Unearthed Arcana Unearthed Arcana Revisits Psionics

The latest Unearthed Arcana from WotC revisits some psionic rules! “Shine with the power of the mind in this installment of Unearthed Arcana! Today we revisit several psi-themed options that we released in the past few months. Studying your feedback on those options, we’ve crafted this new collection of subclasses, spells, and feats, found in the PDF below.“

News Archive | Dungeons and Dragons

Read the full archives of Dungeons & Dragons news, Sage Advice, Unearthed Arcana, and D&D Studio Blogs.

dnd.wizards.com

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Well why not wait for the Dark Sun book to come out to see whether or not everyone in Arthas * is * psionic? Is there a point to getting upset that the generic psionic rules do not get into what could be used by a different game setting that hasn't even come out yet?

Yes, there absolutely is.

Because WotC aren't going to develop two sets of Psionics rules. These rules, or some derivation of them, or a future UA, will be used for Athas (hopefully not for Arthas, one hopes he's still dead in Icecrown Citadel, I mean, it took enough DPS to kill him!).

 

[Paul Farquhar]

The thing is, in Dark Sun, everyone is supposed to be psionic. If the system for psionics doesn't make everyone psionic, it's not going to be a very good replication of Dark Sun. It's not a matter of whether or not those options are good enough that some people choose them... it's a matter of them being optional.

All Dark Sun characters gain the Psionic Wild Talent feat automatically at level one.

Bang, everyone is psionic.

And it's a great match for how things worked in the original Dark Sun boxed set.

 

[DEFCON 1]

I'm sorry, the reasons they gave for not going with Mystic were wholly unauthentic. They literally apply fully to Artificer, but that was apparently not a worry there. They also carefully avoided saying "Players don't want a Psion/Psionicist-type class", rather saying the problems were specific to the 2017 Mystic class.

There's still the possibility that they are doing basic psionics via subclasses for whatever the planar adventure and books are going to be (probably this autumn), but don't have Dark Sun still on the docket until 2021 or 2022. So at that point they could very well add in a full psion class then for the actual setting if they wanted to, as they added the Artificer class to the Eberron book when that came out.

 

[Weiley31]

I would say that if you want a Psionic character at the start, just grant them The Wild Talent feat AS A BONUS feat. And then perhaps Allow Talent selection ala the UA summons feature.

It's a small pool to choose from, but class feature reflavoring and stuff should suffice for now.

 

[dwayne]

Honestly if you want psionics in 5th edition check out Apex Apex (5E version) - Dias Ex Machina Games | DriveThruRPG.com

It can work for super powers as well, the tree mechanic can be added to any class, and it has one class that lets you pick abilities as you want. This can be done to create almost any kind of psionic character.

 

[DEFCON 1]

Yes, there absolutely is.

Because WotC aren't going to develop two sets of Psionics rules. These rules, or some derivation of them, or a future UA, will be used for Athas (hopefully not for Arthas, one hopes he's still dead in Icecrown Citadel, I mean, it took enough DPS to kill him!).

And you know this how?

 

[Weiley31]

Thanks for the heads up, I'm going to be digging into this today!

No prob! It even includes Psionic based Subclasses and races such as the Elan too! And introduces a new base class known as the Empath IIRC.

 

[DammitVictor]

Well why not wait for the Dark Sun book to come out to see whether or not everyone in Arthas * is * psionic? Is there a point to getting upset that the generic psionic rules do not get into what could be used by a different game setting that hasn't even come out yet?

I'm not upset. I can't claim that I am entirely past caring, because I clearly downloaded the UA and read it-- to form a positive opinion-- and I'm putting in the energy to post about it here. Obviously, I must still care a little bit. All I'm doing is predicting, based on previous design decisions, that I'm not going to start caring much more when this finally arrives.

Maybe that's premature. We'll find out.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

All Dark Sun characters gain the Psionic Wild Talent feat automatically at level one.

Bang, everyone is psionic.

And it's a great match for how things worked in the original Dark Sun boxed set.

And that can't happen until WotC are willing to make Feats non-optional. Something that they are SO OPPOSED TO that they drastically re-worked the way Dragonmarks worked in the new Eberron seemingly solely to prevent this, and rendered Dragonmarks a poorly-balanced and hard-to-use mess as a result.

So this would require an unprecedented change of direction, especially as Eberron was changed in what, late 2019? So very recently. It's not like this is a 2015 thing that might be over now.

There's still the possibility that they are doing basic psionics via subclasses for whatever the planar adventure and books are going to be (probably this autumn), but don't have Dark Sun still on the docket until 2021 or 2022. So at that point they could very well add in a full psion class then for the actual setting if they wanted to, as they added the Artificer class to the Eberron book when that came out.

I hope this is true, but I'm really skeptical. I strongly suspect we'll see Athas before we see a Planescape-esque deal at the current rate, and it will be an Athas that is missing the key class.

I also strongly suspect, talking about Athas, that they'll make Preserving/Defiling "not really a thing", despite it being more relevant than ever.

And you know this how?

Because they've literally never done otherwise. Certainly not with even a medium-sized system. It would be utterly unprecedented and against the pattern/structure they've followed pretty reliably.

 

[TwoSix]

Because WotC aren't going to develop two sets of Psionics rules. These rules, or some derivation of them, or a future UA, will be used for Athas (hopefully not for Arthas, one hopes he's still dead in Icecrown Citadel, I mean, it took enough DPS to kill him!).

There must always be a Dragon King.