D&D General What’s The Big Deal About Psionics?

[James Gasik]

I would love for Dreamscarred to work on 5e Psionics, but I can see three issues that may be preventing them from doing so. First, the current OGL is way more finicky than the 3.x version, which they may find problematic as long as they can still pay the bills by making supplements for other games. Second, 5e is a very different beast, with fewer decision points upon level up for most characters. Like if you make a psionic subclass that doesn't use "powers", like the original soulknife, you have what, 5 levels where you can present new abilities over the course of a career? And you have to make them all relevant for when you get them.

And finally, the game is about to undergo some restructuring. I remember a lot of 3rd party supplements who got taken off guard by 3.5 and quickly had to try and make their latest product compliant to the new version of the rules. So publishing anything before the Anniversary Edition is finalized (whatever form it takes) might be counter-productive. Best to wait for the dust to settle first.

 

[Minigiant]

Only in the same sense that any new software could have been designed and implemented without bugs, and it's the programmers' fault that it isn't bug-free. Superhuman game rule designers able to see all the implications of their designs in advance are no more readily available than superhuman programmers able to see all implications of their code in advance.

(Seriously, consider all the time and effort that went into the design and playtesting of 3rd edition, and then look at the mess that its magic system was proved to be the moment people stopped using the play style that had formed under 2nd edition and exploited the rules to the fullest. Cook, Tweet, and Williams were not incompetents, and neither were all the many, many playtesters.)

D&D spell magic as eventually embodied in 5th edition is the product of many cycles of design, testing, patching, and adaptation undertaken over four decades. Unless a not-based-on-spells psionic system is explicitly made narrow and limited (and thus disappoints psionics fans), it will be more broken than 5e spell magic.

But that doesn't matter, because if the new psionics were, by a miracle, only as complicated and broken as 5e spell magic, it would be rejected by most tables. People have already learned spell magic, and already are inured to its broken bits. Most groups as a collective will not want to learn an additional system as complicated as spell magic, and when the others try it out, every time they stumble across a broken bit it will irritate because it is a new issue.

Thus, from the perspective of a publisher, a not-based-on-leveled-spells, non-trivial psionics system that works as well as spell magic would take a massive investment of resources into developing and testing something that would be widely rejected. As an economic proposition, that's inherently losing.

I'm not saying the designers are incompetent. I'm saying that numbers can go up or down. A poor choice of numbers in on year does not mean there is not correct number.

Video games get patches to fix unbalanced things all the time and it usualyis just changing some numbers.

My big fear on the other hand is psionics being tied to spells and a bunch of wizardX/psion5 and socererorX/wilderY start mind nuking every solo monster in a dungeon effortlessly as Arcane spells, Psionic Spells, Magic Items, and Class features are comboed into campaign killers.

5e lets casters' slots stack
5e lets caster's spellcaster level stack
5e lets casters snag spells from each other
5e gives wizards access to almost everything

So making more telepathy, telekinesis, clairsenience, and psychoportation spells seem like a bad idea.

 

[James Gasik]

Sure but if you think they're going to stop printing more spells anyways, I have some bad news for you.

 

[Hussar]

I'm not saying the designers are incompetent. I'm saying that numbers can go up or down. A poor choice of numbers in on year does not mean there is not correct number.

Video games get patches to fix unbalanced things all the time and it usualyis just changing some numbers.

My big fear on the other hand is psionics being tied to spells and a bunch of wizardX/psion5 and socererorX/wilderY start mind nuking every solo monster in a dungeon effortlessly as Arcane spells, Psionic Spells, Magic Items, and Class features are comboed into campaign killers.

5e lets casters' slots stack
5e lets caster's spellcaster level stack
5e lets casters snag spells from each other
5e gives wizards access to almost everything

So making more telepathy, telekinesis, clairsenience, and psychoportation spells seem like a bad idea.

Why?

Wizards ALREADY have most of those. What don't wizards/casters already have?

I asked this before. What effects do you see that cannot be replicated with spells?

 

[Minigiant]

Sure but if you think they're going to stop printing more spells anyways, I have some bad news for you.

sure. But Most new spells are just alternative of the same major attack and buff spells.

Psionics as Spells is recreation of the wildest mind powers... and giving it to the wizard.

 

[James Gasik]

I'm not sure what they could make that would be anything more ridiculous than what we have available now though. It's all take damage/save or suck/save or die anyways. Oh and my personal favorite, save or crumple up your character sheet because your character is now unplayable (Feeblemind, for example).

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Psionics as Spells is recreation of the wildest mind powers... and giving it to the wizard.

So if you think giving them to Wizard would be a problem... don't. Wizards do not automatically get access to every spell that gets printed, they can't learn most healing spells either.

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

Now I start to suspect new powers with special gameplay will be tested in computer simulation than in the tabletop version, for example in a future expansion for Baldur's Gate III. But here the possible mistake would be to create powers for the battlefield, when many ones were more for storytelling effects, for example to search clues for an investigation or to explore.

 

[Minigiant]

So if you think giving them to Wizard would be a problem... don't. Wizards do not automatically get access to every spell that gets printed, they can't learn most healing spells either.

If this is Wizards of the Coast we are talking bout, Wizards will get Psychic spells.

 

[Yaarel]

I'd prefer to see the 3e psionics come back. I loved that you could take the charm ability, and then pick and choose by spending power points who it worked on.

Psionic Charm

Initial cost: 1 power point
Additional cost: 2 power points to be able to affect animals, fey, giant, magical beasts or monstrous humanoids
Additional cost: 4 power points to be able to affect aberrations, dragons, elementals or outsiders.
Additional cost: 4 power points to increase the duration to 1 day per level.
For every additional 2 power points spent, the DC went up by 1.

Now, that's the 3e version, so those numbers and effects wouldn't match up in 5e, but I think a toned down version could work.

Out of curiosity, I want to visualize what that 3e psionic power would look like using 5e mechanics. Note the DC would depend on whatever slot level gets used to cast the spell. Of course, a Psion has innate spellcasting that ignores any spell components. Something like the following:



CHARM
1st-level enchantment

Casting Time: 1 action
Range: 30 feet
Components: V, S
Duration: 1 hour

You enhance the way an other mind perceives you. You attempt to charm a Humanoid that you can see. It must make a Wisdom saving throw, and does so with advantage if your team (including yourself) is fighting it. If it fails the saving throw, it incurs the Charmed condition toward you, and regards you as a friendly acquaintance. The spell also ends if your team does anything harmful to it. At the end of the spell, it knows you charmed it.

At Higher Levels. When you cast this spell:
For each slot level higher, you can target one additional Humanoid.
For two slot levels higher, the creature types can be any.
For two slot levels higher, the duration increases to one day.