D&D 5E Psionics in Tasha

[Minigiant]

Basically, if you spent Sorcery Points, or was it Willpower, you started taking on aspects of your Bloodline. So the more Sorcery Points you spent, I believe you got more bonuses. And said bonuses would last for a day. The Draconic Bloodline(the only example of the NEXT Sorcerer) made you more of a Gish that seemed to get the Gish idea down pat.

It was cool. It was full spell points and got buffs as it ran out of spell points.

The Dragon Sorcerer started the day as a heavy armor mage and ends the day as a heavy weapons tank.

So, something like you could spend sorcery points to bump your AC from Draconic Bloodline?

No, they could spend points to get flat DR or a dragon smite.

Then once you spent enough points that day, you got X to melee damage and resistance to your dragon element.

 

[Maxperson]

Not how magic works in any of our campaigns ever.

Sure, but it is how it works by RAW. How do you do magic if there's no interface between the PCs and wherever magic comes from?

 

[The Mirrorball Man]

One of the cool things about D&D is its modular design. As a player, you pick a class, a race, a background and eventually, a subclass and other options. Each of these things comes with a series of toys: cool, flashy powers and abilities that players can use and enjoy. Yes, a Druid is not much more than a nature Cleric, and yes, a Sorcerer is not very distinct from a Wizard, but they get different toys, and those appeal to different people.

It's true, you could just have one class of magic users and change the fluff when players want to play Clerics, Bards or Psions. Other games do exactly that. But that's not D&D. The people who want Psionics to be different from Magic feel this way because they want new, distinctive, cool toys, instead of using the same old toys that Wizards have been using for years.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Sure, but it is how it works by RAW.

You seem to be confused about what the word 'rule' means.

How do you do magic if there's no interface between the PCs and wherever magic comes from?

Answer for that is fluff and will vary from setting to setting.

 

[Minigiant]

Actually the existence of the wizard's spell spellbook solidifies the interface of spell users and spells.

1. Spells can be translated into written forms
2. Spells are not personal and other spellcasters can research and translate a spell written down by another spellcaster
3. Transcribing and translating a spell is a long and expensive process.
4. Without the notes in a spellbook, a wizard cannot memorize a spell regardless if he or she did so before.

 

[Aldarc]

Sorcerer really shouldn't be a separate class.

So then. Is the problem more so the sorcerer than the psion?

Researcher who stumbled across an ancient tome in a library. Upon opening it, their mind was exposed to that of something beyond, from which they took a sliver of power. But they now know you're there, and their great eyes that should not be come ever closer...

Sounds like a cool backstory for a wizard.

I'd keep the sorcerer over the cleric.
The cleric claims 90% of its existance to 3 words: wizard can't heal.

Take that out and most setting don't even have seperate wizards and clerics as separate spellcasters.

By that logic you can make a dozen new classes just by locking wizards out of it and giving that plus a few spells to the new class.

Jein. Maybe more like undead are annoying. But I agree that the cleric mostly became a support/heal bot as part of praxis, and such magic could have easily been also given to the wizard (hello necromancers!).

I'm thinking of removing all full-spellcasters and instead replacing them with the magic-user which has access to all spells in the game. The subclasses then define them so you can have a white mage (healer), black mage (necromancer and summoner), elementalist, druid, etc. They can access all spells (though I'm thinking of restricting some spells depending on subclass chosen) but will be better with some spells over others.

Please just call this class something more natural like a "mage" instead of a "magic-user."

 

[Crimson Longinus]

So then. Is the problem more so the sorcerer than the psion?

Probably. I think it would definitely had been better if sorcerer wouldn't have existed and some of its concept had been ported to warlock (so you would have dragon pact warlocks etc) and the caster with current sorcerer-style mechanics (limited amount of spells which they can manipulate) would have been the psion. But that ship unfortunately has sailed. (I might still hack it to be that way for my own games though.)

 

[Aldarc]

Probably. I think it would definitely had been better if sorcerer wouldn't have existed and some of its concept had been ported to warlock (so you would have dragon pact warlocks etc) and the caster with current sorcerer-style mechanics (limited amount of spells which they can manipulate) would have been the psion. But that ship unfortunately has sailed. (I might still hack it to be that way for my own games though.)

I kinda also wish that 5e had gone the route of Starfinder, but that would have been far too radical for 5e's conservative sensibilities. In Starfinder, the cleric, druid, psion, and shaman were all essentially made as subclasses of a mystical, intuition-based Mystic class.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

I kinda also wish that 5e had gone the route of Starfinder, but that would have been far too radical for 5e's conservative sensibilities. In Starfinder, the cleric, druid, psion, and shaman were all essentially made as subclasses of a mystical, intuition-based Mystic class.

Sounds fine to me, but that would have caused a riot.

 

[Minigiant]

Jein. Maybe more like undead are annoying. But I agree that the cleric mostly became a support/heal bot as part of praxis, and such magic could have easily been also given to the wizard (hello necromancers!).

Okay 6 words.
But that's the whole thing. The cleric exist because vampire hunter was pulled out the fighter and healer was pulled out the wizard.

Half the classes are aspects of other classes ripped out and refined.

Many suggest taping them back in but the problem has always been keeping the refinement without breaking the game or dullng the refinement.