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.

 

[Tony Vargas]

Some have inturrpted what Jeremy Crawford said in the video as basically saying a. Psion class or Mystic isn't coming.

That'd be unfortunate.

Well you can graft psionics onto the fighter or rogue the same way EK & AT have arcane spellcasting grafted to them, without committing to "psionics is magic," making wizard - or sorcerer or warlock - spells (or monk Ki, for that matter) stand in for psionics prettymuch takes away the possibility of them being different.

Besides, they've broken the no-new-class taboo with the Artificer, for Eberron.
Doing the same for the Psion in Dark Sun, for instance, would be a reasonable minimum deliverable for fans of psionics - I mean, barely reasonable, Eberron and other setting have featured psionics, as well.

(As always, full disclosure: I'm not a fan of Psionics, myself, always felt they were too sci-fi to have a place in D&D, and, yeah, I know, Barrier Peaks, &c - obviously I've relented. Psionics have been in every prior ed, including multiple full classes, there needs to at least be one full Psionicist or Psion or other psionic class in 5e.)

 

[JiffyPopTart]

No what they are providing us is the opportunity to push the boundaries like the good D&D homebrewers we are. Of course with the DMsGuild we have a way to share the better ideas as well. I know people want official this or official that, but I personally like it much better when the design is expanded through homebrew and the DMsGuild and UA Reddit and these forums have been great for exploring new ideas. With some many minds attacking it we can come up with something so much more interesting than what a lone design team can come up with.

I feel like the invention of the DMsGuild has stifled online collaboration. In the past you would be involved in a community (lets say ENWorld for example) and if you created something for your game you would share it with that community to mine for ideas and balance and end up with a crowdsourced final project that everyone has access to. Now I find that a lot of those people who would be doing this are instead having a go at becoming semi-professional game designers by micro-transactioning their efforts.

"Like my Hound Archon class, just a buck!"

I don't begrudge people trying to make it in the industry, but I do feel like the lure to take a project to a marketplace does stifle community creativity. I can only speak for myself, but i'm literally NEVER going to pay for rules material that isn't "official" mostly because I can assume the "official" sources are fairly playtested and balanced.

When the 5e playtest was still going and the time of the official release was approaching 5e was described as an edition where the core rules will be simple and easy to manage. The system was also supposed to be "expanded" by supplements and material meant to tack onto the sections of the rules you wanted to explore and expand. Think that 5e combat is too simplistic....try the "Expanded Combat" module. Want to go heavy on exploration, try the "Wilderness" module.

Since 5e has released the idea of these "modules" to expand our games seems to have been back burnered (if not thrown out entirely) in favor of adventure paths and light introductions to various campaign settings. I understand why people are frustrated to hear something to the effect of "Well, we might not ever have a proper Psionics systems because nobody will use it." because that same statement can be used to apply to each and every system that people are hoping to see from WotC.

In my games of 3e and 4e I have been a big fan of Psionics. I like the idea of exploring "Psionics are totally not magic" which is hard to do when half of the "ruleset" for psionics is describing a wizard and wizard spell lists. Yes, I can houserule and 3rd party whatever I want, but having three subclasses as the only official not to psionics seems a letdown, and really dashes hopes for further content.

 

[tglassy]

I don't remember the exact wording, but I think the "We're not making a whole new class" isn't referring to the Psion or Mystic, it's referring to the Psychic Warrior and the Soulknife.

 

[Parmandur]

I don't remember the exact wording, but I think the "We're not making a whole new class" isn't referring to the Psion or Mystic, it's referring to the Psychic Warrior and the Soulknife.

That is a pretty good point...

 

[cbwjm]

I feel like the invention of the DMsGuild has stifled online collaboration. In the past you would be involved in a community (lets say ENWorld for example) and if you created something for your game you would share it with that community to mine for ideas and balance and end up with a crowdsourced final project that everyone has access to. Now I find that a lot of those people who would be doing this are instead having a go at becoming semi-professional game designers by micro-transactioning their efforts.

While it's true that many people are aiming for putting something up on DMsGuild or on their Patreon; you can still find a lot of people soliciting feedback on their creations on Reddit. The Unearthed Arcana and DnD homebrew subreddits have a lot of people asking for critique of their content. Basically, the content is still being shared, it's just that where it's being shared has changed.

 

[Azzy]

The Soulknife is pretty decent.

The Psychic Warrior doesn't feel like the Psychic Warrior of 3e--which is really sad. The 3e version was versitile in its builds and had a lot of interesting things going on. The old 3e feats could have been reinterpreted as class features, but no, we get this boring thing. I don'y like it at all.

The Wizard Tradition... Please don't tell me that we are getting this instead of a full class. Whicle this has some neat ideas, it's no psion. We need a new psion base class with its own subclasses--I want to see psicrystals and astral constructs and such.

 

[Zaukrie]

Finally read it. Ya, that's not what I was hoping for at all. Telekinetics is just mage hand? Boring. Nothing about the class really says anything unique at all, just another wizard. I understand that not everyone agrees, it's why I like games with lots of choices, so that those who want this can have it, and those that want psionics and spell points and all the other things that come with "classic" psionics can have it that way.

 

[paladinn]

I'm kind of torn about this, in 3 ways:

1. The relegation of psionics to being basically another school of arcane magic is a huge (over)simplification of psionics in general. That said, I can see the attractiveness of Not having to manage a separate wonky psionics sub-system. And there are Plenty of new-ish wonky subsystems already in 5e.

2. If psionics Are going to be considered as another arcane "school", does that mean that other arcane users can grab a psionic spell or two? I can see that being a lot of fun, but it definitely eliminates any particular "specialness" of psionic characters. Especially if there's not going to be a reworked mystic/psion/whatever.

3. I confess, the psionic feats are probably the most attractive piece of the article. In OD&D and 1e, psionics were an Extremely optional "bolt-on" to an existing class. The easiest way to come close to that in 5e would be psionic feats. It doesn't matter your class or sub-class; if you're of a mind (pun intended) to pursue psionics to some extent, you can do it!

Just my $.02

 

[Giltonio_Santos]

No what they are providing us is the opportunity to push the boundaries like the good D&D homebrewers we are. Of course with the DMsGuild we have a way to share the better ideas as well. I know people want official this or official that, but I personally like it much better when the design is expanded through homebrew and the DMsGuild and UA Reddit and these forums have been great for exploring new ideas. With some many minds attacking it we can come up with something so much more interesting than what a lone design team can come up with.

While I agree with the general feeling, I don't think I have the time and energy to go through that. I'd prefer to just pay the pros. :/

 

[Eric V]

Yep. It wouldn't be so annoying if some of the last couple UAs hadn't shown some willingness to innovate. I would think psionics would be one of those subject areas that deserves a higher amount of innovation, but I'm guessing that the cool response to the Mystic closed that path.

To be fair to WotC, I really shouldn't blame the conservatism of their design on anything other than the conservatism of their surveyed audience.

That's what happens when you design to please the masses as opposed to giving it your best creative shot.