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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[Urriak Uruk]

It seems like you guys are talking about just material components. Verbal and somatic are also components, and those come up a lot more.

I rarely care about somatic/verbal either. The wriggling of fingers, the muttering of spells under one's breath... this can be done pretty easily in 95% of situations without issue.

 

[Parmandur]

It's a lot easier to compare the two extra-die-using subclasses, though, since you can look at how many times you can use the thing, and how much difference it makes.

Comparing with the Champion, I guess you'd have to look at the expected difference from an extra fighting style and crit damage. It depends a bit on attacks, and there will be a marked difference at level 5 that's not present for the battlemaster comparison (given that the battlemaster is going to use about the same number of superiority dice ever day as long as the number stays the same)

Granted the math there is complex, but I recall Mearls doing a once-over on the Fighter math there. One of the core assumptions for game balance is that there will be 6-8 encounters, of 2-3 round durations or 20-25 rounds total on average, between long rests with two short rests. The 5% expanded crit range goes a long way.

 

[Parmandur]

I rarely care about somatic/verbal either. The wriggling of fingers, the muttering of spells under one's breath... this can be done pretty easily in 95% of situations without issue.

Except when those other 5% of situations come up, or are engineered by a Dungeon Master, accuracy is vital.

 

[ccooke]

Granted the math there is complex, but I recall Mearls doing a once-over on the Fighter math there. One of the core assumptions for game balance is that there will be 8-10 encounters, of 2-3 round durations, between long rests with two short rests. The 5% expanded crit range goes a long way.

That's not the usual set of encounter assumptions I've seen - usually it's 6-8. I'd have said 2-3 rounds was too short, too. I've been assuming 6-8 five round, for a maximum of 40 combat rounds per day.

Of course, that goes a long way for the champion too!

 

[Hussar]

I mainly mean Vocal and Somantic components. They have big impacts on combat and stealth, particularly.

I generally find the large, explosive ball of fire has a larger impact on combat and stealth.

Put me in the bag with the others who haven't seen VSM matter more than a handful of times in all the time I've played D&D. Haven't tracked M, other than for really expensive stuff, since 3e was released, and, honestly? We never tracked before that either. Haven't had the PC's captured in at least two editions. It just doesn't matter.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I mainly mean Vocal and Somantic components. They have big impacts on combat and stealth, particularly.

I don't personally think they have big impacts at all, in combat. Virtually no component has any impact in combat aside from when Silence is involved. Grappled doesn't stop you using S components, nor does Restrained, indeed the only conditions that do stop you taking actions in general (Incapacitated, Paralyzed, etc.). And that's probably good because if Grappled, say, did, enemy spellcasters would be very easy to deal with.

Literally the only way I can think of any of them interacting with combat in a legit way, not a DM bending the rules, or totally forced bizarro situation is V components vs Silence. If you can think of specific, legit examples (like not some super-corner case thing that happened literally twice in the last thirty years)

Oh the other legit one though extremely rare is if Sorcerer metamagic - if the spell is silent and had a V component, it's arguably impossible to Counterspell. Jeremy Crawford certainly thinks so. But both Silence and Counterspell are things that, in my experience tend to only come out when people are expecting serious enemy spellcasters and not even always then. So that's pretty rare.

I cannot think of a single time Somatic components have ever had any impact on combat, not in 2E, 3E, 4E (did that have components?) or 5E.

Stealth-wise it's really again only V components that tend to interact. I forget the default rules on this but I think we assume you speak the V components at a normal volume so that could mess with Stealth.

As far as I can tell, S components exist solely so you can tie Wizards up to stop them casting spells.

 

[TwoSix]

Well, maybe it isn't intended to be an overly tactical Subclass. The better comparison than a Battlemaster might be the baseline Champion, which is also mathematically balanced with the Battlemaster, bit whose main focus is on achieving actions without complex manuevering. This Psi Knight is a Psionic hammer, beating down with strength.

Shrug...I’m certainly not going to advocate for more subclasses to be more like the Champion.

I’d rather see the class have a lower baseline with a low chance to get a power up, than a higher baseline but a chance to lose it permanently. I’d rather see a mechanic where if you lose the die, you can gain it back after a minute of meditation, sort of akin to the psionic focus of 3.5.

 

[Parmandur]

That's not the usual set of encounter assumptions I've seen - usually it's 6-8. I'd have said 2-3 rounds was too short, too. I've been assuming 6-8 five round, for a maximum of 40 combat rounds per day.

Of course, that goes a long way for the champion too!

Yes, sorry, that was my brain-fart: 6-8 encounters per day, 2-3 rounds each, around 20 assumed by Mearls and company. Mearls was quite adamant in those old design sessions that they expected basically no fights over 3 rounds, and many would be over in 2. That's the design assumption, at any rate, though they also account for that not being universal to some extent.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I'll be honest I don't think there's much chance the "lose the die entirely" thing with a 1/day refresh goes live. The feedback is not going to be positive. I guess it's possible loads of people who don't post on the internet will love it, but I doubt it - the 5E subreddit is quite representative of the "broader D&D" community, and they don't seem keen on the idea.

 

[Parmandur]

I'll be honest I don't think there's much chance the "lose the die entirely" thing with a 1/day refresh goes live. The feedback is not going to be positive. I guess it's possible loads of people who don't post on the internet will love it, but I doubt it - the 5E subreddit is quite representative of the "broader D&D" community, and they don't seem keen on the idea.

I wouldn't bet on Reddit being representative particularly, but yeah, things seem mixed. Time will tell.