Unearthed Arcana Unearthed Arcana Revisits Psionics

The latest Unearthed Arcana from WotC revisits some psionic rules! “Shine with the power of the mind in this installment of Unearthed Arcana! Today we revisit several psi-themed options that we released in the past few months. Studying your feedback on those options, we’ve crafted this new collection of subclasses, spells, and feats, found in the PDF below.“

News Archive | Dungeons and Dragons

Read the full archives of Dungeons & Dragons news, Sage Advice, Unearthed Arcana, and D&D Studio Blogs.

dnd.wizards.com

 

[MechaTarrasque]

You know you can't really get the 1E feeling for psychics unless you lie to your DM about successfully rolling for them and shortly the DM kills your PC with an ugly floating duck thing while the rest of the players laugh at you for thinking you pulled a fast one.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I have the 1E DMG secondhand, so I know in theory. That's what It saying, they aren't recreating the 1E rules, but a feeling (per their stated intent in the text). Most players won't have any familiarity with 1E.

They don't feel remotely like 1E, though, that's the thing.

1E's vibe was that psionics were this really random and potentially powerful thing, but which was secondary to the abilities of other classes (even though sometimes it was actually way more powerful than them, confusingly). Even the Wild Talent thing here doesn't much resemble the 1E implementation. The comment that they were like 1E solely related to the "not an actual class you can pick" point, nothing else.

This is more like really toned-down 3E. In 3E you had the Psychic Warrior i.e. Psi-Knight, indeed I believe the subclass was previously called Psychic Warrior, wasn't it? And the Soulknife which is here called er, the Soulknife as the psionics + fighting and psionics + rogue-ing classes. You also had the Wilder (a bit like 3E's take on Sorcerer so yeah sorta vaguely kinda equivalent to the Psionic Soul sorcerer here), and the Psion. The trouble is the Psion has no equivalent here (the Psionic Wizard was a dismal failure as such), and also that the Psychic Warrior and the Soulknife were half-casters, so should be equivalent to the Eldritch Knight and Arcane Trickster, in that they should have access to the Psion's abilities, but only some of them. That should afford them a great deal of utility not evident here. Utility is something Psionics was strong at in all previous editions except 1E (but that was because 1E psionics were a random mess).

I personally played a Psychic Warrior quite a bit in 3E (my favourite 3E character), and the utility afforded by the psionic stuff was pretty huge, and a lot more interesting than the yawnsome combat stuff here. They could at least hand out a variant Mage Hand cantrip to both. Right now if you wanted to do a character like a Psychic Warrior in 5E, you'd probably want to play a Valor Bard, which is er, not how it should be.

The Soulknife subclass is at least charming (if ill-designed in some regards), and I have no particular issue with the Psionic Soul Sorcerer, but the Psi-Knight is pretty sad, because it has little of the charm of 3E and 4E psychic warrior types (I forget the name of the class in 4E), and fails to follow the recent trend of Fighter subclasses in actually having some non-combat utility.

If we translated 2E's Psionicist to 5E (and to some extent 3E and 4E's Psions), you'd probably end up with something most functionally similar to 5E's Bard, but with a quite distinct set of abilities. Hell, I'm going to say, had that previous article tried to "do a Psion" but used the Bard as the base instead of the Wizard, it might have got away with it, because it's a lot closer. There's a heavy utility and CC theme, and some healing with Psioncists and Psions. You want to do Psionics by way of magic? You start with the Bard or something close to it.

Interesting the "class feature variants" article makes this far more viable, because you could replace a lot of stuff. Even Inspiration works well as a Bard-Psion thing.

 

[maceochaid]

I can also see adding "Wild Talent" as a subrace too to mimic the feel of the Wild Talent. I would do the Core PHB Races, because we wouldn't be able to get coverage outside of that.

They would all get the Psionic talent feature and a racially inspired use of it. It could even tie their Psionic Talent to a racially appropriate Int/Wis/Cha score.

 

[Maxperson]

There's simply no extant model in 5e that can hold what a Dragon King/Avangion represented in 2e, that is, someone who was at the pinnacle of both psionic and arcane power (either defiling or preserving). Anything developed to allow a PC to attain those heights would be a new subsystem built out of whole cloth.

Psionic soul sorcerer won't work for that, but any psionic system not explicitly built for Dark Sun around the assumption that Dragon King/Avangion apotheosis is possible is going to fail that test.

