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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[MoonSong]

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.

The Far realms connection was just bad. In a way was fluffy and made sense, but it wasn't the right kind of fluffy. Psionics was about celebrating the hidden human potential, with the far realm connection all that suddenly turned into damaged goods. And well have you paid attention to Lovecraft? Beyond "cool horror" factor his whole corpus is an essay on human madness, it is disturbing and reeks of despair and helplessness. Not the kind of emotions I want on my D&D.

The quirk/taboo system is ok. It is strictly for personality, for roleplay, without mechanical implications, and is explicitly ok to opt-out of, for players who feel it is less helpful. It encourages players to make up two of their own quirks.

The specific examples dont resonate with me.

But I can see certain mystics wanting to focus on a "crystal" − as one of their quirks − for some of their scrying powers. If need be, they can scry without the crystal, but all things being equal, they are comfortable focusing on the lustrousness of crystal as a meditation technique.

I can imagine a Brute Mystic caterwalling "Bruce Lee noises" before making an attack, as a quirk for concentration.

An other Mystic might want to say a blessing expressing gratitude for the opportunity to manifest a mental ideal into a physical reality, whenever performing a psionic discipline. The Mystic can do the discipline without the blessing, but wants to put the gratitude into words.

I still don't like them, they promote antisocial behaviors in game and they also promote the idea that wizards are the "right way" to dabble in the supernatural. Sorcerer? claws, wings, and even actual quirks of their own, Mystic? OCD and poor personal hygiene. Even if optional, these things have the bad habit of being persistent and later become mandatory. The stuff with dragons and sorcerers? it was a suggestion of a possible explanation for the magic in the blood, a suggestion, now unless you are fine with the random nature of the chaos, all sorcerers in core are scaly winged transhumans.

Wierd.
Why does the Avatar have access to do bonus healing when psionic healing is done, but none of the Avatar disciplines do any healing?
Why does the Soul Knife gain access to martial weapons? The whole point of that class is to use the psi-blades it gives you- not being able to wield a maul, halberd, greataxe, or something.

Overall I like it, it seems like it adds some cool ideas. But it still needs some work as there are clearly some things that don't really synergize with how the subclasses seem like they are supposed to work.

As far as I understand, mystics can choose any discipline, not just those from their own order. Except for bonus disciplines of course.

Ideally, I think I would ask players to create some preferred spells to speed up play coming up with a response to specific encounters when necessary. If they create them during the turns of others it shouldn't be too bad but the proof would be in testing it.

Actually, creating a "spellbook" of preferred spells could make those spells cheaper to use. I think this was an option in DL Saga.

Once a spellbook enters the picture you are not a sorcerer anymore IMO

 

[Tony Vargas]

Yeah, I've had bad experiences with those systems. (GURPS, to be precise.) Hence the note.

Aside from an offhand non- system for improv in the original GURPS Magic, I didn't know it had anything of the sort.

I've had a blast with VPPs, and good experiences with Mage. Guess it's a case where system does matter...

 

[Chaosmancer]

I'm not sure I agree with the calls to give the Mystic 13 pp powers and make them better at higher levels.

As someone pointed out, this is only an issue at 15th level and up, and by that time the Mystic (if we understand psyionic mastery correctly) can bust out multiple concentration effects worth up to 11 points 3 or 4 times a day.

I honestly think that could be more powerful than 1 8th or 9th level spell over the course of a day, and if we compare them more to Paladins and Rangers and Warlocks, Mystic seems to be in a really good spot. Maybe even too powerful at low levels.

I'm not saying they couldn't use something interesting, they kind of stop getting cool things between 15 and 19, but that could be said about Cleric, Druid, and Wizard as well so it becomes a bit 50/50

 

[TheCosmicKid]

I still don't like them, they promote antisocial behaviors in game and they also promote the idea that wizards are the "right way" to dabble in the supernatural.

Rational study with a keen and disciplined intellect is generally best way to dabble in anything.

...now unless you are fine with the random nature of the chaos, all sorcerers in core are scaly winged transhumans.

Translation: not all sorcerers in core are scaly winged transhumans.

 

[Tony Vargas]

Translation: not all sorcerers in core are scaly winged transhumans.

