Unearthed Arcana Psionics Hits Unearthed Arcana

If you've been waiting anxiously for psionics to arrive in the D&D Unearthed Arcana column, your wait is over! The Awakened Mystic is a psionic class by Mike Mearls which - currently - has access to three psionic disciplines, with more to come later. Following on from Mike Mearls' question, Should Psionic Flavour Be Altered? (a discussion which promoted 750+ comments here on EN World, and is still ongoing), it sounds like he has answered the question with a resounding "yes". Rather than pseudo-scientific sounding terms like telepathy, clairovoyance, and the like, we have the disciplines Conquering Mind, Intellect Fortress (a callback to earlier editions), and Third Eye.

UPDATE - IMPORTANT NOTE FROM MIKE MEARLS: "For folks looking at the psionics material in today's UA, looks like there was a minor error. Not all the material is there." Keep an eye on it; I expect it'll be fixed soon.

UPDATE 2 - fixed! Updated document includes another three disciplines (Celerity, Iron Durability, and Psionic Weapon) and the basic rules to the class.

Find it here!

 

[Nifft]

I cut out your change of topic/moving target. You pretended I asked about perceiving around a corner when I hadn't said that.

Mistwell, don't play like you're obtuse.

You said that perception didn't work on places that can't be seen.

I provided two counter examples, one of which was hearing something around a corner.

The rules text talks about perception, not sight, so this is relevant to the discussion, and nobody is pretending you said it.

Providing an example which directly contradicts the core of your argument -- which is that perception and sight are identical -- is not moving the goal posts. It's just proving your argument to be wrong.

Why are you escalating to these scorched-earth rhetorical tactics? You're not going to convince anyone of your point by playing dumb, especially not when the counter-examples are really easy to understand.

Perfect example of what I mean by you changing the topic and being a moving target. There is a reason I said "a solid rock wall" .

The topic was not whatever substance of wall you seem to have sat upon.

The issue was how Blindsight works, and the rules as written are not clear.

The only thing you've demonstrated is that you're unwilling to engage in a discussion about this topic without you resorting to personal attacks and rhetorical dishonesty.

I'm no longer interested in your opinion about this rule, and I'm certainly not continuing to discuss it in this thread.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

Yes but you cannot roll a perception check to hear or smell a dude through a solid stone wall. You can however still detect tremors in the ground from him through that wall. Tremorsense very clearly detects EVERYTHING on the ground in that radius, while blindsight still depends on the normal perception rules to detect things. They're not the same, even just looking at the MM entry for them.

Also, you can't Hide from Tremorsense AFAICT, but you can Hide from blindsight just like from regular sight.

 

[Mistwell]

The issue was how Blindsight works, and the rules as written are not clear..

No, it was not. Maybe that's what you wanted to talk about, but I was questioning you saying Blindsight and Tremorsense were the same. I think we both know the answer to my question of, "Can you perceive someone through a solid rock wall with both Blindsight and Tremorsense?" is a clear "No, you can only do that with tremorsense". They're not the same, you can do things with tremorsense like perceive through a solid rock wall that you cannot do with blindsight, which was the issue initially raised.

I have not resorted to a personal attack (and if you think I have, report me). I am trying to focus on one issue until we resolve it, before I move on to the next. You're free to not respond of course, but don't act like it was a personal attack for me to focus on one thing at a time. I never asked about corners or forcewalls or glass walls. You can talk about those things, but it's not a personal attack for me to point out the argument is not responsive.

 

[Mistwell]

Also, you can't Hide from Tremorsense AFAICT, but you can Hide from blindsight just like from regular sight.

Agreed, unless you are flying of course. The two abilities function differently, as written.

 

[Nifft]

Also, you can't Hide from Tremorsense AFAICT, but you can Hide from blindsight just like from regular sight.

There's nothing in the 5e Tremorsense description about trumping or negating Stealth.

Monsters which rely on Tremorsense still have Perception scores.

There's no reason to think Tremorsense trumps Stealth -- except baggage from earlier editions.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

There's nothing in the 5e Tremorsense description about trumping or negating Stealth.

Monsters which rely on Tremorsense still have Perception scores.

There's no reason to think Tremorsense trumps Stealth -- except baggage from earlier editions.

Can't be baggage from earlier editions because AD&D didn't have Tremorsense, and that's the only edition I'm familiar with. I'm actually going off the MM description of Tremorsense, "can detect and pinpoint vibrations" as long as they're in contact with the ground. YMMV apparently.

