Help Me Make A Tankish Mystic

[TyronePartII]

So to start off with, I haven't roleplayed in a few years, and haven't played D&D in even longer. Never played 5e. In a few months I'll be moving back home and my old group wants me to play some 5e games with them. I have the Player's Handbook. The group wants a tank, but doesn't NEED one, but they do need someone who can fight. The DM would like me to play a Mystic (either awakened or immortal, he doesn't care) from UA, because he'd like to see that in action. I do not know if multiclassing is allowed, but I THINK feats are allowed. The character would start at 5th level.

Can you help me build a Mystic who is as close to being a tank as possible?

[Grod_The_Giant]

Luckily, an Immortal Mystic is insanely tanky. Heavy armor and shields and +Int temporary HP every turn, on top of the steady trickle of healing from Mystical Recovery, should see you golden. Take Iron Durability for a flat +1 AC and up to another +6 as a reaction. And that's pretty much it; everything else is up to you. I'd grab I think Mind Meld and Light Step for Talents, Iron Durability, Psionic Weapon, and Conquering for Lesser Disciplines, and Body of Wind for your Greater Discipline.

Race-wise, I'd go... hmm, I think I'd go Variant Human and take Magic Initiate (Wizard). The level one spell isn't too important-- Find Familiar is probably the most bang for your buck, but there are plenty of good options-- but pick up one or both of the melee cantrips from the Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide. That way you can make the most of your one attack/round. If those aren't on the table, any good strong race will do.

Stats, I'd go Str > Int, Con > Wis > Dex, Cha. Wear plate mail, carry a longsword and shield, and rock the hell out. Your DM will probably hate you; Mystic is hella strong.

[TyronePartII]

Race-wise, I'd go... hmm, I think I'd go Variant Human and take Magic Initiate (Wizard). The level one spell isn't too important-- Find Familiar is probably the most bang for your buck, but there are plenty of good options-- but pick up one or both of the melee cantrips from the Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide. That way you can make the most of your one attack/round. If those aren't on the table, any good strong race will do.

I was thinking maybe a half-orc with the outlander background, but that's mostly because I have a good backstory to go with that. So you'd recommend taking a feat over an ability bump? I was looking at maybe Sentinel, and maybe at the next level that gives me a feat taking Polearm Master to pair with it. I'm not familiar with the melee cantrips from Sword Coast. I'll have to look into that.

[Grod_The_Giant]

I was thinking maybe a half-orc with the outlander background, but that's mostly because I have a good backstory to go with that. So you'd recommend taking a feat over an ability bump? I was looking at maybe Sentinel, and maybe at the next level that gives me a feat taking Polearm Master to pair with it. I'm not familiar with the melee cantrips from Sword Coast. I'll have to look into that.
The cantrips-- Booming Blade and Green-Flame Blade-- are basically "make a melee attack with an additional effect." Booming deals the target damage if it moves, and Green-Flame deals a bit of damage to a second target. They also add a d8 or two to your initial hit, helping make up for the lack of Extra Attack.

You'll need a decent few abilities, and I don't see any feats really jump out at me as must-haves. Great Weapon Master maybe; Psionic Weapon can give you a pretty big to-hit bonus. Polearm Master/Sentinel is always a fine combo, I suppose.

[Gnomes2169]

As a mystic, you should have plenty to spend your bonus action on so PAM isn't necessarily the most necessary thing to pick up if you have, say, a way to ensure your allies are near by, the reaction attack from Sentinel.

Basically, it comes down to how you want to spend your reaction, or how you think it will most often be used. If you are going to be farther from your party, the ability to smack a dude entering your reach makes you more self-sufficient. If you are going to be trying to lock people down and near allies, sentinel is a bit more potent. Either way, I recommend only picking uo one or the other since you will really, really, really want to max out your attack stat and intelligence with your proposed build, and if you don't go V-Human then you will need all the ASI's you can get to do that.

[djreynolds]

We have a mystic warrior in our party, they are IMO as powerful or more than a paladin. We are 4th level, and he fails saves, but really powerful and I believe the powers works with ranged options as well.

[Gnomes2169]

Well, most powers work with range. However, their "psionic smite" option that deals 1-5d10 psychic damage (depending on what you spend on it) is explicitly only for melee weapon attacks.

