Unearthed Arcana WotC Surveys: Implementation vs. Interest

[Tony Vargas]

Quite the contrary, you'd be hard pressed to find a wizard in fantasy that casts fireballs prior to D&D inventing the trope. Gandalf is far and away one of the flashiest wizards in fantasy prior to D&D and he's the original inspiration for the fireball and in part the original inspiration for the non-occult wizard, but even he doesn't actually cast a fireball at any point in the story.

Not really disagreeing, but...

In Harryhausen's 1973 Golden Voyage of Sinbad, the evil Prince Koura - a wizard, who, among other things, makes a bat-winged 'homunculus' (nothing like the classical fetus-like thing of Paracelsus), but very much like the illo of the '77 AD&D MM and sees through its eyes, animates statues, and suffers aging side-effects for casting spells - also, off screen, sends a 'great ball of fire' to incinerate a room of the sultan's palace, burning off a character's face.

 

[phoffman]

My vision of a psion, doesn't use verbal or somatic components in their powers. Psion's don't have to use a point based system, and may be made much simpler with spell slots for higher level abilities.

I like the idea of a psion, mechanically having all of their powers being essentially 'cantrips'. which each of those powers being at will abilities, while having the ability to be "cast at a higher level" which increases the effect and potentially adds additional effects at certain levels.

I feel that psionic powers with duration should be balanced to use concentration or have a 'focus' mechanic that limits the psion to a maximum of two such effects.

In previous iterations psionic's hasn't had verbal or somatic components for their abilities.

 

[Hussar]

One thing that came to mind today with regards to the new psionics UA, is that WotC surveys seem to do a really bad job of allows us to express the difference between our level of interest in certain features versus our satisfaction with the implementation.

For instance, they gave us several UAs with a new Mystic/Psion class. The last iteration (months ago, not the subclass thing today) was a lot different than the previous ones, and they haven't done much with it in a while.

Apparently they kept changing it because none of the particular implementations were satisfying for a large enough percentage of people. That's good.

However, it appears they may have abandoned the idea of a full Psion class for the same reason. This is not good. Because there is a lot of interest in a full Psion class. If there was not, they would seen the tumbleweeds and abandoned it long before taking 3-4 full UA attempts at it.

I mean, maybe they just scour Reddit and stuff looking for discussions to determine the level of interest. But wouldn't it be nice if we had some way to directly let them know whether we like a particular implementation as well as our level of interest in the concept?

Since I don't run their survey department, I can't just add those questions to their surveys, nor can I expect someone else to. So how can we do our small part in the feedback voting community to make sure we give them valuable feedback on both implementation and interest?

[Edit: I want to clarify that I'm using the psion as an example, but I'm addressing the general concept. There are plenty of other surveys that could have benefited from the distinction.]


They are asking for our feedback. They want to know what we want them to make. But they aren't asking that one really important question.

I have an issue with your premise. I asked how often people saw psions played in their games, and about half of respondents said never or at least rarely. The other half saw them played, but, even then, it wasn't terribly regular. I'm not sure you can say that there is a high level of interest. You CAN say that some people are VERY interested in it, but, how many of those people there are, we're not sure.

 

[Hussar]

Psionic characters in science fiction do not throw fireballs.

I think that illustrates the key point: Even if psionics works just the same as magic, a psion needs it's own spell list, defined as much by what is NOT on it as what is. And in 5e to have your own spell list you need to be a class.

Ahem.

 

[Hussar]

Why do you need a Sorcerer when you could easily use fluff or variant rules on the Wizard?

You'll get no argument from me. The sorcerer is largely superfluous. But, you're conflating two arguments.

"We don't need a sorcerer" doesn't mean that we do or don't need a psion. A sorcerer is found by players to be different enough to justify it being a different class, and, let's be honest, that's largely a legacy issue where sorcerer started out as very different from wizard. 5e sorcs and wizards aren't that far apart with the new casting system. It's more about versatility and the fact that sorcs get meta-magic. Plus the bloodline traditions. It's not like your average wizard sprouts wings. And, aberrant mind sorcs already get psionic powers.

We HAVE a psionic sorcerer already.

But, what it comes down to is the psions just don't have enough traction among the greater fandom to justify an entirely new class. And that's the long and the short of it.

 

[Eric V]

Why do new classes need to be "justified" but subclasses or feats or whatever don't? I legitimately don't get the big deal.

 

[Doc_Klueless]

--- Nevermind, two others already brought up Charlie McGee from Firestarter ---

 

[SkidAce]

There really ISNT a lot of interest in a psion.
It’s always just been magic with different fluff.

I don't feel its magic, and neither has it been treated that way in my campaign since 1st edition.

An example...Spock is a psionicist, not a wizard.

 

[SkidAce]

But then it's just a sorcerer/wizard/warlock with a limited spell list. Maybe they effectively get silenced and stilled spells for free if you aren't modeling Star Wars psionics.

There's not a lot of distinction other than no components. As far as wands and component I've also read stories about having and object that help focus energy.

Psionics is just space magic when the authors didn't want wizards.

This is why I usually dont try to explain why psionics is different from magic.

Every example that gets brought up is shot down.."Oh yeah but you could" or "Its just like etc etc, I dont see the problem".

I have a long history of psionics and magic being different. In my opinion at least, its obvious...can they do some of the same things? Sure, but that doesn't make them the same. The stories are different.

But it's like art, I know it when I see it, but its not the same for everybody.

 

[Mistwell]

LOL. Nobody is "keeping the psion from consideration as a class". The devs tried a few options, none was popular enough to make it into a publication yet. That may or may not change.

There is no anti-psion illuminati.

That's just what the Illuminati want you to [fnord] think.