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.“

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[Parmandur]

Given that components are largely overlooked unless/until a PC is specifically denied their pouch/focus, this amounts to, "I ignore a rule that rarely has impact anyway." Which renders this another, "Well, technically it isn't absolutely true," argument. LIke calling ketchup a vegetable dish. Or...

"You said there'd be ice cream!"
"Yes. Well... actually, it is a 'non-dairy desert'. And it has melted."

I think the hair splitting on this is not at all constructive, and gets in the way of just noting the darned reality and moving on. I can see why folks get frustrated.

Does anyone really experience ignoring the component rules as written? I've not seen that in 5E actual play. People are really rigorous about Somatic, Vocal and Material tracking from all I've seen. Invisible Mahe Hand with no component is huge.

 

[Maxperson]

I'm too lazy to re-do the math here but will help critique if someone else does.

Couldn't you just copy/paste?

 

[Guest 6801328]

Considering how frequently posters "do the math" and make huge errors and omissions, cherrypick their assumptions, or otherwise bias the results to fit their own preconceptions, I don't really put much weight behind arguments that claim to have done the math but don't show it.

It's got to get picked over and critiqued by the community or it may as well be astrology.

 

[Maxperson]

Does anyone really experience ignoring the component rules as written? I've not seen that in 5E actual play. People are really rigorous about Somatic, Vocal and Material tracking from all I've seen. Invisible Mahe Hand with no component is huge.

It's a big deal in combat not being able to tell where a "spell" comes from. A psion with no components would be very, very hard to spot in a crowd.

 

[Kinematics]

I suppose one of the subclasses could take Wild Talent, but it wouldn't make much sense. For those non-psionic classes that take Wild Talent, to get anything other than 1d6 they would need to take Telepathic as well. The die size doesn't increase with Wild Talent and the only feat that increases die size is Telepathic.

Incorrect. Wild Talent increases die size at the same levels as the subclass features.

I'm not sure why you say only Telepathic does that, but perhaps it's the way you're reading the page? Telepathic runs down the righthand column of page 8, while the die size increase is in the righthand column of page 9. However, that's not the order you read the text. The bottom-right of page 8 continues with the top-left of page 9, and the Wild Talent description that starts on the left of page 9 overflows into the righthand column of page 9.

 

[Minigiant]

So at this point, I think we can see WotC acted on a lot of really frankly wrong feedback, because it claimed Mystic were "too powerful" (something WotC repeated here, albeit they didn't say they shared that opinion). They literally are not, unless you run the 5MWD (at which point they totally, but so is every class with "daily" resources, especially Sorcerers and Wizards).

I think the core main thing they are giving up is psi/power points as the main resource.

They are testing it as a secondary resource in the sorcerer and seeing if people are okay with it. If it tests well, they might bring back a psionic based class.

But this all looks like a way to pull "warrior" and "skillmonkey" psionic subclasses into core classes and away from the base "caster" psionic character.

The whole UA reeks of "psi points can't work as a primary resource and key tag for psionics. Let's try something else"

 

[Maxperson]

Incorrect. Wild Talent increases die size at the same levels as the subclass features.

I'm not sure why you say only Telepathic does that, but perhaps it's the way you're reading the page? Telepathic runs down the righthand column of page 8, while the die size increase is in the righthand column of page 9. However, that's not the order you read the text. The bottom-right of page 8 continues with the top-left of page 9, and the Wild Talent description that starts on the left of page 9 overflows into the righthand column of page 9.

I totally misread that.

 

[Parmandur]

I'm not saying it should have been, but it could have been, and they didn't bother to try, seemingly on the basis of at least partially spurious feedback. This is the dark side of the 7/10 thing if that's really how they work. If enough people (say, 3.1/10 people) have a false belief about a class/subclass/spell/feat/etc. it doesn't matter that it's false, because it'll fail the 7/10 test.

Your overallanalysis on the Mystic seems spot on.

Mearls got into the nitty-gritty about this point in particular during one of the Happy Fun Hour episodes where he was tinkering with the Fighter: the Brute was not overpowered, and Mearls had spreadsheets that demonstrate that it was perfectly in sync mathematically with the Champion and Battlemaster...but that wasn't the impression people got from UA, so the Brite didn't make the 70% cut.

I'd suggest they didn't try reeling in the versatility and decided to go a different direction because the prototype they had was built on the chassis of that very versatility that people had a negative reaction to. Better to go back to the drawing board and come up with a new approach. Hence the Paionic-Fighter and Psionic-Rogue Subclass approach, so when they take a crack at. Psion it can be free of the baggage of needing to be versatile. I really, really hope that Mearls Concentration bending Psion early draft goes somewhere: mixed with this die mechanic it could be something special.

 

[Blueace]

My own opinion: make it simple and effective as is 5e.

The mystic was a good idea but far too complex. Do it like the monk.

The mystic had "Known Talents / Known Disciplines / Psi Points / Psi Limit".
Do like the monk, keep only the Psi Points.

The mystic had an endless catalog of Talents and Disciplines.
Do like the monk, everything should be in the description of the feature.

With commun features focused on telekinesis and mind reading. And power according to the number of psi point you use, like the wizard "At Higher Levels".

Then sub-classes to make the class more offensive, or more furtive, or dedicated to mental manipulation.

 

[TwoSix]

Does anyone really experience ignoring the component rules as written? I've not seen that in 5E actual play. People are really rigorous about Somatic, Vocal and Material tracking from all I've seen. Invisible Mahe Hand with no component is huge.

The number of times components have come up in my 5 years playing 5e I could count on one (free) hand.