D&D 5E How does 5e know what you're thinking? Psionics Mechanics..

[steeldragons]

What's your favorite/favored way of working with psionics/psychic powers?

How should 5e implement psychic powers, assuming they are to be an element "out the gate" in the basic/starter/core rules?

 

[JeffB]

What's your favorite/favored way of working with psionics/psychic powers?

Ignoring them completely just like Gary had wished he had done when Blume came up with them and insisted they go into the AD&D PHB a couple years later?


There is a quite a bit of truth there, but I'm presenting in a hopefully funny manner.

On a serious note, I do not have a problem with the idea of Psionics, but I have yet to see a simple and flavorful system for them that makes them worth bothering with.

 

[Steely_Dan]

On a serious note, I do not have a problem with the idea of Psionics, but I have yet to see a simple and flavorful system for them that makes them worth bothering with.

Yes, I would like them straight out the gate, not tacked on.


Sorcerers have taken power points (willpower points), so maybe the 5th Ed Psion should be a Sorcerer of Psionic Heritage.

 

[slobster]

First you choose a specialty, appropriate to psionic tropes. Telepathy and telekinesis comes to mind. We should resist the urge to create a psionic specialty equivalent to every school of magic, as has been done before.

You get some simple at-will stuff for your specialty. Telekinetics can push and trip people at a distance and lift objects with their brains. Psychics can charm people, attempt to read their surface thoughts, and even cause small amounts of psychic damage.

Then you have power points, which recover slowly after you use them (essentially making them encounter resources). You can use them to augment your specialty, so that a powerful enough telekinetic could lift someone and toss them into an ally, dealing damage to both. A powerful psychic could crush an opponent's will and make them into a thrall, or overwrite someone's personality with a copy of his own.

So basically it's an encounter resource system modifying at-wills which are granted according to your psionic specialty.

 

[Jeff Carlsen]

First you choose a specialty, appropriate to psionic tropes. Telepathy and telekinesis comes to mind. We should resist the urge to create a psionic specialty equivalent to every school of magic, as has been done before.

You get some simple at-will stuff for your specialty. Telekinetics can push and trip people at a distance and lift objects with their brains. Psychics can charm people, attempt to read their surface thoughts, and even cause small amounts of psychic damage.

Then you have power points, which recover slowly after you use them (essentially making them encounter resources). You can use them to augment your specialty, so that a powerful enough telekinetic could lift someone and toss them into an ally, dealing damage to both. A powerful psychic could crush an opponent's will and make them into a thrall, or overwrite someone's personality with a copy of his own.

So basically it's an encounter resource system modifying at-wills which are granted according to your psionic specialty.

I agree with this, but I'd like to see power points recover every round, like the Fighter's expertise dice. The most powerful augments, though, would require the psion to store up power points over multiple rounds (say, using a psi-crystal). Thus, telekinesis could be used to teleport, and telepathy could cause a psychic explosion.

 

[Dragoslav]

I'm in favor of a system like slobster suggests. Psionics should have their own set of augmentable abilities, not cast normal spells.

 

[bogmad]

Perhaps you could also spend power points to use the at will abilities of different disciplines? I like the system proposed, but I have a feeling some would be disappointed with only having access to telepathy without being able to dabble in telekinesis.

 

[Ultimatecalibur]

I have never gotten the desire that psionics=/="magic" and that the game needs a psionic equivalent for everything. Psionics is just a modern day pseudoscientific refluffing of magic.

If Psionics make an appearance in 5e/Next I hope it ends something like the following:

• Wizards get a Mentalist tradition.
• Sorcerers get a Wild Talent Origin.
• Warlocks get a Pact with a mental super construct.
• Monks get Psychic Warrior and Soul Knife styles.

 

[timASW]

First you choose a specialty, appropriate to psionic tropes. Telepathy and telekinesis comes to mind. We should resist the urge to create a psionic specialty equivalent to every school of magic, as has been done before.

