Mystic: Of psionics and magic

[tk32]

So, I'm allowing a player in my campaign to play a Mystic, we're doing a steampunk campaign that includes some ancient firearms and some artificing etc...

My question is on the Mystic and how it's rules play into the monster manual. Since the Mystic is not official and was created after the monsters, is the Mystic's attacks subject to magic resistances monsters may have (e.g. advantage on saves against magic attacks.) Most of the early Mystic abilities are all intelligence saves and some monsters do have magic resistance providing advantage to saves. I'm not sure how helpful this is since I need a 14-15 somewhere in there and most monsters have an intelligence save of 0 to maybe +1. So resistance will be incredibly important to keep this in check to an extent.

However, this is what I could find that implies some connection, but it could be interpreted both ways:

"Psionics and magic are two distinct forces. In general,an effect that alters or affects a spell has no effect ona psionic effect. There is one important exception tothis rule. A psionic effect that reproduces a spell istreated as magic. A psionic effect reproduces a spellwhen it allows a psionic creature or character to cast aspell. In this case, psionic energy taps into magic andmanipulates it to cast the spell.For example, the mind flayer as presented in theMonster Manual has the Innate Spellcasting(Psionics) feature. This feature allows the mind flayerto cast a set of spells using psionic energy. Thesespells can be countered with dispel magic and similareffects."

So, if the mystic does a spell effect, then the creature has resistance? But if it does a mystic specific ability that still results in an int save then it's not magical?

I guess I'm a little confused? My thought is psionic attacks are magical in nature, just a different source of magic therefore if a monster has magic resistance or levels of immunity (Some Gods, etc) then, the resistance would affect all magic not just typical wizard spells.

Let me know your thoughts?

 

[MechaTarrasque]

I believe that the text of most (if not all) magic resistance is:

Monster's name has advantage on saving throws against spells and other magical effects.

The latest UA says: Psionics is a special form of magic use, distinct from spellcasting.

Between those two, I think we can conclude that everything a mystic does to the monster (except hit the monster with a weapon, including the soul knife, which counts as a melee weapon) counts a magic in terms of magic resistance.

 

[Tales and Chronicles]

You just step right into the Psionic vs Magic debate. Oficially I think that WotC consider psionics to be another form of magic for the moment, meaning that things that interact with magic also react the same way with psionics, aka Advantage to save against Spells does the same with Psionic Powers.

Now, in your game, you can decide that magic resistance or save doesnt work against the psionic powers. Just know that this gives a lot of power to the Mystic since no creatures in the MM will be able to counter its powers, which is too powerful for my personal taste since Mystic also ignore many restriction usually put on ''normal'' spellcasters; no components, always subtle, armor prof, d8 HP, healt regen on spellcasting etc.

On a final note, I would only really care about power imbalance if there's another full caster in the party who could feel outshined in many ways.

 

[tk32]

I have a cardmaster in the party, a automoton paladin, a bard, and I believe a Warlock. At level 3 the mystic was able to bring his AC to 20 and with some type of wind blast, all attacks that miss the mystic are reflected back onto the creature. With an AC of 20 most CR 4 or less creatures are going to miss. That was just in one encounter, but he pretty much negate all attacks and have the monsters kill themselves for one encounter.
These were fish so, everyone else stood outside the water and waited for the fish to all devour themselves. Then took any loot just floating in the water.

Wasn't exactly how I had planned it, but, it was funny imagine a bunch of fish trying to eat themselves. I don't consider mystics OP, but, I think if magic resistance was ignored, then, even Gods would bow to a mystic since if magic resistance was bypassed so too would magic immunities of Gods.

 

[Tales and Chronicles]

I have a cardmaster in the party, a automoton paladin, a bard, and I believe a Warlock. At level 3 the mystic was able to bring his AC to 20 and with some type of wind blast, all attacks that miss the mystic are reflected back onto the creature. With an AC of 20 most CR 4 or less creatures are going to miss. That was just in one encounter, but he pretty much negate all attacks and have the monsters kill themselves for one encounter.
These were fish so, everyone else stood outside the water and waited for the fish to all devour themselves. Then took any loot just floating in the water.

Wasn't exactly how I had planned it, but, it was funny imagine a bunch of fish trying to eat themselves. I don't consider mystics OP, but, I think if magic resistance was ignored, then, even Gods would bow to a mystic since if magic resistance was bypassed so too would magic immunities of Gods.

You seems to have a lot of homebrew going on, so its hard to evaluate the effect of this particular class in this party.
Just make sure you track Concentration correctly and that the Mystic calculate correctly his spell points and max spell point/turn. A Mystic can create a solid nova round, but 20 AC + a huge defensive + counter-attack buff is strange.

Also, remember that the class is in playtest mode, if the player try to cheese some features fight after fight, you can always have an open talk with him to tell him that steam-rolling everything in the campaign with a specific combo puts a lot more work for you and may hurt the enjoyment of other players that came to play D&D, not watch him solo-play a videogame.

Hope you and your group have fun

 

[Yaarel]

In old school 1e and 2e, psionics bypassed magic resistance.

But in new school 3e and 4e, the default is, psionics is a style of magic, and magic resistance does defend against it.

The 5e UA articles continue the new school approach. In 5e, psionics differs from ‘spells’ because spells have a verbal, somatic, and/or material component. However, psionics is a form of magic. Both spells and psionics produce magic *effects*.

There are some old school players who prefer psionics be non-magical. But this same group is also willing to work around the extreme imbalances that such indefensible psionics causes.

 

[tk32]

Thanks Yaarel! That's a good point too. This is the ability he used. It was against 3 swarms of pirana like fish:
Didn't increase his AC but imposed disadvantage, which was probably better than increasing his own AC.

Cloak of Air (3 psi; conc., 10 min.).
As a bonus action, you seize control of the air around you to
create a protective veil. Until your concentration ends,
attack rolls against you have disadvantage,
and when a creature you can see misses you
with a melee attack, yo can use your reaction to
force the creature to repeat the attack roll
against itself.


Yes, he only had one reaction per round, but... against 3 swarms, one swarm attacked itself and all 3 had disadvantage. I rolled for about 10 rounds of attacks and with disadvantage no attacks hit (out of 60 dice rolls-having disadvantage) and after ten rounds at least 2 swarms had eaten themselves... I called it good... Lol.