Yes and no. The Dragons were 20th level wizards and 20th level Psions. At that point they began a 10 level dragon process. Creating a Psion class and making Dragons start at 10th level Psion/10th level wizard would be a much, MUCH closer 5e rendition. They could set forth a path for 10 more levels, or some other process that would be incremental and difficult.

 

[Maxperson]

That's what monster stat blocks are for: Dragon King's are for slaying and looting, not playing, and 5E is not Simulationist in mechanics.

That's not true. They, and Avangions, were for playing. If a PC went through the process, they would become those things.

 

[Thurmas]

I was never a fan of the Mystic, but I do think they need a full class to pull from, with the subclasses being similar in nature. But the biggest reason I think we need a full class is to get a Unique Spell List. Otherwise you just end up with a Sorcerer casting all of the same spells. Make a full class with its own spell list with the addition of Psi unique spells and then you get your more unique classes. Then make subclasses that if they are spell casters, they get to choose spells from either class spell list, just like the Divine Soul does for Sorcerer and Cleric spells, and Eldritch Knight from Wizards.

I think some of the subclasses go in a better direction, and dropping the Wizard for the Sorcerer was a step in the right direction, but it still needs a Monk subclass. I'd be happy shifting the Fighter subclass to the Monk.

I still fully support a full Psi class. Use the Warlock as a chassis but switch the stat to Int and use Invocations, Pacts, Patrons and Spells to define Psi abilities. Turn them into Powers, Disciplines, Abilities and Spells or something.

 

[Mistwell]

Sorry Mistwell but this definitely wrong, and seems very forced.

Three editions of D&D have had dedicated psionics classes. That's a huge tradition.

No it isn't. Notice you even had to go to the lengths of saying "psionics classes" as opposed to "the Psion class" because even that couldn't be said. If you cannot even name it the same thing, much less have it function the same way with the same themes throughout them, then it's not a "huge tradition". Heck, I don't think anything which isn't in the core books can be claimed to have a "huge" tradition. Talk about "forced" I think forcing the "tradition" label onto this topic, and then exaggerating it with the "huge" claim, is forcing it because the correlation is pretty weak.

Saying there's "no tradition" suggests placing zero value on editions after 1st. Two of those editions had MULTIPLE dedicated psionics classes. That's huge. All three had entire books on it.

There you go again, calling a relatively small thing found in expansion books "huge". My point isn't that those editions had no psionic classes, it's that they didn't treat the psionic classes consistently as the same thing between them. All they had was the name in common for the most part, and even that they didn't have consistent because one was a Psionicist and two were Psions. This is not the making of a "huge" anything, much less a huge tradition.

Further, I dislike 3E, so claiming "only dedicated 3E fans" want a psionics class is absolutely bizarre and wrong just on that basis.

Right, i mostly was saying 3E-4E but that one time I left the 4E part out. Sorry about that. Psion is a 3E-4E thing. Though even those two editions didn't address the psion themes the same and mostly just shared the name.

You ask if the classes are "really the same classes?" but that's disingenuous,

Oh no, it's definitely genuine. Something isn't disingenuous just because you disagree with it.

because the Bard of 5E is definitely NOT the Bard of 4E, who was definitely not the Bard of 3E, who was definitely not the Bard of 2E, who scarcely be more different from the Bard of 1E!

I agree. The bard has been a total mess throughout the editions. I like this bard, but it's not similar to most prior bards. If you want to make the argument that there is no clear tradition for bard, I will likely agree.

See, it's a genuine stance I am taking. No need for the personal attack. You're getting my actual opinion, not disagreement for disagreements sake.

Classes change. Almost no class in 4E was particularly close to their 3E predecessor, and many 5E classes are very distant from previous editions, on many many points. Fighter is particularly spectacularly different one in every edition, and that's one of the most simple classes.

The only class which has remained more or less solid, with the exception of 4E, has been Wizard. So that's a very weak argument.

It's a strong argument because now you're talking about core classes throughout all the editions where, while mechanics might change, themes often were the same. Psionics is 1) not a core class, and 2) wasn't in all the editions as even an expansion class, 3) didn't even have the same name when it did show up as an expansion class, and 4) those expansion classes, when they happened, doesn't even share a lot of themes between editions. Few seem to agree on what psionics should even cover and not cover.

I feel like you're glossing over these differences rather than addressing them head-on.

 

[Moorcrys]

I was never a fan of the Mystic, but I do think they need a full class to pull from, with the subclasses being similar in nature. But the biggest reason I think we need a full class is to get a Unique Spell List. Otherwise you just end up with a Sorcerer casting all of the same spells. Make a full class with its own spell list with the addition of Psi unique spells and then you get your more unique classes. Then make subclasses that if they are spell casters, they get to choose spells from either class spell list, just like the Divine Soul does for Sorcerer and Cleric spells, and Eldritch Knight from Wizards.

