D&D 5E People didn't like the Psionic Talent Die

[Parmandur]

I applaud their continued attempts to get something that feels "right enough" for their audience (wish they could show that kind of devotion to the Ranger, but c'est la vie).

My gut tells me a psionic class, if they decide to go back to that concept, would be something like a bard/warlock mix (conceptually). Not literally a mish mash, but a limited pool of spell casting slots but with nifty Invocation-like things...and something like the Inspiration die (not the talent die...interesting though it was, it just felt backwards...struck me as something more at home in the oddball collection of 2e mechanics). You'd have its psionic powers (or spells) with very limited slots, like a warlock, but a psionic type of Invocation/Inspiration type deal (where some might use a die, some might not) rather than be similar to warlock invocations which, for the most part, are just at-will spell options (obviously not all of course).

Or perhaps that's just a psionic warlock subclass. I don't envy WotC this mental pickle.

To be clear about the Ranger versus these options, the Ranger and every Ranger Subclass is already well over the approval rating they are shooting for here: if they got a Psionic option that was as well liked as the Beastmaster, they would publish it!

 

[Campbell]

This kinda highlights some of the differences between D&D 5e fans and fans of other games.

You kinda see that that the majority of 5e fans only want to use the same 5-7 subsystems. Once they learns spellcasting, skills, ki, pact magic, etc.... the fans split.

Some don't want to lean more systems. They just want what they learned expanded.
Some want to learn and see more subsystems. They want to see more ways to cross-interact between the old and new.

I fundamentally disagree here. If anything there seems to be a stronger pull away from having a multitude of subsystems. Games like Legend of Five Rings Fifth Edition, Vampire Fifth Edition, and Wrath and Glory represent a substantial reduction in subsystems compared their antecedents. The Burned Over hack book for Apocalypse World guts subsystems all over the place. The still in development Exalted Essence Edition meant to provide a more approachable alternative to Exalted Third Edition uses a universal charm set. Most games that I am seeing this days have 2-4 major subsystems that characters may plug into at most.

No game represents this trend better than Pathfinder Second Edition. Pathfinder Second Edition has a universal Proficiency System that works the same way for everything - spells, saves, armor, skills, etc. Everything you can do is framed in terms of either the 3 action economy or given a time if it takes longer. With very few exceptions you can either always do something, it is a focus spell, or a spell cast from a spell slot. There is nothing like superiority dice, hit dice, no ki powers, no rage powers / daily rage. Generally if something is similar it works the same way. Dispelling and Removing Curses both use the counteracting system.

It is still a rich game with incredibly different classes. It just gets there by utilizing just a few set subsystems. The Advanced Player's Guide classes play around with these subsystems, but use them in slightly different ways rather than creating new subsystems.

For my money I would rather see psionic classes function off the warlock frame maybe with some at will abilities that played off of Concentration. Mostly I would rather they stand a part based on what they can do rather than how they do it.

 

[RangerWickett]

I think I honestly won't care about any psionic ruleset until it has a way to wed the narrative of 'weird mindscape shenanigans' into game mechanics in an elegant way.

I don't need my psions to shoot goop at people (ectoplasm) or do a bunch of psychic damage or telekinesis or body equilibrium stuff.

I need them to let me play a tabletop version of FX's show LEGION.

 

[Weiley31]

that kind of devotion to the Ranger, but c'est la vie).

They did but for whatever the reason, both WoTC and alot of people won't use the patch that is the Revised Ranger.

 

[willrali]

It’s a strange time indeed when D&D players are vociferously opposed to learning rules.

Psionics has always been cool because it’s different. Ah well.

 

[Guest 6801328]

People must have been "Eeeww! New mechanic? I don't want to learn that!" and didn't give it a shot I bet... I don't know why people found the rules so confusing, it really wasn't!

I didn't watch the video. Do they say that the reason people didn't like it is that they want to learn it, or found it confusing? Or are you assuming that?

Overall I voted for it, but I have to admit there's something that rubs me wrong about the psionic die. It doesn't feel like 5e. Now, maybe that's a good thing, because we want psionics to be all woo-woo alien or whatever. But I'm not going to assume that other people voted against it because they're dumb.

