D&D 5E Unique psionic tricks

[fuindordm]

So, here's a new topic for the conversation on psionics.

I think we all agree that psionics should not be able to do things like summon elementals, turn someone into a toad, and reproduce many other classic spells.

What abilities should be unique to psionics, and difficult or impossible to reproduce using magic?

Here are a few ideas to get the ball rolling:

* Mind probe -- telepaths acquiring knowledge without the subject needing to speak
* Cause/cure insanity
* Lucid dreaming/enter others' dreams
* Create "monsters" on the fly from their imagination or subconscious (metacreativity)
* Long range telekinesis with fine motor control

It would be great if we could come up with a few signature abilities for the six classic disciplines.

 

[Giltonio_Santos]

The problem here is that, as long as we're speaking about D&D magic, there's not a lot it cannot do. You do have some classic restrictions - like wizards being denied access to healing magic - and also a change of focus in modern design as to avoid wizards from stepping in someone else's role (a spell should not make a wizard into a better fighter than the fighter, for example), but the concept of magic in D&D is boundless. I don't know if this is a good or bad thing. It's a D&D thing, for sure, and knowing that not everybody brings psionics to their games, maybe it's a good thing. Then, if you want to have psionics play a major role in your game, you'll probably need to greatly restrict (if not outright remove) two or three schools of magic; I don't think creating some signature psionic effects would be enough.

 

[fuindordm]

True enough! That makes it all the more important to stake out psionic territory now, before a few hundred new spells are added to the game.

 

[Vael]

While I don't mind Psionics being "subtler", I still want some ectoplasmic powers like Astral Construct. It's very Green Lantern, which I like. I have been thinking about creating a 5e Summoner (not necessarily the Pathfinder Summoner, but a pet-focused class), and now I'm tempted by a Shaper build of the Mystic as the method of creating such a class.

Given the wide scope of DnD magic, it might be easier to say, what can Psionics do better than Magic?

Things like:
- Being able to induce a catatonic "sleep state" even on elves and other creatures that don't sleep.
- Nondetection, telepathically preventing other creatures from perceiving you. Invisibility on steroids. At higher levels, you'd be able to erase the memory of even interacting with the person, like the Silence from Doctor Who.

In general, Psionic attacks should be trickier to detect. Sure, a ray of disintegration is pretty obvious, but telekinetically shredding an object? More challenging.

 

[Gadget]

Well I'm not sure that the six 'classic' disciplines are all that classic for psionics to begin with. IIRC, some of them were introduced in 3e, which was the edition that most tried to make psionics a replacement/comparable power with magic. Some of the meta-creativity and other disciplines struck me as magic with a funny hat on, though I guess others will disagree. I see psionics as a combination of the body and mind powers similar to what the monk has always had, combined with more advanced telepathy, ESP, precognition, Telekinesis and such. Many of these things are already covered (though perhaps poorly) by certain spells. I do agree that psionics should be more subtle though.

For Example, you could come up with a psionic effect that allows one to 'force choke' someone within range, say do x damage a round if they fail y save and the victim gets a new save each round. Nice flavor, but really Witch Bolt is doing the same thing, just different flavor.

At the end of the day, most 'special effects' (i.e. any super-or-extra-natural powers) in D&D are either going to enhance the user or others in some way, hinder or disable opponents in some fashion, reduce opponents hit points, or provide some special utility that makes adventuring life much easier (i.e. helps overcome non-combat challenges or bypass combats). Effects will have to interact with AC, attack rolls, Saving Throws, Hit Points, proficiency bonus, and such. Magic already does all of these things, so anything psionics does will have to fall into one these areas, just with slightly different flavor. Don't get me wrong, I like the flavor of most of the psionics we have so far, I just think it will be difficult to differentiate from magic enough in any one of those niches that come up in game play.

 

[Tony Vargas]

So, here's a new topic for the conversation on psionics.

I think we all agree that psionics should not be able to do things like summon elementals, turn someone into a toad, and reproduce many other classic spells.

What abilities should be unique to psionics, and difficult or impossible to reproduce using magic?

The problem here is that, as long as we're speaking about D&D magic, there's not a lot it cannot do. I don't know if this is a good or bad thing. It's a D&D thing, for sure... Then, if you want to have psionics play a major role in your game, you'll probably need to greatly restrict (if not outright remove) two or three schools of magic; I don't think creating some signature psionic effects would be enough.

Here are a few ideas to get the ball rolling:

* Mind probe -- telepaths acquiring knowledge without the subject needing to speak
* Cause/cure insanity
* Lucid dreaming/enter others' dreams
* Create "monsters" on the fly from their imagination or subconscious (metacreativity)
* Long range telekinesis with fine motor control

They may not all be in 5e, yet, but I seem to remember spells doing most of these. Heal cured insanity, there was an illusionist spell that invaded Dreams, Phantasmal Killer created a monster from the victim's fears, TK had long range and mage hand fine control.

It would be great if we could come up with a few signature abilities for the six classic disciplines.

I do think that's plausible, though. You don't have to do something magic "can't," to do something that unique compared to what other classes can do with magic. Of course, 5e leans heavily on mechanical distinctions, so the fact that psionics is using the spell-point system already makes it at least as different from wizards as are sorcerers or warlocks, for instance.

