Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.
Rocket your D&D 5E and Level Up: Advanced 5E games into space! Alpha Star Magazine Is Launching... Right Now!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Yaarel" data-source="post: 9806813" data-attributes="member: 58172">With the power sources, Bard has strong Mind (telepathy/charm) and Spacetime (remote presence/prescience/teleportation) themes, which match psionic. The primal power source emphasizes Elemental and Shapeshift (body/beast/shapeshift) themes. Bard has Shapeshift but lacks Elemental. The Druid is the other way around, with Elemental and Shapeshift of primal, and having Spacetime of psionic but less development of Mind. Druid is primal, almost by definition. I see primal Druid and psionic Bard. This works well as the psionic power source needs classes.The Sorcerer also has strong psionic Mind and Spacetime themes. To these it adds Elemental, thus is an answer to a psionic "fire starter" Elemental kineticist.Monk is tough. Its less developed Mind and Spacetime feels less psionic, despite some precedence. Currently, I have it as a martial class heightening the quasi-reallife body. I also view the Fighter as relying on "ki" for the high level superhuman stunts. Then like Fighter subclasses, the Monk subclasses can lean into other power sources. The subclasses themselves are Openhand (martial), Elemental (primal), Shadow (illusion arcane, Shadowfell necromant), and Mercy (healing divine). Overall it feels somewhat primal, perhaps with a daoist elemental healing vibe. The body enhancement could recharacterize as Shapeshift thus strong primal themes. Still with the central theme being athletic stunts, Monk as a martial class works well enough.The Barbarian class describes itself as primal: "mighty warriors powered by primal forces". The identification would feel more secure if making the Elemental theme more explicit. As-is the primal themes of Shapeshift and Elemental work well enough. The Rage is animalistic ferocity, a kind of shapeshifting into a Beast, even if only the mind is taking the animal form. The iron-cant-bite armorlike imperviousness could be explained elementally. Among the subclasses, Berserker and Beast continue the animal flavor. World Tree refers to Astral alignment planes, but alternatively works well as an Elemental Plant theme, where Plant is a kind of living element composed of the other five elements: Ether, Fire, Air, Water, and Earth. The Zealot subclass is also Astral, but alternatively could be understood as Elemental with Fire (solar radiant damage) and Plant (fungal necrotic damage).Both Yggdrasill the "terrible steed", and shapeshifting, are shamanic techniques. With the Tree one visualizes ones selfidentity as a corpse hanging from the Tree, thus the mind forms a new self independent from the human body that can travel elsewhere away from the body- the shamanic journey. Similarly, visualizing oneself as an animal body disassociates away from the human body, facilitating remote presence elsewhere. If the mindforces are strong enough, one can physicalize elsewhere, even pull the human body to the new location. I generally see a dejure and defacto primal Barbarian: a shamanic warrior. But the Elemental flavor could be more explicit.</blockquote>

Verification