Level Up (A5E) is adept empty mind enchantment saves & resist part of the effect with stray CR or always on?

[tetrasodium]

at level 7 the adept gets empty mind granting:

Spoiler: this

tarting at 7th level, you can empty your mind and easily disguise your emotions. As an action, you can spend 1 exertion to enter a meditative empty mind state. This lasts for 1 hour. While in this state, Insight checks against you have disadvantage.

In addition, you gain advantage on saving throws made against enchantment spells and resistance to psychic damage.

The first part where you spend exertion & use an action to make insight checks against you more difficult for an hour but the second part looks like a stray carriage return in the effect or an always on secondary thing that the adept just has without the 1exertion & 1 hour duration action. Is it always on oriffy formatting?

 

[Heraldofi]

I'm parsing that as an always on ability, if for no other reason than it would be easier and cleaner to write "...in this state, Insight checks against you have disadvantage, you gain resistance to psychic damage, and you gain advantage on saving throws against enchantment spells," as a single sentence if you did want to make the ability conditional.

 

[lichmaster]

I'd go for the other opinion: giving disadvantage to insight checks for 1 hour is way less powerful than permanently gaining advantage to saves vs enchantment spells and resistance to psychic damage. It wouldn't make sense to spend 1 exertion and an action for a relatively minor buff and having a way more powerful one for free and always on, IMO

 

[tetrasodium]

I'd go for the other opinion: giving disadvantage to insight checks for 1 hour is way less powerful than permanently gaining advantage to saves vs enchantment spells and resistance to psychic damage. It wouldn't make sense to spend 1 exertion and an action for a relatively minor buff and having a way more powerful one for free and always on, IMO

How often do your players get hit by psychic damage? can you name a few common sources without a ctrl-f?

 

[Heraldofi]

I'd go for the other opinion: giving disadvantage to insight checks for 1 hour is way less powerful than permanently gaining advantage to saves vs enchantment spells and resistance to psychic damage. It wouldn't make sense to spend 1 exertion and an action for a relatively minor buff and having a way more powerful one for free and always on, IMO

Thing is, even if 1/2 damage from a specific type and advantage on a certain kind of saving throw is "more powerful" in that you might survive/resist something bad, it's also less usable. You can't generally plan for when you're going to be charmed or when you're going to get ambushed by abberations. And then there's not much difference between the ability being on for an hour or forever, because those sorts of threats don't tend to last that long. You're not really making a choice about whether to use a power, you'd always just spend the resources when faced with the right kind of threat and never otherwise.

You can, however, plan for when you're going into a party or a tense negotiation or an audience before the king and might need to lie or conceal your motives, making the choice to spend resources to be better at that kind of thing an interesting decision.

 

[lichmaster]

How often do your players get hit by psychic damage? can you name a few common sources without a ctrl-f?

How often are your players targeted by insight checks?