You get some simple at-will stuff for your specialty. Telekinetics can push and trip people at a distance and lift objects with their brains. Psychics can charm people, attempt to read their surface thoughts, and even cause small amounts of psychic damage.

Then you have power points, which recover slowly after you use them (essentially making them encounter resources). You can use them to augment your specialty, so that a powerful enough telekinetic could lift someone and toss them into an ally, dealing damage to both. A powerful psychic could crush an opponent's will and make them into a thrall, or overwrite someone's personality with a copy of his own.

So basically it's an encounter resource system modifying at-wills which are granted according to your psionic specialty.

I like this idea but rather then have psychics by their own class I would make them a kind of specialist sorcerer and then put all the mind reading, charming, divinatory, telekinesis style powers and just make them spells on a specialty class spell list.

 

[RangerWickett]

I'd love some sort of superhero-esque rules. Like, Magneto can bend metal and fly and do telekinesis, but he doesn't know cantrips and a huge spellbook full of other spells.

If psionics let you focus on a few powers that could do a tight cluster of related things, I'd appreciate that. TKs move stuff, crush and trip and throw. PKs burn and maybe can fly on thermal updrafts. TPs create mental illusions, dominate, and cause your head to explode.

Jaunters teleport. Egoists alter their biochemistry to become invincible, or enhance their damage (but aren't necessarily the kung-fu warriors that monks are). Shapers create objects and monsters.

Like, psion could let you pick one thing and be great at it, or a variety of things. But they'd be at-will. They're innate powers, not spells. You might still have warlock-style "per encounter" points that you can expend to push yourself. Your nose bleeds, your eyes turn white, and you pull off an awesome power, then sag afterward.

 

[RangerWickett]

Or, more succinctly, ditto to slobster and dragoslav.

(Which reminds me. It'd also be cool to see a few "super dangerous to cast" spells a la Slayers the anime.)

 

[slobster]

Or, more succinctly, ditto to slobster and dragoslav.

(Which reminds me. It'd also be cool to see a few "super dangerous to cast" spells a la Slayers the anime.)

I was just thinking about that. Maybe you can normally only spend so many power points on an augment, but if you really need to supercharge a power (deflecting a crashing airship with telekinesis, reaching across a continent to read the mind of an ancient lich) then you can do so - at a cost. Such maneuvers are always risky, and always carry a cost. If you are lucky, you are merely exhausted and take damage. If you are unlucky . . . I don't know, you lose the ability to regain healing surges or power points until you convalesce somehow, maybe involving some RP journey to the center of the mind stuff. Or something. Not good, anyway.

Oh, and supercharging a power gives you a bloody nose. Mind-powers always give you a bloody nose.

 

[Moon_Goddess]

so maybe the 5th Ed Psion should be a Sorcerer of Psionic Heritage.

This will be the easiest thing they can do to make sure I never buy a single 5e product.

What I really want for psionics is a completely at will system, with it's ideas drawn from something like Babylon 5 rather than "new age crystals"

 

[The Shadow]

I have never gotten the desire that psionics=/="magic" and that the game needs a psionic equivalent for everything. Psionics is just a modern day pseudoscientific refluffing of magic.

I would agree this is where psionics ultimately came from. I would disagree that is what it has become now. For better or worse, psionics has acquired a distinctive flavor in fantasy, and in D&D particularly.

I do agree with you that the game doesn't need a psionic equivalent for everything magic can do - that kind of defeats the point. I don't want to see psionics summoning things, for example; or throwing fireballs.

slobster's system appeals to me quite a bit - you have a few specialties and concentrate on them. Perhaps you can dabble in other specialties by taking feats, but you always have a central focus.

If Psionics make an appearance in 5e/Next I hope it ends something like the following:

• Wizards get a Mentalist tradition.
• Sorcerers get a Wild Talent Origin.
• Warlocks get a Pact with a mental super construct.
• Monks get Psychic Warrior and Soul Knife styles.

