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

[Lem23]

I think that rather than a huge bunch of psionic subclasses for every class out there (because if you have a psionic thief, a psionic ranger, a psionic mage, then you'll have people complaining there's no psionic cleric, etc), it would be better to have a psionic class with just a few subclasses dedicated to various niches - a psimaster who uses her powers in conjunction with physical weapons, a mystic with more psi or magical powers (equivalent to a mage, in effect), a psychic shadowborne assassin, etc. It would also make it a lot easier to ignore if you don't want psionics in your game.

 

[Aldarc]

Yes, spellcasting is a shared subsystem. So were psi dice in the UA: it was shared by 3 subclasses and a general feat.

Three UA subclasses, one of which also was juggling the spellcasting subsystem in addition to the psi die. Now how many PHB classes and subclasses share the spellcasting subsystem?

Yes, but that's boring. IMO, obviously.
I mean, 4e is often criticized for sameness of player options, and even in 4e psionics had their own cool, unique subsystem.

...which was the inspiration for the Mystic, but according to WotC, that was soundly rejected.

Those people are 100% free to hold that opinion. Apparently they're even the majority. I still believe that kind of thinking is poisonous to the game's growth and evolution, and I am sad about that. I can't lie.

To channel the spirit of @Parmandur the 5e Apologist, it seems like the game is growing and evolving just fine without the psi die.

Given that psionics have always been optional rules, I would castigate them for stopping other people from having nice things. If the rules are too complex for some players they have the option not to use them. Optional rules are optional.

But more castigation is for WotC - people are always wary of new ideas - bold innovators go ahead and innovate anyway. WotC are cowards.

So why are you only castigating WotC now for being cowards and not earlier for going forward with the Mystic? Strange, it's almost as if the accusation of cowardice is really a mask for something else...

 

[Olrox17]

Three UA subclasses, one of which also was juggling the spellcasting subsystem in addition to the psi die. Now how many PHB classes and subclasses share the spellcasting subsystem?

Almost every class in the game, which is something that is often complained about. Spellcasters everywhere, how boring. By the way, that UA was a playtest. If successful, the same system could have used with new, future subclasses or perhaps even a full class.
It clearly was the devs' intention to make psi dice a widespread system, shared by all present and future psionic options.

...which was the inspiration for the Mystic, but according to WotC, that was soundly rejected.

I also liked the Mystic, btw. Not that it matters now.

To channel the spirit of Parmandur the 5e Apologist, it seems like the game is growing and evolving just fine without the psi die.

For now. After 8 years of playing 5e in its various iterations, I'm starting to feel bored with the lack of evolution. It is starting to feel stagnant, which I guess is what "evergreen" means to some people.
5e was supposed to be a modular game, which implies options, wildly different options, true customization. They ain't delivering on that.
The Class Variants UA is kind of my last hope for this edition. If they drop that concept, I might lose all interest.

 

[Giltonio_Santos]

D&D players: "I hate 4e! All classes feel the same!"
Also D&D players: "Psionics must use mechanics already in the PHB."

Kind of frustrating, from my point of view, and makes it hard to justify continued support for official stuff in an environment like this. As collateral damage, this appears to spell doom for any chance of decent support for Dark Sun, or even Eberron campaigns that involve the Kalashtar or the Quori.

I really like the 5e engine. I own everything WotC released thus far. It appears that this support won't result in anything meatier than yet another not very innovative FR module, though. My hope keeps fading with every new statement from their team, and maybe it would be wiser to take my money somewhere else.

 

[Istbor]

Psionics are never going to happen. Too many people want too many different things from them for any one approach to clear their satisfaction threshold.

Well, that’s not entirely true. Eventually something will be boring enough that most players are fine with it. But it’s going to be a while.

Maybe not too long. I was bored with psionics for 5e the moment people started bringing it up.

I would never do something awful in someone else's cereal though. To each their own.

 

[DEFCON 1]

But more castigation is for WotC - people are always wary of new ideas - bold innovators go ahead and innovate anyway. WotC are cowards.

