The Psionic Class pt2 – The Mike Mearls Happy Fun Hour!

June 27, 2018Zoltar Leave a comment

hello out there on twitch and later YouTube welcome to the mic Merrill’s happy fun hour I am your host the eponymous Mike morals I am the franchise creative director on Dungeons & Dragons that’s right they gave me both they didn’t just give me one they said that’s Parham up so hey how’s it run goin house chat how’s everyone doing on this fine Tuesday I guess I think it’s Wednesday depending on what time zone you’re in the so yeah we’ve got another week another entry in our little quest for psyonix so I’ve got the class up in here let me do a little recap what we’ve done greetings and salutations to you to lambreaux 1 and greetings to everyone else the is yeah I think it’s a super Pro I can’t quite read that they some of you if you follow me on Twitter know I had a very I have a very adorable little sheltie puppy that we’ve acquired and she fell asleep all snuggled up next to me and I could not I could not bear to move and wake up that little pup luckily the cat came along and decided to take care of the situation so he got us all out of bed yes so I was able to overcome the puppy’s cuteness to make it into work today though I would not think this date in old I don’t know the so let’s take a look at what we’ve got so far do a quick recap try not to burn too much time here so we can get right into the interesting bits we’ve got here what we were working on is the new scion character class scion replacing the mystic you might see mystic still pop up the text here I haven’t just done a fine to replace quite yet rather just do it manually oh wait here’s one boom progress made there we go ignore some of the table stuff here sigh points in the side limit this is just gonna be something that we will have to start with we want to try to for the scion using Sonic’s start with trying to use spell Slav so I think we can make work and then that makes it very easy to convert over to points if you want to go that route cuz we already have points in the dmg so there you go the what we’ve got here is a core character class built on the wizard chassis and when I say built in a class chassis that’s really pointing to the power level profile and so the wizard is all about spells but you know a daily resource augmented a bit with a short rest recharge off of that first level character class feature but otherwise wizard level casting spells and to the point where the subclasses for the wizard are mostly about modifying those spells in some way the so that’s really what we saw the Sion being a good match for it being a class that simple similar to the wizard is gonna be all about the abilities they use those psionic disciplines and our subclasses along the same route as the wizard subclasses focusing he went on a subtype of those psionic abilities aiming at making those basically your character’s specialty doesn’t shut down any options but it just says you’re better this thing than the other things you’re not bad at the other things yours better at this one for me personally I love that kind of game design I love game design where I’m just given candy and toys for doing things rather than taking penalties like penalties that’s boring it’s a game if I wanted penalties I just I not play a game I go to work I do my taxes you know but yeah it’s games let’s just give her one stuff make him happy right that’s that’s what games are there for I’m quick question from Mad Hatter him like you think a book featuring the scion of a sidebar pointing to the dmg spell points yeah I think if we if we stay on course with this design I think I’d if I’d go so far as to even just include that material in there either as an appendix or a sidebar knowing that for especially for players you might not own the dmg and you might if you’re coming in from third edition you might be thinking well this is why I like soundex I like spell points and it’d probably be there probably be a section I’d imagine so this is all theoretical but there would probably be some sort of material to address okay we’re gonna treat Sonics as a default this is the same as because we’re doing that for simplicity we’re thinking of the Dungeon Master who just wants to pick this up and throw it in a campaign and I have to worry about it but if you want to build that up in your campaign this idea that it’s a different type of magic we’d want to talk about that and so giving you some of those options and tools to use if you can say hey look dispel magic doesn’t work on sound X because soun X is different for us that’s definitely something we can support especially if we support it knowing that a dungeon masters opted into it because then we can be a little looser and give you more broad guidelines where you’re applying the guidelines to a specific situation rather than rules that cover how everything could interact especially when it comes to character abilities it’s good at least for a big system like that you want to try to give as much guidance as you can without bloating the system and making it overwhelming the yeah at Stella Castillo one yes so this will be the dark Sun campaign we will get to ask this when the time is right but not not to say we’ll see why but I heard we have some announcements now I don’t know I don’t want to want to start teasing stuff too much but we are definitely the settings there on the menu it’s to matter when we get to them we want to make sure we do them right so but I think we’ve got some cool stuff to announce next month so I’m looking forward to it I hope you’re looking forward to it the Devon seconds will there be a dispel psionics most likely what I and we’ll do instead and don’t want to just jump ahead too far but what I’m thinking about is that the sign expel list will include spells from the core spell list and then there probably will probably be some sort of writer that would say if your sanic person using an ability from the Sonic list treat that effect is psionic in nature for whatever that means so in that case I’d imagine when we had the full thing especially if I cast a spell magic but I’m casting it as a psionic user it can counter psionics so in addition to spells or maybe you couldn’t write depending on where the DM wants to set it if you want to ever really think with a high wall between those power sources so yeah so let’s talk a little bit about what we’re going to do with those psionic disciplines because we’ve talked about the core class which like the wizard is mainly a way to get your sonic abilities and then it’s mostly filled with sub class options you know the the features your sub class gives you last week and you know I don’t know what it is but this year it feels like these League weeks are really long last it’s like a month ago last week we talked about the uh the nomads and we had these you know I’m getting myself confused here and we talked about some of these uh what the nomads suite of disciplines would look like the now the basic mechanic I have in mind is this Sonics the disciplines are defined by very powerful can trips at Wilma abilities that do things that can ships don’t normally do but the price of your concentration the Scion is special in that they can concentrate on two sanic disciplines at once rather than the normal hard cap of one so you have a can trip a sonic can trip you use it to kind concentrate on it that allows you to keep activating it if you lose concentration on it you then potentially lose some of the benefits that you’ve gained from especially using higher level versions of it though depending on the other can trips we roll out you’ll see some that if you lose it it’s just you know it’s giving you some sort of static benefit or some han going benefit that then goes away for instance a mind link and trip might allow you to establish telepathic contact with someone if you lose concentration on it obviously that effect ends and you don’t have to go ahead and re-establish it things like that prime most likely the cost of an action so quick recap of what we did for these are the disciplines that we’re we’re want to flesh out for the nomads the Nomad is our one of our orders and they are all about accumulating knowledge and moving through the weird little gaps in reality that to other folks look like teleportation they’re all about transcending boundaries whether those are the boundaries physical boundaries like here’s a place I can’t get into well I want to get into it or boundaries of knowledge nobody knows of anything about this I want to go find out to a nomad the journey isn’t just from point A to point B it could be from concept to concept B they don’t like the idea of things remaining unknown they want to discover them so one of their six signature abilities is this idea of teleportation so we went through and sketched out what does that will teleport can trip look like when you’re working at the can trips a lot of time the question is what are the limits on it things that you can do all the time are very obnoxious for tension masters if they’re too good and there’s actually tension in game design for tabletop role-playing games especially for D&D Dungeon Master’s are much more forgiving about effects that are limited by a resource I can do this once than I can’t do it again most likely for the rest of the session things that players can do all the time if they distort the game too much just get very irritating for Dungeon Master’s very quickly in terms of feedback we see teams are much quicker to give negative feedback to something that’s at-will than they are to something that is that is a resource to the point there I think I wouldn’t hold a natural ability to the same level of approval necessarily it might need is something more limited not out of the sense that the play testers are wrong by no means more of the sense that people are just more sensitive to it so we just calibrate our expectations a little bit differently I think if we I think it’s one thing we learned probably from the core design of the core fifth edition game is that there’s a little bit more opportunity how to put it we’re a little bit because we follow the play test feedback which I think was that’s what we should have done but I think we ended up with actual abilities that maybe aren’t as good as they could be and still have the system be balanced the Brutes subclass I loved use this as an example the brute was something we didn’t under Canada could horrible ratings yet if you were to look at it mathematically it was just getting extra damage on all of its attacks it was better than the champion but on par with the battle master now that it may have an off still I can’t remedy exact numbers but there was just the sense that if I was to take the encounter based abilities of the battle master just convert them to raw numbers and then spread them out over a kind of well what do we think is a good estimate of a number of rounds of combat and then even saying even that spike is not so high that even if you just like fought all day like 80 rounds of combat it still wouldn’t distort things it was still people had a very quick knee-jerk reaction to not wanting it so that’s something really to think about in your own design but it’s something for us to manage too it’s really think about you know getting that right it’s very tricky people just yeah so the yeah and I in Condon oh yeah it probably bad things because people were sad it made the champion look bad I think it’s also a big part of it but it’s irritating because the game designer in me I want to play a brute because it’s more fun yeah i io flat out say the champion is probably to me it’s a it’s a subclass that does it does a good job in mostly but it’s missing a big thing it relies on critical hits which is fine you create more often but it’s for beginning players who are probably the least likely of everyone at the table to realize that got- lay it on a 19 rather than a 20 even on a 20 they might not know and so it’s just one of those things where relying on your math your mastery of the core system to really actually make this work so it looks really simple and it’s not going to go back and do six edition you know it’s not back to you but it’s just one of those things with like oh that you know it is not quite doing what I want it to do but you know again we really respect the players handbook we don’t want to go back and start willing with willy-nilly changing things so anyways let’s talk about the Nomad right quick question from Grom roll fist Mike you were mentioning Nomad is exploring the boundaries of reality so I got a time element like a can should lets you spend concentration to get more reactions yeah and I think that is um that I think something with time travel be cool now time travel at a tabletop game oh it’s rough it is really hard but I thought I like the challenge of it so you know what let’s do this scramble fist challenge accepted let’s see what we can do with some elements of time travel now we have if I remember right we have temporal step coming at 14th level you can travel through both space and time in space this is from the subclass when you teleport you can choose to skip forward in time mechanically what we’re seeing is this is essentially kind of like a time stop or an exile kind of effect so I think of them you just sort of step out of the game for a little bit get to take some actions then pop back in or you can just delay having to come back in the three rounds from now things like that so I think that and you know what would be fun I’m gonna say this I think it would be really fun if we end up having to kill this class feature because we made canned trips and abilities and and disciplines that obviated it obviate I love that word such a good word I just love saying it the so one of the things if you were with me and then prior episodes what I try to avoid in subclass features is or class features is to give an effect that’s just a spell sometimes you can’t get around that sometimes you just you know what it’s the best way to execute on something so you’ll just do it but it’s really nice when things aren’t just like Oh like I’m the enchanter so I can charm people and now you should charm people by casting term person or charm monster not just by having this class feature that duplicates a spell so Cromwell fist challenge accepted let’s make temporal step let’s put it out the past year by coming up with some great disciplines that make it so we don’t need it so I’m gonna go down here and I kind of like the visual enough you know what I will expand this oh and by the way time travel from the spells yep okay we’ll spend a second looking at it but there’s not much in the core game so let’s do this oh I have caps lock on what is this AOL that’s a reference letter lost on most younger viewers so let’s go a little time travel because that’s insane but this is the thing try doing things that are crazy right that that’s get players excited like whoa that’s nuts how can you do that well let’s try it let’s see this is this is the time to get things wrong I totally embrace that in your first draft this is time to mess things up get them wrong because this is the point in which you can recover decide things don’t work but sometimes you’re gonna figure out hey this crazy thing it actually worked hey so let’s see what we got here now other than time stop let’s take a look at our spells and I’m just gonna look at all spells I’m gonna do a search word time time travels not a big big part of D&D so I don’t think there’s a lot I don’t think there’s a spell tag travel up there could be though and handy handy dandy beyond you never know like what you know what you how we might slice things the app let’s just search for time time stop that’s it this is probably the only one I’ll take a look at Hayes – because haste you could argue so time some it’s a ninth double spell so okay we are definitely going where Eagles dare you briefly stop the flow of time for everyone but yourself no time passes further creatures while you take one D 4+1 turns in a row during which you can use actions and move as normal the spell ends if one of the actions used during this period are any effects you create during this period effects are creature other than you or an object being worn or carried by someone other than you in addition the spell ends if you move to a place more than a thousand feet location where you cast it so yeah the what I see in chat people throwing in hey check out haste and slow and blink Oh cut the Ebola take a look at plain to see okay so what the one thing that’s gonna save us here though right was like 95 oh wow that’s a wee powerful it’s one plus what’s one D four plus one so it’s not just one already there’s one that I mean like Amy this is too much but you can’t get bunch of turns here getting three and a half typically so let’s take a look it’s that slow hastened blink okay this is a third level spell transportation you alter time oh we’re altering time you alter a time around up to six creatures of your choice in a 40-foot cube within range each target must succeed in a wisdom saving therapy affected by the spell for the duration an affected spell an effective target speed is halved it takes a minus two penalties to a seen dexterity saving throws and it can’t use reactions on its turn it can use either an action or or a bonus action not both regardless of the creature’s abilities of magic items it can’t make more than one melee arrange attack during its turn okay this is great cuz this is third level so where this is getting close we went from you get this at 17th level to now you get this at fifth level so that’s a nice gap a nice you know leap to make to get this down to first level that you can use every reverie round let’s see if the creature attempts to cast a spell at the casting time of one action or Lindy 20 and 11 or higher it’s gotta wait till next turn that that’s they kill off the it’s gonna use its next action to complete the spell Wow you know what I forgot about this aspect of slow I need to put slow on more of my monsters because this will really really irritate my players I do this because I love of course the last session the players luckily we had our our goblin fighter decided to like leap down to the second deck of an airship without really knowing what was down there which is great it’s trying to be a bunch of undead and a very angry Deathlok Peter affected by the spell makes us a saving thread stockade so it’s gonna you not just stuck with this forever you can try to throw it off the right let’s check out haste haste is slows benevolent twin-brother haste choose a willing creature so this is one creature the slow was looked at I think with six creatures remember right she’s a willing creature that you can see within range until the spell ends double at speed plus two to a seed Vantage and saving throws and one additional action to its turns that action can be used only to take the attack one weapon attack only – disengage hider use an omni action ok cool so this is something where I’m gonna take a little quick aside when I talk with a bonus action this is something where when if you’ve been following me for a while on Twitter or this stream you know I talked a bit about bonus actions I feel that kind of hacky because I think they had an identity and they quickly lost that identity and we’re in a world now where it’s like if I’m a barbarian I want at weapon fight I can’t do that in a rage in the same turn was just kind of like so I’m about bearing into rage I’d stop attacking like it’s a minor pet peeve of mine but this is something that kind of points to where you might have action stacking where the action is very specific in what you can do with it and it’s referring to the specific action types action typing is something in fifth that from a very mechanistic just from the system standpoint is something that I think it is a bit weak at it’s something which we can use to our advantage and talking about our time travel options by very zeroing in on exactly what you can do with those actions and what exactly can have so okay so this is pretty good this is one person but they’re getting this for a minute and they’re getting an extra attack or doing a lot of other funky stuff that they can’t normally do the all right now and the someone mentioned blink too let’s take a look at this is also a third-level so it’s coming in fifth level fifth character level we roll a d20 at the end of each of your turns for the duration of the spell on a roll of 11 or higher you vanish from your current point of existence and appear in the ethereal plane spell fails and the casting is wasted if you’re already on that plane it’s the start of your next turn and when the spell ends if you are on the ethereal you return to an unoccupied space of your choice that you can see within 10 feet of the space you vanished from okay this is almost kinda like skipping through time if were to look at it that time travel ends if no unoccupied space is available within that range or pier in the next time I’ll carry behind space chosen at random if there’s more than one you can just dismiss the spell as an action let’s say you can dis this spells an action like a blink that’s terrible and there goes your action pal good move while on the ethereal plane okay great so the foresight eagerly 7 thank you that’s something which we would expect yes there are no that’s a divination ninth bubble last eight hours though so again we’re seeing these ninth double spells interesting they’re giving these sort of time-traveling effects but they’re doing with like these really big numbers or like you get five actions it’s a lot going on or I think we can chop them down you touch a willing creature it gains a limited ability to see into the future for the duration can’t be surprised has advantage and attack rolls ability checks and saving throws that’s pretty nice other creatures have disadvantage in attack roles that’s really nice this is great buff and that’s not concentration all right so we get this kind of sense of insight and that’s the hard thing you know when you’re with the tabletop game when check out a future in time travel video games especially more scripted you could do the time-travel thing you leap forward the game essentially if you really wanted to get mechanistic about it could just imagine an open-world game it could just run the world for a while then show you what and what you pop back into time and then obviously with time travel backward with the video game if it’s tracking the state of everything in the game it just rewinds back so I mean Prince of Persia did that God now like 13 years ago the so but in a tabletop game mmm I don’t know about you maybe I’m just not good at dungeon messaging but I don’t remember every single thing that happened I’m not like the bronze James I can’t just go back and remember