psionics Archives - Tribality

UA 2020: Psionic Options Revisited Breakdown

Brandes Stoddard — Wed, 15 Apr 2020 06:01:04 +0000

The WotC team plunges in again on psionics design, in the new UA release. Unlike a lot of UA documents, this one spends about a page discussing the winding path of psionic/mystic development in UA to date, including the official deprecation of some prior UAs – the Psionics wizard and several psionic attack spells. My only issue is that I like Int as the psionic casting stat more than Cha. (Apropos, I am glad that we have the artificer as […]

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Unearthed Arcana: Psionics, Round Four

Brandes Stoddard — Tue, 26 Nov 2019 17:13:27 +0000

That’s not the proper name for this UA release, which would be either Fighter, Rogue, and Wizard or PsychicSoulPsionics, but as those are both unhelpful names, you get Psionics, Round Four. This is a new, very 5e take: what if there’s no mystic or psion 20-level class? Instead, psionics is three subclasses, a handful of spells, and two feats. Also, folks? Psionics is one of the most contentious things we ever discuss about D&D. I’m not sure why that is, […]

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UA: The Mystic Class Breakdown, Part Three

Brandes Stoddard — Wed, 15 Mar 2017 03:23:18 +0000

The new Unearthed Arcana document dropped toward the end of the West Coast working day yesterday, so getting an article up on the same day, while my perpetual goal, was a non-starter. It is a doozy of a release, weighing in at 28 pages and carrying all the context of its predecessors. In case you’re just now joining in on reading about the Mystic, it’s the 5e name for the Psion. This in itself is a thoroughly divisive point in the community, but I am a huge fan of that name change – it feels like an appropriate in-setting work for the great majority of settings (even of the subset that do include psionics).

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Psionics, Part Eight

Brandes Stoddard — Thu, 20 Aug 2015 11:00:59 +0000

Through dangers untold and hardships unnumbered, we have come to the eighth and, for the time being, final article of the series on the history of psionics in D&D. In this case, we’re talking about a class that is still in an early, public-playtest state, but it’s also the first exploration of any particular scale of how 5e will present psionics in its settings. Because things could still change, I’ll also discuss my own thoughts on psionics and how it […]

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Psionics, Part Seven

Brandes Stoddard — Thu, 13 Aug 2015 12:00:25 +0000

In last week’s article, I discussed some of the peripheral support for psionics in 3.5 D&D. This week, I’m moving on to 4e, which means we’re going to the Player’s Handbook 3 and Psionic Power. 4e nominally has four psionic classes, but if you can find any credible psionic theme in the monk, you’re doing better than I am. I won’t be touching the monk in this article, since it isn’t psionic in any other edition, and it might get […]

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Psionics, Part Six

Brandes Stoddard — Thu, 06 Aug 2015 12:15:28 +0000

In last week’s History of the Classes, I looked at the Psionics Handbook and the Expanded Psionics Handbook, the core psionics rules for 3.0 and 3.5, respectively. This week I’m moving on to later developments within 3.x: one official WotC expansion, Complete Psionic; and one third-party alternate vision, The Psychic’s Handbook. (Yes, there’s a lot more psionic content for 3.x than that in circulation. I have to draw the line somewhere, and this arbitrary line is as good as any.) […]

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Psionics, Part Five

Brandes Stoddard — Thu, 30 Jul 2015 13:00:08 +0000

Welcome back to History of the Classes, after a week of ridiculous polling and a week off. We return to the history of psionics in D&D, already in progress. This article discusses psionics in Third Edition D&D. I think I can fairly sum up the approach as making psionic classes as close to pre-existing classes and mechanics as possible – it’s a spell point system with some weird parapsychology mixed in. (Part One, Part Two, Part Three, Dark Sun) D&D […]

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Could YOU Be Psychic?

Brandes Stoddard — Thu, 16 Jul 2015 13:16:42 +0000

Welcome to the first round of Tribality’s Psi-Testing. You will be pushed to the limit of your knowledge of D&D psionics in all their bizarre glory. Now, as every schoolchild knows, there are not two, but three degrees of psychic capability, made clear in the etymology of psionic. As Wikipedia explains: “The term comes from psi (‘psyche’) and the -onics from electronics (machine), which implied that the paranormal powers of the mind could be made to work reliably.” A psion, […]

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Dark Sun Psionics

Brandes Stoddard — Thu, 09 Jul 2015 13:00:50 +0000

In today’s History of the Classes article, I’m examining Dark Sun’s use of psionics in AD&D Second Edition. As far as I know, it’s the only 2e setting – out of the glorious variety of 2e settings – that deeply embraces psionics and makes it a centerpiece of the setting. My resources are the revised Dark Sun Campaign Setting (the one reworked to fit Skills and Powers), Dragon Kings, and The Will and the Way. I also have a copy […]

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Psionics, Part Three

Brandes Stoddard — Thu, 02 Jul 2015 13:00:50 +0000

Last time in History of the Classes, I talked about AD&D First Edition’s psionics, including a psionicist class introduced in Dragon. Especially from the other articles in that issue, it was clear that psionics in D&D were divisive at the time, even on a level of basic mechanical resolution. Second Edition’s Complete Psionics Handbook sets out to address the messy mechanics of OD&D and 1e psionics, bringing them into a new and more streamlined age. (Relatively speaking.) This is also […]

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