Mystics, the Psionics of 5e

[Sagetim]

So, I was trying to find a thread that was talking about Mystics, because I'm playing as one in a 5e game. I was hoping to find people having batted the class around a bit to see what the wheat and what the chaff is for it, but the most recent one I could find on the forum was from a few months ago and talking about the 10 level v2 Mystic, instead of the full base class that came out more recently.

So, instead of thread necromancy, here we are. The questions I would like to discuss in this thread are:
1) Have you seen the class? If not, here's a link. (http://media.wizards.com/2017/dnd/downloads/UAMystic3.pdf) What are your first impressions?

2) Do any of the orders appeal to you? Which ones do you think would be fun to play, or fit a niche or concept you've wanted to try out?

3) Is there anything that seems odd to you about the class?

4) How breakable is this class? What do you see it mixing well with in multiclassing, or what feats do you see as opening up particularly sweet tricks?

[Khrysaes]

Potentially quite strong. Especially as a 1 level dip if you are allowed to multi class in it.

That said, for a Full Class it is very versatile. and I know that the wu jen and nomad are the better archetypes in my opinion. wu jen is better if you are going deep into the class.

I haven't looked into it much beyond multi classing potential.

It needs a rule to have the multi class requirement of 13 int.

I dont know how strong mind would work if you multi class, and don't have wis as a proficient save, I would rule it doesn't.

It would mix well multi classing with the focus on disciplines, not orders. That said, I think Nomad order is best for multiclassing because of the flexible skills/languages/tools, and nomadic mind.

Giant form one is great for a Polearm Master. since it increases your reach by 5+ feet.

Nomadic Arrow is good for archers.

Beast Form granting Flight without concentration.

Psionic Weapon is good, but not if you don't take 6 Mystic.

Diminutive and Nomadic Chameleon are good for stealth based characters, granting advantage on stealth.

Various other disciplines granting advantage on various skills.

Mastery of Light and Dark giving Dark vision that can see through magical darkness AND Darkness at level 1.

Precognition is good too.

The Mind Meld talent is the best, in my opinion, if you take only 1 level. it becomes still useful, but less so at level 2 because of the passive telepathy feature, although more limited.

All the other talents require saves, which I believe are based on your Int.

I like the invisibility and charm talents as well.

Would work well with a Blade Pact Warlock with a relevant smite invocation or Paladin to fuel the smites, especially with the passives. In fact I know there is a 5 Warlock 15 Mystic build someone made with Archfey and Moon Bow, it gives advice on the Disciplines too.

[Drackolus]

The weirdest bit is probably the immortal and blade orders. They're not quite a fighter. I would liken them to Bladesingers: they're still mystics, they can just do some fightery things occasionally.
My favorite is easily the nomad. Modifiable skill proficiencies and teleportation? Sign me up!
The Wu Jen is okay too. I would probably never use the Awakened, though it has it's merits. It sets itself up to be the "classic psion," but I feel the Nomad actually does a better job of it.

[Asmotherion]

So, I was trying to find a thread that was talking about Mystics, because I'm playing as one in a 5e game. I was hoping to find people having batted the class around a bit to see what the wheat and what the chaff is for it, but the most recent one I could find on the forum was from a few months ago and talking about the 10 level v2 Mystic, instead of the full base class that came out more recently.

So, instead of thread necromancy, here we are. The questions I would like to discuss in this thread are:
1) Have you seen the class? If not, here's a link. (http://media.wizards.com/2017/dnd/downloads/UAMystic3.pdf) What are your first impressions?

2) Do any of the orders appeal to you? Which ones do you think would be fun to play, or fit a niche or concept you've wanted to try out?

3) Is there anything that seems odd to you about the class?

4) How breakable is this class? What do you see it mixing well with in multiclassing, or what feats do you see as opening up particularly sweet tricks?

1) Sucks, too imbalanced and broken, and 5e does not need any new classes, just archetypes for existing classes. Make each Mystic archetype into an archetype for their respective classes.

2) None whatsoever. The mystic class is just a copycat-class with copycat features into it's archetypes for other classes. Wile I would enjoy to play a Jedi-like character, or a Mewtwo-like character, I don't want to see the mystic into official material as a new class, and I will ban it from all campains I'd DM if it becomes official.

3) Everything, as I explained above.

4) Nothing is sweet by breaking the game. I hate this class. I wish they discard it, and never publish it.

[ATHATH]

1) Sucks, too imbalanced and broken, and 5e does not need any new classes, just archetypes for existing classes. Make each Mystic archetype into an archetype for their respective classes.

2) None whatsoever. The mystic class is just a copycat-class with copycat features into it's archetypes for other classes. Wile I would enjoy to play a Jedi-like character, or a Mewtwo-like character, I don't want to see the mystic into official material as a new class, and I will ban it from all campains I'd DM if it becomes official.

3) Everything, as I explained above.

4) Nothing is sweet by breaking the game. I hate this class. I wish they discard it, and never publish it.
Would you care to explain what parts of it you think are imbalanced (and why)?

Why shouldn't 5e get more classes?

[Steampunkette]

As the Mystic is currently implemented, it's a hyperflexible caster who can melee at the cost of PP or do archery pretty well.

And if you multiclass (Which the document explicitly forbids) it becomes completely broken.

However, some of us are convinced that the Mystic is essentially the D&D Next Playtest "Mage". A way to work out the psionic casting system with all the options tied to it to see how it interacts with each of them. Kind of like how the Mage was the Arcane Trickster/Bard/Eldritch Knight/Sorcerer/Warlock monoclass before it was split apart.

I highly suggest taking a look at some of the homebrew adaptations of the current Mystic content. People have made their own classes based off of it that limit the shenanigans a bit.

[joaber]

First impression was "wow thos is completly broken". When I started to build characters this go down. They start really strong and maybe broken if your DM do low encounter by long rest. Lvl 11+ they don't get much, the acion economy start to be a problem since they don't get nothing like lvl 6+ spells.
They are incredible versatile, because of that, they are a good option to muticlass with any thing. Damage isn't they strong point unless you burn a lot of resources, what you can't sustain for the entire normal day.
Immortal and soul knife looks bad planned. Immortal is incredible MAD and they features don't have any sinergy. Soul knife was made to work with two weapon fight, but you have so many options for bonus action, that the off hand attack isn't a good one.
I will not analise the class by multiclass options, because UA isn't balance for that.

[Asmotherion]

Would you care to explain what parts of it you think are imbalanced (and why)?

Why shouldn't 5e get more classes?

On your first question, I'll just quote myself from a post I made on the matter in a past thread:


Things that are just Wrong with the Psion:

A) Telepathy: The Old One Warlock, who specialises in his subclass to get this, only comunicates within 30 feet. Why the heck would the Psion get 120 as a default class ability, without trading off anything is beyond me.

B) Talents: Like cantrips, except 1000 times more versalite. Why would a sorcerer bother getting 4 diferent elemental cantrips for elemental coverage, when the psion can just take Energy Beam, and change the elemental type as he wants? Or why bother casting invisibility, when he can Blind Spot at-will? Why would a monk have unarmored movement, when the Psion can have Light step with no restrictions whatsoever? What's the point in the Longuestrider spell then? Why even bother with casting spells to comunicate telepathically, when the Psion has an exclusive cantrip-like ability to do so? Mind Slam? Ha, the Battlemaster is stupid to use a resource to knock prone, you can do it at-will. Mystic charm? Hey, why be a Swashbackler or high level Enchanter to charm without them realising? The psion has a cantip for it. And has no limitation to use it on a hostile creature either. Hey, the Warlock got an Invocation to push things 10 feet with EB? Well why not give the mystic Psychic Hammer to move something 10 feet in any direction he wants? Why be an other class and dedicate yourself to it, wile the Mystic gets everything with next to no dedication?

C) Disiplines: I am not even going in detail on how broken some are, like that Iron Hide ability (basically AC on demand, overshadowing the Shield Spell by a lot), or the ridiculus bonuses you can get by Psychic Focus. I'm just gonna mention that, wile a regular spells-known caster (is it ok if I call them spontaneous casters like we used to?) has 15 spells more or less, and a wizard, without counting copying into your spellbook, has 44 at 20th level, the Mystic, like the Smart-@ss he is, activelly gets more or less 24, with an average of 3 options on his Disiplines. What's even worse is that some have ridiculusly low costs, as low as 1 Psi Point. This means that he can activelly save up his Psi points for Boss Fights, wile getting limited benefits too... Reminds me of the "having the cake and eating it too" proverb.

D) Mystical Recovery: Oh, you used a resource? Let me reward you by healing yourself with it... Meanwile, Spellcasters use their more limited spell slots, and the only reward is casting the spell they called. Wow... just wow. I don't even...

