My Prayers Listened!! New #Psionics in #DnD5e: a most welcome surprise!

After the last entries of crazy psionics subclasses, I was disheartened and disillusioned about the whole direction WotC took with D&D design.

I wrote lengthy feedback, stressing mainly the following:

• Psionics has to be mechanically different compared to magic. Otherwise it's just Psychic magic and we already have it.
• Psionics has to have unique mechanics not just to be different, but because the concept it should convey is that of something that is totally enclosed within the user, so it should be more flexible than magic, but at the same time more straining. Closer to martial abilities than spellcasting.
• The concept of Psionic subclasses is ok in principle, but they can't all just add some psi-sounding features and call it a day: they have to draw from a common system/mechanics, showing that the mind's power has many forms, but is ultimately a unified power source.
• A true Psionic class would still be nice.

Now, the last point hasn't been covered this time around, and maybe never will be, but on the other points, they delivered EXACTLY what I asked for!! And this after being called all sorts of names in forums, reddits etc. when I was exposing my point of view is proof that, as I thought, I am actually in a majority that may be less vocal on social media, but takes feedback to the designers seriously.

Because here's another point that I mentioned in the feedback, and was not well received in social media:

• If you want to do Psionics right, you have to listen to people who are actually invested in the concept. If you ask the people who don't care, they will just want to avoid "messing" with the game, so they will say everything is good as long as it's bland and irrelevant, even if it's terrible at representing the concept.

I am not saying that hardcore fans of Psionics should be the only ones dictating how it goes of course, because there are indeed those that enjoy the concept only if it serves as a way to power-play. But I am convinced this is a minority: most fans of Psionics are actually happier with LESS power, as long as it conveys the concept as something truly unique.
And if before I was saying this just as the outcome of a personal "Insight check" on the community, seeing what they did after feedback I now see it's actually a good approximation of reality: they indeed listened to fans that, at the cost of a bit of added complexity (which is welcome I think, in a game that has become so simplified) asked for a unique mechanic that just FEELS PSIONIC.

This mechanic came under the guise of the extremely elegant "Psionic Talent die": a d6 at first, growing with levels, that simply dictates the maximum numerical bonus (or substitution of other die in some case) provided by the mind power, with a few important caveats:

1. If you roll a maximum, you actually strain your mind and you will use a smaller die afterwards, which means initially a d4.
2. If you roll a minimum, you can regain the larger die (but you will have probably botched the action you were trying to perform, not to mention it's irrelevant if you already have the largest die in use: a wonderful balance!)
3. If you roll a maximum again when there is no smaller die available (so you roll 4 on a d4) you just lose the Psionic Talent die for the rest of the day.

I don't even know where to begin to praise this design, because I think it's one of the most elegant ideas coming out of the designers since EVER.

1. The connection of a good roll with something bad (risking losing the power for the day) and of a bad roll with something good (regaining stamina, if you had lost some) is not only just balanced, but extremely good at conveying the Psionic flavor: the mind can overwork and get tired, or botch something but find new paths. It's PERFECT.
2. This crazy thing of having a power function at-will or not at all is also SO PSIONIC! Typical in pop culture is in fact seeing these gifted people use their power with little to no limits for some time, and then at some point suffering some kind of outburst or drain, and just lose their powers for a long while.
   It's portrayed by the mechanics with incredible efficiency and style. This is what I meant with "mechanics that convey a concept"!
3. It's a system that can be applied to so many things. In this playtest material we have it in three different subclasses, plus a feat that makes it available for everyone, even for characters already having Psionic subclasses! In fact you never have more than one die: you just grow it in size, and add more ways to use it, which also means more ways to lose it... 
4. It adds a new layer of strategical thinking: do you use the Psionic Talent now, and risk not having it later? Is a bonus now better than more bonuses later? It really is a game inside the game, and this is awesome, and truly distinguishes a Psionic character, making you feel the weight of such power: it's basically a constant Russian Roulette!

Now, the material is not perfect either: the Sorcerer remains a poor way to represent a true "Psion" (although it's ten times better than that nonsense "Psionic School" Wizard we got before...) and the fact the designer still wanted to consider "psionic spells" a thing, and just call all of Divination and Enchantment such, is bad in my opinion. But all in all, the subclass is a nice try, and an original concept: this Sorcerer really conveys a mix of Magic AND Psionics, and does it well. Perhaps even too well, which brings me to what will be the most common criticism for sure...

There are a few slightly overpowered things. But easy to fix!

Adding a d6 to an ability check, even limited to a single ability (speaking of the Wild Talent feat) is VERY powerful, even considering you have a chance of running out of this power.

It stacks with Expertise, meaning I KNOW I want a Rogue or Bard to be Psionic from now on, just to be able to add, potentially, +13 to a skill check at first level. It's a bit too much and could have been probably solved by making the bonus be half the die result, capping the total at a very good +10.