how all 10 people were on the court during like a 30 second exchange Stevie so yeah the so ok let’s take a look at what our will version this might look like because this will be the hardest one as I mentioned before yeah hole zoom in on this you guys can see things better there make that nice and gigantic okay so here’s what we want to do how many should I put this up front just so we know this this can’t be obnoxious and I’m going to find obnoxious I actually to me a useful the game designer not just say obnoxious and walk away because that can mean a lot I want low tracking because this is a quail up this is a natural ability it’s like you need to break down five things like who’s I don’t wanna do that it be round solo tracking I want a little complexity I don’t want low handling time now here’s a thing I’m putting these up front normally we just do these but it’s important because time travel is going to innately want to become come complicated there might be something flavorful that could very quickly violate these rules so sometimes it’s nice to just let’s just make sure we know that this is a quail it’s got to be simple it can’t be too complicated I’m already looking at this at will cantrip for teleportation the restrictions on it we kind of need them stop it from being obnoxious but there’s a bit of a sort of circular thing here because we have these restrictions it’s something players have to think of it is going to start leading to more complexity if I you know right now it’s just you can teleport 10 feet to a position you can see players are naturally just gonna want to use that to just teleport 10 feet in a direction right and we tried to make this something where like okay you can’t move after teleporting it’s using your action so these are things that hopefully you’ll learn pretty quickly you’re not for instance if it was restricted this first bullet point number something we talked about if we restricted your vertical movement that would be something which people would forget all the time and you’re constantly stopping and rewinding so we don’t want that I lost your time traveling but it’s kind of hard to be wined they call me Tomo to be fair aren’t scions going to be chosen by high complexity players we don’t know that we actually this is one thing to keep in mind that you can aim something to be high complexity that’s fine but I only want to do that when we’ve established our baseline complexity is it’s like eating it’s like eating dessert first complexities Greeks lets you do all sorts of wacky stuff and you can design the heck out of things because you get a high complexity budget it’s like eating a lot of calories right if I have a five thousand calorie a day budget as someone who’s often struggled with my weight fantastic five thousand calories you know what school we’re going on for ice cream right that’s not just getting like a scoop of ice cream in a cup I’m getting the freaking sundae with every thing they have in that topping bar thrown on top of it so I have 5,000 calories that’s a ton of fun and then I am old enough now the next day and I wake up I feel horrible right I just I can’t do that anymore all that sugar the so that’s what our complexity budget is like we need to start with that really lean mean core and get ourselves the discipline to like not just go nuts and throw things in and then once we have that down then we can say okay now here’s the high complexity option for the player who wants to really play with the mechanics let me just catch a little bit on shad hair there’s been no there’s a lot of chat stuff flying by I’ve seen has been talking the let’s see what else I got how about time time manipulation use reaction to force to be role of one d20 that’d be kind of interesting here reaction to force re-roll yeah that’s actually a pretty simple mechanic now it’s a reaction so I don’t want to make though the core thing unless well this is where this is where having concentration is nice this might be you know let’s start just by this in this quick more action to activate and requires concentration this might be the one effect here right no I don’t know that’s we’re gonna end up but this is one thing about moving concentration down to can trips that’s nice basically I have this Concha this is this can trip up and active it gives me a new option now I think a reaction of for Surrey role at will might be a little too much here’s my memory of these kind of characters right hey the the auger swings and hits oh hey Bob the guy just died hey what’s your AC oh it’s like 22 okay so it’s really unlikely he’d hit you uh okay I want to use my ability we’re like well how much damage was that I think it it can slow the game down not to the point where I’m just gonna to just say no we can’t do this but something like that keep in mind right it means we’re not quite done I want to poke at this a bit more the oh wow and this could be like some sort of buff right so under fan yeah maybe you get extra reaction maybe it’s just you get some of those benefits we saw the high level things you know bonus to a thing okay bonus true thing might sound like it’s not very descriptive but there actually is like no I mean that’s like like you know one specific role or let’s say saving through so basically a floating bonus I can choose to invoke that might go back the reaction of horse re-roll maybe this works in two ways sort of precognition post cognition I can I can see the pass that gives me a benefit or maybe I can see the future and that lets me avoid danger you know this is one against is whenever you’re having concentration on a can trip is nice because it lets me now I could have a can trip that essentially is buffing you constantly we could maybe like a creepy Bob disengage is a bonus action it’s not like that we might be you know bonus action news but you know I don’t want to I don’t want to step on the road too much I’m just put these further things you know like this engage maybe perception checks preception perception checks maybe since I can kind of see what’s coming I get a benefit to react to it you know avoid surprise kind of like some like when we saw in those spells let’s see what else we got here yeah geek reality 70 the one thing is I think concentration is gonna be for the new things we’re adding I think that’s gonna be a kind of core piece of it but I would I expect is all the spells we pull in from the core list and make basically say hey these are available to psionic users that those most of those want I mean obviously some of them might still use concentration but I think for the new things we’re gonna focus on like that new doesn’t a design style let’s see whose your reaction to move a monster down the initiative order you know this is this is something where I’m gonna like oh I’m blocking the text with my blocky old head let’s do this thank you much 10 seconds so here’s something we’re here you know what I’ll do I will do this and let’s do this let’s do we don’t need two columns for any other particular reason right now so let’s just do that and just there we go I have found an issue messing with the initiative order we’ve tried it a few times in the past and people don’t ever seem to like it doesn’t mean they don’t want to try it here I think this could be something that we can do here but I have found people I think initiative is something which is for a lot of players and Dungeon Master’s unnecessary and a necessary evil so the yeah tacky and railgun please don’t give them away to mess a little it was a can trip yeah doing that all the time could get it could get messy fast but maybe this is something which when rolling for initiative you know it’s also funny it’s the number of times in which you roll for initiative and the sequencing is really important it’s not as it doesn’t seem to come up often enough to be worth the the brain space you know the or just the opportunity cost of like hey here’s our can trip and that’s the thing it does so you know but I’ll just put find a way to make this work what I think I’d want to lean on advantage on initiative that yeah I could work doing a random had in there fain doing a something a reaction to delay people like making them wait a couple turns that kind of work to deal one thing is though if that gets very powerful though especially near the end of the fight if I think a monsters on its last legs and I can push it down after a couple of initiative spots I could basically did deny the turn so that gets very yeah it gets a little wonky this is gonna operate much like tracer an overwatch ask cinder flame you know maybe we talked about a tracer style ability last week where you would move then bounce back to where you were the challenge there is it’s really great flavor it also it makes a ton of sense in a video game where the game is tracking your state and it knows where you were on a tabletop game though it is a little bit trickier because a lot of players might not track where they were might forget and that’s the worst case scenario is if you play with managers player picks their miniature up I’m gonna move over here and swing to this guy oh hey I want to use my thing to go back oh where was I again like that kind of thing so it’s a little tricky but I like the flavor of it right I like the flavor of tracer as a character who’s interacting with time and having that is kind of like one of our core concepts here choosing where you go an initiative checker author well that may be non the interesting way choose your result you might just always get you can pick instead of rolling I pick one of three numbers I’m granting and I surprise you and that kind of fits in with the precognition I don’t know if I want you to gain surprise though because if someone will immediately put this us on a set on in this asset so dat’ll swing your turn is split between two initiative accounts you know something like a legendary action kind of thing legendary creatures that may be kind of interesting huh I don’t know how that would interact with everything else you know that also makes that feels kind of like super speed to me though and I don’t know where I might want to shelled it but that’d be kind of interesting to have a way you can break your turn up into smaller sub turns that you can throw in and mmm let me remove them I don’t know but it doesn’t quite feel like time travel it feels kind of more like speed our change Derick thief taking the 17th double taking two turns the initiative yeah that’s and that’s a 7000 ability and I get I don’t I don’t know sent want to step on that especially as an that will ability good so ok well here let’s do this right I like this idea of at will time travel and I want to take another quick look spells because there was something in here under haste it’s gonna haste it’s a throwable spell so I think if I can hack the spell down I can get it down at first level and I think the thing I don’t want to do with this is something with this additional action on each of its turns you know I’m gonna use an action and I get something here and so what I here’s something which is very prescriptive do is it might also feel really kind of fun what if we did something like this so you get I’m gonna call this is totally fake in the sense that I’m just making this up as a label as no bearing I’m gonna call it your time step actually and what if it’s just like look you can just kind of mess with time around you so you can just you can move ten feet you can I don’t want to use this is gonna addition to your turn so something like you just you can just move ten feet very quickly oh you can swap out here in your hand and maybe there’s something here like you can get a defensive bow something very minor you know maybe you know I’m gonna call baby shield versus won’t attack or save so something like that again this might still be too good and it might need to peek back into but again this is getting more complicated but here’s what as I’m writing this if I explain what it is the the idea here being you’re traveling through time so tight you can you can mess up time so if you do things other people can’t and so I’d like to set it like ok you move 10 feet cuz you can speed time up around yourself or slow I’m sorry you can slow it down relative the people so you’re getting more out of your second I’m gonna swap my gear out right now I’m just gonna speed myself up great everyone else so kind of using that time thing so hey I had a sword and shield ok no sweat I can change my armor oh whatever right maybe that’s it feels a little nomad right depending on where I am I can very quickly change my gear load and then something with like a defensive buff would be nice now here’s the thing though that’s starts to get good enough that as an at-will thing you’re gonna you’re gonna do this every round so I think what we might need to do is give you a little bit of a restriction on what you can do with your regular action and what I think that might look like is I’m gonna say this like you know one attack or one camp or you know list to be determined so here’s what a way I kind of see this if you restrict flavor-wise here’s what I imagine is happening as a nomad you can mess this time but you still only have so much mental processing bandwidth so if you take a certain subset of like simple actions like just stabbing someone or throwing a can trip you can then on top of it create a little extra time for yourself to do something else boom you know it moving a bit further swap out your gear or set up the sense about I’m gonna move very quickly if someone tries to clobber me that could also be an offensive buff I know I don’t make that offensive buff because that’ll cord too nicely with uh with the can trip you just you always be combining those two so the if you remember a few weeks back we took a look at the lrish night we made the the psychic warrior and then LG tonight had the ability aware if you need to use DAC and trip you could make a single up an attack then that got upgraded later on to be whenever you cast a spell you know kind of like that ability of you get this if you do this so that I’d be something that which we do here the help action I’m not necessarily crazy DM envel about putting it in here because that feels a little that the mastermind does that and I don’t think the the mastermind build for the rogue I don’t think the nomads dress is necessarily about helping the team I think nomads are a little greedy I think they travel through time themselves they travel themselves right that they can bring the group along but it’s gonna require a limited resource so yeah the I’m gonna kind of settle on something like this for right now and I think the extra reaction thing I’m a little worried about making that without a resource because I think that just makes you better without any drawback so this is something here that I think can work so now what we then need to do is what could the spell effects be and so here’s what what I just want to think about we’ve had a lot of ideas so it’s just you know it’s really insisting okay whatever oh I see that whenever me and bullets guess we’re not getting along today so a lot of things we talked about here are extra actions see the future and take advantage of that step outside of time I think if we’re gonna do time travel we can be pretty you know the future is easy to get to but I think the past we want to say like oh you can go back like a year or something like that rather than like five seconds right like then it’s just as a DM you’re like well what was you know it’s more precise than we needed to be past and longer increments view the past and future there you go saw that see the future and take advantage of that view the past and teach here see the past and a future that fits our Nomad theme Oh Kayla they want to push the barriers they want to they want to basically dispel the unknown oh we also want this speedy mattress okay okay bullet point lists and I are not getting along well today slow style effects you know ability travel in time so this is again that which is nice it’s a third level spell so I’ll be pretty easy to bring in and then income it up and down let’s see what else we got it OB the past steps on the toes of the waken that might oh it’s right because they’re more I’m gonna leave him there for now but I think yeah that is something to just that italics so just remember be a few tree is much more sealed away as part of thing to the Nomad let’s see X to the X is time step part of your move action no I would see this as just it may see a is an action so here’s an action I’m gonna use my time stuff ability and then it would tell me then what I can do – you can still move in all that let’s see whoredom noxious stress to them not just shared the bring friends with unit through time yeah had nur found I think the I’ll make a note of that mostly greedy but with a resource or higher level spell can affect the Oh time hop yeah disappear makes the Mingus fear for your rounds yeah that’s disappear for a bit do and that net actually pulls in from that class feature we’re looking at putting away to purl step the let’s see Oh another thing which we could do is dictate your initiative results where are we we’re going to dictate your initiative result let’s see what else we got here oh it could you make duplicates of yourself automatic could be zooty um maybe I’ll throw it in here but that gets really good really fast I guess maybe if you don’t like yourself though that would be kind of interesting the oh yeah couple the blink spell effect oh yeah and let’s throw in our spells I just remember this blink slow paced foresight and time stop so we should make sure we’re looking at those spells to see what we can just disassemble and get from there yes tacky and railguns summer a future version of yourself you know this could be something we’re like all the bad news is I want to see that myself and ten years from now how the bad news is that’s just a coffin like here oops they’re gonna make some pretty bad bad decisions in the near future yeah and some sort of hold effect so it makes sense you know freeze and time there’s a lot yeah reaction based abilities you know these kind of capture the idea of knowing the future like I knew I knew that was exactly what Rena to you because I saw the future I went look so now I know exactly how to counter that the okay so this is actually coming together pretty well you know and I think the challenge here this is a tricky one to design with the the can trip because it’s going to be the route right if you don’t like the can trip then you know it’s gonna be such an opportunity cost for you just like load it up and start using these other effects the oh this should be disappointed call them so yeah anyway the I’m kind of leaning toward this idea that it gives you a thing as an action basically spa nice new special action that lets you do a little bit more than you normally can and if you were ever curious this is the kind of model that I had in mind of like what you know if we didn’t have in bonus actions what would it look like it would look something like this right like oh I choose to attack and there’s just an attack one of the options an attack is to up and fighting and it just means you swing twice right the if there are effects that gave you multiple attacks I’d probably just say hey you get a new special multi attack action lets you choose the attack action twice oh yeah I can show up and fight great two up and fight twice right so two stabs with the short sword two stabs with the other short sword and then you’re done right so um let’s see what we got here now I say hey so to chat sound off do you think that what do you think of this can should affect this idea of basically letting you make a little fold in time and what you get a little bit more out of your action than you normally do does that feel like a very low you know basically at-will expression of time travel throw that up there let me know I’m feeling pretty good about it but I am a little worried that it might not be quite the flavor be looking for but I see if it feels powerful I mean it feels kind of cool like I got a special thing that only I can do and doesn’t feel like any of the can trip out there okay let’s try good djf a hundred percent what it should be I love it oh she call it full time he that’s great a great idea like that full-time so i full-time over make a little gap in time I take a take advantage of it so there we go and oh you know another thing you could do oh this is this might be a very you know I’ve seen a couple of people talk about extra reactions so extra reactions that will gets a little obnoxious but I think there’s something very simple here right spell that grants a reaction stacks on top of so here’s what I’m seeing with this as a popped in mind oh I want to take a reaction great I spent a spell slot this might actually do discipline effect called overtime then they’re coming to this in overtime ever gets really tense and what’s gonna happen next um so this might be a Class B true but what I imagine is anytime I wanted to spend a reaction without using my reaction I just expend a spell slot it might be a first of all spell slot so I get more of them and I have a lot of flexibility because I think that would be kind of interesting and fun and feel like oh yeah I’m always doing extra stuff cuz I’m bopping around through time but again I do want to put a cap on it because again if you can just do it all the time it gets really obnoxious it’s just a you know opportunity tax they’re constantly firing off you getting extra ones or you’re actually using shield extra times and whatnot so the but this might be a class feature and it might be at higher levels get one all the time you might just always get a second reaction and higher levels I’m not as worried because at this point you’re like blowing up mountains so it’s not breaking something let’s take a quick look back then are we about eight minutes left so what I want to do is take a look at what we did with the Nomad the class features I’m gonna go back to two column mode because if I remember right I think that lets us see more of the text it kind of does but I think it also puts my my head like right in a dead spot no it does let it lets us see more here okay so let’s walk back through we kind of know now what our cancer is gonna do the cancer it’s really important that the order of the Nomad talks to the toilets it’s signature can trips so the let’s we got bonus disciplines learn traditional psychic disciplines of your choice okay that’s pretty straightforward and then let’s see can the ability to you sign next week all your steps as reaction what was this I thought I was Directorate you can teleport or not cried space you can see within 30 feet of you okay this was this was the the originally this was someplace you had been but then we just that’s just