I choose not to mention how ridiculus the Immortal, Nomad and Wu Jen are. Or how poorly designed the archetypes are, since they give away all their bonuses (save 1) by 6th level... It's just stupid.

On your second question, I feel the Archetype mechanic can give a lot of fun new options to the game without needing to introduce new classes, which is something awkward. 3.5 had so many classes that it's hard to keep track of. Personally I'm aware of 19 core classes, and suspect many more exist in that system. I'd hate to see 5e simplicity destroyed in a similar way, via the introduction of more classes.


First impression was "wow thos is completly broken". When I started to build characters this go down. They start really strong and maybe broken if your DM do low encounter by long rest. Lvl 11+ they don't get much, the acion economy start to be a problem since they don't get nothing like lvl 6+ spells.
They are incredible versatile, because of that, they are a good option to muticlass with any thing. Damage isn't they strong point unless you burn a lot of resources, what you can't sustain for the entire normal day.
Immortal and soul knife looks bad planned. Immortal is incredible MAD and they features don't have any sinergy. Soul knife was made to work with two weapon fight, but you have so many options for bonus action, that the off hand attack isn't a good one.
I will not analise the class by multiclass options, because UA isn't balance for that.

The thing is that, as everyone who has played a class that was not the mystic knows (which you obviously have not), most games are played into levels 3-11, and it's at those levels that it's the hardest to have an all around good character. People dip into other classes to get just that, but the smart@ss option that is the Mystic gets everything core-class. The whole "it's not designed for multiclassing" thing is ridiculous to say the least, as, if it plays into a non-multiclassing game it's broken, wile if it plays in one, it still gets full progression in it's abilities without sacrificing anything... which is the point of multiclassing. It's a Mary-Sue character class, and I honestly believe that if you can't see that, your experiance with 5e is limited to the mystic class only.

[Mortis_Elrod]

1. Very strong. At first i thought it was a bit much maybe too much in one class.

2. Soulknife is the most appealing to me, sadly its probably the weakest order there, but it has some good ideas going in it. Always wanted to be a jedi in D&D, and loved the 3.5 soulknife (though sadly thats a mess too). Other ideas come to mind are a full telepath, or an avatar style character. Maybe a guy that just throws things with his mind.

3. There's alot of bonus action and reaction things within the disciplines and even the orders themselves, this kind of leaves the player with multiple options for action economy, and a feeling of 'what do i do, whats the best option AAAAH'. I wouldnt want this class played by some of my friends who happen to take a while to decide their actions when playing a less option heavy class. Nothing wrong per say, but i could see some problems at least with certain groups. Oh and there needs to be some proof reading done here, like a lot.

4. Its a fairly strong option if allowed to multi class, but i don't think it should be. Even if it was official i find it hard to believe that someone acquires psionic powers out of nowhere, and if someone dedicated their lives to these psionic powers they wouldn't start training elsewhere. The class alone can do some seemingly amazing things, but not without blowing all of its load on it. There are some things that need some rewording as well, and other things that might need to be removed. Its strong class in early levels and then it stops being so amazing when the to other classes actually start to be amazing. Mystic has a lot of roles it can fill, but not be very good at it. It's been said that they can do everything better than everyone else but i disagree, usually these things are said without looking at how man resources are expended, and how the 'best option' for the role has other things it can do that nobody can do.


All in all if it gets out of testing as a full class i wouldn't ban it outright. Psionics is a large part of D&D and there needs to be player options for it, so whichever way i comes to us is a way i want to use, I would however look it over thoroughly before allowing any multiclass. Like others I'd rather it be split into subclasses for various existing classes. I almost wish there was a way to make a subclass apply to multiple classes, but since subclass features are at different levels it might be hard to make that happen. I doubt we will see a version 4, the next time we see psionics it will be in a book, the last version seemed close to completion and just needs some slight adjustments and polish if they wanted a full class. If they are doing subclasses for the PHB classes they may make a UA for that but i doubt it.

[Tiffanyhm]

Frankly I don't think multi classing should exist to me multi classing is **** its way of optimization rather than role playing there is no concept that you need to multi class for. Almost anyone multi classing is doing it for power game reasons and I DESPISE power gamers.

I love psionics because of power point system rather than vancian casting, vancian casting never made sense to me how can you forget a spell after casting it? Just seems dumb but that's me.

The mystic might be trying to do too much right now and does need some tweaking like it needs 6th-9th level powers. But I would explicilty say that non mystics cannot multi class into mystic at all ever period.

[Zaq]

It's one of the only interesting things I've seen come out of 5e so far. It almost kind of allows you a little bit of flexibility and agency, which is why a lot of folks have a knee-jerk "OMG BROKEN" response, despite nothing that it does actually really being that strong. It does look like it's easy to screw yourself out of effectiveness if you aren't keeping a tight lid on your PP, since they really don't get too many PP-conserving options.

The Focus mechanic is exactly the kind of thing I'd like to see more of in the game, since it gives you options and lets you have some influence over your own abilities and your capacity to interact with the world.

I think the class seems reasonably well-designed overall, at least until the scaling gets weird at high levels. There's still some stupid 5e parts to it, but there are fewer than usual, which is why I like it.

[joaber]

The thing is that, as everyone who has played a class that was not the mystic knows (which you obviously have not), most games are played into levels 3-11, and it's at those levels that it's the hardest to have an all around good character. People dip into other classes to get just that, but the smart@ss option that is the Mystic gets everything core-class. The whole "it's not designed for multiclassing" thing is ridiculous to say the least, as, if it plays into a non-multiclassing game it's broken, wile if it plays in one, it still gets full progression in it's abilities without sacrificing anything... which is the point of multiclassing. It's a Mary-Sue character class, and I honestly believe that if you can't see that, your experiance with 5e is limited to the mystic class only.

I'm currently played a mystic lvl 5, and I did 4 other builds. By you completly wrong "analysis" you didn't a single one. So your state about the mysic i just my first impression "wow, this is broke". Try to make a lvl 5, lvl 8, lvl 11 and lvl 15 before trying to argue. You obviously will not do, because you have some repulse of new classes, but your opinion isn't the same of all player. The text in UA say "this is a playtest and isn't balanced for multicless yet" you can argue agaist this, sorry.

Just to point:

A) Telepathy: The Old One Warlock, who specialises in his subclass to get this, only comunicates within 30 feet. Why the heck would the Psion get 120 as a default class ability, without trading off anything is beyond me.

Mystic don't get NONE full telepathy, read again, great old one and all mystic document.

B) Talents: Like cantrips, except 1000 times more versalite. Why would a sorcerer bother getting 4 diferent elemental cantrips for elemental coverage, when the psion can just take Energy Beam, and change the elemental type as he wants? Or why bother casting invisibility, when he can Blind Spot at-will? Why would a monk have unarmored movement, when the Psion can have Light step with no restrictions whatsoever? What's the point in the Longuestrider spell then? Why even bother with casting spells to comunicate telepathically, when the Psion has an exclusive cantrip-like ability to do so? Mind Slam? Ha, the Battlemaster is stupid to use a resource to knock prone, you can do it at-will. Mystic charm? Hey, why be a Swashbackler or high level Enchanter to charm without them realising? The psion has a cantip for it. And has no limitation to use it on a hostile creature either. Hey, the Warlock got an Invocation to push things 10 feet with EB? Well why not give the mystic Psychic Hammer to move something 10 feet in any direction he wants? Why be an other class and dedicate yourself to it, wile the Mystic gets everything with next to no dedication?

Until lvl you only can have 2 talents, so your statement is completly false. Good luck picking just 2.

C) Disiplines: I am not even going in detail on how broken some are, like that Iron Hide ability (basically AC on demand, overshadowing the Shield Spell by a lot), or the ridiculus bonuses you can get by Psychic Focus. I'm just gonna mention that, wile a regular spells-known caster (is it ok if I call them spontaneous casters like we used to?) has 15 spells more or less, and a wizard, without counting copying into your spellbook, has 44 at 20th level, the Mystic, like the Smart-@ss he is, activelly gets more or less 24, with an average of 3 options on his Disiplines. What's even worse is that some have ridiculusly low costs, as low as 1 Psi Point. This means that he can activelly save up his Psi points for Boss Fights, wile getting limited benefits too... Reminds me of the "having the cake and eating it too" proverb.

