New D&D Monthly Survey: Mystics & Psionics

The new D&D monthly survey is up - it asks about last month's Unearthed Arcana psionics rules. Additionally, WotC reports on the results of the last survey about settings, classes, and races. It turns out that the top tier settings in terms of popularity are Eberron, Ravenloft, Dark Sun, Planescape, and the Forgotten Realms, followed by Greyhawk, Dragonlance, and Spelljammer. Additionally, popular character types were led by the artificer, shaman, and alchemist; while the most popular races were thri-kreen, goblin, and aasimar.

Find the new survey here. "This month, our survey looks at the mystic character class and our first draft of psionics rules for fifth edition. Your input is an invaluable tool that helps shape how we develop new material for D&D. If you love the rules, hate them, or have a specific issue you want to address, let us know."

 

[Agamon]

A paragraph or two about what Greyhawk is about and how new folks can incorporate old edition texts into their game would help too, maybe use Greyhawk as the example for that in a UA.

Not asking for the world, just a snippet to reignite a bit of interest and refresh the idea that Greyhawk actually exists outside of a small gods list and some sentences in the core books.

That's not really what UA is for, though. It's a testing ground for new rules.

This could fit well as a D&D Alumni article though.

 

[Remathilis]

This could fit well as a D&D Alumni article though.

I proposed a while back that WotC could use Dragon+ to highlight different campaign settings; a primer on Greyhawk, a retrospective on Mystara, a history of Ravenloft, the creation process on Eberron, etc. No rules, just info on the settings and perhaps background info on their creation and such.

But of course, that wouldn't be selling us a new product, which is the primary function of Dragon+, so I don't expect we'll see that anytime soon...

 

[Barantor]

I proposed a while back that WotC could use Dragon+ to highlight different campaign settings; a primer on Greyhawk, a retrospective on Mystara, a history of Ravenloft, the creation process on Eberron, etc. No rules, just info on the settings and perhaps background info on their creation and such.

But of course, that wouldn't be selling us a new product, which is the primary function of Dragon+, so I don't expect we'll see that anytime soon...

Whichever format, I think it would get some page views at least of the main D&D site, which is part of the reason you make interesting articles... I mean they made an article about throwing D&D birthday parties, so I don't think a Greyhawk article of some type is too much to ask lol.

Dragon+ went off my phone after seeing the second installment. I keep checking if it ever has anything good, but so far it seems more like an app that is just the ad space of the old Dragon magazine without as many articles....

 

[MoonSong]

I think it will be very tricky to design classes/subclasses based on creating consumable equipment i.e. Alchemist and Artificer.

During the playtest, an attempt was made at some point to give Wizards the ability to create Scrolls and Potions, and it was clear that you have to create a limit. But how the limit is enforced has to make some narrative sense too, and that's the tricky part. A lot of people reacted with rage at that Wizard's hard-coded limits, if the explanation is too feeble, it just doesn't cut it for a portion of the gamebase.

I remember that, I was very against that, but not because of the limits, because it wasn't called Wizard at the time, it was called MAGE, and was hardcoding scrolls, potions and stuff to all wizards, all sorcerers, all warlocks and even all psions.

See, I definitely agree with KM's assessment of UA Psionics, but to me (at least flavour-wise) his suggestions are committing the same sins that the playtest did: it's an unnecessary reinvention that ignores past expressions of the concept of psionics and tries to lump unrelated things together. For example, the whole "dream-plane" psionics thing is an explicitly racial concept in Eberron, but this didn't have any bearing on the type of psionics that, say, a dwarf might have used against the horrors of Xoriat. Would most fans of previous-editions psionics be satisfied if 5E's single psionic class had only setting-specific subclasses? Alternatively, would fans of those settings be satisfied if psionics was pared down to a single narrow subclass?

