D&D (2024) WotC Fireside Chat: Revised 2024 Player’s Handbook

Charlaquin said:

It depends on what you consider mundane. Cutting a mountain in half with a sword is certainly not possible under the laws of physics. But, in a fantasy setting, it is conceivably something that could be done by an “ordinary” person who is just that good at using swords. We can get pedantic about whether or not that’s “magic,” or we can skip all that and admit that fans of martial characters want their characters to be able to get to that point, and to not have to cast spells to do it.

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What I consider mundane is based on my perspective as a real life human: things real life humans can't do.

Minigiant said:

I meant classes.

90% of the time, the best solution is more classes.

My coffee was brewing as I posted.

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90% of the time a new class is proposed a new subclass or two would be better. Far lower mechanical overhead and far fewer rules added. Every rule added is a cost to the wider game. This doesn't mean that it is never worth it - just that it is a cost. And subclasses have an inherently lower cost because if people don't take the subclass I don't have to care about it.

Minigiant said:

One book doesn't torch a game.

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No. It takes an attitude. The one size fits all attitude that more classes and spells are inherently better.

Minigiant said:

The D&D community has to come to grips that it's WAY TOO DIVERSE for one size fits all.

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Indeed. One size fits all solutions like "It must be a class" and "Spells are always good" are something that should be rejected.

Minigiant said:

The D&D spell system works because there are tons of spells that many different fans can latch on to. That mentality has to spread across the whole game understanding that what one person likes one thing, another person like another thing.

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The D&D spell system also collapses under its own weight when there are too many spells. Every single spell is a new rule - and you use a lot more spells than you do subclasses. Every single spell adds a burden.

Minigiant said:

There is a huge demand for psionics but the community is divided.

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There is a small demand for psionics, the community is catered to with numerous subclasses, but there are a few very vocal members who want something else and can't agree on what they want.

Minigiant said:

I work in sales. Every work I sell multiple variants of the same things that have different applications. I can choose to not offer one variety and my customers will get that somewhere else. Probably for higher cost or lower quality. That happens for the things I don't sell

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Meanwhile no shop in their senses stocks every single possible product. There are overheads to stocking more. And often even if there is something perfect location matters. So this is an argument that presents only one side of the coin.

And D&D is not as modular as you think, and DMs need to be able to understand the entire line they offer.

Minigiant said:

We split up the fighting man, cleric, and magic user due to demand.

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And made them fundamentally different play experiences with fundamentally different play objectives.

Minigiant said:

Why not the psionicist? You just have to do it early like how the artificer was done.

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The psionicist has been split up. Into the Aberrant Mind, the Great Old One Warlock (the OneD&D version is way better than the PHB version), the Soulknife, the Psi War, the Astral Soul Monk, and the College of Whispers bard.

If you want to play a Psion and think that the 3.5 psion was anything other than a travesty what you want to do is go around casting "Psychic Spells" that are sometimes literally wizard spells except you cast them with a pool of psionic power points and cast them using the power of your mind, ignoring most components. You want to do it spontaneously, and you want similar baseline stats to the wizard. This is literally what an Aberrant Mind does. The only thing they do differently is a tiny splash of Far Realm flavour.

Meanwhile the Soulknife actually suits me better as a low-mid grade psychic who can do things with the power of their mind, but uses that in support of a honed body and mind for an excellent spy/assassin subclass. It is a better representation of the type of psychic I want to play than going all out Professor X the way the Psion/Aberrant Mind does. (And don't get me started on the travesty that was the 3.X Soulknife that was basically a fighter-but-worse).

mamba said:

if grounded ends around level 5, it is too few levels to use D&D for this…

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Level 5 is literally when the casters become ungrounded because they can fly. And fireball. D&D has never been my pick for gritty games. (Level 4 was when the oD&D fighter became a Hero).

Possibly you do want a game other than D&D. It's not a generic game.

This thread is full of people make wild extrapolations over the sliver of data wotc shares and pretending like these conclusions are both fact and the only positive answer.

We dont kmow what the feedback for mystic was, and we dont know now close it was to 70%. People in this thread need to stop pretending their BIAS towards psionics is somehow represented in the mainstream.

Neonchameleon said:

If you want to play a Psion and think that the 3.5 psion was anything other than a travesty what you want to do is go around casting "Psychic Spells" that are sometimes literally wizard spells except you cast them with a pool of psionic power points and cast them using the power of your mind, ignoring most components. You want to do it spontaneously, and you want similar baseline stats to the wizard. This is literally what an Aberrant Mind does. The only thing they do differently is a tiny splash of Far Realm flavour.

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I can't say that I agree with this, Neon. The Aberrant Mind may scratch the itch for someone who otherwise hates psionics, but it does NOT scratch my itch for a psion.

Reynard said:

That sounds dull by way of eliminating potential different roles.

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And there it is.

If you want a game where there are roles, you need the classes to be good at different things.

Which means that sometimes they've gotta be bad at different things.

Kill the powerful damage spells and make Wizards into exploration/control/support monsters. Let them do AoE at a lower level than a Fighter hits at and single target at a significantly lower level than a Rogue hits at.

And then you get 4e in spirit if not in mechanics.

The issue D&D has is LEGACY. Gygax and the others weren't huge on balance and wanted low level wizards to suck and high level wizards to pay off that low level suck by becoming gods.

Hence Melf's Meteors and the like.

Neonchameleon said:

90% of the time a new class is proposed a new subclass or two would be better. Far lower mechanical overhead and far fewer rules added. Every rule added is a cost to the wider game. This doesn't mean that it is never worth it - just that it is a cost. And subclasses have an inherently lower cost because if people don't take the subclass I don't have to care about it.

