Sneak Attack - Psionics

[shawnmerwin]

The next several Sneak Attack segments will cover psionics in 5e. I'll share my thoughts and evaluations, but I'd love to hear from you all on the subject.

[Jared Rascher]

This Unearthed Arcana REALLY engendered some thoughts. I love the concepts introduced, but the concepts are so big and new that I think there is a lot of room to refine and modify. In general, even with all of the problems I have, I really want to see this material get reworked, rather than scrapped if it’s not all that engaging for others.
I’ve posted my thoughts on this in two separate articles:

https://knighterrantjr.blogspot.com/202 ... sions.html

https://knighterrantjr.blogspot.com/202 ... mbers.html

The TL/DR is that I like the concept of the die, but I think moving the die up is a little weird, and as Shawn said, feels more “chaotic” than it should for a reserve battery.

Specifically, in regards to the feats, I like the idea of having a feat that gives you minor prescient, telepathic, or telekinetic abilities as a natural talent, but I don’t like the concept of getting one feat to become a wild talent, with that ability largely being “invisible” manipulation of the rules, and the second feat in the chain actually giving you the psychic ability.

To my thinking, and maybe others will think differently, the wild talent feats should be more about picking up some flavor that is situationally useful, but is mainly for those character concepts where your character is a “regular” member of their class that also has this psychic ability that kicks in once in a while.

If the psionic talent die is important as a unifying mechanic, I would rather see wording in the base feat say something like “if you do not already have a psionic talent die, you gain one,” instead of introducing a feat chain that sets up the “second-tier” abilities that I would rather be minor “first-tier” abilities.

[shawnmerwin]

Thanks for sharing, Jared. It sounds like we agree in a lot of ways.