Again, you can't have all disciplines and have limites resources. You're saying thing like "just check all wizard spell list, they can have all and can use them all day". Try to pick just 5, see the limitetion resources and than we start to talk. At lvl 9 they can choose 7, is about 28 different effects, but just half of that is useful and they can't use all day. At lvl 20 they can have 40 effects, but now, just 18 are useful, because most effects don't worth the action or bonus action at that lvl. Caster cam get 100% of useful effects. Yes, they are incredible versatile, bards and wizards are too, but even if they burn all resources for damage, this will be lower than fighters, barbarians, paladins, sorcloks and so. Every class has his "shine levels", mystic are lvl 7 to 10, wizard is lvl 11+, moon druid is lvl 2 to 5, so be careful with this comparision.

D) Mystical Recovery: Oh, you used a resource? Let me reward you by healing yourself with it... Meanwile, Spellcasters use their more limited spell slots, and the only reward is casting the spell they called. Wow... just wow. I don't even...

Half of psi uses are bonus action or reactions, mystic still get other good bonus action uses, in the end, you'll only get 25% of your pp spend in hp. Play before say.

I choose not to mention how ridiculus the Immortal, Nomad and Wu Jen are. Or how poorly designed the archetypes are, since they give away all their bonuses (save 1) by 6th level... It's just stupid.

Agree, there is some pprtly designed archetypes, most about immortal and soul knife.

You can say that Mystic have about 4 or 5 "broken" effects, as any other UA does, is a playtest, in that case 28 pages of playtest, what did you expected?
But you can't say the entire class is broken if you didn't even tried to build a character or say that just because you "don't want new classes".

Please, make a lvl 5, a lvl 9 (the freat spot of myatic class) and a lvl 15 build to see how "broken" it is and I do 3 builds of other classes to compare.

[dejarnjc]

So, I was trying to find a thread that was talking about Mystics, because I'm playing as one in a 5e game. I was hoping to find people having batted the class around a bit to see what the wheat and what the chaff is for it, but the most recent one I could find on the forum was from a few months ago and talking about the 10 level v2 Mystic, instead of the full base class that came out more recently.

So, instead of thread necromancy, here we are. The questions I would like to discuss in this thread are:
1) Have you seen the class? If not, here's a link. (http://media.wizards.com/2017/dnd/downloads/UAMystic3.pdf) What are your first impressions?

2) Do any of the orders appeal to you? Which ones do you think would be fun to play, or fit a niche or concept you've wanted to try out?

3) Is there anything that seems odd to you about the class?

4) How breakable is this class? What do you see it mixing well with in multiclassing, or what feats do you see as opening up particularly sweet tricks?

1) First impressions: sweet! I love psionics and whoa this is a lot of stuff!
2) Playing a Wu Jen at level 7 right now. Very fun. Also very interested in playing an immortal and an awakened.
3) The sheer number of disciplines that overlap or are redundant. The psionic really has fewer options than people think. Definitely less than a wizard or druid.
4) Could be "breakable" with some AC stacking abilities and save boosting abilities that make the Mystic super tanky. Also has high potential at using a lot of psi points and multiple disciplines in a turn for massive burst damage. Large PSI expenditure for both of thsee though (HUGE cost for the latter with the possibility the PSI points are wasted).

This class as is should not be allowed to multi class. I see lots of issues with barb, druid, paladin, fighter, monk, and wizard multiclasses.

[Sagetim]

1) Sucks, too imbalanced and broken, and 5e does not need any new classes, just archetypes for existing classes. Make each Mystic archetype into an archetype for their respective classes.

2) None whatsoever. The mystic class is just a copycat-class with copycat features into it's archetypes for other classes. Wile I would enjoy to play a Jedi-like character, or a Mewtwo-like character, I don't want to see the mystic into official material as a new class, and I will ban it from all campains I'd DM if it becomes official.

3) Everything, as I explained above.

4) Nothing is sweet by breaking the game. I hate this class. I wish they discard it, and never publish it.

This response leaves me with the impression that you just hate psionics, possibly of every edition. I'm not trying to judge, but it leaves something to be desired in trying to talk about the class. That aside (since you posted later with detail), I'd like to unpack some of your protestations to the class:

Who cares what the warlock can do with regards to telepathy? It's not a specialist in mental shenanigans, so why should it be the benchmark by which all other classes are judged? The Mystic is supposed to be the class for powers of the mind, so it makes sense that they would be better at telepathy than other people. It's part of their jam. It feels similar to complaining that wizards are broken because fireball is better than the cleric's flamestrike.

Energy Beam is a legit complaint. But if you just look at it from a power to power comparison, without considering them in the context of their classes, then it seems like an incomplete argument. Cantrips run the range of utility, like prestidigitation, light, mage hand, minor illusion, and so on. Light is more useful than Beacon, for example, because the Light Cantrip can be put on objects and thrown down holes, around corners, and so on. Beacon is stuck to you and unless you're going to be on the end of a rope, you're not going down any hole to see how deep it is or what have you. It's less Useful. Less versatile. Light Step straight up sucks. It eats a bonus action to give you a non scaling minor bonus to your movement speed and a very situational benefit in the kip up. A level 2 rogue, for example, is already better at moving just by using rogue actions to dash as a bonus action, and the monk scales up in speed over levels of monk. Also the monk doesn't eat your actions to go faster. So it's a really sub par talent. Blade Meld makes you impossible to disarm. Which is of limited use, even if you're in melee a lot. Disarming only comes up if your GM actually has people try to do it, or if you are doing it. In nearly 20 years of dnd, I've seen maybe 3 uses of disarm or something?

Blind Spot is basically a copy paste of a 3.5 power called Cloud Mind. It was pretty bad in 3.5, and even at will it's not great. Because it's only a single target and barely has a duration. Invisibility is going to give you way more mileage, because you don't have to be aware of people to be invisible to them, and are invisible to Everyone, not just that one guy you singled out. It seems powerful because it says invisibility, and it's a talent so it can be spammed, but unlike invisibility it has a save to resist and it's single target only. Most of your sneaking is probably going to involve more than one guard at a time. It's situationally useful, but you have to hunt the opportunity to use it instead of it being blanket useful.

Delusion seems to be about on par with Minor Illusion, which makes it as good or bad as that cantrip is. Except that you know far fewer Talents baseline, and can't pick up more by, say, a feat called Magic Initiate for example.

Now we get back to Energy Beam. The downside to it is that it will always target dex and will always do 1d8 damage. This means that compared to the person who took a bunch of different damage cantrips, they don't have the versatility that all those cantrips provide. Firebolt for example, does d10's with an attack roll, while Poison Spray does d12's and is con save based, while Ray of Frost has a debuff attached and Chill Touch is an attack roll, necrotic damage and shuts down healing entirely. Damage Type versatility is what Energy Ray gets instead of a regular secondary effect. And that's in keeping with how psionic powers worked in 3.5 that did energy damage.

Mind Meld is okay. It's completely overshadowed by telepathy class feature at level 2. I suppose if you need to share memories for some reason it's handy.

Mind Slam is pretty cool, but the damage is low for a cantrip. It does d6's with a con save and does Force damage, and that sounds pretty good. Because Force damage is pretty cool. Now if you could just get people to fail their con saves regularly. It's also pretty moderate on range. So, medium range, low damage, and a save that, as far as I know, a lot of monsters have proficiency in.

Mind Thrust is nice, unless you're fighting wizards and druids. Intelligence is a secondary save and I think it's one of the more unusual ones to have proficiency in. Mind Thrust is in keeping with already statted psionic monsters, like the Intellect Devourer.

Charm has basically no duration. The target gets a save EVERY round to resist it, and there's not really any way to stack up your dc's other than having a big casting stat. And it's still only a charm effect, not domination. If you try to lean to heavily on this, the target is going to save even if they have a sub 10 stat. And then you're in trouble.

Mystic Hand is, more or less, Mage Hand. It's nice for the same reasons that Mage hand is nice. It's also more subtle than Mage Hand, so that's nice.

Psychic Hammer is long range (for a cantrip or talent, Nice), has low damage (booo), and has a rider of possibly moving a target up to 10 feet. While you get more directional control, this really doesn't compare to Eldritch Blast, which does d10's damage, gets more rays, and can Also have More riders, like +cha to damage starting at level 2. Potent Psionics only comes online at level 8.

1 AC on demand doesn't overshadow +5 to ac and immunity to magic missiles, if you're talking about the focus ability. And that would be something that eats your focus, since you can only have on Discipline focus at a given time. If you're talking the bonus that costs psi points, then you need to consider that A) you still have to follow the psi limit and B) blowing psi points on that effect is way more expensive than a first level spell slot. That's kind of how psionics has been since 3.5, with a 'pay more to scale' set up as compared to magic. So CAN you theoretically get more AC from this discipline than you can from Shield? Yes. But is it going to eat more of your resources? Like a Monster.

