Unearthed Arcana 5E Psionics Alert! The Mystic Is Back In Unearthed Arcana

It's back! The long-awaited new version of the mystic - 5th Edition's psionic class - is here. "The mystic class, a master of psionics, has arrived in its entirety for you to try in your D&D games. Thanks to your playtest feedback on the class’s previous two versions, the class now goes to level 20, has six subclasses, and can choose from many new psionic disciplines and talents. Explore the material here—there’s a lot of it—and let us know what you think in the survey we release in the next installment of Unearthed Arcana." Click the image below for the full 28-page PDF!

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[The_Hanged_Man]

And even more, if you look at the spellpoints in the DMG you'll see that this matches exactly with that spellpoint system up to caster level 10, then it switches up with their Psionic Mastery.

Good observation. So it seems like they are mixing up spellpoint progression with something similar to a warlock. Interesting concept.

 

[Bera]

Good observation. So it seems like they are mixing up spellpoint progression with something similar to a warlock. Interesting concept.

Yeah. I kinda hope that mystics and monks will both just get ki points, or that multiclass monks' and mystics' ki can somehow interact. Not sure if bunches of extra ki points would break monks tho.

 

[Li Shenron]

This is huge... don't know how I'll be able to give feedback on such enormous amount of material.

Overall the whole system gives me an excellent impression, and I've never been a fan of psionics!

Two things I like are the variety of mechanisms for psionic powers (not just spell-like), and the lack of symmetry between disciplines as well as between subclasses. I'd really dislike if they all followed the same patter.

 

[rollingForInit]

This is so awesome.

Two minor issues I have:

The Soul Knife gets 2 fewer Disciplines than the rest. That feels weak? The actual soul knives don't make up for that, to me.

Talents ... they are very much like cantrips, and can be a lot of fun. But the progression seems odd. You start with 1, then get 2, 3 ... and 4 muuuuch later. Why not have it be similar to spellcaster cantrip progression? Start with 2, get 3 at level ~5, and a 4th around ~10.

 

[CydKnight]

After reading the UA on this, I have to admit this seems very interesting.

 

[Aldarc]

I was more referring to Martial healing and action granting, a lot of argument against the warlord that I have seen is that you can't do what a warlord does without magic, this particular version of the warlord definitely uses a form of magic so it should abate that particular argument, though it might disappoint the people who want an entirely non-magical Warlord.

I believe in 4E, we called that the "Ardent" which was a separate class entirely from the Warlord.

 

[Curmudjinn]

While I love psionics, this is still not what I'm looking for. Yes, I think it's better than previous iterations of D&D psionics and will be even better once fully-polished. I'm sure I'll use it, even soon.

However, I think psionics would work just fine as a warlock variant, with pacts similar to a warlock. No power points, none of that.
I'd rather see HP burn and escalating skill checks to manifest bigger powers, and have a slew of prime base powers to pick from.

 

[DEFCON 1]

Wow... up to page 8 and I don't think I've seen a single poster mention that all traces of the Far Realms have been removed from the class. Which tells me either one of two things...

1) Everyone expected it to happen so it wasn't worth mentioning... or...

2) Having the Far Realms as a possible fluff story for the class to make it unique (just like the quirks table does now) actually is, as it always has been, so easily able to be ignored that people don't even notice it when it's not there anymore. Which goes to show how inconsequential it was that the class mentioned it and turns out wasn't worth nearly the amount of time and energy people spent freaking out about it.

Of course, now instead people can get all up in arms about the quirks table (yelling "Not in MY psionics!"), when again, they'll be able to ignore it with absolutely no issue whatsoever.

 

[Aldarc]

Wow... up to page 8 and I don't think I've seen a single poster mention that all traces of the Far Realms have been removed from the class. Which tells me either one of two things...

I was getting ready to mention the same thing. Hallelujah! I loathed the mention of the Far Realms flavor text, and you can bet that my playtest feedback mentioned that. (I still dislike the class name.)

I would like to add something else DEFCON 1 as a possibility for why it wasn't mentioned, namely 3) That's a lot of new material to sift through, given the tremendous expanse of class abilities the Mystic received.

 

[DEFCON 1]

I was getting ready to mention the same thing. Hallelujah! I loathed the mention of the Far Realms flavor text, and you can bet that my playtest feedback mentioned that. (I still dislike the class name.)

I would like to add something else DEFCON 1 as a possibility for why it wasn't mentioned, namely 3) That's a lot of new material to sift through, given the tremendous expanse of class abilities the Mystic received.

Heh... I dunno... on the previous two UAs for it, the Far Realms connection was like one of the first things people mentioned as soon as the article was released. You'd think if it was really that important that people would have read those first couple pages, saw no mention of it (with it all replaced by the quirks charts) and come on here screaming 'Hallelujah!' Instead, nary a peep. LOL!