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!

SaveSave
SaveSave​

 

[Kobold Stew]

Also, why is there a choice between leather armor and studded leather armor in starting equipment? Is there some edge case I'm not thinking of where anybody would ever pick plain leather over studded?

First thing I noticed. No reason not to (only edge case I can think of would be a m/c Druid, whose DM says studded armour is "metal".)

Second thing I noticed: how quickly reach adds up with Giant Form. (I presume all the bonuses are additive).

Third: Soul Knife 1/Rogue x would be a lot of fun to play, and easily worth a 1-level dip.

Am I reading the soul knife 6th level ability wrong, or does soul knife + bag of rats = infinite psi points?

If your DM lets you call pets you have bought "enemies" then sure. *eyeroll*

The Warlord lives in the Avatar and Mantle of the Commander. It may not be the warlord everyone is looking for, but it is clearly there.

Importantly, any discipline can choose Mantle of the Commander. The flexibility here is actually quite interesting.

I will note that if you take
(choose from: order of avatar, order of the immortal, order of the nomad, order of the soul knife)
+ ( choose from: mantle of command, mantle of courage, adaptive body, bestial form, brute force, celerity, giant growth, intellect fortress, iron durability, nomadic arrow, nomadic chameleon, nomadic mind, precognition, psychic restoration, psionic weapon, third eye)
+ (choose from: beacon, blade meld, delusion, light step, mind meld, mystic hand)

you can pretty must completely ignore intelligence, as you aren't making any intelligence to hit rolls or intelligence based saved DCs. Immortals would lose a bit on the temp hp, but you are likely going to be tough enough to ignore that too much anyways.

plenty of options to make a low-int mystic. That should open up the race options a lot.

I think this is a key observation. Mystics can be INT-based, but there are many other ways to build them. That's a real strength for me.

 

[Dualazi]

Uh, wow. As others have said, this is quite a bit to parse all at once, so I'm sure there will be a large number of discussions about various individual factors of the classes. In keeping with this, I expect my feedback will be somewhat brief at this time, until I can really sink my teeth into it.

One of the first thoughts is that a lot of these seem like they are strongly aided by level dips for proficiencies (avatar, immortal), and are frequently MAD as well. For classes like the Immortal and Soul knife, it makes a lot more sense to me to tuck those as subclasses into fighter and rogue respectively, rather than try once again to make what is essentially a full caster melee friendly. Especially since classes such as soul-knife have means of regenerating their psi points, they wouldn't be as unduly hindered at a slower progression/cap.

For a (not)magic class, they get an absurd number of ways to interact with skills, and bypass language requirements by default with telepathy. One of these two areas needs to be lessened, I think.

The level 11 feature is emblematic of potential problems with the class as whole; it requires a lot of book-keeping and is highly complex, so for players who haven't really read up on the class ahead of time and know what combos they prefer, it stands a real risk of grinding the table to a halt while the mystic picks and chooses.

Wu-jen should have not been included in this as well I think, I always figured they'd be a druid or sorcerer subclass.

As an addendum, no, the mantles are not and never will be a warlord replacement, since some have been poking that bear upthread.

 

[devincutler]

If your DM lets you call pets you have bought "enemies" then sure. *eyeroll*

Then define enemy. OK, so dunk the rats in water so that they are irritated. Then kill them. The point is, enemy is a fairly ill-defined term. While I understand the 5e vibe of short rules and let the DM fill in the blanks, the bag of rats syndrome has been around long enough that WOTC should just quash it. The rule should state that you must kill an enemy with a CR of greater than 0. Problem solved.

 

[fuindordm]

Not really what I expected for the third iteration, but interesting. I think it's a strong framework for a class that will feel very different in play from any other class.

Likes:

If any class should be able to break the concentration barrier, it's this one. It is a daring choice to make their 'mystic arcana' a group of lower-level spells that you can activate and hold simultaneously, instead of imitating the high-level effects from other classes. At first glance, I like it, and it definitely makes the high-level mystic play differently from other magicians. Note that it is still possible to tack 9- and 11-point effects on a few core disciplines, in a future version.

