ZRN
2020-11-19, 04:49 PM
Now that Tasha's is out, we finally get a look at the end result of - what - SIX YEARS of playtesting of psionics? I think it's worth a thread to gather our impressions of the two feats, three subclasses, and handful of spells that probably comprise most of what we'll see of psionics in fifth edition. (Personally, I think it mostly looks pretty fun!)
Feats
They trimmed the UA options to just two feats, Telepathic and Telekinetic. Both are half-feats, giving you +1 to Intelligence, Wisdom, or Charisma.
Telekinetic also gives you an invisible, componentless mage hand cantrip (or extends the range by 30ft if you already have it) and lets you push or pull by 5 feet a creature within 30ft of you (no size restriction, interestingly!) as a bonus action. This feat honestly seems fairly useful but not overpowered. In a pinch it can let you or an ally avoid opportunity attacks, and it could be pretty deadly on dangerous terrain or with area-effect spells around.
Telepathic gives you one-way silent telekinetic communication (60ft range, must share a language) and lets you cast a componentless detect thoughts 1/day (and you can use level 2+ slots to cast it again). My only complaint here is that there's no synergy with the soulknife and psi warrior subclasses (as you now need spell slots instead of psionic energy dice to recast the spell).
Overall, I'd say both these feats have a real Star Wars "force-sensitive" vibe, which is very cool to me.
Soulknife
The interesting thing about the soulknife is that it's very economical with its resource (psionic energy dice). Psychic Whispers and Psychic Veil last an hour or longer (without concentration), and Psi-Bolstered Knack and Homing Strikes only spend a die when they turn your miss (or failed skill check) into a hit/success. And remember, you're a rogue, so you're usually attacking with advantage and succeeding a LOT on skill checks, meaning you'll probably have a ton of dice left for bonus-action teleporting yourself around at high levels. To me, the vibe of this subclass is very cool but hard to tie to a specific character/archetype: you're kind of a master jedi assassin. You rarely miss or fail at anything you try, and you can vanish and blink around like crazy. Plus the knives, which are cool! I know people are worried about the wording preventing you from using them for opportunity attacks, but honestly what DM would try to pull that nonsense?
Psi Warrior
Unlike the soulknife, you're definitely going to have to watch how fast you spend your dice. You're also MAD, with a lot of incentive to increase your intelligence; that, plus the fact that your number of psionic energy dice scales with proficiency, means that I expect to see some interesting multiclass options (bladesinger and artificer being the obvious ones). I'm not a huge fan of Protective Field, just because (a) a lot of the "magic tank" subclasses have basically the same thing, including Rune Knight a couple pages later, and (b) it feels kind of lazy. Most of the psi warrior is basically a Jedi, jump-flying around and force-smacking bad guys, so why do I have a sort of Jean Grey passive damage shield to protect my allies from across the room? I would definitely play the heck out of this class, though, straight to level 20.
Aberrant Mind
I can't believe this thing made it out of UA basically unscathed. The extra spells are frankly necessary for the subclass to even begin to work, but the way they synergize with the level 6 ability is really awesome. You can do all sorts of sneaky/crazy stuff even with the baseline spells, much less the other enchantments you can swap them out for, especially since the Psionic Sorcery ability itself doesn't count as metamagic, meaning you can stack it with "real" metamagic. (Subtle Careful Synaptic Static for 6 sorcery points? Subtle Twinned Dissonant Whispers for 2? Sold!) The level 14 ability is also great. I still hate how sparse sorcerer spells are after spell level 6 or so, but this is such a cool class to play with.
Overall, as you can tell, I like what I see! Any thoughts/comments/characters you guys can't wait to try?
Feats
They trimmed the UA options to just two feats, Telepathic and Telekinetic. Both are half-feats, giving you +1 to Intelligence, Wisdom, or Charisma.
Telekinetic also gives you an invisible, componentless mage hand cantrip (or extends the range by 30ft if you already have it) and lets you push or pull by 5 feet a creature within 30ft of you (no size restriction, interestingly!) as a bonus action. This feat honestly seems fairly useful but not overpowered. In a pinch it can let you or an ally avoid opportunity attacks, and it could be pretty deadly on dangerous terrain or with area-effect spells around.
Telepathic gives you one-way silent telekinetic communication (60ft range, must share a language) and lets you cast a componentless detect thoughts 1/day (and you can use level 2+ slots to cast it again). My only complaint here is that there's no synergy with the soulknife and psi warrior subclasses (as you now need spell slots instead of psionic energy dice to recast the spell).
Overall, I'd say both these feats have a real Star Wars "force-sensitive" vibe, which is very cool to me.
Soulknife
The interesting thing about the soulknife is that it's very economical with its resource (psionic energy dice). Psychic Whispers and Psychic Veil last an hour or longer (without concentration), and Psi-Bolstered Knack and Homing Strikes only spend a die when they turn your miss (or failed skill check) into a hit/success. And remember, you're a rogue, so you're usually attacking with advantage and succeeding a LOT on skill checks, meaning you'll probably have a ton of dice left for bonus-action teleporting yourself around at high levels. To me, the vibe of this subclass is very cool but hard to tie to a specific character/archetype: you're kind of a master jedi assassin. You rarely miss or fail at anything you try, and you can vanish and blink around like crazy. Plus the knives, which are cool! I know people are worried about the wording preventing you from using them for opportunity attacks, but honestly what DM would try to pull that nonsense?
Psi Warrior
Unlike the soulknife, you're definitely going to have to watch how fast you spend your dice. You're also MAD, with a lot of incentive to increase your intelligence; that, plus the fact that your number of psionic energy dice scales with proficiency, means that I expect to see some interesting multiclass options (bladesinger and artificer being the obvious ones). I'm not a huge fan of Protective Field, just because (a) a lot of the "magic tank" subclasses have basically the same thing, including Rune Knight a couple pages later, and (b) it feels kind of lazy. Most of the psi warrior is basically a Jedi, jump-flying around and force-smacking bad guys, so why do I have a sort of Jean Grey passive damage shield to protect my allies from across the room? I would definitely play the heck out of this class, though, straight to level 20.
Aberrant Mind
I can't believe this thing made it out of UA basically unscathed. The extra spells are frankly necessary for the subclass to even begin to work, but the way they synergize with the level 6 ability is really awesome. You can do all sorts of sneaky/crazy stuff even with the baseline spells, much less the other enchantments you can swap them out for, especially since the Psionic Sorcery ability itself doesn't count as metamagic, meaning you can stack it with "real" metamagic. (Subtle Careful Synaptic Static for 6 sorcery points? Subtle Twinned Dissonant Whispers for 2? Sold!) The level 14 ability is also great. I still hate how sparse sorcerer spells are after spell level 6 or so, but this is such a cool class to play with.
Overall, as you can tell, I like what I see! Any thoughts/comments/characters you guys can't wait to try?