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!

 

[Li Shenron]

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.

If this is what you're after, check again the UA article because it's already mentioned there:

Order of the Awakened
Order of the Immortal
Order of the Knife
Order of the Invisible Hand

 

[Li Shenron]

My bar might be a little lower than yours when it comes to basic story. It's enough that I have "unlocks powers of the mind" as a description or "masters magic through study". That is literally all I need, the rest comes from the campaign setting itself.

Same for me.

I don't mind that much to have stronger fluff as long as it can be just treated as an example. For instance, I have NEVER played a game of D&D where the Wizard Schools were real organizations (much less actual premises), but instead just 'schools of thought' like philosophers who may be grouped (by others) theoretically even if they don't have a personal relationship or even lived at the same time. Druid circles, Bard colleges etc. they all work as real things or loose concepts, whatever you want.

Still, the connection of psionics to the Far Realms feels too much artificial, unneeded and straight inappropriate (because Far Realm is madness, and psionic is clarity i.e. the opposite) to me. And I don't think we need another 'every power needs a source' rush like in previous edition. Psionics to me feels very much from within (like Sorcery) so it doesn't need an external source or connection to 'someone/thing is granting me these powers'.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

[Wizards 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 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.).

Wizard: Has to go to school to learn magic.
Druid: Has to...meditate on nature or something?
Sorcerer: Is just naturally magical.
Warlock: Cuts a deal with the devil (or something of similar power)

Some of these are more inherently flavorful than others. The Warlock is crazy flavorful, no question; it's a walking Faust story. The others aren't even in its league. "Go to school for magic" isn't necessarily particularly flavorful, though it can be if you work for it. "I'm just naturally magical" isn't particularly flavorful either, and that's the only way you can summarize Storm, Dragon, and Chaos Sorcerers (and I don't even know how you'd fold in the Favored Soul). Although the wild shape mechanic is very flavorful, how you get to be able to do that is...pretty sketchily described. A "transcendent" understanding of nature, or revering a nature-god (despite that also being a thing Clerics can totally do).

The Mystic isn't just "discover brain powers," though you could call it that if you want to ignore an important detail. You need to have an exposure to something completely outside all "possible" experiences, for your reality. That sounds, to me, pretty close to that "transcendant union with nature" description of the Druid--it's just a transcendent disunion with nature. A perspective shift so complete, it lets you see at angles to reality. To give a mundane example, it would be like having, for just a split second, a completely realized four-dimensional picture of our spacetime. You'd have something no one else in the whole world has, actual awareness of what four-dimensional things look like, and you could make sense of things which are utterly senseless when squashed to three dimensions. If you retained enough understanding of that moment, you could in theory achieve things that shouldn't be possible, like passing through solid matter (shifting, ever so slightly, along a higher-dimensional axis, for just a moment).

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."

Sure it does, if you let it. The people who have the above situation happen to them are fundamentally branded by it. They're different now, they're the equivalent of (actual) UFO abductees or survivors of demonic/ghostly possession. For some, it's an ultimately negative, crushing experience--the equivalent of a shell-shocked vet who never really comes back from the war. For some, it's ultimately harmless, albeit leaving an indelible mark on their psyche--the cloudcukoolander, the bunny-ears lawyer, the incredibly gifted librarian who has a thing about beanie babies. And for a few more, it's helpful. All of these people can be drawn to each other, marked in a similar way, unable to view the world the same way that all the mundies blissfully do now that the veil of ignorance is gone.

And there you have both a conflict (the inherent alienness inflicted on people who gain the potential to use psionic powers) and an organization (people seeking a support group), as well as the potential for another conflict (the exploitation of those who didn't handle their "awakening" well by nefarious businesses, politicians, or cultists).

 

[I'm A Banana]

If this is what you're after, check again the UA article because it's already mentioned there:

Order of the Awakened
Order of the Immortal
Order of the Knife
Order of the Invisible Hand

It's not really clear what function these Orders serve in the world, where they are, what they do, what their goal is. WHY does the Order of the Immortal do what they do? What is the MOTIVE for the Order of the Knife? How do these both reflect the conflict that the Mystic supposedly embodies?

