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

[Hussar]

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.

You keep repeating this. Examples please.

 

[Minigiant]

You keep repeating this. Examples please.

PHB
XGTE
TCOE
Fixban
Everything in 3e except TOB, Complete Adventurer, Complete Divine, and the Nature book.

 

[James Gasik]

Well, let's take a look (attached file for list).

Crisis of Breath is about equal in power to Phantasmal Killer, though it is limited to "breathing humanoids". Though it can be augmented to affect other types of creatures. Empathic Transfer, Hostile, allows you to remove up to 50 points of damage from your character by "gifting" it to a creature touched (save for half). False Sensory Input is roughly equal to Phantasmal Force, but it's not an illusion, so true seeing won't help you. Schism is pretty powerful, as it lets you use two powers a turn (though one must be of lower level). and I think the quick description of the higher level Telepathy powers is enough to get the point across on whether or not you think these effects are powerful.

 

[MoonSong]

The Sorcerer has the wrong flavor for psionics, its own weir spell point mechanics are a problem, its spells wrongly require material components and costly gp components, and there are other inappropriate aspects as well.

A need a fresh start for a normal 5e Psion class.

Those aspects are also at odds with the sorcerer itself. That's what happens when the designers spend two years trying to erase the class before having to backtrack at the eleventh hour. It was barely playable for almost two years.

 

[James Gasik]

I'm not even sure there's a point to the Sorcerer anymore, since the other casters ate some of their versatility by allowing you to prepare a myriad of spells and then let you decide what slots to use on the fly. Like, ok, you get powers because your grandpappy dated a dragon. Your class features aren't any better than what a Wizard gets, so your one unique thing is Metamagic, which is fantastic, but you'll run out of Sorcery points fast while the Wizard easily has five times as many spells they can choose from each day.

And since anyone apparently can get magic powers from some shady guy offering pacts in a dark alley, they're not even all that special in-universe either.

 

[Cadence]

Assuming a psionic system gets added to D&D and is orthogonal to arcane magic in terms of dispel magic and the like and has its own mechanics...

Should there be a Deity of Psionics (like there often is for pretty much anything about people from strength to magic)?

Should any of the other classes or magic items be able to buff a psionicsist?

Should tinfoil hats (or say slightly electrified wire net hats) offer some protection?

 

[Vaalingrade]

What killed 3e was certainly the thing you hated about it and certainly not that it was at the end of its production cycle as evidenced by the experimental releases people hold up was part of a 'glut' of splatbooks. No edition is going to last forever in print because the companty needs to continue to produce content to make money.

They got to a place where they had stretched the existing d20 system to its limit and were ready to move on with a structural change no longer restricted to reverse compatibility.

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

In Pathfinder 2 sorcerers can choose different power sources, and one of these is the occultism (the psionic).

Think about that, if you played a medieval fantasy version of X-Men in your tabletop, would use psionic or magic with verbal, material and somatic components?

 

[MoonSong]

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.

It's the same OGL? The only thing that changed was the SRD, and even then, you are free to mix and match from both the 3.x and 5.1 SRDs.

I'm not even sure there's a point to the Sorcerer anymore, since the other casters ate some of their versatility by allowing you to prepare a myriad of spells and then let you decide what slots to use on the fly. Like, ok, you get powers because your grandpappy dated a dragon. Your class features aren't any better than what a Wizard gets, so your one unique thing is Metamagic, which is fantastic, but you'll run out of Sorcery points fast while the Wizard easily has five times as many spells they can choose from each day.

And since anyone apparently can get magic powers from some shady guy offering pacts in a dark alley, they're not even all that special in-universe either.

They are still a valid archetype, more so because they reflect the way magic in a lot of fiction and folklore works. If you go by purely mechanics, they are poorly balanced and the class could have benefited from having actual public playtesting, but again that doesn't mean there isn't a point to the sorcerer. There is a point to the sorcerer, it is just one you might not care about. And don't get me wrong, all versions of the class have been disappointing and frustrating to play, but that is a failure of the designers to fully support the concept with the mechanics while overloading it with experimental mechanics that they are too afraid might get out of control.

And well, Divine Soul sorcerers are very fun to play and versatile. And thankfully, Abberrant mind and Shadow Magic are optional in how creepy you are.

 

[Cruentus]

Verbal, somatic, and material components are, for the most part, completely ignorable.

Its a legacy thing for "flavor" and has absolutely no impact on magic in DnD, aside from the arguably small cost in GP (besides, what else are you spending gold on?). So the argument that Psionics is different than magic because of V/S/M components is specious. You could run a game tomorrow where "magic" is the same exact thing as "psionics", and use the same exact mechanics minus V/S/M.