I guess I don't see the need to reinvent the proverbial wheel with psionics. Psionics would be well-served by a single class, the psion, with six different subclasses based on the six psionic disciplines: egoist, kineticist, nomad, seer, shaper, and telepath. (If six subclasses seems unreasonable, why? Clerics have seven and wizards have eight.) Further, make a new martial archetype (a.k.a.: subclass) for fighters called "psychic warrior", with a limited selection of psionic abilities from a couple of the psionic disciplines. Ditto for the soulknife, except make it a subclass of either monk or rogue. Finally, create a bunch of psionic powers--what were called "disciplines" in the playtest--and divvy them into the six disciplines, then put them on a list. Why re-conceptualize psionics in the same edition that was deliberately trying to roll back the re-conceptualizations of other classes that 4E brought?

Reading the UA Psionics playtest, I'm reminded of one of the wizard previews that was released in the months prior to 4E: instead of having the traditional schools of magic, the designers had thought fans would like wizards to have specializations like, "Golden Wyvern initiate" and "Serpent Eye cabalist" and "Stormwalker theurge". As soon as WotC gauged the fan reaction, they changed all that in a hurry. There's nothing wrong with those concepts, but they sure as hell didn't represent what the previous incarnations of the D&D brand had said wizards were supposed to be. "Order of the Awakened" and "Order of the Immortal" feel like exactly that same mess all over again.

I agree entirely, but with a precision: The wilders-empaths-whatever you want to call them deserve some place too, a more emotional and raw counterpart to the meditative and disciplined psion. And the order thing won't exactly fit with that.

In many cultures, the role of shaman was a hereditary one...the association with (or dare I say "origin" of?) the ancestral or nature-benefactor spirit beings assumed to be passed down through a family line...the line's connection to the spirit at some mythical past being the source of their abilities.

Is/would it be too much of a stretch to create a Shaman as a Sorcerous Origin? Sorcerer's are built around a) an ancestor or b) association with/imbued by magical energies of some sort...We have a Dragon ancestor. We have a divine ancestor, Favored Soul. We have the Chaos Sorcerer. And the Storm Sorcerer (which could be either from an [air elemental] ancestor or getting caught in a "magically forceful/imbuing" storm).

Is the Shaman, as "Spirit World Origin" [be that ancestor or association] Sorcerer, too far a leap? Seems a shorter jump, to me, than Artificer to Shaman....or stretching the shaman so thin to create subclasses to justify a full class.

It sounds interesting. It could fit with the sorcerer, and give the class some needed animal friends and summons. But it doesn't quite fit the "mystic" and animistic flavor people expect from the shaman.

 

[steeldragons]

Well, the "animistic" would be inherent because the whole explanation of the powers are from spirits and the class features would show that. It's easy for any setting/world/game to say they have "spirit magic"/connect to the "spirit world". It's another thing entirely to demand a setting/world/game recognize and include "animism."

The "mystic" flavor could just be handled a) by having them choose from the Druid spell list instead of the Sorcerer, b) allowing them to choose from either! or c) have them choose from the sorcerer list and make the class' Bonus Spells (since that seems to be the running mode of the additional sorcerer's we have thus far) come from the Druid list/convey nature-mystic-some spirit stuff.

 

[SkidAce]

I guess I'll have to give it a shot.
Which means first reading all of those books myself (all I know from GH comes from the 3E PHB, which is to say, not a lot.) and then writing up my own "summary" which I would have to hand out to my potential players.
Which region of the Flanaess would be both sufficiently diverse to allow for PCs from all races (the "standard" ones, minus Dragonborn) yet remote enough to not have that over-the-top Faerûn feel? I basically want a "default" generic medieval-ish feel.

Kingdom of Nyrond.

 

[Mistwell]

If people are truly convinced a Greyhawk setting wouldn't be profitable for WOTC, they could license it out to one of the other RPG companies to use.

Would they do that? What argument would you make against it, that doesn't in some way detract from the claim it wouldn't be profitable for WOTC to do it themselves?

 

[everyman322]

We need a new thread to talk about this month's article - I had to scan 12 pages of setting talk nostalgia to find out nobody cares that the Mystic class is total garbage.