 

[toucanbuzz]

WTF, we let players roll more dice and they don't like it? Blasphemy!

Seriously though, discordant message from feedback: "we are cool with something new, but we don't want anything actually to change. Too many buttons and knobs..."

We forget that when people start playing D&D, everything is new and has buttons and knobs. I wonder if the same feedback would have occurred if the Sorcerer had been left out initially and years later they tried to introduce a caster with metamagic features and new "buttons and knobs."

 

[Xenonnonex]

This is why we cannot have nice things. Goddamn.

 

[Guest 6801328]

See, I am just the opposite. If I've learned a maneuver with a weapon or against an attack, I should be able to use it whenever the time arises. Why can't I try to trip an opponent with my Trip Attack whenever I want?

The way I interpret it, everybody with any kind of training/experience knows how to avoid your basic trip attack. But Battlemasters know especially difficult tricks, such as an amazingly sneaky trip attack. However, it requires an opponent to open him/her/itself up to such a maneuver, and you have to happen to be set up just right to exploit it. And that only happens sometimes. So, no, you can't use it whenever you want.

Now, 5e doesn't try to model stance and positioning and openings and all that, so we need to some way to gate how often that occurs. A way to say, "Hey, every now and then, when the stars align, you have this great trick you can use."

One way to model this would be to roll percentile dice every time you make an attack. If you get, say, 03 or less or you can use the maneuver. But that would both be really annoying AND wouldn't give you any control over when you get to use it.

Another example is the one that GWM uses: when you reduce a creature to 0 HP, or get a critical hit, it triggers. That works great for GWM, but for most BM abilities "reducing an opponent to 0 HP" isn't very useful, and "on a critical hit" doesn't give you any control over when you use it.

So instead they simplified it dramatically AND gave you control over when to use it, by making it an "N times per short/long rest" ability.

This is how I interpret basically all "N times per short/long rest" non-magical abilities.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

I loved the early stuff. Giving every martial class superiority dice wasn’t my favorite choice, but up until that point I had been really enjoying the playtest.

The early playtest rogue in particular caused some of my group to completely bounce off of the playtest.

Well....like....that's your opinion, man.

I listen to pop music sometimes, are you saying that I'm dumb and lazy? Pop is short for popular, which implies using a certain formula to sell units to the masses , but I think you probably actually already knew that and you just want to assert your "I'm more enlightened than you" superiority to "win" yet another opinion based discussion.

So how about you keep your personal attacks off the board and specifically not aimed at me...because I didn't level a personal attack at anyone with my comment and didn't mention your name once in what I said.

You don't seem to have actually read what I wrote, nor do you seem to remember what you wrote, to which I was responding. I'll help.

5e....the Pop Music version of Dungeons & Dragons.

It reminds me of having a bright prodigy of a child you once had great hopes for....only to see them be content washing dishes at a Denny's and getting high with their friends at 25.

To which I replied that you were being elitist.

But the entire system WASN'T just the Psionic Die, but also the fact each of the listed Subclasses had their own Talents.

No one is saying that it was, though.

They messed up when they made Divine Magic just the same thing as Arcane magic but with a different color of sprinkles on top. No reason to repeat that mistake.

DnD is already FILLED with arbitrary subsystem that only affect a few class, or even one subclass! Bardic Inspiration Dice, Channel Divinity, Rage, Wildshape, Battlemaster Maneuvers, Monk Ki Points, Paladin Smites, Ranger Beast Companion, Sorcery Points, Invocation, Wizard books, Artificer infusions... I don't get why adding anything to that list is suddenly bad for some reason. It's just one more thing you may or may not need to learn. It's not like the game was ONLY Superiority Dice and ONLY Vancian Casting, then anything else would be a big deal... It's been a weird mish mash of system since the begining...

DnD is exception based design, isn't that what we all signed up for when we decided to buy more books?! It's not like we're DROWNING in those 'new subsystem' that, honestly, aren't THAT new.

All of those systems serve a purpose other than just differentiation, and only apply to a single class or archetype, not any entire broad type of characters.