Ovinomancer
No flips for you!
The answer to your latter question answers the former. Ravnica isn't my bag, but I have no doubt that a lot of people really love that book and that WotC knew that before it started the project.
D&D 5E What's wrong with this psion?
JiffyPopTart
Bree-Yark
I found an I-think-interesting method for trying to determine the relative sales of the various D&D books released in 5e so far. I know that some of the best selling titles are listed in the Top 100 charts...but that doesn't help with many of the others.
My theory is that you could use the number of ratings for each book as a rough guide for how they have sold in relation to each other. I am not sure if ratings "fall off" over time so my data may be flawed...but its pretty easy data to access to at least get a feel for how the books are selling in relation to each other. The top 5 seem to slot in the way I would think they would, so I am hoping the data is somewhat useful.
I claim no analytics...just publishing the data I found...
Number of ratings for the various D&D books on Amazon
Book Title | Ratings |
Players Handbook | 17162 |
Dungeon Masters Guide | 9258 |
Monster Manual | 8670 |
Xanathar’s Guide to Everything | 7574 |
Volo’s Guide to Monsters | 4364 |
Eberron: Rising from the Last War | 3634 |
Mordenkainen’s Tome of Foes | 3382 |
Explorer’s Guide to Wildemount | 2656 |
Sword Coast Adventurers Guide | 2298 |
Curse of Strahd | 2179 |
Decent Into Avernus | 1738 |
Guildmaster’s Guide to Ravnica | 1627 |
Ghosts of Saltmarsh | 1614 |
Dragon Heist | 1489 |
Tales From the Yawning Portal | 1280 |
Hoard of the Dragon Queen | 1276 |
Mythic Odysseys of Theros | 1263 |
Dungeon of the Mad Mage | 1165 |
Tomb of Annihilation | 1153 |
Rise of Tiamat | 1015 |
Storm King’s Thunder | 863 |
Out of the Abyss | 858 |
Princes of the Apocalypse | 790 |
Acquisitions Incorporated | 769 |
Change that to Theros.
I am sure pages of psionics would see more views and purchases than Theros despite psi being very niche.
Gammadoodler
Hero
Orrrrr. Developers were not interested in investing page count and design space to something almost no one thinks about...like...ever, so they just threw some (occasionally literal) naughty word at the wall and called it a day.
This, by the way, is a helluva lot better than if each spell had a separate section for the particular specific components needed by each class, domain, whatever that gets access to each spell.
The spell section of the PHB is bad enough with how much of it is going to be irrelevant to an individual player. Material requirements by class would have been pure sadism.
Ruin Explorer
Legend
It's a self-fulfilling prophecy.
If they keep doing psionics in essentially half-arsed ways, often late in the edition or at awkward times, why should they have wide popularity? If they'd just come in with a solid psionics system, in say, 2017, I think we'd see them be pretty widely popular by now. There's always some percentage of "Just say no to psionics!" hold-outs, but they're mostly aging grogs, and even though this forum is basically just aging grogs (sorry anyone who isn't!), it's only like 30% of them. The bulk of players, many of whom are entirely new to D&D, would have been ready for a bold implementation of psionics, I'd suggest, but we'll never know, or not this edition. It's too late already for psionics to be particularly popular.
If they come out in 6E and have a psionic class as one of the base classes, and build the system in, then we could see something better.
I think even the Mystic showed you don't actually need a particularly huge page-count. It's 28 pages, but could have been cut down to half that without losing anything cool, maybe even down to 10. The trouble was it was kind of designed like a class that had been around for the entire time 5E had been out, not a new class. Artificer didn't make the same mistake.
WayOfTheFourElements
Hero
Absolutely. It's a good point.
EscherEnigma
Adventurer
Because Gary Gygax thought it was funny. Further, you don't have lists of different options because the writers didn't think it was worth it. You can come up with different in-world explanations if you want, but they are, universally, after-the-fact justifications, and not the "reason". The reasons for material spell components are meta, every single time.
So sure, you can fluff it in your campaign as "magic is science". Or you can fluff it as "those are just the traditional options, doesn't mean other stuff wouldn't work." Seriously, can you imagine any GM balking at a Jewish player saying "hey, I don't want my wizard handling a pork rind to cast grease. Can they use a stick of butter instead?" Ok, I can, but I can't do it without the GM being an naughty word. Similar thing with sorcerers, I imagine most GMs would say "just write down what your born-in-the-wilds sorcerer uses instead of bat guano, and we'll stick with that." For that matter, do you think the writers intended hold person to be an inaccessible spell in Theros (it's a bronze-age setting, remember? Worked iron is rare, iron wire? Super-rare).
Getting hung up on material components and what they "mean" for a setting is, and always will be, an exercise in futility. They're referential fluff. Nothing more. They are something to assign meaning to in your campaign, but they are not something you can derive meaning from in your campaign.
So spells-in-all-but-name? With a "manifestations" line instead of a "components" line? A whole mess of what's essentially reprints?
