Unearthed Arcana Why UA Psionics are never going to work in 5e.

[Vael]

To me, it adds variability. It makes psionics different from other magic in that it can wax or wane in a different way. I don't see how that kind of thing can be represented with existing mechanics -- no other existing mechanic waxes and wanes like the psi-die do. As for why, why not? Honest question, not snark. As it stands, it's a design I like, so there's at least one why. It's a design you don't like, so there's one reason why not. This doesn't seem like a useful question to ask, because the answer is always subjective.

I have to see it in play before I can evaluate it, but in theory, I do agree. It gives Psionics a unique mechanic ... "thing" ... that all Psionicists can use, it's more nebulous, which kinda works with Psionics being a more mysterious form of magic, and it's not just another pool of points, like Ki or Sorcery points.

 

[Fenris-77]

Wizard: My magic toys with the fundamental laws of the universe! Fear me!!

Psion: Hah! I can can manipulate forces even more mysterious than that! Really mysterious!! So mysterious that I can't even tell you what they are. No, really, mysteries galore. Hey, where are you going?

 

[Catulle]

Wizard: My magic toys with the fundamental laws of the universe! Fear me!!

Psion: Hah! I can can manipulate forces even more mysterious than that! Really mysterious!! So mysterious that I can't even tell you what they are. No, really, mysteries galore. Hey, where are you going?

Why so keen about taking dump on the thread?

 

[Fenris-77]

I'm not dumping on the thread at all, I just found the phrase "a more mysterious kind of magic" pretty funny.

 

[Guest 6801328]

Why so keen about taking dump on the thread?

I don’t think using satire to critique one post in a long meandering thread is threadcrapping.

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

I guess if WotC gets the creaton of a character with the right background then fandom will start to create their own crunch about psions and other psionic manifester classes.

Who would play a psion? Who is sick of the classic wizard, and like to play different characters. It's like urban tribes wearing special style of clothing as marks of identity.

I see a great potential as hook for future adventures and plots the ardent as the psionic cousin of the divine spellcasters, with a hate-love relation, with a speech "I also serve the gods/sacred powers but I would rather to work alone as freelance".

 

[doctorbadwolf]

I'll just say...

(wait, I want to make sure I'm not near anything that might attract lighting)

...that Max has a point here. Or, at least, there is a point that can be extracted from Max's posts.

If you want a fantasy world in which wizards are rare and mysterious, you need some mechanism to explain why that would be true. If magic is as "easy" as 5e makes it appear to be, you would have a steadily increasing numbers of Wizards. After all, as @Tony Vargas would happily tell you, Magic > All in 5e. And even if not, it's awfully useful and powerful.

You could, for example, simply rule (as a DM) that only some people have the magical spark. Players get to have that spark if they want it, so no random roll is required, but part of the fictional setting is that not everybody has it. But that's not part of the actual rules anywhere.

Or you might rule that Wizards are, effectively, a guild, and maintain strict control over their trade "secrets". This is quite reasonable and feasible, in my mind. Not so different from the way certain swords, produced not by sole individuals but by secretive "guilds" (in deed if not in name) were so highly prized over the centuries. Whether Uthbert, Damascus, Toledo, or whatever, the smiths who made these blades taught their apprentices how to do it, but as a group maintained an iron grip on the trade secrets. (As an aside, it blows my mind that they even figured this stuff out, and how to replicate it, with zero understanding of the actual metallurgy and chemistry.). Wizards might do the same thing.

Or maybe it's just that teaching magic sucks up a tremendous amount of time. The Wizards aren't "secretive" so much as just really uninterested in spending 10,000 hours training somebody.

Whatever it is, if your world does not have an explanation for why magic is rare, I think Max is right in that you're either going to have more and more and more wizards (and maybe bards and clerics and what-not) or you're going to just have to live with an incongruity in your game world, similar to how it makes no sense that you can't easily and cheaply buy copying privileges to fill up your spell book, since there's no real "cost" to letting somebody copy your spells.

I mean, it just has to be harder to learn than bladesmithing. That’s it.

Now, if there are magewright rituals like in Eberron, and you can learn them as part of learning a trade they’re related to, then you’ll see a wide proliferation of everyday magic.

 

[Cap'n Kobold]

I mean, it just has to be harder to learn than bladesmithing. That’s it.

Now, if there are magewright rituals like in Eberron, and you can learn them as part of learning a trade they’re related to, then you’ll see a wide proliferation of everyday magic.

Yep. But in Eberron, wizards are rare and mysterious.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Yep. But in Eberron, wizards are rare and mysterious.

Not especially. Arcanix is full of them. THey just aren’t high level, and in 5e don’t all use PC rules.

 

[Cap'n Kobold]

Not especially. Arcanix is full of them. THey just aren’t high level, and in 5e don’t all use PC rules.

Most of the pupils of Arcanix do not have the capacity to become wizards. They will learn the rituals that allow them to make a living casting magic as a profession. These Magewrights make up Eberron's wide proliferation of magic, but the ability to learn many spells and cast them out of personal power requires something that most NPCs in Eberron don't have.