too much tracking okay but this one I’m kind of thinking maybe we don’t necessarily need will see especially these are all about teleportation temp level he gained resistance weapon tax until is starving externa after you teleport I kind of want to replace this one with a time-based one I like the idea that you know I’m kind of surprised first of all I’m only giving you two additional disciplines did I do that for the other for the weekend no I didn’t I didn’t okay we need something in first level because the look the the awakened is giving you a bonus disciplines and then giving you awaken talent in our poor Nomad just gets that the Nomad is looking across the room going hey I’ll give me something what the heck’s up with that you know maybe what we could do here is no I don’t know if I want to give you that extra reaction here I think what I’m going to throw in it first level is pride just I’m gonna be really lame but just to get this thing in here yeah it’s gonna do something here first of all you get a speed benefit this is kind of placeholder I don’t want to make that maybe that does work perfectly I mean chive you guys go nuts and say dear God the medic step that’s the greatest of all things see I don’t want to give an extra reaction at first of all but maybe it’s six level this is where I can start to give you more I like the idea of moving through time and space there’s a nice little balance there and those beings real of the two signature things for the Nomad and then otherwise then you’re gonna you’re gonna flavor more to taste the so but it does make me kind of want to because this again feels kind of like a spell so don’t know what I want to call it but it’s six level here’s another an you additional reaction spend a first level or higher spell slot to gain another reaction so that’s just really pseudocode it’s only about five minutes left I kind of like throwing the next six level the attack and railgun you know speed bonuses are nice right like this is it feels kind of right maybe no difficult terrain I’ll throw a question mark in there this gives it a little bit more of a space time space not time and space do the same value over time we’re gonna head over time what is up with me and kept like I just must have oh man I hit caps lucky him so I used to do something I did back I was just I was a sysadmin at the time so I could get away with it because it’s in charge of all the hardware and later on I would keep doing it was just irritating whoever was taking care of the computers over I worked I used to always have a ritual of whenever whenever I was gonna do keyboard first thing I do is get a flathead screwdriver and pop that cat caps lock key right off that keyboard because it is useless you never need a caps lock keyboard key on your keyboard I don’t know why they still put them there it’s shift shift is right next to it just hold down shift and then when you really gotta yell at someone an AOL chat or whatever was what was it not Instant Messenger just come on son you want to yell hold down that Shift key the is over time the tracer only solo spinel are traded good see that was right they should call it Tecton rogen yes what I’m thinking is you get two reactions and then if you want even more reactions you could expend spell slots we might want to limit to limit this to know I don’t eliminate I want to say look you get you get two reactions you can get two opportunity attacks you can block and I cannot be in cash shield why not your your the Nomad this is what you do the right so Oh initiative + inter adventures in the check Oh mad that’s another thing that might be more fun I throw it here as an alternate you know what you couldn’t do is you could say no no you wouldn’t say yeah in bonus to mark there that’s it maybe that’s my I’m worried about just putting on too much stuff kind of like this more than the speed bonus because the speed bonus again it feels I want to make sure this guy doesn’t feel like a speedster again you’re not the flash your doctor who if doctor who didn’t need to TARDIS he could just travel at a time by really thinking really hard a geek early to seven thank you for coming along I I’m glad you’re enjoying this and it’s been a lot of great feedback from the chance why I kind of feel like we could but pretty good within the past month a Viking sort of multitask now and I first started is that being interesting go back and look at the video I’m sure it’s just me just talking and then like oh there’s people chatting what’s how does that work now the so it’s kind of nice to be able to like have this the back and forth here the UM so we’ve got three minutes left I don’t know if there’s anything huge that I want to try to do obviously I record six eight six six X suggestion to mess with the initiative order you could just have it so the slowest Ally changes places with and I got a little cut off my screen here but it couldn’t the enemy in the turn order the character is already acting around its use they can’t act again till accident yeah I can do something about it a lot of people around it it’s funny though I just I think I wanted to say that we tried playtesting something like that I forget what class it was it may have been like a commander style fighter and people just didn’t like it like they just there were a lot of complaints about it I can’t member that made it to a public play test it was just got shot down an internal play test I am not sure so share big I can we get a rest in the Scion next week and return to it afterwards chat what do you guys think do you think we’ve been doing the sign for a while do you want to venture over to doing something else or do you want to keep going with a Scion I’m pretty flexible at this and just sound off we got two minutes so let your voice be heard the the one thing I’m you know okay you seem like we’re getting emphasize kind of like a hawk Anza gonna be fun to do that fun thing is figure out the guns I think that the guns should be cool Calvin Bala is the is diplom just one power you pick up it’s a grouped Oh what I imagine is that the what you will do is all more so a lock I think everyone some people okay lots of summoners well lots of things sorry for the Scion I think people want to speak I think we can finish the Scion next week would I’m not gonna go on kion online and design all the disciplines cuz that’ll be really boring trust me that’s like spell design is incredibly boring it’s a lot of just looking up stuff and making sure you’re getting your your your things right so here’s what we’ll do I’ll do the shaper next week doesn’t give us the Nomad be awakened in the shaper I think that’s a good enough point where from there I can just delve into getting that design knocked out and then we’ll look at where I am with it and then we’ll see what one of you next what I’ll probably do is this went okay with the with the order domain where I had designed it off camera then showed it to people but maybe since this is something worked on together like it’ll be interesting to see where I ended up and it can be a little bit more I’ll do a lot of questions and you know take a lot of questions from chat so yeah let’s next week let’s do this let’s get the shaper into the into the shape that we have the Nomad where we have basically a couple of our sonic abilities sketched out what I imagine will happen is when you take the the discipline what will happen is it’ll come with a number of options beneath well me with a billion things it’ll probably come with some basic upgrades and then future spells that you can add to your repertoire will you two be spells that justice you know it’s a sonic ability it could be a spell that’s made psionic like saying dispel magics by using it sound eclis so we’re not reprinting anything or it could be here are new ways to use your existing thing I won’t really know though until I designed that first one for realsies and then I think I’ll get a sense of what of how this is playing out but yeah I’d want some element of scaling up to come with it just so you don’t just feel like I have to keep I’m spending all my choices just to keep up I don’t like that I want you to feel like you’re expanding so okay barrage so the red rage made I mean that was on the very early 3.0 D&D pressures causes always liked the concept so okay so anyway I’ll call it the an arc mad hatter him yeah that’s a drawn on so that gets the ride lore um okay we’ll see we’ll see what next year we come up with but yeah so that’s what work on well go through and do the class features and then take a look maybe what I’ll do is I’ll do the class features on stream next week and then I’ll come with some thoughts on the disciplines so not fine too far behind or maybe we’ll just do two more weeks and then I’ll just go and start working off-camera and we’ll start kind of broadening our repertoire of stuff so anyways thank you much for joining me on stream for joining the the happy fun hour I will see everyone next week in which we will talk about the shaper our third subclass and the third category of psychic disciplines and yeah I think we’ll spend tweaks on that well do the class features next week and then we’ll do kind of like we did here the skeleton of the discipline then I can kind of go off and delve into this a bit more depth and we can move on to some other things so all right I’ll see you next week take care and see you then [Music]

The Psionic Class – The Mike Mearls Happy Fun Hour!

June 14, 2018Zoltar Leave a comment

hello everyone and welcome back to the happy fun hour I’m your host Mike Merrill’s the creative director on Dungeons & Dragons and this week we’re going to continue our quest for psyonix you might see sort of lurking behind my head is a Microsoft Word file that has the basic foundations of new character class the mystic well not the mystic the Sion I have not yet gone through and found and replaced the every that’s actually I’ll do for the next hour I’ll just find mystic everywhere and do it by hand change it now the classroom is gonna be called the Sion d100 hitpoints right dark elven double 0 that’s right that’s the first change we need to make is one do you 100 right here keep it forever but you only get 6 at each level beyond that the so this is basically building on everything we talked about last week the if you were here uh you have to sit through a quick recap for everyone who wasn’t here how what we talked about was what the sign the Sion character class might look like now that we’ve done a few subclasses and we figured out kind of where they fit in and what kind of parts of the psionic system might reside in other classes what what is the focus for the actual core class it’s very much like taking arcane magic if we’re adding that to a game and saying ok we know we want a wizard but the warrior mage does that sit in the wizard does that sit in the fighter things like that so one thing that we talked about that I thought about a bit over the week and that I think makes a lot more sense is since we are going for a d6 hit die for the Scion it probably makes sense to really have the telepath just be in this class rather than try to have it be in the wizard because it is just something that’s really core to what people expect from this character class um I don’t think it makes sense to say if you want to be a mind reader go somewhere else that I would just expect that that stuffs are just reside in this class but I was thinking that what we might then do with the mentalist wizard is keep some of that flavor that light touch on psyonix and actually let the energy manipulation end of Sonic’s rest over there because the wizard already has fireball lightning bolt and all those spells it’s pretty easy to imagine that this is just a more psionic friendly take on a wizard I think we can actually keep it as is and maybe kind of recast it as the MU gen or that kind of character and then think of it as yeah the Sion who just blows stuff up that’s that that’s that that’s not that in that character we we sort of cast the mujin as an elementalist in the first pass so I think that actually makes some sense it might mean I want to go back and revisit the class which was a little bit the but yeah I gained Bentham diem essentially a Wizards become like the pyrokinetic or set you know cryo kinetic because I think this is easier rather than having to reinvent the wheel that spell list crossover just feels like it’s very well adapted to having the wizard serve that function rather than just just try to recreate a bunch of energy based attack spells Under the Sun expel list it just seems like that’s just a lot of extra work where we remember when we look back at the Mentalist we found well there weren’t a lot of spells in the wizard list that we’re giving us that ESP feel so the and the the name would Jen they call me Tomo to I don’t know if we’ll use that name because I just don’t I don’t know if it makes like I know the game has the history of it but my understanding of it that it’s really just means like it’s some sort of like kind of garbled Japanese for Wizards so I don’t know if I’ll actually keep it but the concept is what I’d want to move over the I don’t want people to think oh this is the the the Asian flavored wizard that that’s not that would be my intent there so the so we’ll figure out a better name for it I don’t know exactly would it be it might even just still be Mentalist but I can know to capture that ESP feel but I think that might not be capturing that the intent that it’s there to capture that and that enter that that crossroads of psionics and channeling a you know elemental energy you know fireball all that stuff can assist elementalist it might be these easiest way to go you know with it but the psychokinetic says yes I’m like that well but we’ll throw and get back to it I’m gonna that’ll be one of the last things we probably work on the numerals list yeah son who can command my dogs which would not be me my dogs do not listen to me these days I think I’ve been traveling too much lately so the yeah the the Baker is coming for you yeah the fund of the firestarter trope if you’re familiar with the the Stephen King movie you know controlling energy so so that’s what we’ve got let’s see what we’ve got here so actually I’m gonna reverse these windows because if I remember right my head is on the right side of the screen as far as I see so we’ll do this so I’m just blocking some of my handy-dandy D and D beyond window which most that stuff you’ll need to see will be in the middle so um what I wanted to do was go back and show the look I want to go back and take a look at the core features for the the Siam character class now that we have a much much clearer vision of what we want to do how much of this still makes sense so this class was built on the cleric chassis using that as a starting point so moving over to using wizard does mean some things will probably have to shift one thing is you could ignore this table because the Society of talents known disciplines downside points we’re just like as I mentioned earlier we’re gonna start by using spell slots I want to design it that way then see how easily does this transfer we’re using the spell point system from the dmg and if that’s working well but I think I’d rather just take that approach and let dm’s who want to opt into using Sai points can just do that I suspect that if we can make if it works fine with spent with spell slots I think it’ll work fine with points and keeping in mind also that one of the ideas we had was decided that this class will naturally stack powers on top of each other essentially using your can trips which might we might call them talons to make that make it clear they’re very different and then using that is your basic thing and then augmenting with your spell slots essentially spells that sit on top of them that might not be true for everything but I think for a lot of cases that’s how the models gonna work the the so yeah it’ll just basically whatever DMS feel come from with especially if you’re if you’re coming for a prior addition and you want to use points I’m hoping that’ll work out but like with everything until you design it till you play it you not exactly sure it’s gonna how it’s gonna roll out so the we can skip a few of these first couple class features because there’s describing the stuff on the table sonic talents I’m disciplined sigh points silent all that let’s go to sew mystic order so this is obviously would be sanic probably order we’ll just keep that for now so we know this just has to be up today this is just where you’re picking your your subclass this will kill Mike recovery so you know you are just gonna watch me change mystic to sonic throughout the entire day deal will the focus mechanically somehow translate I suspect it will I want to sort of delve into the pieces here then we’ll see but I think there might be something to do with focus my very first concept of it was essentially focus is your second your ability to concentrate on a second thing and that you can break your focus to get a bigger effect but we’ll see how it all comes together the that it’s one of the challenges when you’re dealing with like you know an expectation of a prior design is there is always a lot of attention as you’re building it do you make room up front for it and and accept that everything across the board has to be a little less deep because you don’t want to overwhelm you know the class with complexity or you just have to design and see where it ends up falling in I think what we’re gonna do is I just wanna kind of start designing and we’ll see where it falls in but I kind of think this idea that being able to focus on two things at once just will naturally lend itself to it but but we’ll see alright so we’ve got our choice of first of all which I think makes total sense as we’ve talked about before the divide between classes you get something at first level for your subclass or third level the wizard of court and the wizard and druid to being at second level for reasons we talked about last week which is we wanted there’s features we wanted to give you at first we can wait till second this is a class I think that you start out you think of yourself as having that flavor the type of Scion you want to play so this would I think that’s where we want to keep that with Sonic recovery the world this is a manner in which you can draw a figure from psy energy choose to you can yeah you can draw a figure from the site energy you use to power your psionic disciplines immediately after you spend side points on a sonic discipline you can take a bonus action to regain hit points eagle the number of side points you spend so this is a good example and hey I’ll do this now zooming and begin so this is an example over the point doesn’t necessarily work here but it would not be hard to change this to spell slots I’m gonna do a quick change for that the the so this just be spell yeah we don’t want this minister I work on can trips telecasting so in me after you cast a sanic spell we’re just going to spell language for now that might change but that’s um we need you could take about action to regain hit points equal to the level these balance lot you spent so now the flavor behind this was to get this idea that if you’re using that sonic magic and power comes from within and that you can use it to sort of buoy yourself up that channeling it strengthened you it was a two-way street the but I’m not necessarily sure yeah all didn’t seventy I’d understand why it’s core force ions to recover health and I don’t know if I don’t know if we necessarily need this because now as I think about it I think this is something that can rest inside of basically if we want to give you ability to recover hit points you can just choose those powers so I put that in red I don’t think we need it anymore so the yeah like the you know this might be something with like a specific subclass might give you or some like that so we’ll see I’m just gonna put this in red because I just don’t think this is cord what we think of the Scion we set up front right we’re giving you d68 points for your hit die I don’t like design where it’s like I’m giving you these six eight points but I’m letting you heal really easily that just I just make it a d8 if we thought that class durable enough how just increase the hit dye it wasn’t super like it was like 90% t6 last week when we talked about d6 vs. d8 it was like 6040 so yeah let’s just put this one aside and put it in red just so we know it was there but I don’t think we’re gonna keep it um telepathy second level your mind awakens to the ability to communicate communicate by a telepathy you can telepathically speak to any creature you can see with 120 feet of you in this manner you don’t need to share language of the creature for to understand your telepathic messages but the creature must be a little understanding least one language so that that language is nothing to make sure you don’t tell telepathically talked like a news or something like that it’s gotta be able to talk back to you I think this is what I want to keep I think when I think of a basic ability for telepathy I think a Scion should just be able to get that the I don’t want to go to I want to keep some elements in the core class that define what unifies all Saiyans the nice thing about this is it’s pretty simple loud knocks just why second-level that’s a really good question and I think that this might actually be something that I would move up to first level if we’re giving you your order ability and just the basic psionic stuff here I kind of want to make this first level because I think this is not something it’s simple enough I don’t think you need to wait for it so I want to bed up to first and I’m gonna go up to the and just drop it in there just sorry I remember I did that and then I want to do this just remember that I did that so now we don’t have anything at 2:00 but I think that’s gonna be okay because I have a feeling we’re not gonna be but not to be short on stuff these guys can do we have our ASIS are our lovely ability score improvements you get a bunch of those these are typically something in class design we try to make sure your first one drops in at fourth and then progresses from there it is largely though based on how the class progression is shaping up it’s not sorry I should strike that it’s not like we would not give a class these it’s just typically we think upfront if a class has a lot of features it needs to deal with we can afford to not have as many here is to post other classes I don’t ever recall in the development of the core game thinking of ability score improvements as like a balancing thing like we’d say well this class gets more than that class so that is an advantage we just saw it all is the important thing was the sum effectively your class features this is just one that allows