You need to have an exposure to something completely outside all "possible" experiences, for your reality. That sounds, to me, pretty close to that "transcendant union with nature" description of the Druid--it's just a transcendent disunion with nature.

I can get on board with that, though I still don't get WHY a character (PC or NPC) would do that?

Sure it does, if you let it.

Oh, my quibble isn't that it's impossible to do it, just that the Mystic doesn't do it automagically, which is the case with pretty much every 5e class, and something I'm a big fan of.

 

[Mercule]

Except in 5e the concept of "the Weave" is the core all-setting (unless some setting, like perhaps Dark Sun specifically overrides it) official explanation of how magic works in the D&D multiverse. "The Weave" and its Mystra connection is just the name and world-specific flavor of how it works in the Forgotten Realms.

The game has survived for 40 years without needing a unified theory of magic. I can see no value in adding one, now. That said, it's relatively harmless because most groups I've played with have had some sort of magical energy field that wizards tap into. My objection probably comes largely from a desire to keep Forgotten Realms setting concepts outside the core books. Keep the flow of ideas and terminology in one direction -- no backwash, please.

I can see a few a reasons for why they listed the Forgotten Realms ethnicities, but it does feel off sticking it right there in the PHB/Basic Rules.

I'm sure it was, at least in part, because of the original intent to provide setting material "in line" rather than in separate, designated setting books. If there's one place I'd like to see the more invasive form of "errata" used, it'd be in purging the in-line references to the Realms from the second printing of the PHB (the Weave, Faerunian ethnicities, and anything else I may have missed). I'd have zero issues with them being in an appendix, though.

 

[Minigiant]

The snips and pieces of D&D's arcane and divine magic is that it is very very very very very very very bad truespeak. The Weave acts as an intermediary and translates spells back into true naming for Reality to understand it.

That's why wizards use verbal and somatic components. It's really speaking True Speech.with a horrible accent and terrible sign language.
Bards sing and get hints into the words of creation of the language of reality.
And deities give clerics words and gestures directly from the parts of the language that is in their portfolios.

Psionics, if not magic, is then alien to reality. It is some weird thing outside of normal space and breaks the rules of how things are done. Psionics therefore has no connection to the Weave directly and thus comes from someplace else. The Far Realm would be an obvious or easy choice as it is alien to reality.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I can get on board with that, though I still don't get WHY a character (PC or NPC) would do that?

The article seems to present it as not being something you choose--rather, it's an event that happens to you, and how you react to it is what matters. Much like the large number of books and films about characters who don't seek out special power, but rather have the special power beat a path to their door (sometimes forcefully). Rand al'Thor didn't choose to be a channeller or the reincarnation of Lews Therin. Ged (and Harry Potter, for that matter) didn't choose their wizardly-heroic path, it was chosen for them. Lirael always wanted to be a Clayr, but her nigh-unique status as a Clayr-Abhorsen destined her for a completely different path. This is not to say that all characters are "born" to the power--merely that some choose it, and some do not.

Does the walker choose the path, or the path the walker?

But if you want someone who WOULD choose it, you need look no further than the desperate, the touched, and the marginalized. Surely, if magic and psionics are not the same, there are things one can do and the other cannot. Perhaps someone tried to learn magic, and it failed them, so they pushed boundaries that shouldn't be pushed, and found answers to questions no one should ever ask. Perhaps you have what 3e tried to codify as the "alienist"--someone who was never right in the head to begin with, but finally, FINALLY finds the only "someone(s)" who think the same way. Or perhaps it is the people who have never been allowed to taste the fruits of traditional magic: imagine the people living at rock bottom in a pitiless magocratic society, struggling to deal with all the magical fallout and pollution such a culture would produce. I dare say, a snarl of incompatible spells could easily create such a perspective shift--if magic is the "sysop codes" of reality, and a mage (or several) gives reality fundamentally irreconcilable instructions, I'd expect to see some general protection faults along the line.

