D&D 5E I Miss Tangents...

[J-H]

I like it. I don't think it's in line with what would get published outside of an adventure or a setting book, but it keeps psionics from being "wizard-lite", maintains the flavor, and gives generally useful utility powers. Easy to make a situation where everyone gets the feat for free.

 

[dave2008]

I have a system I've been designing just for my own games. I went back to OD&D's Eldritch Wizardry and 2e's Complete Psionics, and focused on the core idea that any character could develop a psionic wild talent under the right circumstances. Here's a snapshot of how I'm handling it...

PSIONICS (QUICKLEAF'S VERSION)
Psionics are mysterious powers from the untapped regions of the mind. Whereas magic draws on an external source – the Weave, accessed by studying words of power, praying to deities, consorting with patrons, or through magical bloodlines – sages conjecture that psionics may be a form of mutation. Adventurers who come into contact with powerful aberrations (e.g. aboleths, beholders, mind flayers), who venture into certain regions of the Underdark or the Astral Plane, who undergo psychic surgery, or who suffer extreme trauma may awaken their latent psionic potential. Events during the campaign, such as exposure to specific substances/energies may also trigger a roll on the Psionic Powers table.

A few powers refer to your psionic attack or save DC. Calculate them as follows:
Psionic attack = your proficiency bonus + Intelligence, Wisdom, or Charisma modifier (choose one).
Psionic save DC = 8 + your proficiency bonus + your Intelligence/Wisdom/or Charisma modifier.

Wild Talent (feat)
You gain a randomly determined psionic power; roll on the Psionic Powers table. If you roll a ‘1’ indicating psionic madness, record that roll and apply it to to your character, but also roll again. You may take this feat multiple times.

PSIONIC POWERS

d20	Discipline	Description
1	Psionic Madness (d10)	You’ve touched the deep recesses of your mind… and something touched back.
2-6	Clairsentience (d20)	Clairsentience enables you to learn secrets long forgotten, glimpse the immediate future and predict the far future, find hidden objects, and know the unknowable.
7-9	Psychokinesis (d20)	Psychokinesis manipulates energy to move objects, melt or transform matter, and blast targets with raw energy.
10-12	Psychometabolism (d20)	Psychometabolism changes the physical properties of a creature, thing, or condition, allowing you to accomplish extraordinary physical feats.
13-15	Psychoportation (d20)	Psychoportation moves you, an object, or another creature through space and time.
16-19	Telepathy (d20)	Telepathy allows you to spy on and contact the minds of others, influencing or controlling their behavior.
20	Roll twice, or pick one	–

PSIONIC MADNESS

d10	Madness	Description
1	Aberration Link	A lasting connection was formed between you and an aberration (e.g. aboleth or mind flayer), allowing you to telepathically communicate with one another regardless of distance.
2	Hallucinations	You experience distracting hallucinations which are hard to distinguish from reality. Though they may interfere with concentration, they are only fleeting.
3	Hypersensitivity	Too much stimulus (e.g. crowds, loud noises, bright lights) overwhelms you, and your saving throws against such effects suffer disadvantage.
4	Hypnotic Suggestion	You are induced with a subconscious hypnotic trigger by some unfathomably horrific entity that will trigger at a future time.
5	Permeable Aura	After spending significant time around another person, you take on one of their roleplaying traits for a few hours. Magic and Insight checks detect that trait as if it were your own.
6	Psionic Interference	You experience bizarre dreams and you fail any attempts to communicate telepathically or understand telepathic communication. Telepathic communication used within 30 feet of you, or on someone within 30 feet of you, fails.
7	Psychic Clone	Whenever you can see your reflection, it acts as a twisted clone of yourself, its values a dark mirror of your own. This twisted clone yearns to assume physical form.
8	Psychic Vulnerability	You suffer vulnerability to psychic damage and develop a phobia of anything psionic in nature, such as aberrations, githyanki, wild talents, etc.
9	Split Personality	Your mind splits into two separate personalities, though you only have limited control when you switch between them. You and your DM can work together to determine your alternate personality’s nature.
10	Unreliable Premonitions	You have premonitions that may or may not come true, but at the time you are convinced they are inevitable.

