D&D 5E Psionics in Tasha

[Chaosmancer]

1. I am not the poster who mentioned "play better, think more, be better players". I am happy that 5e was designed as a super smooth entryway for HUGE amounts of new players to pick up and learn tabletop RPGs. I don't demand that any table play in any way that they don't find fun for themselves. I don't think that general design for 5e should veer from this zone of complexity.

I never said you were that poster.

But from your edit of my quote, your disagreement with my statement, and your utter dismissal by saying you would "help prvent him from screaming into the wind" by laying out false reasons and false conclusions that made it seem like even discussing was a waste of time, you certainly took on an appearance of agreeing with his post.

2. I am more of a boardgamer than I am an RPGer nowadays. I have the same username on BGG if you want to scope out my pedigree. I understand the concept of weight. I am happy that 5e is of similar weight in the RPG world as, say, Pandemic is in the boardgame world. Pandemic is a great example, actually, in that it has sold massive amounts of copies BECAUSE OF it's easily accessible design. The second expansion for Pandemic, In the Lab, adds at least another half-point of complexity in curing the diseases because it wanted to give the big fans something more to dig their teeth into when playing the game. Its optional. It doesn't have to hit the table, but it is there for those that want to explore it. My brother, who owns Pandemic as a casual boardgamer has no interest in In the Lab, and may not even know it exists. He is happy to play the base game and move on. The existance of some optional heavier rules isn't impacting his love of the game at all.

Two things

1) I could not assume you were aware, but thank you for telling me that you have a pedigree.

2) Samloyal did not seem to present his position as one about optional rules. His post read to me as a desire to rewrite 5e magic from the ground up, Which would be taking Pandemic and redesigning it to be a completely different game. Now, I could be way off about that, but that was the feel I got from his message.

Which, goes against what you seem to be implying you are for, which are crunchier, optional rules. He seems like he wants a crunchier, core system.

That is exactly what people like myself are SCREAMING about with 5e. Yes, we have a great introductory game. Yes it sells like hotcakes. Yes we have millions of new players...that's all awesome. But that doesn't mean that every release for 5e ever has to adhere to that same level of design. Give the hardcore fans something to sink their teeth into. Who cares if it doesn't sell as well? Make it a downloadable supplement. Make it a small part of a Tasha's book that can be ignored if desired. Just give fans who want a little bit more Weight in their game SOMETHING in the 5 years the game has been in print.

I can empathize with the desire for something. But, this seems to be a desire to make the core experience of psionics for the base game, highly complex and breaking multiple different design goals.

And WoTC has allowed a lot of downloadable supplements and other resources for weighter play. But, Tasha's isn't a niche product. Psionics is something they are trying to make sure can integrate with the core play experience. I fully agree that something more complex would be welcome. I just don't see that happening with a major book release meant to expand the core game.

That is what the fan content and DMs Guild sponsored content is for.

3. My initial response to correct your statement was because you were representing ME by saying "The rest of us" and then saying something opposite of how I feel. Even when you boil down "the rest of us" to just the users on this thread, you still aren't speaking for everyone.

A fair point, but thus are the limits of language. "Me and the majority of people I have talked with and interacted with within the scope of this community" is a bit more a mouthful. The rest of us was clearly not all inclusive, because that could be the rest of the planet earth too, which is clearly wrong since most of them don't care about DnD.

But your correction goes beyond making sure it is known that you are not part of the group I am speaking about, replacing it with "I" to make it seem like I am the solitary and only person who feels this way. Which is equally innaccurate and false.

 

[EscherEnigma]

And as I showed [...]

Asserted. You did not show, you asserted.

Further, you are confusing correlation (there are no published monsters that have components on psionic abilities) with causation (those monsters don't have components because they're psionic).

You are very obviously confusing your preference for the rules.

But hey, as I said, if you think the rules as written are wrong, you are free to go to the writer. I even did the leg work and provided you his twitter handle.

 

[Ovinomancer]

1. I am not the poster who mentioned "play better, think more, be better players". I am happy that 5e was designed as a super smooth entryway for HUGE amounts of new players to pick up and learn tabletop RPGs. I don't demand that any table play in any way that they don't find fun for themselves. I don't think that general design for 5e should veer from this zone of complexity.

