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]

People can only go by their experience and best guess, and I don't think there's any research on whether people ignore spell components, but from my experience and from all discussion of D&D, for the last thirty years, on all formats, with all people, I think it's fair to say "Over 51% of (hence "most") groups ignore spell components outside of extremely specific situations". Is that a guess, not a fact? Yeah absolutely, but it's the result of my experience and reading an awful lot of discussion on this topic over a very, very long time.

Those specific situations would be:

1) The caster is affected by Silence. (V)

2) When the caster is tied up and has had their stuff taken away. (S)

3) When a material component costs a lot of money. (M)

Just look at any thread where people get talking about how spell focuses actually, RAW, work and so on on the 5E reddit or even places like here or GitP, and it really quickly becomes obvious that most people just go with "what makes sense to them", and totally ignore the RAW aside from the above (some go further and just start making up their own rules which don't correspond with the RAW). The 5E reddit is usually particularly full of "What really? That's dumb..." about how spell components are supposed to work (particularly re: focuses), and whilst it's still far more "hardcore" than your average D&D group, is at least somewhat more reflective of the general audience. And they sure aren't following these rules tightly.



Exactly! Yet most people would think that it did, because that would make way more sense and loads of people play it that way.

It's a bit like the perverse and confusing limit on what spells you can cast in a round. Instead of going with something simple that made sense, they've created an almost impossible to remember (and I'm normally extremely good at remembering obscure rules) scenario involving the specific order spells and cantrips are cast in and so on. And to no apparent point, either. Like, there's no dangerous situation eliminated by adhering tightly to those rules. It just seems arbitrary.

The plural of anecdote is not data. Forums and Reddit are just anecdote sharing services. Neither my experience, nor your experience, not Interwebza chatter are data. WotC has data, and they designed the perfectly useable component rules for 5E based on the data...not anecdotes.

 

[Parmandur]

There is no scenario in which the designers should not be paying very close attention to "how the game is actually played, even when it's different from the rules". At the very least, that should inform the next edition significantly. It may inform design decisions within an edition, too. We're not talking about "one table" or something. We're talking almost certainly well over half of groups (I would say) largely ignoring VSM. If even 10% of tables are reliably ignoring a bit of the rules, they should be considering why that's happening.



Unfortunately this is a great example against your point.

The encounter guidelines are the result of very peculiar and counter-intuitive design, and we know that a large number of groups do not closely follow them (somewhere between 20-50%, I would guess, perhaps higher if we eliminate groups using pre-gen adventures only, because they're not responsible for their own encounter design, if they're not following them, that's on an author somewhere), in large part because 6-8 resource-burning encounters every single day is just not a good match for most of adventures people write, and stories people want to tell, with D&D.

And before you suggest all the people new to 5E religiously follow them or something, all the evidence we have available is that people new to 5E have a lot of difficult with the 6-8 encounters/day concept. They don't instinctively follow it, it doesn't make sense to them, and they end up on messageboards going "Why are my encounters so easy!?!" and so on. And I'm a human, and I have a fairly good idea how humans think, and I know this is not something that is going to "click" with people in the way experience or initiative does. The figures are only going to be lower for that group than the more serious players.

WotC absolutely should be paying extremely close attention to this. Even it's 20%, that's significant, and I suspect it's much, much higher, maybe even a majority. And what should be telling them is they can't design D&D to require 6-8 encounters/day. That's mental. They need to either just dial it back, to say 3-6 by default, or work out a way to have a more flexible system in future.

They do need to be consistent, of course. All current subclasses are designed on the basis of 6-8 encounters/day. So future ones should be too. But for the future of D&D, they need to find a different path, whether that's 5.5, or 6E or whatever.

The genius of the Encounter system is that it is set around a maximum assumption: if a table undershoots, no problem, the worst outcome is everyone wins. If a table overshoots, they probably know what they are in for.

It is probable that WotC data shows people use the 5E component rules as RAW, since they are very useable and common sense: need to be able to balance that Axe and Material component and Somatic somehow, or it's just silly.

 

[Parmandur]

It has already been done. Psionics in 5e by RAW does not use components. You can see it in the Mind Flayer stat block.

Absolutely, and that's how I'd expect them to handle it, as with this UA. But designing a casting Class with no components is an interesting challenge.

 

[Chaosmancer]

If your house has 30 foot long hallways, and you think that's a short hallway, you have one hell of a big house. There are a lot of people out there whose entire house isn't 30 feet on a side. I grew up in a house that was a bit more than 40 feet on the long side - pretty standard bungalow.

