D&D 5E 5e Psionics Handbook: What would it look like?

[Steampunkette]

The official 5e rules concerning psionics are relevant to any future 5e psionic product.


You are making up houserules, and misinforming readers about what the official 5e psionics is.

The "Official Rules" for Psionics in 1e and 2e were that Psionics was Magic... Until the Psionics Handbook came out and changed it. 3e had the idea of "Supernatural Abilities" and "Spell Like Abilities" and then the Psionics Handbook came out and some of those Spell Like Abilities got changed into Psionic Powers 'cause that's just how it goes.

Because that's how it works, Yaarel. The designers get to change whatever they like in whatever they produce. Your screaming in this thread about how you interpret things how things currently -are- doesn't affect any of that.

This isn't "Houserules" or "Misinforming" anything. This is speculation and fantasizing that tracks with previous editions of D&D and also the stuff from the UA and so on and so forth.

So stop.

 

[Yaarel]

I would not expect a book like that to happen in 5E.

It doesn't make sense to how 5E works. ... The whole weeble wooble stuff about how they interact with magic and so on is both unnecessary and makes no sense in 5E. ...

Think 5E, not 3E, imho.

QFT

 

[Steampunkette]

I like psionics to have a different mechanical implementation than magic, so that it feels different in play, a different resource to be tracked. I know that's antithetical to the way they're going, but that's okay. My preferred Psionics in 5E is this supplement by /u/ZDnD from 2017:

EDIT: Wow, that's my first experience with the MEDIA tag, and I'm not a fan of it when it comes to these long Reddit posts with changelogs. Changed to a URL. Aaaand... it changed it back to a MEDIA.

EDIT 2: Okay, go to reddit.com, and add on /r/UnearthedArcana/comments/5zhixe/the_psionic_handbook_tweaking_the_mystic_and/

I mean... The Psionic Energy Dice are very much a new mechanical implementation. The question is whether they'll use a similar system for a "Full Caster" Psion or not.

That is a pretty good Mystic Tweak, though!

You can also take a look at it here to avoid going through the Reddit copypasta.

 

[Faolyn]

I'm pretty sure there isn't going to be a psionic class this edition. That might change next edition, but so far, all three attempts to do psionics have petered out in favor of psionic-flavored archetypes.

So if they produce a So-and-So's Guide to Psionics, I think it would have a several more psychic archetypes--probably one or two for each of the martial classes--and perhaps some psychic options for existing archetypes (psychic maneuvers for Battlemasters, "Path of the Thought Eater" for Totem bars (kidding), etc. Then a bunch of psychic spells and "magic" items. Probably something on biological grafts and other bodymods, since that always seems to go hand-in-hand with psionics. And that indicates the possibility of the Xichil getting a write-up. Also, a chapter on the Astral Plane. Then some psionic monsters, possibly including new/variant/updated mind flayers.

Possibly (and ideally, in my mind) they could expand the book to include stuff on dreaming, since that's both a magical and a psionic thing. They could include the Plane of Dreams.

 

[Steampunkette]

That's not a bad thought, @Faolyn, yeah.

Jeremy Crawford said back in April of 2020 when the Psionic Options Revisited came out that a full Psionic class was a "We'll See" measure, rather than something they outright intended to do at the time, right after the collapse of the Mystic. Simply because there's only -so- much design time in between publishings and they can't spend it all on one class.

He did, however, specify that any such class would need to both have a Thematic reason to exist and also a function that was different enough from other characters to be interesting and not feel like a repackage of another class. It would also have to be waaaaay less complex than the Mystic for obvious reasons.

 

[Faolyn]

He did, however, specify that any such class would need to both have a Thematic reason to exist and also a function that was different enough from other characters to be interesting and not feel like a repackage of another class. It would also have to be waaaaay less complex than the Mystic for obvious reasons.

Which is why I'm not particularly fond of psions and psychic warriors. Psychic warriors are already just fighters with psychic abilities; they don't really need to be a class unto themselves when they could just be a collection of archetypes. Heck, you could possibly even reflavor the Eldritch Knight by creating a list of "psychic spells" for them and letting them access those instead of just abjuration and evocation.