Heh... you know if we're talking cowards here... I'd actually put forth the idea that WotC aren't the ones that are the true culprit. The "cowards" are all the players who want all manner of new stuff-- new player options, new rules, new mechanics etc. etc... and yet when they told repteatedly "Hey, you know you have these past UAs" or "You have an entire site called the DMs Guild that will supply you with all manner of new stuff to your heart's content"... the response is always:

"I don't trust that stuff. I can't tell if it's balanced."

Guess what? If you are a DM or a player who has somehow overused and mastered all of the already-published D&D material to the point where none of that stuff is good enough for you anymore and you need all these new rules and mechanics just to keep things interesting... and you are unwilling to use that knowledge to take 3PP stuff and figure out for yourself 1) Is it balanced? and 2) If it's not balanced, let me re-balance it myself...

...then I'd suggest the true cowards here might just be you.

Everyone only wants the "Official D&D" stuff because there's supposedly a level of balance and playtesting and authority that comes with it. Using older stuff or 3PP stuff is a "minefield" where you just don't know how good the stuff if. Well, if having all this weird stuff really matters that much to you... man and woman and non-binary up and do the work yourself! Stop waiting for WotC to give you everything and then whine when they don't give you what you want. Be brave and MAKE what you want.

[And please note that I know full well many of you already do this, so this post is mainly satire making fun of the idea that the people who design this game are actually "cowards".]

 

[Chaosmancer]

So, things Jeremy Crawford specifically said in this video:

1) "The majority of people are not interested in Psionics having its own mechanic."

2) The material they've released that is Psionically themed but works like all the other subclasses...the feedback was not only in satisfaction scores but also ... "we dig kind of a neat, sometimes spooky psychic theme, we just want it to work like how things work generally in fifth edition." There were a lot of people bouncing not just on the Psionic talent die, but just on there being a different mechanic at all. People are just like, "Can't I just sit down and play this cool thing please?"

Yeah, which is why I think that there is really not going to be anything new with the Psionic. It is going to be spellcasters with a neat trick that has the name psychic stapled on it, but without new mechanics, the only thing left for people to play psion characters is going to be spellcasters. Which a lot of people don't want.

Unfortunately this is I think of one of the D&D design team's foibles. They consistently do a few weird things - I've mentioned that they wildly overvalue natural weapons and natural armour, like to a bananas degree. It's inexplicable. In almost every case they make them a terrible idea, and objectively vastly worse than say, having Elven Weapon Proficiencies or the Mountain Dwarf deal with okay weapons and medium armour, yet they value them as if they were the same as, or better than that. I have no idea what sort of games they're playing, but in thirty years of D&D, the only "natural weapons" using characters I've seen have have been either gimmick characters, where it wasn't mechanically advantageous, just cool, or weird exploits (like where some race got to retain a claw/claw/bite routine or whatever), and the latter just isn't a thing in 5E.

And I think likewise they overvalue trying to make people using full V/S/M components, even though, realistically, 95% of the time, it doesn't even matter, and the other 5% it's either costly components (just adjust those spells or take them off the list) or casting from steatlh - and psionics should be good at being cast from stealth. That's part of it's "thing". So I think they'll mess it up if they try to go the "spell" route.

This is a tangent, but yes.

I've never understood why they seem to think natural weapons are powerful, and I've consistenly been floored by how weak they make healing abilities.

Or, Orcish fury. The feat is literally "deal an extra d8 damage once per short rest" unless you drop to zero hp. That isn't that good. at all.

Can’t there be a middle ground between “nothing new, ever, I hate change” and “third edition level massive bloat”?

I hope so.

Sure, I've messed around with making things occasionally, but I still like seeing new ideas. The tattoo system was a new thing, magic items don't work that way, except know I can think of them doing things like that where you can have multiple items in the same attunement slot.