And that's one area we start running into trouble trying to directly compare things. The Mystic, for some reason, just stops getting more resources about halfway through. Psionic Mastery technically gives you more resources, but it seems more geared towards being useful at buffing/debuffing as opposed to doing damage or what have you. And because it stops scaling your psi limit at level 4 powers (1-1, 2-3, 3-5, 4-7, 5-9, etc) your potency on powers stops being competitive after level 10 or so. So you wind up in this weird warlock like zone where your resources and capabilities don't really directly compare to a regular full caster. The full caster has a higher peak that they can, and do hit, later. While the Mystic hits the peak of their abilities more or less around level 9.

Which brings us to a point that's perfectly valid that I just disagree with. That doesn't invalidate the fair point that you don't want some onslaught of base classes that 3.5 had. However, I disagree. I mostly disagree because I feel that Psionics deserves an exception. It's been part of DND for a long time, and not having at least one class that can do it as their main thing feels disingenuous to me. If psionics were relegated to only being archetypes for other classes, then none of them would really shine at it unless the archetype drastically altered the class enough that it might as well be it's own class anyway.



Some of the odd things about the class to me are that it mysteriously stops getting more power points and any further psi cap about half way through the class. It's just weird to me. It's like someone looked at the sorcerer and said 'you know what this needs? A heavier focus on low and mid level abilities and to take away what little end game it has'. Spontaneous casters (the sorcerer in particular) got super shortchanged with 15 spells known total, especially at higher level when that becomes 'basically one spell known per level unless you give up on lower level spells'. And you can't use Sorcery Points to stretch your higher level spells per day at all, when having more spell slots per day was Supposed to be the justification or balance to have a really limited known list compared to Wizard. And then Wizard gets Spell Master and the Sorcerer just feels bad because he Never gets unlimited first and second level spells, let alone the ability to change out those picks. And then the Sorcerer feels worse because the Wizard gets some two free third level spells that also recharge on a short rest, as compared to the Sorcerer's 4 piddling sorcery points that can't even turn into a single third level slot.

So yeah, the Sorcerer got a bum deal in a number of ways (especially if they push too hard with wish and suddenly lose their only 9th level spell). But unlike the Mystic they still GET higher level spells. Which is strange to me.

Another weird thing to me is how much more tanky the Immortal is than most archetypes compared to their base class. +1 hp per level and con to ac, and refreshing temp hp each round seems pretty tanky. But getting even 5 temp hp each round isn't going to stop high damage from monsters from taking you down to 0, and I get the impression that you get a lot more mileage out of it at low level than later on. Even if you can multiclass, I don't think your unarmored bonus from Mystic would stack with Monk's any more than Barbarian's does with Monk's, nor with Mage Armor. What Would stack is the whole temp hp thing per round though.

On the Wu Jen: What spells have you found it to be most effective to pilfer from the wizard list? I always assume fireball is a great pick, but what kind of mileage have you gotten out of it?

[Zevox]

3) Is there anything that seems odd to you about the class?
Several things. My biggest complaint with it is that they're just cramming too much into it as-is. I hope speculation that it's only one class for the purposes of playtesting the new psionic mechanics first and will be broken up later is correct, because that would make considerably more sense. What I really want out of it is a minimum of two classes: one for caster-style Psionics (current Orders of the Avatar, Awakened, Nomad, and, if it's going to stay, Wu Jen), and one for more physical versions (current Orders of the Immortal and Soulknife, preferably plus one or two more). Also, on a minor note, I want them to ditch the name "Mystic," which is very generic and doesn't bring to mind psychic powers in any way. I'd prefer them to just take 3e's names: Psion and Psychic Warrior, respectively. But even if not those specifically, at least something that actually sounds like a description of the kind of class this is supposed to be, rather than sounding like a generic magic-user.

One thing that baffles me is why Wu Jen is one the subclasses now. That was an arcane spellcasting class back in 3e, not a psionic thing at all - it seems totally out of place to me. And they even still reference that with having one of its subclass features be that it learns some arcane spells, which also seems kind of counter to the point of making psionics distinct from magic. I'd kind of prefer that one got dropped entirely, and maybe became a new Wizard school somewhere down the line instead. Though I'd hope they keep the Mastery of Force discipline around in that case, since that one actually seems quite appropriate for a psionic character, despite being nominally a Wu Jen discipline. Though Inertial Armor should probably be changed to be more in line with Mage Armor, since as-is it's just better than that spell, which seems wrong.

On a more specific note for a couple subclasses, I find myself confused by the decision to give Soulknives medium armor and martial weapons, but not Immortals. It seems to me that that will make Immortals either too MAD (need Int for their powers, Strength to have any decent weapon, Dex for AC with only light armor, Con because everyone does and possibly for AC) or force them to play as casters who just have better survival than other caster Mystic Orders, while meanwhile Soulknives will often prefer to stick to light armor since their special weapons are finesse anyway, so they can just focus on Dexterity and Intelligence. And since Soulknives create their own weapon, the only reason they even care about martial proficiency is because they made that weapon martial rather than simple.

There's probably balance issues I haven't noticed with individual powers since I haven't looked into many of them in-depth as yet, but hey, it's not a finished, published product yet, it's a playtest version. And it doesn't look to me like the most blatantly imbalanced power from a previous version (a cheap one that let you force a person who failed a wisdom save to believe any one ten-word statement you made, which could easily be broken into being as powerful as or more powerful than much higher-level charm effects with the right wording) is present in the current one, so, progress.

In general, I like how the base mechanics of the new psionics work at this point, and that they're still working on it and adding more to it. I'm considering actually playing one down the road if my DM allows it, after I'm ready to retire my current character, though I'm not sure which Order I'd go with just at the moment. But I definitely hope it continues to get revised before they think of publishing a final version.

[Grizl' Bjorn]

There seem to be a lot of misconceptions.

1. The movement cantrip requires a bonus action. It's not like monk speed at all.
2. Blindspot only works on one person, and must be rerolled every turn. It has a fraction of the power of invisibility.

The UA mystic class introduces a lot of new themes and mechanics. It has to be read carefully otherwise a lot of the work that went into balancing it will be missed.

[Grizl' Bjorn]

Also, someone upthread noted it, but how on earth could anyone think iron body overshadows shield. You have to spend six points(!!!) To make it even one AC better. You have to spend five points(!!!!) to make it equal. That's equivalent to a fourth and third level spell respectively- and the Psion doesn't have those kinda points to burn. If anything this manifestation is underpowered.

[joaber]

[SPOILER=A long response]

On the Wu Jen: What spells have you found it to be most effective to pilfer from the wizard list? I always assume fireball is a great pick, but what kind of mileage have you gotten out of it?

the first option os probably counterspell. Fireball doesn't look a good pick, because there is lots of similar (or better) discipline effects, like mind storm.
Dispel magic, shield or even scorching ray if you concentrate in mastery of fire focus.

About immortal, is the worst design, any mystic can be more "immortal" than them. Avatar cet medium armor+shield, souls knife get medium armor+parry, and wu jen and awakened aren't designed to stay in melee.

[Specter]

Frankly I don't think multi classing should exist to me multi classing is **** its way of optimization rather than role playing there is no concept that you need to multi class for. Almost anyone multi classing is doing it for power game reasons and I DESPISE power gamers.

I could a list of 100 concepts that need multiclassing to be fully achieved.

[dejarnjc]

[QUOTE=joaber;21966699]the first option os probably counterspell. Fireball doesn't look a good pick, because there is lots of similar (or better) discipline effects, like mind storm.
Dispel magic, shield or even scorching ray if you concentrate in mastery of fire focus.
/QUOTE]

Agree with these. Would also add find familiar for the help action in combat. A lot of the mystic's most damaging abilities require an attack roll and the ability and the psi points are completely wasted if you miss. Advantage is paramount in this case.

Haste is also a good selection depending on comp and your mystic build. Wu Jen doesn't necessarily have a ton of stuff to concentrate on.

Melf's minute meteors are especially good if you got fire discipline. Does use your bonus action though.

Shield and absorb elements are strong picks depending on what disciplines you have.

Animate dead is super strong depending on your campaign.

Hypnotic pattern is strong cause it's always stupidly strong.

[Sabeta]

1) 1-5 are too strong, 6-11 are balanced, after that it falls behind Warlock. Being limited to 7 Psi Points stops you from casting spells above 5th level, and Disciplines are sort of like Invocations bit more flexible.

In combat, they're underwhelming. They burn through Psi faster than a caster does Slots, and even if they burn through several of their best burst damage combos they fall short if Paladin (or even Fighter), and the exchange rate on some of their skills (Iron Skill for example) just plain sucks.

