D&D 5E Everything wrong with the Wizard Psionics subclass

[Ruin Explorer]

The new Psionic subclass for Wizards in the current UA is easily the most half-done and ill-considered UA I've seen so far, which is saying something, as UA has ranged between brilliant and pretty awful. It reads like "My boss told me to do this so I will just hurry through it and not think about it much to get it done!", yet it is being proposed to essentially replace what was in 2E through 4E, an entire class.

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I'm going to break down all the things wrong with it.

1. Psionic Focus - Why is this not replacing your spellbook at least? Why the damage focus on a traditionally utility-focused concept?

2. Psionic Devotion - Why pick one? This stuff is core to the idea of being Psionic, so why are you Psionic some of the time but not most of the time? We will see this theme recur, sadly.

3. Thought Form - What the heck? That isn't a thing. That's never been a thing. They shove the ability to cast without components, a key Psionic concept, into a sub-ability of a high powered, flashy and totally unnecessary defensive ability. Terrible.

4. Mental Discipline - Continues the theme of "I'm psychic, but only some of the time!", by letting you select one of three spells to actually work like a Psionic power.

5. Empowered Psionics - Continues the bizarre damage fixation, and is also almost entirely meaningless in amount! Awesome!

6. Thought Travel - No. We have spells or powers for this. This is inappropriate and takes the place of something actually Psionics-y.

7. Psionic Spells - Not actually a power or descriptor or anything, just a list of suggestions. This is not even homebrew level stuff. It's genuinely sad and a bit embarrassing to see if a WotC UA.

I have never seen a UA before which made me feel bad for the writer and cringe a little bit, but this managed it. It's so uncommited, so half-done, so lacking in thought that I feel bad for everyone involved. And worry for the future of 5E a bit. Is this really the result of 6+ years of iterating on Psionics!?

I will of course give my thoughts to WotC in the next survey but wow, just wow...

 

[Coroc]

Totally agree, when there was no idea around on how to do a psionic you could eventually use a reskinned wizard or sorcerer for psionic, but versus this UA I prefer the UA33 a long time. They should have built up on that instead of these failing new idea.

 

[Sadras]

By attempting to incorporate an entire class into the wizard subclass they have just highlighted again the weaknesses which exists within the other wizard subclasses (i.e. weak archetypes)

 

[jayoungr]

By attempting to incorporate an entire class into the wizard subclass

That's assuming there won't eventually be an entire class as well, which I think is pretty likely if/when 5E Dark Sun happens.

 

[dave2008]

Would it be acceptable if it was not intended to replace a Psion class? Personally I like the idea of subclasses that allow part time psionics and then a class for those you want a 100% Psion.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Would it be acceptable if it was not intended to replace a Psion class? Personally I like the idea of subclasses that allow part time psionics and then a class for those you want a 100% Psion.

I think it makes no sense as a partially Psionic Wizard either, because the mechanics are confused and inappropriate. You could definitely do a Wizard with a side of Psionics, but that wasn't achieved here.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Would it be acceptable if it was not intended to replace a Psion class? Personally I like the idea of subclasses that allow part time psionics and then a class for those you want a 100% Psion.

No, not in this form. "Psionic Spells" is not acceptable for any subclass. Leave the fluff to the player, the subclass should be all about crunch.

The list of psychic spells, gated behind a feat/race/subrace, would be acceptable to add a psychic wild talent to a regular spellcaster.

 

[Tallifer]

The Mystic was far better. Our tables will continue to use and tweak the Mystic.

 

[Tony Vargas]

1. Psionic Focus - ... Why the damage focus on a traditionally utility-focused concept?
5. Empowered Psionics - Continues the bizarre damage fixation, and is also almost entirely meaningless in amount! Awesome!

5e balances itself around single-target DPR over the course of a 6-8 encounter/2-3 short-rest 'day.' So an initial pass is likely to consider 'how does this class keep up?' in that sense.

2. Psionic Devotion - Why pick one? This stuff is core to the idea of being Psionic, so why are you Psionic some of the time but not most of the time? We will see this theme recur, sadly.

Obviously, because you're a sub-class.

3. Thought Form - What the heck? That isn't a thing. That's never been a thing. They shove the ability to cast without components, a key Psionic concept, into a sub-ability of a high powered, flashy and totally unnecessary defensive ability. Terrible.

I guess they figured it had to go somewhere.

4. Mental Discipline - Continues the theme of "I'm psychic, but only some of the time!", by letting you select one of three spells to actually work like a Psionic power.
7. Psionic Spells - Not actually a power or descriptor or anything, just a list of suggestions.

Re-jiggering spells to be not-spells is something they tried before with the spell-less ranger that used spells to be not-spells because everything in D&D is all about spells, apparently.

 

[Einlanzer0]

My thread dovetailed into a lot of bickering, but, yeah I share pretty much all your concerns and have a very generalized concern about the tendency to create subclasses ad nauseam as a replacement for concepts that really should be developed as full classes.

It doesn't matter if they come out infrequently - I'm fine with that. What matters is that they're done right.