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.

 

[Sacrosanct]

I gotta admit, part of the comments before the interview was done made me chuckle.
“The fighter version is sooooo boring.”
Crawford: “we made the fighter so you can play Darth Vader”

I guess Vader is super boring

 

[DEFCON 1]

If people want psionics at level 1, easiest way to accomplish that is the dragonmark way... psionic sub-races.

Heck, you could probably wipe the fluff from the dragonmark sub-races in Rising and a handful of them would work as psionics already. Orien's psychoportation, Sivis' messaging, etc.

 

[gyor]

And in fact Mearls had a wizard subclass called a 'mentalist'. This is a lot different than that subclass, but that's not surprising.

I think it's called a 'psionicist' to leave space for calling the full class a 'psion'.

AD

See I need to know if this class is a replacement for a Psion class or if it's own thing before I can grade it.

Given that we saw Mind Sliver again it seems clear this is for the same book as the other subclasses. Interesting.

I like the Psychic Warrior and Soul Knife, the Mentalist is no replacement for Psion, but it's good as it's own thing, but it needs to be clearer that it's not a substitute for a Psion class, which was really cool.

Also I noted to my surprise these Psionic spells were on the Bards spell list too, which suggests it's College of Eloquence might be Psionic in nature as well, calling back to the 3.5 Ardent class.

 

[gyor]

I gotta admit, part of the comments before the interview was done made me chuckle.
“The fighter version is sooooo boring.”
Crawford: “we made the fighter so you can play Darth Vader”

I guess Vader is super boring

Well like most things in Star Wars, Darth Vader is boring.

 

[gyor]

As noted above, I think that a full psionic class is coming. Mearls was taking a two pronged approach to psioncis-- subclasses to cover concepts he thought fit well within the existing class system and a full class to capture the full fledged psion. I don't think it's an accident that the psionic subclass for wizard is called a psionicisit instead of a psion. Psion is coming.

<disclaimer: probably>

AD

I think they should have called the subclass mentalist to make that clear, plus it's more traditional for a wizard with Psionic interests.

 

[Giltonio_Santos]

Also, Crawford explains why it's not a stand alone class (and why it probably won't be), and why the mechanics are core 5e rather than new stuff. He comes right out and says that when previous editions did that in the past, while fun, hardly anyone used them. So they want options that more people will use, and not have to buy a new book and learn an entire new rules system.

Agree or not, there you have it.

So, the rules guy basically admits that this edition is dead in regard to expanding the system in different and new directions. Looking at the finished versions of the warforged and the artificer already makes me feel like that's the case, anyway, but it's good to know that's an official stance.

It's a pity we have such a strong core game and the designers are not willing to play with it. How many flavors of "you can use a bonus action to deal X additional damage every Y attacks" they can come up with? We'll learn soon. :/

 

[Shardstone]

I gotta admit, part of the comments before the interview was done made me chuckle.
“The fighter version is sooooo boring.”
Crawford: “we made the fighter so you can play Darth Vader”

I guess Vader is super boring

This doesn't feel like Darth Vader.

It just adds psionic damage to attacks and later you can force mind blast people. There's so much more to Vader than that but you could really just play Vader with a Paladin, Eldritch Knight, etc etc

 

[Fenris-77]

The fact that it doesn't allow you to do all the things Vader does in the movie doesn't really obviate the point that the goal was to index Darth Vader as an idea.

 

[Shardstone]

The fact that it doesn't allow you to do all the things Vader does in the movie doesn't really obviate the point that the goal was to index Darth Vader as an idea.

Just because the goal was to make Darth Vader also doesn't mean it was successful at doing so.

EDIT: Paladin Oath of Conquest or Vengeance are straight up better Darth Vader mechanics than this.

 

[Fenris-77]

So we aren't admitting to levels of success? That seems a little restrictive, but whatever props your tent.