D&D General What’s The Big Deal About Psionics?

[Crimson Longinus]

Have you considered...not using any new psionics system that might get added and letting other people have their fun? Seems like you have what you want already.

Yes, but I'm considering this from the perspective of what should WotC do, and I think they should avoid making the game convoluted and confusing. I think bespoke systems for niche concepts are best served by third party publishers as such would be detrimental to the easily approachable mass market appeal WotC should be going for.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Yes, but I'm considering this from the perspective of what should WotC do, and I think they should avoid making the game convoluted and confusing. I think bespoke systems for niche concepts are best served by third party publishers as such would be detrimental to the easily approachable mass market appeal WotC should be going for.

On that we agree. In fact, I don't expect WotC to publish any more psionics rules for 5e, except maybe a new subclass when they get around to Dark Sun. If you're cool with 3rd parties doing more, then that's great.

 

[Baron Opal II]

Psionic fans can't agree on what they want.

D&D fans have trouble deciding what they want. As a whole we are too diverse in taste to come to a consensus with other than broad strokes. This discussion is par.

 

[Staffan]

As someone who likes Psionics in my fantasy, I'm going to say, not as a core option.

The problem with psionics not being a core option is that that leads to other classes (mainly the wizard) poaching design space that by right should be the psion's. In a world with psions, wizards should not be as good as mindbleeping and certain types of divination as they are, because psions should be better than wizards at those things. Some spells probably shouldn't exist outright, like phantasmal force.

 

[James Gasik]

Well yeah, but that ship has sailed. Psionics wouldn't have fit in the 5e PHB as WotC envisioned it, preferring simply built classes with few decision points. It'd at best be shoved into an appendix in the DMG or something. Wizards have always had spells that could do things psions could do (I remember when there was literally a spell called "ESP"). And if you made a new edition where Wizards couldn't use clairaudience/clairvoyance, Rary's telepathic bond, telekinesis, or mind control, you'd naturally have backlash as people would say "my Wizard don't feel like a Wizard, where is spell X?".

Note that WotC filled the PHB with many classic spells, and quite a few that weren't in there were published later. This same thing happens in ever edition I've ever played. "Hey, new edition, let's pare down the Wizard." "The fans are asking about spells x, y, and z!" "Oh better make a new book we can sell them!"

 

[Hex08]

"What’s The Big Deal About Psionics?"

This discussion pretty much answers the question.

 

[Minigiant]

It's too complicated and more importantly doesn't really add much of value. There already is a mechanic for handling manifesting supernatural powers, it's called spells. If you want 48 powers, then first see which of these (or close) already exist as spells. Then create spells for those few that already do not exist. Then give this list of 48 spells to your psion class, they cast them using normal 5e magic mechanics.

I am not opposed to adding some new spells or even a new class. But inventing some parallel magic system absolutely is making things too complicated.

the number one issue with creating a new psionic class and psionic spells is not giving them to the wizard and cleric.

Add based on 5e's current and past design...

 

[Crimson Longinus]

the number one issue with creating a new psionic class and psionic spells is not giving them to the wizard and cleric.

Add based on 5e's current and past design...

That's a bizarre complaint. You don't trust them to not give new psionic spells to the wizard and cleric, but you'd trust them to design and balance a completely separate parallel magic system from scratch. Now I'm not saying that they couldn't fail at both, but the former is objectively way easier to do than the latter.

 

[Mecheon]

And historicall when WOTC adds a bunch of magic expansion to the magic system directly, they break the game.

Remembering from 3.5E.... Not really? Mind, there's always an argument to make that 3.5E was broken from day 1, but the variant casting systems didn't tend to break anything. The most broken stuff back then was stuff that used the basic casting and just, found ways to break harder

Except Truenaming but, well, Truenaming was broken from day 1, it didn't break the game

 

[James Gasik]

I agree, Shadow Magic, Warlocks, Binding, Pact Magic, Truenaming- these aren't the things that make tables quake with fear. Psionics kind of does, but it's a little unfair, since most of the complaints against 3e Psionics came from a blatant misunderstanding about how power points functioned- I've heard plenty of lurid tales of Psions going "nova" and dumping all their power points on an encounter to melt faces, despite the fact that they need to pay for "upcasting" their powers and they had a limit on how many power points they could use to augment a power.

The real problem children for 3e were things that enhanced existing magic systems: Divine Metamagic, "free metamagic" ala the Incantatrix, Planar Shepherds changing the laws of action economy, Epice Spellcasting, and, of course, printing new spells when there were already plenty of spells in the PHB that were problematic. When we already have Gate, Polymorph Any Object, Shapechange, Simulacrum, and Wish, do we really need Mind R*pe or Genesis?