Wu Jen as psionic-arcane hybrid. Again, this makes for a "wizard" that plays very differently from a wizard. Psionics mesh well with an eastern theme, and this actually reproduces well a very common literary version of magic that D&D has never done well: magicians are those who learn to develop a psychic talent they are born with, and only begin learning things resembling 'spells' and 'rituals' after long experience. Good job!

Dislikes:

Overloading the Immortal (and psionics in general) with vulgar physical transformations. Grow claws! Shrink! Grow! Breathe acid! Turn to metal! I've always felt these powers were horribly out of place in every version of D&D and every version of psionics. Other specialties are also guilty (Nomad: you animate a missle weapon to take shots for you... huh?)

No metacreativity anywhere that I could see, which makes me sad.

The Nomad feels like a 4E teleporter, not a master of planar travel. 1 mile doesn't get you very far.

Many of the unique high-level psionic powers from previous editions are still missing.

 

[cbwjm]

Then define enemy. OK, so dunk the rats in water so that they are irritated. Then kill them. The point is, enemy is a fairly ill-defined term. While I understand the 5e vibe of short rules and let the DM fill in the blanks, the bag of rats syndrome has been around long enough that WOTC should just quash it. The rule should state that you must kill an enemy with a CR of greater than 0. Problem solved.

Or maybe the DM can just say "no, that's gaming the system" and then disallow it.

 

[Eubani]

Then define enemy. OK, so dunk the rats in water so that they are irritated. Then kill them. The point is, enemy is a fairly ill-defined term. While I understand the 5e vibe of short rules and let the DM fill in the blanks, the bag of rats syndrome has been around long enough that WOTC should just quash it. The rule should state that you must kill an enemy with a CR of greater than 0. Problem solved.

Hence most editions have had a bag of rats rule and 5e given it's nature runs under the assumption that the DM will deal with the issue as they want at the table level.

 

[The_Hanged_Man]

Psi Points:
Some levels you get a small boost to points, while others get huge jumps. The Progression here is really borked. It seems as if they designed it with the intent to discourage the two-level dip. But there are obvious cut off points and huge span of levels where you don't really get better at manifesting stuff.

Psi Limit:
The cap to how many psi points you can spend on a discipline. You cap out at level 9. Putting a dampener on how much damage you can pump out at higher levels, though are are alternative ways to get more.

Psi progression is not "borked". I reversed engineered the psi point progression, and it follows a typical spell progression pattern, but is based on psi limit rather than spell level. The table below demonstrates the breakdown. To get back to total psi points just multiply each of the "slots" by the number of psi points associated with the "slot" and total across. Example: Level 5 Psi points=4*2+3*3+2*5=27.

Level/Psi Points	2	3	5	6	7
1	2
2	3
3	4	2
4	4	3
5	4	3	2
6	4	3	3
7	4	3	3	1
8	4	3	3	2
9	4	3	3	3	1
10	4	3	3	3	2
...
18	4	3	3	3	3

 

[CapnZapp]

Then define enemy. OK, so dunk the rats in water so that they are irritated. Then kill them. The point is, enemy is a fairly ill-defined term. While I understand the 5e vibe of short rules and let the DM fill in the blanks, the bag of rats syndrome has been around long enough that WOTC should just quash it. The rule should state that you must kill an enemy with a CR of greater than 0. Problem solved.

Please just stop. The only real solution is that the DM asks any player trying to pull off a bag of rats trick to leave the table. WotC should definitely not spend even a second on this silliness.

 

[Tallifer]

Looks like its time to try and create a Bene Gesserit.

View attachment 82041

 

[Bera]

Psi progression is not "borked". I reversed engineered the psi point progression, and it follows a typical spell progression pattern, but is based on psi limit rather than spell level. The table below demonstrates the breakdown. To get back to total psi points just multiply each of the "slots" by the number of psi points associated with the "slot" and total across. Example: Level 5 Psi points=4*2+3*3+2*5=27.

Level/Psi Points	2	3	5	6	7
1	2
2	3
3	4	2
4	4	3
5	4	3	2
6	4	3	3
7	4	3	3	1
8	4	3	3	2
9	4	3	3	3	1
10	4	3	3	3	2
...
18	4	3	3	3	3

And even more, if you look at the spellpoints in the DMG you'll see that this matches exactly with that spellpoint system up to caster level 10, then it switches up with their Psionic Mastery.

