Mystic is back up!

[8wGremlin]

http://dnd.wizards.com/articles/unearthed-arcana/mystic-class

http://media.wizards.com/2017/dnd/downloads/UAMystic3.pdf

[NecroDancer]

Seems a bit too strong. I'd let a player use it if they promised no multiclassing

[Naanomi]

Seems a bit too strong. I'd let a player use it if they promised no multiclassing
The 'UA Philosophy' has been explicitly:
1) make it too strong rather than too weak, to encourage people to try it out; and
2) multiclassing implications are not considered

So... sounds like they were right on track then :smallwink:

[sightlessrealit]

It is to strong. Basically, at first level for every Order except Soul knife you have three tool kits to choose from that give you so powerful benefits. You wanna see in magical Darkness, you got it. You wanna not get disadvantage on ranged attacks, you got it. And thats just two......and doesn't count the other benifits they give. Not to mention 2 level telepathy. No longer need to go Great Old One Warlock.

[Psikerlord]

Consumptive power at 10th and Wujen 6th level arcane dabbler look broken to me. Stopped reading there. Dont we already have a psion class anyways?

[Flashy]

Consumptive power at 10th and Wujen 6th level arcane dabbler look broken to me. Stopped reading there. Dont we already have a psion class anyways?

Arcane Dabbler gets you three 5th level or lower spells off the Wizard list. It's basically just an extra discipline. Consumptive Power lets you recover 5 Psi points in exchange for a 50 point reduction in your max hitpoints. It's a third level spell in exchange for ~half your hitpoint pool. An infinitely worse version of the Wizard's Arcane Recovery feature.

[DracoKnight]

Consumptive Power lets you recover 5 Psi points in exchange for a 50 point reduction in your max hitpoints. It's a third level spell in exchange for ~half your hitpoint pool. An infinitely worse version of the Wizard's Arcane Recovery feature.

Ummmmmm, no? Your HP/HP maximum are reduced by the amount of psi points you spend :smalltongue:

Spend 5 psi points? HP/HP MAX reduced by 5. Spend 7? HP/HP MAX reduced by 7? Spend 2? You get the idea.

[sightlessrealit]

Arcane Dabbler gets you three 5th level or lower spells off the Wizard list. It's basically just an extra discipline. Consumptive Power lets you recover 5 Psi points in exchange for a 50 point reduction in your max hitpoints. It's a third level spell in exchange for ~half your hitpoint pool. An infinitely worse version of the Wizard's Arcane Recovery feature.
It's just 1st-3rd level spells. You can just cast those spells up to 5th level. Not that that makes much of a diffenerace if your multi classing though. It plus Sorcerer or Lore Master or Sorcerer & Lore Master is broken as hell.

[Flashy]

Ummmmmm, no? Your HP/HP maximum are reduced by the amount of psi points you spend :smalltongue:

Spend 5 psi points? HP/HP MAX reduced by 5. Spend 7? HP/HP MAX reduced by 7? Spend 2? You get the idea.

My mistake, I had accidentally re-opened the older version.

[DracoKnight]

My mistake, I had accidentally re-opened the older version.

Also, my apologies - rereading my post it sounded like I was being antagonistic...which wasn't my intent. :smallsmile:

[Ferrin33]

All-Round Sight from the Precognition Discipline.

Is it just me, or wouldn't this be better off being a re-roll rather than imposing disadvantage? If the attack that hits had advantage already, which die is kept? It's pretty wonky. *continues reading*

[Tanarii]

Read it all last night. My first two impressions:
1) Holy crap that's far to complex!
2) Seems strong, but it's kinda hard to tell, because 1.

That said, psionics has always been the realm of players that want super complex for both builds AND resource management during actual play. And UA is always strong. So all in all, so far it checks out.

What's interesting to me is they released it with so many sub-paths. Given that any sub-class can take any discipline (except with it's two initial), and that they wanted a bunch of disciplines, that makes sense. Also it took me two looks to realize that there are no Soul Knife Disciplines, which makes sense since they don't get bonus disciplines.

Edit: I am rather disappointed to see Wu Jen coming in as a psionic sub-type though. As far as I know, Wu Jen have always been wizards in the past. They're the definitive elemental wizard sub-class. I know that's kinda become the domain of sorcerers for western arcane casters since 4th edition, but still ...

[dejarnjc]

Edit: I am rather disappointed to see Wu Jen coming in as a psionic sub-type though. As far as I know, Wu Jen have always been wizards in the past. They're the definitive elemental wizard sub-class. I know that's kinda become the domain of sorcerers for western arcane casters since 4th edition, but still ...

From what I gather though, the fluff on the Wu Jen reaaaallly fit the mystic feel though. Shunned by society, reclusive, withdrawn, nomadic, live in the wilderness to purify their mind and body, meditative, weird, and quirky.

