Unearthed Arcana 5E Psionics Alert! The Mystic Is Back In Unearthed Arcana

It's back! The long-awaited new version of the mystic - 5th Edition's psionic class - is here. "The mystic class, a master of psionics, has arrived in its entirety for you to try in your D&D games. Thanks to your playtest feedback on the class’s previous two versions, the class now goes to level 20, has six subclasses, and can choose from many new psionic disciplines and talents. Explore the material here—there’s a lot of it—and let us know what you think in the survey we release in the next installment of Unearthed Arcana." Click the image below for the full 28-page PDF!

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[Yaarel]

The flavor of the Mystic class is Mind-only.

I feel relief and enthusiasm.

D&D (1e, 2e, and even 0e) began with Psionics as mental flavor, and anything else feels wrong.

It matters alot to me that the unwanted flavors are absent.

I understand this flavor of personal "mental powers" is vanilla. But in the case of Psionics, vanilla feels right. Vanilla is an important flavor (the one that sells the most). It is enduring, pleasant, and adds well to anything. Medieval flavor, Bronze Age flavor, Modern flavor, Future flavor, Israel flavor, Norse flavor, Japan flavor, and so on, all of these different add-ons have "psychic powers". Psionics means minds. We all have minds. Vanilla is delicious.

I like the Mind-only flavor.

 

[Yaarel]

The flavor of the Mystic class is Mind-only.

I feel relief and enthusiasm.

D&D (1e, 2e, and even 0e) began with Psionics as mental flavor, and anything else feels wrong.

It matters alot to me that the unwanted flavors are absent.

I understand this flavor of personal "mental powers" is vanilla. But in the case of Psionics, vanilla feels right. Vanilla is an important flavor (the one that sells the most). It is enduring, pleasant, and adds well to anything. Medieval, Bronze Age, Modern, Future, Israel, Norse, Japan, and so on, all of these different setting flavors have "psychic powers". The mystic can add well to any of them. Psionics means minds. We all have minds. Vanilla is delicious.

I like the Mind-only.

 

[Yaarel]

I like the concept organization that Mearls mentions in his tweet.

The magic classes are quadrants of two polarities: source (internal/external) and ethic (discipline/cheat).

"mystic and wizard – learn through intense study;
warlock and sorcerer – take shortcuts
wizard and warlock – external source;
sorcerer and mystic – internal source"
— (((Mike Mearls))) (@mikemearls)


So, the psionic Mystic utilizes ones own mind, the personal internal source of power, and achieves this by disciplined training.

Oppositely, the arcane Warlock utilizes an external power source, some foreign spirit, and cheats via an unseemly pact.


In this framework, the Warlock class is the goto concept for external Farrealms corruption.

 

[Yaarel]

Regarding the class features, the Mystic gets "simple weapons" for the weapon proficiency.

This is standard, but for some reason seems a less good fit for the Mystic class.

Better might be:

"
Weapons: Choose one weapon from the martial or simple weapons table. By telekinetic influence, precognitive anticipation, or so on, you can use your Intelligence for your weapon attack modifier instead of Strength or Dexterity.

"


To me, this suits the flavor of the mystic a bit better. They literally have a mental affinity with a specific weapon concept. I dont see them being martially trained in a diversity of weapons. A number of psionic disciplines strongly imply the use of a sword or an arrow. And the optional use of Intelligence for the weapon, might help out concern about the Mystic class suffering from Multiple Ability Dependence.

 

[Li Shenron]

I had some more time to go through a second read of the UA article, although still far from a complete reading...

Once again I have to say that I have never been a far of psionics in D&D, mostly because they felt too much "sci-fi" in flavor for my own preferences. But this version of psionics does not feel that much "sci-fi" to be honest, and that's good.

Perhaps it's a matter of fluff and names being used. I even criticized the class name "Mystic" in the feedback for the previous two related UA articles, but now I see that moving away from modern/sci-fi feel might be the purpose behind this choice, because "Mystic" doesn't feel out of place in a medieval-esque fantasy setting (or even older), compared to "Psion" which always sounded more appropriate to me ("Mystic" has a non-necessary religious connotation in many languages) but also clearly modern.

Similarly, older terms like "kineticist" sound very modern to me. "Wu Jen" is not modern at all, and that's why it sounds a much better choice to me.

"Wu Jen" is oriental, which I don't typically approve by default in D&D. However I realize that the main reason why I have typically disliked having the Monk in default D&D is not exactly because they are oriental, but rather because they are the only oriental character option, so they always felt to me like an extraneous addition that doesn't match with the rest of the characters. But if now we are going to have Monks, Samurai, Kensai, Wu Jen and maybe Sohei as options, then they are a whole bunch of archetypes instead of just one oddball.

And yes, let's hope the Far Realm connection is gone... it's way too specific for a whole class. By comparison, it would be as if all Warlocks were required to have Fiend patrons or even more restricted to Devils only (i.e. all their powers explained in terms of a connection to Hell). The game is so much better with Warlocks having lots of options, and so why not Mystics?