There however, a couple of things that I found too strong. Psychic Inquisition I thought was too good, as well as a similar set of abilities. You basically win all social encounters now, with little personal risk. As someone on Reddit pointed out. They failed their saves against an NPC mystic, and got attacked by a friend. Long story short, they execute the friend for revealing himself as a traitor, only to learn they were under the effects of Inquisition, and he'd never actually attacked them.

Adaptive Body is also too strong for a passive effect. Removing the need to breath is waaaay too strong, and removing eating and sleeping on top of that is nuts.

Nomads entire tree has some abusable mechanics as well. Teleporting feels abusable to me, and if you toss in the Wu Jen Mastery of Air you can do (cool but possibly OP) stuff like teleport into the sky and shoot down at enemies who were trying to hide.

2) Nomad and Wu Jen are the coolest, and probably strongest.

3) The entire class is odd. It seems to lack a proper identity, and steps on the toes of other classes a bit. Definitely don't allow Multiclassing.

4) Just don't.

[Jerrykhor]

I just got one piece of advice to the OP: Don't listen to Asmotherion, he haven't got a clue on balance at all. The fact that he thinks Iron Hide is superior to Shield spell is testament to his stupidity. He posted the same thing in another thread and many people have proved him wrong, but apparently he didn't read them or something.

Mystic is not as overpowered as people make them out to be. Sure, if they take all the most powerful Disciplines and talents and Order, they'd be pretty powerful. But I doubt any DM would allow that. As is typical with any D&D character, ask the Mystic player to justify his choices by character concept. Why would a Mystic from the Order of Nomad have Bestial Form, Mastery of Air and Psychic Assault?

If you want a simpler and faster way, there is a guy at Reddit who already made a more balanced version of the Mystic v3. It is quite well thought out, and its not all nerfs. For example, Soul Knife get some buffs too.

[druid91]

On your first question, I'll just quote myself from a post I made on the matter in a past thread:



On your second question, I feel the Archetype mechanic can give a lot of fun new options to the game without needing to introduce new classes, which is something awkward. 3.5 had so many classes that it's hard to keep track of. Personally I'm aware of 19 core classes, and suspect many more exist in that system. I'd hate to see 5e simplicity destroyed in a similar way, via the introduction of more classes.



The thing is that, as everyone who has played a class that was not the mystic knows (which you obviously have not), most games are played into levels 3-11, and it's at those levels that it's the hardest to have an all around good character. People dip into other classes to get just that, but the smart@ss option that is the Mystic gets everything core-class. The whole "it's not designed for multiclassing" thing is ridiculous to say the least, as, if it plays into a non-multiclassing game it's broken, wile if it plays in one, it still gets full progression in it's abilities without sacrificing anything... which is the point of multiclassing. It's a Mary-Sue character class, and I honestly believe that if you can't see that, your experiance with 5e is limited to the mystic class only.

The problem with your statement is that, litterally everything the mystic does offers a saving throw. Energy beam for example offers a saving throw and if they save they avoid ALL DAMAGE. You can get a lucky roll with firebolt. But you have to hope the DM get's a terrible roll with energy beam. This is endemic throughout the class until higher levels. When you're hitting on all pistons? You're powerful as heck. When you're not you're still contributing but not quite as much. And at most, you're looking at a DC 15 at low levels.

Blind spot effects ONE CREATURE. Bob the guard has a pal? Woops. Looks like you're screwed bucko. And two. You will, ever. Even at 20th level. Have four talents. You don't get a second until third level, and you don't get a third until 9th. Most mystics are going to take something that deals damage at first level, because they want to be able to contribute after they've blown their 4 PP. Oh right. Mystics only get 4 pp Sure, a wizard only get's 2 1st level spells. But let's compare those spells shall we?

Witchbolt vs Combustion. Which is arguably the best Damage power the mystic gets.

Witchbolt is a spell attack, meaning it's better right off the bat. Compare to Combustion which is a Con save. What do big monsters that you want to do a lot of damage to likely have a high stat in? Constitution.

Damage. Well, yes. You can dump 2 pp into Combustion to get marginally better damage. 2d10+2 vs 1d10+2 for 1. But there's a large chance that will be halved. And if it's halved you also lose the rider the causes them to burst into flames. Meaning they don't take any ongoing damage. Sure, the same can be said if you miss your attack roll, but that's a lot less likely than the enemy managing to make a basic DC13 con save.

And no. No it doesn't get everything the other core classes get. At all. SOME archetypes emulate other classes in limited ways. The only obvious one that I can bring to mind is the Wu Jen and it's arcane dabbler. Which mind you, almost EVERY class that is not a caster already in 5e has some sort of 'half wizard' archetype.

Iron Hide is good? The whole Iron Durability discipline is terrible. You're spending 2 pp for something wizards get as a cantrip and spending 5 to equal the protective output of a first level spell. AND you're sacrificing getting better disciplines like Giant Form or Brute Force. Mystics who aren't immortals get one choice outside of their archetype at first level. They get 4 PP to use their disciplines. Does spending 2 PP to get the effects of blade ward sound like a good use of HALF your daily resources?

Shield is good because it's a 1st level spell and costs you essentially nothing.

You want strong options from the mystic? Most of them have no alternative in other classes. Water Whip. Shadow Beasts. Radiant Beam. Psionic Disruption in general.

Nova performance has always been the psions schtick. They perform REALLY REALLY WELL. And then they run out of gas and perform really really poorly. This is in full effect with the mystic.

[Sagetim]

I mean, I don't know that the schtick of psionics has been novaing really well, I think that depends entirely on if you can get away with that kind of behavior or if that kind of thing gets you killed for being foolish. Last time I ran a psion (in a 3.5 game, because remember, the mystic is not the psion), I had to be careful in my usage of power points across the course of the day, generally relying on talking, skill checks, and my party and a first level astral construct to do fighting, because blowing power points on direct attacks was a waste.

The Mystic is in a similar boat: If you go full swing into every fight, you're going to run out of steam and probably have wasted a lot of power on mooks. Picking your targets, concentrating your biggest offense to have the most effect, instead of blowing powers on every fight, in essence- acting like every other caster who has limited resources that don't come back on a short rest- seems to be the most effective strategy to me. But that might just be because the group I regularly pnp with doesn't go with a 15 minute adventuring day. You get one rest that you can count on between days, usually, and sometimes there are times when you have to push on through and make saves against fatigue because the world ending isn't going to wait for you to get an 8 hour rest.

Adaptive Body sure looks nice (and I took it because I'm running an Immortal mystic and it fit the theme I have in mind better than the more combat effective disciplines) but it's not really better than a ring of sustenance. Because suffocation doesn't come up that often, usually. Also, there are things like Cloudkill where you mgiht think 'oh, hold your breath' and nope, it gives no craps about you breathing or not, take the damage.

I do hope that they come out with an actual psionics book, or something, and that it's not just the Mystic as the one class that does mind shenanigans. I'm not sure that they would need a stand alone class for the psychic warrior, since that might well be the Fighter Archetype that eventually shakes out of things. So if there was more than one base class to break up the Mystic, I would think it might be Psion, Ardent, Wilder, Maybe? Depending on the set up, Wilder could be a branch off psion, and the way orders and disciplines are set up is already more like Ardent than it is like psion. At the very least, the lurk could be an archetype for rogue, with divine mind showing back up as a weird paladin archetype. Soulknife might find it's way into monk, maybe?

So, to keep this thread going, how would you envision the Mystic getting broken up, what kinds of base class or classes would you want to see coming out of it, waht kind of archetypes, and even what would you want to see dropped by the wayside?

[Vaz]

1) Sucks, too imbalanced and broken, and 5e does not need any new classes, just archetypes for existing classes. Make each Mystic archetype into an archetype for their respective classes.

2) None whatsoever. The mystic class is just a copycat-class with copycat features into it's archetypes for other classes. Wile I would enjoy to play a Jedi-like character, or a Mewtwo-like character, I don't want to see the mystic into official material as a new class, and I will ban it from all campains I'd DM if it becomes official.

3) Everything, as I explained above.

4) Nothing is sweet by breaking the game. I hate this class. I wish they discard it, and never publish it.

LOL @ Bolded. Where?

Sweet summer child. If only you knew how wrong you were. Word of advice, stop reading D&D reddit. That place is pretty cancerous for rules discussion and build advice, and the sky is falling every damn time.

Unless, of course, these are your own thoughts. In which case, all I have to say is educate yourself on the subject matter. Because everything has copycat mechanics.

A Barbarian isn't a Barbarian. It's a fighter archetype, as much as a Ranger, Monk and Paladin is. A Bard isn't a Bard, it's a Caster archetype, as much as a Cleric, Druid, Warlock, Wizard or Sorcerer are just archetypes of the Caster baseline. The Rogue isn't really a Fighter or Caster, actually, so it kind of falls into its own area of expertise.