I do think a psionic combat module would be one way to add distinctiveness - with psion-on-psion combat making up most of it, and just Psionic Blast working on no-psionics, that is.

 

[Saeviomagy]

I don't want psionics to have unique tricks that cannot be done with magic because I don't want to wall off concepts in order to make a less-used portion of the game 'special'.

The things that make psionics special should be the mechanics that a psion uses and flavour behind their powers. Saying "only psionicists can do dreamscape stuff" (for instance) makes it harder to add dreamscape things to a campaign world that doesn't feature psionics.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

I don't want psionics to have unique tricks that cannot be done with magic because I don't want to wall off concepts in order to make a less-used portion of the game 'special'.

It doesn't have to be "only psionics" as long as psionics has a certain shtick that it's better at. Take telepathy. Magic can do Dominate Person at 5th level and Dominate Monster at 8th level, but a telepath can do it at effectively 3rd level (Broken Will), targetting a weaker save and with no humanoid-only restrictions: the net effect is that psionics has a more mind-controlley flavor to it even though the shtick is not unique. Presumably it is possible for magic to create a sentient magic item like Blackrazor, but a psionicist using 2nd edition-style Metapsionics (Empower) can awaken sentience in an item, presumably more easily than whatever fluke of magic created Blackrazor.

I'm of the opinion that as long as you concentrate on giving psionics its own shtick of things it's good at, you don't need to worry overly much about making magic worse at those things. That will happen automatically, as long as you are careful to measure spell power only against other spells and not against psionics. I.e. don't allow a wizard to research a spell to duplicate Broken Will and call it 3rd level because Broken Will costs 5 PP; measure it against Dominate Monster and call it 7th or 8th level. (Shorter duration but targets a weaker save.)

 

[Saeviomagy]

It doesn't have to be "only psionics" as long as psionics has a certain shtick that it's better at. Take telepathy. Magic can do Dominate Person at 5th level and Dominate Monster at 8th level, but a telepath can do it at effectively 3rd level (Broken Will), targetting a weaker save and with no humanoid-only restrictions: the net effect is that psionics has a more mind-controlley flavor to it even though the shtick is not unique.

I agree with the theory, but I think that in this particular case it's actually a case of the flavour and mechanics being different not better. While it's true that magic's dominate spells have target restrictions, the true thing that makes them higher level is that they effectively persist on the target for an extended period of time, making it amenable to suggestions and generally non hostile even if you don't actively force your will upon theirs. Psionics requires you to engage in mental combat and expend resources for each round of actions you wish to control, and the subject lapses to hostility if you interrupt that.

But different I think is precisely what is needed - I would also not be supportive of creating a wizard spell that duplicated the mechanics of Broken Will.

Presumably it is possible for magic to create a sentient magic item like Blackrazor, but a psionicist using 2nd edition-style Metapsionics (Empower) can awaken sentience in an item, presumably more easily than whatever fluke of magic created Blackrazor.

I do very much like the idea that a prerequisite for making an item with psionics is to make it sentient, and I think this is exactly the kind of thing that can be used to differentiate psionics from magic.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

I agree with the theory, but I think that in this particular case it's actually a case of the flavour and mechanics being different not better. While it's true that magic's dominate spells have target restrictions, the true thing that makes them higher level is that they effectively persist on the target for an extended period of time, making it amenable to suggestions and generally non hostile even if you don't actively force your will upon theirs. Psionics requires you to engage in mental combat and expend resources for each round of actions you wish to control, and the subject lapses to hostility if you interrupt that.

As an aside, I think target restrictions are actually pretty huge, worth approximately three spell levels. Compare Hold Person (2nd level, scales) to Hold Monster (5th level, doesn't scale), or Dominate Person (5th level) to Dominate Monster (8th level, longer duration). You can paralyze 4 humanoids for the same 5th level spell slot as one crocodile.

I agree that Broken Will is also different, and the one-round duration plus immunity-on-save is important, but overall I think it's clear that psionics really is better at mind-control from a pure power perspective. A wizard trying to get an adult red dragon to claw itself to death has to spend an 8th level spell slot and overcome a Wisdom +7 saving throw, and the dragon gets another saving throw each time it takes damage, so in order to get three successful attacks in for 50-ish damage, he has to beat THREE saves at +7 after exhausting legendary resistance. It could happen but it's not likely, and it's expensive. A 5th level telepath on the other hand just has to spend 5 PP and beat one Int save at +3. (Interestingly the telepath doesn't control the dragon's bonus action or reaction, but vanilla dragons have no real use for their bonus action so it doesn't much matter. My dragons are all sorcerers with Quicken Metamagic so it would matter a lot at my table.) A party of mid-level Telepaths, Diviners, and/or Wild Sorcs would have a very good chance of getting a dragon to claw its own self to death via Broken Will, which would never ever happen via Dominate Monster.

I'm cool with it if you don't think telepathy is better at domination than magic, but it sure looks to me as if it is. And I think that's great!

But different I think is precisely what is needed - I would also not be supportive of creating a wizard spell that duplicated the mechanics of Broken Will.

I do very much like the idea that a prerequisite for making an item with psionics is to make it sentient, and I think this is exactly the kind of thing that can be used to differentiate psionics from magic.

Check out the 2nd edition Complete Psionics Handbook for details. That was the book that first introduced the psionicist as a full-fledged class to AD&D.