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.“

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[Ruin Explorer]

Make a series of new Subrace and variant Race options that build in Psionic Talent elements: Athasian Dwarf, Athasian Elf, Athasian Human, etc. Then say only those Races are canon in Dark Sun. Done, no Feats required.

Yes, I expect that's what they'll do. I didn't say it was hard. I said Feats weren't an option.

I see no reason to believe that they are unauthentic. They've tested the concepts out: people liked the Artificers, they didn't like the Mystic. Simple enough.

That's literally not what they said, in fact they went to great lengths to avoid saying that, but I guess if that's how you view it, then there's no discussion to be had with you.

Given the popularity of 80's adventure reprints in 5E, this is inaccurate.

What are you discussing, exactly?

Adventures aren't rules. This may be semantic to you, it's important to what I'm saying. Even adventure-wise all I can think of is stuff that's been drastically remade, and is significantly different to the '80s iteration. Which supports my point. People don't want to go back to 1E-style rules or even really 1E-style adventures. They like some '80s theme stuff, or stuff that's timeless, but they don't want the rules to be similar to the 1980s.

That's why 1E AD&D isn't even that popular with OSR fans, and most OSR games mimic OD&D or BECMI/RC or the like.

It kind of feels to me like you're trying to score points here rather than trying to honestly understand my posts, and I have to say, I don't appreciate it.

 

[gyor]

I get where you're coming from re: the UA stuff, and it is possible it's designed for planar adventures, but I also think it's possible it's for Al-Qadim or something similar. Creation Bards and Unity Clerics seem more up Al-Qadim's alley than Planescape's. As does the Way of Mercy monk (because he sure ain't the Mercykillers' version of Mercy!). Genie obviously could be AQ. Oath of the Watchers seems almost antithetical to Planar adventuring, in a sense, and certainly the fluff doesn't fit with a Planescape-style game. Beast Barbarian I guess you could like to certain planes but they don't seem to be making that link, and he could fit anywhere. Clockwork soul is the best one of Planescape-ish.

I mean, could it be planar? Sure. But if so it's a weird bunch, and suggests a very non-Planescape take on Planar stuff, which would be disappointing to say the least.

Unity Domain was a substitute for Love Domain at the last minute.

Clockwork Soul actually shares some flavour with the Clockwork Mages of Zakhara/Al Qadim, although mechanically the Artificer is a lot better fit.

Still other subraces like, Astral Monk and Wild Soul Barbarian were more planar in theme. I feel like I need to see at least May,
June and maybe July's UA before I have a good idea of what they are up too.

I still say that I think we are getting another setting of some sort later in the year, but what kind I don't know, except that it won't be Zendikar because that won't come until after Zendikar Rising.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Still other subraces like, Astral Monk and Wild Soul Barbarian were more planar in theme.

Those were, but they were um, imho, kind of terrible and the reception here and on Reddit was not er, positive for either. I suspect they've gone back to the drawing board on those.

There were also a bunch of UA subclasses which seemed from a very different setting, like the Rune Knight or whatever it was called, and have yet (AFAIK) to emerge as connected to a setting.

 

[Parmandur]

That seems very straightforward.

Can you return it to its original size when it is a d4? sure.

But can you restore it after you roll that 4 on the d4? no takebacks, it's gone.

It has been confirmed by Crawford that this reading is incorrect, the die can be stored with this feature from zero:

 

[DEFCON 1]

Given it's popularity I just don't know why they don't make a deal with the designer, make it official, and put in a book. I just don't get the mind set of these folks sometimes.

It's because KibbleTasty's products are 19 (Psion) and 38 (Artificer) pages long. You really think WotC is going to give over that much space to either of those things in one of their player-facing books? Especially when KibbleTasty can just distribute the stuff themselves?

 

[Weiley31]

There must always be a Dragon King.

Shao Kahn remembers.

 

[zedturtle]

It has been confirmed by Crawford that this reading is incorrect, the die can be stored with this feature from zero:

Good to know. Obviously it doesn't read that way, but it's an easy fix.

 

[Maxperson]

Ditching the Psionics Wizard is great, even if I say RIP to Id Insinuation, a spell I'd been using to great effect on my Bard in an Eberron campaign (there's always Dissonant Whispers).

Why not just keep using it? Just because they are saying goodbye to it, doesn't mean your table has to.

The die size changing thing is completely silly. How could anyone even write that down? You get lucky twice in a row, even when you don't want to be lucky, and basically all your subclass abilities become unusable? What on earth?

4 times in a row. You can refresh once per long rest and restore it to maximum. And that's at low level. Once you start going up in die size, it becomes 6 times, 8 times or 10 times in a row to lose it in the minimum possible time, which is highly unlikely.

Some of the roll-based abilities are pretty awful because you as a player have to assume you're going to get 1, and you can't count on anything else, and there's not even necessarily any benefit on getting a higher number (Psionic Discovery being a prime example - you're not going to do that unless you need the spell in the next hour, and having it for longer probably isn't going to help you).

You cannot guarantee anything higher than a 1, but if you are making an assumption that will be wrong 75% of the time on a d4 and 86% of the time on a d6, you are making a faulty assumption. I'd never assume that I would roll a 1.

I will agree with you that they should make a full Psion class. These subclasses are good for what they do, but they fall way short of giving us the psionic class that we want.

 

[Mistwell]

And your concerns echo my own. The problem with the subclass system in general is that it intrinsically prohibits making characters that are different from Day One. Everybody has to be the same for a level or two and then get different stuff, which just does not work conceptually with a lot of ideas.

The subclasses, especially wizard/caster subclasses, suffer from the dual disadvantage of being too different without being different enough. I can understand WotC's reluctance to add more base classes, but I really feel they could have thought this one through a bit better from the outset.

I think particularly if you're going in with psionics in mind it's important to re-fluff the base classes abilities from the start. That means also picking a psionic-themed background, perhaps even a tailored background rather than one from the book.

 

[Maxperson]

Nope. I want psionics, but prefer it as an extra sideline for existing classes. Feats + subclasses suits me fine. This is closest to the 1st edition Gygax model. Never liked psion since it was introduced in 2nd edition.

Nope. It's still a common theme. Common theme does not equal "Every last person." It just means that most of us who want psionics want this, even if we don't agree with how it should be implemented.