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Message: <blockquote data-quote="I'm A Banana" data-source="post: 6910099" data-attributes="member: 2067">I've been thinking about how psionics might look in Official 5e recently, since it plays a pretty significant role in my Astral Campaign (githzerai, shardminds, <a href="http://www.dmsguild.com/product/193314/Hereos-of-the-Eternal-Classes-of-the-Astral-Plane" target="_blank">psionic sorcerers, </a>mind flayers, psurlons, neh-thagglu, etc., etc.). We know bits and pieces from the Mystic playtest, but I think it might be worthwhile to look at this from the perspective of psionic things that are already in 5e: namely, psionic monsters. A few things those monsters suggest:Psionics is magical. If you're a mind flayer, and you use dominate monster, a wizard can use dispel magic to end that effect. Similarly, if you're that same mind flayer and you try to plane shift in an Anti-Magic field, it won't work. Even an aboleth's Enslave, or the mind flayer's Mind Blast, which aren't explicitly psionic, are explicitly magical - they can all be dispelled, and don't work in an anti-magic field. At least some psionics are basically the same as spells.This might not be the case with "psionic classes" we get later,  but every explicit incidence of psionics in the MM is basically a list of spell-like abilities. Those "magical" abilities that might be psionics but definitely aren't spells indicate a possible direction for future psionic abilities that don't mimic spells - things like Mind Blast and Enslave.Psionic abilities don't use componentsThough a mind flayer can psionically plane shift, and it is casting a magical spell when the mind flayer does that, all it needs to do is will itself to a different plane - it needs no magic words, no magic gestures, no tuning fork. This implies that, like a sorcerer using Subtle Spell, it doesn't trigger a counterspell. Normally, even a creature who can innately cast a spell, needs all the components to cast it - words, gestures, and even objects (though many creatures with Innate Spellcasting also note that they can ignore material components). It seems like WotC is interested in making the "Mystic" turn out very distinct from spellcasters, so I think it's likely that they'll lean hard into "magical abilities that aren't spells" territory, but it'll be interesting to see how that eventual class compares and contrasts with the magical and spell-like psionics that are in the game already. I don't think they'll be delving too deep into the "magic can't affect psionics" territory, though. My guess is, from a fiction standpoint, that magic "suffuses the multiverse" (from the Antimagic Field spell description) - psionics is magic by that definition, though it certainly isn't the learned arcane wizardy magic or even necessarily the spontaneous, quirky sorcerous magic. That's all rampant speculation, though!What's yours? Aside from what you might want or wish, what do you think is likely to happen?</blockquote>

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