2. I am more of a boardgamer than I am an RPGer nowadays. I have the same username on BGG if you want to scope out my pedigree. I understand the concept of weight. I am happy that 5e is of similar weight in the RPG world as, say, Pandemic is in the boardgame world. Pandemic is a great example, actually, in that it has sold massive amounts of copies BECAUSE OF it's easily accessible design. The second expansion for Pandemic, In the Lab, adds at least another half-point of complexity in curing the diseases because it wanted to give the big fans something more to dig their teeth into when playing the game. Its optional. It doesn't have to hit the table, but it is there for those that want to explore it. My brother, who owns Pandemic as a casual boardgamer has no interest in In the Lab, and may not even know it exists. He is happy to play the base game and move on. The existance of some optional heavier rules isn't impacting his love of the game at all.

That is exactly what people like myself are SCREAMING about with 5e. Yes, we have a great introductory game. Yes it sells like hotcakes. Yes we have millions of new players...that's all awesome. But that doesn't mean that every release for 5e ever has to adhere to that same level of design. Give the hardcore fans something to sink their teeth into. Who cares if it doesn't sell as well? Make it a downloadable supplement. Make it a small part of a Tasha's book that can be ignored if desired. Just give fans who want a little bit more Weight in their game SOMETHING in the 5 years the game has been in print.

3. My initial response to correct your statement was because you were representing ME by saying "The rest of us" and then saying something opposite of how I feel. Even when you boil down "the rest of us" to just the users on this thread, you still aren't speaking for everyone.

So, the issue with 2 is one of causing headaches in the community. If more complex psionics, as the going example, are printed by WotC, they either have to be labeled as incompatible with organized play or they're going to be used at lots of tables and cause lots of people to need to learn them. If they label the section as incompatible with organized play, they're doing themselves a disservice, as there are a lot of players that get a lot of playing in at organized play tables who now can't use these rules, even if they like them. The confusion a separate, non-organized play download would cause isn't necessarily large, but they've already done that, three or four times, with OA content on psionics. IE, this is already out there. This doesn't remove the constraint that anything officially published is official or will cause weirdness in their larger business model.

Finally, the issue with. "who cares if it doesn't sell as well?" I imagine the design team at WotC cares. WotC has an huge design team on staff for an RPG. That's only possible because of sales. If they start making products that don't sell as well, but are popular with niche markets, then they will not be able to afford to keep as many designers on staff. They already tried to make four or so attempts as appealing to the niche market while still having broader appeal -- they've been trying since the NEXT playtest! -- but it didn't take -- the factions in the niche market couldn't align well enough to find a large enough customer base. In the end, sales matter. They aren't the only thing, or even sometimes the most important thing, but without them, there's nothing.

 

[JiffyPopTart]

So, the issue with 2 is one of causing headaches in the community. If more complex psionics, as the going example, are printed by WotC, they either have to be labeled as incompatible with organized play or they're going to be used at lots of tables and cause lots of people to need to learn them. If they label the section as incompatible with organized play, they're doing themselves a disservice, as there are a lot of players that get a lot of playing in at organized play tables who now can't use these rules, even if they like them. The confusion a separate, non-organized play download would cause isn't necessarily large, but they've already done that, three or four times, with OA content on psionics. IE, this is already out there. This doesn't remove the constraint that anything officially published is official or will cause weirdness in their larger business model.

Finally, the issue with. "who cares if it doesn't sell as well?" I imagine the design team at WotC cares. WotC has an huge design team on staff for an RPG. That's only possible because of sales. If they start making products that don't sell as well, but are popular with niche markets, then they will not be able to afford to keep as many designers on staff. They already tried to make four or so attempts as appealing to the niche market while still having broader appeal -- they've been trying since the NEXT playtest! -- but it didn't take -- the factions in the niche market couldn't align well enough to find a large enough customer base. In the end, sales matter. They aren't the only thing, or even sometimes the most important thing, but without them, there's nothing.

1. I can't comment on how organized play works. I don't know how they treat optional rules (like multiclassing and feats). However they treat those is probably how they should treat any "optional" module from any sourcebook.

2. 5e does not have any books released so far that are dedicated to a single concept of gameplay crunch. Additional crunch is tied in either with an adventure path, a campaign setting, or a book of other crunch. Xanathar's had 17 pages of the book dedicated to random tables of names. I would be willing to wager few tables use those names and those 17 pages aren't referenced near as often as the additional subclasses and spells are. The existence of the niche section of the book doesn't render the entire book useless to groups that do not need random name generators. Similarly the existence of 17 pages of a base class of a psion using a more complex ruleset wouldn't render a Tasha's book useless to groups wanting access to its other 150+ pages of content. I also would be willing to wager that more 5e players would use a complex psion optional class than would use those names tables.