 

[Hussar]

I really don't see why there is such furor over the connection between Far Realms and Psionics. Aberrations in 5e are tied to the Far Realms. Many, if not most, of the psionic creatures in D&D are aberrations. There's already a pretty clear tie between the Far Realms and psionics in the game. And, while the term Far Realms is new, the connection between aberrations and psionics has always been in the game - Aboleth, Mind Flayers, Thought Eaters, Intellect Devourers, so on and so forth.

Why is this suddenly a big deal that they make that connection explicit? 5e's already gone a long way down that road by directly tying aberrations to the Far Realms, so, to me, it just seems like this is acknowledging what's already been rather clearly implied.

Besides, to me, since 5e magic all comes from The Weave, it just seems like a lot more flavorful than saying, "Hey, your character is extra special". It's just a bit too comic book for me. My mutant superhero Soul Knife adventures in quasi medieval land. I'd rather psionics gained a lot more of a "knowledge that man should not have" flavor than, "Hey, your mutant genes lets you do superhuman stuff".

I guess, to me, giving psionics a Lovecraft spin just oozes a lot more flavor than fantasy X-men.

 

[sleepyhitsuji]

So far I have built 2 tabaxi Mystics for two 5e campaigns that I'm in, a soul knife and an awakened, so far I haven't played either yet, but will be playing the awakened on Sunday and soul knife on Monday. With mystic V2, I felt that I would be hindering myself by playing an awakened, and had been working on a few builds of immortal, when I read over V3, I felt that the soul knife was very appealing and went with that for my Monday group, and since my Sunday dm is a player for said Monday group I figured I would run a different build, and found the the new awakened abilities and skills would work nicely.

so far the only things that I've disliked from the theorycraft (since I haven't had a chance to sit down and play yet) is that the disciplines are very bonus heavy, so a soul knife's first few turns seem like they will be something like a ritual in that your first few turns every combat look the same.

Also when first reading the soul knife fluff I had mental images of Archer or Shiro from fate/stay night/unlimited bladeworks summoning their swords.

 

[SkidAce]

I understand this flavor of personal "mental powers" is vanilla. But in the case of Psionics, vanilla feels right. Vanilla is an important flavor (the one that sells the most). It is enduring, pleasant, and adds well to anything. Medieval flavor, Bronze Age flavor, Modern flavor, Future flavor, Israel flavor, Norse flavor, Japan flavor, and so on, all of these different add-ons have "psychic powers". Psionics means minds. We all have minds. Vanilla is delicious.

I like the Mind-only flavor.

For some reason I am picturing a mind flayer with an ice cream scoop.

Drooling....

 

[OB1]

Doesn't mean people can't share their feedback on the MCing issues they see before answering the survey.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Yes exactly. I understand that the UA material isn't optimized for multiclassing. I'm suggesting that instead of optimizing for multiclassing, keep what they have (or push it even further) and don't allow MCing with this class. By only having to worry about balancing within the class, you have the opportunity to do a lot more interesting things and push the design space further.

 

[Aldarc]

I really don't see why there is such furor over the connection between Far Realms and Psionics. Aberrations in 5e are tied to the Far Realms. Many, if not most, of the psionic creatures in D&D are aberrations. There's already a pretty clear tie between the Far Realms and psionics in the game. And, while the term Far Realms is new, the connection between aberrations and psionics has always been in the game - Aboleth, Mind Flayers, Thought Eaters, Intellect Devourers, so on and so forth.

Why is this suddenly a big deal that they make that connection explicit? 5e's already gone a long way down that road by directly tying aberrations to the Far Realms, so, to me, it just seems like this is acknowledging what's already been rather clearly implied.

Besides, to me, since 5e magic all comes from The Weave, it just seems like a lot more flavorful than saying, "Hey, your character is extra special". It's just a bit too comic book for me. My mutant superhero Soul Knife adventures in quasi medieval land. I'd rather psionics gained a lot more of a "knowledge that man should not have" flavor than, "Hey, your mutant genes lets you do superhuman stuff".

I guess, to me, giving psionics a Lovecraft spin just oozes a lot more flavor than fantasy X-men.

I would say that one part of the problem - not the whole, only a portion - is the potentially culturally insensitive undertones that results in hardwire connecting psionics with the Far Realms. This may sound ridiculous or being overly sensitive, but please hear me out. In the popular imagining of D&D, the Far Realms represents the "aberrant." As you say, aberrations and Lovecraftian and Freudian psychological horrors come from there. The Far Realms are the exotic "far realms" on the margins of our sense of normal planes. A lot of the psychic and mental powers from these denizens is likely meant to reflect Lovecraftian horror. At the same time, however, a lot of the powers, flavor, and such of psionics have also been tied to real world cultures, particularly from South and East Asia. Chakras. Dorjes. Astral projection. Flavors of mind over matter Hindu and Buddhist mystics. (As well as New Age and Psuedoscientific appropriation of these concepts.) In a number of campaigns that do not assume a sort of pseudo-European setting, psionics may be serve as a more appropriate aesthetic or model for the nature of magic, mystical powers, or supernatural. But when you say that psionics comes from the Far Realms, you risk attaching the Far Realms' baggage (e.g. exotic, aberrant, marginal, etc.) to real world cultures: i.e. "your norm is exotic."