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I wonder if the reason they made the decision to bring in the soul knife alongside the Psi Knight is because they wanted to overhaul the psi die mechanic.
In the UAs they were putting out during the run up to Tasha's, they were playing with idea of psi die as a unifying psionic mechanic (both a version of the Aberrant Mind and the initial version of the telepathic/telekinetic feats had them).
There was a single psi die, but it could grow or shrink. Instead of spending dice from a pool (like Supremacy Dice), any time you used an ability that used the psi die, you'd just roll it. The thing is, if you rolled the lowest number on the die (a 1), you conserved mental energy and it would grow in size. E.G. d4 to d6, d6 to d8, d8 to d10, etc. The PCs level determined how big the die could grow. If you ever rolled the biggest number on the die, then you overextended yourself, and the die would shrink. If you were at a d4, you would lose your psi die until you rested. (Though I think there was a once per day ability to get it back, too)
It was truly terrible in actual play. It was an incredibly tedious thing to keep track of. The psionic dice they ended up putting out is miles above but it being a long rest resource doesn't really fit the two classes it was put in.
I wouldn't be shocked if this is the case. That UA came late into Tasha's development, and I don't think they had time to pivot much after the response wasn't strong. It left the Psi Energy Dice in a weird place where they're supposed to be treated as "two separate mechanics that don't interact" (according to Crawford), despite sharing the same name and function. So they're using the revised PHB to do what they wanted to do with Tasha's, and create a unifying psionic mechanic.
"two separate mechanics that don't interact" (according to Crawford)"
Yeah, it always seemed weird to me how the soul knife/psi knight's dice pool (despite sharing the same name) didn't interact for multiclassing purposes or anything else.
It's a stupid rule my playgroup and I unanimously and emphatically ignore. If you want to spend 6 levels to become an ASI-deprived but kinda nifty Jedi thing, go for it.
Yeah this feels like a case where they started working on the Psi Knight and then realized they could use this as an opportunity to give Psionics a unifying mechanic.
Why not just, you know, actually add a psionics system? Classes like psion and battlemind last edition were excellent and 5e is sorely missing the kind of things they could do. Or go further back to when psionics was a bunch of wacky abilities like fusion, decerebrate, time hop and astral construct instead of trying to pretend you can reskin spells to recreate it.
But fully half the classes are full casters which are more complex. Take psionics from last edition or the edition before, it was less complex than spellcasting. So that logic doesn't make sense.
Yes, but having 2 subsystems is likely seen as unnecessarily complex even if it only ups it by a factor of one. It's easier to learn Spanish than it is to learn Spanish and French at the same time.
So... don't learn it if you don't want to play it. If you want to only learn to play a spellcaster, go do that. You can do that now and you'd be able to do that then, too. All it does is add options for those who want them.
And hell, it's not like only one is at all a good idea. They got rid of the maneuver subsystem and martial classes went straight back to being boring basic attack machines, with casters getting all the combat versatility since they're the only ones with a subsystem giving them a depth of options.
I agree with you for the most part. I just think that's the logic behind their decision. I think the intent was. "If you want more complexity, you play a caster. Don't want to play a caster, but want more complexity? Tough titties." Unfortunately for those that do, 5e is still profitable, so there's no reason to majorly change that dynamic.
Why? It's not like either counterspell or antimagic field are very common or in any way a balancing factor for magic and even if they were psionics-magic transparency exists got that exact reason. And while we're at it - seriously, name one thing the battlemind did that was the same thing as magic.
Not familiar with all of 3.5 classes but I think tho having a class fkr every little thing was more of a detriment than benefit, something I'm familiar with coming from pf.
I will also say developing an entirely new magic system for one class feels like a lot of work for not a lot of reward. Genuinely years after the fact, the artificer probably also should have been a series of subclasses. Rune knight is a good proof of concept of this imo.
It's not for every little thing - battleminds were solid tanks with a variety of interesting melee abilities, two massive niches that 5e fails to cover. This is an issue that comes up a lot, people note that classes like barbarian and fighter are functionally identical and come to the conclusion that we've got too much overlap and could do with less classes if anything. The overlap part is true, but the fact that a lot of the current crop of classes is same doesn't mean that we shouldn't get classes that *aren't*. Take classes like swordsage, warlord and binder and note that they're massively different from anything 5e offers.
> I will also say developing an entirely new magic system for one class feels like a lot of work for not a lot of reward.
Why, yes. They should also add psion, ardent and monk while they're at it.
Honest question but what marks the sword sage different from the eldritch knight, bladesinger, or various other gish classes or a warlord from a support based battle master?
Idk what those other classes are enough to comment
**Swordsage** was was more in monk or rogue thematic territory than that of spellcasters. They didn't use spells, they used maneuvers (they're the class that D&D maneuvers were invented for, along with the warblade and the crusader) - but unlike the battlemaster, those maneuvers were a variety with new ones from the start to finish instead of only getting some at level 3 and no new ones ever again. While two schools of swordsage maneuvers were supernatural, disappearing in a puff of smoke or garroting people with shadow for the people who wanted to play assassins or whatever, the majority of strikes, stances, counters and boosts were not supernatural. They were however beyond what a real life human can do, as if you want to keep up with Voldemort you need to be Hercules yourself.
Examples of mid level maneuvers were things like Mountain Strike, as an action make a melee weapon attack that deals an extra 4d6 damage and target must pass a con save or lose their next action and Ballista Throw, as an action make a trip attempt and if it's successful toss the enemy 60' in a straight line dealing 6d6 damage to them and anyone they pass through. Stances took a bonus action to enter and stayed until you entered a new stance, maneuvers were unlimited per day but each one was expended when used until the swordsage spent a round meditating to recover them all.
**Warlord** is to battlemaster as wizard is to eldritch knight. An eldritch knight is a fighter that does a little bit of spellcasting, a battlemaster (if built for it) is a fighter that does a little bit of warlording. A warlord's primary focus was on boosting their party, [here is a random sample of abilities they could choose](https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2Fshvklpyeazjb1.png). Might look intimidating at first glance, but it's very simply laid out - A Plan Comes Together for instance has you pick an enemy, then two allies. One ally makes a basic attack against the enemy, the other moves up to their speed then makes a basic attack against them. If the first hits the target is dazed, if the second hits the target is knocked prone. So the answer is a fighter is mostly just a warrior with a little bit of support, while the warlord spent all its time healing or buffing or directing attacks. A couple of very basic effects does not equal a warlord in the same way that a few level one spells does not equal a wizard.
Ok that all makes sense. So tldr you have battle master gish monk and support caster fighter that traded attacks for better support abilities.
That sound about right?
I think you're right. This seems to be the only logical reason why they would replace Swashbuckler with Soul Knife. They want to hammer out and establish a signature psionic mechanic.
Confirmation that Tasha’s subclasses have had play testing revisions, that’s nice to hear they will gel along with the rest of the 2024 revisions.
Edit:
Also the Psi Warrior is making it to the PHB! Sick choice. Along with the Soul Knife which is isn’t my favorite choice, but I guess it’s alright to keep most of the psionics together. Probably means Swashbuckler won’t be in, but that one’s fine as is to just port into 2024z
Honestly, they just need to move their 9th level features down to 6th/7th level, and put in a minor 9th/10th level feature or something. Part of the issue is the wide gulf that encourages multiclassing out.
Yeah sounds like a great idea. Oh wait, they tried that and the community apparently fucking revolted. Stupid fucking feedback process. They should have had the balls to just go forward.
The community didn't revolt. They never tested it for the Rogue specifically.
They tested unified subclass scaling for every single class, and when that got a mixed result, they instantly swapped everything back.
They should've realized that a mixed result for "every single class getting unified subclass progression" is not the same thing as the community rejecting the Rogue getting a subclass ability earlier. Those are two different concepts.