 

[Ovinomancer]

1. I can't comment on how organized play works. I don't know how they treat optional rules (like multiclassing and feats). However they treat those is probably how they should treat any "optional" module from any sourcebook.

2. 5e does not have any books released so far that are dedicated to a single concept of gameplay crunch. Additional crunch is tied in either with an adventure path, a campaign setting, or a book of other crunch. Xanathar's had 17 pages of the book dedicated to random tables of names. I would be willing to wager few tables use those names and those 17 pages aren't referenced near as often as the additional subclasses and spells are. The existence of the niche section of the book doesn't render the entire book useless to groups that do not need random name generators. Similarly the existence of 17 pages of a base class of a psion using a more complex ruleset wouldn't render a Tasha's book useless to groups wanting access to its other 150+ pages of content. I also would be willing to wager that more 5e players would use a complex psion optional class than would use those names tables.

That's a wager you shouldn't take because you have nothing but a gut feeling on it. The names tables are fun, lots of people were asking for them in the surveys. Psionics, on the other hand, people ask for but don't like anything done with them. You keep saying it would be easy to put out psionics rules that are just more complex because people could ignore them if they wanted (somewhat dubious, but okay), but this completely ignores that their isn't even a moderate consensus on what more complex psionics rules should look like. You're saying that the publishing of the rules shouldn't be contentious while ignoring the design of those rules has been terribly contentious. We're getting what we're getting not because there was a different set of liked rules that was deemed too complicated, but because there isn't a different set of rules at all that enough people liked. I mean, I loved the last UA with the psi-die. I thought that very flavorful and capable of lots of interesting complexity in play if simple in presentation. The resource game it introduced was rather interesting and deeper than it looked at first. But, not enough other people liked it, so we aren't getting that. To me, that would suggest that the rules I'd prefer were dropped and puts me equal to you in getting something else I like less, but I'm sure you'd strongly disagree that more complex psionics rules should be the psi-die stuff. This is the fundamental point -- there isn't even a coherent enough market for whatever you want out of more complex psionics rules. It's not a matter of figuring out publication problems, it's that there's not a well-liked design available.

And, as for options, there's a lot of well received 3rd party products for psionics on the market. Why does Wizards have to publish them?

 

[JiffyPopTart]

snipped what you actually wrote to save space

Because my replies to two different posters showed up back to back I inadvertently gave the impression that my replies were all tied together.

So, to clarify (not that anyone but you and I are following this fork of discussion)....

I am assuming (maybe incorrectly) that SamLoyal isn't a long term regular poster here because I have never seen their name pop up until recently.

I am trying to help SamLoyal shape their arguments by stating two important facts about 5e frequently talked about here, and then posting three false conclusions/assumptions that are almost always stated in threads criticizing 5e complexity design.

Completely separately from that, with correcting your post, I wanted to let SamLoyal know that they are not the ONLY poster on ENWorld that thinks that 5e game design has room to be criticized or that they are wrong for wanting more from the system. Your original statement made it look like SamLoyal was in some sort of small minority having an issue with complexity and wanting more. I would say those wanting more complexity IS probably a minority of players, however if that minority is 51/49, 75/25, or even 99/1 I can't say.

As far as my personal opinions on 5e in general...I like the system. Its my favorite edition to GM and probably my second favorite edition to play. I love that it has become such a large presence in society in general. Over the last year to two years, however, the system has started to get very stale for me as a player. The slower release schedule (which I think is a mostly positive thing) combined with an emphasis on adventure paths and campaign settings (which I think is OK but not in combination with a very slow release schedule) has led to a reality in which i'm getting bored sitting at the table each week without having new crunch to explore. When the rare crunch focused book is finally headed my way (only the second in 5 years) and I find out that WotC is playing safe with new themes and making more of the same rather than something brand new it is more than frustrating.

 

[JiffyPopTart]

To me, that would suggest that the rules I'd prefer were dropped and puts me equal to you in getting something else I like less, but I'm sure you'd strongly disagree that more complex psionics rules should be the psi-die stuff.

While the psi-die wasn't how I would have done it, it was at least original and something no other class had so that it made psionics its own thing in a mechanical way. If they had gone with that I would have been happy. I don't find it "complex" at all, but apparently the general public did. Husbanding psi-die resources is exactly the sort of complex I am asking for them to add (and then make optional like multiclassing and feats which are also "complex" by 5e standards).

 

[Crimson Longinus]

While the psi-die wasn't how I would have done it, it was at least original and something no other class had so that it made psionics its own thing in a mechanical way. If they had gone with that I would have been happy. I don't find it "complex" at all, but apparently the general public did. Husbanding psi-die resources is exactly the sort of complex I am asking for them to add (and then make optional like multiclassing and feats which are also "complex" by 5e standards).

One person's 'original mechanic' is another person's 'pointless gimmick.'

 

[Chaosmancer]

Xanathar's had 17 pages of the book dedicated to random tables of names. I would be willing to wager few tables use those names and those 17 pages aren't referenced near as often as the additional subclasses and spells are.

I have easily referenced those names more than the War Wizard and the Fighter subclasses. And the Trap rules and encounter tables. Likely combined.

Because my replies to two different posters showed up back to back I inadvertently gave the impression that my replies were all tied together.

So, to clarify (not that anyone but you and I are following this fork of discussion)....

I am assuming (maybe incorrectly) that SamLoyal isn't a long term regular poster here because I have never seen their name pop up until recently.

I am trying to help SamLoyal shape their arguments by stating two important facts about 5e frequently talked about here, and then posting three false conclusions/assumptions that are almost always stated in threads criticizing 5e complexity design.

Completely separately from that, with correcting your post, I wanted to let SamLoyal know that they are not the ONLY poster on ENWorld that thinks that 5e game design has room to be criticized or that they are wrong for wanting more from the system. Your original statement made it look like SamLoyal was in some sort of small minority having an issue with complexity and wanting more. I would say those wanting more complexity IS probably a minority of players, however if that minority is 51/49, 75/25, or even 99/1 I can't say.

I have seen them pop up once or twice, over the last few months. I assume long term lurker, occasional poster.

But, by putting forth those "false conclusions" also ends up poisoning the well to a degree. By pointing out that DnD 5e is popular, I was immediately put in the same faction as a lot of arguments I do not agree with, obfuscating the actual point I was trying to make (which I recognize as a type of appeal to popularity, but since in essence the question is in part about how well the game is liked, appeals to popularity are a valid data point.)

As far as my personal opinions on 5e in general...I like the system. Its my favorite edition to GM and probably my second favorite edition to play. I love that it has become such a large presence in society in general. Over the last year to two years, however, the system has started to get very stale for me as a player. The slower release schedule (which I think is a mostly positive thing) combined with an emphasis on adventure paths and campaign settings (which I think is OK but not in combination with a very slow release schedule) has led to a reality in which i'm getting bored sitting at the table each week without having new crunch to explore. When the rare crunch focused book is finally headed my way (only the second in 5 years) and I find out that WotC is playing safe with new themes and making more of the same rather than something brand new it is more than frustrating.

Then, frankly, me and you are fairly in agreement. I like the game a lot, I wish there was a bit more crunch, and I'd love to see more stuff.

I think the difference is, I'm kind of giving up on that for Psionics. Everything they tried, that I liked, we were told were terrible and that everyone hated. I wanted to test the Mystic multiple times, and I had a guy who would have left the group if I ever played (even for a one-shot) that class. Because according to them, they've seen it too often and it is insanely OP. I never got a chance to see for myself though.

I have low expectations by this point. If I need new stuff that works, I need to go to 3pp and homebrew. WoTC isn't providing that extra crunch.

 

[JiffyPopTart]

Then, frankly, me and you are fairly in agreement. I like the game a lot, I wish there was a bit more crunch, and I'd love to see more stuff.

I think the difference is, I'm kind of giving up on that for Psionics. Everything they tried, that I liked, we were told were terrible and that everyone hated. I wanted to test the Mystic multiple times, and I had a guy who would have left the group if I ever played (even for a one-shot) that class. Because according to them, they've seen it too often and it is insanely OP. I never got a chance to see for myself though.

I have low expectations by this point. If I need new stuff that works, I need to go to 3pp and homebrew. WoTC isn't providing that extra crunch

Everything you said here could have come directly from my mouth, so maybe you CAN? speak for me moving forward? I can pinpoint when I gave up on 5e as "Best Edition Ever" as being when the psionic die playtest revealed "Too many people don't want to learn new things." I was already pretty pessimistic something good would come from the design when the spell SORCERER version came along, and that just was the finishing blow. There really isn't anywhere to go mechanically with those kinds of restraints.

I'm still not sure how we devolved back to the psionic SORCERER, which I thought was the one thing people hated the most from all the psionic playtesting feedback. Maybe I should reserve further comment until the actual system gets released.