D&D (2024) Should 2014 Half Elves and Half Orcs be added to the 2025 SRD?

[Maxperson]

Fair enough. Pretty weak though.

Yep. Like I said, it's a bastardized version of psionics. Not even worth the name, really.

 

[Yaarel]

I think the word missing from a lot of the half-x discussion is the word " ...yet." They are not in the PHB (neither are necromancers) but there is no indication they won't exist later in some form or another.

I can see the species miscibility rules happening in the Forgotten Realms setting. The 2014 setting guide had special rules for Half Elves, and the 2024 rules might go in for any kind of species combination.

 

[DEFCON 1]

...one half-assed attempt.

The game has moved on from using "half" to describe a mixed species... I believe you want the word "mule".

One mule attempt.

 

[Yaarel]

Re psionics, fortunately the indy Psions such as by LaserLlama are pretty good. They are just as "5e" as 2014 is.

For me I care about flavor. I dont want fringe mechanics. That said. The short rest spell points deriving from the Warlock chassis are mechanically solid, worthwhile in their own right for any caster class, and conducive for psionic flavor.

Likewise mechanically, it is vital for psionics to be innate magic. Ones own soul (mind, spirit, aura) is the power source, without external creatures and without material components. The mechanics of "innate magic", and its abolition of the costly components, deserves formal standard and complete rules in an entry in the Glossary.

 

[Mistwell]

I'm one of those others. There is nothing to those "psionics rules" beyond them calling it psionics. It's just flavor on the existing spell system, with no mechanical backing. No psionic classes, no points, no way to make it feel like something different. Just a label.

WotC gave up. Fortunately 3pp came through where WotC failed. Like always.

It's been flavor on the existing magic rules since 3e and onwards. The 1e AD&D system was a complete mess but at least it was genuinely distinct. It's just been "reflavor magic" since then really. So I'm glad we at least got the reflavored magic version version.

 

[Micah Sweet]

It's been flavor on the existing magic rules since 3e and onwards. The 1e AD&D system was a complete mess but at least it was genuinely distinct. It's just been "reflavor magic" since then really. So I'm glad we at least got the reflavored magic version version.

3e had a lot of psionic stuff in it, so we'll have to agree to disagree there.

 

[Mistwell]

3e had a lot of psionic stuff in it, so we'll have to agree to disagree there.

In the PHB? Not that I recall.

 

[Micah Sweet]

In the PHB? Not that I recall.

There was a whole separate book in 3e for psionics (and a full revision of that book for 3.5), plus a bunch of smaller notes in other books and several pdfs.

 

[Minigiant]

One thing 4e did right IMHO was make the first PHB the most iconic classes and races. Then explain the roster with 2 other PHBs which less iconic or setting flavored ones.

 

[Mistwell]

There was a whole separate book in 3e for psionics (and a full revision of that book for 3.5), plus a bunch of smaller notes in other books and several pdfs.

Sure and that could happen after several years for 5.24e. But I was happy there is some basic amount of psionics as a concept in the PHB at least. They have some of the core ideas already: telepathy, telekinesis, invisible force shields, mind defenses, strikes that come from your mind, no verbal or somatic components, often with a separate limited resource (like once free per day), etc.. They can build on that and all these ideas have roots in the AD&D 1e rules on some level.