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.

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!
 

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Rune

Once A Fool
I really like the core mechanic for the mystic class, but the specific options are mostly crazy-overpowered. Especially with multiclassing.
 

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Dire Bare

Legend
No one is twisting your arm to use this fluff. It's just one way of presenting how psionics might mesh with a universe suffused with magic.

Wait . . . we DON'T have to use fluff as written? Well golly, thanks for the insight, I've been doing it wrong for ages now!

Sorry for the snark, but "no duh" we don't have to use fluff as written. Doesn't mean we can't discuss what we like and what we don't about the fluff, or that it isn't an important part of D&D. Changing the fluff and leaving behind classic D&D setting elements is what happened with 4E, and that left a lot of fans alienated. I'm hoping that the final psionic rules for 5E don't make the same mistake.
 

Dire Bare

Legend
Maybe rename the ‘Order of the Invisible Hand’ as the ‘Order of the Forcer’

Codifying a gravity-like telekinetic force as a ‘hand’ is lame.

I like it! And it makes perfect sense! If you see a guy concentrating real hard, and then a boulder is ripped from the earth and thrown at the bad guys, you could easily describe it as, "It's like he used a giant invisible hand to throw that boulder at the horrible monster!"

As long as in the description, we have language like, "Sometimes, members of the Order of the Invisible Hand are known as telekineticists."
 


Tony Vargas

Legend
D&D has struggled to get psionics "right" in every edition (and it seems 5E won't be any different), and has never quite managed to do it.
Part of the issue, of course, is that psionics are sci-fi trope, not a fantasy one. Small problem, since D&D really doesn't stick to the fantasy genre too tightly, but it's an issue.

WotC isn't run by fools and they do a lot of marketing to help them guide their decisions. If they have left the pseudoscience behind in favor of mysticism and the occult for psionics (which, BTW, Pathfinder has already done), I'm sure that's based on good data.
It's not like it was run by fools who didn't use the best data they could get in 2007, either. Maybe fools would do a better job of guessing what they heck we crazy nerdraging D&D fans actually want?

If the classic archetypes are easily modeled by new class/archetypes and called out as such, then changing names from an "occult" feel to a "pseudoscience" feel would be very simple and hopefully keep everybody happy.
5e has gone heavily for 'classic D&D feel,' and changing the tenor of psionics at this late date would seem to be at odds with that. But, I guess when you've got so few designers working on a game, it's going to start really reflecting their vision (or bias) pretty closely, for good or ill.
 


fuindordm

Adventurer
Overall, not too bad.

Disciplines are sort of like cleric domains (always prepared) that you can swap out. I would hope that at higher levels the class gets to maintain more than one domain at a time somehow. The saving throw mechanic is also neat, but I'd expect most PCs to leave it set to Con rather than Dex to improve their Concentration checks.

The only thing that I don't like is that they are using the spell point scale from the DMG. I think spell points work better when low-level slots still consume a significant portion of the pool--I don't like to see characters that at high levels can cast hundreds of low-level spells per day.

The rule for psi/magic transparency is fine with me. You can say that psi learns how to stimulate a spell in the weave, or that some magic spells imitate psi--either way works. Some refinement of this concept is possible down the line.
 

GX.Sigma

Adventurer
I like this a lot. At first, I was concerned that you had to lock yourself into one subclass from level 1. I played a psion in 4e, and my character could do all kinds of psionic stuff. After reading it, though, it seems like the different subclasses really are totally different archetypes. This is a neat way to fit a lot of character types into one class (I wish they did this with the Bard/Cleric/Druid/Sorcerer/Wizard in the core game, but oh well).

I miss the old terminology, and I'll definitely say that in the survey, but if I'm outnumbered I can't really argue with that.

Also, holy crap, they just won't quit jamming the Far Realm into the lore. I get that they want to push the IP, but I think they could've been more subtle with it. They could've just had a sentence saying "In some D&D worlds, psionic power is said to come from a plane called the Far Realm" and leave it at that. Maybe even have a description of how different worlds interpret psionics (the "evolution" and "dreams" things sound cool), implying it's up to the DM to figure out how it works in their world.
 

This is neat, but it's 1/4 of a class and so far they haven't revisited any topics on Unearthed Arcana. The usefulness of the article series really depends on if they actually start revising in response to feedback.

However, this just suggest that down the road we're going to have 2-3 UA that are just revisits of this class. Or months of just repeated content. There are six UA articles already. Mearls could just revise and coast for the rest of 2015...
 

Staffan

Legend
My initial thoughts:

1. I could do without the explicit Far Realm connection. The Far Realm is absent from Dark Sun lore, and not the primary source for psionic power in Eberron. These are the two published settings with the heaviest psionic influence, and the psionics rules should play well with those.

2. I like the basic structure: concentrate on a discipline to get a minor static bonus, spend PP to get bigger effects. Some of the specifics need work, however.

3. Mind Thrust: This is very wacky. IMO, it should force the target to make an Intelligence save or take damage, possibly doing half damage on a success (or perhaps have that as an potential upgrade, either via a straight-up class feature or via a discipline power). Also, I think it could do with a bit of automatic scaling, like a cantrip. Giving it a free 1d8 per tier sounds about right.

4. Psychic Mind: I don't have any problem with this, but someone earlier in the thread misunderstood it. The ability says the target can respond if you let it and it speaks at least one language. Someone thought that meant you needed a language in common, but that's not what it says. It's just there so you can't use it for two-way communication with creatures that lack language entirely, like most beasts.

5. Intellect Fortress: Could do with some abilities to spend points on.

6. Order of the Immortal: Since they're primarily "beat things up" characters, they could do with an extra attack. Though it's possible that that comes at 8th level instead of the customary 5th, because of the cleric parallels.

7. Psionic Regeneration: Should state that it does not work while unconscious.

8. Celerity - Surge of Action: I feel that this has too much potential for abuse, at the same time as the cost is very steep. Some have stated that they think this is an invitation to multi-class-dip into the Mystic class, but I think that's a small risk. After all, you need to be 5th level before using this ability, and I don't really think you can call a 5-level multi-class a "dip." But at the same time, it is kind of robbing the fighter of his biggest ability, and letting the character use it multiple times in quick succession, albeit at a steep cost (a 5th level mystic can do it 5 times). I think this would be better as a Cunning Action/Haste-like feature - something like "For one minute, you can take any of these actions as a bonus action: Attack (single attack only), Dash, Dodge, Help, Hide, or Use An Object."

9. Psionic Weapon - Lethal Strike: On the other hand (compared to issue 6), it's possible that this is supposed to be the Immortal's primary damage boost. If so, I don't approve on account of needing to have this discipline running in order to get it, and because it eats your psi points for what should be an at-will thing. It's also possible that this is supposed to be something on top of regular damage, in which case the reasonable thing to do would be to compare it to Divine Smite - at which point this is much superior. Smite gives +1d8 + 1d8 per spell slot expended, whereas this gives +3d10 for 3 PP which is the equivalent of a 2nd level slot, or +5d10 for 5 PP which is the equivalent of a 3rd level slot.

10. Psionic Weapon - Augmented Weapon: For a caster to get a +3 weapon out of the magic weapon spell, they have to use a 6th level slot. This guy gets it for 5 PP = 3rd level slot. OK, for a shorter duration (potentially - 1 minute vs 1 hour, but the 1 hour spell requires breakable concentration while this guy can't lose concentration to damage), but still.
 

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