In fact, of everything you could have listed, it is literally the most unique mechanic in the game - it was specifically developed for this very class.

Your opinion is noted, but it's so hilariously wrong, you'd do well to not really repeat it.

[Pex]

Frankly I don't think multi classing should exist to me multi classing is **** its way of optimization rather than role playing there is no concept that you need to multi class for. Almost anyone multi classing is doing it for power game reasons and I DESPISE power gamers.

I love psionics because of power point system rather than vancian casting, vancian casting never made sense to me how can you forget a spell after casting it? Just seems dumb but that's me.

The mystic might be trying to do too much right now and does need some tweaking like it needs 6th-9th level powers. But I would explicilty say that non mystics cannot multi class into mystic at all ever period.

The feeling is mutual against Breakers of the Stormwind.

[Sir cryosin]

I hate all these white room theorist. I've been playing a Mystic in my Tuesday every Tuesday night game since they released it a month or so back. My sub class is awaken I've leveled up a few times that I changed up my disciplines when I leveled. I started off plane as a caster with investigation skills ass off of that so I had like psionic assault a couple of the nomadic stuff. But I switched up the character now now I'm playing as a Jedi. My disciplines are mastory of force, pisonic weapon, psychic assault, telepathic contact, psionic restoration, nomadic step, I think I have one or two more I'm lv 7 right now. So what I've learned playing as a Mystic so far. Is you're not as opiate people f****** think you are you're really not. What you are though is a very good nova damager. There were several times where I blown through my pee pee and then had to fall back on my one damaging Talent. There are a few abilities that are inside disciplines that seems a tad bit Opie but I think that's due to the weird wording of just 5th edition as is. One of them I think it's in the telepathic contact or psionic assault I'm not sure right now but it's where if the enemy feels the same you control their turn will you control their movement in their actions. Another ability that I love and I geek out every time I use it because I'm a huge as Star Wars fan is in the telepathic contact discipline. It's where you can say a sentence to somebody in if they feel safe they believe that sentence to be true. I will say when I first looked at the Mystic I was like holy cow there is a lot of stuff here that I can do but when I started playing I am now like holy cow there's not a lot of s*** I can do. A good portion of all the abilities that you can do or a bonus action and you only get one bonus action there is nothing else in the game that gives you a second bonus action. You also run into the problem of not having a lot of psionic points. Every time we get into combat or have some kind of encounter I am always thinking about how many psionic points can I use and make them last. Now if my DM uses the standard 6 - 8 and counters / venturing day I would be in a world of hurt. But he doesn't so I can use a lot more psionic points freely than I normally would be able to. Now my character is that level 7 and at level 7 you can only use up to five psionic points per ability. I have 38 psionic points so to keep up with damage with what my other companions or putting out. Have to use 5 points when using a damaging ability. Meaning I can only do that 6 times. But I can do that because I have to spend points on other things like 2points for my AC the force ability AC is 14+Dex. Trying to stay alive. Using the nomadic step to give +4 to AC and 10ft teley. Or telling the group of bird people that there is no Cultists on are airship when the air ship is beening run by them. My point is yes if you focus only on one thing you are doing it well. But you will be spending points on other things so you won't be doing crazy ****. With the mystic I can play characters ideas that I couldn't be for. Like playing a dragon here is this dragon build. Order I haven't pick yet but race black dragon born you could go green but poison is the ****est damage type so black dragon born disciplines are corrosive metabolism, giant growth, Beastal forum, one of the Avatar's fear disciplines. That just part of it. Another one is a guy's teleporting around swinging a greatsword and using ice magic as well.

[Arenabait]

Holy hell, that's a wall of text that I'm not reading!

[Sir cryosin]

Holy hell, that's a wall of text that I'm not reading!

Ya sorry about that I didn't know it was that long untell I hit the submit button and looked at it. My point is just don't white room theorist it. In play it's not so bad and I'm playing with good stats 17,17,17,17,12,12. And I'm still falling behind my party's Evo wizard, assassin rogue, and gunsmith Artificer in damage. Are party's bard is supporting and haldle social better then me. I can't even play the smart guy thanks to the wizard and Artificer.

[Sagetim]

I hate all these white room theorist*. I've been playing a Mystic in my Tuesday game, every Tuesday night game since they released it a month or so back. My sub class (order) is awakened I've leveled up a few times, and that I changed up my disciplines when I leveled. I started off plane plain? playing? as a caster with investigation skills out the ass off. of that so I had like psionic assault and a couple of the nomadic stuff. But I switched up the character now, Now I'm playing as a Jedi. My disciplines are mastery of force, psionic weapon, psychic assault, telepathic contact, psionic restoration, nomadic step, and I think I have one or two more I'm lv 7 right now. So what I've learned playing as a Mystic so far. Is you're not as opiate OP as people f****** think you are, but you're really not. What you are though, is a very good nova damager. There were several times where I blown blew through my pee pee PP (or Psi Points) and then had to fall back on my one damaging Talent. There are a few abilities that are inside disciplines that seems a tad bit Opie OP but I think that's due to the weird wording of just 5th edition as is. One of them I think it's in the telepathic contact or psionic assault I'm not sure right now but it's where if the enemy feels the same you control their turn or something. will you control their movement in their actions. Another ability that I love and I geek out every time I use it (because I'm a huge as Star Wars fan) is in the telepathic contact discipline. It's where you can say a sentence to somebody inand if they feel safe they believe that sentence to be true. I will say when I first looked at the Mystic I was like," holy cow there is a lot of stuff here that I can do." But when I started playing I am now like," holy cow there's not a lot of s*** I can do."
Insert Paragraph to make it easier to read.
A good portion of all the abilities that you can do or are a bonus action and you only get one bonus action. There is nothing else in the game that gives you a second bonus action. You also run into the problem of not having a lot of psionic points. Every time we get into combat or have some kind of encounter I am always thinking about how many psionic points can I use and how to make them last. Now if my DM uses the standard 6 - 8 and counters encounters / adventuring day I would be in a world of hurt. But he doesn't, so I can use a lot more psionic points more freely than I normally would be able to*. Now my character is that at level 7 and at level 7 you can only use up to five psionic points per ability. I have 38 psionic points so to keep up with damage, what with what my other companions or are putting out, I Have to use 5 points when using a damaging ability. Meaning I can only do that 6 times. *But I can do that because I have to spend points on other things like 2 points for my AC, the force ability AC is 14+Dex. Trying to stay alive. Using the nomadic step to give +4 to AC and 10ft teley. Or telling the group of bird people that there is no Cultists on are our airship when the air ship is beeningbeing run by them. My point is: yes if you focus only on one thing you are doing it well. But you will be spending points on other things so you won't be doing crazy ****.
New subject, new paragraph space
With the mystic I can play characters* and ideas that I couldn't before. Like playing a dragon. Here is this dragon build: Order I haven't pick yet, but race black dragonborn you could go green but poison is the ****est damage type so black dragon born disciplines are corrosive metabolism, giant growth, Beastal forum, one of the Avatar's fear disciplines. That just part of it. Another one is a guy's teleporting around swinging a greatsword and using ice magic as well.

*I think this is a reference to Ivory Tower, like 'you are disconnected from the world with your Ivory Tower Science pursuits'.
*the end of the sentence has a few extra words, but is fine. Ending with 'normally could' brings the sentence to a close a bit faster, for example.
*'But I can't do that', or 'I can only do that six times because' would fit what you're going for here.
And yeah, sorry, I had to go through this and grammar check it. Because there are so many words that need to be other words in it.
*you would need to either go with 'characters and ideas' , or 'character idea's here. In one case they are two separate things and both deserve the plural of the s, and in the other the ideas are the subject and is the only thing that needs the plural s.
Additional notes: OP is short for Over Powered. It thusly has nothing to do with the name Opie (such as from Opie and Andy, and old tv show or radio show as I recall.)
PP is short for Power Points or Psi Points or Psionic Strength Points (PSP), depending on what edition of DND you're in. ithas nothing to do with pee pee, slang for urine that is mostly relegated to use by small children.
"Out the ass" is a turn of phrase and doesn't generally require you to use 'of' with it. Because English is a mess and turns of phrases aren't always grammatically correct.
I didn't do this to try and be a jerk, but more to try to be helpful. Just so we're clear on that. I'm also not perfectly sure of my own grammar or corrections, but I felt the need to try.

