D&D 5E (2024) Psion Class: Green/Yellow/Red?

[Xeviat]

More of everything, I hope. New elements, new augments, new adaptations...

Exactly! Hopefully finishing up the beta on all the adaptations today.

 

[pukunui]

Just taking the survey and they're now allowing you to provide written feedback for all ratings! Not just the yellow ones.

More psionic dice recovery. 1 on a short rest is too small. Half on a short rest? Sorcerers get up to 20 sorcery points, Psions get 12+2 for 2 short rests... If it was half on a short rest, it would be 20 vs 24 and all the features that cost psi dice wouldn't hurt so bad.

Psionic Restoration at level 5 lets the psion regain a number of expended PED "equal to half your number of dice (round down)."

Were you thinking of Psionic Surge at level 7, which lets you spend a HD to regain one expended use of Psionic Modes?

 

[MostlyHarmless42]

I've got a player about to playtest this class in my campaign, so I'll probably have more feedback as time goes on.


My biggest issue with the class so far is that the psychic disciplines are all over the place in usefulness, purely due to the class having such a limited spell list. I.e. the class essentially has next to no necromancy, conjuration, or revocation spells (even considering subclass lists) yet THREE of these disciplones are related to those spell schools.


I also find it odd given a lot of the 2024 design concepts that they didn't just make three psionic disciplines for rerolling ability checks, rerolling saKing throws, and rerolling attack rolls (respectively), rather than making half of the list of options be specific skill checks. It just feel like lazy inefficient use of design space and makes the whole feature feel not great.


And perhaps the oddest part is Attack Mode being substantially worse than Defense Mode. We're trying with helping balanced the feature letting you change all spell damage to psychic damage while attack mode is active and giving them an additional feature at 6th level that let's psions just do psychic damage as a replacement for weapon attacks (like monks and force damage) to help make it less...bad.


It is also completely baffling to me that the necromor...err *meta*morph subclass doesn't get a feature like Unarmored Defense for Monks/Barbarians (using Intelligence) as one of their subclass features.


Overall it's a class that feels like it has potentially, but as written it just isn't there yet. Related, yet not related, if they are so damned hard set on making a freaking psionics class, why did they waste so much damned page space on psionics subclasses in the PHB and not release them all in the same book? Like I'm STILL bitter about soul knife beating out swashbuckler and psi-knight beating out Cavalier/samurai and no I won't shut up about it.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

yet THREE of these disciplones are related to those spell schools

Multiclass or pick them up with feats. The discipline doesn’t care were the spell comes from.

 

[MostlyHarmless42]

Multiclass or pick them up with feats. The discipline doesn’t care were the spell comes from.

If a class feature requires you to multiclass or spend optional feats to be functional, it's a s&%@ class feature and needs to be fixed. Additionally, the features do care. They specifically say "Psion spells", so multiclassing does not work. And again, these are coming at the cost of other potentially good options they could have done instead.

 

[Yaarel]

I've got a player about to playtest this class in my campaign, so I'll probably have more feedback as time goes on.

Cool.

My biggest issue with the class so far is that the psychic disciplines are all over the place in usefulness, purely due to the class having such a limited spell list. I.e. the class essentially has next to no necromancy, conjuration, or revocation spells (even considering subclass lists) yet THREE of these disciplones are related to those spell schools.

I suspect organizing spells by Psion subclass, rather than by Wizard "school", would help the machinery run more smoothly.

Regarding the spells, I see four main and a total of seven possible subclasses:
• Telepath (mind magic: enchantment, phantasm, and telepathy)
• Metamorph (body magic: shapeshift and healing)
• Psykinetic (force magic: telekinesis, flight, force damage, and force constructs)
• Warper (spacetime magic: teleport, extradimensional space, time manipulation, divination, luck)
Also:
• Creator (reality magic: illusion and certain conjurations and transmutations)
• Mancer (elemental magic)
• Channeler (planar magic: 'occult' spirit channeler for Celestial, Fiend, Aberration, Fey, and Undead)

Each subclass has its own suite of flavor-relevant spells.

I also find it odd given a lot of the 2024 design concepts that they didn't just make three psionic disciplines for rerolling ability checks, rerolling saKing throws, and rerolling attack rolls (respectively), rather than making half of the list of options be specific skill checks. It just feel like lazy inefficient use of design space and makes the whole feature feel not great.

Others have also said to merge the skill checks into a single feature. That probably applies to attack and saves too.

And perhaps the oddest part is Attack Mode being substantially worse than Defense Mode. We're trying with helping balanced the feature letting you change all spell damage to psychic damage while attack mode is active and giving them an additional feature at 6th level that let's psions just do psychic damage as a replacement for weapon attacks (like monks and force damage) to help make it less...bad.

I agree, wherever there is a choice, the options need to strive to be equally appealing.

It is also completely baffling to me that the necromor...err *meta*morph subclass doesn't get a feature like Unarmored Defense for Monks/Barbarians (using Intelligence) as one of their subclass features.

Probably Mage Armor should be a feature, or similarly: AC = 10 + Dex + Int (or highest mental ability).

Overall it's a class that feels like it has potentially, but as written it just isn't there yet. Related, yet not related, if they are so damned hard set on making a freaking psionics class, why did they waste so much damned page space on psionics subclasses in the PHB and not release them all in the same book? Like I'm STILL bitter about soul knife beating out swashbuckler and psi-knight beating out Cavalier/samurai and no I won't shut up about it.

I am grateful the psionic subclasses, Psi Knight and Soul Knife, made it into the 2024 core rules, because now psionics is "core". It is a big deal. Maybe if a solid Psion class had already proved popular enough, it too would have been in core. Regarding Swashbuckler, Cavalier, Samurai, the decision was to pick four subclasses that were as different to each other as possible, to convey the versatility of each class. Among the Wizard subclasses, I would have liked to have seen a Bladesinger, but it is what it is. The earlier subclasses are still in play, and expect future products to update them.

 

[Yaarel]

Heh, I should know this by now. Any idea when we will hear about Psion survey results? The survey closed yesterday (June 17).

 

[Gorck]

Heh, I should know this by now. Any idea when we will hear about Psion survey results? The survey closed yesterday (June 17).

Todd should be doing a video any day….oh, never mind.

 

[Kobold Avenger]

I certainly hope they're filtering out certain things that aren't helpful, or least trying to get a better context of the results.

 

[WanderingMystic]

Heh, I should know this by now. Any idea when we will hear about Psion survey results? The survey closed yesterday (June 17).

About two months or so if we are lucky