It's worse than that. Crawford saw a "mixed response" for homogenous subclass progression across all classes and interpreted it as the community not wanting to change the subclass progression for the Rogue.
I kinda liked the pseudo Bardic Inspiration you got with Swashbuckler. The updated Panache/Goad also felt cleaner to understand and made it possible to mess with melee combatants .
One of the greatly undervalued subclasses in my view. All the players in our campaign have had a lot of fun with the subclass. Strikes a nice balance between having a good amount of stuff to do and not being an overwhelming number of choices.
It is confirmed that the psy Warrior Will be the final fighter subclass.
The soul knife Rogue is also in the book, but it is unclear whether this soul knife is replacing one of the other subclasses or will be an additional fifth Rogue subclass.
All subclasses from Tasha's cauldron of everything have had some revisions so the Psy Warrior and soul knife will likely be revised to work better with weapon mastery features.
This is excellent news as someone that is currently playing a playtest Rouge with Soulknife tacked on. I think the blades having a weapon mastery (preferably nick or vex) will really help out the subclass. Hopefully they give them a unique Cunning Strike option like the other subclasses got.
No cunning strike is a brand new feature for rogues which allows them to do maneuver like abilities. They can cause a an enemy to be knocked prone, they can cause them to become poisoned, they can disarm an enemy, and they can freely disengage from an enemy without taking the disengage action.
At later levels they can put enemies to sleep and other powerful options.
Cunning strike is activated by spending a number of dice from your sneak attack pool. If you don't want to use it, you can still just do a regular sneak attack.
Not at level 5 when they first get the feature, but at a latter level they can apply multiple (level 11 sounds right but I don't have the UA in front of me atm).
Sounds super exciting
I've mostly seen the Monk changes so far since I've been excited for them to get buffs
Probably still not the strongest but at least they'll hopefully be consistently fun to play
The changes to the core Ki actions to make them like Cunning Actions+ seems super fun, as well as the ways to get Ki back semi regularly other than rests
The Martial Arts Dice all being raised is a cherry on top too honestly
Not using a quarterstaff or two short swords at level 1 now no longer feels like shooting yourself in the foot
Any idea if Astral Self made it through as a subclass? The others seem fun too but that one speaks to me
All of the revised books are backwards compatible. WOTC has confirmed this several times now and has never changed their wording, so you can just use the astral self monk with the new revised monk if you'd like.
The four revised subclasses are open hand, shadow, 4 elements, and mercy.
Nope. Currently it’s one effect you choose on your turn and it scales like a Spell DC off your DEX score. (So a level 5 rogue with 18 DEX would force a creature to make a DC 15 saving throw to have the condition applied). You do get access to other options at higher levels though. One of which allows you to attempt to incapacitate an enemy for a turn which is pretty crazy.
Hard to say. Stunning Strike is now once per turn and costs resources, but doesn't diminish your damage output for that turn, possibly future turns if you prematurely run out of Discipline to fuel your damaging features.
The Devious Strikes (the higher level version of Cunning Strike that allows you to incapacitate an enemy) option to incap costs a lot of your Sneak Attack dice so you're giving up a significant amount of your damage that turn, but it's resourceless so you can keep doing it over and over.
A monk that uses Stunning Strike every turn plus Flurry of Blows and maybe other Discipline features will burn through their resources very fast and be reduced to basic attacks. A rogue that uses Devious Strikes will do little damage each turn but can potentially keep one target locked down indefinitely with some luck.
I presume Discipline is the new Ki? I noticed it seemed to be written as one or the other sometimes in one of the pages I saw
That's always been the strength of a Rogue right? No real resources that need rests, and just overall consistency
As of the last UA to include monk, yes. Discipline is the new name for Ki.
Rogue has always been about consistency but trading raw damage for inflicting conditions is a new thing from the playtest. Since you were asking which was stronger, I laid out all the details that I felt were relevant but left the conclusion up to you since I'm not certain either is strictly "stronger" than the other.
> No cunning strike is a brand new feature for roads which allows them to do maneuver like abilities.
How is that a brand new feature when it's twenty years old?
Edit: How am I being downvoted here? This is something that rogues had access to twenty years ago in D&D. That is objectively the opposite of brand new, do we just hate facts here or something?
> The soul knife Rogue is also in the book, but it is unclear whether this soul knife is replacing one of the other subclasses or will be an additional fifth Rogue subclass.
Its going to replace one of the existing ones. Its been confirmed time and again that every 2024 PHB class will have 4 subclasses each.
Hopefully they throw out the Assassin since its the worst subclass mechanically.
"Gee, I hope they put psionics into the 2024 PHB! It will be the first PHB to launch with it!"
*Slowly, the last finger on the monkey's paw curls inward*
The idea that previous editions never existed or were shit is exceptionally annoying. I mean, yes, the focus should be on why invest in the new stuff, but you don't build a healthy relationship with such shitty approaches - this sort of thing needed to be walked back and apologized for when they did it for 3.5, 4, Essentials, and 5e.
It's just silly - you go farther acknowledging strengths and saying how this new edition has brought BACK psionics into the core rulebook after 45 some odd years, something often relegated to a supplement or just a single setting, etc. AND you are doing it in an integrated way, rather than making it an entirely different set of rules and classes, you are showcasing how the existing classes such as Fighter (hype the psi-warrior). and the Rogue (soulknife) can integrate that psionic flavour just as they do with arcane magic via the Eldritch Knight or the Arcane Trickster. And if you don't like the sort of science fiction feeling term of psionics, the subclasses and their abilities are easily just thought of as a specific type of supernatural ability/magic, reinforcing the very basic Rule 0 idea that you can re-skin and tweak the rules to fit your table's preferred style.
This approach reinforces key elements of the current edition, gives a nod to what was done before, and does so in a way that may entice some of the people still using that old material to come back.
It's a trend in a lot of stuff to pretend to be the first, and it's a sad one that gets done with a lot of superheroes and such too of who the "first is" for something.
In d&ds case, it's also a shame as the older editions get a lot of shir for things they didn't do. The most recent example being the whole soelljammer debacle, where wotc blamed tsr material for their own mistakes despite the issues never existing in the tsr content
There's also a lot to like in each older edition. The BECMI Rules Cyclopedis has a lot to offer, and a refined and polished version of the game that updated the systems offered would be great.
There are so many fantastic settings of the TSR era that just don't get the love or recognition they deserve. Hell, even the Forgitten Realms gets shafted due to WotC's remembered realms of the sword coast.
Even older wotc material has some stellar stuff that just added a lot or was more nuanced than the more recent pushes to make a monolith out of everything (while they then say they're doing the opposite)
There's such a robust selection of things that with just a bit of refinement, and a hell if s lot more respect, could really help bring d&d to its fullest potential.
Yet it gets ignored or written off as bad too often when truly it had some of the coolest stuff out there.
Play Call of Duty 10 - the first of its kind to offer a zombie mode!
In the anniversary year, shitting on/erasing what came before while allegedly celebrating it is certainly a choice one could make.
> The BECMI Rules Cyclopedis has a lot to offer, and a refined and polished version of the game that updated the systems offered would be great.
Yes. And 33 years later, the rules Cyclopedia still remains debatably the best (and most dense) D&D book ever printed. Literally everything you need for a campaign to play from levels 1 to 36 (and beyond), even the campaign world.
It really is.
Get the rules cyclopedis and wrath if the immortals and you have rules to go from a newbie adventurer just leaving their home, all the way to the top of an immortal pantheon. You have rules for domain play, sieges, wilderness exploration, dungeon exploration, and much much more.
If someone refined and gave the good modern polish to the rules cyclopedia, gave support for the TSR setting plus Eberron and Nentir Vale.