[Finlam]

After playing a mystic through 8 levels I found some abilities are much better than others.

Intellect Fortress - Psychic Backlash >>> Iron Durability - Iron Hide. In other words, PB is way better than IH for numerous reasons, the first is that imposing disadvantage is much better than an AC boost as it stops crits, which with your d8 HD, you risk getting dropped by a single lucky crit, secondly PB deals damage if they do manage to hit, and lastly, PB is more bang for your buck as it only costs 1 no matter what; depending on if your DM tells you their roll result before hand, you can find yourself funneling points into IH to find they still hit anyway. Also, if your AC is high already, imposing disadvantage is never going to be worse than adding to an already high AC.

Honestly, these two abilities are going to be your top picks for tanking at low levels either way. It goes without saying you need psionic weapon to be able to deal damage as it's the only damaging ability of the whole class. After that, if your goal is tanking, psionic restoration is probably your next choice; I wouldn't use it in combat, but the healing should help stretch the group's HP a little between rests.

When you get to higher levels you'll want body of wind to gain resistance to all physical damage (also comes with fly), and adaptive body to be able to gain resistance and later immunity to entire damage types.

[spartan_ah]

After playing a mystic through 8 levels I found some abilities are much better than others.

Intellect Fortress - Psychic Backlash >>> Iron Durability - Iron Hide. In other words, PB is way better than IH for numerous reasons, the first is that imposing disadvantage is much better than an AC boost as it stops crits, which with your d8 HD, you risk getting dropped by a single lucky crit, secondly PB deals damage if they do manage to hit, and lastly, PB is more bang for your buck as it only costs 1 no matter what; depending on if your DM tells you their roll result before hand, you can find yourself funneling points into IH to find they still hit anyway. Also, if your AC is high already, imposing disadvantage is never going to be worse than adding to an already high AC.

Honestly, these two abilities are going to be your top picks for tanking at low levels either way. It goes without saying you need psionic weapon to be able to deal damage as it's the only damaging ability of the whole class. After that, if your goal is tanking, psionic restoration is probably your next choice; I wouldn't use it in combat, but the healing should help stretch the group's HP a little between rests.

When you get to higher levels you'll want body of wind to gain resistance to all physical damage (also comes with fly), and adaptive body to be able to gain resistance and later immunity to entire damage types.

thought about it as well. yet 2 problems I see...
intellect fortress' psychic focus is much more inferior. and using PB as immortals doesn't add you HP
your thoughts?

[Finlam]

thought about it as well. yet 2 problems I see...
intellect fortress' psychic focus is much more inferior. and using PB as immortals doesn't add you HP
your thoughts?

The focus of intellect fortress is pure garbage, it's true. Personally, I've never taken the healing into account when choosing disciplines because it only kicks in when below half health, which is a pretty narrow window when your HD is a d8. In my experience it amounts to a couple rounds of healing in a day as it either heals you back over half or combat ends.

That said, I think the ability Psychic Parry ability of Intellect Fotress is absolutely necessary to avoid save or suck effects as the class' saves are INT and WIS, but due to their 4th level Strength of Mind feature, you will probably be proficient in INT and CON most of the time.

If you had to make a choice between the two, in my experience, Intellect Fortress is strictly better than Iron Durability, except for the focus, but ideally you can choose to have both.

Something to bear in mind is that your concentration will probably be on Psionic Weapon - Augmented Weapon after you hit level 5. Having an always on bonus action activated +3 weapon is pretty crazy and has amazing synergy with Sharpshooter/Crossbow Expert or Great Weapon Master, as it lessens the -5 penalty to a -2 and adds that nice additional +3 to damage. For a class with only one damaging ability, at least you have a really good one.

I would recommend taking a feat to get a bonus action attack, you can use Celerity to do it, but 5 points a pull starts to really add up and if you're on the front lines, it quickly gets boring to make one attack and then end your turn.

Lastly, it goes without saying that the most overpowered discipline, by an enormous margin, is Conquering Mind. It's so good it's virtually mandatory regardless of your party role as it, alone, can solve entire encounters and end combats. If you do pick it up, use it sparingly so as not to frustrate the DM; almost no monster's have good INT saves and the ability is really only limited by your imagination. Use in conjunction with the Mind Meld talent for range of 120 and the ability to target any creature that understands any language.