for more flexibility the what was always a spiral out of the question what was the design process by not making it normal telepathy is described in the Monster Manual that’s a good question let’s take a look let’s do a quick side here let’s do telepathy let’s see if that picks oh you know what actually yeah let’s just search for telepathy here it’s possible that that was just drift the sets clear Samberg Dungeon Master’s okay do we have a oh here we go some languages the monster manuals telepathy let’s see-oh doesn’t need to see you contacting ok so this was essentially – so yeah I can see why this is here we didn’t want this to become something that was more powerful enough that it took on more weight it’s really there more for flavor so that’s why as written you I believe and I might party this wrong but double-check that in this version of telepathy you have to you can speak which you can see so but that’s really why you see that change there with monsters we’re not as worried because it’s more flavorful and we like the idea that a lot of monsters that have it money use it in a kind of a creepy manner so that’s why you don’t you don’t see those necessarily sync it up and that’s something which in 5e we don’t do too often but we’re okay with a power that ability of player has or power it can have some drift to its name something similar for the DM side because you know they’re not necessarily meant to go over and it’s not why is this one only one wage yes and that’s the same thing we didn’t want this becoming to load-bearing in terms of its power again it’s really meant to be a ribbon whereas if you could go two ways that would be pretty useful in some role-playing situations now obviously though there’s also a world thing here a little bit of one where multiple Saiyans could talk to each other and it’s also I think in the flavour you think of this is a sign of character assembled with other adventurers it gives them a little bit of that flavor being a little strange right like they you know that it’s not just something that’s super utility that this is now our communication network for the party everyone speaks through the Scion using telepathy it is that that that one-way thing so the but yeah so that’s we’ve got there so then let’s take a look at so that we’ll use second level empty one thing to keep in mind if you take a look at the wizard let’s peek at that because the Wizards are kill our best compañera you see whenever you give a character class a d6 hit die it’s almost always gonna be built in a very manner similar for the wizard one of the things we look at the wizard this was this will requires me to make a few changes here we tend to give you nothing that a spell at a character level in which you gain a new level of spell so 2 5 7 9 essentially the the odd-numbered abilities the odd-numbered advancement points on the for the wizard are blank and I think first yeah first is the only time you get that so that’s something I’d want to look at here and probably re-engineer a bit so we probably want to do this that mystic that Sion order feature will move to there 5 is blank 7 is blank okay so we basically have these here we have other ones which we want to look at clearing out ok getting a new level spells is pretty potent so it’s not necessary something that we want to do getting that and other things and I’ll just copy need freak so I don’t know if we want to give you an order thing at second level but we’ll see right then when we get to the orders we’ll take a look at that and I always love it oh those things so then strength of mine comes in at 4th level let’s take a look at that one what do we have your strength of mind even the simplest psionic technique requires a deep understanding of a house ionic energy can augment mind and body this understanding allows you to alter your defenses to better deal with threats I remember the states are now starting fourth level you can replace your proficiency and wisdom saving cards whenever you finish yeah I don’t know if I’m like this is like something that’s kind of flexible but you know I think this gets lost in the shuffle a lot chat do I cut this I think I might because I’m thinking when I think sound I think I want stuff that’s a little more flavorful than this this feels like you know use it yeah this one this confuses yeah I remember getting a lot of lot of static like how does this work Multi classing cut it cut it oh no oh random a kloves it cut cut I never end up using it leading towards cut go through my gut is to cut it costal on Kenobi yeah the feedback survey was confused it was it was pretty it wasn’t crazy about it and the feedback survey was this actually is a great question the feedbacks I’m gonna put in red I think we’re good yeah making a spell yeah human double Oh – I like that that meant we might end up doing the if we think that’s important to like a shape-shifter adaptability will make it you can just make make it a spell begin gonna make it what discipline I can just spend a slot change change my saves that’s easy or just become proficient in the save for a while no way okay so get squished give it to the bard we’ll just get everything the bard being jack-of-all-trades we just give them everything we cut so okay so I need to remind myself that we zap that there is an ability score improving sitting there so it’s not super important I put something there but let’s go all right then we getting another order feature and up an eighth level so this is another one this is gonna get cut if you’re not familiar with a cleric when we talked about it since this bit this was built on the cleric chassis that meant that an eighth level we just need to drop in and apply one way for our field so this is potent psionics at eighth level you gain your village you gain the ability to infuse your weapon attacks and psychic energy this is just basically since you only get one attack around we wanted to augment your damage a bit so you could keep up if you did clobber someone with your mace so whatever keep it on par with the can drip we just we don’t need this because that’s not what this does class is not a weapon user anymore this is actually a great example of how I think having that better focus really helped the class I think there’s a lot of players who look at this and go oh hey this is a feature and it’s like cooling it is load-bearing you might be it’s meant to be like Oh neat how about a new thing but it’s not supposed to be something I think it’s a good example of in terms of the design it was not supposed to be something real like yeah this is awesome it’s defining it’s like now it’s just kind of there that it help you keep up if you were keeping tab of your characters damage and you’re just using weapons playing a cleric you might find like god I’m not doing as much damage there ever has everyone else on average so the way it goes all right let’s zoom up to 10th all consumptive power just the name alone suggests to me people probably didn’t like this one so context consumptive power P generally in D&D players don’t like giving up things to get things like take damage to get a benefit it’s a classic if you play Magic the Gathering that is a classic mechanic for for black cards and my experience though is that generally especially beginning players they don’t understand like they don’t like taking drawbacks at all give them a drawback they will avoid it it’s also hard to balance because you you have to balance it assuming the player will find a way just circumvent the drawback my experience is like if you in your design try to no no it can make this like 10% better because there is a drawback there is always a way to get that drop pack erased so let’s see what this one’s doing so we kind of know where we’re going here right but we’ll see maybe maybe this one will pull it through ok Tech W gain the ability to sacrifice your physical durability exchange sonic power whatever this ability will do a wonderful will come with a drawback when activating discipline you can pay its side points with your current hit points interviews any side points yeah and it does you I don’t I don’t want to do this one chat you guys can can tell me I should save this but I’m gonna get rid of it because I just because this is goes back that hit point manipulation thing we’re dealing with where you know we had you were gaining hit points yet idiot hit die uh you go away now we’re coating everything nothing left but you know actually I wouldn’t be sad if there was just nothing left cuz that’s me would say hey we’re kind of on I mean again we’re recon cepting this class quite a bit the yeah so yeah get a subclass right I think Costa Wan kenobe we like you and I aren’t seeing mine here this is you know an order power yeah I think this is something which we could make part of a specific subclass but not for everybody okay what’s this a psychic mastery business mastery begin you’d eleventh level your master your sonic energy allows you to push your mind beyond this normal limits as an accident action you can gain nine special side points that you can spend only on disciplines that require an action bonus action you can use all nine points one discipline this is just basically giving an extra spell slot can’t spend you know this disciplines this is very techie I’m like waiting for something shot to like make the example of so I came has to use amazingly filter on that note this is you know what’s fun about having the time I know through it for a lot of you it’s frustrating that we spend all this time between design things but it’s fun to go back and just laugh at what I really I thought this was a good idea what was my problem back then I mean it’s I look at this it’s everywhere this is just we don’t oh you know what this was doing I think this was just a hack to get around the limit on how many power points you could spend on six level and higher spells I think it smells super hacky I’m just gonna get rid of it for now until I see a reason why because it’s just gonna get caught up in your spell slots like we don’t need to like give me more spell slots oh man the mystic you’ve got nothing left so I use a lesson here I hope everyone’s taking away from this you know this is what’s good about going back in your work don’t get Precious about it right like it’s it’s got to work or it doesn’t and you know yeah exactly this is like a John a myth though right it’s just moldy consecration be so much more fun right oh that’s interesting that’s different that’s actually something which if I’ve played a wizard I’ve been frustrated a killing come straight on one thing we’re actually give you something different and academic it’s kind of funny going back and reading this I’m like ah this is why I didn’t play test like it’s a lot of reasons why I didn’t plate as well but this is a lot of it alright sonic body will you be the last one to fall let’s see or will it stand stand tall okay so sonic body here we go the last stand for this character class a 20th level lose capstone abilities that should be big your master your sonic power causes your mind to transcend the body your physical forms infuse the sonic energy you gain the following benefits I’m a sucker for class features that give you bullet point lists of cool things cuz they’re always really fun I okay you gain resistance alright like not just to non-magical to all that’s cool xx level no longer aged okay whatever that’s flavor you’re immune to disease poison image and the poison condition pretty good if you die roll the d20 on a 10 or higher you just coorporate with zero hit points instead of dying what can you fall unconscious you would instead of okay so instead of dying you fall unconscious you and your gear disappear you appear to spot every choice one d3 late days later on the well that’s cool on the plane of existence I’m gonna give myself a little like good job that’s kind of funky right this is actually kind of a funny ability because you could imagine points where it’s like oh crap we’re we’re the scion like you know if things are going really bad for you see the and you don’t actually die you just cooperate that’s pretty kind of fun so yeah okay so I think yeah it sounds like yeah I think your Force Coast thing was going here so I think I’m gonna keep this I think this is a fun little capstone ability makes your really hard to kill which I think makes it it feels like it’s it’s talking about Sonics and you’re sort of blending and forming in the oh wait the Spyro Hawk wants me to keep it so I have to cut it now I’m just getting science my rock megaphone yet the yeah it’s it’s it’s not too hard to resurrect but what this does is it it this might be something you never use but it’s just something cool that no you have in your character sheet that it’s come you know you have this funky little ability that no one else gets and that’s such a fun thing about character classes if you’re building any game of character classes what’s the really fun thing that you can give to a player that they can’t get anywhere else that is what defines our character class and the best expression you can do is when that’s tied to the story identity so you’re like hey I’m a knight and here’s what Knights do and it that feels like something that Knights would do and then do something cool if we decide as we do the orders that we need a capstone ability for the orders I think this one could stand and I could just give you another like an order ability that slots in here to give you some specific flavor but yeah yeah tacky and real again it’s kind of a psychic glitch thing it’s kind of like this kind of feel right you’re very hard to destroy permanently so yeah put exactly pulling in obi-wan of Erath oh okay so it was not all grim destruction a few things did survive so I’m just gonna go through delete these don’t worry I have the text elsewhere in case we need to go back yeah we’re doing a lot of stuff it is good that we’re deleting all this stuff to you I mean this is the class had some issues so to say oh it’s perfect would be really goofy because it’s kind of dumb to say class has issues but it’s perfect make no sense alright so let’s take a look now at our orders and so what I want to do is see what what do we need to fit inside of them in order to really express them because then that will give us a sense of how many of these levels should be taken up with order features versus core class features I think you know obviously telepathy being something that everyone gets makes sense I think a feature coming in second level is probably too soon like you’re getting a feature order and you should get one at first like when you choose the the subclass you should get something from it not just the me of essentially you make the first choice when you make your choice when it makes sense for to come in so the the oh I shared DVI we it’s an excuse to use the word noosphere just like we’re like it’s it makes you sound smart when you use that word oh yeah so you emerged you could do something we flav you can see dude like become something like you know more like this like you know you are really embedded in it but I’ll get to that later but I think that’s an interesting idea I’ll store it away so it’s not just simply you disappear maybe in that time you disappeared you are pure psychic being and there’s like restrictions on what you can do but you can do things the you kind of like obi-wan you know use the Force Luke great that kind of thing the I always think it’s fun to of a classes dead the I’m sorry class of a character dies like to give the player of things they can still do that’s always fun without it being cheesy the okay so we talked about last time and now you want to talk about deleting I’m actually gonna just go through again this is the text I still have this text elsewhere so I can just kind of delete a lot of this stuff so avatar we said we’re likely going to move over to the bard so I’ll just save that for later and use that to build a the ardent under the bard order be awakened is our sort of mind reader so I think I want to keep I’m gonna keep that one wanna see what we can get out of it order the immortal I think this is this is probably end up going under the Barbarian so I’m trying to cut it for now you might find things over there elsewhere that work well you know I have my notes in two things so we had Nomad we want to keep because that’s one of those we talked about keeping some life we don’t need to keep around anymore because that is now a monk that this one weighed upon to Keeble Jen can go away because we’re going to put our caneta cyst under the wizard and there we go so let’s take a look then now we also know we want to throw in the constructor or the shaper and a metamorph and those will be the two new ones will get to the look into those first later but let’s right now check out the order they waking so this is our mind reader or our telepath and I’m not sure you know I think order we can we can just keep it around for now we might we’ll probably change the name so it’s something maybe that says more clearly telepathy but we’ll see the okay so what we want to see here are class features that make it clear this character is all about reading lines this is our RESP focus character so we’ve got you telepathy so bonus disciplines that’ll be we might want to keep this around because there’s might be something we want we might want to point to in the Sam expel us we might want to organize it by school so I just wanna keep that there as a reminder that’s something to think of awaken talent at first level you gain proficiency with two of the following skills of your choice animal handling deception insight intimidation investigation perception and persuasion ah you know I’m looking at this and I think I don’t know if I just want to give you some more skills because up here I’m giving you telepathy at this level your skill is you’re getting two skills are kind of history and so yeah I don’t think giving you extra skills this goes back to when the class is all over the place and I think these were here to just kind of give you more utility so I don’t think we need to I don’t think we need this I’ll get rid of it in fact I’m gonna at first level here’s what we’re gonna do first level you gain an enhanced version luckily that allows two-way communication and continuing communication even if line-of-sight there I think that uh would fit in pretty well Thor ESP class that you can just naturally have a superior version of telepathic communication so the I think that they come with Tomy rather than having expertise we probably give you a spell or discipline that just gives you a probably a can trip that lets you make in to check with a bonus that would then maybe be our gateway to our more advanced mind control abilities the so I think that’s a pretty that’s a pretty simple one sonic investigation starting at third level you can focus your mind remember these levels will shift you can focus your mind to read the sonic imprint left on an object if you hold an object can concentrate for ten minutes you learn some basic fact to this this to me seems like this should just be a I don’t I don’t think this should be unique to this character I think you should probably a spell because it seems like oh cuddly yeah we could even do that extended to more planning extend to more targets so you are the the other Prairie professor Eck’s yeah close make a note here I think this one’s gonna put a dash here the yeah I think this should just be a object reading psionic spell so I don’t know if this should be this needs to be unique so there is this thing that you can embed an intangible sonic sensor within the object that could be a it’s got in here to sonic surge six level we can overload your psychic focus to batter down an opponent’s defenses you can impose disadvantage and a target saving throw against a discipline or talent use the cost of using your psychic focus your psychic focus merely ends if it’s active you can’t use it until you finish a short : this is actually pretty nifty I like this one I like this ability to I can check in sort of narrow my focus in my mind to just batter down your defenses especially cuz it’s on a shorter long rest timer I kind of like that the what I like about this too is it’s got a it is a drawback so you know a lot of players might not want to use it but it’s also something which you will know when to use except I need to land this savings there on this guy I really need to know that this ability has to pay off the yeah I think we could do that so I’m just make a note up here bow will move that out and I like surge I like keeping that you know it also feels correct to me for this character to do that sort of ability I’m gonna throw this down here just I like to just keep text around later because I just think that the that feels right that I have more control over my abilities and other characters I can batterbatter through and seize control of you or make you do something alright don’t got spectral form and 40w gain the ability to become a ghostly figure of sonic energy as an action you can transform into transparent ghosty version of yourself this feels like the metamorph ability so I’m just gonna take this right out the I kind of see what I was going for but I again now that we have this feels much better doing the class with this approach the okay so that means right now we don’t have a we have a couple things to build on but not not a ton of stuff let’s go down to the Nomad real quick let’s walk through these the subclasses we have here looks like we back to this the the the psychic and the Nomad and let’s see we’ve got then that’ll start to give us a sense of like how much space we have to fill in alright so bonus disciplines I’ll just keep it in there again this idea that we’ll probably want to organize these by schools within the sonic spell list breadth of knowledge you gain the ability to extend your knowledge when you finish a long rest you gain two proficiencies of your choice two tools two skills or one of each you can replace one or both of these selections with languages this benefit lasts until you finish a long rest so I get what I was doing here the idea of the Nomad was there Wanderers and that they could pick up abilities depending on where they needed to go but part of the kind of wonder should this be under the telepath no you know I kind of like that for the flavor though I’d like to keep this your Excel really do like that flavor that you are like this this traveler he’s there noosphere more please yeah I kinda I want to keep that in here just for now but you know here’s this other thing too I would really like to move maybe that’s just me wow that’s a question if I say that’s going to be a cantrip style spell it means anyone can take it should anyone be able to take it I don’t know yet don’t know yet we’ll see memory 1,000 steps