I agree with you that whether it's a separate class or not, there should definitely be a full 'psionic'-specific spell list, even if they go the subclass route and use the sorcerer as the base class.

 

[Maxperson]

There you go again, calling a relatively small thing found in expansion books "huge". My point isn't that those editions had no psionic classes, it's that they didn't treat the psionic classes consistently as the same thing between them. All they had was the name in common for the most part, and even that they didn't have consistent because one was a Psionicist and two were Psions. This is not the making of a "huge" anything, much less a huge tradition.

It wasn't relatively small. It was relatively huge. Hand to hand combat, which was only a few pages(if that) was relatively small. Will-O-Wisps, which had only a few pages devoted to them were relatively small. Having an entire book dedicated to you, the same as fighters, wizards and other classes, as well as an entire campaign setting dedicated to you, is relatively huge.

And while the exact mechanics changed from edition to edition, the existence of a Psion class, attack and defense modes(2e and 3e. Not sure about 4e), names of powers, disciplines, etc., were consistent. You might as well argue that there is no large tradition of classes and races, given that they also have different mechanics attached to them from edition to edition.

Edit: Corrected a typo

 

[Mistwell]

That is itself a strawman. I specifically asked for what percentage of people wanted 1E-style Psionics, and I asked a specific person, who hasn't answered, and you used that, and then went off on a tangent, and because I disagree with your opinion, which is just an opinion, not supported by facts (your numbers appear to all be made up on the spot which is fine, but is not acceptable as "indications"), you're trying to claim something else? I don't think so.

I don't think that's a fair characterization of this series of events. Here is what you said:

No, I'm expressing an honestly-held opinion, and one that I'm pretty sure you think is actually correct.

What percentage, do you think, of current D&D players, looking at all D&D players, including all the new groups that have sprung up with 5E, and all the people who started with 2E, 3E and even 4E, and are still/once again playing, actually want to go back to 1E-style rules?

Please answer honestly. "I have no idea" is fine, but it's a cop-out, frankly, because you clearly have an opinion here.

So you asked for people's OPINIONS, and challenged them to come up with SPECIFIC PERCENTAGE NUMBERS based on their opinions, and told them it would be a COP OUT if they refused to do that.

So I did exactly that. And now you just bashed me for giving my opinion and assigning numbers to that opinion in the precise manner you challenged people to do.

THAT is what disingenuous looks like to me. It looked exactly like I characterized it earlier - you asked for people's opinions but didn't seem prepared to get those opinions if they ran contrary to what your opinion was, because as you said you thought people would "think [you] were actually correct". When it turned out that was not the case, suddenly it's "opinions not supported by facts...numbers all made up on the spot...not acceptable as indications..."

There's also no way in heck that 100% of people who started with 1E, prefer 1E Psionics, because I know tons of people who started with 1E who utterly hated 1E Psionics. 3/4s of my original D&D group played 1E first and they universally prefered 2E Psionics.

Another strawman. I never made any claim to 100%. Why do you keep doing that? It's not polite.

So even your 23.8% of players (have no idea where that is coming from btw)

You darn well do know where it's coming from! It's coming from, "What percentage, do you think...Please answer honestly. "I have no idea" is fine, but it's a cop-out, frankly, because you clearly have an opinion here." What is this, selective amnesia?

started with 1E, it's a subset of that which prefers 1E. The same is true of 3E-4E. First off, lumping them together makes no sense. It's like lumping cats and dogs together. No two editions have had such opposed "fans".

I lumped the Psion editions together. I agree the link between the two is weak, but it's literally the only "tradition" stand you have going for you as those are the only two editions which even named the darn thing the same thing between them. If you want to argue we shouldn't even consider that commonality, go ahead. But as you argued earlier for "strong tradition" and used both those editions in your argument, I was giving you the benefit of the doubt that you thought they were very similar.

Second off, even if 2-4E fans (let's not exclude 2E fans like myself entirely, eh?) prefer slightly inconsistent things - there's one thing they do like - a psionics focused class, and a connected psionics system worthy of such a class.

Do they? You told me not 100% of 1E fans like psionics as something all classes can access, but now you're speaking for all fans of 29 years worth of editions and saying they all 100% agree? I am asking you for clarification here - is that what you're saying or are you saying that's not really what all of them think?