Oh, my quibble isn't that it's impossible to do it, just that the Mystic doesn't do it automagically, which is the case with pretty much every 5e class, and something I'm a big fan of.

I don't really buy the "automagic" thing--Druids, divorced of fiction, are just "guys who use nature magic." There is no automagic fluff--you have to write it yourself. Most people (perhaps lazily) resort to the tried-and-true modern-legend version of the Celtic religion, but at this point that fluff is sufficiently divorced from its historical context to be "emulating itself." Sorcerers, divorced of fiction, can't even be united under a single archetype, because Dragon, Chaos, and Favored Soul don't actually line up in flavor terms (Dragon, and Storm, claim descent; Chaos generally claims--like Mystics--pre-exposure to the exotic phenomenon in question; Favored Souls essentially ape the Warlock fluff, a special and personal dispensation from a powerful entity, but make it a divine boon rather than an infernal pact.)

And if we're going to go that far--where's the "automagically" generated story for Fighters, or Rogues? I can't count the number of times people have rigorously defended the total fluff neutrality of the Fighter as being proof positive why they can't get certain things. Or does "merc/soldier" count as "automagically" generated fluff? Because if it does, it feels like a double standard to say "telepath/telekinetic" has no inherent fluff, particularly with the solid establishment of things like the Carrie movies, or the way teeps and teeks are treated in Babylon 5, or the way most psychic mutants are even more feared than general mutants in X-Men (with only the obviously-nonstandard-physiology humans, like Hank McCoy, being more feared, and that only with direct personal contact--Beast can't fry your brain from the other side of the planet.)

 

[Yaarel]

It's enough that I have "unlocks powers of the mind" as a description or "masters magic through study". That is literally all I need, the rest comes from the campaign setting itself.

True.

Different settings must be able to use the psionic adventurers in different ways for different kinds of world.

 

[Yaarel]

It is important for players to use D&D books as a springboard for imagination. They arent meant for one world, but for *any* worlds. They encourage unlimited imagination, creativity, and experimentation.

The Far Realms will probably never exist in any setting I ever play in. If it did, it would be a one-shot.

I require the psionic classes to have zero connection with Far Realms - or any other ‘source’ that is external to the mind of the adventurers.



If the rules-as-written makes naturalistic and transcendent consciousness flavors difficult or confrontational, it isnt the psionics that has to go, but D&D itself that has to go.

The intrusion of rules that fixate on setting requirements - including gods, the Great Wheel, and so on - have already turned me off - and causing wandering eye.

I am looking at other systems that are good. Between them and using the OGL to invent my own system, there are good options besides D&D.

If 5e makes it too difficult to facilitate my own world-building creativity and interests - and my own character concept building - then it will be the end of an era for me.

I wont fight and argue about heavy-handed, intrusive, unwanted flavor requirements, baked into the rules-as-written. If they are there, it is the D&D game that will go away.

The 5e core books are already way too deep in the quicksand of someone elses setting.

For me, Psionics is the last chance to write classes that are open to player creativity.



Inspire. Dont impose.

 

[Li Shenron]

Psionics, if not magic, is then alien to reality. It is some weird thing outside of normal space and breaks the rules of how things are done. Psionics therefore has no connection to the Weave directly and thus comes from someplace else. The Far Realm would be an obvious or easy choice as it is alien to reality.

I guess there must be different fundamental views on psionics, because when I think of that, I think of The Matrix or X-Men: psionics is reality, but of the kind that few really get. It might be the next step in evolution, like handling tools, walking upright or speaking. There was a time where nobody knew those were even possible, but a few scattered individual started doing just that... Or a potential everyone has but is somehow 'hidden' until casually discovered or properly taught (like a lot of things). That's the flavor that psionics always had for me (and perhaps even the reason why in general it never totally fit into my favourite D&D): not alien, not unnatural, not supernatural, but pretty much 100% natural!