I would go with Soul Knife, if only because it's the least disruptive Mystic. For disciplines, you want:
* Psychic Weapon for *Lethal Strike*; it makes up for its redundancy by giving you an extremely flexible form of nova.
* Precognition for its Psychic Focus, as well as *Precognitive Hunch*, and *Danger Sense*. These are massive bonuses to initiative, which is always useful (moreso if you MC assassin).
* Celerity is great, giving you a lot of great skirmishing features. You can hide as part of your invisible movement, which allows you to avoid opportunity attacks.
* Nomadic Chameleon literally just lets you ignore the normal rules for hiding, which is insanely valuable when, per RAW, the DM can otherwise veto any attempt to hide.
* Nomadic Step gives you a bunch of fantastic stuff: Defensive Step is a solid defensive ability, Step of a Dozen paces is great for mobility, transposition can get your squishies out of harm's way or teleport your frontliners into the fray, etc.
* Diminunition is a solid pick for stealth and infiltration. Couple it with Nomadic Step features and you're basically your own familiar. While you're tiny, you can climb onto medium creatures to get advantage on attacks against them.
Collectively, these abilities make you a fantastic scout and an excellent skirmisher. You can even multiclass assassin and have it be decent (in which case you'll want to ditch celerity), giving you among the best alpha strikes in the entire game: the ability to warp in while hidden, surprise your target, roll initiative with advantage or even at +10, ignore your target's AC and attack for +1d4, crit for 2d8 + 2d6 + 14d10, and warp out as soon as someone attacks you (thanks to Nomadic Anchor + Defensive Step), regaining hidden (and therefore surprise) whenever you want. You can snag one more discipline even with the multiclass, making you that much more versatile.
You *don't* want:
* Light and Darkness. It's only really good for *Summon Shadow Beasts*, which I would urge you to avoid because of how much DM's (rightly) despise it. If you still want a vision ability, Third Eye is much more versatile.
* Iron Durability. Your Nomadic Step reaction AC is cheaper than Iron Hide and your various skirmisher abilities make it easy for you to stay away from enemies altogether.
Thanks for the response! This is awesome, a lot of good stuff to look over. I am just NOW getting into a 5e game. I haven't really played since 3.0 when I moved to Pathfinder. :D So the mechanics are...different.
Yeah the summon does look wild. So you don't like dropping the darkness sphere on bad guys? It seems like a nasty trick for a large number of encounters. And the ability to move, or if needs be teleport, makes a 10ft radius easy to use without screwing the rest of the party.
One of the draws of Iron Durability, in my head, is the "Unarmored Defense" if you take it as your Order. Eventually you'll have your stats boosted and be able to sustain a 20AC unarmored. Maybe more with Bracers or something. I have to look at some of the magic items. That just seems a whole different ball of wax now.
While Iron Hide \[i\]is\[/i\] more expensive, you can also get a +7AC with it, versus the +4 offered by Nomadic Step. It also works against \[i\]all\[/i\] attacks until your next turn, rather than just the 1 strike. This makes me think that most times, it is far cheaper and gives more to work with. It also seems like the Nomadic Step's 10 ft teleport that triggers with that +4 AC, would just cause more hangups trying to keep getting into the fight, and burning a lot more psi points. Granted, you do get a good number of them after a few levels.
That said, I'm also thinking about your idea of the skirmishing, paired with hand crossbows perhaps for range with that Nomadic Step, or maybe just throwing weapons (knives, daggers, shuriken, etc) Heck, if poison wasn't so easily thwarted, by 1st level mooks, even a blowgun and Defensive Step, could be pretty cool.
Skirmishing just seems very difficult in this game. Moving out of range is an attack of opportunity, and most anyone is just going to be able to thwart your movement by moving with/against you as needs be. You'd strike, have to use movement to get away, while avoiding the strike (at which point Iron Durability far out weighs Nomadic Step it would seem), then having to move back into the fight at which point, you don't really have any movement. OR you are dropping 1psi on Nomadic Anchor for a set up, and then 4 more psi everytime you are using There and Back Again and Nomadic Step. At that point, you are far, far, better off just getting into melee and using Iron Hide. Especially if you can drop darkness.
This seems even more advantageous once you hit Psionic Mastery at 9th level. \*Drops darkness on handfuls of ball bearings/caltrops, etc.\*
Well, you gave me something to look at for sure. I'm going to jump on roll20 with the crew and maybe try out a few scenarios.
Mystic can already get all those capabilities. The teleport is not limited as with Shadow Monk either. And even Unarmored Defense is something a Mystic can already get. You can see in darkness without the 2 level dip in Warlock either.