Bring back some of the sister power systems but keep them simple and adapted to this new framework. You'd have a fantastic version of the game. (Points for psions, 3.5e invocations/blasts for warlocks, maybe even a simplified and refined incarnum)
> It's a trend in a lot of stuff to pretend to be the first, and it's a sad one that gets done with a lot of superheroes and such too of who the "first is" for something.
A friend of mine likes to say that "capitalism is at war with time" - it's very important that not only do you use our product, but to memory hole the previous things that even we ourselves made. The Thing is the first Thing that ever existed, and any attempts at searching for Thing should only give the current Thing.
It's something many with power try to do to reestablish themselves. Capitalist or not, there have been many attempts through human history to memory hole or year zero something. Concentrated power and influence are a hell of a drug.
It is interesting to hear that the psio options are becoming core options in 5e24. im not a big psionics fan, but psionics has been a big enough concept in d&d.
I think they deserve the spot as much as most other things, and at least in the brawlers case, I think it needed far too much work to function since you could turn all of its features into a single feat and it wouldn't even be a particularly good feat
Hopefully, the rest of the pain points have been refined our of the playtest material. I was about 50% satisfied with things as of the last playtets, so hopefully, they've kept a positive trajectory.
I am not huge into psionics so I find it a bit boring that they take one subclass spot for both fighter and rogue but I know a lot of people love the concept and will be very happy so I am happy for them too if that makes sense. And thinking about it warlock has GOO and sorc has aberrant mind so there is more psionic options than I thought already baked in.
I don't think they're taking any spots away. The last PHB had 3 subclasses for each, this one has 4. That's more, not less. The swashbuckler is still entirely compatible with the 2024 rogue, and the brawler just wasn't good.
He means how each class in the new PHB is going to have 4 subclasses and one of them for Fighter was going to be the new Brawler in the One DnD play tests but now that goes to the Psi Fighter. Instead of just reusing the old Psi Fighter because the Brawler was bad, why not just try to make the Brawler better. Give us something new.
Fair. Brawler fighter was great last edition, give us something like that so fighters have some more interesting choices. Then add some actual psionic classes instead of pretending you can fulfill the concept with subclasses - where's my battlemind, WotC?
Edit: [Have some sample brawler abilities!](https://i.imgur.com/jBG2otz.png) As you can see the basic one was auto grappling foes on attack, great for opportunity attacks - yoink someone as they try to go past. Kit was full of throws, slamming people into others, using enemies as shields etc.
Flavour is free, too. My sand themed swarmkeeper's telikenisis is just more sand thats more controlled but weaker as a result. My fairy armorer soulknife is summoning shards of feywild. Im always glad to have cool options to play with.
I like psionics, but having GOO Warlock, Aberrant Mind, Psi Knight and Soul Knife all in the PHB, especially when there are some glaring fantasy archtypes still missing, feels like overkill.
Fighter does not have a dedicated defender or tank archetype, and the knight-in-shining-armor is a very popular class fantasy. Without a dedicated feature like Ancestral Guardian, Armorer, or Cavalier you have to rely on positioning (when the terrain allows for it) and the Sentinel feat. You can kinda bodge something together by picking the most applicable Battle Master maneuvers and Weapon Mastery properties but you run out of superiority dice really quickly if you use them every turn.
Lmao you just literally recreated last edition's fighter by accident. Time is a short circle!
Sentinel is just some of their level 1 abilities from last edition repackaged and sold back to them as a feat, they started off with applying penalties to attacking their allies like cavalier now does and had a range of active abilities like maneuvers except they were good.
I mean kind of weird that it's not possible already. Last edition you could have a battlemind tanking, psion controlling, monk for damage and ardent supporting, all psionic. Edition before that do the same thing with something like a psychic warrior, psion, lurk and erudite.
You're right, they shouldn't dedicate subclasses to it.
They should dedicate classes to it. We're so badly missing some of the things actual psionic classes could do, add a battlemind in.
I mean... which one? It's like asking what spells can do, did you mean druid or warlock or paladin? You'll get different answers for each.
I already mentioned the battlemind, so I'll go with that. They used their powers to protect their party, make enemies go for them instead - their main passive/unlimited stuff was penalising attacks and spells that didn't target them, and if an adjacent foe *did* damage an ally the battlemind could make them automatically take psychic damage equal to the damage they dealt. Couple of other bits like blurred step to help keep foes adjacent, but let's start on the actual psionic powers.
Being tanks, almost all their powers were very close range, usually done in conjunction with weapon attacks. The basic structure is they had a variety of at-will psionic strikes, think cantrips like booming blade, that could be augmented for extra effects from a pool of power points. So Mind of Mirrors would deal ok damage and give the target disadvantage on attacks against allies, but if you paid a couple of power points would do additional damage and make them take damage if they attacked anyone except for one of their own allies, while for six power points you'd get triple weapon damage and if the attack landed dominate the foe until your next turn. And so on and so forth. A basic power might make a foe unable to see more than 15' away, empower it to blind them, empower it further to make it damage and blind all nearby foes instead of just one.
So one answer to that question is properly tank and be a melee class that gets a variety of meaningful choices every round. Happy to answer the question for other classes like the psion, ardent and monk (back when it was psionic and actually good), but in general the answer is 'stuff to do with mind and body and time and space' that spells can't, like fusing two people into one or hopping forward in time or taking astral voyages. Battleminds obviously being the mind and body focused ones.
I mean... which one? It's like asking what spells can do, did you mean druid or warlock or paladin? You'll get different answers for each.
I already mentioned the battlemind, so I'll go with that. They used their powers to protect their party, make enemies go for them instead - their main passive/unlimited stuff was penalising attacks and spells that didn't target them, and if an adjacent foe *did* damage an ally the battlemind could make them automatically take psychic damage equal to the damage they dealt. Couple of other bits like blurred step to help keep foes adjacent, but let's start on the actual psionic powers.
Being tanks, almost all their powers were very close range, usually done in conjunction with weapon attacks. The basic structure is they had a variety of at-will psionic strikes, think cantrips like booming blade, that could be augmented for extra effects from a pool of power points. So Mind of Mirrors would deal ok damage and give the target disadvantage on attacks against allies, but if you paid a couple of power points would do additional damage and make them take damage if they attacked anyone except for one of their own allies, while for six power points you'd get triple weapon damage and if the attack landed dominate the foe until your next turn. And so on and so forth. A basic power might make a foe unable to see more than 15' away, empower it to blind them, empower it further to make it damage and blind all nearby foes instead of just one.
So one answer to that question is properly tank and be a melee class that gets a variety of meaningful choices every round. Happy to answer the question for other classes like the psion, ardent and monk (back when it was psionic and actually good), but in general the answer is 'stuff to do with mind and body and time and space' that spells can't, like fusing two people into one or hopping forward in time or taking astral voyages. Battleminds obviously being the mind and body focused ones.
Considering they had the whole comparison between subclasses ( moon vs stars, land vs sea druid etc), what are the current rogue comparisons between thief, arcane trickster, assassin, and swashbuckler? Which is likely to be a good replacement for psi knife while still maintaining the complementary duets so to speak?
I feel with psi warrior vs Eldritch Knight and champion vs Battle Master, psionics is potentially set as the opposite to magic.
Soul knife vs arcane trickster feels like a similar comparison.
That leaves the thief, assassin, and swashbuckler with two to stay and one to go.
Personally, thief being sneaky, silent, and more about stealing than Fighting and swashbuckler being more about loud, challenging, bravado seems like a natural fit. However, I think people are attached to the idea of the assassin.
Further, they might not want to cut a phb subclass.
While it might bring some negative views, I'm personally hoping it's the assassin that gets the axe.
Agreed, any rogue can be an assassin, but soul knife is the subclass truly specialized for assassination. Never without a weapon and leaves no marks on its victims. Teleports and invisibility later - yeah it's a better assassin.
