Spelljammer Dark Sun confirmed? Or, the mysterious case of the dissappearing Spelljammer article...

[Mind of tempest]

I know no such thing, because that is contrary to both my experience and the rules as written, let alone intended. WotC constantly encourages people to refluff, and provides exa.ples of doing so. It’s simple.

welcome to the problems of interpersonal relationships

Oh, to be very clear. My concept is a Warlock subclass called the Deep Mind, to be used in place of a psion.

at 1st level abilities that include no-component casting, an expanded spell list, and an extra cantrip from the psion-adjacent feats.

at 6th level an Iron Mind inspired feature, built off the mental fortitude aspects of the 1/2e psion.

at 10th level maybe spell options similar to the Black Tentacles of The Fathomless, but for a dominate mind, a telekenisis, and a mind spike concept.

at 14th level something inspired by the ability to enter another's mind

or we could just do it properly and not force everything into a class it does not belong to.

They can have the same basic mechanical framework and still have different niches. See: every spellcasting class other than warlock. See also: every non-spellcasting class.

true but that depends on doing it properly and sufficiently different to work, see the sorcerer for how it can fail.

No, it is not: it is easy-peasy, lemon squeezey. Flavor in 5E is always skin deep, and easy to redo.

a) it is not.
b) just because you can brut force a thing to do what you want does not mean a proper thing should not be built.

The core rules disagree.

okay, describe a cleric without a god how do they gain power? and why do they get the power that way?

That's not what I asked. Do we really need a levels 1-20 psionicist class?

I'm perfectly happy with my kalishtar psi knight.

okay you're happy, why does that mean I should go without the thing I want?
why do we need any class in dnd why not just have fighting man and wizard?

No, I really don't think that it does. The rules provide Paionic powers, effects, and character concepts. That there is no "Class" doesn't matter.

do you want to make a MAD as hell multi-class to play what you want or do you just want to play it in one class?

The real question is, how well did the dedicated psionic classes work, and how much fun were they to play? I didn't try or really even read 3e's classes, but I recall that the 2e psionicist was a mess.

this is true but only because games design was bad in those days and the fact they literally copied the badly working stuff in for insane reasons, not that the idea was bad itself.

 

[Micah Sweet]

To the mechanics, they do not matter. Mechanics are mathematical functiona. Those functions can accomodate different stories easily. That's what makes D&D cool.

No, that's what makes rpg mechanics cool, if you're into that. It is in no way what makes D&D cool.

 

[Micah Sweet]

The real question is, how well did the dedicated psionic classes work, and how much fun were they to play? I didn't try or really even read 3e's classes, but I recall that the 2e psionicist was a mess.

I played both versions and had fun, but anything either of us say about it is anecdotal and thus irrelevant.

 

[Faolyn]

Please see my message immediately above. Also, what is "really needed"? Is a paladin class "really needed"? I'm not going down that rabbit hole.

"Really needed" as an addition to the existing core classes.

Since nobody can agree on the way that psions should work or where their powers should even come from (e.g., should psionics be tied into the Far Realms and aberrations, like the way they've been depicted so far or not), and there's already a ton of "psionic" spells for other casters... maybe psions just aren't needed in 5e and 5e should stick to psionic archetypes and feats.

Now, psions probably should be baked into the core of 6e (maybe getting rid of or merging with sorcerers in the process, maybe finding a way to make them distinct enough to justify two classes). But at the same time, other casters should have minimal or no access to psionic spells--maybe only psions can cast telekinesis, for instance. Or perhaps each spell should have a list of how it manifests depending on the caster. Psions just have to stare at something (and have their eyes glow) to use telekinesis, while wizards summon spectral beings or giant hands a la Bigby to lift the object. At least this way, if psions use spell slots to power their abilities, they would still be distinct from other casters.

 

[Micah Sweet]

"Really needed" as an addition to the existing core classes.

Since nobody can agree on the way that psions should work or where their powers should even come from (e.g., should psionics be tied into the Far Realms and aberrations, like the way they've been depicted so far or not), and there's already a ton of "psionic" spells for other casters... maybe psions just aren't needed in 5e and 5e should stick to psionic archetypes and feats.

Now, psions probably should be baked into the core of 6e (maybe getting rid of or merging with sorcerers in the process, maybe finding a way to make them distinct enough to justify two classes). But at the same time, other casters should have minimal or no access to psionic spells--maybe only psions can cast telekinesis, for instance. Or perhaps each spell should have a list of how it manifests depending on the caster. Psions just have to stare at something (and have their eyes glow) to use telekinesis, while wizards summon spectral beings or giant hands a la Bigby to lift the object. At least this way, if psions use spell slots to power their abilities, they would still be distinct from other casters.

As a relevant aside, how do you feel about the upcoming psion class in Level Up's Voidrunner's Codex? Is that worth looking into, or is it also "not needed"?

I'm sorry, I just can't accept "it's not needed" as an excuse not to include something in an RPG.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

I have tried to reflavor the Players Handbook.

You don't reflavour the book. The player reflavours the class to fit their concept. That's as per rules. Whatever the fluff written for a class in the PHB the player is free (with their DMs permission) to change it. That's an example of a specific rule that beats the general rule.

 

[Maxperson]

EDIT: never mind

 

[Maxperson]

As a big fan of 2e Spelljammer, I don't mind them getting rid of the Phlogiston in favor of the Astra Sea.

Even back then I pretty much ignored the Phlogiston except to figure out how long it took to go to another sphere. Encounters in it were extraordinarily rare and the only halfway interesting thing about it was that it exploded in the presence of fire.

The Astral on the other hand makes much more sense as the in-between of the various prime material worlds/planes(depending on cosmology used) and is filled with much more interesting things and many more of them, so it will be fun to actually run the ships traveling through it, unlike the 2e Phlogiston.

 

[bedir than]

or we could just do it properly

Since no two psionics fans can agree on what properly is, I will attempt suitably, via class with mechanics that support the fiction that inspired the concept while enabling specialties

 

[Faolyn]

As a relevant aside, how do you feel about the upcoming psion class in Level Up's Voidrunner's Codex? Is that worth looking into, or is it also "not needed"?

I'm sorry, I just can't accept "it's not needed" as an excuse not to include something in an RPG.

It looks interesting, but it may be too sci-fi for a fantasy world (I need to reread the playtest and see) and I wasn't planning on buying that particular book.

I was saying it's not needed in 5e because of all the existing overlap--there really isn't a proper niche for it at the moment. For Voidrunner, the psion isn't competing with a bunch of other classes with the exact same abilities. With Dark Sun, non-psionicist spellcasters exist but are very rare and so don't compete either.