Measured the hallway I was talking about, came out to a little under 16 ft, which makes no sense to me. I was in marching band, I remember marching from 10 yd line to 10 yd line. It wasn't that huge of a difference to be bigger than my entire house.

I don't know what is going on with either my memory, or the football fields I marched on.

So do you just tell the players who all the casters are in opposing groups? Do they have to ask or roll?

If there are any spellcasters on the other side (which is a rarity) they usually figure it out when I say things like "The Cult leader screams in rage and sends a blast of arcane energy hurling towards you."

The ability to cast sells undetectably is definitely worthy of design space. It may not be the dominant power of a class, but it is certainly worth consideration.
Subtle spell for a sorceror has definitely been worth taking in my experience, so a class that casts all sells as if under the effects of a metamagic ability.

I think that official D&D products will need to be designed with the assumption that people are following the rules of the game, since trying to account for everyone's homebrew is a losing proposition. If specific tables tend to ignore the VSM rules, and thus find that the official psionic casters are too weak, then they can always adjust things themselves.

The thing is, it is actually the dominant power of the Psionic Soul. A minor damage buff at level 6, some random extra spells and limited telepathy are the only other things they get.

Casting Silently and without components is their biggest ability

The psionic feats can greatly increase the frequency with which you use your PTD though. The Wild Talent feat in particular synergises with the Soul Knife.

One might almost think they where designed that way...

I would really hope not. If the class was designed so that they had to take a feat to shore up their weaknesses, that is a terrible design.

Classes should be able to stand on their own, not require a feat to play the way it was intended to play.

The plural of anecdote is not data. Forums and Reddit are just anecdote sharing services. Neither my experience, nor your experience, not Interwebza chatter are data. WotC has data, and they designed the perfectly useable component rules for 5E based on the data...not anecdotes.

I always hate when we get to this part of a discussion. "You don't have sufficient data, no one has sufficient data, therefore your point is invalid."

Even WoTC doesn't have sufficient, peer-reviewed data to go from. They've certainly never interviewed me or any one I've ever met on this. And no one on the forums talks about how they were contacted by WoTC's research team.

So no data exists.

 

[Maxperson]

If there are any spellcasters on the other side (which is a rarity) they usually figure it out when I say things like "The Cult leader screams in rage and sends a blast of arcane energy hurling towards you."

What about the spellcaster who is calm and casting charm or one of the myriad of other spells that doesn't emanate from the caster? Do you just tell the party that they have no idea who cast that spell? Do they get a roll to detect? What are they detecting if they do get a roll?

 

[Guest 6801328]

Measured the hallway I was talking about, came out to a little under 16 ft, which makes no sense to me. I was in marching band, I remember marching from 10 yd line to 10 yd line. It wasn't that huge of a difference to be bigger than my entire house.

So....wait a sec...are you saying that you can start stories with "This one time, in band camp..." and it's TRUE?!?!

 

[FlyingChihuahua]

What about the spellcaster who is calm and casting charm or one of the myriad of other spells that doesn't emanate from the caster? Do you just tell the party that they have no idea who cast that spell? Do they get a roll to detect? What are they detecting if they do get a roll?

What kind of casting of a spell doesn't originate from the person casting the spell?

 

[Maxperson]

What kind of casting of a spell doesn't originate from the person casting the spell?

I didn't say originate. I said emanate. Charm has no visible emanation like fireball or lightning bolt do.

 

[Chaosmancer]

So....wait a sec...are you saying that you can start stories with "This one time, in band camp..." and it's TRUE?!?!

Yep, I can.

And generally those stories involve it being the hottest week of the summer, because it always was.

What about the spellcaster who is calm and casting charm or one of the myriad of other spells that doesn't emanate from the caster? Do you just tell the party that they have no idea who cast that spell? Do they get a roll to detect? What are they detecting if they do get a roll?

It has literally never come up?

The biggest I can remember doing is hold Person, and again, "This guy gestures, etheral chains explode around you, roll a wisdom save" is generally what happens.

Also, no one bothers to detect anything, generally if they are confused I either tell them I reflavored this spell (yeah, that arcane wave that smashed everyone was just a magic missile spell, just wanted to make it sound cooler) or I say "it was this spell"

Edit:

I didn't say originate. I said emanate. Charm has no visible emanation like fireball or lightning bolt do.

It can, if you flavor it that way,

 

[Maxperson]

It has literally never come up?

That's really odd. My player like to know who they need to hit to disrupt concentration on, so they like to pinpoint the casters. Your players make the game a lot harder than they need to be by ignoring casters that way.

The biggest I can remember doing is hold Person, and again, "This guy gestures, etheral chains explode around you, roll a wisdom save" is generally what happens.

So you DO use components.