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Well it's a choice between being an easy RPG or providing various narrative and gameplay elements in the customer base. Every rule is a cost.

However Subclasses is the solution is how we got 5+ years of a terrible beastmaster ranger.

The classes were not designed flexible enough more the subclasses big enough for everything.

Some ideas can't happen in a satisfactory manner without a whole new class.

My vision for the Psion is pretty simple. I don't think that WotC needs to reinvent the wheel.

I would prefer a full class Psion. I don't just want the Psion to be a Sorcerer or something bolted onto another class. I believe that there is ample room for subclasses for the Psion, probably more so for the Psion than some other classes in the game.

I don't necessarily think that Metamagic, for example, is the best way to express the Psion's unique talents. If anything, I think that the Warlock (i.e., autoscaling powers, recharge on short rests, relying a lot on cantrips, and invocations = wild talents) provides a better model for the Psion than the Sorcerer. However, having the Psion as a regular fullcaster is also acceptable.

I don't need psionic magic to be its own thing. I have no problems with the Psion casting spells. I don't mind that they cast magic spells and their spells are affected by things like anti-magic. However, I think that there needs to be a more thematically-appropriate curated spell list for the Psion than what the base Sorcerer or other spellcasting classes provide.

When it comes to the casting stat for the Psion, I would prefer Wisdom > Intelligence > Charisma, in that order. This is to say, that the Psion is focused around intuition, extrasensory perception, and insight into the world around them. This would move them closer to the divine casters and Monks. It also means that they would be better at skills like Perception and Insight.

If there are balance concerns about things like spell components, then my suggestion would be that (1) the ability to naturally negate spell components are unlocked through Psion levels, and (2) this ability applies only to spells on the Psion spell list or those possibly gained from a Psion's subclass.

While I understand the characterization that psionic fans can't agree on what they want from psionics, I think that it does a huge disservice to psionic fans to then suggest that this means that desires of psionic fans are therefore unreasonable or impractical. As I said before in this thread, I do think that WotC left a lot of unexplored design space between the Mystic and their current subclasses route completely untouched.

Aldarc said:

My vision for the Psion is pretty simple. I don't think that WotC needs to reinvent the wheel.

I would prefer a full class Psion. I don't just want the Psion to be a Sorcerer or something bolted onto another class. I believe that there is ample room for subclasses for the Psion, probably more so for the Psion than some other classes in the game.

I don't necessarily think that Metamagic, for example, is the best way to express the Psion's unique talents. If anything, I think that the Warlock (i.e., autoscaling powers, recharge on short rests, relying a lot on cantrips, and invocations = wild talents) provides a better model for the Psion than the Sorcerer. However, having the Psion as a regular fullcaster is also acceptable.

I don't need psionic magic to be its own thing. I have no problems with the Psion casting spells. I don't mind that they cast magic spells and their spells are affected by things like anti-magic. However, I think that there needs to be a more thematically-appropriate curated spell list for the Psion than what the base Sorcerer or other spellcasting classes provide.

When it comes to the casting stat for the Psion, I would prefer Wisdom > Intelligence > Charisma, in that order. This is to say, that the Psion is focused around intuition, extrasensory perception, and insight into the world around them. This would move them closer to the divine casters and Monks. It also means that they would be better at skills like Perception and Insight.

If there are balance concerns about things like spell components, then my suggestion would be that (1) the ability to naturally negate spell components are unlocked through Psion levels, and (2) this ability applies only to spells on the Psion spell list or those possibly gained from a Psion's subclass.

While I understand the characterization that psionic fans can't agree on what they want from psionics, I think that it does a huge disservice to psionic fans to then suggest that this means that desires of psionic fans are therefore unreasonable or impractical. As I said before in this thread, I do think that WotC left a lot of unexplored design space between the Mystic and their current subclasses route completely untouched.

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These ideas are very much in line with the design style of 5e.

If we are to treat Psionic powers as mental magic, as your post suggests then everything is fine, but if psionics is to be viewed as something other than magic, the game, I feel, would have to introduce a new skill (as it did in 3.5e).

Charlaquin said:

It depends on what you consider mundane. Cutting a mountain in half with a sword is certainly not possible under the laws of physics. But, in a fantasy setting, it is conceivably something that could be done by an “ordinary” person who is just that good at using swords. We can get pedantic about whether or not that’s “magic,” or we can skip all that and admit that fans of martial characters want their characters to be able to get to that point, and to not have to cast spells to do it.

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This ends up being the versimilitude argument. In fiction, we assume things work the way we know about on Earth unless we are explicitly told how and often why they are different. D&D doesn't explain how the world works except in the vaguest terms. So in lieu of world building, you have to assume the worlds of D&D works like ours does.

I think it would be interesting if the World assumed magic and supernatural abilities were commonplace: a world where bakers use a bit of magic to keep their bread fresh or the royal knights can jump hundreds of feet and resist weapon blows with skin hard as iron, but D&D doesn't put the effort in. So we are left to assume bakers make bread the way they do on Earth and the royal knights are just ordinary soldiers in regular armor until the game goes out of the way to tell us otherwise.

Maybe the 24 core will make explicit that the Worlds of D&D are innately fantastical and magical and that the laws of physics don't work that way naturally. There are certainly hints of it. But as long as D&D tiptoes around that, the "the ordinary is extraordinary" defense is not viable. And that's a problem that is easily solved if D&D would commit to the bit and define the world.