Yaarel
🇮🇱 🇺🇦 He-Mage
Toward the end of the Happy Fun Hour show on Twitch .tv,
Mearls sketches out the psion as a wizard archetype. He intends it as a kind of place holder until the mystic class arrives. He uses the evoker wizard as a comparison for a psion wizard. He is skeptical about how well the wizard can convey the psychic flavor, mainly because of the absence of pertinent spells.
Mearls focuses on psychic damage spells, but skips over some spells that seem pertinent. Here are some examples of spells that are relevant for a psion wizard:
Mind
• telepathy: telepathy language (Monster Manual), suggestion, charm, fear, domination, hold, hideous laughter, zone of truth, heroism, nondetection, tongues, comprehend languages, sending, telepathic bond, mind link, compulsion, confusion, feeblemind, modify memory, sanctuary
• illusion: phantasmal force, minor image, silent image, major image, invisibility, project image
• prescience: guidance, augury, detect magic, clairvoyance, locate
Spirit
• force: telekinesis, fly, levitate, mage hand, magic missile, mage armor, light, gravity, disintegrate, time stop
• force constructs: unseen servant, wall of force, force cage, tiny hut
• teleportation: misty step, dimension door, plane shift, teleport, rope trick, etherealness
Body
• shapeshift (psychometabolism): longstrider, freedom of movement, alter self, enhance ability, animal forms, bark skin
• psychic healer (psychometabolism): cure, healing word, restoration, revivify, regeneration, resurrection, clone
And so on.
There are enough spells to substantiate a psion wizard. Difficulties with spells include:
• The flavor of a spell is often awkward, such as the rope in rope trick, the hand in mage hand, the crown in crown of madness. The effect is fine − especially with a different flavor. As part of Subtle Spell, the psion could have a feature that can officially alter the flavor of spells.
• Telepathic communication spells are weak and often many levels higher than they are worth. All of them combined (!) should be about spell level 2: Sending, Telepathy, Telepathy Language (Monster Manual), Tongues, Telepathic Bond. It would be appropriate to give full-on telepathy to the psion as a feature at wizard level 2.
• Divination spells are often obsolete. Many old-school divination spells are today handled by skill checks (legend lore/history, find path/survival, animal friendship/animal handling, detect thoughts/insight, also as skill checks, glibness, detect trap, locate object, locate creature).
• Divination as DM-gives-a-hint spells (augury, divination, commune, contact other plane) should instead be a ritual-like mechanic per long rest, being unworthy of a spell but with need to prevent spamming.
• Telekinesis needs to be a cantrip whose strength improves while leveling.
• Phasing thru objects and etherealness needs to be more normal at lower levels. 4e has good ways to do this.
Similar to the way Xanathars introduced many elemental spells to D&D 5e, a future book can introduce many psion spells.
The psion wizard is a good way to translate the 3e psion into 5e.
Mearls sketches out the psion as a wizard archetype. He intends it as a kind of place holder until the mystic class arrives. He uses the evoker wizard as a comparison for a psion wizard. He is skeptical about how well the wizard can convey the psychic flavor, mainly because of the absence of pertinent spells.
Mearls focuses on psychic damage spells, but skips over some spells that seem pertinent. Here are some examples of spells that are relevant for a psion wizard:
Mind
• telepathy: telepathy language (Monster Manual), suggestion, charm, fear, domination, hold, hideous laughter, zone of truth, heroism, nondetection, tongues, comprehend languages, sending, telepathic bond, mind link, compulsion, confusion, feeblemind, modify memory, sanctuary
• illusion: phantasmal force, minor image, silent image, major image, invisibility, project image
• prescience: guidance, augury, detect magic, clairvoyance, locate
Spirit
• force: telekinesis, fly, levitate, mage hand, magic missile, mage armor, light, gravity, disintegrate, time stop
• force constructs: unseen servant, wall of force, force cage, tiny hut
• teleportation: misty step, dimension door, plane shift, teleport, rope trick, etherealness
Body
• shapeshift (psychometabolism): longstrider, freedom of movement, alter self, enhance ability, animal forms, bark skin
• psychic healer (psychometabolism): cure, healing word, restoration, revivify, regeneration, resurrection, clone
And so on.
There are enough spells to substantiate a psion wizard. Difficulties with spells include:
• The flavor of a spell is often awkward, such as the rope in rope trick, the hand in mage hand, the crown in crown of madness. The effect is fine − especially with a different flavor. As part of Subtle Spell, the psion could have a feature that can officially alter the flavor of spells.
• Telepathic communication spells are weak and often many levels higher than they are worth. All of them combined (!) should be about spell level 2: Sending, Telepathy, Telepathy Language (Monster Manual), Tongues, Telepathic Bond. It would be appropriate to give full-on telepathy to the psion as a feature at wizard level 2.
• Divination spells are often obsolete. Many old-school divination spells are today handled by skill checks (legend lore/history, find path/survival, animal friendship/animal handling, detect thoughts/insight, also as skill checks, glibness, detect trap, locate object, locate creature).
• Divination as DM-gives-a-hint spells (augury, divination, commune, contact other plane) should instead be a ritual-like mechanic per long rest, being unworthy of a spell but with need to prevent spamming.
• Telekinesis needs to be a cantrip whose strength improves while leveling.
• Phasing thru objects and etherealness needs to be more normal at lower levels. 4e has good ways to do this.
Similar to the way Xanathars introduced many elemental spells to D&D 5e, a future book can introduce many psion spells.
The psion wizard is a good way to translate the 3e psion into 5e.
