D&D Psionics Survey; Plus "First Major Mechanical Expansion" Coming?

The latest D&D survey is up from WotC, and it's asking your thoughts on the revised Awakened Mystic article (aka 5E psionics rules) in Mike Mearls' Unearthed Arcana column last July. It also asks whether you want to see new races, classes, spells, and feats. At the same time, the last survey's results are in, reporting on the pubic's opinions of the Kits of Old article from a few months ago; and Mike Mearls refers to a "first major mechanical expansion" in the game.

[lq]At this stage, we’ve begun considering what the first, major mechanical expansion to the game might look like.[/lq]

 

[TerraDave]

As someone who has tracked these things...a "major mechanical expansion" would certainly sell well.

Mearls implies that we would see a post UA round of play-testing for it. In any case, they should do a good job. It will end up in a lot of games.

 

[Patrick McGill]

I appreciate their caution, very much so. I to wonder what the expansion might look like. Up to this point any new options were directly tied to the storylines/campaign world. I wonder if this is an indicator that this major expansion (if it happens, which doesn't seem to be a sure thing) won't be.

 

[Tzarevitch]

I wonder if they are using the word "expansion" to mean "fix."

 

[Sunsword]

I think they mean new races, monsters, and class options. My emphasis is new, not fixed.

 

[Patrick McGill]

I put the most extreme negative option as far as new classes are concerned. I would really prefer any new character types to be expressed via subclasses. I feel like keeping the ones we have now (with maybe a new one simply for psionics) would help keep it elegant. I can't really think of anything that reaches the archetypal breadth of what we have now (and can think of a couple we have now that don't really do it for me in that regard as it is).

 

[Jester David]

If they're looking at it now, even if they started writing tomorrow, it'd be a late 2017 release. At the earliest...

 

[Edwin Suijkerbuijk]

I put the most extreme negative option as far as new classes are concerned. I would really prefer any new character types to be expressed via subclasses. I feel like keeping the ones we have now (with maybe a new one simply for psionics) would help keep it elegant. I can't really think of anything that reaches the archetypal breadth of what we have now (and can think of a couple we have now that don't really do it for me in that regard as it is).

uptill now subclasses only add abilities.
Some might want to see modifications to the base abilities of a class, for example a non spellcating ranger.

So there would be 2 options add base classes, or make subclasses do more then add abilities so they also can replace or remove features given by the base class.

 

[Bad Fox]

If they're looking at it now, even if they started writing tomorrow, it'd be a late 2017 release. At the earliest...

I feel like even though Mearls says they are just considering an expansion, a lot of the initial work has already been done. There have been quite a few UAs that have presented drafts of additional rules.

Not saying that we would see anything before the year is out, but I do think it could be completed faster than we might expect...

 

[Einlanzer0]

On the one hand, I prefer that classes be kept as broad as possible and incorporate other concepts for diversity like background and subclasses. On the other hand, if the concept of "class" was really that broad we wouldn't have rangers, paladins, druids, bards, and warlocks as full classes. So it's kind of an arbitrary distinction.

So, really, I don't think it's any big deal, and could be really good, to have entire new classes, as long as they aren't excessively pigeonholing and there's plenty of room to diversity them through subclasses.

More than anything, I'd like to see optional additional rules to make the ability scores more significant. I.e. give me a real reason to play a fighter with high int, or something comparable.