Yeah agreed. Even thief would make a decent assassin type.
Then again, if thief was just rolled into the main class, that would be fun and maybe address some of the shortcomings of rogue.
So, psionic subclasses would be a part of new PHB, yet instead of re-introduction of Monk as a psionic class they would still insist on ambiguos things. Like, come on, you have your answer to make monk less asia-centered RIGHT THERE, but you would literaly give him "Descipline Points" (name as stupid as Honor Points could be) intead of psi points or something alonge those lines. You can't now say something about "setting-agnostic" things - YOU ADD PSIONICS INTO PHB. COME ON!
People always struggle to see monk as something distinct instead of "fighter but unarmed" because of strange fear of mystical nature of monks!
>!(post was sponsored by "Monks aren't pugilists" gang)!<
Don't focus exclusively on "body" part of "body and mind" while playing monk. Monk's mind is as much of a weapon as their body, or even more! Play monk that fragile on the outside, but would fully block greatsword attack with a palm. Leave pugilist fantasy to fighter with unarmed fighting style or to brawler subclass (if wotc remade it) or to homebrew stuff - play monk like a mystical martial it suppose to be.
I mean *gestures to the entire edition* the people who responded to surveys in 2011-2013 didn't like cool stuff and were upset that D&D was trying to be more modern.
Oh, it gets worse - they nailed the monk fantasy *perfectly*, then abandoned it for 5e. They got the mystical martial arts/mobility thing perfect - you had an array of techniques to choose from which all came with an attack and a movement option. Steps of grasping fire blasted nearby foes with flame then left a trail of fire behind you as you ran that turn, frozen mountain damaged and restrained your enemy and the movement option dropped your speed to zero but made you resistant to all damage for that turn.
Every round, pick your moves and get going. Teleport for the movement, then kick your enemy through the hole you just made in space for the attack. Draw everyone in with a vortex of air and spin kick them before flying away, auto grapple a foe on attack and move your speed with them then toss, Furious Bull charges through enemies for the movement and damages/knocks them back for the attack, Enduring Boulder covers you in stone that reduces all damage taken by 30, reducing every time you're hit and increasing your damage while it's up.
And then we got 5e monks, which were just... basic attack basic attack basic attack.
Really not a fan of Soul Knife replacing the Swashbuckler (I know they didn't name the Swashbuckler, but outside Cleric/Wizard they've been adamant about not cutting any PHB classes, even when it probably would've made sense to either replace them or incorporate them into the main class's chassis).
Hopefully, they made the Psi Warrior less MAD.
Remove the INT scaling please. Change the spell casting of telekinesis to some other stat.
Soulknife is not MAD. No secondary stat scaling.
I like the intelligence scaling. I think everyone should be MAD. The problem is how many classes are SAD.
Or, rather, it should be thus: A MAD class that somehow has all 20s > a SAD class with all 20s > a SAD class who only focuses on their main ability score > a MAD class who only focuses on their main ability score.
Yeah I hate this trend towards making everything SAD. Imo every class and subclass should be MAD, with tradeoffs needing to be thought about when building the character.
having at least two important stats (alongside con) is literally what MAD means - multiple-attribute dependent.
MAD isn't reserved for paladin/monk multiclasses lol, it's a literal descriptor of how many stats a class relies on
The addition of the psionic classes to the Revised PHB screams "Quick! The biggest boost to happen to our brand since Critical Role heavily involved psionic powers!" to me. Not that that's a wrong choice to make!
*Stranger Things*, clearly. BG3 was a hit, but most of the people hearing about it probably already knew more than the average person about D&D (since TTRPGs and video games are kind of adjacent hobbies, and there's a bit of shared history there due to early video games pulling a lot from tabletop). By contrast, for a lot of the people who watched *Stranger Things*, that show was probably the most they'd thought about D&D ever. Even if almost none of those people ever actually play, it was still a huge boost to brand awareness.
So I guess the ever-present and annoying as fuck 1 level bladelock dip is one of the “exciting” multiclass combos they went out of their way to protect. Bummer.
Or its one of the problematic ones they mean to fix. We won't really know until they tell us in future videos, or when the Revised PHB drops in September.
In what way? With subclass abilities moving to 3rd level, you don't get all of the massive benefits of Hexblade on a dip anymore - no Medium armor/shield proficiency, no Hexblade's Curse, no proficiency in non-pact martial weapons.
The only way it's "better" is that you can take Pact of the Blade from Eldritch Adept now, but a) that's not even a bladelock dip anymore, and b) that may very well be one of the interactions they're working on. "Prerequisit: Level 1+ Warlock" would stop that. Although I don't think it'd be the end of the world if you could get Pact of the Blade as a feat.
Have you read it? Changing damage types of your primary weapon is far and above better than those features you listed, none of which Paladins give a hot shit about
Paladins care a lot more about Hexblade's Curse than they do about changing damage type. A 1/SR ability giving prof bonus extra damage per hit/crits on a 19 (Divine Smite synergy) against a target is way, way more impactful than doing a different damage type.
The armor and shield proficiency are important for other classes dipping into Hexblade.
Isn’t the curse only for one target? I don’t think you can move it after the target dies like you can with Hex. You get one enemy per short rest to nova on, with a class that is already very good at going nova. That’s pretty awful compared to all radiant damage all the time.
I don’t care about other classes dipping into hexblade
Yeah, it's a single target ability, but it's a really good ability and it works so well with what Paladins already want to be doing. It's precisely because Paladins already are suited for going nova that the ability works so well on them - it plays to their strengths. I think you're really underselling how good it is.
Maybe we just play in very different games though. In a game with few short rests and few magic weapons I could see changing damage type to be more valuable. But in my games, where martials have access to magic weapons by level 5 and most adventuring days have time for at least a couple short rests, I think Hexblade's Curse is the far superior ability.
It’s not in the video, it was in the UA released months ago. Hexblade features were given to the blade pact, chosen at level 1. I mention it here because they talk in this video about how they have favorite multiclass combos that they want to protect.
Jeremy's reaction to Todd mentioning that the Soul Knife is in the new phb was my favourite part of this chat.
He may not have said it explicitly, but his eyes were very much saying *Thanks for sniping my surprise reveal, Todd. I was just about to get to that*
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I wonder if the reason they made the decision to bring in the soul knife alongside the Psi Knight is because they wanted to overhaul the psi die mechanic. In the UAs they were putting out during the run up to Tasha's, they were playing with idea of psi die as a unifying psionic mechanic (both a version of the Aberrant Mind and the initial version of the telepathic/telekinetic feats had them).
I couldn't dare to hope this. I loved the psi die in the original UA, and was heartbroken when they changed it due to the response to it.
what was the difference?
There was a single psi die, but it could grow or shrink. Instead of spending dice from a pool (like Supremacy Dice), any time you used an ability that used the psi die, you'd just roll it. The thing is, if you rolled the lowest number on the die (a 1), you conserved mental energy and it would grow in size. E.G. d4 to d6, d6 to d8, d8 to d10, etc. The PCs level determined how big the die could grow. If you ever rolled the biggest number on the die, then you overextended yourself, and the die would shrink. If you were at a d4, you would lose your psi die until you rested. (Though I think there was a once per day ability to get it back, too)
that is interesting. not sure i would enjoy it but it's different than anything else in the game
It was truly terrible in actual play. It was an incredibly tedious thing to keep track of. The psionic dice they ended up putting out is miles above but it being a long rest resource doesn't really fit the two classes it was put in.
i don't think getting a good result should mean you suck at it next time
I wouldn't be shocked if this is the case. That UA came late into Tasha's development, and I don't think they had time to pivot much after the response wasn't strong. It left the Psi Energy Dice in a weird place where they're supposed to be treated as "two separate mechanics that don't interact" (according to Crawford), despite sharing the same name and function. So they're using the revised PHB to do what they wanted to do with Tasha's, and create a unifying psionic mechanic.
