Psion class (Mearls, Happy Fun Hour)

Salthorae

Imperial Mountain Dew Taster
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.

I like these concepts for the Paladin and Ranger a lot thematically, they are both very flavorful. Not sure about Druid either... they already have a Circle of Dreams which would have been a good spot to drop Psionics.

OTOH, does EVERY class need a Psionic sub version? I don't really think so. I'd even be ok if these 3 and sorcerer ended up not getting anything. Even Wizard really.. not sure there needs to be a Psionic sub-class for this now, though I'll take it. While I was happy with the mentalist sub-class, that was before he started working on the Psion class and then moved the Telepathy abilities back to the Psion (way more sense).
 

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jgsugden

Legend
You need single action summon spells for summoners.

Conjurer has too few options. Their first real summon is a 3rd level spell, and it creates monsters hostile to everyone.

Circle of Sheppard is UA only, and also doesn't really get a summon until level 5... It is likely the best summoner right now.

Lore Bards can summon, but again only at 6th level and do not really get anyvsummon specific abilities.
 


Salthorae

Imperial Mountain Dew Taster
You need single action summon spells for summoners.

Conjurer has too few options. Their first real summon is a 3rd level spell, and it creates monsters hostile to everyone.

Circle of Sheppard is UA only.

Circle of the Shepherd is in Xanathar’s now and they get boosts to summoned beasts/fey at 6th level & 10th level.

Druids get all the conjure/summons spells in the PHB but conjure celestial/planar ally

The lowest conjure/summon anywhere in 5e is 3rd level.

It is odd how they’ve seemed to divvy up summoning

Cleric - celestial, some ability to call elemental/fiends with Planar ally
Druid - all natural/fey/elementals
Ranger - natural/fey
Warlock - fiends and fey
Wizards, elementals & fiends

No one has access to all types for summoning, I never noticed that before.

Also Conjure Animals and Conjure Woodland brings are 1 action for Druid/Ranger. Summon Demon (lesser and greater) is also 1 action for wizards and warlocks.

Seems like the conjurer subclass got a little better with those spells. He can be a combat diabolist now where before they couldn’t.
 

tglassy

Adventurer
Maybe because summons breaks the Action economy. A large enough group, no matter their level, can take an enemy that can only attack one of them at a time. They’re great for soaking up Damage.

Man, I need to create a summoner now.
 

gyor

Legend
You need single action summon spells for summoners.

Conjurer has too few options. Their first real summon is a 3rd level spell, and it creates monsters hostile to everyone.

Circle of Sheppard is UA only, and also doesn't really get a summon until level 5... It is likely the best summoner right now.

Lore Bards can summon, but again only at 6th level and do not really get anyvsummon specific abilities.

To fix the Circle of the Shepherd issue, go human variant and pick Wizard Ritual Caster, and pick Unseen Servant and Find Familiar (pick a fey familiar), so you have some summoning from the get go. Also if Druids get the Infestation can trip, I forget it basically summons vermin for 1 round to damage your target, so take that too.
 

gyor

Legend
Circle of the Shepherd is in Xanathar’s now and they get boosts to summoned beasts/fey at 6th level & 10th level.

Druids get all the conjure/summons spells in the PHB but conjure celestial/planar ally

The lowest conjure/summon anywhere in 5e is 3rd level.

It is odd how they’ve seemed to divvy up summoning

Cleric - celestial, some ability to call elemental/fiends with Planar ally
Druid - all natural/fey/elementals
Ranger - natural/fey
Warlock - fiends and fey
Wizards, elementals & fiends

No one has access to all types for summoning, I never noticed that before.

Also Conjure Animals and Conjure Woodland brings are 1 action for Druid/Ranger. Summon Demon (lesser and greater) is also 1 action for wizards and warlocks.

Seems like the conjurer subclass got a little better with those spells. He can be a combat diabolist now where before they couldn’t.

With an invocation Warlocks have conjure Elemental as well.

Would Divine Soul has access to cleric Planar Ally and Conjure Celestial spells and Spiritual Weapon is kind of a minion of sorts.

The one class that can potentially summon a everything is Bard, who can poach the best summoning spells in the game, Conjure X, Summon X, Planar Ally, Infernal Call, Gate (btw any class with Gate can summon pretty much any kind of creature), Find Familiar, Find Steed, Find Greater Steed, Unseen Servant).

Btw Mighty Fortress is the biggest summoning spell in the game in terms of raw numbers because it can summon 100 unseen servants in the fortress that can leave the fortress and go with you.

Weirdest Summoning spell, True Resurrection, if the creature you wish to raise has no body, you effectively summon it to your location. (Side note as I typed this it dawned on me you could really screw with the Githyank by raising the dead God they use as a city using True Resurrection).

Wish can also summon anything an 8th level or lower spell can and it does it as an single turn action.
 


CapnZapp

Legend
Do you guys think we'll get the finished UA before the end of the year?
At this glacial pace?

Honestly - it would not surprise me if they drag the development out another year, so the final published class doesn't come out in 2019 even...

I hope they won't actually get anywhere if the design by committee, ie the public.

What's needed is a design team with a strong vision for how they want psionics to be.

Most of us will be happy either way, as long as it's not ruined by compromise.

At this rate the class(es) won't be out of UA in 2019.

Just look at the Ranger UA. It looks more and more like a bait and switch, where they secretly wanted to do nothing, so they made an UA but then dragged their feet hoping everybody should just give up.

Like me. I'm starting to give up hope they will ever add actual crunch to this edition. MMearls talks and talks, but only ever delivers the easy stuff: more subclasses, races, spells and backgrounds.
 

I don't think we will see the finished version before the publication of something that is going to use it: either a setting, and adventure, or a full on psionics handbook. And that isn't going to happen this year.
 

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