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

[Tony Vargas]

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

I think I preferred the Traveler approach to psoincs: they were very limited in scope, power, and availability, were vaguely known and could be dealt with to some degree by the non-psionics of the society in which they existed...

...and, most importantly, they were in a science-fiction game, where they belonged.


That said, psoinics should probably be included as a module in an established setting, like Athas, where they serve an important function. While it might be OK to have full-on psionic classes, they definitely should leverage their multi-class or feat (or Background) sub-systems to allow for 'wild talents,' too.

Given the 5e disparate-mechanics mandate, psionic classes should work on some sort of 'power point' system that evokes the classic psionics (hopefully in a much less broken way), and makes them very distinct from casters.

 

[Unwise]

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.

I really like the expertise dice concept, but only for fighters. The reason is that the fighter has to make more meaningful choices with their dice each turn. They are in the thick of it, they have to wiegh up damage vs taking less damage vs stopping the enemies getting to their friends vs blocking damage to their friends etc.

A class that has the luxury of being behind the front lines will tend to have less interesting decisions to make about their spell usage. A magical striker for instance will just pick a damaging spell and tend to spam it. Swapping to a slowing/prone spell when threatened.

For this reason I prefer the willpower point system to provide flexibility, but still contain meaningful choices about whether to spend those points or not. This also allows for more powerful spells. For instance a spammable dominate would be inappropriate, even for a telepath, but as an expensive investment of willpower points that is fine.

I like the idea of having wild psionics as sorcerers, after all they are just tapping into their 'blood' and natural ability. As for the more arcane mentalist, I think they fall nicely under wizards specialising in enchanting magics. Maybe have a specialisation too, that lets enchanters not have to use their hands and/or voice to cast spells, this way you could put in a little bit of at-will telepathy etc as well.

 

[Jeff Carlsen]

I really like the expertise dice concept, but only for fighters. The reason is that the fighter has to make more meaningful choices with their dice each turn. They are in the thick of it, they have to wiegh up damage vs taking less damage vs stopping the enemies getting to their friends vs blocking damage to their friends etc.

I think your reasoning behind why a round based resource makes sense for the fighter fits with the psion very well. Both the second edition and the 3.0 edition psion engaged in a form of mental combat. There were different attacks and defenses. It mimicked normal combat in many ways.

When a wizard cast dominate, it's one spell that just works. They don't have to manage it. A psion, though, would have to focus some of their concentration on controlling someone. It would be a constant battle of wills. And the results might not be like dominate, but more like suggestion, each round trying to get the target to do one thing.

By using a round based resource, the more powerful a psion becomes, the more he can do at once or the more powerful his abilities can be. Again, this is well represented by a round by round resource.

Now, I'll grant you that designing the psion like this isn't going to be easy to make balanced, but it would certainly be fitting of the concept and an interesting addition to the game.

 

[Moon_Goddess]

-In the interest of "not re-writing the wheel", and in keeping with the above, if the Psychic power does something that a Spell does, then just call it the same thing and give me the tweaks (fluff and crunch bits) in the Power description. We do not need a spell called "Sleep" and a psychic power called "Imposed Slumber" or whatever.

Yeeees, this means that some effects will be listed twice, once as a spell called "Sleep" and again as a Psychic Power called "Sleep." But considering most of the repeats will involve something along the lines of:

"blah blah description yada yada...otherwise the power functions as the Mage spell of the same name."
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I don't really see this as a problem for page count or space.

I like everything you say, but this...

I don't wanna see this ever even having a reason for happening. If we decide that sleep is something that feels natural for Psions to do then we shouldn't let Wizards do it.

I'm tired of Wizards can do everthing and others can do some subset of everything. Every class needs their own subset of everything. Wizards need limitations.

 

[bogmad]

I don't wanna see this ever even having a reason for happening. If we decide that sleep is something that feels natural for Psions to do then we shouldn't let Wizards do it.

Assassins could coat a weapon with sleeping poisons, anyone could use a sleeping potion, wizard could cast sleep, and a psion could put someone to sleep with his mind. What's the problem?

Oh, and a bard could "soothe the savage beast" to sleep.
Some overlap is ok. The trick is not to make the wizard BEST AT EVERYTHING!

 

[Moon_Goddess]

I forgot to comment on this. My breath is taken away with the sheer irrationality of this position. Especially since we *already know* that Next is going to be modular!

It takes all kinds, I guess. But thankfully, it seems overwhelmingly likely that your friend will be disappointed.

Well he only presented his position after I told him about how modular Next is supposed to be.

So yes he knew NEXT is going to be modular, he was telling me he doesn't want to play Next BECAUSE it's modular.