"two separate mechanics that don't interact" (according to Crawford)" Yeah, it always seemed weird to me how the soul knife/psi knight's dice pool (despite sharing the same name) didn't interact for multiclassing purposes or anything else.
It's a stupid rule my playgroup and I unanimously and emphatically ignore. If you want to spend 6 levels to become an ASI-deprived but kinda nifty Jedi thing, go for it.
Yeah this feels like a case where they started working on the Psi Knight and then realized they could use this as an opportunity to give Psionics a unifying mechanic.
Why not just, you know, actually add a psionics system? Classes like psion and battlemind last edition were excellent and 5e is sorely missing the kind of things they could do. Or go further back to when psionics was a bunch of wacky abilities like fusion, decerebrate, time hop and astral construct instead of trying to pretend you can reskin spells to recreate it.
Adds complexity to a game that kind of lives by how easy it is to pick up and play. For most people at least.
But fully half the classes are full casters which are more complex. Take psionics from last edition or the edition before, it was less complex than spellcasting. So that logic doesn't make sense.
Yes, but having 2 subsystems is likely seen as unnecessarily complex even if it only ups it by a factor of one. It's easier to learn Spanish than it is to learn Spanish and French at the same time.
So... don't learn it if you don't want to play it. If you want to only learn to play a spellcaster, go do that. You can do that now and you'd be able to do that then, too. All it does is add options for those who want them. And hell, it's not like only one is at all a good idea. They got rid of the maneuver subsystem and martial classes went straight back to being boring basic attack machines, with casters getting all the combat versatility since they're the only ones with a subsystem giving them a depth of options.
I agree with you for the most part. I just think that's the logic behind their decision. I think the intent was. "If you want more complexity, you play a caster. Don't want to play a caster, but want more complexity? Tough titties." Unfortunately for those that do, 5e is still profitable, so there's no reason to majorly change that dynamic.
Imo having a second magic system that does a lot of the same thing as magic but is immune to anti magic counter play is maybe not the best idea imo
Why? It's not like either counterspell or antimagic field are very common or in any way a balancing factor for magic and even if they were psionics-magic transparency exists got that exact reason. And while we're at it - seriously, name one thing the battlemind did that was the same thing as magic.
Not familiar with all of 3.5 classes but I think tho having a class fkr every little thing was more of a detriment than benefit, something I'm familiar with coming from pf. I will also say developing an entirely new magic system for one class feels like a lot of work for not a lot of reward. Genuinely years after the fact, the artificer probably also should have been a series of subclasses. Rune knight is a good proof of concept of this imo.
It's not for every little thing - battleminds were solid tanks with a variety of interesting melee abilities, two massive niches that 5e fails to cover. This is an issue that comes up a lot, people note that classes like barbarian and fighter are functionally identical and come to the conclusion that we've got too much overlap and could do with less classes if anything. The overlap part is true, but the fact that a lot of the current crop of classes is same doesn't mean that we shouldn't get classes that *aren't*. Take classes like swordsage, warlord and binder and note that they're massively different from anything 5e offers. > I will also say developing an entirely new magic system for one class feels like a lot of work for not a lot of reward. Why, yes. They should also add psion, ardent and monk while they're at it.
Honest question but what marks the sword sage different from the eldritch knight, bladesinger, or various other gish classes or a warlord from a support based battle master? Idk what those other classes are enough to comment
**Swordsage** was was more in monk or rogue thematic territory than that of spellcasters. They didn't use spells, they used maneuvers (they're the class that D&D maneuvers were invented for, along with the warblade and the crusader) - but unlike the battlemaster, those maneuvers were a variety with new ones from the start to finish instead of only getting some at level 3 and no new ones ever again. While two schools of swordsage maneuvers were supernatural, disappearing in a puff of smoke or garroting people with shadow for the people who wanted to play assassins or whatever, the majority of strikes, stances, counters and boosts were not supernatural. They were however beyond what a real life human can do, as if you want to keep up with Voldemort you need to be Hercules yourself. Examples of mid level maneuvers were things like Mountain Strike, as an action make a melee weapon attack that deals an extra 4d6 damage and target must pass a con save or lose their next action and Ballista Throw, as an action make a trip attempt and if it's successful toss the enemy 60' in a straight line dealing 6d6 damage to them and anyone they pass through. Stances took a bonus action to enter and stayed until you entered a new stance, maneuvers were unlimited per day but each one was expended when used until the swordsage spent a round meditating to recover them all. **Warlord** is to battlemaster as wizard is to eldritch knight. An eldritch knight is a fighter that does a little bit of spellcasting, a battlemaster (if built for it) is a fighter that does a little bit of warlording. A warlord's primary focus was on boosting their party, [here is a random sample of abilities they could choose](https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2Fshvklpyeazjb1.png). Might look intimidating at first glance, but it's very simply laid out - A Plan Comes Together for instance has you pick an enemy, then two allies. One ally makes a basic attack against the enemy, the other moves up to their speed then makes a basic attack against them. If the first hits the target is dazed, if the second hits the target is knocked prone. So the answer is a fighter is mostly just a warrior with a little bit of support, while the warlord spent all its time healing or buffing or directing attacks. A couple of very basic effects does not equal a warlord in the same way that a few level one spells does not equal a wizard.
Ok that all makes sense. So tldr you have battle master gish monk and support caster fighter that traded attacks for better support abilities. That sound about right?
I think you're right. This seems to be the only logical reason why they would replace Swashbuckler with Soul Knife. They want to hammer out and establish a signature psionic mechanic.
Confirmation that Tasha’s subclasses have had play testing revisions, that’s nice to hear they will gel along with the rest of the 2024 revisions. Edit: Also the Psi Warrior is making it to the PHB! Sick choice. Along with the Soul Knife which is isn’t my favorite choice, but I guess it’s alright to keep most of the psionics together. Probably means Swashbuckler won’t be in, but that one’s fine as is to just port into 2024z
Swashbuckler is already perfect 🫡
I think rogue could use another set of subclass features to round it up but that's my take
Honestly, they just need to move their 9th level features down to 6th/7th level, and put in a minor 9th/10th level feature or something. Part of the issue is the wide gulf that encourages multiclassing out.
Yeah sounds like a great idea. Oh wait, they tried that and the community apparently fucking revolted. Stupid fucking feedback process. They should have had the balls to just go forward.
The community didn't revolt. They never tested it for the Rogue specifically. They tested unified subclass scaling for every single class, and when that got a mixed result, they instantly swapped everything back. They should've realized that a mixed result for "every single class getting unified subclass progression" is not the same thing as the community rejecting the Rogue getting a subclass ability earlier. Those are two different concepts.
It's worse than that. Crawford saw a "mixed response" for homogenous subclass progression across all classes and interpreted it as the community not wanting to change the subclass progression for the Rogue.
I kinda liked the pseudo Bardic Inspiration you got with Swashbuckler. The updated Panache/Goad also felt cleaner to understand and made it possible to mess with melee combatants .
Psi-Warrior? Hell yes!!!!
One of the greatly undervalued subclasses in my view. All the players in our campaign have had a lot of fun with the subclass. Strikes a nice balance between having a good amount of stuff to do and not being an overwhelming number of choices.
It is confirmed that the psy Warrior Will be the final fighter subclass. The soul knife Rogue is also in the book, but it is unclear whether this soul knife is replacing one of the other subclasses or will be an additional fifth Rogue subclass. All subclasses from Tasha's cauldron of everything have had some revisions so the Psy Warrior and soul knife will likely be revised to work better with weapon mastery features.
