Psion class (Mearls, Happy Fun Hour)

[TheCosmicKid]

...or, even more out there, the Ranger.

I feel like you're just describing the druid.

 

[tglassy]

Druid would be natural forms. Metamorph would be for weird things, like the Beast Form Discipline or Corrosive Biology or whatever it was called.

 

[TheCosmicKid]

Druid would be natural forms. Metamorph would be for weird things, like the Beast Form Discipline or Corrosive Biology or whatever it was called.

Doesn't it make more sense to bolt this onto the druid chassis than the ranger chassis, if you're going to bolt it onto some existing chassis?

 

[TwoSix]

Doesn't it make more sense to bolt this onto the druid chassis than the ranger chassis, if you're going to bolt it onto some existing chassis?

I did consider that, but psychic warriors always got a lot of psychometabolic powers back in 3.5, so I thought Ranger might be an interesting compromise position. It's not like Ranger gets a lot of love anyway.

 

[tglassy]

I suppose, except they’re currently looking to make it a Psion subclass.

 

[Ancalagon]

They put immortal on Barbarian because they gave the Immortal an AC calculated by 8+dex+Con, which they realized was the Barbarian. The Immortal is all about defense, healing, and being really hard to kill. Kind of like the Barbarian.

The psychic warrior is a warrior. A Fighter. Focusing on attack and is basically an Eldridge Knight with Psionics instead of magic.

The Soul Knife is a dexterous skirmishes who has such control over their mind’s powers, they can create a blade from pure mental strength. Like a psychic ninja. So it’s a Monk class.

The Lurk is going to be a sneaky type who slips in and out of peoples minds like a thief in the night. Thus, a Rogue class.

These all make sense to me but... the barbarian is already tanky. If you put the Immortal's defensive capacities on top of the barbarian, it might be *too* tanky?

I'll also note that using psionics while raging seems... peculiar.

 

[TwoSix]

I'll also note that using psionics while raging seems... peculiar.

Worked for the 3.5 Wilder. Strong emotion allowing one to tap into latent psionic power seems a legit trope to build around, in my eyes.

 

[NaturalZero]

I hope they give us the jedi equivalent base class. Fundamentally, adding psionics to another class gives you a psionic fighter, a psionic wizard, a psionic paladin, or a psionic barbarian. Psionic is the tweak, not the core of the class.

A million times this. The problem with the current class design is that, for many classes, the subclass features are too little, too late. If I want to play a psychic warrior, i don't want to be a generic fighter for 2 levels, then get a drip of psionics that kinda-sorta works with my 90% core fighter chasis. Just give me the damned battlemind or psywar from level 1 with psionic ability that start taking off from the get-go.

Also, the wizard absolutely cannot be THE telepath for this reason. The wizard subclasses in this edition are completely anemic compared to the base class chasis. One wizard at the table gets oracle dice and the other gets +1 hp on zombies but they still wind up picking 90% of the same standard spells! The "telepath" wizard is going to be a guy who gets some minor rider to mind-affecting spells but then still uses the same old sleep, fireball, and polymorph that every other frickin' wizard player uses. The psion needs to be THE telepath.

Doesn't it make more sense to bolt this onto the druid chassis than the ranger chassis, if you're going to bolt it onto some existing chassis?

The problem with giving the druid awesome metamorphic abilities is that he's already a full caster on top of that. We could benefit from a dedicated metamorph class that doesn't need to have his transformations nerfed to offset full spellcasting.

 

[CapnZapp]

I'm getting a bad feeling about this.

The impression is clueless designers with no vision - it sounds more like they're trying to solve a puzzle (which piece fits where?) than they're having a strong and consistent idea of what psionics is, and only are debating how to implement it...

 

[CapnZapp]

Yes, a psychic warrior that is an Eldritch Knight, only with spell points and different spells...

...that's a stopgap measure at best.

It's not completely useless. If temporary. But is it worth a FIVE year wait??

Absolutely not. They could and should have added that year 2, with specific promises that's more to come.

It's the quick and easy solution we use to tide us over until the proper psionics handbook comes along.