D&D 5E What Single Thing Would You Add

[Stormonu]

Where in D&D has it been done "right," though? Every incarnation of psionics I've seen for D&D has been a mess and IMO failed in one or more of the ways I listed.

As for magic, well, they're about as far from Vancian as they're going to get. Yes, you have to prepare the spells (unless you're a class that Knows them), but you know longer forget them after casting or have to prepare them multiple times.


Calculations for power points are time consuming at best, leads to psionicists going nova and then being useless, and are bothersome for people who aren't good at math. (Same thing with using spell points for magic.) Plus, they'd have to either come back on a short or long rest--and people would complain about that--because having them come back over any other period of time would lead to waaay too much timekeeping for probably most tables.

Personally, I like the psionic archetypes and wouldn't mind more of those, but I honestly can't stand the idea of a psionic class.

They do have the Telekinetic and Telepathic feats now, so it's a good start.

No system is perfect, but the 2E system worked overall. I’d would have also included the 3E system as one “that works”, but it got on a bit of a power trip (excuse the pun) - but not really any worse than the 3E magic system. It would be mostly problematic if you used the “psionics are different than magic” option that left psionics unchecked and unresistable.

If folks can keep track of spell slots and hit point totals, tracking power points isn’t an issue. If someone’s not willing/able to track points, then they should run something else - no one tolerates a wizard/cleric/sorcerer/etc. player who won’t track their sorcery points, ki or used spell slots, after all. The class/system could also be hybrid on recovery - full point recovery on a long rest, a small point recovery on a short rest (like the Wizard). Coupled with psionic cantrips, the psion should retain at least minimal ability throughout the adventure to keep up with the rest of the party. At the same time, if someone wants to Nova and then complain how they’re then useless for the rest of the day - well, that’s on them.

This whole discussion has me investigating putting together a psion class/system that uses power points for powers 1st-4th level, and a system similar to the Warlock’s invocations for powers of 5th+.

 

[Faolyn]

Re: rational/reasonable I was referring to the false "has to be", but it's not rational to trash theoretical psionics because magic is bad.

Which I didn't actually do. You kind of did, though, by saying that the way it currently is wouldn't be allowed if it were just introduced, everyone would hate it, etc.

Which also kind of brings up the point I was making: if you already have a magic system, you don't really need a second one.

As for "trivial", yeah that is all trivial, and you present no rational argument there, just opinion. It's not stuff that really impacts the game, and the triviality of it is shown by the fact that psionics fit in just fine in previous editions.

To be fair, when I asked you to say what psionics systems you liked, all you did was say "I liked every other edition's psionics," which is also just opinion with no rational argument--you never said why the 2e/3x/4e psionics systems were good and you didn't show the math or any actual examples to support why they were good; just that you liked them. I guess that's my fault for not asking you to explain.

As for "Well on reddit..." I was likewise and on r/dndnext at the same time and that's not what I saw, so what, do you want some kind of anecdote battle?

So your anecdotes beat mine, then?

1) Bad math. Some incredibly bad. I got a ton of upvotes pointing this out, but nowhere near as many as the original bad math dudes. People would rather go with excitingly bad math I guess.

Funny; all the math I saw worked pretty well.

2) The ironclad assumption that nothing could be changed or nerfed.

Never saw those arguments myself. Everyone I saw seemed to realize that UAs start out overly powerful and are later tuned down.

Also, I don't think anyone, regardless of forum, wants them to produce material that we the players then have to nerf on our own. Why do you think so many people just disallow healing spirit rather than go through the effort of nerfing it--and that's just a single spell, not a whole class.

3) Assuming D&D wasn't balanced on 6-8 encounters/day. This was constant. I don't think it would fly nowadays when the 6-8 thing is better known and more accepted. It was pretty funny given how many other classes break on a 1-3 encounter workday too.

Ah, this argument again. Nope, sorry. Here's the actual text from the DMG:

The Adventuring Day (pg 84)​

Assuming typical adventuring conditions and average luck, most adventuring parties can handle about six to eight medium or hard encounters in a day. If the adventure has more easy encounters, the adventurers can get through more. If it has more deadly encounters, they can handle fewer.​

It's NOT that "a game day has 6-8 encounters." It's "adventurers can probably handle this many average-difficulty encounters before they run out of resources."

The game is not balanced on 6-8 encounters, nor does it require that many to be balanced.

So you're basically saying that the 5e Mystic class was balanced around something that doesn't actually exist, which makes that a useless metric for determining how balanced the class actually is.

 

[Faolyn]

If folks can keep track of spell slots and hit point totals, tracking power points isn’t an issue. If someone’s not willing/able to track points, then they should run something else - no one tolerates a wizard/cleric/sorcerer/etc. player who won’t track their sorcery points, ki or used spell slots, after all.

This, I'm going to disagree with. Power points in the 5e Mystic class got pretty high--64 points at 10th level, whereas ki and SP maxed out at 20 at 20th level. There's a lot more numbers to track.

This whole discussion has me investigating putting together a psion class/system that uses power points for powers 1st-4th level, and a system similar to the Warlock’s invocations for powers of 5th+.

If you haven't already, check out the Level Up Warlock playtest. They decided to use sorcery points for the whole thing.

 

[Faolyn]

Bloodied.

Not just as an easy measure for "this creature is visibly wounded" (which I do anyway), but also for things like having monsters behave differently as they take damage, or indeed having them behave differently when the PCs take damage.

I dunno. I still have a hard time with the idea that they would go all "this isn't even my final form!" when they take damage--or that monsters just wouldn't start out with their biggest attacks, in order to minimize the risk of taking damage itself.

 

[TwoSix]

I dunno. I still have a hard time with the idea that they would go all "this isn't even my final form!" when they take damage--or that monsters just wouldn't start out with their biggest attacks, in order to minimize the risk of taking damage itself.

That's like asking why Goku doesn't just start out of every fight with a Spirit Bomb. You don't do it because it isn't cool.

 

[overgeeked]

That's like asking why Goku doesn't just start out of every fight with a Spirit Bomb. You don't do it because it isn't cool.

Why doesn’t that apply to PCs and their constant need to nova?

 

[DnD Warlord]

4e class sytem

 

[Mind of tempest]

That's like asking why Goku doesn't just start out of every fight with a Spirit Bomb. You don't do it because it isn't cool.

or because you hope you will not need it.

 

[TwoSix]

Why doesn’t that apply to PCs and their constant need to nova?

It should! I'd love to see a buildup power system or a combo system in D&D.

 

[Faolyn]

That's like asking why Goku doesn't just start out of every fight with a Spirit Bomb. You don't do it because it isn't cool.

Yeah, but that's a fight to the plot climax for viewing entertainment, not a fight to the death against players who like to think up killer combat maneuvers.

Maybe in a gladiatorial combat, the Goku thing works.