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!

 

[I'm A Banana]

....concerns that this closely mimics the monk or the sorcerer are rising...

Looks like the main point of difference is the different concentration mechanic....which is interesting....and might be enough...but it looks pretty minor from the first gloss.

 

[Minigiant]

Switch saves on rest.
LOL. Mearls you crazy, man. I get mind over matter but that's something.

Otherwise. Cool with it. Intelligence no longer dump stat..

 

[Voort]

They can pick another one after every rest through Strength of Mind.

Ah, my mistake.

I can already hear my table's munchkin giggling over an Order of the Immortal / Assassin multiclass.

 

[SigmaOne]

No, it gets Wisdom, and then the Strength of Mind feature means you get to choose your other ST after any short or long rest.

This is a cool feature.

 

[tsadkiel]

Hey, look! It's the 3E warlock! Which I am perfectly okay with, even if it's a break from the tradition of the psion being the super-complicated spellcaster*.

*Psioniccaster, really, but you know what I mean.

 

[MonkeezOnFire]

The unique discipline mechanic is interesting. It's hard to judge balance with other classes just by looking at it so a lot play testing will be needed. Each individual discipline seems strong, but I think the main balancing factor here is that only one discipline can be active at once. You can either be very good at offense or defense but never both at the same time. Mind thrust targeting intelligence score is the only thing that feels off for me.

I'm most curious as to how the full class will look. Will they increase the Psi maximum and add even more powers to each discipline that can utilize it or will they leave the maximum at 5? How will the progression for disciplines known and psi points and look when we have 20 levels? Will the base class get any more abilities or will progression be strictly relegated to the sub classes as it currently is?

 

[Tony Vargas]

I'm glad to see the willingness to add a new class. Psionics <> magic is potentially a little problematic, and the exception (that seems like it's for backwards-MM-compatibility) looks like it'll generally favor the PCs (PC casters will be able to cope with psionic monsters, NPC/monster casters won't be able to counter psionic PCs). Also, the re-naming/re-flavoring to sound less sci-fi is at odds with it somehow not being magic, a Psion sounds maybe a little sci-fi, an Awakened Mystic sounds decidedly magicky. Similarly, explicit connection to the Far Realms could be an issue for some campaigns. Both, however, are the kinds of things the DM can change with minimal effort, so not serious objections.

Anyway, it's good to see a class, not just a phoned-in sub-class.

I don't like the name "Awakened Mystic" at all. Just call it a Psion.

I don't see the need to change it, not while keeping 'Psionics' as the name of it's powers. If it was the 'School of Mysticism,' sure... Class names really shouldn't matter, they're not necessarily used "in the fiction" - one PC could call himself a Mystic, another 'Gifted' or whatever, they needn't say Psion, just because it's on the character sheet. So why change it? Keeping the Psion name would have maintained continuity.

I do like most of the ability names, except "Mind Thrust", which is destined to cause immature giggles at the table for years to come.

It goes all the way back to the Attack Modes in the 1e PH Psionics Appendix. Similarly, Intellect Fortress was a Defense Mode.

 

[ZeshinX]

[sarcasm]

Well, didn't take 5e long to introduce a class to out-Fighter the Fighter (looking at you, Order of the Immortal). Wouldn't be D&D if that didn't happen.

[/sarcasm]

Snark aside, that one bears close examination...some of the disciplines for OotI are....insanely good. No real way to get more than one attack per round though, aside from Celerity's Surge of Action (and then only at 5th level), so perhaps that limits its otherwise overall excellent-ness.

Not a bad take on Psionics, though 5e is really, really starting to show its just the 2e Emperor's new clothes.

I'll mirror a few others in that I would have liked to see psionics this edition be a sort of spread out option that can be added to existing classes (be it via archetypes or feats or something akin to that). I'm sure that can happen still, but you know what, I still like this.

 

[Minigiant]

I like the psionic magic transparency.
Psionics is unaffected by magic except when psionics is creating magic.

 

[Yaarel]

The fact there is a maximum amount of points that an adventurer can spend at any one time, is very frequently misunderstood by too many D&D players.

The following rules need to be much more emphatic - more difficult to miss. "The maximum number of psi points a mystic can spend on a single discipline option is based on class level."



Maybe have its own black bolded section title saying something like "Maximum Number of Psi Points".