 

[Nifft]

Can't be baggage from earlier editions because AD&D didn't have Tremorsense, and that's the only edition I'm familiar with. I'm actually going off the MM description of Tremorsense, "can detect and pinpoint vibrations" as long as they're in contact with the ground. YMMV apparently.

Ah, yeah, I'm assuming that the ability to not make sound vibrations extends to the ability to not make Tremor vibrations.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

Ah, yeah, I'm assuming that the ability to not make sound vibrations extends to the ability to not make Tremor vibrations.

If you were the DM and that was your ruling, I'd shrug and say, "Okay." If I were the DM and my ruling was the opposite, I would expect you to do the same.

Doesn't seem like a big deal to me either way--pros and cons exist for PCs in both cases.

 

[I'm A Banana]

I don't know why the Far Realm story seems insufficient to you, it actually feels redundant to me.

It's just kind of a weak hook with no tie to the mechanics.

Wizards don't really have a story or fiction to them! They read books, they copy scrolls, some may have had teachers. That's it.

They're academics who master magic by their intellect, which is reflected in their spellbook mechanic and their subclass being a "school" of magic. This instantly creates things in the world - magical centers of education, or factions of wizards based around schools. It places the wizard in a context in the setting.

Druids also don't really have much of a backup fiction. Nobody really explains how nature can possibly grant their powers.

They're casters of the wilderness, which is exhibited in their wildshape mechanic. Their subclass further refines this by putting them in the world via various organizations or groups of druids who promote the magic or the shape-shifting methods of channeling the wilderness.

The Mystic, as described, doesn't have much of a place in the world or much meat in terms of how they look as NPC's (and how they're different from monks/sorcerers/etc.).

I don't think Psions/Mystics need much more explained than they managed to unlock some unusual capabilities of the mind that simply most people don't have, or haven't learned, just like e.g. Barbarians do with Rage and Rogues with their highly developed skills.

I've got a higher bar than that for a 5e class. I need to see members of this class as people in the world in some way. "Unlock some unusual capabilities of the mind" doesn't give you an organization or training or an origin story or a mentor or a conflict or anything. It's a pretty bland description of "makes magic happen, but differently."

 

[Kobold Avenger]

I don't really care too much about the name Mystic, while I certainly would want many of the powers like Ego Whip and Id Insinuation still around I'm not too tied to pseudo-science names. While Mystic is generic and ambiguous based on the history of D&D and the usage of that word, it's certainly one way of making Psionics not stick out like a sore thumb for some campaigns.

I'm very much in the camp of 3.5e having the best approach in D&D, even though I got my start in 2e. I remember just how bad it was trying to use psionics in 2e because of things like mental contact from psionic combat, or it's replacement of tangents. 3.0e also had the flop of psionic combat, which was generally best avoided. I think they got the message going into 3.5e just to drop psionic combat as something to be different for the sake of being different. With 3.5e being my preferred approach, and Mage the Ascension being another big influence, my ideas of psionics and magic is strongly in the Grand Unified Theory approach of how such abilities relate to each other story-wise.

Even though I don't like how 2e psionics played at all, I think they should just have the idea of "sciences" and "devotions" being around in some form. I feel that Disciplines should have most of it's options being spells just like other classes, there easy to compare with other classes and play with better for more of the fence-sitting-in-opinions-of-psionics DMs, these can be the "sciences". At will abilities and other miscellaneous stuff that can't be pigeonholed into new or existing spells should be "devotions".

For fitting in psionics other than being psuedo-scifi abilities, I actually feel that Pathfinder took a good approach with Psychic spells and abilities in the upcoming Occult Adventures, giving psychic phenomena a strong connection to the "spooky" feel of the occult and the paranormal with classes, in many ways quite Victorian in the feel of a bunch classes like the Medium and Spirtualist. That's certainly one thematic approach for including "psychic" concepts in a campaign setting.

Another approach I liked, was how the CRPG Pillars of Eternity basically had a psionic class in the form of the Cipher. While it basically took up the Sorcerer's slot in the same way the Chanter took the Bard's slot, the Cipher was very thematically the strange mental talent with somewhat unconventional powers. They fit into that game's setting since spells and magic were simply based on the manipulation of souls and their energy, and Ciphers were one way of doing it. Though I wouldn't base anything mechanically on them, since "focus" point tracking based on damage is something easy for a computer, but more complicated for a bunch of human players.