psychometry which is the ability to read psychic imprints on objects and using some psychoportation related powers. In many ways they'd be the ulimate bounty hunters as they can use other senses to track their targets. Some of them might be aberration hunters, or hunters of shapeshifters tracking hidden threats that embed themselves deep inside civilization. Any many ways they could be the actual Urban Rangers that a few have expressed a want for.

The Druid might be the hardest one to fit in a psionic subclass, but there's certainly some sort of overlap between wildshape and many of the body control abilities of psionics, especially 3e psionics where there's many partial shape-shifting abilities such as growing claws and spitting acid. Perhaps the circle will be about an idealized primal beast of many forms, becoming like it in body and mind.

Tony Vargas said:

Oh, the 're-inventing' argument is obvious and even compelling, it just doubles as an argument not to have psionics, at all. So, IDK, have them work nothing like spells. Instead of discrete effects, construct effects up from disciplines, like supernatural Legos, using power points to fuel each block. Or simply don't have "high level" disciplines, don't level-gate them, just learn more as you go, and pouring more power points into them brings them up to level-appropriate effectiveness.

Click to expand...

The Lego approach always sounds awesome in principle, but there are a couple of practical hurdles there, both in design and play. The more-power approach seems cleaner, simpler, more... 5E. (Also: incarnum magic.)

It also seems like a perfect fit for some disciplines, such as telekinesis. Just brainstorming:

Telekinetic Talent: Basically mage hand, but with open-ended actions available (attack, grapple, ready...).
Augment: Spend psi points to increase hand's effective Strength score (and size?).
Augment: Spend psi points to get extra hands.
And maybe Power: Spend psi points to throw something you're holding really hard.

And that seems like all you really need for a telekinetic. Not three dozen powers that do specific slightly different things. Give the character this broad, flexible tool and let them figure out what to do with it.

But does the same approach work for every discipline? It seems like it'd be trickier to design, say, metamorphosis or telepathy along these lines.

Not necessarily. Telepathy, he’s already touched on. He seems to like at every Psion will have basic telepathy, which is to send thoughts to others. Telepaths would be able to also receive responses, as an upgrade.

Other upgrades could be reading all surface thoughts, delving into memories, implanting false memories, telepathically connecting to more people, or keeping a psychic link open when not in line of sight.

Metamorph could start out small, with simply changing the color of ones skin, hair and eyes. Then spells that augment it’s effects. Granting claws, wing, growth or shrinkage, corrosive blood, whatever. Not much of a Cantrip, but then none of them really should be. It’s the augments that would make the Psion powerful.

I'm looking foward to how he does the Constructor subclass, maybe building off a Cantrip that summons your imaginary friend?

gyor said:

I'm looking foward to how he does the Constructor subclass, maybe building off a Cantrip that summons your imaginary friend?

Click to expand...

I will be curious to see how they learned lessons from summoning when they construct this element as well... Although the Xanathar's summoning spells are better, we still do not have a truly viable conjuration specialist that brings monster servants to the table... you're better off summoning via polymorph than summoning from scratch.

TheCosmicKid said:

And that seems like all you really need for a telekinetic. Not three dozen powers that do specific slightly different things. Give the character this broad, flexible tool and let them figure out what to do with it.

Click to expand...

That is one of my favorite parts about 5e. This approach with the bigby hand spell that used to be 4-5 and now just one with different actions, and collapsing some of the spells back like enlarge/reduce.

It’s basically what 3e psionics was built on. Spend base pp then augment strength, flexibility or both with additional points. Sounds like he is aiming to do that augmentation with spells this time around though.

Eubani said:

I wouldn't of minded the EK so much if it had a bit of story and identity woven in. This is possible as I have used it as a template to make a Dark Knight subclass that had access to Necromancy, Conjuration and an Imp familiar. Remove some of the not necessary stuff throw in a dash of Necrotic damage with melee and a bonus to intimidate and I got something that had story and flavour.

Click to expand...

I think that it is good that there is little flavor. It allows someone creative to add the flavor they want! Like you just did

Same goes with the battlemaster really...

jgsugden said:

I will be curious to see how they learned lessons from summoning when they construct this element as well... Although the Xanathar's summoning spells are better, we still do not have a truly viable conjuration specialist that brings monster servants to the table... you're better off summoning via polymorph than summoning from scratch.

Click to expand...

I'm curious why you say this, what about Conjurer and Circle of the Sherpherd and Lore Bards?