What I worry about slightly is that if we don't create some new systems eventually, then it is all spellcasting all the time. And as much as I can argue for that in homebrew (because it makes things easier) that doesn't mean I really want it being the only way the designers work within the game space.

 

[Giltonio_Santos]

Heh... you know if we're talking cowards here... I'd actually put forth the idea that WotC aren't the ones that are the true culprit. The "cowards" are all the players who want all manner of new stuff-- new player options, new rules, new mechanics etc. etc... and yet when they told repteatedly "Hey, you know you have these past UAs" or "You have an entire site called the DMs Guild that will supply you with all manner of new stuff to your heart's content"... the response is always:

"I don't trust that stuff. I can't tell if it's balanced."

I can only talk for myself, but desire for official support does not come from an unwillingness to go third-party. I own two bestiaries and two Midgard books by KP, I've backed Sandy Petersen's Cthulhu Mythos for 5e, I own Odyssey of the Dragonlords and the Tal'Dorei book by Green Ronin, and I also intend to get their Book of Fiends in the future. I'm in no way unwilling to support new rules or setting stuff from third-party, but none of these publishers can give me an official Dark Sun module or spare me the frustration of opening one and discovering that the Dragon of Tyr's stat block is a reskinned draconic sorcerer.

In a certain sense, I'm more frustrated now than when Crawford stated they would not be making any additional effort to implement the mystic. I don't love the psionic die. I think it was a cool subclass implementation with some additional potential, but never really loved it. That said, it at least felt like moving away from the base standard. And now I'm told that the D&D community believes that this was too much for them. Ouch. If three psionic classes using such an inoffensive mechanic is too much for the player base, what mechanical avenues are left for official sources to explore?

 

[Parmandur]

But more castigation is for WotC - people are always wary of new ideas - bold innovators go ahead and innovate anyway. WotC are cowards.

Caution is the better part of valor.

 

[Undrave]

I think on some level, people just hated having the bad effect tied to the high roll, and good effect to the low, too.

I thought it was cool! You roll low and don't do a lot of extra damage NOW, you get extra later! It's give and take!

Perhaps. What strikes me is that D&D, as a whole, is not a simple game. 5e is certainly simpler that past editions, but it's still a complex game.
Spellcasting, the most common and widespread player-side subsystem, is the opposite of simplicity. Almost 100 pages of the PHB are solely dedicated to spellcasting! But apparently half a column to explain Psi dice was too much. It bothers me.

Seconded!

For now. After 8 years of playing 5e in its various iterations, I'm starting to feel bored with the lack of evolution. It is starting to feel stagnant, which I guess is what "evergreen" means to some people.
5e was supposed to be a modular game, which implies options, wildly different options, true customization. They ain't delivering on that.
The Class Variants UA is kind of my last hope for this edition. If they drop that concept, I might lose all interest.

Seconded as well! I don't even CARE about Psionics as a legacy of some kind. I got no attachment to it. I will freely admit I liked the Psi Dice class because they were something NEW to play with.

Heh... you know if we're talking cowards here... I'd actually put forth the idea that WotC aren't the ones that are the true culprit. The "cowards" are all the players who want all manner of new stuff-- new player options, new rules, new mechanics etc. etc... and yet when they told repteatedly "Hey, you know you have these past UAs" or "You have an entire site called the DMs Guild that will supply you with all manner of new stuff to your heart's content"... the response is always:

"I don't trust that stuff. I can't tell if it's balanced."

Guess what? If you are a DM or a player who has somehow overused and mastered all of the already-published D&D material to the point where none of that stuff is good enough for you anymore and you need all these new rules and mechanics just to keep things interesting... and you are unwilling to use that knowledge to take 3PP stuff and figure out for yourself 1) Is it balanced? and 2) If it's not balanced, let me re-balance it myself...

DMs Guild is a goddamn jungle, I don't have unlimited time or unlimited money.

And I haven't overused and mastered ALL the D&D material, just the stuff that interest me... and after playing a Cleric, a Bard, and a Druid... full casters aren't my cup of tea.