D&D 5E Psionics in Tasha

Maxperson said:

There's nothing wrong or unusual about adding displays to psionics. Just about every class has unique mechanics, so why not psionic classes?

Click to expand...

"The Psion under this build"

AKA: The Psion proposed by using the Cranium Rat rules.

AKA: The Psion with No components and no displays

AKA: The one being talked about.

Sure, you can add displays to the psion class. Not disputing that, not even talking about that. Paul's point was that giving the Psion free, infinite subtle spell (which does not include displays) is a massive power boost. And I was responding to Sabathius about why that was different than the sorcerer having Subtle spell.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Sabathius42 said:

It's the same reason the adult red dragon (INT16) doesn't have one tactic when fighting a tough foe of flying by at high speed dragon breathing then exiting the area and waiting for it to recharge and then flying back in and dragon breathing the area over and over until the party is dead.

It's bad encounter design.

As is an impossible to detect monster just attacking the party and running away without giving them a chance to do anything in return.

The bad design has nothing to do with knowing someone cast a spell or not because of components rules.

Click to expand...

I'm going to have to agree with @Ovinomancer here. Saying that the Dragon who fights smart is "bad encounter design" then you are setting a bad precedent.

Now, I'm not going to argue that it is a fun fight, it is blatantly unfair to the players, but then again, the monsters never have to play fair.

Sabathius42 said:

It's supposed to be a game that's a fun experience for everyone. Would you have fun playing Watchmen RPG when you get to the BBEG at the end of the adventure only for him to tell you he finished his plot a half hour earlier and there wasn't anything you can do to save the world because he was too smart to get caught?

Click to expand...

I guess we play different games. I'd just not use cranium rats if I wasn't going to make them exactly as threatening and cunning as they could be. If there were cranium rats in the encounter, I'd not design it so they weren't played to their strengths. In other words, bad design for me would be to not make monsters as dangerous as they could be.

This, however, does expose another problem -- if cranium rats, by dint of their abilities, are unfair opponents if they use those abilities to good effect, then they're poorly design monsters or there's a poorly designed mechanics. Here, it's undetectable psionics that lead to certain conditions in play if used effectively. Putting this problem on bad encounter design is effectively saying "here's a bad mechanic, but it's your fault if you use it because that would be poor encounter design."

Sabathius42 said:

It's supposed to be a game that's a fun experience for everyone. Would you have fun playing Watchmen RPG when you get to the BBEG at the end of the adventure only for him to tell you he finished his plot a half hour earlier and there wasn't anything you can do to save the world because he was too smart to get caught?

Click to expand...

IF I was playing a game based off the Watchmen IP, and the evil genius stripped off his armor and demanded we fight fisticuffs like real men? I'd be a little disappointed. That breaks the immersion of the setting.

Chaosmancer said:

Sure, you can add displays to the psion class. Not disputing that, not even talking about that. Paul's point was that giving the Psion free, infinite subtle spell (which does not include displays) is a massive power boost. And I was responding to Sabathius about why that was different than the sorcerer having Subtle spell.

Click to expand...

Yeah, but that was both a Red Herring and a Strawman of our position. There are very few people here asking for that. We're fine with a display to avoid that boost and he is aware of that.

Ovinomancer said:

I guess we play different games. I'd just not use cranium rats if I wasn't going to make them exactly as threatening and cunning as they could be. If there were cranium rats in the encounter, I'd not design it so they weren't played to their strengths. In other words, bad design for me would be to not make monsters as dangerous as they could be.

This, however, does expose another problem -- if cranium rats, by dint of their abilities, are unfair opponents if they use those abilities to good effect, then they're poorly design monsters or there's a poorly designed mechanics. Here, it's undetectable psionics that lead to certain conditions in play if used effectively. Putting this problem on bad encounter design is effectively saying "here's a bad mechanic, but it's your fault if you use it because that would be poor encounter design."

Click to expand...

So if it was an undetectable magic ability, which also do not have components, that would be well designed? Or is it that psionics is not relevant to the design and the poor design is only the undetectability, which psionic displays would prevent, that's the issue?

So what are the schools of thought here regarding how psionics should manifest in the fiction for the game world?

Is it 'always on subtle spell with no outward indication', which would, as some folks have mentioned, be pretty powerful as a core feature... or is it...'that fellow with the sparkles around his noggin made me stop my sword', which would be mechanical distinct, but have the identical flavor to 'that fellow waving his hands around made drop my sword'.

Option 1 seems like something that would require mechanical tuning to balance.
Option 2 seems like just another magic man.

Option 2 does still have some power creepiness to it though. Basically, things like silence or a gag, hand binding, and disarmament (which here could mean either removing their component pouch OR removing their actual arms), paralysis, etc. do not serve their functions as practical countermeasures to casters.

By the way have seen this first hand. Have someone playing a mystic in one of my games. He triggered a paralysis trap in a treasure chest and continued to operate at near full effectiveness for several minutes till the druid took care of it.

Maxperson said:

Yeah, but that was both a Red Herring and a Strawman of our position. There are very few people here asking for that. We're fine with a display to avoid that boost and he is aware of that.

Click to expand...

So, the fact that everyone is aware of it is why Sabathus said "why is that powerful, sorcerers do it" referencing an ability with no displays to avoid that power boost?

I would think his response would be more "yes, that is a power boost which is why everyone is advocating for displays". Which... is not what he said. And while that may be your position which you are advocating for, I have no way to know if that is his position that he is advocating for.