Or she could have said "unless you're fine with being a scaly winged transhuman, all sorcerers are random chaos in nature." :shrug: Moonsong's statement was an accurate description of the class as presented in the PH. Your 'translation' could be misleading in that regard, and is incomplete, in describing only one of the two options. Don't quit your day job to take up translation full time, I'd say. ;P

Th 3.0 Sorcerer was presented with some fluff about draconic heritage and the iconic, Henef, I think it was, certainly went that way, but that bit was nothing more than how you described your character's appearance, something 3e explicitly left up to the player. So your sorcerer could be draconic, or elemental, or touched by fate, or whatever. The only thing, mechanically, that painted a picture of your 3e Sorcerer's powers was your spell choices. And, you had more spells/day than prepped casters, and could cast spontaneously, so you got to display those powers quite a bit. From the moment it was introduced, the Sorcerer let you build to quite a range of concepts. The 5e Sorcerer presents two possibilities, Draconic, or Chaos. Want more? Wait for a sub-class. Sub-classes are coming down the pike, but they'll never catch up with the build-to-concept flexibility of the comparatively elegant design of the 3e Sorcerer. In part, because everyone casts spontaneously now, but mostly because customization has been packaged in sub-classes. FWIW.

 

[cbwjm]

The Far realms connection was just bad. In a way was fluffy and made sense, but it wasn't the right kind of fluffy. Psionics was about celebrating the hidden human potential, with the far realm connection all that suddenly turned into damaged goods. And well have you paid attention to Lovecraft? Beyond "cool horror" factor his whole corpus is an essay on human madness, it is disturbing and reeks of despair and helplessness. Not the kind of emotions I want on my D&D.



I still don't like them, they promote antisocial behaviors in game and they also promote the idea that wizards are the "right way" to dabble in the supernatural. Sorcerer? claws, wings, and even actual quirks of their own, Mystic? OCD and poor personal hygiene. Even if optional, these things have the bad habit of being persistent and later become mandatory. The stuff with dragons and sorcerers? it was a suggestion of a possible explanation for the magic in the blood, a suggestion, now unless you are fine with the random nature of the chaos, all sorcerers in core are scaly winged transhumans.



As far as I understand, mystics can choose any discipline, not just those from their own order. Except for bonus disciplines of course.



Once a spellbook enters the picture you are not a sorcerer anymore IMO

It fits well for a Dragonlance style sorcerer. They were more analytical and reasoned in their approach to sorcery, researching and studying its power. They weren't like the 3e sorcerers and their powers were based on the reason code. If I ever played Dragonlance in 3e, I would have made sorcerers main stat intelligence.

 

[Yaarel]

As someone pointed out, this is only an issue at 15th level and up, and by that time the Mystic (if we understand psyionic mastery correctly) can bust out multiple concentration effects worth up to 11 points 3 or 4 times a day.

I honestly think that could be more powerful than 1 8th or 9th level spell over the course of a day, and if we compare them more to Paladins and Rangers and Warlocks, Mystic seems to be in a really good spot. Maybe even too powerful at low levels.

Psionic Mastery is substandard. The current Mystic cannot access 11 point powers. Instead what it does is spam 7 point powers and lower.

Despite being a fullcaster upto level 9, the Mystic class shuts down at level 10. From that level up, it is gimped, for no reason.

 

[Yaarel]

This is what a fullcaster progression looks like. Basically, they must be able to access the higher level spells for more impacting effects, at the appropriate levels. At the same time, they generally cast their highest level spell once.

[FONT=Courier New]Wizard    Spell Level                  (Total points)
Level     6th   7th   8th   9th

11        1                              9 points
13        1     1                        19 points (9+10)
15        1     1     1                  30 points (9+10+11)
17        1     1     1     1            43 points (9+10+11+13)
19        2     1     1     1            ...
[/FONT]

Basically, the full caster needs a 9th level spell slot at level 17. (It seems to me, the extra 6th level spell slot gained at level 19 is less significant in the context of the higher level spells, so less important for balance, and some other feature could easily substitute it. So we are focusing on what the fullcaster can do at level 17.)

 

[MarkB]

This is what a fullcaster progression looks like. Basically, they must be able to access the higher level spells for more impacting effects, at the appropriate levels. At the same time, they generally cast their highest level spell once.

[FONT=Courier New]Wizard    Spell Level                  (Total points)
Level     6th   7th   8th   9th

11        1                              9 points
13        1     1                        19 points (9+10)
15        1     1     1                  30 points (9+10+11)
17        1     1     1     1            43 points (9+10+11+13)
19        2     1     1     1            ...
[/FONT]

Basically, the full caster needs a 9th level spell slot at level 17. (It seems to me, the extra 6th level spell slot gained at level 19 is less significant in the context of the higher level spells, so less important for balance, and some other feature could easily substitute it. So we are focusing on what the fullcaster can do at level 17.)

The tricky part is that other full casters only get that one slot. A Mystic could potentially sink all their daily psi points into 9th-level-equivalent discipline effects.

 

[cbwjm]

The tricky part is that other full casters only get that one slot. A Mystic could potentially sink all their daily psi points into 9th-level-equivalent discipline effects.

I feel like they are trying not to arbitrarily restrict mystics as theyear do with the spell point variant where they can only spend points to cast a single spell of 6th to 9th level. That would take away from supposed versatility of the mystic so they've capped it at 5th level equivalent effects.