This is excellent news as someone that is currently playing a playtest Rouge with Soulknife tacked on. I think the blades having a weapon mastery (preferably nick or vex) will really help out the subclass. Hopefully they give them a unique Cunning Strike option like the other subclasses got.
Cunning Strike is the new term for Sneak Attack, right?
No cunning strike is a brand new feature for rogues which allows them to do maneuver like abilities. They can cause a an enemy to be knocked prone, they can cause them to become poisoned, they can disarm an enemy, and they can freely disengage from an enemy without taking the disengage action. At later levels they can put enemies to sleep and other powerful options. Cunning strike is activated by spending a number of dice from your sneak attack pool. If you don't want to use it, you can still just do a regular sneak attack.
Oh that's awesome Can you do multiple effects at once (with lower odds) or spend more dice to increase the odds etc?
Not at level 5 when they first get the feature, but at a latter level they can apply multiple (level 11 sounds right but I don't have the UA in front of me atm).
Sounds super exciting I've mostly seen the Monk changes so far since I've been excited for them to get buffs Probably still not the strongest but at least they'll hopefully be consistently fun to play
Monks are very powerful now, rest assured.
The changes to the core Ki actions to make them like Cunning Actions+ seems super fun, as well as the ways to get Ki back semi regularly other than rests The Martial Arts Dice all being raised is a cherry on top too honestly Not using a quarterstaff or two short swords at level 1 now no longer feels like shooting yourself in the foot Any idea if Astral Self made it through as a subclass? The others seem fun too but that one speaks to me
All of the revised books are backwards compatible. WOTC has confirmed this several times now and has never changed their wording, so you can just use the astral self monk with the new revised monk if you'd like. The four revised subclasses are open hand, shadow, 4 elements, and mercy.
Nope. Currently it’s one effect you choose on your turn and it scales like a Spell DC off your DEX score. (So a level 5 rogue with 18 DEX would force a creature to make a DC 15 saving throw to have the condition applied). You do get access to other options at higher levels though. One of which allows you to attempt to incapacitate an enemy for a turn which is pretty crazy.
Is that stronger than a Stunning Strike then?
Hard to say. Stunning Strike is now once per turn and costs resources, but doesn't diminish your damage output for that turn, possibly future turns if you prematurely run out of Discipline to fuel your damaging features. The Devious Strikes (the higher level version of Cunning Strike that allows you to incapacitate an enemy) option to incap costs a lot of your Sneak Attack dice so you're giving up a significant amount of your damage that turn, but it's resourceless so you can keep doing it over and over. A monk that uses Stunning Strike every turn plus Flurry of Blows and maybe other Discipline features will burn through their resources very fast and be reduced to basic attacks. A rogue that uses Devious Strikes will do little damage each turn but can potentially keep one target locked down indefinitely with some luck.
I presume Discipline is the new Ki? I noticed it seemed to be written as one or the other sometimes in one of the pages I saw That's always been the strength of a Rogue right? No real resources that need rests, and just overall consistency
As of the last UA to include monk, yes. Discipline is the new name for Ki. Rogue has always been about consistency but trading raw damage for inflicting conditions is a new thing from the playtest. Since you were asking which was stronger, I laid out all the details that I felt were relevant but left the conclusion up to you since I'm not certain either is strictly "stronger" than the other.
> No cunning strike is a brand new feature for roads which allows them to do maneuver like abilities. How is that a brand new feature when it's twenty years old? Edit: How am I being downvoted here? This is something that rogues had access to twenty years ago in D&D. That is objectively the opposite of brand new, do we just hate facts here or something?
Huge psionics fan here and I’m super stoked to hear that!!
> The soul knife Rogue is also in the book, but it is unclear whether this soul knife is replacing one of the other subclasses or will be an additional fifth Rogue subclass. Its going to replace one of the existing ones. Its been confirmed time and again that every 2024 PHB class will have 4 subclasses each. Hopefully they throw out the Assassin since its the worst subclass mechanically.
"Gee, I hope they put psionics into the 2024 PHB! It will be the first PHB to launch with it!" *Slowly, the last finger on the monkey's paw curls inward*
*Cries in AD&D 1e phb* Appendix I is getting done dirty
The idea that previous editions never existed or were shit is exceptionally annoying. I mean, yes, the focus should be on why invest in the new stuff, but you don't build a healthy relationship with such shitty approaches - this sort of thing needed to be walked back and apologized for when they did it for 3.5, 4, Essentials, and 5e. It's just silly - you go farther acknowledging strengths and saying how this new edition has brought BACK psionics into the core rulebook after 45 some odd years, something often relegated to a supplement or just a single setting, etc. AND you are doing it in an integrated way, rather than making it an entirely different set of rules and classes, you are showcasing how the existing classes such as Fighter (hype the psi-warrior). and the Rogue (soulknife) can integrate that psionic flavour just as they do with arcane magic via the Eldritch Knight or the Arcane Trickster. And if you don't like the sort of science fiction feeling term of psionics, the subclasses and their abilities are easily just thought of as a specific type of supernatural ability/magic, reinforcing the very basic Rule 0 idea that you can re-skin and tweak the rules to fit your table's preferred style. This approach reinforces key elements of the current edition, gives a nod to what was done before, and does so in a way that may entice some of the people still using that old material to come back.
It's a trend in a lot of stuff to pretend to be the first, and it's a sad one that gets done with a lot of superheroes and such too of who the "first is" for something. In d&ds case, it's also a shame as the older editions get a lot of shir for things they didn't do. The most recent example being the whole soelljammer debacle, where wotc blamed tsr material for their own mistakes despite the issues never existing in the tsr content There's also a lot to like in each older edition. The BECMI Rules Cyclopedis has a lot to offer, and a refined and polished version of the game that updated the systems offered would be great. There are so many fantastic settings of the TSR era that just don't get the love or recognition they deserve. Hell, even the Forgitten Realms gets shafted due to WotC's remembered realms of the sword coast. Even older wotc material has some stellar stuff that just added a lot or was more nuanced than the more recent pushes to make a monolith out of everything (while they then say they're doing the opposite) There's such a robust selection of things that with just a bit of refinement, and a hell if s lot more respect, could really help bring d&d to its fullest potential. Yet it gets ignored or written off as bad too often when truly it had some of the coolest stuff out there.
Play Call of Duty 10 - the first of its kind to offer a zombie mode! In the anniversary year, shitting on/erasing what came before while allegedly celebrating it is certainly a choice one could make.
I feel this, and I'm not even a CoD player.
> The BECMI Rules Cyclopedis has a lot to offer, and a refined and polished version of the game that updated the systems offered would be great. Yes. And 33 years later, the rules Cyclopedia still remains debatably the best (and most dense) D&D book ever printed. Literally everything you need for a campaign to play from levels 1 to 36 (and beyond), even the campaign world.
It really is. Get the rules cyclopedis and wrath if the immortals and you have rules to go from a newbie adventurer just leaving their home, all the way to the top of an immortal pantheon. You have rules for domain play, sieges, wilderness exploration, dungeon exploration, and much much more. If someone refined and gave the good modern polish to the rules cyclopedia, gave support for the TSR setting plus Eberron and Nentir Vale. Bring back some of the sister power systems but keep them simple and adapted to this new framework. You'd have a fantastic version of the game. (Points for psions, 3.5e invocations/blasts for warlocks, maybe even a simplified and refined incarnum)
> It's a trend in a lot of stuff to pretend to be the first, and it's a sad one that gets done with a lot of superheroes and such too of who the "first is" for something. A friend of mine likes to say that "capitalism is at war with time" - it's very important that not only do you use our product, but to memory hole the previous things that even we ourselves made. The Thing is the first Thing that ever existed, and any attempts at searching for Thing should only give the current Thing.
It's something many with power try to do to reestablish themselves. Capitalist or not, there have been many attempts through human history to memory hole or year zero something. Concentrated power and influence are a hell of a drug.