And none of that changes that you immediately jumping to my point being wrong, because of course the PCs would have displays, when you were the first one to bring displays into that line of discussion.... seems to be you interjecting your premises into a discussion that did not include those premises.

In fact, instead of responding to me, to tell me that I was wrong, why did you not respond to @Paul Farquhar to tell him that he knows that is not what is being advocated for and that his example and concerns were a Red Herring and a Strawman?

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Gammadoodler said:

So what are the schools of thought here regarding how psionics should manifest in the fiction for the game world?

Is it 'always on subtle spell with no outward indication', which would, as some folks have mentioned, be pretty powerful as a core feature... or is it...'that fellow with the sparkles around his noggin made me stop my sword', which would be mechanical distinct, but have the identical flavor to 'that fellow waving his hands around made drop my sword'.

Option 1 seems like something that would require mechanical tuning to balance.
Option 2 seems like just another magic man.

Option 2 does still have some power creepiness to it though. Basically, things like silence or a gag, hand binding, and disarmament (which here could mean either removing their component pouch OR removing their actual arms), paralysis, etc. do not serve their functions as practical countermeasures to casters.

By the way have seen this first hand. Have someone playing a mystic in one of my games. He triggered a paralysis trap in a treasure chest and continued to operate at near full effectiveness for several minutes till the druid took care of it.

Click to expand...

Right, and this is one aspect that Displays and such cannot really counter. They may make you light up like a christmas tree, but since you can still cast anyways without the need for moving or vocalizing, the ability to enact countermeasures is greatly curtailed.

Chaosmancer said:

So, the fact that everyone is aware of it is why Sabathus said "why is that powerful, sorcerers do it" referencing an ability with no displays to avoid that power boost?

I would think his response would be more "yes, that is a power boost which is why everyone is advocating for displays". Which... is not what he said. And while that may be your position which you are advocating for, I have no way to know if that is his position that he is advocating for.

And none of that changes that you immediately jumping to my point being wrong, because of course the PCs would have displays, when you were the first one to bring displays into that line of discussion.... seems to be you interjecting your premises into a discussion that did not include those premises.

Click to expand...

If they didn't include displays, then the also did not include the lack of displays. The proper response should then be, "Well, how do we balance it then?", rather than just assuming that there would be no balance, which is rather silly as WotC makes a lot of effort to keep the classes balanced.

In fact, instead of responding to me, to tell me that I was wrong, why did you not respond to @Paul Farquhar to tell him that he knows that is not what is being advocated for and that his example and concerns were a Red Herring and a Strawman?

Click to expand...

As I told him, he is aware that the majority of us are advocating for balance, not for imbalance. Especially me as he has had that conversation with me multiple times. So when he jumped in with, "Let's look at the consequences of "no components" then, shall we?," he was aware that for the most part, those on my side aren't advocating for a lack of components with no balancing factor. For him to say that anyway was to deflect from the real discussion and change what the position of most on my side of things have been saying. Hence, Red Herring and Strawman

Had he been making a response based what he knew about the position of those of us who want psionics to have no components, he would have said something like, "The following story shows why psionics having no components needs to be balanced in some other way like people have suggested."

Right, and this is one aspect that Displays and such cannot really counter. They may make you light up like a christmas tree, but since you can still cast anyways without the need for moving or vocalizing, the ability to enact countermeasures is greatly curtailed.

Click to expand...

The displays are not once the spell is cast. "Displays" that happen after the spell is cast are called spell effects. Displays happen while the spell is being cast which alerts anyone who wishes to Counterspell. And as we(collectively) have said in other threads, you can quite easily balance the inability to stop them from casting through immobilization and silence, in other ways. It's not as if they can't be given slight disadvantages somewhere else to compensate.

Sabathius42 said:

So they had to knock out a fellow party member and then investigate what made them act so strange, find out it was a strange hoarde of rats, and then deal with it in a later showdown.

I can see how this massively overpowered attack could ruin an adventure.

And by that I mean I don't see an issue.

Click to expand...

As I said - it wasn't an issue, because it was a monster ability. It made the monster far more powerful than it would have otherwise been had it been immediately obvious that the players where having a spell cast at them, but that was allowed for when I balanced the encounter. It changed the monster from being trivially easy to somewhat of a threat.

And that's the point. removing components isn't zero sum. If you do it it is a massive power boost to the character, which needs to be paid for in some other way. For example, if it applies to all the "effects" a character can cast those effects would have to be considerably weaker than spells of equivalent level, since those spells paint a big "kill me" target on anyone casting them.

Paul Farquhar said:

As I said - it wasn't an issue, because it was a monster ability. It made the monster far more powerful than it would have otherwise been had it been immediately obvious that the players where having a spell cast at them, but that was allowed for when I balanced the encounter. It changed the monster from being trivially easy to somewhat of a threat.

Click to expand...

Sure, which is probably why the swarm of Cranium Rats is CR 5 rather than the single Cranium Rate CR 0 or swarm of normal Rats at CR 1/4.

And that's the point. removing components isn't zero sum. If you do it it is a massive power boost to the character, which needs to be paid for in some other way. For example, if it applies to all the "effects" a character can cast those effects would have to be considerably weaker than spells of equivalent level, since those spells paint a big "kill me" target on anyone casting them.

Click to expand...

Or, you just make casting visible(and/or other display) and/or reduce spell slots by a bit. Or balance it in another easy manner. No need to muck around with the power level of "spell" itself. Doing that makes it waaaaaaay more complicated and time consuming to balance than it needs to be.