CLAIRSENTIENCE

d20	Power	Description
1	All-Around Vision	You can see in a 360-degree circle around yourself, though this requires concentration to maintain. Creatures sneaking up on you from behind suffer disadvantage.
2	Aura Sight	You can feel the mood of a creature by concentrating intently on it for 1 minute, perceiving an outline of colors. Gain proficiency in the Insight skill if you don’t already have it.
3	Clairvoyance	As a bonus action choose a space within 60 feet that you can see; you project your vision and hearing as if you were standing there until the start of your next turn (or 6 seconds).
4	Danger Sense	By concentrating on your turn, you cannot be surprised and you know the general direction hostile creatures are coming from a few seconds in advance.
5	Detect Psionics	You can detect if a creature or object within 60 feet has psionic power by concentrating intently on it for 1 round. You also gain a sense for how strong its psionic power is.
6	Detect Spellcasters	You can detect if a creature or object within 60 feet can cast spells by concentrating intently on it for 1 round. You also gain a sense for how powerful a spellcaster it is.
7	Hypercognition	You can spend Inspiration to gain a clue from the DM that reflects your ability to perceive patterns and make deductions. If your Intelligence isn’t already 13, increase it to 13.
8	Incarnation Awareness	By concentrating intently on a dead creature within 5 feet for 1 minute, you determine how many times it has died and the general nature of its past life/lives.
9	Infravision	By concentrating on your turn, you can perceive heat signatures within 60 feet, allowing you to see any warm-blooded creatures or heat sources, even through walls. However, stone and metal (and anything else that conducts heat) blocks your infravision.
10	Know Direction	You always know true north and are immune to maze magic and effects.
11	Object Reading	When touching an object and meditating with it during a short rest, you gain a glimpse of its creation, its destruction (if destroyed), and the last creature interact with it.
12	Perceive Light	By concentrating on your turn, you can perceive light through tactile or auditory sensation, circumventing the blinded condition (provided there is ambient light).
13	Perceive Sound	By concentrating on your turn, you can perceive sound thru tactile or visual sensation, circumventing the deafened condition (provided there is ambient sound).
14	Precognition	You can spend Inspiration to learn about a future event or threat from the DM, though the DM determines the extent of the information you receive. If your Wisdom isn’t already 13, increase it to 13.
15	Radial Navigation	By concentrating on your turn, you know the direction and distance to the last fixed point that you meditated at during a short or long rest.
16	Remote Viewing	Once per long rest you can produce a psionic effect similar to the scrying spell.
17	Retrospection	During a long rest you can meditate with another creature and help it (or yourself) to regain lost memories or review old memories. The DM may call for a check.
18	Sense Aberrations	By concentrating on your turn, you become aware of the presence of any aberrations within 60 feet of you.
19	Sense Spirits	By concentrating on your turn, you become aware of the presence of any restless spirits (e.g. ghosts, haunts, specters, wraiths) within 60 feet of you.
20	Sensitivity to Psychic Impressions	By meditating in an area during a short rest, you gain a vague sense of the emotional history of the place you’re currently in (e.g. tragedy, war, madness, elation, reunion, birth).

That his a great system @Quickleaf and is a great way to add psionics to 5e. You should write it up (I assume each discipline gets a full roll table) and put it on the DmsGuild. I'd buy it and I hate psionics!

 

[atanakar]

I seem to recall a broken 2e psionic character who had a gem to store Psionic points in advance of the adventure. Too powerful compared to other classes. I don't know if he was doing things properly.

 

[Quickleaf]

I like it. I don't think it's in line with what would get published outside of an adventure or a setting book, but it keeps psionics from being "wizard-lite", maintains the flavor, and gives generally useful utility powers. Easy to make a situation where everyone gets the feat for free.

Totally, that was exactly my intent. I wanted something that would feel at home in a campaign using the dal quor of Eberron, psionics of Athas, mind flayers & gith, or drawing on the Cthulu mythos.