[Steampunkette]

So... I took a stab at character creation.

At level 1, your low power point limit means you're either going to do 2 "Spell Equivalents" like gaining a climb speed equal to your walking speed, completely analyzing one enemy's resistances, vulnerabilities, and HP, or granting your allies a half-move that uses their reactions.

Or you can spend 1-2 points on making a spell attack, or forcing a save on a single target, to do 2d10 damage (maximum). Or, if you've got the Mastery of Air, make a short line-attack for bludgeoning damage at 2d8.

So their spellcasting ability is moderately lackluster...

Fortunately for anyone who isn't a Soulknife: You've got, like, 12 "Spells" to choose from at level 1 to spend your power points on.

The real power of Disciplines at level 1 is the Psychic Focus, which gives you a choice between three (or no choice at all), moderately cool abilities. Whether it's the Nomad Archer having no range disadvantage or changing your weapon damage type to Psychic (at the cost of your ability modifier to damage).

Aside from that, they've got Cantrips that are nice. Mind Thrust is probably the best, especially for an Awakened Mystic or someone who uses Psychic Assault for the +2 damage bonus.

Most of the class's "Spells" aren't really as strong as spells of equivalent "Level". For most powers you get 1 die of damage for every power point you spend, meaning their "5th Level Spells" do 7dX (X dependent on the spell) for their maximum damage. That's less than a 3rd level Fireball spell. There are exceptions, like Psychic Blast at 8d8 (10d8 if you spend the extra PP).

Psionic Characters also max out at 71 power points, making them similar to "Half Casters" in the amount of spell points they get, though spell points don't exactly equate. Though through their Psionic Mastery they'll eventually gain an additional 44 spell points which gives them 121 spell points total (though they have to spend an action to gain access to each 11 of those 44 spell points) The ability to sacrifice up to 7 hit points for more PP brings their full total up to 128, still 5 less than a regular caster. So Half-Caster isn't -entirely- accurate, even if they max out at "5th Level" spells.

Psionic Mastery is where the Mystic really hits it's "OMG this is kind of amazing!" stride. The ability to maintain concentration on multiple effects is great! Someone with Aura Sight can have Detect Magic with an HP counter -and- Truesight on at the same time. Or Hold Person (One target only) and Ogre Form (10 temp HP, +1d4 damage, Reach 10ft). Add in your no-concentration-required Psychic Focus and you can get three or even four long-lasting benefits that would normally require concentration.

Unless you're looking to make someone who throws out psychic damage like candy at a parade, or a teleporting archer with one shot per round that they make count through spending power points, you're probably going to feel like an information-gathering mage or a "Not Quite There" barbarian. There are two exceptions.

The Pseudo-Battlemaster/Warlord Avatar, and the Pseudo Avatar Wu Jen. Srsly. They spend their career doing the whole Element-Bending thing while the Order of the Avatar is all about spending their power points to confound their enemies or bolster their allies. At high end, I imagine most Avatars are going to blow scads of PP on "Command to Strike" which gives their Paladin, Barbarian, and Fighter allies an Attack Action (Between 2 and 4 attacks, scads of bonus damage, etc).

I feel like the class is going to feel very much like a Warlock in play, when it comes to their damage limits and when their spells cap out. With as much if not more overall flexibility. However most of their actual expenditures are probably going to feel fairly weak and simply have a better chance of actually going off (By targeting weak saves or minimizing disadvantage or ignoring some measure of armor).

I'm honestly really excited for the chance to see them in action.

[jesterjeff]

The scope of the current mystic class is huge, it offers a base psionic class. The orders? Each one is practically a class on its own.
Avatars are mystic bards, awakened are mystic clerics, immortals are mystic barbarians, nomads are mystic rogues, wu jen are mystic wizards, and soul knives are mystic fighters. This idea is manifest if you consider only taking their order disciplines and what kind of chara yet you'd have.

Avatar disciplines inspire and augment others, awakened disciplines are devoted to psi's stereotypical narrative, immortal disciplines are flesh focused, nomad disciplines are movement based, soul knife disciplines are combat based, and wu jen disciplines are psi-wizardry.
Personally, I think this is an amazing design, and totally screams, "Dark Sun 5E!"

[RumoCrytuf]

http://dnd.wizards.com/articles/unearthed-arcana/mystic-class

http://media.wizards.com/2017/dnd/downloads/UAMystic3.pdf

Aaaand now we have Jace. Who's next? Garruk? Ooh! what about Saheeli?

Of course, I merely jest. Good Job wizards, ripping off your own games :P

[Petrocorus]

Is it just me or recovering HP when you manifest "spells" is really strong?
The potential combinations of Disciplines may probably have some unintended brokenness to be discovered too.



