Dungeons & Dragons is continuing to tinker with bringing psionic abilities into its Fifth Edition rules. Earlier today, Dungeons & Dragons released a new set of Unearthed Arcana playtest materials that revisits the psionic subclasses introduced last year. The revisions drop the Psionics wizards and several psionic spells and replaces those spells with several new subclass features and five new feats that can be used to give any character additional psionic abilities.
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The biggest change to the new psionic subclasses is the addition of a Psionic Talent Die, which starts as a D6 and gradually grows in size as a player levels up. Each of the psionic subclasses has different ways to use the Psionic Talent Die to either increase damage or affect dice rolls in other ways. For instance, a Psi Knight can use their Psionic Talent Die to increase the distance of their long jump or high jump, while a Soulknife Rogue can create a telepathic bond with a number of creatures equal to the number rolled on their Psionic Talent Die.
One unique aspect to the Psionic Talent Die is that it has the potential to increase or decrease in size. If a player rolls the highest number on the Psionic Talent Die, it decreases in size (i.e, from a d6 to a d4), while it increases in size if a player rolls a 1. At no point can the Psionic Talent Die go above a player’s initial die size, but a player can cause their Psionic Talent to temporarily exhaust until they take a long rest.
In addition to the Psi Knight Fighter, Soulknife Rogue, and the renamed Psionic Soul Sorcerer, players can also equip their characters with one of five feats that grant players basic psionic abilities like telepathy or telekinesis. The Wild Talent feat also gives players a Psionic Talent dice that they can use to enhance an ability check (limited to one type of ability score) and increase the damage of an attack.
Personally, I like the new Psionics options – they give the Psionic subclasses a new mechanic that differentiates it from normal spellcasting, and offers players increased flexibility without making them too overpowered. With Psionics still in the works, it seems certain that we’ll get some new Psionics subclasses in a D&D release later this year.
You can check out all of the new Psionics rules here.
Another note from the Unearthed Arcana is that Dungeons & Dragons has officially abandoned the Mystic class playtested back in 2017. The D&D team noted that playtesters felt the Mystic class too closely encroached on the abilities of other classes, and that many considered it to be too powerful or too complex.