[ImSAMazing]

Just a question:
What version of the Mystic are you referring to? the 10 level version or the 5 level version?

[spartan_ah]

my fear with psionic weapon focus is that it is obsolete once you get a magical weapon, and then you have lousy psychic focuses to choose from.
gonna start as a level 3 immortal and debating between 3 disciplines to begin with...

[Finlam]

Just a question:
What version of the Mystic are you referring to? the 10 level version or the 5 level version?

I've only ever played the 10 level version; that's all I reference in my posts.

@spartan_ah yes, the focus of Psionic Weapon becomes outdated at the acquisition of your first magic weapon, but the non-focus abilities are useful at any level.

If you want to be MAXIMUM TANK, I would honestly consider not investing in INT and pumping CON, you only need INT if you are picking up Conquering Mind or Mind Over Emotion, it is otherwise irrelevant to the class.

For my first 3 picks when playing immortal I usually go for Psionic Weapon, Intellect Fortress, and Conquering Mind, YMMV. I will say that I couldn't even imagine playing a mystic without Psionic Weapon right now as it's literally the only damaging feature of the class, after that it's hard to go wrong as you will find nearly every discipline to be fairly useful in its own right. Except Mind Over Emotion, there's never a reason to pick that one.

[spartan_ah]

I've only ever played the 10 level version; that's all I reference in my posts.

@spartan_ah yes, the focus of Psionic Weapon becomes outdated at the acquisition of your first magic weapon, but the non-focus abilities are useful at any level.

If you want to be MAXIMUM TANK, I would honestly consider not investing in INT and pumping CON, you only need INT if you are picking up Conquering Mind or Mind Over Emotion, it is otherwise irrelevant to the class.

For my first 3 picks when playing immortal I usually go for Psionic Weapon, Intellect Fortress, and Conquering Mind, YMMV. I will say that I couldn't even imagine playing a mystic without Psionic Weapon right now as it's literally the only damaging feature of the class, after that it's hard to go wrong as you will find nearly every discipline to be fairly useful in its own right. Except Mind Over Emotion, there's never a reason to pick that one.

you'll skip celerity?
I actually have a barb in my group so tanking isn't the mail thing. more of a fron damage dealer, going STR build.

[Finlam]

you'll skip celerity?
I actually have a barb in my group so tanking isn't the mail thing. more of a fron damage dealer, going STR build.

I actually didn't skip Celerity my first time through and I found I regretted it. If surprise is something you deal with often, then you'll get a lot of mileage out of it, also if you have an assassin you can become their best friend, but otherwise I didn't find it worth it until after I could activate its 5 pp ability to get an extra attack, something that would be better done through a feat to conserve pp.

[spartan_ah]

I'm not a fan of high initiative, but the additional movement and the bonus action can make you super fast, especially when you are not good at ranged attacks. Maybe I can just hold 2 scimitars to get my bonus action

[Finlam]

I'm not a fan of high initiative, but the additional movement and the bonus action can make you super fast, especially when you are not good at ranged attacks. Maybe I can just hold 2 scimitars to get my bonus action

The 30+ move with free disengage for a bonus action is a nice feature to be sure. Personally, I found the Mystic's bonus action to be so overloaded that I almost never used the feature though, by which I mean the Mystic has so many good options for the bonus action already that there was almost always a better use for it. I ended up using the 10 feet of movement talent and dropping Celerity entirely because of how little benefit I got from it.

Now here's where I should drop the disclaimer that I built a ranged character around SS/Crossbow Master rather than go into melee with GWM; turns out that dealing upwards of 1d6 + 16 damage per shot by level 8 worked out really well (of course a nice finesse weapon was always on hand in case I needed to nova the crap out of some enemies). If you're in melee a lot and you don't see yourself using the bonus action to attack, buff, or change focus all that often, then you will probably get a lot more mileage out of Celerity than I did.

[TyronePartII]

Thanks everybody for the feedback. It looks like I have some options to play with.

[spartan_ah]

Starting at 3rd level I'm gonna start with celerity, psionic weapon and intellect fortress. I'll see how it goes and maybe change to conquering mind at 4th. I like the "Jedi mind tricks " of this discipline but my INT will not be high until 4.
Finally I'm going to be a real Jedi :smallamused: