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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Mercule" data-source="post: 7693848" data-attributes="member: 5100">This is kinda my issue with psionics in 5E. I don't really mind the Mystic class. I just don't know that it fills a niche I need filled, anymore. Bear with me, for a moment.Going back to 1E, I used psionics as a "mutation" that came from exposure to anything unknown and might have an impact on someone's physiology (I wasn't scientific with it, but I don't have a better word). This may come from the fact that the first PC in our group that rolled successfully for psionics also happened to be a second generation character descended from a middle-school twink character (don't judge) that was bonded to an artifact. Even though the new character, itself, was fair and non-twinkish, we were looking for a way to show the lineage and the psionics was perfectly serendipitous. His psionics came because he was conceived after his papa was deep in the thrall of the artifact.When a full psionic class was introduced in 2E, I found a spot for it by saying that the obligatory Ancient Evil Empire Just Over There had a high number of psions because of their centuries long, abhorrent, magical experiments that, essentially, produced magical fallout. Psions occurred in other areas, but weren't as common because no one else did the same sort of weird stuff. My campaign's timeline had advanced a couple hundred years, so the royal family of the kingdom established by the above wild talent were also frequently psionic. For the most part, anyone with psionics could trace their lineage back to someone who held an artifact for a long period, was touched by extraplanar energies, had been in the evil empire, or was somewhere near a legendary magical event, even if they didn't know it. Very internally consistent.Dark Sun reinforced this idea because the whole place was post-magical-apocalypse and everyone was psionic. 3E/3.5 psionics filled the same niche as prior versions.5E (or maybe 4E, which I effectively skipped) is where the niche changes, though. In 3E, the Sorcerer was pretty much a Wizard for people who didn't like slots. Even in 3.5 the heritage flavor was extremely easy to ignore and just treat them as a different sort of Wizard. In 5E, you must choose an origin and the closest thing to "I don't know" (Wild) really doesn't work well as an alt-Wizard -- not that you need one with the changes to spell slots in 5E. So, the Sorcerer is now the "I (or someone upstream) was exposed to something unusual so I has cool powers." The only thing that's in-congruent, IMO, is that someone with natural magic isn't going to go through the same sort of VSM components as a trained caster. If you gave sorcerers a way to sub in something else (not just blow points for silent/still metamagic) and maybe added a couple of flavored sub-classes (entropy, planar, whatever), it'd work awesome. There's even a feat that would work great for wild talent.I know there's some angst at the idea of using Sorcerer for psionics. I just don't know why we need the Mystic. Is it just the Monk turned up to 11?</blockquote>

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