at third level you gain the ability to use sign next week all your steps as a reaction when you’re hit by an attack you can teleport to an unoccupied space that you occupied since the start of your last turn the attack misses you once you use this feature you can’t use it again until you finish it well that’s the someone was playing overwatch from a design that’s that’s basically kind of like a tracer ability to rewind time okay I could see that the with d6 hit died you’re gonna be happy or having something that’s more than to a defensive like this the one thing I don’t like about this though is it requires me when it’s not my turn to remember where I was yeah make you consumed you’re fine Sonic focus yeah mm-hmm that’s really kind of interesting yeah I think tacky and railgun it’s hard to keep track of because you’re gonna move there’s gonna be times and you don’t move see this is what this is what really makes me not want to keep this the exactly the way it is there’ll be times when you don’t move and you want to use this new trick oh crap I need to make sure I move so what the play pattern this might encourage is just imagine using a miniatures and you’re like well I want to be able to use this cuz hit by an attack so it could be a ranged attack that I’m just trying it at the end of my turn I reason to take a step back and take a step forward or something like that so it’s just that’s a little silly but I think I think there’s something here for the nomads but again it’s like should this just be a spell right now the I don’t know you know so uh I don’t know what to do Chad help right Thea yeah I want to leave this here for now but I’m not crazy about it yet it’s a mystery to me cease up his reactions kind of like this yeah stabby row games I think whenever and anytime you can just point out a spell that does this does something so this might just be we’re getting too clever for I’m good at six level you get a superior talent teleportation we use a sign of discipline to tilt what in distance you crease that distance up to ten feet it’s fine I mean if you really like I needed that extra ten feet but this this isn’t fun right it’s like okay nine numbers get bigger the effortless journey starting at fourteen level your mind can mystically move your body once on each of your turns you can forfeit up to 30 feet of your movement to tell where the distance you forfeited you must teleport to an unoccupied space you can see okay that one’s that one’s more fun I’m actually letting you teleport but you know what here’s let’s just do this right look what should before we can actually start tearing this apart because I think it’s gonna have to be torn apart um we need to understand what this guy’s can trip style abilities are gonna be so we’re gonna take a little bit of a side tour into building what that can trip could be so here’s what I want you know what I want chat I want a quill a teleportation here’s the thing now this is gonna be a catcher but I don’t remember all the headers we’re just gonna be so hat will teleport cam sure look teleportation is really good not necessarily in the sense that of combat it does in a fight have some when it’s useful it’s super useful the bad guys have closed off the door I just teleport behind them the evil wizards getting away he loved it ate sup i teleport up next to him so it can be really good the real like a irritating thing as a DM of this ability is outside of combat you’re teleporting everywhere right my teleporter up to the window I can see i teleport across the pit oh look a trap i teleport past it yes Iker is a TV at will let’s set this okay what would at-will teleportation look like so we know we don’t want this to be something that just short-circuits any a physical barrier that he might face in the adventure right that’s something that is a little too good we know right off the bat so here’s one thing in the state off the bat you know it’s gonna be restricted verticality this might end up being too complicated but you know what you don’t know until you try right it should be shorter than walking it should replace your movement I don’t think I want you to move teleport then move some more I think you want to do this in place of moving so it’s gonna require sand you know what require concentration this is a pretty subtle thing but it’s important if I say that this is concentration yeah in ground you can see oh that’s the one yeah here’s what’s cool what’s gonna happen here is I can’t I have to I can’t have two buffs up or two talents up and do this right this is gonna pop in and displace one of them so that’s so we’re getting some now we’re kind of getting somewhere there’s some places where you don’t want to do it yeah Banff baby right exactly accuracy TV the yeah I think jazz restrictions on to say we want to put a pretty short range on it should it require an action on moon silver TV that’s something interesting should require an action you know it might I think that actually right off the bat I think I’m off the bat that starts to say like we’re really serious you want to teleport because this is our Admiral version now remember we’re going to be able to now augment this with other spells so let’s take a step back here’s what I imagine happening when I use I have as a Sion I have two concentration slots most characters only have one when I use on I can trips my column something else but I’m gonna see I can choose why half Duke’s I’m using the can’t trip I pop one of my can trips into that concentration slot and now I’m concentrating on a thing then I have spells that say you can cast a spell if you’re concentrating on this thing and here’s what happens and this is where a lot of our crazy bopping around stuff may then start coming through what is interesting about this though is if I am a if I’m the Scion I use my action to concentrate on this then I just leave it up there right I’m not you know I’m just going to use it the start of the day if I really want to from a nomad I really want to teleport a lot I’m gonna leave it there so what I think as a starting point I’m gonna say while you are this is not the final text as just prep drop concentrating on this canned trip as an action you can teleport ten feet to a position you cannot you know what I think ten feet might be enough to let you go up and down I’m just leave it in there for now the duration of the concentration game phantom diem and basically as long as you can until you take a long rest you can have that locked in distance should improve yeah that should this world probably what we can price scale this up like a note just some scales up and there you go while concentrating is an action when you teleport in this manner you can’t otherwise some stuff whatever Crawford will know how to make that make sense but the idea is I do want to look you’re just teleporting this round you’re not running up teleporting then continuing on your movement so I think that’s actually a pretty good starting point right now when we think about one thing we could say is path between you and your destination must be clear again we can we can clean that up that is you can’t teleport necessary through a window that might be too restrictive but you know I’m gonna leave that outside rather play test without it and then make have angry dm’s tell me the abilities was too good then have players just not use it because we you don’t want is that players just you know they focus on it they just never actually use the core thing so no you don’t on North and Kyle I believe the AO opportunity attack rule specify teleportation doesn’t work but um what we’ll figure that we do a more detailed pass the so yeah okay that’s ever us elects designed to be cross we will fix this there is some truth to that so but I think there’s something here like I think we have some language so Chad do you think this is broken do you think this is too good just just let’s throw that out there do you think this that this is too good coca-cola the idea is that this is just to make it more restrictive so you feel like I’m giving up something when I’m teleporting because this is really useful but it’s not something that I can just use to bounce around too much I think it gets too flexible I think it’s yeah actually I think it’s good a grumble first I think it’s actually good that beginning me some people gets too costly because I think it’s this is one where ya underpowered no-nos the reason that bad no no it’s fine okay not broken but not great okay it doesn’t have to be yeah using a Reuben action is a lot I just well you know what we could say you can’t move here what’s I’ll be nice you can’t move after till the flavor here could just be you’re a little disoriented when you come out so I can move up and teleport that I’m done you know what that’s actually right now grumble first Jukes I think one of the things we want to avoid this is supposed to be a mobile class we don’t want you to feel like you’re immobile you know that you’re worried too much about that so I think that’s really good yeah it’s really good outside of combat really bad inside combat XJ DoDEA and I think that’s what I’d be aiming for the yeah not range of Derek you have the concentrations you can’t miss or spam it I mean you can keep using this thing but you can’t use other things the yes I think saying the you know you can teleport but then you can’t keep moving I kind of like that because as a player you just know I’m gonna go to that space so that my turns going to end and I think that’s okay I think that’s a nice restriction on this so let’s keep it there so now that we have that in place the you know obviously will probably give you that can’t ship for free I do like this idea of keeping the flavor of the Nomad is being like hey they know stuff they can move through the noosphere [Music] and that you get some some flexibility here I kind of you know what I’m gonna I kind of want all the Saiyans to have this because you know what we’re missing we don’t have a lot in the core class and the idea of an intelligence based class that’s got that flexibility yeah I’m gonna move this unless I see Chad explode infuriating move this the core class cuz the core class needs stuff Stiga beefy Claire um if you fall out speak can you teleport the last second to be fine it’s a real question I think rules is written yeah cuz he would the fall would end the physics might disagree don’t try teleporting at home like I would not if you having a little teleport I would not try using that I believe you will you will maintain your momentum wherever you teleport and go and hit the ground pretty hard but in D&D it’s fine I do that I like the idea that I have to include a I felt compelled to warn you that a case you actually can teleport like don’t necessarily believe what I’m telling you okay so you know I want breadth of knowledge too because you know the scion class is pretty thin and I think that’s a really good and fun second level of feature and Chad has not rose up in Revolt we’re all traces now yes we all should be physics in magic never worked together they might be in at odds the I don’t see a riot in chat so I think I’m gonna keep this just found our second level second level feature that feels psionic to me that because you’re smart character intelligence is gonna be your key stat and I like that idea that it’s thing yeah the warlock link from destiny it’s a little bit yeah I think a little bit of a feel like that we want Flynn Nomad and it’s actually it’s funny cuz I remember right in destiny they did they think they through her cool down on the after you teleported you couldn’t immediately attack especially for PvP the I was are I never had the reflexes to actually use that ability to do anything other than dunk into walls when I was trying to escape from getting murdered by the players the okay so now here’s something kind of fun here okay let’s do this with memory a 1000 steps the what if instead of this beam is kind of techy I get missed by an attack ability which I think I think this could just be a spell or you know what actually we could do is we don’t need to say your rewinding it took memory 1,000 steps gain abilities assign extra color steps as reaction you’re hit by an attack you can teleport or knocking I’m occupied space that weakens this is it we’ll just do this oh wait cool down this doesn’t have to rewind boom done so I think that rather than have the restriction I like the idea that hell yeah you could it’s flavorful but it’s just I get why this is trying to be defensive I like the idea of a defensive teleport that just rests on top of everything else I don’t think I don’t want him in here’s actually here’s why I don’t necessarily want to make this spell what do I want I get a spell yeah whatever we’ll get to that one in a second let’s do this real quick because I’m being fool and what I really should be doing is going to our spells going the door spell list everyone feel free to yell at me I don’t want to show what I want to do is find every spell that uses the word teleport so though food do I have oh let’s see if this is they’re not as no oops I misspelled it teleportation boom I should have done this to the start but I didn’t because alright so let’s see what we got here what spells to be up sitting around out here so here’s Missy step it’s a bonus action tell put up so here’s what we’re establishing right here the core game your first teleport comes in at second level and is a bonus action teller 30 feet this is what’s nice about having spells you know and charging you for a resource I can make this available more liberally so I look at this compared to our canned trip and for the Nomad as a whole I feel pretty good that if you’re gonna take this and transform it to a zero level catch-up spell yeah we’re going from bonus action to an action and we’re reducing the range by a third and requiring concentration and then let’s see thunder step I believe that sisty teleport and do some yeah you teleport away you teleport an occupied space maybe I could disappear a boom within the the place you left that’s basically your like you know partying shot to people like oh hey see ya suckas and you someday man just so okay that’s a good word spell not to sir something it’s a good complement into our fourth level this is an action the one nice thing about dimension door is you can tell what places you can’t see so you’re at the exact the spot desired it can be a place you can see or when you can visualize or one you just described so you can bring long objects as long as their weight doesn’t exceed what you can carry you can also bring along one willing creature so that’s another stake in the ground we can put it forth level and then the rest of them hype so make sure is there anything here that’s like see bonus action 60 feet you can keep bonus action oh that’s actually one thing to keep in mind the concentration spell and keep okay so that’s fine the yeah okay the nurse detail operations are Larkin gate okay so I think what we’ve done there is not too far out of the way and then our best comp for an ability that is cancels the attack is shield which is the first of all spell so but this one is combining shield with some additional things so gonna rewind a second we already have shield in the game and here’s a secret for you guys to know shield is one of it’s probably the spell in the game that is the most broken in the sense of for a first level slot canceling out an attack is really really really good is the only spell when we look at balancing creatures if we give a creature a shield it actually does it could potentially alter the challenge writing more than the damage rating of a for a simple spell so the so what if we I think I’m okay is giving you as a reaction to turn it attack into a mess once push or short or long rest should this come in at third level I don’t think so cuz we already have third level that’s where we’re getting spells but I think putting one of these in at fourth or sixth would be good if we sent six I’m gonna put it in at six cuz that’s just where we have the connect like a clear gap but we never know I might change so that’s pretty so that that works out fine increasing you distance by ten feet I’m just I don’t care just not how many what percentage of players do you think will actually remember to use this ability right Oh gramma will sport maybe fourth yeah it’ll be still be 64th if we find more core features we’ll put it forth the but there is an ability score increase there the yeah this doesn’t like yeah that’s like I think it happy a huge number – uh yeah spy rock it’s just not enough to be noticeable I’m gonna get rid of this I think if I want to do something that does alter your teleportation I have a thought let me see what does 14th probably want to put something in at ninth and what I’m thinking of doing is are charged Eric mentioned something about an AC bonus here’s what I’m gonna do here I think this idea that you are moving between the planes and can I’m gonna be really lazy and just copy and paste my formatting is I just typing it like a reasonable rational human being so spectral teleportation and what I’m gonna do say is when you teleport until the start of your next turn you get damage resistance the we’re gonna drop this one a tenth so this is gonna really encourage you to teleport as often as you can time to push I don’t you know the nomads maybe that will be at 14th level we’ll see but a tenth level okay this is gonna be pseudocode you gain resistance to weapon I’m gonna say weapon attacks because I imagine physical stuff rather than energy cuz I don’t need just you’re always taking half damage yeah so basically yeah a shadow kind of feel so you can Bruce weapon attacks till the start of your next turn there we go so I like that because I think it’s something you’re gonna remember because it’s a big effect it is a little narrow skins weapon users match weapon attacks yeah the combo – I would do that I would say you know magic alone because it is limited and since this is a d6 hid die class you’re probably happy if people are making attacks against you I would allow it to go against both yep after teleporting oh it’s gonna turn after you teleport Yeah right you just get resistance to the end of your next turn always the start of your next turn it’s like okay that’s that’s useful let’s take a pitch and then see emili´s journey you starting at 14th level your mind can mystically move your body once on each of your turns you can forfeit to 30 feet – I don’t we don’t need this because we are giving you a can trip that’s letting you teleport so at fourteenth level let’s see we got so I think okay so that makes sense if we do that there we might want to do something at 18th in fact I think I want to say we do want something 18th the orders might be getting a bit too big but I think we can fill both of these I do like the idea of doing some sort of time manipulation Idaho time travel in games is really difficult because we don’t you know we don’t want to miss our shackle people into doing something that they okay now everyone has to do this stuff or send you back in time but what I think we could do is stack so in 4th level you can travel through blows time so what I wanted to do is basically you teleport you can also choose to move ahead in time yeah maybe something to play with initiative a simple thing yeah China gonna go for in time and I think yeah okay yeah that’s yeah that’s easier right because you’re not trying to change things back but I think what I think wise means you when you tell what you can choose to skip forward in time and what I think I want and actually no this might be our 18th availability and what I’m just gonna throw in is just like mechanically what this will do you are isolated for one round to do what you want so the idea is you step forward in time it’s almost like a time stop thing you take a round off and that’s xx up with dark tomato Derek at 25 you can change the game we’re playing to a previous edition of deep D now my that was just totally playing in my armor class being really low is actually helping me if I go back far enough but that is like some sort of like time stopped ability that I can teleport through time I get around to do whatever I want then I pop out the other side this would obviously be a long rest the you know I think I actually would make this 14th level and then say second use or longer use kind of if you yeah well I think I would want to put in a cool-down because I think the what I think you’re going to do is use this to take a round off to either reach each swap out what you’ve got prepared what you’re concentrating on the and then or throw healing yourself and then popping in yeah I think yeah I think that makes it pop back of the initiative and you know I think we could do is this is we could say you know off or take an extra restrictive action what I mean by this is this let’s say it’s around five of the fight and realize it’s a big epic battle I need to take it take it round off I could use this to essentially fold in this extra action to my turn so I take my turn I take two actions one of which is gonna be like an I throw spell or something like that then I travel through time and pop out an initiative count 20 on the next turn the next round or I could say I want to go at the end so I’m essentially missing a few things I’m letting a few monsters go they’re gonna waste their attacks so yeah I think that’s fun and I think the nice thing is taking a page in the giant soul one of the things that Jeremy did that I really like when we were he was doing the final design on it was let you stack if you remember at 14th level you can go size large an 18th level you get a second use but you can stack them I really like that mechanic because it lets you go look I want to alpha strike so I think when we give you that that second use of Tim portal step you can use it and then you can burn both of them to essentially step out of time even further and get an additional actions worth of stuff to do so yeah the I think that’s fun so then and then pop back the initiative so there we go all right well we’re at 1:59 so wow that was a little over I feel pretty good about the Nomad I think we’re getting a good sense that this is gonna be a class it’s very much driven by the sub class in terms of what you’re getting but I love look look chat this is a beautiful very beautiful wizardly looking class feature order right out in front of us boom this is pretty so ok so I think we made some good progress here so next week we’ll delve into the other subclasses and see what we come up with and yeah thanks a lot everyone this was really fun and I’m feeling pretty confident what we’re doing here so I will see you all next week we’ll continue work on this until then keep gaming and we’ll see you then goodbye [Music]

The Mystic Class – The Mike Mearls Happy Fun Hour!