No Psi points back from short rest? Monk gets all his ki points back (yes he has fewer ki points than Mystic has psi points, but uses fewer), fighter gets his second wind, action surge, and superiority dice back after a short rest, and he isn't dependent on those to be tanky or to do consistent damage.

Being only able to use one discipline at a time makes this class have to choose between decent offense, and (poor)defense, making them effectively a strictly ranged offensive class. The defensive stuff is not good enough to make the class tanky, takes away virtually all offensive capabilities and is thus pretty much unusable.

The mind control discipline seems strong vs a single target, albeit one dimensional (like being a wizard that can only cast a couple different single target charm spells).

There is the Psionic Weapon discipline that can nova similar in power to a fire snake monk at level 5, but can do it for 5 rounds in a row!

There is a discipline that makes you sorta tanky vs only one attack per round and you have to use psi points and your reaction, and you have to switch to that discipline BEFORE you are attacked.

There is a discipline that gives you the fighter's Action Surge (even called "Surge of Action", but you don't get it until 5th level, and you have to use your bonus action, but you can use it FIVE ROUNDS IN A ROW. That means a Fighter 11, Mystic 5 with both Action Surge and Surge of Action, on the first five turns of a combat can get 9/6/6/6/6 attacks! That's 33 attacks in 5 turns! Even just the first round's 9 attacks is more than the Fighter class's level 20 capstone lets him do in a single round. Add in Great Weapon Master + a magic greatsword or Sharpshooter + Archery + a magic bow and wow!

Everything in this class is either super broken or completely useless.

 

[Greybird]

In the real world, shamans are a distinct "role" from the druids of Europe, and are found all over the world in hunter-gatherer and nomadic societies. It needs to be its own class. IMO, of course!

But I hope WotC never touches the term of "witch doctor" or anything resembling it. Witch doctors are a real world concept, and a D&D version would most certainly fit as a shaman subclass . . . but the term has some pretty negative and racist connotations it has acquired over the years, and would not be a good fit for D&D, IMO. Especially because the "humanoid" witch doctors found in early D&D were very racist caricatures of "primitive" divine spellcasters and made me cringe even as a kid. I wouldn't mind a respectfully done "medicine man" or "sangoma" shaman subclass, however . . .

I agree that it should be its own class, but I really don't want to see 5E get bogged down with dozens of classes. Class options, yes. Anyway, 'shaman' is actually nearly as abused as 'witch doctor.' Technically only the people of one culture (native to the northern Asia/Siberia area) are shaman. If you want to see someone ticked off, call a Native American medicine man a 'shaman', even though what they do falls within the anthropological category of 'shamanistic.'

Part of the reasoning behind my suggesting Warlock is that in many shamanistic cultures, the practitioner is A) chosen by the spirits rather than choosing the path, and B) while some spirits are seen as allies to the shaman, others are antagonistic, forced into service through willpower and skill. There are lots of examples of spirit allies who only serve the shaman after he dominates them. It is a very powerful give-and-take between two forces - the shaman and the spirits.

Likewise, there are certain roles that the cultural shaman typically fulfills. He is a counselor, advising the people. He is a healer and a protector. He is also often an aggressive opponent, cursing, sickening, and even killing other shaman and members of opposing tribes. As an aside, he is also often a showman, conducting elaborate rituals purely for the psychological impact on the subject (although this isn't often mentioned openly.) Some traditional shaman have basically said (paraphrasing) that a lot of what they do is by tricking the sick person into healing themselves, ie triggering the placebo effect.

While I shaman may be wise, it is his personality that keeps things going. That tells me charisma. I considered sorcerer (and it would certainly be a decent option), but chose warlock simply because of the more aggressive options combined with the theme of working with external entity with its own agenda that may or may not agree with the caster's. The fact that they can stand on their own in combat fits, too.

 

[epithet]

I agree with Greybird, the Shaman is best realised as a spirit pact warlock. That can also accommodate the Pathfinder-style Witch class.