Yeah, I gotta say no to that. If they ever do a dedicated psion class (which I think would be really cool, by-the-by) I hope they either stick with the spells we already have, with a note on components/manifestations or whatever, or they abandon the psion as a spell-caster all-together and do something like warlock invocations, or the mystic, or something. There is no need to re-invent the wheel and cut-off the psion from future content.
Sorcerer with subtle spell can cast every single one of their spells without V&S components. If you use the UA psionic-soul sorcerer, they can do that even easier.
Ovinomancer
No flips for you!
Was the first Mystic half-arsed or late in the edition? How about the NEXT playtest rules -- late in the edition? I could understand the opinion that the OAs are half-arsed, despite the clear effort that went into them you're welcome to your opinion. But, late in the edition? They've been trying to find a psionics system that people like from before the edition launched and then throughout. This is a poor claim.
Ruin Explorer
Legend
No, that had an interestingly different set of problems, but basically was doomed from before it was ever published, because of WotC's self-imposed "70% approval" requirement for UA'd 5E content*. The Mystic also had some design issues, but the main thing was, it could have been literally the best-implemented psionics in D&D history, but it would never have hit 70% because more than 30% of D&D players who answer surveys either:
A) Just don't like psionics (for varied reasons).
or
B) See a UA as an opportunity to "hold out" for their preferred take on psionics.
(I confess to being in the latter category early on - though I liked the Mystic and just thought it needed paring down and about 3-5 powers needed serious nerfs/deletions - literally every "Mystic is OP" claim relied on exploiting those.)
When were psionics in the NEXT playtest? I thought I had all the playtests that got publicly released and none of them have psionics in AFAIK. Am I missing one? Or was it in some private playtest? If it was private-era, that seemed to largely be paleo-D&D-players in terms of groups selected, and I doubt any psionics system would have met with even 50% approval from them, no matter how good. Can you PM it to me if it's from a private one? I'd love to see their early thinking. Further, even the open playtests, whilst interesting, were deeply unrepresentative of the audience 5E now has, being far more grog-y and WotC reacted to even them pretty strangely too - the more interesting Sorcerer design they had seemed to be extremely popular (to judge by all the forum discussion), but they inexplicably ditched it favour of a much more 3E-esque approach. Anyway, the same point applies - if you make psionics part of a "popularity" contest, it gets ripped apart between the anti-psionics crowd and the people holding out for the precise version they want. The "hold out" group didn't realize this would result in "no version" I think - that's something new to 5E - in literally all other editions TSR/WotC just decided on a system, so no-one was initially afraid they wouldn't get psionics at all.
By the way, if you read my post carefully, you'd have seen I was implying that if, instead of going with a UA, they'd just published the Mystic (or preferably a cut-down version of it) as an official class back in 2017, it'd be popular by now. That's my point. Yeah, the "no psionics ever" crowd might dislike it, but there are plenty of people who ban plenty of "core" classes/races from their home games. But the large audience of newer players would likely have enjoyed it a lot, had they just been told "this is what's happening", I'd suggest (jmho ofc).
No, you're not understanding the issue. You can't demand that a psionics system have 70% approval via a UA. Period. It won't happen. I very much doubt that 5E's spell-slot system (which is a big change from 3E and 2E and so on) would have even got 70% approval had it been presented as a UA. Certainly no existing full-caster class would have - they'd literally all be dismissed as "overpowered" or even "broken". Warlocks would be dismissed as "overcomplicated" and "unnecessary".
The only way to make a popular take on psionics is to come in early, and lay down a system you have faith in, then wait for players to see that it is good.
No. I don't know why you're saying this, but it doesn't follow from what I'm saying, and makes zero sense.
It's particularly bizarre because you then refer positively to the Mystic. A cut-down version of the Mystic is exactly the sort of thing I'm talking about. There's nothing "intricate" or "complex" about the Mystic, which is what people were claiming pro-psionics people wanted.
No, they cannot. They'll run out of juice extremely quickly, and before they run out of spells (esp. when you remember cantrips exist). Why even say something that's obviously not true?
* = This whole "rule" is made a mockery of because if you have content that isn't UA'd, no matter how junk it is, it can go in. They've even taken out UA/playtest content that was approved of, and replaced it with un-UA'd/un-playtested content (c.f. Marks in Eberron). So it's certainly no golden rule or something that has to be followed.
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Istbor
Dances with Gnolls
I want people to have what they think is fun.
But maaaaybe, and just hear me out here... we are coming to a point where Psionics just aren't that popular anymore? Could be that in 6e or 7e, there just isn't even this discussion? Who knows. Seems like such a small group of us want or need them in D&D for it to feel right, and then an even smaller group(s) that even agree with one another.
I certainly think that once we start seeing Psionics in this edition, it is going to conform more to existing mechanics. Perhaps with some additional lite stuff or optional stuff mixed in.
But maaaaybe, and just hear me out here... we are coming to a point where Psionics just aren't that popular anymore? Could be that in 6e or 7e, there just isn't even this discussion? Who knows. Seems like such a small group of us want or need them in D&D for it to feel right, and then an even smaller group(s) that even agree with one another.
I certainly think that once we start seeing Psionics in this edition, it is going to conform more to existing mechanics. Perhaps with some additional lite stuff or optional stuff mixed in.