Personally, [...] and totally screams, "Dark Sun 5E!"
Yes, please.
And can we have Eberron too.

[Steampunkette]

It could be a problem. But it's a bonus action. And a Mystic is always going to have a pile of other things they can use a Bonus Action for that might be more important.

But being able to recover a maximum of 11 points of damage at high end will be a nice thing, if you're in trouble.

[Tanarii]

From what I gather though, the fluff on the Wu Jen reaaaallly fit the mystic feel though. Shunned by society, reclusive, withdrawn, nomadic, live in the wilderness to purify their mind and body, meditative, weird, and quirky.What 'mystic feel'? This is an entirely invented new class without any pre-existing feel, isn't it? I don't see how the Wu Jen can fit that.

Edit: What I mean to say is that the Wu Jen has it's own feel and fluff entirely based on being wizards for 3 editions of D&D, AD&D 1e Oriental Adventures, AD&D 2e Complete Wizards, and D&D 3e Oriental Adventures. So it's hard to see how they suddenly fit the brand new 'mystic feel' suddenly.

[MeeposFire]

What 'mystic feel'? This is an entirely invented new class without any pre-existing feel, isn't it? I don't see how the Wu Jen can fit that.

Edit: What I mean to say is that the Wu Jen has it's own feel and fluff entirely based on being wizards for 3 editions of D&D, AD&D 1e Oriental Adventures, AD&D 2e Complete Wizards, and D&D 3e Oriental Adventures. So it's hard to see how they suddenly fit the brand new 'mystic feel' suddenly.

Well to be fair when they made the initial Wu Jen that was how magic was done for the most part and since then essentially that class has been forced to be "wizard but Asian flavored". It has never been all that popular for that exact reason there really has not been a very good hold on what makes it interesting outside of being Asian flavored (whatever that really means) and it uses magic and since magic meant being like a wizard or cleric in 1e and they had not gotten very creative at that point in the official books that has sadly meant that it only became a slight wizard variant and has never escaped that problem. Frankly we should be happy it is NOT like those classes because those classes have often been looked down upon for being exactly that wizard retreads.


As for the mystic class itself in terms of the name we had Rulescyclopedia types which are monks and in 2e we had a aesthetic cleric type that was really strange and had the ability to make potions and I think candles. We also know that the psionisist and the gallery of 3e psionic classes are also being represented here even though the name is not normally associated with those classes.

[Potato_Priest]

From what I've seen nothing is too strong (although I'm probably missing some combos that others are seeing) (maybe the spend 7 hp for 20 temp hp?) and it looks to me like the mystic isn't really going to be dishing out the pain. However, my favorite abilities are utilities with creative function, and this looks perfect for that.

[Sianthus]

It's very strong yes.

I'm more annoyed they didn't just sort the Psionic Disciplines by their Orders instead of alphabetical. Really really ruffles my feathers.

[Theodoxus]

Hehe, I'm entering the Disciplines into Excel - so I sorted it by the way they have in the PDF, but after they're entered, I'll sort it by Order.

Other than the rushed feel (which is odd, given how long it's been in development), and having to make rulings on things that shouldn't need rulings (like Darkness not having a duration listed, so it defaults to Instantaneous) I don't think it's overly OP. Of course, if you start trying to MC with it, it'll get wonky in ways WotC didn't anticipate, and I honestly think most of the general OPness disappears when you modify the paragraph on Psi Limit to include "in a round".

[Zalabim]

Well we know that UA are written the same day they're released. That really explains too much.

However it was within two hours of this UA being published that JC answered a twitter question about Darkness. It's supposed to have the same duration as the Light option.

[Tanarii]

It's very strong yes.

I'm more annoyed they didn't just sort the Psionic Disciplines by their Orders instead of alphabetical. Really really ruffles my feathers.
That is not their standard. It also doesn't make sense, because the only time you care about the order a disciple has is for your two sub-class selections, when you can refer to the list. Any other time you're selecting from all of them.

[Psikerlord]

Arcane Dabbler gets you three 5th level or lower spells off the Wizard list. It's basically just an extra discipline. Consumptive Power lets you recover 5 Psi points in exchange for a 50 point reduction in your max hitpoints. It's a third level spell in exchange for ~half your hitpoint pool. An infinitely worse version of the Wizard's Arcane Recovery feature.

I think Arcane Dabbler is too strong. Reminds me of the bard ability to cherry pick the best spells.

My mistake re Consumptive power - I didnt read the once/long rest bit! My bad!

[Potato_Priest]

So it's been established that consumptive power is not as bad as previously thought. What still looks OP on a single-classed mystic?