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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Chaosmancer" data-source="post: 8101643" data-attributes="member: 6801228">WoTC is just as likely to release spells with components and call that Psionics as they are to release your vision of Psionics. But, since there is no official psionic class, then talking about hypothetical builds is all we can do. And engaging with a hypothetical, by inserting additional facts that directly impact the core premise of the hypothetical, is a poor discussion strategy. The basis of that tangent was a discussion of Psionics with no components, and no mention of displays. Me inserting displays is not discussion the basis of the point. It is me avoiding the point entirely and changing the subject.Then Max, maybe you should go back and double check, because this was the part I was referring to This was the last paragraph to his response about how giving this ability to players was far too much power. I responded with actually the basic point you just said "Sorcerers cannot do it with every single spell." along with pointing out how much opportunity cost came from the sorcerer even getting the ability to do this on an occasional basis is.You then swooped in to tell me that adding Displays to Psionics was completely uncontreversial and I should assume that Sabathius also supports displays for Psionics as does everyone else, and Paul is engaging in Strawmen. Which was not something he ever said, nor the actual topic of discussion.Both of them are ignoring doctors instructions out of stubbornness, but they both seem to be healing okay. Also, you might notice I grouped all your responses together. You seemed to want to respond to my single overarching argument by breaking it into smaller pieces. This was fairly aggravating since, for example, you responded to me restating the premise by treating it like an argument. Responding to "you can't counter a psionist by tying and gagging them" by telling me that PCs are very rarely bound and gagged doesn't really address the point. Especially since I had those two lines, not as arguments, but to show where we were standing in the discussion. Most of this actually is you responding to a critique of your lack of detail, as though you gave me actual answers to discuss. I mean, the entire point of my paragraph was that you did not give me actual ways to balance the classes, yet in this response you say " Proposing ways to balance that has everything to do with the point." Sure Max, it would. But in that post I was responding to, you did not propose any ways to balance it. You instead said "you can quite easily balance the inability to stop them from casting through immobilization and silence, in other ways.  It's not as if they can't be given slight disadvantages somewhere else to compensate."That isn't proposing a way to balance it. That is stating that balancing it won't be a challenge. As for the actual point you made that I can address, no, I am not solely concerned with the balance in combat. Combat is actually the point I am the least concerned about, for a few reasons. 1) My players do not tend to be highly tactical. I have tried to get various groups to a higher level of tactical thinking, but they aren't interested2) My players are concerned with "rule of cool" type moments. So, if the Psion wanted to throw an enemy with telekinesis, they are far more likely to describe it as them gritting their teeth and throwing out their hands than they are to be standing in cover and staring really hard. Meaning a lot of Somatic and Verbal indicators (note I did not say components) are likely to be included whether or not they are needed. Therefore identifying them in combat (on top of other things like enemies not exactly standing idly by as a guy who is standing around staring at people who are getting flung around the room is in the combat) Leading us to...3) The issue of safe containment and transport of dangerous individuals is something we see fairly often in my games. Both when I am a player and when I am a DM. And we have struggled enough with simply securing wizards and other magic users, that this issue with Psionics immediately jumps out at me as being hard to navigate as a player, and challenging world building to a degree. Mundane methods can restrain even an Archmage. Current discussions have no way to fully restrain even the weakest Psion. Which means a dangerous Psion would be killed on the spot, because you have no way to contain them or restrain their power. This is a big deal.How many NPCs will be Psions? As many as the plot calls for. Saying they are rare and therefore this is not an issue is again, sidestepping the point. I don't know how rare Psions are yet. The idea of devoting your watch to keeping a perfect eye on your prisoner runs into a few other problems. For example, how well are you actually keeping watch if you are staring at the prisoner? Can you keep your sword to their throat while marching? If they have charm abilities, can you be sure that you can get your readied action off in time if they have a readied action to whammy you when you are distracted? I would say it is very difficult to hold a readied action of a sword held against someone's throat, while keeping your full attention on that person for two hours. Possible, but incredibly difficult.Also, if you can just kill them, why didn't you? Supposedly you are transporting them for a reason. If you could kill them with no repurcussions, you would have just done so. Finally, you are wrong about NPCs having no hit dice. First of all, this NPC is a Psion, so they do have class levels. That's why they have psionic abilities. Secondly, every statblock has Hit Dice. Instead of just hoping you believe me, I'm going to quote the monster manual:[EXCERPT]A monster’s hit points are presented both as a die expression and as an average number. For example, a monster with 2d8 hit points has 9 hit points on average (2 × 4½).A monster’s size determines the die used to calculate its hit points, as shown in the Hit Dice by Size table.A monster’s Constitution modifier also affects the number of hit points it has. Its Constitution modifier is multiplied by the number of Hit Dice it possesses, and the result is added to its hit points. For example, if a monster has a Constitution of 12 (+1 modifier) and 2d8 Hit Dice, it has 2d8 + 2 hit points (average 11).[/EXCERPT]So, if we assume the Psion has a similiar statblock to the mage, they would have 9d8 Hit dice, that they could spend after an hour rest to recover. They can only spend those nine, unless they get a long rest, but if they have enough to survive an exchange with the guard on Watch, they could potentially overwhelm the guard and escape. Again, fear of death only works if the Psion actively believes the party will kill them. If they know or suspect the party can't kill them for whatever reason, such as a possession story where the Psionic individual is a spirit in the mind of a young child the party does not want to kill (a classic story) then they can attack the party with impunity. Perhaps not every moment, but at key moments, that might lead to the party's demise? Certainly.ShrugI have seen a lot of people argue that the Psion should not even have to see you, to attack you. I would also argue that Clairvoyance shouldn't work for casting, but then that leads to the Psion not even having clairvoyant or "sight beyond sight" abilities. Which, are fairly iconic abilities for Psionics.So, it ends up cutting an entire section of psionic power off from the game, but keeps things balanced.Torches and pitchforks over a name. If it wasn't for the fact that that happens every single time in this discussion, I'd find it amusing.A fair way to approach it as a DM. But, if we want to talk about designing the system, then these are considerations that must be taken into account. If we want to judge whatever solutions WoTC puts forth, we need to be able to understand the thought process that went into them.</blockquote>

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