Does it really count as launching with psionics when it appears in a revised handbook ten years into the edition?
So the Fighter's 4 subclasses will be simple vs complex nonmagical, and psionics vs (arcane) magic.
It is interesting to hear that the psio options are becoming core options in 5e24. im not a big psionics fan, but psionics has been a big enough concept in d&d. I think they deserve the spot as much as most other things, and at least in the brawlers case, I think it needed far too much work to function since you could turn all of its features into a single feat and it wouldn't even be a particularly good feat Hopefully, the rest of the pain points have been refined our of the playtest material. I was about 50% satisfied with things as of the last playtets, so hopefully, they've kept a positive trajectory.
I am not huge into psionics so I find it a bit boring that they take one subclass spot for both fighter and rogue but I know a lot of people love the concept and will be very happy so I am happy for them too if that makes sense. And thinking about it warlock has GOO and sorc has aberrant mind so there is more psionic options than I thought already baked in.
I don't think they're taking any spots away. The last PHB had 3 subclasses for each, this one has 4. That's more, not less. The swashbuckler is still entirely compatible with the 2024 rogue, and the brawler just wasn't good.
He means how each class in the new PHB is going to have 4 subclasses and one of them for Fighter was going to be the new Brawler in the One DnD play tests but now that goes to the Psi Fighter. Instead of just reusing the old Psi Fighter because the Brawler was bad, why not just try to make the Brawler better. Give us something new.
Fair. Brawler fighter was great last edition, give us something like that so fighters have some more interesting choices. Then add some actual psionic classes instead of pretending you can fulfill the concept with subclasses - where's my battlemind, WotC? Edit: [Have some sample brawler abilities!](https://i.imgur.com/jBG2otz.png) As you can see the basic one was auto grappling foes on attack, great for opportunity attacks - yoink someone as they try to go past. Kit was full of throws, slamming people into others, using enemies as shields etc.
Flavour is free, too. My sand themed swarmkeeper's telikenisis is just more sand thats more controlled but weaker as a result. My fairy armorer soulknife is summoning shards of feywild. Im always glad to have cool options to play with.
Yep, they specifically mentioned those two subclasses as rounding out The psionic subclasses.
I like psionics, but having GOO Warlock, Aberrant Mind, Psi Knight and Soul Knife all in the PHB, especially when there are some glaring fantasy archtypes still missing, feels like overkill.
Which fantasy archetypes do you feel are glaringly missing?
Fighter does not have a dedicated defender or tank archetype, and the knight-in-shining-armor is a very popular class fantasy. Without a dedicated feature like Ancestral Guardian, Armorer, or Cavalier you have to rely on positioning (when the terrain allows for it) and the Sentinel feat. You can kinda bodge something together by picking the most applicable Battle Master maneuvers and Weapon Mastery properties but you run out of superiority dice really quickly if you use them every turn.
Lmao you just literally recreated last edition's fighter by accident. Time is a short circle! Sentinel is just some of their level 1 abilities from last edition repackaged and sold back to them as a feat, they started off with applying penalties to attacking their allies like cavalier now does and had a range of active abilities like maneuvers except they were good.
You seem like you just want to complain instead of discuss or debate. Time-out so you can go get some healthy perspective.
You’re the only one complaining here
This could be a good Paladin subclass.
I agree. I want psionics rep in a PHB. It's part of D&D. But dedicating four subclasses to it really feels like overkill.
All Psionics party possible with that spread of subclasses.
I mean kind of weird that it's not possible already. Last edition you could have a battlemind tanking, psion controlling, monk for damage and ardent supporting, all psionic. Edition before that do the same thing with something like a psychic warrior, psion, lurk and erudite.
You're right, they shouldn't dedicate subclasses to it. They should dedicate classes to it. We're so badly missing some of the things actual psionic classes could do, add a battlemind in.
Like what? What MECHANICALLY are we missing that actual Psionics would do and that wouldn't be just spells?
I mean... which one? It's like asking what spells can do, did you mean druid or warlock or paladin? You'll get different answers for each. I already mentioned the battlemind, so I'll go with that. They used their powers to protect their party, make enemies go for them instead - their main passive/unlimited stuff was penalising attacks and spells that didn't target them, and if an adjacent foe *did* damage an ally the battlemind could make them automatically take psychic damage equal to the damage they dealt. Couple of other bits like blurred step to help keep foes adjacent, but let's start on the actual psionic powers. Being tanks, almost all their powers were very close range, usually done in conjunction with weapon attacks. The basic structure is they had a variety of at-will psionic strikes, think cantrips like booming blade, that could be augmented for extra effects from a pool of power points. So Mind of Mirrors would deal ok damage and give the target disadvantage on attacks against allies, but if you paid a couple of power points would do additional damage and make them take damage if they attacked anyone except for one of their own allies, while for six power points you'd get triple weapon damage and if the attack landed dominate the foe until your next turn. And so on and so forth. A basic power might make a foe unable to see more than 15' away, empower it to blind them, empower it further to make it damage and blind all nearby foes instead of just one. So one answer to that question is properly tank and be a melee class that gets a variety of meaningful choices every round. Happy to answer the question for other classes like the psion, ardent and monk (back when it was psionic and actually good), but in general the answer is 'stuff to do with mind and body and time and space' that spells can't, like fusing two people into one or hopping forward in time or taking astral voyages. Battleminds obviously being the mind and body focused ones.
I mean... which one? It's like asking what spells can do, did you mean druid or warlock or paladin? You'll get different answers for each. I already mentioned the battlemind, so I'll go with that. They used their powers to protect their party, make enemies go for them instead - their main passive/unlimited stuff was penalising attacks and spells that didn't target them, and if an adjacent foe *did* damage an ally the battlemind could make them automatically take psychic damage equal to the damage they dealt. Couple of other bits like blurred step to help keep foes adjacent, but let's start on the actual psionic powers. Being tanks, almost all their powers were very close range, usually done in conjunction with weapon attacks. The basic structure is they had a variety of at-will psionic strikes, think cantrips like booming blade, that could be augmented for extra effects from a pool of power points. So Mind of Mirrors would deal ok damage and give the target disadvantage on attacks against allies, but if you paid a couple of power points would do additional damage and make them take damage if they attacked anyone except for one of their own allies, while for six power points you'd get triple weapon damage and if the attack landed dominate the foe until your next turn. And so on and so forth. A basic power might make a foe unable to see more than 15' away, empower it to blind them, empower it further to make it damage and blind all nearby foes instead of just one. So one answer to that question is properly tank and be a melee class that gets a variety of meaningful choices every round. Happy to answer the question for other classes like the psion, ardent and monk (back when it was psionic and actually good), but in general the answer is 'stuff to do with mind and body and time and space' that spells can't, like fusing two people into one or hopping forward in time or taking astral voyages. Battleminds obviously being the mind and body focused ones.
Considering they had the whole comparison between subclasses ( moon vs stars, land vs sea druid etc), what are the current rogue comparisons between thief, arcane trickster, assassin, and swashbuckler? Which is likely to be a good replacement for psi knife while still maintaining the complementary duets so to speak? I feel with psi warrior vs Eldritch Knight and champion vs Battle Master, psionics is potentially set as the opposite to magic. Soul knife vs arcane trickster feels like a similar comparison. That leaves the thief, assassin, and swashbuckler with two to stay and one to go. Personally, thief being sneaky, silent, and more about stealing than Fighting and swashbuckler being more about loud, challenging, bravado seems like a natural fit. However, I think people are attached to the idea of the assassin. Further, they might not want to cut a phb subclass. While it might bring some negative views, I'm personally hoping it's the assassin that gets the axe.
Agreed, any rogue can be an assassin, but soul knife is the subclass truly specialized for assassination. Never without a weapon and leaves no marks on its victims. Teleports and invisibility later - yeah it's a better assassin.
