Unearthed Arcana Unearthed Arcana: Psionics and Mystics Take Two

February's Unearthed Arcana article from WotC's Mike Mearls has been posted. This time around, the topic is psionics again "This month, Unearthed Arcana returns to the mystic character class and the rules for psionics. Based on the playtest feedback you sent us, there are a number of changes you can expect." The article expands the Mystic class to 10th level, and adds a variety of new options.

Find the article right here.

 

[mellored]

I'd still rather see psionics be short rest, or at least allow you to recover some psi points durring a short rest.


Also, i miss the focus=discipline restriction. It made good sense to me that you needed to be in a iron durability mode in order to benefit from iron durability psionics.

Perhaps switch it? Use a discipline and you have a lingering passive effect. Similar to the 4e runepriest.

Otherwise it seems good.

 

[beholdsa]

I'm still not a fan of the reflavoring of psionics to remove its pseudo-science theme.

 

[FallenAkriel]

I'm still not a fan of the reflavoring of psionics to remove its pseudo-science theme.

We should not care so much about the fluff, the mechanics of the class at this point is the most important. So useful for my Dark Sun 5E campaign.

 

[Twiggly the Gnome]

Psionics is not as pervasive in Eberron as in Athas, but the influence of the otherworldly realm of Xoriat makes it a known and studied art.

Dammit! Is it really that much trouble to drop in a reference to Dal Quor here?

[note: I'm not mad, just incredibly frustrated. ]

 

[Inchoroi]

At work, so can't test it out yet, but it seems alright at first blush.

 

[Morlock]

Psionics and magic are two distinct forces. In general, an effect that affects a spell has no effect on a psionic effect. There is one important exception to this rule. A psionic effect that reproduces a spell is treated as magic. A psionic effect reproduces a spell when it allows a psionic creature or character to cast a spell. In this case, psionic energy taps into magic and manipulates it to cast the spell.

For example, the mind flayer as presented in the Monster Manual has the Innate Spellcasting (Psionics) feature. This feature allows the mind flayer to cast a set of spells using psionic energy. These spells can be countered with dispel magic and similar effects.

This seems schizo to me. Don't much care for allowing psionics to be used to cast spells, either. I'd rather just have them all mechanically work the same way, in this regard.

As an aside, this is why I hate the PDF format. Why is it never possible to just copy and paste text from this crappy format? I had to run find & replace (tabs to spaces) in my text editor, then clean up all the line breaks, before I could paste it into a comment.

 

[NotActuallyTim]

Interesting...

I like the way they breakdown the powers into disciplines of related abilities. Not so happy about the Psi Point progression. 4 to 6 to 14 to 17 to 27? What the heck are they doing?

 

[turkeygiant]

At the beginning of the article where they lay out the design thesis it says:

"Psionic disciplines are now available to all mystics, regardless of mystic order. However, your order grants you a benefit for using its associated disciplines."

Is there a benefit that only activates when using a in order discipline (I cant see anything like this), or is it just a synergistic benefit where the order's features mesh well with it's associated disciplines?

 

[Inchoroi]

At the beginning of the article where they lay out the design thesis it says:

"Psionic disciplines are now available to all mystics, regardless of mystic order. However, your order grants you a benefit for using its associated disciplines."

Is there a benefit that only activates when using a in order discipline (I cant see anything like this), or is it just a synergistic benefit where the order's features mesh well with it's associated disciplines?

As far as I can tell, there's no special benefit, but it seems like it might have been left off by accident, which has happened before.