There might be a few instances where a psionic power should use an existing spell (e.g. Remote Viewing is basically identical to the Scrying spell), but when I went back through Gary Gygax & Brian Blume's original presentation of psionics in OD&D they only rarely used "see such-and-such spell", instead writing up each psionic power as its own thing. There were psionic powers like levitation and enlarge/reduce that, through out modern lens, seem to parallel 5e spells, but more often they were weird stuff like Cell Adjustment or Probability Travel. I tried to take the best from their approach, while jettisoning the complicated psionic matrices.

That his a great system @Quickleaf and is a great way to add psionics to 5e. You should write it up (I assume each discipline gets a full roll table) and put it on the DmsGuild. I'd buy it and I hate psionics!

Thanks Dave! Maybe, yeah, I'll definitely consider it.

I tend to be hesitant about putting un-playtested content onto the DM's Guild. I know the majority of stuff isn't playtested, but I would rather not add to that "static." As you can see, my writeup of psionic powers has a lot more in common with Gary's terse writing from back when psionics was introduced... Saying "Retrospection: During a long rest you can meditate with another creature and help it (or yourself) to regain lost memories or review old memories; the DM may call for a check" might be fine at my game table, but it's more loosey-goosey than what most players expect.

 

[dave2008]

Thanks Dave! Maybe, yeah, I'll definitely consider it.

I tend to be hesitant about putting un-playtested content onto the DM's Guild. I know the majority of stuff isn't playtested, but I would rather not add to that "static." As you can see, my writeup of psionic powers has a lot more in common with Gary's terse writing from back when psionics was introduced... Saying "Retrospection: During a long rest you can meditate with another creature and help it (or yourself) to regain lost memories or review old memories; the DM may call for a check" might be fine at my game table, but it's more loosey-goosey than what most players expect.

I understand that fear, I'm pretty similar. The major issue, and benefit, of your system is the the abilities need to be balanced around a feat or ASI. Currently I would say a lot of yours are not, so I agree it probably would need a re-work before putting out for sale (or at least I would), but maybe you can get some playtesters or post a free version hear and get people to give feed back.

Selfishly I like what you've got going and I don't want to do the work myself!

 

[Samloyal23]

I seem to recall a broken 2e psionic character who had a gem to store Psionic points in advance of the adventure. Too powerful compared to other classes. I don't know if he was doing things properly.

The Receptacle power allowed you to store power points for use at a later date. Think of it as storing an open spell slot in a wand or scroll instead of a specific spell.

 

[Marandahir]

Totally, that was exactly my intent. I wanted something that would feel at home in a campaign using the dal quor of Eberron, psionics of Athas, mind flayers & gith, or drawing on the Cthulu mythos.

There might be a few instances where a psionic power should use an existing spell (e.g. Remote Viewing is basically identical to the Scrying spell), but when I went back through Gary Gygax & Brian Blume's original presentation of psionics in OD&D they only rarely used "see such-and-such spell", instead writing up each psionic power as its own thing. There were psionic powers like levitation and enlarge/reduce that, through out modern lens, seem to parallel 5e spells, but more often they were weird stuff like Cell Adjustment or Probability Travel. I tried to take the best from their approach, while jettisoning the complicated psionic matrices.

Thanks Dave! Maybe, yeah, I'll definitely consider it.

I tend to be hesitant about putting un-playtested content onto the DM's Guild. I know the majority of stuff isn't playtested, but I would rather not add to that "static." As you can see, my writeup of psionic powers has a lot more in common with Gary's terse writing from back when psionics was introduced... Saying "Retrospection: During a long rest you can meditate with another creature and help it (or yourself) to regain lost memories or review old memories; the DM may call for a check" might be fine at my game table, but it's more loosey-goosey than what most players expect.

If you don't want to put it up there without playtesting, I'm sure many of us would be more than happy to test it out if you wanted to expand it out and show us the other discipline schools!

 

[Ath-kethin]

I have yet to see a psionics system for any edition of D&D that I like better than the ones in 2E. I don't like psionic spells, I don't think psionics should be magic. So how much of the system in the Psionics Handbook and The Will & The Way can be translated into 5E? I want to see tangents, harbingers, and disciplines, not 9 levels of watered down magic...

You could try this option.

I've read it but never played it; it might hit the spot for you.

Dungeon Masters Guild

www.dmsguild.com