Like you, I liked the psi die, but that seems to have been voted away. But I'm not interested in doing the math for psi points, and using "spell" slots doesn't make psionics interesting.

 

[RealAlHazred]

That is a pretty good Mystic Tweak, though!

Yeah, I allowed it at my weekly Hobby Shop table, and had one player make one once. It felt distinct from the full caster characters, but not overpowering (which is what happened in 3.5E). Unfortunately, the game was only 2 hours a week and the pandemic killed that table so I can't speak of it as a full playtest.

You can also take a look at it here to avoid going through the Reddit copypasta.

Yeah, I didn't think of doing that, that would have been much easier. Thanks!

 

[Steampunkette]

Yeah, I allowed it at my weekly Hobby Shop table, and had one player make one once. It felt distinct from the full caster characters, but not overpowering (which is what happened in 3.5E). Unfortunately, the game was only 2 hours a week and the pandemic killed that table so I can't speak of it as a full playtest.


Yeah, I didn't think of doing that, that would have been much easier. Thanks!

They definitely reigned in the individual powers of the Mystic's Disciplines to bring them better in line with D&D Balance. My only issue is that it's still doing the "I can do everything you can do, but Psionic" level of complexity that caused problems.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

This is a genuinely hard question to answer because it's just not the structure of 5E books, like not even one.

I expect if they did this, it would mark a significant change in direction.

As such I would expect a much more in-depth Psion class and probably at least one other class that isn't the Psion but shares abilities with them. Normally I'd think that'd be the Psychic Warrior but that already exists, so maybe they'd go with Ardent, maybe also the Battlemind even but that would be pretty wild.

I'd expect to see any archetypes that WotC considers "Psionic" to be reprinted, and because this is a 5E, probably psionic archetypes for several but not all classes that don't already have them.

Psionic wild talents would likely get recast as "Psionic gifts", and there'd be some Psionic-specific Feats as well.

Probably see a whole bunch of psionic monsters, including some previously oriented towards Dark Sun only/primarily. Advice on changing over existing monsters to Psionics from magic,

Likely extensive advice on running a "psionic" campaign, including like, never calling Psionics psionics, and just treating it as the "default" magic of that world, because it actually is a lot closer to the magic of a lot of fantasy media than D&D magic is.

I think we'd see the CRYSTALS CRYSTALS CRYSTALS ALSO WE LOVE THE X-MEN!!!!! vibe of 3E severely curtailed. It's a dumb and tacky approach to psionics that also limits them hard theme-wise. So mysticism/spirituality would likely be the main thing there, and as they aren't casting spells, they don't need focuses. Someone will of course get terribly upset about the lack of VSM components, but this can easily be worked around by making some abilities flashy/obvious, and others just more limited or costly because of their ability to evade that kind of detection. It's not a huge issue anyway in my experience - I've played countless RPGs where a lot of magic and/or psionics and/or The Force or the like had no VFX/VSM stuff and it wasn't really that much of an edge.

 

[Steampunkette]

Technically... I used Tasha's Cauldron as a guide, @Ruin Explorer

"Using this Book" became the "What is Psionics" segment.

Then comes the character options. The Class(es), the Subclasses, the Feats. Chapter 2.

Then the narrative expansion for set dressing where Tasha's had the Group Patron and such. Though I -imagine- it would take up less than 20 pages.

Tasha's then has all it's spells in the next chapter, so that's where I put powers. That's also -technically- where Tasha's has Magic items, but I split the Psionic Items out 'cause honestly I'd rather just not have them.

Then the DM Toolbox. Where Tasha's has Sidekicks and everystuff.

The big difference between the two is the introduction of a class and I spread the introduction into it's own "Chapter" though, honestly, it probably wouldn't need it. But the layout is pretty similar, really.

Definitely agree with the Psi Monsters and dropping Crystals. Definitely also agree on the plethora of subclasses for non-Psionic classes.