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Message: <blockquote data-quote="I'm A Banana" data-source="post: 7673922" data-attributes="member: 2067">Here's a point where I differ. I think a pre-judging like this limits possible design directions and stifles creative use of existing frameworks. "Deserve" I think is a pretty negative choice of words, somehow implying that assassins and arcane tricksters and battlemasters and illusionists are somehow "not deserving." A psionic subclass isn't somehow an insult to psionics, it's not a lessening or other-ing of it. It's simply an easy, effective way to realize the gameplay important to psionics. A subclass isn't a lesser version of anything. It's not a second-run, also-ran, backup-copy. It's the full character, floating on top of existing mechanics as much as it needs to. It's a tool for realizing your character, one that is more fine-tuned, easier to apply, and less expensive in many ways than an entirely new class could ever be. A new class is a blunt, expensive instrument - it takes more effort to get right, even when right it occludes other choices, and even when perfectly executed there's a significant downside to it. It's appropriate, sometimes, but it is never something that should just be presumed to be the case. A new official class in 5e always needs to be a conscious and intensely thorough process. When they said a few months ago that the entire lifetime of 5e could see no more classes than what's in the PHB, that should be seen as good news, because it shows that they realize that there's no gameplay necessity for any class - that every new class is an opt-in situation. Furthermore, a new class turns existing classes into narrower stereotypes. If I can play a wizard or sorcerer as a psion today, then if they make a psion class, I suddenly am not playing a "real" psion. Pre-judging that a psion absolutely cannot be a sorcerer is also saying that there is no way that you can play a character like a psion using the sorcerer - now being born with powerful mental abilities is off the table for them. It draws unnecessary boundaries, and limits the diversity of existing choices. To treat a class as a sort of medal we give a character concept that is somehow more worthy of being expressed than, say, "illusoinist"  or "turnip farmer" is to put a hierarchy in place where none currently exists, and fails to recognize the inherent arbitrariness of all classes. What is important to me is what happens in play at the table, which is why this insistence seems bizarrely disconnected. It doesn't care what happens in play, it just makes a vehement mandate based on previous presentation. It matters more in this view that the psion is a class than it matters what that class plays like, which rings entirely hollow to me. It's not like "you're a full class!" is some gold star that is given to the bestestest and brightestest of imaginary elf jobs that are better than all the rest(est). It doesn't so much matter what is written on your character sheet at first level or what you call what you gain levels it, it matters what actions you take when you play the character across the course of a year (give or take).All of which is not to say that new classes are verboten, just that we need to get our priorities straight. We can have new classes, but lets admit to ourselves that it's basically arbitrary - there's no objective reason to have a psion class and not have an illusionist class or a brazen strumpet class or a bohemian ear-spoon specialist class. It's not like there's some threshold one crosses that another doesn't. And once we allow ourselves the freedom to design outside of a class, lets see what we come up with. It might still be a class, but that'll be the result of discussion, development, and active choices, not simply a meaningless design criteria made in a void, and it'll be a better class for it.</blockquote>

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