But to actually respond to your post: It always tends to help to actually play the game with the class and test it out in an actual game to see how it runs. It was one of the problems that 2nd edition had, when play testing new rules was banned because the lady in charge considered it to be goofing off instead of work. This is why a lot of the 2nd edition splat books and supplements were not as well thought out nor implemented as they could have been.It's also why 3.5 psionics and tome of battle classes tend not to be as broken as they seem to be at first glance. In the rarified air of Ivory Tower Theoretical Optimization, they sure look like they are broken at first glance. But in actual play they are nowhere near as all-encompassingly Batman as wizards can easily be.

[Pex]

Thanks for clarifying "PP". The original wording has a certain slang meaning in American English at least.
:smallyuk:

[Sabeta]

snip

I've never heard of anyone refer to this as ivory tower before. White Room theorycrafting is what it is. An empty white room, completely devoid of features except whatever you're talking about.

So "Mystic vs Dragon: Look you can totally burn 20+ Power Points to attack the Dragon, shove it against the wall, and do cuhrazy damage to it. You can basically mangle a Dragon with no real effort!"

All of which ignores the rest of the world. For example, if you're fighting the Dragon on top of death mountain and the wind is howling then maybe you can't slam him. At a glance, the Energy Beam seems pretty strong, until you realize it's a saving throw. Actually, then you realize that almost every single Mystic ability relies on saving throws, many of which are common saves such as Strength, Dexterity, or Constitution.

"White Room" is theorycrafting without context, basically. He's saying running the numbers is meaningless because you need to know how it actually stacks up against other classes in live gameplay. A "White room" is insufficient for a game like D&D.

[Sagetim]

I've never heard of anyone refer to this as ivory tower before. White Room theorycrafting is what it is. An empty white room, completely devoid of features except whatever you're talking about.

So "Mystic vs Dragon: Look you can totally burn 20+ Power Points to attack the Dragon, shove it against the wall, and do cuhrazy damage to it. You can basically mangle a Dragon with no real effort!"

All of which ignores the rest of the world. For example, if you're fighting the Dragon on top of death mountain and the wind is howling then maybe you can't slam him. At a glance, the Energy Beam seems pretty strong, until you realize it's a saving throw. Actually, then you realize that almost every single Mystic ability relies on saving throws, many of which are common saves such as Strength, Dexterity, or Constitution.

"White Room" is theorycrafting without context, basically. He's saying running the numbers is meaningless because you need to know how it actually stacks up against other classes in live gameplay. A "White room" is insufficient for a game like D&D.

Oh? I wasn't aware that White Room was it's own thing. There's a similar concept with regards to academics and research, with the definition of the term Ivory Tower being, literally, "a state of privileged seclusion or separation from the facts and practicalities of the real world." So, with the similarity in implied meaning, I had assumed it was a misremembered reference to Ivory Tower. To learn that no, it is it's own similar but different and specific thing is nice. I like learning new things.

But that just brings us back to the topic at hand: has anyone else got some experience in implementing the class that they wold like to share, or anything they want to discuss about it, so that we can move from White Room to Educated Opinion? So far it looks like the people who have used the class have had similar experiences in finding the class lacking staying power due to having a number of options,. And another common theme seems to be 'these powers look good but are easily resisted'.

[Random Sanity]

There's very little in the Mystic's bag of tricks that someone else can't do better.

They have the only combat-castable summons in the game ... and to get them you have to take an entire pool of powers that are flatly inferior to a regular caster's abilities.

They can kinda-sorta play the healer role - with half a toolbox.

They can fight melee if they specialize for it - and be outdone anyway by a Fighter or Barbarian.

Their performance hits a hardcap when many other classes are taking off.

5e Mystic is basically the 3.X Bard; it can do a lot of different things, but does none of them well.

[dejarnjc]

They have the only combat-castable summons in the game ... and to get them you have to take an entire pool of powers that are flatly inferior to a regular caster's abilities.

Mostly agree with your post but FYI the druid has combat-castable summons. Better combat-castable summoning spells too though which basically proves your point.

[Sir cryosin]

*I think this is a reference to Ivory Tower, like 'you are disconnected from the world with your Ivory Tower Science pursuits'.
*the end of the sentence has a few extra words, but is fine. Ending with 'normally could' brings the sentence to a close a bit faster, for example.
*'But I can't do that', or 'I can only do that six times because' would fit what you're going for here.
And yeah, sorry, I had to go through this and grammar check it. Because there are so many words that need to be other words in it.
*you would need to either go with 'characters and ideas' , or 'character idea's here. In one case they are two separate things and both deserve the plural of the s, and in the other the ideas are the subject and is the only thing that needs the plural s.
Additional notes: OP is short for Over Powered. It thusly has nothing to do with the name Opie (such as from Opie and Andy, and old tv show or radio show as I recall.)
PP is short for Power Points or Psi Points or Psionic Strength Points (PSP), depending on what edition of DND you're in. ithas nothing to do with pee pee, slang for urine that is mostly relegated to use by small children.
"Out the ass" is a turn of phrase and doesn't generally require you to use 'of' with it. Because English is a mess and turns of phrases aren't always grammatically correct.
I didn't do this to try and be a jerk, but more to try to be helpful. Just so we're clear on that. I'm also not perfectly sure of my own grammar or corrections, but I felt the need to try.

But to actually respond to your post: It always tends to help to actually play the game with the class and test it out in an actual game to see how it runs. It was one of the problems that 2nd edition had, when play testing new rules was banned because the lady in charge considered it to be goofing off instead of work. This is why a lot of the 2nd edition splat books and supplements were not as well thought out nor implemented as they could have been.It's also why 3.5 psionics and tome of battle classes tend not to be as broken as they seem to be at first glance. In the rarified air of Ivory Tower Theoretical Optimization, they sure look like they are broken at first glance. But in actual play they are nowhere near as all-encompassingly Batman as wizards can easily be.

I am so sorry about that. I was using the voice texting on my phone.

[Dyst]

I started playing an order of the avatar mystic in my group. We are level 8. I really enjoy the class - but I do feel like it's a little strong, and my DM thinks he should nerf it (but I just started on this character two weeks ago, so we're going to continue to play it out for a bit and see). Psionic Restoration seems very powerful. Psychic Inquisition is quite powerful - but having to spend an hour within 30 feet of them to use Ransack Mind and Phantom Idea does limit its practical use in many situations. Even when I was conserving my psi points I found they were running out faster than I thought, and not having many options for psi point restoration forced me into using the talents in a couple situations.

[Maxilian]

I have a player that had played both Mystic V2 and the third version, and IMHO its quite powerful (even more at low lvls) as you lvl up, the power of it becomes less obvious (its mostly cause at low lvl, INT saves are quite good against most enemies), the Mystic got many options, so as long as they know a little about the enemy, they can make it a really hard fight for the enemy.

-Inmortal is quite tanky (more than what you would expect).

-The ability to become tiny is fun (and that basically means that anything can be your mount)

[Sir cryosin]

So sorry about my rant so something's I found that need changing is.
1. Psychic Assault's psionic blast ability feels very strong. You are dealing a d8 no save no to hit for every pp you spend on it. Yes you have your limit to how much you can spend at a time. But those d8's add up.
2.everythings a saving throw. This might just be me but I don't like how everything is a saving throw.
3. There are a few abilitys that read like. If the creature makes the save they are still effected by the rider effects.

The thing I see is that the mystic starts out strong. But weekens out over time. The most fun to play one is at lv 10. Yes at higher levels we can have two concentration effects up. But that's not as cracked up as it seams. With how many pp you get and the duration of abilitys.

[Waterdeep Merch]

I've had a game where I've been playing a mystic on and off for over a year, originally using the v2 document (which was horrifically overpowered from levels 1-5 in my experience) before retiring him, waiting for v3, then rebuilding him at level 10 to rejoin the party.

He's been an immortal school mystic since day one, and I had to make some unorthodox building decisions to make him work with the new v3 immortal, which dropped the weapon and armor proficiencies that partially defined him before. The game I'm playing grants a free feat at level 1, and I'm playing a variant human besides. I had to spend one of those on heavy armor proficiency, then another on heavy armor master to emulate how I behaved before. I talked to the DM and agreed to trade in a tool proficiency for greatsword proficiency, with the understanding that I will never take great weapon master. It's a flavor thing.

We went with point buy, and I'm currently sitting at 18's in Strength and Intelligence, with a 16 in Constitution thanks to a belt of dwarvenkind. Dexterity is a 10, Wisdom a 12, Charisma an 8 (again, flavor. He's supposed to be an arrogant jerk that means well). For disciplines, I took Adaptive Body, Aura Sight, Intellect Fortress, Precognition, Psionic Restoration, Psionic Weapon, and Telepathic Contact. For talents, Delusion, Mind Thrust, and Mystic Hand.