With damage it works perfectly, and in the feat it's even slightly under-powered, although it can be awesome if for some reason one uses small-die weapons (the double-scimitar from Eberron would be the optimal choice!), since it substitutes a die, instead of adding.

Which brings me to another possible fix for the skill bonus granted by the feat: leave it as it is, but make it substitute the Proficiency bonus, effectively becoming my beloved Skill Die which never saw the light of day after the old D&D Next public playtest phase. It would still mean adding on average a +1 and many times +2 or +3, up to +4, at first level. So still amazing. But interaction with Expertise would become harder to figure out. I guess for those cases, the best would be basically die and single Proficiency bonus: like it is now, basically.

Another feat offender is Tower of Iron Will: although it's supposed to be fairly high level for non-psionic characters, a Fighter might take this at 6th level and become basically a nightmare for the DM, since adding a whole d6 to saving throws, yours and others' means saving the day many times.

Again, if this would be instead of proficiency bonus, or half the die's result, it would probably be a bit more in-line with other bonuses.

When it comes to the subclasses, instead, as I mentioned the Sorcerer might be an offender.
I don't see any reason to play any other Sorcerer subclass after seeing this, and not just because I like it, on the contrary: the strength of the mechanics attracts me even if the flavor itself is the worst of the bunch for me personally. I really love the Psi Knight and the Soulknife (ten times better than their last incarnations, although it was a low bar...), but this Psionic Soul Sorcerer is just WOW: temporarily learn spells? Amazing. Avoid the spell components? At last! Telepathic Speech? Of course!

It's just a bit too much, and it gets crazier at higher levels, although all very thematic.

This I don't have many fixes for, honestly. Discovering spells is probably the most amazing feature, and I think it could be ok if it came later on, and/or if it would be limited to a selection of spells (like Cleric's domain spells), and not two entire schools, which by the way also forces one to find indexes of spells by school, which are weirdly not present in the manuals.

One more highlight:

The awesomeness of the new mechanic is shown in the cost of some powers of the Psi Knight and Soulknife, which is a great example of how the Psionic Talent die can be used for more powerful effects too:

"Once you use this feature, you can’t do so again until you finish a long rest, unless you decrease your Psionic Talent die by one die size to use this feature again."

See, this is a great way to control daily uses of powers, without even having to do book-keeping of slots and numbers: the player just keeps the Psionic Talent die close at hand, and instantly knows how many uses left, and how good or bad an idea it is to lower it. Plus, again, it makes you ponder your decisions much better, because all your other Psionic abilities will be affected by the decrease.
This is an example of drawback of Psionics compared to Magic that we fans actually LOVE TO SUFFER! Imagine if a Wizard would have all its spells weakened after using a Fireball: players would come down on the streets marching in protest, but for Psionic fans, this is actually cool!

One more fixable problem:

Wording. Although the mechanic is awesome, it takes a lot of space to be described. This is better fixed by designers than me, since I am notoriously verbose, but in general I think the worst offender is the Wild Talent feat: it's just too long, and while it's basically the same in the classes, one expects this length of stuff more in classes than in feats. My solution would be, once again, to actually nerf it, for example not giving out with it the Psi Replenishment feature, or even the scaling die size, although the latter would mean the ability would at some point become irrelevant, at least for damage.

The best solution would just be to really shorten the explanation in the whole Changing the Die's Size section: it perhaps states too many examples, and could be shortened a lot.

All in all, we don't want Psionics to be considered convoluted or difficult, at least not too much, otherwise the same usual vocal minority will have another excuse to complain it makes the game worse, just because they don't like it in general. Never mind the fact they would have not wanted to use it anyway, and they could just avoid it... It's like people wanting to ban a product that they would have all the rights of banning just from their houses! Which brings me to an appeal to the designers, to end this anti-rant...

Speaking of feedback which might be against this new development, I appeal to the rational mind of designers.

Don't miss opportunities just to please naysayers: create something liked by the ones who actually care, and then the naysayers can always choose not to use it. But us the fans, we can't really choose to use something if it doesn't exist, unless we home-brew it, which inevitably distances us from the game, like it was already happening to me...

So just continue on this path: balance things out, and have Psionics be really unique, really different. And if someone doesn't like it, nothing will happen to them: they can always ban it. If instead you will go back to avoiding new mechanics and lean heavily on spells to do everything psionic (which unfortunately is still being done here and there, like mage hand representing telekinesis...), you will just have created something that nobody complains about, but nobody really enjoys.
A complete waste of time!

So here is hope we are on the right path to a great comeback of Psionics, perhaps tied to Dark Sun or similar "psi-heavy" setting, and that perhaps we will even see a true psionic class, instead of only subclasses. A man can dream!