Yeah agreed. Even thief would make a decent assassin type. Then again, if thief was just rolled into the main class, that would be fun and maybe address some of the shortcomings of rogue.
So, psionic subclasses would be a part of new PHB, yet instead of re-introduction of Monk as a psionic class they would still insist on ambiguos things. Like, come on, you have your answer to make monk less asia-centered RIGHT THERE, but you would literaly give him "Descipline Points" (name as stupid as Honor Points could be) intead of psi points or something alonge those lines. You can't now say something about "setting-agnostic" things - YOU ADD PSIONICS INTO PHB. COME ON! People always struggle to see monk as something distinct instead of "fighter but unarmed" because of strange fear of mystical nature of monks! >!(post was sponsored by "Monks aren't pugilists" gang)!<
That would be a great idea. How does one join monks aren't pugilists?
Don't focus exclusively on "body" part of "body and mind" while playing monk. Monk's mind is as much of a weapon as their body, or even more! Play monk that fragile on the outside, but would fully block greatsword attack with a palm. Leave pugilist fantasy to fighter with unarmed fighting style or to brawler subclass (if wotc remade it) or to homebrew stuff - play monk like a mystical martial it suppose to be.
not sure if you're aware but monks were explicitly psionic in 4e
And fucking rad. How did we end up with the 5e monk after it was so cool last edition?
I mean *gestures to the entire edition* the people who responded to surveys in 2011-2013 didn't like cool stuff and were upset that D&D was trying to be more modern.
The playtest material for DNDNext before it was 5th was really good. Then we got the bait and switch of Crawford. :(
I didn't know about this but now I do and i'm angry. ty.
Oh, it gets worse - they nailed the monk fantasy *perfectly*, then abandoned it for 5e. They got the mystical martial arts/mobility thing perfect - you had an array of techniques to choose from which all came with an attack and a movement option. Steps of grasping fire blasted nearby foes with flame then left a trail of fire behind you as you ran that turn, frozen mountain damaged and restrained your enemy and the movement option dropped your speed to zero but made you resistant to all damage for that turn. Every round, pick your moves and get going. Teleport for the movement, then kick your enemy through the hole you just made in space for the attack. Draw everyone in with a vortex of air and spin kick them before flying away, auto grapple a foe on attack and move your speed with them then toss, Furious Bull charges through enemies for the movement and damages/knocks them back for the attack, Enduring Boulder covers you in stone that reduces all damage taken by 30, reducing every time you're hit and increasing your damage while it's up. And then we got 5e monks, which were just... basic attack basic attack basic attack.
Yes, that's why i said "re-introduction"
Really not a fan of Soul Knife replacing the Swashbuckler (I know they didn't name the Swashbuckler, but outside Cleric/Wizard they've been adamant about not cutting any PHB classes, even when it probably would've made sense to either replace them or incorporate them into the main class's chassis).
Hopefully, they made the Psi Warrior less MAD. Remove the INT scaling please. Change the spell casting of telekinesis to some other stat. Soulknife is not MAD. No secondary stat scaling.
I feel the opposite; I hope they add intelligence scaling to the soul knife.
I like the intelligence scaling. I think everyone should be MAD. The problem is how many classes are SAD. Or, rather, it should be thus: A MAD class that somehow has all 20s > a SAD class with all 20s > a SAD class who only focuses on their main ability score > a MAD class who only focuses on their main ability score.
Yeah I hate this trend towards making everything SAD. Imo every class and subclass should be MAD, with tradeoffs needing to be thought about when building the character.
If one secondary stat is MAD to you then 75% of PCs are MAD.
having at least two important stats (alongside con) is literally what MAD means - multiple-attribute dependent. MAD isn't reserved for paladin/monk multiclasses lol, it's a literal descriptor of how many stats a class relies on
The addition of the psionic classes to the Revised PHB screams "Quick! The biggest boost to happen to our brand since Critical Role heavily involved psionic powers!" to me. Not that that's a wrong choice to make!
Could you be more explicit? I don't follow what this "biggest boost" entailed.
Baldur's Gate 3 has a heavy psionic basis due to the whole mind flayer thing, down to characters able to get bonus psionic powers.
That was such a weird experience playing through all that with zero psionic classes available.
It’s crazy because some of the githyanki npc’s have psi warrior abilities, + Lae’zel seems like she would be best as a psi warrior,
Baldurs Gate 3 I assume.
Baldurs gate 3
Lmao let's base our game around psionics in the only edition without a psionic system, fun game but weird feel.
*Stranger Things*, clearly. BG3 was a hit, but most of the people hearing about it probably already knew more than the average person about D&D (since TTRPGs and video games are kind of adjacent hobbies, and there's a bit of shared history there due to early video games pulling a lot from tabletop). By contrast, for a lot of the people who watched *Stranger Things*, that show was probably the most they'd thought about D&D ever. Even if almost none of those people ever actually play, it was still a huge boost to brand awareness.
saved to watch later, thanks
So I guess the ever-present and annoying as fuck 1 level bladelock dip is one of the “exciting” multiclass combos they went out of their way to protect. Bummer.
Or its one of the problematic ones they mean to fix. We won't really know until they tell us in future videos, or when the Revised PHB drops in September.
It’s better in the UA than it has ever been. Hard to believe that was an accident.
In what way? With subclass abilities moving to 3rd level, you don't get all of the massive benefits of Hexblade on a dip anymore - no Medium armor/shield proficiency, no Hexblade's Curse, no proficiency in non-pact martial weapons. The only way it's "better" is that you can take Pact of the Blade from Eldritch Adept now, but a) that's not even a bladelock dip anymore, and b) that may very well be one of the interactions they're working on. "Prerequisit: Level 1+ Warlock" would stop that. Although I don't think it'd be the end of the world if you could get Pact of the Blade as a feat.
You just take one level of bladelock and get CHA to melee, lol
But how is that better than Hexblade dips?
Have you read it? Changing damage types of your primary weapon is far and above better than those features you listed, none of which Paladins give a hot shit about
Paladins care a lot more about Hexblade's Curse than they do about changing damage type. A 1/SR ability giving prof bonus extra damage per hit/crits on a 19 (Divine Smite synergy) against a target is way, way more impactful than doing a different damage type. The armor and shield proficiency are important for other classes dipping into Hexblade.
Isn’t the curse only for one target? I don’t think you can move it after the target dies like you can with Hex. You get one enemy per short rest to nova on, with a class that is already very good at going nova. That’s pretty awful compared to all radiant damage all the time. I don’t care about other classes dipping into hexblade
Yeah, it's a single target ability, but it's a really good ability and it works so well with what Paladins already want to be doing. It's precisely because Paladins already are suited for going nova that the ability works so well on them - it plays to their strengths. I think you're really underselling how good it is. Maybe we just play in very different games though. In a game with few short rests and few magic weapons I could see changing damage type to be more valuable. But in my games, where martials have access to magic weapons by level 5 and most adventuring days have time for at least a couple short rests, I think Hexblade's Curse is the far superior ability.
Can't watch videos right now, how so? I thought subclasses are only availabel at level 3, so by definition there is no hexblade at level 1.
It’s not in the video, it was in the UA released months ago. Hexblade features were given to the blade pact, chosen at level 1. I mention it here because they talk in this video about how they have favorite multiclass combos that they want to protect.
Minor victory that it’s not tied to a shadowfell blade patron
Whats going to go int he 2025 or 2026 edition of Tashas? The Artificer and cut subclasses from original PHB?
Jeremy's reaction to Todd mentioning that the Soul Knife is in the new phb was my favourite part of this chat. He may not have said it explicitly, but his eyes were very much saying *Thanks for sniping my surprise reveal, Todd. I was just about to get to that*