With the new build, despite my much higher PP, I'm finding it harder to justify spending monstrous levels of PP if I can help it. Might be from experience now, having done this before and playing a sorcadin in the interim.

*Psionic Weapon is mostly terrible now, but it can shine if you can create the right setup (the only times I used its headline feature, Lethal Strike, I had both advantage AND bardic inspiration, because wasting a high level spell alongside a full round sucks).
*Adaptive Body is okay. It made me a perfect camp guard. Hard to justify blowing huge levels of points and concentration on resistance in most cases.
*Aura Sight saw a LOT of use, out of combat and in. Had we faced stealthy or invisible enemies, it would be a must-have instead of just pretty good. Gave me an in-game reason to know all the monsters as well as I actually do, and I prefer roleplaying my monster knowledge. Feels very psychic-y, too. Love it.
*Psionic Restoration saved an encounter. I was not, and could never be, a replacement for a proper support class with just this. But the no-cost revivify saved the lives of five people that my "chaotic good" party let die entirely out of selfish idiocy. Different rant, there. Also let me do something hilarious involving the rogue, mentioned further down.
*Intellect Fortress is how you shut down some of the nastiest spells and magical effects in the game. Big fan. Psions should be the best at combating mental shenanigans, and this does it in spades.
*Precognition let us win an encounter via alpha strike all on its own. It can derail a boss fight like that. Its high cost means you'll only likely do so in those circumstances, but its other buffs are decent enough to justify having it along. Best focus out of the lot to travel with.
*Telepathic-friggin'-Contact. Oddly, the obviously powerful paralysis and friends powers at the end of it did almost nothing for me thanks to my DM rolling consistently high (or fudging dice, but either way-), which alongside their high cost led me to think of them as emergency powers more than bread and butter ones. The standout power was the souped-up suggestion. We were facing a flying enemy that just grabbed the party rogue and was going to run off with him. I told him "You don't have wings and can't fly". The rogue died from the impact, but hey! I had Psionic Restoration! We're all good, knife buddy!
*Mind Thrust is nice for a cantrip, but couldn't compete with the rogue or warlock in the party (and it shouldn't). Kept up with the sorcerer, though, and that's something.
*Delusion is hilarious. I found no combat use for it, but in roleplaying scenarios, alongside a medallion of detect thoughts, my god. A player found out they had false memories. I played Freud by using this, the aforementioned medallion, Aura Sight, and Telepathic Contact to literally show him his false memories and cross-reference them with an NPC who knew the truth. I can't imagine making a mystic without it.
*Mystic Hand's good. Yep. It's Mage Hand, but psychic-y. Lets you roleplay a jedi better.

Overall, it felt more balanced than the previous iteration, but there are still some weird spots. I had to jury rig a build that frankly doesn't mesh well and shouldn't have required jumping through that many hoops, Psionic Weapon went from broken good to bad (no access to extra attack and the risk of blowing tons of points on nothing seriously gimps it), Telepathic Contact needs toning down in general, and Psionic Restoration might need to have its revivify tweaked to be less spammable. Otherwise, I really enjoyed the class and am looking forward to continuing with him.

[Mortis_Elrod]

So sorry about my rant so something's I found that need changing is.
1. Psychic Assault's psionic blast ability feels very strong. You are dealing a d8 no save no to hit for every pp you spend on it. Yes you have your limit to how much you can spend at a time. But those d8's add up.
2.everythings a saving throw. This might just be me but I don't like how everything is a saving throw.
3. There are a few abilitys that read like. If the creature makes the save they are still effected by the rider effects.

The thing I see is that the mystic starts out strong. But weekens out over time. The most fun to play one is at lv 10. Yes at higher levels we can have two concentration effects up. But that's not as cracked up as it seams. With how many pp you get and the duration of abilitys.

1. Yeah, theres not really an equivalent in the spell casting side of things, maybe heat metal. But heat metal is concentration to 1 minute and you just use your Bonus action to cause more damage each turn no extra spell slots, as opposed to psionic blast, which requires an action and PP everytime you use it. If you got PP to spare and want to deal damage no matter what, without riders then this is good, otherwise i think you're wasting PP. even using 2 points for 1 minute every round for same damage as heat metal isn't possible at the same level a bard gets heat metal. So, IDK but someone do the maths and tell me which one is better and when.

2. Yeah everything IS a saving throw, save for the odd attack like bestial claws (which needs to include some sort of action in its description, as its its a broken mess). I'm not sure if thats good or bad but its something of note.

3. I'm not sure which abilities you are referring to, give some examples. AFAIK everything is a saving throw, if fail effect + rider, if success effect and no rider. usually the effect is damage.

[Sagetim]

I am so sorry about that. I was using the voice texting on my phone.

Oh, no need to be sorry. And that makes So much sense. I just saw all those wrong word errors and it triggered the teaching instinct in me to try and be helpful.

I had also noticed Psionic Blast's no save no attack roll eat a fistful of d8's attack. In fact, I've used it twice, and rolled high each time so far. It's still not very good though, as compared to equivalent level spells. The guaranteed conversion of psi points to damage against a single target really stops being amazing when other casters are getting things like Sleep and Fireball. Spells that can wreck entire encounters, or soften them all up at once. Now, don't get me wrong, it sure helped against the banshee we were fighting. However, in an encounter with 3 dire wolves earlier, it was a waste of power points.

Psionic Restoration is fairly good. It's not great, but it's got your basic healing support packaged into one discipline. The only class better at healing the sick and removing diseases that I can think of is the paladin, using lay on hands at 5 hp of healing per disease, then having spell slots to keep going. Where it drops off is area healing, but as a trade off it has free Revivify, and not spending money to raise the dead is always nice. And you get access to that a lot sooner than the transmuter's level 14 transmuter stone effect for Raise Dead.

[Sir cryosin]

1. Yeah, theres not really an equivalent in the spell casting side of things, maybe heat metal. But heat metal is concentration to 1 minute and you just use your Bonus action to cause more damage each turn no extra spell slots, as opposed to psionic blast, which requires an action and PP everytime you use it. If you got PP to spare and want to deal damage no matter what, without riders then this is good, otherwise i think you're wasting PP. even using 2 points for 1 minute every round for same damage as heat metal isn't possible at the same level a bard gets heat metal. So, IDK but someone do the maths and tell me which one is better and when.

2. Yeah everything IS a saving throw, save for the odd attack like bestial claws (which needs to include some sort of action in its description, as its its a broken mess). I'm not sure if thats good or bad but its something of note.

3. I'm not sure which abilities you are referring to, give some examples. AFAIK everything is a saving throw, if fail effect + rider, if success effect and no rider. usually the effect is damage.

I'm at work so I can't look them up I mean I can because I have it on my phone but I ain't got the time to sit there and go through all the ones that and read them. But I do believe it's one or two or a couple of them that are in the Avatar the mantles and the crowns.


On the spellcaster side the only thing that is equivalent to psionic blast is magic Missile, heat metal like you said but it's a bonus action and which both those are the only ones where they're Auto hits with slight variations to them because you do got a hit for which Bull and heat metal is a saving throw.

[Random Sanity]

Mostly agree with your post but FYI the druid has combat-castable summons. Better combat-castable summoning spells too though which basically proves your point.

My bad. I'm more used to playing arcane casters; I've never actually been in a group with a druid, so it's easy to forget what they can do. But yeah, that's even more depressing for the mystic. Poor bugger's basically got nothing going for him - even as a flex-role member there's several classes that do it all better.


The mystic desperately needs 2 things: more resources/mana/PP/whateveryoucallit so he can actually keep up with the party, and some abilities above spell level 5 so he can make an impact.

[jaappleton]

I apologize if this was already answered.

Every Order but he Soul Knife gets two bonus Disciplines when you select your Order at first level.

Can you swap those Disciplines out as you level up?

I'm pretty sure you can, I just want to confirm.

[sightlessrealit]

I apologize if this was already answered.

Every Order but he Soul Knife gets two bonus Disciplines when you select your Order at first level.

Can you swap those Disciplines out as you level up?

I'm pretty sure you can, I just want to confirm.

Yeah you can. Says so on page 3 of the PDF.

[jaappleton]

Yeah you can. Says so on page 3 of the PDF.

Just wanted to be sure I could properly explain why I'm an Immortal with basically no Immortal Disciplines :smallbiggrin:

[Sagetim]

Just wanted to be sure I could properly explain why I'm an Immortal with basically no Immortal Disciplines :smallbiggrin:

Well, I mean, you have to check for blackula's and heal your own wounds and keep up with a dude in a robe and a necromancer, I don't blame you for dropping most of the Immortal's disciplines for other stuff.