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Welcome once again to the weekly Nerdarchy Newsletter. You can get the Nerdarchy Newsletter delivered to your inbox each week, along with updates and info on how to game with Nerdarchy, by signing up here. One quick announcement then we’ll jump into discussing this week’s topic, psionics. Our latest update for Out of the Box Encounters went out today. You can see it here.

Psionics. My favorite campaign settings for D&D have incorporated them from the very beginning. Dark Sun and Eberron had them not as clunky add-ons to the setting but core components. Psionics are integral in Dark Sun. Nearly all creatures had at least a little psionic power. Heck, even the plants could kill you with mind powers. In Eberron one the major threats had heavy psionic themes — the Dreaming Dark. Two of the nemeses, Inspired and the psychic overlords the quori. There are also good quori that inhabit one of the player races of Eberron, the kalashtar. The struggle between these forces of light and dark dreams originate from the plane of Dal Quor. The epicenter of this struggle on Eberron is the continent of Sarlona. The final touch is the religion of The Path of the Light. A world with psionics built in keeps them from feeling tacked on and clunky.

Back in the day I created a world we played in called Shattered Realm. One of the ruling factions was the Psi-Lords. They were bent on destroying and taking over the lands of the Sorcerer Kings. Both had to deal with incursions from the Ogre Thranes. All the lands floated in the ether with nothing else between them.  The question is when designing your own worlds how can you go about incorporating psionics to make them feel like they belong? Especially by adding psionic and psychic abilities into areas you might not normally think of as being powered by such things you can create a unique world experience.

Areas to incorporate psionics:

Psionics has been a part of the game from the very beginning. In first edition Advanced Dungeons & Dragons characters with high scores in your mental stats: Intelligence, Wisdom or Charisma had a chance of being psionic and the roll was low to see if you were psionic.

When I played second edition AD&D psionics were not part of the main book anymore but had their own companion book. I would have to say it was my favorite right next to the book about monstrous humanoids. The power names might not have changed all that much over the editions and years, but the mechanics certainly have. My first serious character I ever played with Dave and our group was a dark dwarven psionicist. His favorite ability was Animal Affinity and he had one for scorpions. His arms would turn into claws and he would grow a tail with a poisonous stinger. He was a crap load of fun to play. But playing a pure caster as a melee character did not end well and like so many others over the years he did not survive the adventure.

When I look at psionics and the pure mental power of making things happen it is a lot of fun and has many scientific elements to it. I look at worlds like Athas, the land of the Dark Sun, and how psionics is the main staple of that world instead of magic. Mechanically since 2E AD&D psionics have not been in the core books and always added later. This addition makes it kick back against certain things. In 2E AD&D what about things with magic resistance? It makes for many disputes and calls of power gaming if you play a psionic character because the psionic resistance is lower than the magic resistance. Not that I am expecting WotC to consult with Nerdarchy, when or if they make a new edition, but if they did I would ask for psionics to be a part of it from the beginning.

Fifth edition has made several attempts to look at psionics and how it could be incorporated into the current rule set. We have the mystic character class from Unearthed Arcana focused on psionics as a class, as well as the newly released UA that gives us psionic subclasses for fighter, rogue and wizard. While I am not opposed to these options and like the material they provided I fully believe that psionics needs to be its own class. I know it is not easy to make a full class, trust me I have been toying around with an idea for one for quite some time and have not made it work yet.

Another point to bring up, if they have any designs on releasing Dark Sun for 5E D&D, psionics needs to be its own class as there is a huge rift between magic and psionics. If you incorporate it into wizard than there is no difference and it would require a massive conceptual change to the fundamentals of one of my favorite campaign settings. Nate, while he was with Nerdarchy, wrote this series on making a psionic class for 5E D&D you can check out here. If you are interested in another option for psionics you might want to check it out and see if it is right for your game.

After Unearthed Arcana — Fighter, Rogue, and Wizard released three new psionic subclasses into the playtest world, I thought long and hard about my roleplaying game experiences and came to realize that maybe I don’t think psionics are all that.

Since then I’ve hemmed and hawed over writing this newsletter, struggling to come up with something useful to say. Because while psionics might not stimulate my brain waves, it certainly does for legions of RPG players out there.

During our live chat, Nerdarchist Dave and I discussed psionics from a whole bunch of angles. My takeaway from the conversation was psionics works best when it’s not a separate game system added after the launch of a new edition, and when it’s baked into the edition at large in terms of monsters, magic items and the like.

So after all this thinking, discussing and keeping an eye on social media to get more perspectives on psionics in D&D, I came up with a solution that works for me here at the zero hour for the newsletter. Half the solution is in Unearthed Arcana. It’s not the mystic class and a system of power points, and it’s not subclasses for every class. It’s feats!

Using the feats system in 5E D&D to incorporate psionics appeals to me because it’s an existing system since launch and it can become part of a DM toolbox for monsters and encounters really easily. Designing psionic feats means any character can take them when the gain an ability score increase. This way there’s no need for a whole new class but players can still create countless unique characters with a selection of unusual psionic feats giving them unique abilities. And dropping any of these psionic feats on any creature you want gives the monster a nifty extra trick.

I’ve got a few ideas how to develop this idea further too, but for that you’ll have to keep an eye on Nerdarchy the Website. Once the video discussion of Unearthed Arcana — Fighter, Rogue, and Wizard drops, we’ll create a new post with expanded ideas and content for using psioncs in 5E D&D with feats.

Until next time, stay nerdy

— Nerdarchy Team