Unearthed Arcana New Unearthed Arcana: Psionics!

There’s a new Unearthed Arcana article out, and it’s all about psionics! "Their minds bristling with power, three new subclasses arrive in today’s Unearthed Arcana: the Psychic Warrior for the fighter, the Soulknife for the rogue, and the tradition of Psionics for the wizard."

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In this 9-page PDF, there are also some new psionics-themed spells (including versions of classic psionic powers like id insinuation and ego whip) and two new feats.

 

[Umbran]

I'm not a big fan of these. The powers of the Psychic Warrior and the Soulknife are locked in, which is boring, and I really, really don't like the idea of psionicists being a wizard tradition. It might be easier to balance that way, but it's not true to the way psionics worked in any previous edition.

I'm going to disagree a bit there.

Long ago, I read the various Deryni books, by Katherine Kurtz, and I went, "Wow, here's what D&D psionics as a stand-alone magic system looks like". And they were basically wizards powered by their own minds...

 

[TwoSix]

They basically already did that with the Aberrant Mind UA though not Int based, it was the "Psionic Sorcerer" for lack of a better descriptor.

Aberrant Mind was decent, albeit a little too focused on the squicky-Cthuhlu parts for my taste. Use that as a base, replace the bonus spells with the new spells from today's UA, get the cantrip upgrades as a 1st level feature, put in the cool "psychic form" feature somewhere, and that's a lot closer to what I envision from a psionic subclass of a PHB base class.

I still think a new base class is entirely appropriate for psionics, though.

 

[Urriak Uruk]

I remember a bunch of people saying that the next setting book isn't going to be Dark Sun, because we haven't seen any Psionics UA in a while.

Well, now we've got it. Damn a Dark Sun book would be so awesome.

 

[Zaukrie]

I'd prefer a different magic system for psionics, so we had another choice for how magic works. I look forward to reading this, but it isn't my first choice at all.

 

[Von Ether]

Consider switching psionics to spell points ala the DMG.

 

[Raunalyn]

The classes were all Meh to me, with the most interesting being the SoulKnife (that capstone ability...dayum!).

The spells were definitely intriguing...Ego Whip and Psionic Blast were both quite flavorful. Intellect Fortress will become a must have for just about any caster.

 

[Shardstone]

I am incredibly disappointed in this.

First, the sub-classes.

Psonic Warrior is boring. You just get damage to things, or some defenses. Like a less interesting Battlemind.

Soulknife on the otherhand is perfect. You get the blades, they fear on hit, you can tear people's minds apart, etc. Great sub-class, if a little weak.

Psionist...

...

So, thoughtforms are cool. I love this mechanic. You become a force ghost. But...

...

So no Psion class. No Mystic. Everything is just this wizard. Why else would they add in all this advice about a spell list? And then they put these spells out (which I love the spells but they are busted) instead of what Mearls was workshopping (cantrips powered by spell slots) so yeah...this is our psionics.

And that is disappointing. It doesn't feel unique. It doesn't feel special. It doesn't even feel fun. One sub-class is just adding more dice to damage and so forth, another sub-class the Psionist really just doesn't feel like a wizard. I don't know. Its just boring.

I didn't need something as complex as the Mystic. I didn't need something broken like 2E or 3E. I just wanted something a little mechanically different that was fun to play. I wanted to be able to run Fantasy worlds that were just Psionics with little to no magic in them. And while yes, I know, I can do that with reflavoring, but reflavoring at such a scale is unsatisfying to me. I wanted something new.

This is not it. Not only is this not it, but this isn't exciting. You get a suite of spells that do various busted things, you get to reflavor a bunch of other spells as pretending to be psionics, and you get three sub-classes to pretend like a psion. YOu can get the feats too, I guess, but meh. Its an optional rule and not even available until your four levels into the game. That's 4-8 sessions I have to go before I can even pretend to be a real psion, lest I play the variant human (which is another optional rule).

At least Soulknife is cool. My psions in the future I guess are rogues who pick up Magical Initiate for a psionic spell at level 4 for now on.

Mind the language, please.

 

[Shardstone]

Impression after a first read through:

These Subclasses fit in very well with the Psionic monsters and PC Races released so far.

This is true. Even though I really don't like this UA, it is exactly what everything else in the edition psion-related is, so it makes sense there.

 

[Shardstone]

It's not an either/or proposition, to boot: last time WotC discussed Psionic plans, both a new Class and a range of Subclasses were the idea. So, we might see a full Psion in the next UA...

There's a chance but the end of this UA really dissuades me from that idea. We shall see. I would love to eat my words.

 

[Benjamin Olson]

I'm not seeing this article

I find that unearthed arcana web searches often take me to a version of the site from the previous instalment. When I then navigate to Unearthed Arcana under articles on the D&D website an up-to-date version appears. Maybe you have a similar situation.