Unearthed Arcana Why UA Psionics are never going to work in 5e.

[Maxperson]

So your reason for sabotaging discussion with your persistent "this is why psionics in 5e will never work" spiel is because you want psionics to be exceptional in 5e that gets slapped onto the character rather than a dedicated class, as has been the case for the past 3 out of 4 editions?

What it "was supposed to be"? What is that even supposed to mean? It's psionics. Even if it was "supposed to be" like 1e, both 3e and 4e showed us that it could be better than what it was "supposed to be" in 1e. Why go back to the days when psionics was its worst? Why not look to 3.5e and 4e when it was at its most balanced and flavorful?

3e was better than 1e, yes, but it also had it's issues, like the summoning/creation portions of the class. 4e I have no clue about. I also really liked the 2e version where you had to roll and could easily fail and often did, but abilities were powerful when you succeeded.

 

[Aldarc]

3e was better than 1e, yes, but it also had it's issues, like the summoning/creation portions of the class. 4e I have no clue about. I also really liked the 2e version where you had to roll and could easily fail and often did, but abilities were powerful when you succeeded.

What issue?

 

[Catulle]

Speaking solely from my own experience, Metacreativity suffered from being yet another summoner in an edition that already had that niche well covered by the time it came along, but to my mind that speaks more to 3.X as a whole than the discipline itself. I'm sure there's something in platonic forms, tulpa, etc. that could be interestingly built on, moreso than "summon doodad I-IX" was in the past.

 

[Aldarc]

Speaking solely from my own experience, Metacreativity suffered from being yet another summoner in an edition that already had that niche well covered by the time it came along, but to my mind that speaks more to 3.X as a whole than the discipline itself. I'm sure there's something in platonic forms, tulpa, etc. that could be interestingly built on, moreso than "summon doodad I-IX" was in the past.

From what I recall, the best summoner in 3.5 (or one of the best) was actually a druid, particularly a druid that took a shifter-oriented prestige class, the Moonspeaker, in Races of Eberron.

But if you are curious about what could be done with the idea of "summoning ectoplasm," then I would look at some of the classes of Dreamscarred Press. One class is the Aegis, which summons customizable armor made of ectoplasm.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

There is the Spiritualist in Pathfinder, that bonds with an undead phantom.

 

[Maxperson]

What issue?

Giving Psions abilities that went beyond what 1e and 2e set. The ability to create constructs and such went beyond what D&D gave to psionics. Even 2e barely gave animation to objects. 100 pounds max, and if you tried anything of substance(metal or rock) you had anywhere from your Int-7 to -9 to succeed. Even if you had an 18 intelligence, you were going to fail around half the time. the object creation ability in 2e was also very poor, unless you had Molecular Rearrangement to go along with it and rolled well.

 

[Aldarc]

Giving Psions abilities that went beyond what 1e and 2e set. The ability to create constructs and such went beyond what D&D gave to psionics.

That's untrue. 3e D&D is D&D and it set that psionics in D&D could do this. Setting the limits of what psionics can do at 1-2e is just you applying your arbitrary preference of tastes. Or is this also the mysterious work "limiters"?

 

[Maxperson]

That's untrue. 3e D&D is D&D and it set that psionics in D&D could do this. Setting the limits of what psionics can do at 1-2e is just you applying your arbitrary preference of tastes.

AD&D was the designers vision. 3e was WotC enacting changes. Was it D&D? Yes. I didn't mean to imply otherwise. It was, however, beyond the vision of the person who designed what psionics was supposed to be and was out of place because of that.

 

[Ovinomancer]

AD&D was the designers vision. 3e was WotC enacting changes. Was it D&D? Yes. I didn't mean to imply otherwise. It was, however, beyond the vision of the person who designed what psionics was supposed to be and was out of place because of that.

It looks like we've come full around to argument from tradition, there's now just a disagreement as to which tradition controls.

 

[Maxperson]

It looks like we've come full around to argument from tradition, there's now just a disagreement as to which tradition controls.

And your usual Argument from Fallacy in response!!

Not everything made is tradition by the way. You can argue that how the designers made it in the beginning is tradition. What 3e did for one single edition isn't even tradition, so if tradition is going to control, it's going to be AD&D.