June 8, 2018Zoltar Leave a comment

hey everyone and welcome back to the
micros happy fun hour I’m your host Mike
Murrells franchise creative director for
Dungeons & Dragons I and if maybe
perhaps and we watched the stream of
many I is the last you saw of me on this
stream I was having my three shadow
dragons and my minions of a I guess I
won’t try to beat around the bush of
Vecna who is lurking out in the negative
Material Plane fell to the combined
efforts of four mighty 18th all
characters I hope you tune in if you
haven’t if you didn’t turn it in I check
out the videos we have here on twitch.tv
slash D and E to catch up on all the
action I was but one of many Dungeon
Master’s who ran sessions over the
weekend I had a great time I hope if you
had a chance to check to check it out
and tune in that you had fun and so now
I’m kind of riding my post stream of
many eyes hi to roll on in to some more
design work here on psionics and if
you’re looking I mean obviously the
screens up
I see behind my big blocky head we have
the mystic clasp and a blank Word
document well not quite blank it’s blank
say for two words mystic notes so that
might give you a hint as to what we’re
gonna talk about here today chat we’re
actually to talk about the fighter know
the and we’re gonna talk some more about
say onyx hey so hey it’s good to be back
it’s good to be back in the chat you
know tired of the stream was Ord I
actually I flew back yesterday so I had
a chance to get a good night’s sleep it
turns out don’t sleep very well in
hotels but I sleep pretty well when I’m
at home and our Sheltie puppy is jumping
on my head
chewing on my ear so some reason that
was very relaxing I slept very well the
welcome to any new viewers I hope you
have fun essentially our goal with this
stream is for me to show you live the
creation of essentially the first draft
of new stuff for dd5 right now we’re
doing lots of subclasses we’re doing
psionics right now and what we’re gonna
do today is I’m gonna walk through the
mystic character class
I’ll provide a recap of what we done
with sine X so far surfer Nass context
if you’re new viewer not gonna make it
go back and watch all the videos but
what I want to do today is given what
we’ve done so far let’s take a look at
what the state of the mystic last year
at the end of 2017
what we had and what might change as we
look at the subclasses we’ve built so
the so yeah OMI is my audio coming
through I see doom Drake I’m very quiet
guys if you shot if you’re getting
issues we did have we’re running late
because we’re having some issues with
the mic not this mic the mic that
captures the noise I am the mic that
makes the noise at least on this stream
so anyone else having issues with some
audio just chime in on chat Jeremy here
is keeping an eye on things and we’ll
make sure that we’ve got some looks like
okay so may just be my projection – I
did kind of the Southern California very
dry climate now we’re getting some folks
hearing that it’s a little bit quiet so
I will try to project Oh Jeremy’s
getting up this is getting serious now
so people don’t just lose our audio but
I’ll just keep talking so we have a good
testing the smidge quieter than usual
it’s a little quiet how’s it going now
anyone dmn chime in is a spat tk-421 of
you guys is it getting better I want to
see a couple folks who are still a few
things coming in and I’m quiet this
would be now the first hour it’s a bit
quiet for max volume yeah it does looks
like it’s a bit muffled oh okay much
better now it sounds so it sounds like
everyone sitting getting better now
louder better much better better I think
we’re good alright yes better and
clearer heart rate is Derek cuz I’m
gonna turn it down a bit
alright here we go alright you got if
anyone out there in chat just let me
know if my voice starts to tail off
written like that just let us know like
I said we do kind of coming in we’re a
little bit late cuz I the heroes that
support this stream this week it’s
Jeremy well making sure we get getting
everything going and rolling fine
alright so even loud loud even which is
appropriate come in laude knock loud
noxious so
okay excellent all right so I’ll keep an
eye on shad as we go like I usually do
but again just in case any technical
issues just sound off we’ll see what we
can do to fix them up all right
so let’s recap what we’ve done so far
first of all we’ve had a number of
subclasses we’ve built for existing
character classes that are going to use
psionics Oh
share DVI did Scion beat mystic yes it
did so I think it pains me I’m gonna
tell you Chad it pains me I think we’re
gonna call the class to Sion in my
defense I know initially mystic was not
the most popular choice that’s what they
were gonna call the sanic class back in
the 70s but each generation of gamers
gets the D&D that they need so we’ll
pivot to Sion no problem this is kind of
a case to where as a designer and my and
where I’m sitting I can’t really get
attached to names you know we put things
out there often will like the mystic is
a good example of we could have called
it Sion up front we knew that would have
gone over well sometimes it’s best to
test the change even if you’re not
confident in it just because in this
case since we’re play testing it gives
us the chance to see well how would
people react so anyways yeah we’re gonna
call this class the Sion because that’s
what everyone wants and why not do it
that way right make everybody happy
the now it doesn’t mean the mystic can’t
come up somewhere else as a subclass or
is a name but I think one of the pieces
of feedback I got from people was mystic
sound didn’t quite sound like the flavor
of this class and that’s the big thing I
want to talk about today what is the
flavor of this class we’ve walked
through so far and I’m gonna types I
just like typing as I talk someone at
the stream remarked was kind of like Bob
Ross it was soothing as I’m gonna try to
like not get too high energy today but
it also I find as is my type while I’m
going not only do the notes help me but
it is kind of soothing for me Keith keep
the mind focused so we’ve got the
psychic warrior who’s our fighter
psionic fighter we have the soul knife
who’s our psychic monk and we had the oh
now I’m totally blanking we had the the
name of the psionic Wizard was someone
from someone from chat named this class
and I’m forgetting the Mentalist
Mentalist
so essentially we’ve got our classic
telepath we’ve got our sort of you know
an ecologist the psychic martial artist
and we’ve got our psychic bruiser
I think these archetypes are captured
pretty well so far
obviously pending playtesting but I feel
like the the concept behind them fits in
well and so that this is something where
I don’t necessarily feel like we’re
gonna revisit it the specific
implementation might shift but I think
we’re starting to kind of carve out
where these things fit good parallel for
you is the this idea of imagine if we
were inventing D&D from scratch and we
said hey who uses magic right and we had
divine magic in arcane magic and we’re
starting to hold the cleric can heal and
the Wizards more about blasting and the
oh well go on like what about the
warrior mage how do we want to handle
that well that’s maybe you know the
eldritch Knight and the fighter it’s
it’s kind of the process we’re going
through here right now we’re asking
ourselves where do these where these
concepts best served now I’m gonna give
you a little bit of a a forward-looking
thing we you know kind of see where I
think we might go with with subclasses
we talk about a warlock having like a
pact of the missile called the aberrant
just relax by the words but this could
be a warlock has a pact with say like a
AB Aleph or an elder brain so now the
interesting thing about this is I don’t
think conceptually this warlock is
necessarily has a super clear place like
for instance the psychic warrior
imagines we have a lot of abilities that
augment their physical prowess just like
in the wizard spell list we have spells
like shield that are useful for a mage
but also really great for a frontline
warrior so I’m not saying we’re breaking
up lists of spells it’s more saying what
subclass what subclasses within the Sion
so I really need to worry about
supporting so I don’t think the warlocks
poaching any of those within the rogue
I’d like to do there was a class in 3rd
edition called the lurk
and that the kind of way I’ve been
thinking about that character is the
sort of psionic psionic invisibility
this is the character who essentially
erases evidence that they’re around
right their invisibility is more you
don’t perceive them in the sense that
they’re messing with your mental
processes I would imagine this will
probably also lend itself to like I’ve
taken something and you don’t know it’s
gone I open a door and you think it’s
still closed things like that so that’s
kind of where I see that coming in that
sort of information hacking it’s another
thing I kind of thought about it I mean
that’s moving far more science fiction
but it’s that’s kind of the concept the
character who goes in and comes out
without without your knowing and then
looking at the other classes for
barbarian and bard
and like I don’t know if we need sanic
subclasses there there are ones we can
do but the the approach being I don’t
think that they’re gonna intrude on the
course I on class druid so is very same
situation since in such a nature focused
class as with the cleric focused on the
divine I don’t think we necessarily need
that crossover if it’s there it might be
some sort of sonic theme domain for the
cleric it may be aberration theme for
the druid but I don’t think that’s
necessarily taking conceptual space in
the Sion we think of the rest of the
classes the sorcerer and I think the
sorcerer is in a space similar to the
warlock
it’ll probably patterned after something
existing in D&D like aberrations for
instant it would probably more of a look
at the warlock and sorcerer how can they
express that differently and so I think
looking at the classes this is these are
probably the ones so I’m actually gonna
erase warlock not that we’re not gonna
do this but I think what I want to do is
of these four I think these are covering
concepts that I don’t need to cover
directly within the Sion
so yeah in same failure automated air
effect the Ranger a pallid I think it’s
a similar thing if we were to do
something like this it may either be
more response to the flavor around
soundex
or would be taking that existing
character class and finding a way to
express it sonically rather than saying
get think of the eldritch night versus
the wizard we had a long discussion of
should the
warrior mage and the players handbook be
a fighter subclass or a wizard subclass
if you own the Sword Coast adventures
guide you see what the wizard would look
like if you did take that path of the
warrior mage as a wizard subclass with
the Blade Dancer but we felt that was
very realm specific so we’re okay
putting it there we felt the most direct
path for a new player would be llama
warrior first who uses spells also
because if you look at the blade dancers
class features they are require a little
bit more of an advanced sort of grasp of
mechanics like how to make these things
work together where the eldritch night
it’s pretty straightforward you play as
a fighter for your first couple levels
then you pick up a couple of spells and
then you’re going from there
conceptually it’s pretty straight
forward rather than they think of the
resource management when do I use my
blade dance what am I in the front line
what am i in the back how do I manage my
spell list typically mechanical options
that require more of that meta thinking
we see as being the next step beyond the
players handbook the wizard and the sort
of classic I’m the kind of glass cannon
II spell caster
that’s about as techy as we want to get
the players handbook all right so the oh
uh LT virus no sign of healing at all
well no we’ll probably see some flavor
started killing and that’s what actually
a great question – oh it’s blade song
not blade dance did I get it completely
wrong see that’s why I’m the creative
director because now the directive is
please everyone pull out your copies of
sword custom you know I’m horrible with
names
see that’s why changing mystic design
doesn’t bother me because I don’t
remember any way so the but yeah so we
added a question about sonic healing so
what we’re gonna do today and next 40 or
so minutes on a walk through the
existing mystic character class and
we’re gonna we’re not I’m not saying
we’re redesigning the class we’re kind
of redesigning the class oh I think
we’ll probably end up keeping a lot of
this but what I want to do is is touch
on something that C is very important to
tabletop role-playing game design in
specific and role-playing game design in
general
and that’s when you think about it when
you’re designing a role-playing game
there are two main tasks you have in
front of you and I’ll zero in on
tabletop role-playing the first thing
you need to do is determine who are the
players going to portray what are your
archetypes in our game in our world who
is it that what are the roles who take
on and there’s a lot behind that
question this is not a question okay
what’s just this thing right I mean
you’re that’s may see your world
building but it gives direction to it it
makes you think about who do I want to
portray and ideally you’re going to
create those roles in a way that people
who are think about playing your game
would think wow I want to portray that
now you might have a very like Dungeons
& Dragons high adventure you know I’m
gonna go to dungeons battle monsters
okay great I want to be a warrior I want
to be like and you might pull in
characters from movies and think oh my
character to be like I want to be the
plain elf like Legolas I want to play
out like a powerful wizard man be cool
and a thorough volts of energy and just
you know things like that I want to play
the cunning road you know and so when
you come up with those those arc types
you’re essentially deciding this is what
I need to design for my players so that
they can go through pick these things
out and portray them that even applies
to much more sort of if you’re gonna
make a much more sane dramatic game I
call my game doesn’t have violence it’s
all about portraying the corruption of
you know the organized crime the 1950s
you’d still think okay I want to play
the undercover cop or I want to play the
you know the hitman or I want to play
the the mastermind or I’m gonna play the
criminal lawyer you know things like
that you’d still think of it that way
and that’s how I would approach it now
keep in mind that’s my approach
everyone’s approach is gonna vary but
that’s how I sort of my creative voice
flows I like to think of that so what
we’re gonna do here is walk through our
mystic impact answer that question if I
want to play a site-to-site on not
mystic if I’m gonna make a sign a
character who do I want to portray and
it’s essentially with these these
subclasses have shown us all what here’s
here’s roles you that you can portray
you can be the big bruiser tough guy you
can be the martial artist
can be the classic telepathic you know
Professor X character and then what the
road we got this kind of criminal
mastermind
you know just disappearing into the
firmament so what I want to do first
taking here at the draft of the mystic
and zoom back is we’re actually gonna go
to the subclasses first because this
really this is a stage we already have
our classes designed I’m not going to
design a bunch of new ones
okay what about the immortal is a barbed
subclass that actually might be
something to as we go through these we
might end up finding homes for some of
these if we think we want to keep them
but what we’ll talk about that
so the orders are the the subclasses
here the and Daedalus wing how is it
different that’s really something that’s
important here because that’s going to
tell us what we need to get to do here
is we look at these these subclasses if
we let’s say the order the avatar is up
on the screen so I’ll just dive into
that one if we look at this and say yeah
we think this is a character people want
to play now here’s the important thing
ideally your target is people who
haven’t they’re not familiar with the
concept of psionics yet there’s gonna
look at this as a piece of art and a
page and read the description and think
wow i really want to play that person
it’s really helpful if you’re pulling in
examples from pop culture characters
they already know but since this is an
expansion to an existing game we already
have our players handbook out there it’s
not as important if we’re making a game
from scratch you know going back to the
organized-crime game i talked about
where it’s oh I want to play the the
undercover you know the informant right
I’m coming I don’t know your game I just
know the genre I know the story I’m
thinking of the characters I want to
play we’re going a little bit deeper
here because Dungeons & Dragons has
already captured a lot of those sort of
knee-jerk responses you play a fantasy
adventure game kind of like World of
Warcraft Lord of the Rings or Conan the
Barbarian who don’t to play right and
you’re gonna say Archer I wanna be a
warrior right I want to be we’ve already
got those covered so we can be a little
more esoteric with these the important
thing is that we have a clear identity
for all of them
quick question from aids Apia how do I
feel the disaster Baron is coming along
the I’m glad you liked it it’s a little
bit on the back burner for getting it
finished
because I’m really focused right now I’m
getting this the sonics thing is
sprawled out a bit more
we do have almost everything though in
the queue to come out as an on earth
Turkana the scheduling the one thing to
keep in mind we since we do do use an
Arthur canna to play test things for
upcoming products there is a little bit
of a traffic jam there everything is
eventually going to show up in you a
unless in chat we just saw hey this
wasn’t working at all
which I don’t think is the case for
anything we worked on I think everything
that just didn’t work out we revised and
took a different path but so it’s just a
matter of sequencing and when stuff
shows up but I’ve been pretty happy with
the design we’ve done for almost
everything so far so I think it’s all of
its in us in the space now where it’s
ready to go to a UA it’s to matter of
traffic because well you guys don’t know
the schedule I know the schedule and I
know it’s coming up so it’s a little bit
crowded right now but everything will
eventually make its way out there I’m
also considering the Giants or sure
speed rules I love I was actually I’m
super excited about the kid that went
out there I’m thinking about maybe for
extra life in the spirit of being sort
of I’d like to call it enlightened
laziness saving myself time but then
doing something useful and maybe tying
some of these things to to extra life
maybe putting together a PDF source up
on DMS guild and like for a nominal
donation letting people grab an edited
version of some of the stuff I’ve done
I’m not sure yet if I’d want to do that
you know here’s the thing I chat feel
free to sound off how you guys feel
about this but this is my kind of
reaction to it I didn’t want to do that
with Sonics I know that could be a
really juicy thing I think soundex is
big enough but I just want to make it
freely available I think that it’d be
kind of fun to do a sort of donation
