D&D 5E Is "Mystic" a bad class name?

[Cleon]

That's an interesting take. Rather than the Far Realm created psionics, psionics created the Far Realm. I'd find that more palatable personally.

That's one possible interpretation, but my preferred version is psionics created the connection to the Far Realms which always existed as another universe (probably literally "always existed", as time itself is insane in the Realms Beyond!).

 

[Cleon]

The conversation was meant to be about whether or not mystic is a good or bad name for the class. Some say yes, some say no. Somewhere along the line it brought in whether or not psionics should count as magic and whether or not there should be a connection to the far realm as in the UA article.

Personally, I don't believe mystic is a good name for the class; I'm somewhat ambivalent about whether or not psionics should count as magic; I would probably ignore the far realm connection, it doesn't seem to be a major point in the UA article anyway.

Yes, but the conversation got side-tracked as usual.

Personally, while I don't think Mystic is a bad class name, it seems inappropriate for a psionicists. Others are free to differ, and obviously have done so on this thread.

 

[Cleon]

Nothing has to be marked as "spell equivalent" or not. If the psionic ability allows you to cast a spell from the prexisting spell lists, then it counts as magic, even if it was created with psionic abilities.

Its how the class is currently set up to work.

In effect, "allows you to cast spell X" is marking the psionic power as a spell-equivalent. It's just the simplest and most compact way to do so.

It basically seems too arbitrary to me. I'm sure the system will end up with some psionic powers that are mechanically very similar or nigh-identical but one is a "spell" and another "not a spell".

 

[garnuk]

In effect, "allows you to cast spell X" is marking the psionic power as a spell-equivalent. It's just the simplest and most compact way to do so.

It basically seems too arbitrary to me. I'm sure the system will end up with some psionic powers that are mechanically very similar or nigh-identical but one is a "spell" and another "not a spell".

I see no reason for that to happen. If a mystic can cast fireball without needing VSM, it can cast fireball , and its a spell. There is no reason to say that its a non-magical fireball. Seems a really clean and easy to handle rule without any need for checking the details of spells or disciplines during game play. But that's just me. If they ever did create a discipline which replicates a spell, I would expect the errata to clarify that they cast the spell, or they clarify what the difference between the spell and the discipline are.

 

[Cleon]

I see no reason for that to happen. If a mystic can cast fireball without needing VSM, it can cast fireball , and its a spell. There is no reason to say that its a non-magical fireball. Seems a really clean and easy to handle rule without any need for checking the details of spells or disciplines during game play. But that's just me. If they ever did create a discipline which replicates a spell, I would expect the errata to clarify that they cast the spell, or they clarify what the difference between the spell and the discipline are.

I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree.

It still seems arbitrary to me, plus I don't like how it'll perforce split psionics into "magic" spells and "nonmagic" powers.

If such a rule were applied to 3E, the psionic power read thoughts would not be "magic", since it doesn't quote the wizard's detect thoughts spell, while in AD&D both abilities were the same, being the ESP spell/power (unless my memory deceives me).

Similarly, the 3E psionic teleport would be "magic", since the description says it works like the teleport spell, while psionic restoration is not, since the description is a copy of what restoration does instead of a "works like it" quote. There's no real reason as to why the former's "magic" and the latter isn't. I don't mind some arbitrariness with magic spells, but it just feels wrong to me for psionics, since I think of them more as "mental science". There just doesn't seem to be any solid reason for the difference. (Unless there isn't any logic behind it? Maybe the insane physics of the Far Realms are influencing the psionic rules… ).

It also retains one of my other objections to that approach - whenever a psionic power interacts with dispel magic or whatever you have to check whether the power works like a spell, either by looking them up or memorizing which ones are spells.

Obviously, there are ways around this. A simple solution would be to use a particular prefix to the name of every power that works like a spell, so the gamers will always know psionic disintegrate can be dispelled and works like disintegrate. Just be careful not to have any that aren't "magic", like the 3E psionic disintegrate which copies most of the spell description instead of saying "works like disintegrate".

 

[Sword of Spirit]

The impression I get is that none of the powers of the mystic class are intended to replicate spells. So you won't be looking anything up to see which it is. The note about some powers being magical is given in context of backwards compatibility with the Monster Manual--ie, where a monster has a spell listed as (psionics) it still counts as magic, so you don't have to worry about how any specific differences between magic and psionics operate. It also maintains consistency for those who aren't using psionics rules in their campaign, so that the (psionics) descriptor in the Monster Manual works the same for them as it does for those who are using psionics--ie, it is fluff for certain spellcasting abilities without mechanical impact.

That's not to say that they may not give us a "psionic mind flayer" and such in a psionics sourcebook that uses the same type of psionics as PCs can through the class rather than just using spells with a descriptor, as that is exactly what they did in the 3.5e psionics book.

 

[Deuce Traveler]

A mystic was a monk in BECMI, so as an old school player this just confuses me, especially when Psion seemed to work just fine and was self-explanatory in 3.5.

 

[Yaarel]

The impression I get is that none of the powers of the mystic class are intended to replicate spells.

The problem is, there are many things that the psionic Mystic *should* do, but that are already spells.

Changing the spell mechanics for no reason except a conceit of spell-less-ness, interferes with balance.

 

[Aldarc]

Personally, I have no objection to the Far Realms becoming part of the core D&D setting, but I really dislike the idea of Psionics being from the Far Realms or a response to the Far Realms' intrusion.

If it was up to me, I'd do something like this:

Psionics is the power of thought manifesting into reality. It is literally mind over matter. In the most potent cases, mind becomes matter.

The Far Realms is impossible and insane. A place that cannot exist in D&D reality according to its natural and magical laws. However the idea of the Far Realms can exist. That's no different from someone in the real world imagining a perpetual motion machine, despite them violating fundamental physics. They just can't build one.

However, in the D&D universe the power of psionics allows an idea to become real, and that's the route by which the Far Realms "encroached" into the Prime Material. The actual details of the encroachment could be left unsaid or speculative. Maybe a lot of latent psionicists dreamed of the Far Realms at the same time and it got a toehold? Maybe the universe's most powerful psychics went exploring and tried to astral travel to a plane that couldn't actually exist and their combined mental abilities were so potent that what the created or linked to a dimension they thought might be there?

If psionics must be tied to the Far Realm (ugh), I would prefer your take as well, especially given how it's not just human minds shaping the Far Realms, but also the minds of outsiders and other odd inhabitants of the Great Wheel.

That said, I strongly dislike the name 'mystic' for the psionic class. It strikes me as a means to further marginalize psionics by clothing the flavor in a way that mostly appeases anti-psionic fans. But what I want in terms of flavor is what we saw in 3E psionics that has since been preserved and expanded marvelously by Dreamscarred Press.

WotC should bring in the Dreamscarred Press team to help develop psionics for 5E. Those are the people who "get" psionics well.