A Mentalist wizard does not, in my judgment, capture the feel of psionics at all.

A Wild Talent sorcerer... that's a lot closer, I must say. Its spell list would need to be carefully worked out, though. And my preference would be to rename them to something besides 'spells'. (Though honestly, that's my preference even for the cleric.)

I can't picture a psionic Warlock in my mind. But I could totally see a Psychic Warrior or Soul Knife build for the monk, yes.

EDIT: Oh, and DarwinofMind? I also dislike the crystal fixation. Unfortunately we're probably stuck with it. And in its favor, it does tend to give psionics a distinctive 'look'... just not one I cotton to all that well.

 

[Yora]

Psionics should use the Expanded Psionic Handbook rules.

Just like any spellcasting classes should use the XPH rules!

 

[howandwhy99]

Psionics was cool as an add-on in the early game that you had to be lucky enough to qualify for both when you generated your PC and level by level. I don't know if that would fly now as qualifying for classes (or abilities in this case) based on die rolls isn't so popular anymore.

Still, I wouldn't mind looking at a additive system as well other other optional modules for Psionics. Of course the simplest is to simply provide it as a class like Warlock or Sorcerer are - completely new systems built into the class design rather than as environmental subsystem.

 

[Chris_Nightwing]

I never liked psionics, I would take the opportunity to drop them entirely from official support.

 

[howandwhy99]

How does 5e know what you're thinking?

Now here's the real cool question. "Read Thoughts" was the Detect Thinking Creatures spell in early D&D.

You had Detect Magic, Detect Alignment, Detect Undead (which always seemed weird once all the other monsters received an official "type"), but no Detect Monsters. This spell is why.

There were a ton of cool uses.

• You could use it to discern where an invisible creature was.
• You could see if creatures were "playing possum" and not dead as they appeared.
• Some DMs let us use it as a warning signal when wandering monsters were coming (a la the Alien films).
• If you were near enough to other creatures in conversation, you could listen in even though you couldn't hear them. You heard their thoughts, which meant it was better than light-dependent Read Lips (though still language-dependent).
• If you conversed with an NPC (or evasive PC) and you asked them a question, there was a save to see if they thought of the answer so you could read it from their mind.
• And the basic use of learning what another person was thinking about could be useful too for picking up rumors, learning very short-term immediate objectives, and the like. Everyone you focused on received a save, but it wasn't limited by the number of people or what kinds of people you chose.

The spell's real limitations were distance, duration, obstructions, and the saving throw to dig beyond awareness of the existence of the mind. However, you could use it in the dark and through stuff like one "armor layer" of substance (1" of metal, stone, leather, cloth, etc.)

 

[bogmad]

With all the talk of making psionics a wizard specialty or sorcererous origin, I'm curious how many people who are fans of that approach are actually fans of the psion, or just see that as a way to tuck away something they're not really fond of in the first place?


Full disclosure, I'm of the psioncs =/= magic crowd and would be disappointed if it didn't have its own unique mechanic aside from arcane sources.

Is anyone a fan of the psion who would actually prefer to have it just be a bloodline, specialty, etc?

I'm curious because wotc's been saying they want to please fans who enjoy playing particular class, and a lot of the discussion here seems to quickly turn to "I don't like this class so lets subsume it to something else!" Which only seems to please folks who didn't intend on playing that class anyway.

 

[Dragoslav]

I've noticed that, too. Whether it's psionics, specific classes, or whatever, people who aren't fond of a particular mechanic sometimes seem to think that they're making a magnanimous concession by saying, "Okay, it can be in the game, but only in an uninteresting, half-functional form."

This is supposed to be the "everything but the kitchen sink" edition, so if the fanbase really wants something, WotC should make sure they do that thing well if they decide to include it at all. If people don't want to include those things in their particular game that they're running, they can just say, "Make your characters now, but remember, no psions/barbarians/warlords/etc."