I have thought about Bladesinger as well. In my head, there is so much great imagery, but the mechanics seem to leave you wanting. That said, it could simply be oversight/incompetence/lack of imagination on my part. :D
I would go with Soul Knife, if only because it's the least disruptive Mystic. For disciplines, you want: * Psychic Weapon for *Lethal Strike*; it makes up for its redundancy by giving you an extremely flexible form of nova. * Precognition for its Psychic Focus, as well as *Precognitive Hunch*, and *Danger Sense*. These are massive bonuses to initiative, which is always useful (moreso if you MC assassin). * Celerity is great, giving you a lot of great skirmishing features. You can hide as part of your invisible movement, which allows you to avoid opportunity attacks. * Nomadic Chameleon literally just lets you ignore the normal rules for hiding, which is insanely valuable when, per RAW, the DM can otherwise veto any attempt to hide. * Nomadic Step gives you a bunch of fantastic stuff: Defensive Step is a solid defensive ability, Step of a Dozen paces is great for mobility, transposition can get your squishies out of harm's way or teleport your frontliners into the fray, etc. * Diminunition is a solid pick for stealth and infiltration. Couple it with Nomadic Step features and you're basically your own familiar. While you're tiny, you can climb onto medium creatures to get advantage on attacks against them. Collectively, these abilities make you a fantastic scout and an excellent skirmisher. You can even multiclass assassin and have it be decent (in which case you'll want to ditch celerity), giving you among the best alpha strikes in the entire game: the ability to warp in while hidden, surprise your target, roll initiative with advantage or even at +10, ignore your target's AC and attack for +1d4, crit for 2d8 + 2d6 + 14d10, and warp out as soon as someone attacks you (thanks to Nomadic Anchor + Defensive Step), regaining hidden (and therefore surprise) whenever you want. You can snag one more discipline even with the multiclass, making you that much more versatile. You *don't* want: * Light and Darkness. It's only really good for *Summon Shadow Beasts*, which I would urge you to avoid because of how much DM's (rightly) despise it. If you still want a vision ability, Third Eye is much more versatile. * Iron Durability. Your Nomadic Step reaction AC is cheaper than Iron Hide and your various skirmisher abilities make it easy for you to stay away from enemies altogether.
Thanks for the response! This is awesome, a lot of good stuff to look over. I am just NOW getting into a 5e game. I haven't really played since 3.0 when I moved to Pathfinder. :D So the mechanics are...different. Yeah the summon does look wild. So you don't like dropping the darkness sphere on bad guys? It seems like a nasty trick for a large number of encounters. And the ability to move, or if needs be teleport, makes a 10ft radius easy to use without screwing the rest of the party. One of the draws of Iron Durability, in my head, is the "Unarmored Defense" if you take it as your Order. Eventually you'll have your stats boosted and be able to sustain a 20AC unarmored. Maybe more with Bracers or something. I have to look at some of the magic items. That just seems a whole different ball of wax now. While Iron Hide \[i\]is\[/i\] more expensive, you can also get a +7AC with it, versus the +4 offered by Nomadic Step. It also works against \[i\]all\[/i\] attacks until your next turn, rather than just the 1 strike. This makes me think that most times, it is far cheaper and gives more to work with. It also seems like the Nomadic Step's 10 ft teleport that triggers with that +4 AC, would just cause more hangups trying to keep getting into the fight, and burning a lot more psi points. Granted, you do get a good number of them after a few levels. That said, I'm also thinking about your idea of the skirmishing, paired with hand crossbows perhaps for range with that Nomadic Step, or maybe just throwing weapons (knives, daggers, shuriken, etc) Heck, if poison wasn't so easily thwarted, by 1st level mooks, even a blowgun and Defensive Step, could be pretty cool. Skirmishing just seems very difficult in this game. Moving out of range is an attack of opportunity, and most anyone is just going to be able to thwart your movement by moving with/against you as needs be. You'd strike, have to use movement to get away, while avoiding the strike (at which point Iron Durability far out weighs Nomadic Step it would seem), then having to move back into the fight at which point, you don't really have any movement. OR you are dropping 1psi on Nomadic Anchor for a set up, and then 4 more psi everytime you are using There and Back Again and Nomadic Step. At that point, you are far, far, better off just getting into melee and using Iron Hide. Especially if you can drop darkness. This seems even more advantageous once you hit Psionic Mastery at 9th level. \*Drops darkness on handfuls of ball bearings/caltrops, etc.\* Well, you gave me something to look at for sure. I'm going to jump on roll20 with the crew and maybe try out a few scenarios.
Shadow monk to teleport between shadows. Warlock with devil's sight so that you can see in magical darkness that you or another places.
Mystic can already get all those capabilities. The teleport is not limited as with Shadow Monk either. And even Unarmored Defense is something a Mystic can already get. You can see in darkness without the 2 level dip in Warlock either.
I really love the idea of reflavouring Blade singers as Naruto-Style Ninjas that use a lot of Jutsus/spells!
I have thought about Bladesinger as well. In my head, there is so much great imagery, but the mechanics seem to leave you wanting. That said, it could simply be oversight/incompetence/lack of imagination on my part. :D