 

[The_Hanged_Man]

And even more, if you look at the spellpoints in the DMG you'll see that this matches exactly with that spellpoint system up to caster level 10, then it switches up with their Psionic Mastery.

Good observation. So it seems like they are mixing up spellpoint progression with something similar to a warlock. Interesting concept.

 

[Bera]

Good observation. So it seems like they are mixing up spellpoint progression with something similar to a warlock. Interesting concept.

Yeah. I kinda hope that mystics and monks will both just get ki points, or that multiclass monks' and mystics' ki can somehow interact. Not sure if bunches of extra ki points would break monks tho.

 

[Li Shenron]

This is huge... don't know how I'll be able to give feedback on such enormous amount of material.

Overall the whole system gives me an excellent impression, and I've never been a fan of psionics!

Two things I like are the variety of mechanisms for psionic powers (not just spell-like), and the lack of symmetry between disciplines as well as between subclasses. I'd really dislike if they all followed the same patter.

 

[rollingForInit]

This is so awesome.

Two minor issues I have:

The Soul Knife gets 2 fewer Disciplines than the rest. That feels weak? The actual soul knives don't make up for that, to me.

Talents ... they are very much like cantrips, and can be a lot of fun. But the progression seems odd. You start with 1, then get 2, 3 ... and 4 muuuuch later. Why not have it be similar to spellcaster cantrip progression? Start with 2, get 3 at level ~5, and a 4th around ~10.

 

[CydKnight]

After reading the UA on this, I have to admit this seems very interesting.

 

[Aldarc]

I was more referring to Martial healing and action granting, a lot of argument against the warlord that I have seen is that you can't do what a warlord does without magic, this particular version of the warlord definitely uses a form of magic so it should abate that particular argument, though it might disappoint the people who want an entirely non-magical Warlord.

I believe in 4E, we called that the "Ardent" which was a separate class entirely from the Warlord.

 

[Curmudjinn]

While I love psionics, this is still not what I'm looking for. Yes, I think it's better than previous iterations of D&D psionics and will be even better once fully-polished. I'm sure I'll use it, even soon.

However, I think psionics would work just fine as a warlock variant, with pacts similar to a warlock. No power points, none of that.
I'd rather see HP burn and escalating skill checks to manifest bigger powers, and have a slew of prime base powers to pick from.

 

[DEFCON 1]

Wow... up to page 8 and I don't think I've seen a single poster mention that all traces of the Far Realms have been removed from the class. Which tells me either one of two things...

1) Everyone expected it to happen so it wasn't worth mentioning... or...

2) Having the Far Realms as a possible fluff story for the class to make it unique (just like the quirks table does now) actually is, as it always has been, so easily able to be ignored that people don't even notice it when it's not there anymore. Which goes to show how inconsequential it was that the class mentioned it and turns out wasn't worth nearly the amount of time and energy people spent freaking out about it.

Of course, now instead people can get all up in arms about the quirks table (yelling "Not in MY psionics!"), when again, they'll be able to ignore it with absolutely no issue whatsoever.

 

[Aldarc]

Wow... up to page 8 and I don't think I've seen a single poster mention that all traces of the Far Realms have been removed from the class. Which tells me either one of two things...

I was getting ready to mention the same thing. Hallelujah! I loathed the mention of the Far Realms flavor text, and you can bet that my playtest feedback mentioned that. (I still dislike the class name.)

I would like to add something else DEFCON 1 as a possibility for why it wasn't mentioned, namely 3) That's a lot of new material to sift through, given the tremendous expanse of class abilities the Mystic received.

 

[DEFCON 1]

I was getting ready to mention the same thing. Hallelujah! I loathed the mention of the Far Realms flavor text, and you can bet that my playtest feedback mentioned that. (I still dislike the class name.)

I would like to add something else DEFCON 1 as a possibility for why it wasn't mentioned, namely 3) That's a lot of new material to sift through, given the tremendous expanse of class abilities the Mystic received.

Heh... I dunno... on the previous two UAs for it, the Far Realms connection was like one of the first things people mentioned as soon as the article was released. You'd think if it was really that important that people would have read those first couple pages, saw no mention of it (with it all replaced by the quirks charts) and come on here screaming 'Hallelujah!' Instead, nary a peep. LOL!