thing for other material but also just
if you think that the entire thing like
you know just let me know how you feel
you throw in chat I’ll keep an eye on it
anyhow probably ask on Twitter too later
I want to make sure that what we do for
extra life I know last year for instance
we auctioned off a personalized subclass
for everyone now which the everyone I’ve
heard from so far has agreed that those
subclasses will be released to the
general public so I might do those with
extra life too we’ll see I just don’t
want people to feel like Oh sound ex
we’re doing this together
on stream I don’t want people to feel
like on now have to pay make a donation
even though it’s a donation I don’t I
don’t want to take it you know I don’t
force anyone you know to get access to
things where they kind of feel it’s more
in the community space so so now that
I’ve walked it through maybe I’ll just
do it with the the four subclasses from
last year but the yeah and I think I
hadn’t found I think that’s kind of an
ideas we’d really want to get these as
wide exposure as possible that’s always
that’s something I struggled with last
year and that’s why I made the four
subclasses just for one person you know
one before them each one person was that
the we weren’t putting people in the
position of what we need to play test
this so I paid money for something but
now it’s going to play test so I didn’t
have to pay money yeah it’s something a
little bit tricky I don’t want to go to
the extent of writing a full adventure
because that takes a lot of energy and
if you watched my for instance the the
tanks game on Sunday I had like a page
of notes for that I am very much a
middle is DM so I could run into bench
everything turn it into an actual
adventure that you guys could use that
take a lot of work so I want to make
sure anyways oh yes so datalist we are
getting distracted so come on let’s
buckle down okay so what we’re gonna do
first is let’s take a look at existing
Scion special subclasses let’s take a
look at the Avatar so what I want what I
like to do when I think of this is I
write down the Avatar I think myself who
is this person right without looking at
the text this is somebody who embodies
virtues or beliefs inspires others is
the and I really think was psionically
it’s the walking manifestation of
emotion that’s kind of how I think of it
the glad people enjoyed the game I had
awesome players they made it so easy for
me I literally told them beforehand like
you know the first half hours is gonna
be you guys being you guys don’t you
know I’m not I’m not there to get in the
way it’s a different approach to DMing
than maybe for a home game but
especially we have such talented people
I mean I’ll say I don’t know if people
were expecting from Ron’s paladin I
think he was probably the least
well-known of those characters but when
when I heard about his character and
that’s character he plays in Joe’s
campaign this is gonna be easy
and then the Big Show was super he’s oh
he’s a hardcore gamer we had a nice
conversation but building his character
and he on phone about tweaks before and
he was really excited and so I was so
much fun
the it’s fun to be in front of an
audience I gotta admit the okay so let’s
take a look with the avatar
now here’s one thing here knows that our
avatar is Mashable for elements that’s
terminator 455 that’s correct I never
watch that show I need to I’m waiting
against my daughter’s old an apple-pie
watch together so okay so this is
something which now here’s one thing
gonna throw in here when I think of this
this might actually be a bard subclass
that’s one thing I threw out there
because we talked about bards who talk
about inspiring bards are all about you
know bringing out emotion in others so
this might be something which we want to
throw out there as a bard subclass
rather than necessarily nesting it
within the sion now quick side note as
part of what we’re doing here one of the
big flaws I felt with the what was
called the mystic was it was trying to
do too much and it meant that the core
of the character class was all over the
place so the oh and uh
Mirek the Arctic might actually just be
the avatar and maybe we’ll change the
name up what yeah so that in there that
was that was of the fourth edition
character class so what I want to do is
go through and find out which of these
subclasses I can only express within a
new character class I’m sure there’s
others other ones that we have not
accounted for might might float to the
surface and I’ve already thinking of a
few it sounds like it should be named
Bastion I don’t know the Bastion is a
can transform into a turret so that’s
next
overwatch reference for anyone out there
I had opportunity to go to the overwatch
League Denham Elia but just was too busy
too much too much stuff going on next
time I’m down there I do want to check
it out though I do i do love eSports I’m
a big sports fan so naturally alright or
to be awakened this is the character
that I think the The Mentalist has sort
of taken over the awakened is all about
you know bending minds using sanic
attacks so I’m gonna write this down but
I think pretty quickly I would really
intend that The Mentalist picks this up
and here’s why
when I picture there’s a reason why
in x-men professor axe is depicted you
know classically I have not follow
comics in a while but he’s depicted as
hey he’s this incredibly powerful
psychic figure but he’s not physically
he’s not meant to be imposing and I
think when this was a great example of
something where game wise this character
felt like they wanted to have light
armor or no armor few weapons a d6 hit
died and putting it in this class that
was kind of built on a cleric style
chassis was really working against it so
I think that what I would like to do is
just sort of say look let’s let’s put
the awakened over to the mental let’s
not try to follow up on this one the so
then let’s go out to our next one order
be immortal and this is another one
where this is all about using sonic
energy – oops – sustain your your
physical form and I think someone in
chat throughout that maybe this could be
a barbarian I could actually see that a
barbarian that the rage is like some
sort of is a psionic state I could see
that I could also see the psychic
warrior picking some of this stuff up
the that really the mastery of the
physical form i thinkin this is another
one where I wanted the immortal I check
check on chat Titan look at this right
bonus disciplines immortal durability
right starting at a first level your hit
point maximum increases by one per
mystic level this is the fifth edition
designer talk for I really wish I could
give you a bigger hit die but I can’t
because this class is d8 this is one
also when you’re aren’t wearing armor
wearing a shield your base AC equals 10
plus 2x plus con this is essentially
getting at the the aesthetic sort of
choice I was looking for here is that
typically these characters didn’t wear
armor it starts to look a bit like a
monk you know so I think if you’re
playing a soul life maybe that gets so
oldest if you’re playing a psychic
warrior and you just want to go with
light or no armor and build your
character that way or maybe the bar oh
you know what Dov this is the barbarian
so I think maybe the super durable
psychic guy I think that might be able
to go over there
the
yeah okay so I’m seeing I’m not seeing a
riot and shot yet for somebody’s okay
now come to the Nomad this is one thing
where things get a lot more interesting
so we think of the Nomad this is a
character who can bend space and maybe
even been time they’re good at using
soundex to essentially manipulate the
concept of space and time around them
not necessarily you know making like a
wall disappear per se but more I’m gonna
twist twist time in space to just move
to where the wall isn’t if that makes
sense so the our notes here they keep
their mind is a strange rarefied state
they seek out knowledge they perceive a
bizarre living with knowledge they call
the noosphere it’s getting a little
nerdy there but that’s I always want to
drop into a D&D book the so this is all
about going out gathering knowledge and
I like this this is a class who I feel
like do bards they’re masters of lore
yeah but they’re not this because these
guys are about themselves they are not
about I’m gonna also inspire others you
know it would be a poor this is a great
example of trying to say build us into
the Bard I think would be a dead end
because you’d have all these bard core
bard class traits that just wouldn’t
support this archetype so I think we
have our very clear the avatar was like
maybe but this one is very clear this is
this a scion subclass um I like the
flavor grapples you know this could be a
ranger but I think this character isn’t
necessarily walking around with a lot of
weapons also again just that flavor of
like I think the difference is the
Ranger I’ll use it here I’ll use an
example the Rangers traveling through
the forest leading the party because the
Ranger knows the terrain the nomads
might have something similar because the
Nomad is using psionics to learn about
the Train as you go using a sort of
clairvoyant style effect or tapping into
the web of knowledge around it so I
think there’s enough of a flavor
difference there that I wouldn’t want to
go Ranger I think this could be pretty
strong within this so this is basically
our knowledge of time and space this is
almost kind of like a maybe yeah almost
like they mean like Doctor Who I mean
it’s not quite there but this idea that
it’s character who knows a lot
and is using Sonic’s for knowledge and a
manipulate space and time I think that’s
I think there’s also something very
distinct we don’t really have another
character that can do that so I think
this is I think it’s a pretty good one
Solon I’ve already picked up so I’m not
gonna bother with it
I will bother in the sense we’ll make it
as a monk subclass and I gotta say
having designed this it works so much
better about subclass the wujin this is
a weird one so this was basically to get
ours our sonic blaster into place I
don’t think we necessarily need it
because if we think sanic that blaster
you know messing with the elements
this is Ono Matt is dr. Manhattan yeah a
human double-o – I like that yeah that’s
pretty cool
the I think that this isn’t necessarily
one we need anymore
because if I’m like hey I want to be a
sonic guy and I want to throw like lots
of energy around I can just play The
Mentalist and then stock up on some Evo
patient spells in addition to whatever
I’m pulling in from the Sonics bellows
so I think the wujin just goes away the
and this is okay so now you might be
thinking okay way to go Merrill’s you
had like six subclasses and you killed
them all
well Leonid demon yes a new subclass
astral constructor right this is work
that’s go in add a few new ones right
the so that’s the first one we talked
about the stream way ago way ago way
back when we first started working on
this there’s two that popped to mind
first is another other word I’m gonna
click on my right window call the
constructor this is something which I
know we get requests all the time
oops look at me using word this is our
summer this is the character I talked
about on stream a few weeks back where
they create psychic constructs and they
can view them with psionic effects the
classic one would be you know the you’re
fighting a group of works they have
their leader you create a sign a
construct it comes into being and it has
a fear of Eket a CH to it because since
it’s an act not just a you know but I
think it should have some of that ESP
mental flavor
and I might say look I’m actually gonna
reach into the mind of the orc chieftain
and pull out the thing it fears most and
that’s what I’ve created the other works
are afraid of it you’re right and it’s
fun thing about this is it’s a summons
and no one is like well was it was it
having tea like up and you know Anna
Vernis when I got pulled through now
this is purely a construct it does some
nice things world building wise it’s
just clean what’s actually going on the
I also want to have some fun with this
cuz here’s my here’s my weird flavor I
was thinking about this that new pistol
that that essentially this is you
bringing your imaginary friend to life I
thought this would be funny this is a
subclass actually had a little companion
there might be purely psionic that
you’re talking to and then you basically
then give it form it springs into being
and it starts doing stuff essentially
that’s your sort of you might have an
at-will ability to bring it into life to
do a limited set of things then use
power on it to make it do cooler things
the yeah
newbee one it looks different ever
that’s easy I think it’s exactly it if
you remember from the stream of my tanks
game that the moat the first mode of
light never looked at it they saw the
thing that was you know that they wish
for yeah I never once saw something
different right and now there’s now it’s
kind of wait I’m just just grabbing it
as like this beam of light I don’t think
I ever described the actual thing
because in theory I’d have to go around
the audience and ask everyone what would
you see so yeah so that’s one of the
first ones the other one this is a
favorite of mine cuz I always like this
and the metamorph I think we want a cool
shape changer this is the character I
think this is kind of taking the place
with the immortal a little bit and where
the immortal was kind of a warrior was
all about I’m durability think I want to
transform this a bit to being C pun this
is someone who can change themselves and
that could be new creature forms
elemental forms if you were watching the
stream so I custom-built for the Big
Show a sort of very crude but functional
the math was there didn’t look like it
cuz he’s actually did it Wow like I was
kinda he was a great example player to
Rex DMS playing out plans sealing up my
that’s what the dragons are so to come
down but closed it all up the this idea
that he could turn
if he caught it and watch the stream he
took a stone for him at one point gave
him a big booster armor class really
dropped his speed and also let him
deflect attacks that would have gone
through him if the dragons had breathed
again you probably have seen it he would
have had an ability to dampen that that
damage in the AOE because of his
defensive form you know things like a
liquid form you know stuff like that and
this is a class again when you look at
what we have out there the druid is a
shape changer but it’s a very directed
shape change you know it’s I am changing
into things that you find in nature this
is a character that I see is changing
into things and arise to the mind so I
think the I think you want to do
creature forms right but I think it’s a
lot more flexible rather than saying I’m
turning into an alligator I’m gonna
think of something dangerous and turn
into that and it’s more general this
might be an error rather than saying use
the alligator snap lock we’re giving you
statin bonuses and changes and it’s up
to the player to describe what did I
just turn into because it’s only it’s
the you know its power of mind right the
yeah turning to I one of the Big Show’s
forms as a fire form you could have gone
into the and yeah liebe Libre zero I
think some of the immortal disciplines
would go under here because I imagine
there’s probably some sort of like
durability aspect to this since I can
change my form you know you throw me
into water I can breathe water you
trying to set me on fire I can turn into
something that’s fire resistant
especially lower levels I think these
might be some of these abilities that
you could layer on all right so what
else we got yeah oh yeah
zap you know turning into an alligator
made of Nightmare fuel and tentacles
think that actually was it’s a good way
to think of it because there’s some of
these abilities is a player you might
flavor this as I turn into a creature
now I’m gonna use a fear effect like if
I’m a different ability that’s not not
one of my shape-changing ones that maybe
happened how you describe it to other
players like this is what I’m doing I’m
changing myself to make myself
terrifying than augmenting that with
sanic power to make all the orcs run
away or whatever it is I’m doing the so
let’s see a k3 one eight my to subclass
thoughts was wondering if you think it
would be interesting for something Jedi
force themed yeah I think that the the
other’s thinking is some of the other
things working with the astral plane
yeah I think the nomads I might actually
throw in something astral here because
I’m kind of thinking that might be how
they get around and also they how they
manipulate time since the astral is a
timeless realm but I think that’s the
sort of final one I want to do here so I
think what I’m gonna do is I’m gonna
throw via weight you know I’m just gonna
cut this so I think we’re good here
I think I’m gonna cut this because I
think we don’t need it and I think the
avatar I’m kind of thinking we might go
this route but I’m not gonna commit to
it yet but I think the final one is the
telekinetic character don’t know what to
call them yet but this is the character
who you know you know I think that
something could be very flexible and we
could do a lot of interesting force
effects that really it is a specific
like I’m gonna use my mind to batter
stuff around and move it and I think you
know I think this one needs a little
more consideration to give it that the
real flavor but I think telekinesis
since it’s here’s the thing this is a
great example of when you’re coming into
an existing system the telekinesis is a
very high level effect even for the the
Mentalist it was not something you got
till six level so getting this at first
level I think would be fun and I think
it would speak to a some would think hey
that’s yeah okay I want to play it on a
character oh cool oh no no I want
telekinesis right the classic Jedi you
know pushing stuff away from me this is
probably a good case where the mechanics
of the game might drive a might drive an
option we build to basically let players
you know
dip in you play a character they want to
play the right now the system just
doesn’t support now the danger here is
we can’t be too mechanical about it
we’ve got to think of a good story I’m
not gonna worry about that too much
right here right now though because I
think we can get to it the but I think
that that is something which we want to
build and it you know it kind of makes
me feel that then I think with if we
have four to start out with it’s a
pretty strong thing to build in I think
that these the Avatar style things we
might just keep the powers in the game
but not necessarily make it something
that is
a subclass so cuz I think maybe the bar
D we could do to the ardent and in swing
that over to the bar tonight I think
that would work alright so what I hope
this is kind of a shown is it mean
character class design often the first
thing you’ll do is you’ll think of the
subclasses you’ll think of who is it
that I am going to play or is that whom
no that’s not yeah who when I you know
what is the role I’m offering to players
you know when we’re doing this what are
the sort of the incentive are you like
to think it’s it’s a casting a movie you
know who but you know who is gonna make
up the cast of this game and what are
the roles that I want to play and so
starting with this starting with
subclasses is nice because it gives you
more specificity and it also starts
