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

[jgsugden]

I've played with many DMs who have Adventuring Guilds in various cities. Now I'm half tempted to install Pact Offices, where representatives of the various fiends, celestials, fey and other powers that be wait with standard contracts.

You joke - but I have these. Certain powers, like Asmodeus, are both Gods to be worshipped and Powers that engage in contracts. Where their worship is tolerated, they often openly offer contracts (both to become warlocks and for other bargains) openly and cleanly. For example, in my setting, Asmodeus is seen in many places as the proverbial 'Necessary Evil', while he argues that he is not evil at all, but is just collecting what he is due for his place in the Blood War - and thus he has a significant and accessible presence in the world. People go to these temples to make 'Deals with the Devil' all the time, much like people go to the Faceless Men in Bravos in Game of Thrones.

You can also go to the Feywild to find an Archfey, and visit Divine beings of a more goodly nature to make pacts with them. While there are many shadowy deals, there are also deals in the light.

 

[Staffan]

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.

I mostly agree. A reskinned sorcerer would be fine if I was running, say, a Dark Sun one-shot where I'm just interested in giving this one character psionics, but it wouldn't suffice for a Dark Sun campaign which needs to support several different types of psions, just like you need more than one type of wizard in another campaign.

But I recommend only using points for slot levels 1 to 6, and treating slots 7 to 9 separately.

I don't see a reason to limit that. Sure allowing it would let them spam powerful spells.....................for 2 fights. Then they will be out of points for the next 4-6 fights of the adventuring day and be reduced to the psionic equivalent of cantrips.

The game does treat high-level spells as something distinctly different. The Warlock's Pact Magic only works with up to 5th level spells. Sorcerers can only use spell points to create slots of up to 5th level. Wizards only get to recover up to 5th level spells with Arcane Recovery. And it's not until 19th level where casters get a second 6th level spell slot (which you could see as compensation for not getting a 10th level slot).

The game treats level 6+ spells as something extra rare and powerful, and whatever you do with psionics probably shouldn't bypass that.

 

[Maxperson]

Hypothetically, it can be balanced to cast Wish multiple times (but it might be more like 8 times per day) - if every spell in the game is carefully balanced and is accurately worth its slot/point cost.

Given the 5e design of scarcity of high slot spells, it seems safer to keep them scarce.

Any way, I will look caefully at spells, their balance, and their costs and come up with a hopefuly robust system.

I'm going to use 3e points numbers since I don't really feel like looking up the 5e points system.

Total points in 5e = 4+9+15+21+27+22+26+15+17 points. You can use nine 9th level spells with that number of points. So you blast through maybe 3 encounters and are completely done. The adventuring day is 6-8 encounters. 5e is balanced around resource attrition and you've just attritioned yourself out of effectively participating in the majority of encounters, hurting the party in the process.

I personally don't mind if that happens. It will all balance out in the end.

 

[Maxperson]

I mostly agree. A reskinned sorcerer would be fine if I was running, say, a Dark Sun one-shot where I'm just interested in giving this one character psionics, but it wouldn't suffice for a Dark Sun campaign which needs to support several different types of psions, just like you need more than one type of wizard in another campaign.





The game does treat high-level spells as something distinctly different. The Warlock's Pact Magic only works with up to 5th level spells. Sorcerers can only use spell points to create slots of up to 5th level. Wizards only get to recover up to 5th level spells with Arcane Recovery. And it's not until 19th level where casters get a second 6th level spell slot (which you could see as compensation for not getting a 10th level slot).

The game treats level 6+ spells as something extra rare and powerful, and whatever you do with psionics probably shouldn't bypass that.

I can see that argument and would not be upset if that limitation happened. I just wouldn't mind if it is allowed for the reasons I put forth.

 

[Stormonu]

Ding ding. 100% right here. 3.5 wasn't that bad, it was just super heavy under all that weight. Usually most of the "builds" that showed how broken it was were extreme exercises in minmaxing and nobody played that way that I know of from any message board but they sure did argue about it.

That's hardly an excuse - spellcasters have been as bad in each edition as well, or worse.

Personally, I've never cared for psionics myself, but have had several players fervently wishing for it and would like the option available for them. I'd at least like to see a psion class that uses pure psionic points instead of slots (we have pure slot users in Wizards, hybrid slot users in Sorcerers and at-willers with Warlocks. A pure points class at the least is missing). If I could get a simplified psionic attack/defense system, I'd appreciate it as well - but getting the class is the biggest thing for me.

 

[jgsugden]

See, to me the Weave is an explicitly FR thing, and I hated that it was applied to D&D as a whole in 5e.

It has some origins outside the FR, but they're not exact parallels. A very well known one:

After much reflection, I think this is actually where my idea for my version of the weave originated in my setting. I didn't have a label for it, but it was how I thought about magic through the 1980s - wizards, illusionists, clerics and druids were pulling magic from the universe around them.

As the Spell Weave of the FR was announced, and as we saw how Athas was destroyed in Dark Sun, I think I began to merge the language and concepts behind those situations with myForce influenced perceptions andwhen I made my first real Lore Omnibus for my setting out of all of my notes, I reconciled theminto my approach to the Weave - which has been tweaked toaccomodate changes in the rule set, but is mostly unchanged since the very early 1990s.

This Jedi origin is kind of ironic, as I later made Psychic Warriors, my Jedi rip off, entirely internally power generated beings who are not touched by the spell Weave - making them both eht most Jedi-like, and least Jedi-like, depending upon what elements you focus upon.

 

[Jefe Bergenstein]

The Wizard too needs a point system that works, in a way that is user friendly and consistently balanced. The Psion that uses normal spell slots can opt in to use the same point system that the Wizard uses.

Likewise, the Warlock can exchange its per-rest slots for the eqivalent amount of spell points.

But only if the spell points work well in the first place.

It needs to be a "normal" spell point system that all caster classes can use, to ensure consistent balance between classes, especially at the highest levels

Actually the wizard needs to be gutted and limited to maybe 4 schools +universal. Go back to spheres for clerics/druids while we're at it.

 

[Yaarel]

Nah. First, Wish = some other spell of 8th level or lower unless you want to risk losing the , aability to use it. So go ahead and cast it 3 times. You've just spent most of your spell points to cast some other spells of under 9th level and taken yourself out of almost every other fight for the adventuring day in the process. Sure you'll own that one fight, but overall you've made the day harder for you and your group.

According to the official (!) 5e spell point system in the DMG, a level 17 Wizard can cast Wish eight times a day, and a level 20 can cast it ten times a day.

Hypothetically, if the spells really are worth their assigned slot/point cost, this is balanced for those levels.

But does casting Wish about nine times a day give you pause?

It isnt only about spamming, because slot 9 in particular has solid spells to choose from.

 

[jgsugden]

Merging the Sorcerer narrative into the Warlock helps the Warlock too. Because, now the player can choose whether the bloodline comes from descent from the bloodline or from a pact that TRANSFORMS the character to exibit the bloodline. In other words, the pact is meaningfully granting magical capability, that the character must learn to master.

While you could merge them, they really do have their own distinct and separate qualities. A warlock in my world is not going to be a similar RPG experience to playing a sorcerer. The pact of a warlock is a huge RPG element.

If you're going to merge them and just say that they're mechanically similar, but some subclasses get their power from pacts while others get them from heritage, you're going to just pull people further from the importance of the origin in the development of a PC.

 

[Jefe Bergenstein]

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?

Why does all player facing magic have to be a spell with you guys?

Why is at will power + resource augment so unacceptable? The mystic was on the right track for something that actually felt mechanically unique.