showing you what are the core features
of the class and then what are the
things that we need to make specific let
me throw in and come back to it Mike
it’s got a sweet died fellows asking off
to have a question was more coxed
eternal champion idea part of the
inspiration of the session yes 100%
the tower of hopes defiance was
thoroughly inspired by Moorcock and his
approach to the multiverse in the plains
and I’ve always found that I’ve always
really loved that that Michael Moorcock
stories we haven’t read them Elric the
eternal champion well worth reading
fantastic stuff Moorcock’s a great
writer another one that inspired me not
directly here but is uh Zelazny amber
series for me amber is very inspiring
when I think about the Gods my takeaway
from reading amber was that if you were
immortal and you had immortals in your
life whether it’s your family or just
people you know give it enough time
eventually those other immortals would
be both both both your best friends and
your worst enemies because you just have
such a long history that you’d have a
reason to save their lives and give your
life for them and you’d have a reason to
want to kill them you have so much water
under the bridge so yeah definitely more
cockin Zelazny or cheek huge influences
on how I think like cosmic D&D the see
what else we got here the oh cool you
met you met Moorcock that’s know I’ve
never met him I have never not had the
chance so anyway so this is kind of what
we’re looking at here so the next step
work in a character class okay River
this is just how I do it everyone you
know game designs a little bit finding
your own voice so you’re gonna probably
if you’re such if you’re starting out
whether you’re 10 or 50 or whatever
somewhere in between if you haven’t done
a lot of game design we’re doing it for
a while it took me a while to kind of
really establish how I do things I did
it for a few years many years actually
before I really felt comforting oh this
is how I like to do it it’s all about
finding your tools your toolset and what
you do so what I like to do at this
stage is then look here what we’ve got
here I’m actually gonna put this one in
italics just to remind myself that I’m
not really considering it looking at
these were to think to ourselves what
binds these characters together and very
simple stuff we have to do right now but
it’s useful to do this like what kind of
hit die do we expect this character have
so chat feel free to throw in your
thoughts but d68 d-10 maybe even d12
looking at these thinking of the Scion
and thinking of these four subclasses
where do you sit think Oh Ramona are
Bergsma the telepath we actually saw
that being thrown over by the The
Mentalist subclass of the wizard maybe
because we saw the telepath is being
probably physically less capable than
the other subclasses in this class so
I’m seeing some do you say 200 dark
elven double ODST yes there was highly
varying class for hit points would you
roll over here and said that’s like I
below 9800 one oops so I’m seeing a lot
of d8 d6 is 50 tends to d4 gold cliff
trust being I kind of class tyrant we
tried to test that with the Ranger at
one point to d85 people hated it
d6 are dat dark islands still voting for
that d hundred the so I think I’m seeing
a lot of d8 the one line of the druid d6
or d8 I think Daedalus winged miking d6
but d6 I don’t know if it’s well looking
at these subclasses you know here’s
machining I think well hmm d6 I’m seeing
actual eye people going up calling for
d6
that would be interesting because that
would well I don’t know what that would
do the would the wizard subclass we’d
figure it out later all right in a few
da it’s okay you know what I’m gonna
arbitrarily go for ya it might be too
much you actually looking at these
classes we’re not seeing anyone except
the metamorph who’s gonna get up in your
face and do damage to you and with the
metamorph we can build in those hit
points than the powers you know I want
to do this so here’s something I like to
do whenever I have a design where it’s a
though cuddly evil member cezzah
Warriors gonna be over in the fighter so
it’s kind of like having the Elder
tonight over in the fighter so we don’t
worry about the wizard itself being
tanky all right you know car games d4
let’s go back old school I’m gonna throw
in the d6 it done here’s why I think if
you’re you have a choice between
something that brings you more toward
the middle of your existing population
and something that pushes you to the
edge I think it’s good your first try to
go to the edge because that might prompt
something a bit more interesting now
here’s something that’ll definitely
happen though right if we find and I’ve
seen this happen in game design let’s do
a d6 that makes sense okay what’s your
first class feature your first class
feature is you get extra points right
like we no no let’s get rid of that you
know if we were to say we don’t want
this character that armor but then we
wanted to give them some you know funky
way to get their AC up like that’s we
will do the thing of what you just get
to add a second ability mod to your AC
that’s the easy thing to do if it starts
getting more techy the metals like just
give them armor okay let’s go let’s go
with d6 the you did dark elven do you
made a great case I was so tempted just
go on G percentage no I want to go the
opposite end right we’re gonna go crazy
with lots of hit points but that would
you know I gotta admit it’s kind of
funny to think I now kind of want to
make a character who’s one class feature
is they get like 50 hit points per level
and that’s it like no proficiencies
nothing it’s just you just you just take
up a 5 by 5 by 5 square and that’s your
entire job and it takes forever to kill
you like maybe give you super good
saving throws the
so okay so I think that’s an extra one
what about our armor we’re just talkin
armor throwing does this character get
armor did we think any any armor versus
Oh
eighty-three 180s if we do d6 that might
actually mean then we want to do a
telepath in this class well see though I
don’t want to bite off more than we can
chew at this stage well what I’d like to
do is work for the class features first
and then see and then what implications
that has for the wizard so we’ve got
okay so armor do we guys we got this
character is a default wearing armor
light nah see weighted comp there do ya
like that
the new class the roided counters huge
it’s anti pile of meat no armor light
armor plus it into the bins
okay so yeah I think we’re saying armor
and I think we could if you wanted to
give the inability it’s like int mod two
armor if we wanted to get but that that
might be a choice that actually might be
the sonic version of major armor but
we’ll get to that
okay so normal weapons do we feel like
these guys are using any like basically
we look at do they use swords or are we
just looking at bows I don’t you know
yeah shields no armor yeah no armor but
a really sweet looking at stabby burger
game that’s it gonna be stylish you’re
gonna go to the dungeon simple weapons
dagger staff cleric weapons yeah I think
he okay simple weapons no swords yeah to
have clubs short pros yeah okay so I
think we’re looking it’s it’s simple
weapons I don’t think we need to go as
far as the wizard list with it’s that
kind of funky idiosyncratic list we can
just go simple weapons so yeah weapon is
the mine scarecrow scarecrow King
thirteen thirteen exactly the mind is
the deadliest weapon alright so now
let’s take a quick look back here’s what
we ended up with a mystic and I think
this is where you’re gonna kind of see
some of the tension I felt in the class
so we had d8 hit points so we’re gonna
we might where to try dropping that down
and we can’t blight arm in simple
weapons now this here’s the thing that
when i look at these subclasses i don’t
see any reason why I need to like
address the armor and weapons issue
again that was that’s a good sign of a
class might be stretched beyond its
bounds if you’re like well but this guy
needs armor we did identify the
metamorph might me
more hitpoints but that might be a sort
of a class feature that’s giving healing
or additional polloi and so we can
figure that out but but I feel more
comfortable this because we – tell me
hey here’s our for current subclasses
one of the men the the metamorph has a
recovery feature I mean we already had
this right here as durability and
healing that’s it we’re not doing that
because mechanically we need to patch it
over we’re doing that because we think
it’s in flavor and that’s always a good
place to be if you’re doing things for
subclasses it’s in flavor as opposed to
this guy’s just get in this class is
getting its ass beat in combat we just
we need to give them better armor cuz
cuz otherwise they’re just getting you
know to go you know your flavor is not
working well with your actual story with
your actual mechanics so it’s good here
that if we had a character who could
recover and is durable but it makes
sense it’s the story driving this as
opposed to like well we’re adding it in
just to make it work for instance if you
know you can imagine a world we said
well it’s a shape change you’re getting
claws and a bite and stuff like that we
didn’t really think of durability as
being key that that would be a real
tension with d6 a new armor but I think
we’re good here even the armor part I
imagine when you change you’re gonna get
better armor I imagine that that’ll be a
feature alright good so and I think
that’s probably the no am I gonna bow I
don’t I think that I might would
probably be using more like I’m twisting
space to to hit you from short from long
range
like with short range attacks I we’ll
see we’ll see so the nice thing is when
we go back and look up here right we
could see his psychic warrior we wanted
to armor and more hitpoints so it would
have been pushing against it soul knife
same way they mix it up up close the the
rogue the lurk we’ll probably need some
of that you know because they’re gonna
be off on their own a lot again this is
something where maybe this kind of this
rolls over and becomes I mean we might
keep it we just might see it this is a
good option for if you don’t want to use
the class but you want to use Sonic’s
like you might in your campaign use this
I think we’ll keep it but I’m not too
worried about trying to make it the
defining you know men tools but we’ll
get there it said let’s tackle these for
them then see where that that it should
resolve itself I want to give us the
opportunity if we feel that d6 isn’t
working to go back to a d8 I don’t want
to lock us in quite yet all right so we
get five minutes so let’s take a look at
so this is a very simple case now this
is all it’s a matter of you know killing
your darlings let’s see what we created
last year and let’s see how much wood
survives saving throws intelligence and
wisdom I don’t think that’s gonna change
the sonic class being very mental makes
sense our skills Arcana history insight
medicine nature perception and religion
these are all mental skills without
going to charisma related skills I think
looking at these four right here that
makes sense the avatar is a little bit
of one who is out there like well it
seems like they should be charisma
driven but that’s also a very nice way
to do it too
if you’re looking at a class that is
using magic or has a spell casting stat
and you have a subclass that naturally
seems to want to push that to somewhere
else a subclass is a great great way to
resolve that because if we make you know
the art into subclass of the bard or the
average how would we call it
it’s a charisma casting class that just
takes care of itself
I don’t need to put in some weird thing
here to make your charisma relevant same
thing if we wanted to pick up this idea
of the immortal I could imagine if the
Barbarian if we did is a barbarian that
could specify in its psionics class
feature some class featured that you may
be using Constitution as you’re casting
stat so okay so I think these equipments
whatever that will just be based on the
features here’s a nice table which will
just skip the table is very important
but we don’t need to worry about it
let’s take a look at our class features
so I if you follow the stream for a
while you know there’s a big decision we
have to make up front about our sub
class and that is does your sub class
come in at first level third level or if
you’re the weird outlier that is the
wizard which is one of our core classes
but whatever odd second level and I
think shad sound off I have my
suspicions I don’t think this this is a
super tough question but I’m just
curious to see does the does everyone’s
expectation in chat line up with what
I’m thinking what level do you think you
should be making the the sub class
choice Act first purser second fifth the
banana will go crate just me a level I’m
gonna play for like a couple weeks where
we go third first second third first
looks like first is coming in for a lot
of characters a few points per second Oh
get to the second – oh that’s right
that’s right I get to second but I’m
seeing out of first 20th level red lets
you play this that’s like you know the
reward was now you get a subclass choice
I just love the idea now that that’s
someone would play D&D for a while I
think that’s noir like I was doing
classy no don’t you get a 20th level you
get to pick you know you can be a farmer
or mechanic dark out you know dark out
but down below I got a minute I like the
the the persistence in the number 100
hundred let’s make this a hundred level
class and we can make it I can you XP
table will divide you like your level
divided by five is your actual level or
know what forget it 100 level yours
isn’t your five times stronger the okay
lotsa for D fourth I share DB I will
make it random that would stand out
see you guys you don’t have to read the
feedback when the I read those comments
the special tip of the hat person who
put like I think one time someone put
some erotica in there like oh hey that’s
a nice little you know this is violating
our computer policies here at Hasbro but
the it was definitely a change of pace
okay so I’m seen a lot of boats reversed
in a second the you want more post
twenty Khan say the classicism
guaranteed to go to post twenty I see a
lot I think the manic isn’t waiting for
front I got one very ardent supporter
fifth level ok I think what you know I
think the second level I think actually
is I’m even example what of why second
level was not something that’s gay and
had no fainting at the hitting the nail
on the head first since the subclass
defines the playstyle that’s very true
and that’s a very powerful argument in
favor first and here’s I seeing people
saying first and second and I’m gonna
sort of show you like here’s why the
wizard doesn’t get it at first you wait
until second and that’s really just
because we felt there was enough stuff
going on at first level but we want to
just get in your hands as quickly as
possible that we could afford to wait a
level that we wanted to make any known
animal try to remember how much you know
what this is a little there’s a little
bit of a technical thing right here
excite I’m not oh wait no I think I if I
go to Dena beyond I think I have someone
else’s account up yeah here we go so
let’s take a quick look we have a minute
oops
it’s good at characters and classes
official and let’s go the wizard so if
we take a look at the wizard in its
progression what you see here is arcane
recovery is coming in at first we felt
that was really important for play that
while the arcane traditional stuff was
pretty cool we wanted you to get make
sure you are getting more spells and
tying those spells into the short rest I
mean obviously although the mechanic
works because that’s probably was a good
balance for it but it needed the players
at 451st level you were playing a bit
longer adventurer you had the chance to
rest as a wizard this gave you another
reason to want to trigger one of those
short rests and for any character that
had a short rest stuff going on this
just felt like a good way to get across
a short rests your first level take a
short rest
essentially power back up these are a
little trick I do oh and uh Edna feign
white why does a druid let I’ll take a
quick look yeah but I was little I
kidding I’ll go to the druid um this is
really about teaching about short and
long rests my trick I know first of all
characters are very fragile so typically
when I’m running a first level adventure
I give the players copious chances for a
short rest and I essentially designed
them with you know section of the
adventure short rest finale so I ran a
dungeon like a month or two ago where
there’s all this sort of initial
exploration kind of a mini boss
encounter yet the kind of solid like
it’s a it’s a trap and a Mike of south
and before you go into the final big
room like it’s telling you know here’s
the vault door when you open if there’s
danger on either side but we’ve cleared
out this tomb otherwise so let’s just
take a short rest and for first little
characters that’s essentially powering
back up they’re almost back up to full
so yeah let’s go and now one caveat I
don’t remember if this account has the
that would have the druid available
let’s take a quick look here we go so
now now the second interesting so I
can’t quite remember why we did for the
druid oh because of wild shape coming in
we wanted drew dis yes exactly so this
is a good example of the reverse we’re
keeping things pretty simple for you at
first level we didn’t want wild shape
and spell casting to come in at the same
time so giving you spell cast when you
felt especially for a first time player
and this is a good example of really
designing for the first time player
obviously if we played druids before an
experienced player getting spell casting
in wild shape is probably pretty simple
for you but if you’re a first time
player we didn’t want you to feel like
oh I’m learning spell casting and I’m
learning wild shape since the circle
spoke to wild shape we had to wait until
you got wild shape before your circle
abilities could kick could kick in so
that is really what would determine
whether at first or second for this
character class for the Sion we would
just have to look as we build it out
what are the core features that all Sion
the share and then does it make sense
just to give you hey they’re pretty
light it’s nothing too serious I need to
give you up front so I can give you your
subclass at first which I think probably
is the path bid go down or is there a
reason to delay until second and that
would need to be the subclass is
speaking to a pretty meaty class feature
that’s shared across all characters
width of the class or there’s another
mechanic that we feel like it’d be very
valuable to have a first level to help
you play that character I mean
essentially with the wizard having the
d6 hit points and pour weapons and armor
now compare that the druid was a d8 and
can be effective up front you know
keeping mind druids you know their their
proficiencies you’re getting medium
armor and shields so you are essentially
if you need to be the backup fighter you
can do that where the wizard was very
dependent on spells and encounters so
yeah so we’re at about three minutes to
the top of the hour ah
we’ll call it there we’ve got a pretty
good place now that we kind of see who
this can this character class we see who
it is becoming we’re seeing the
relationship between the subclasses we
built the ones I kind of think um is
like load-bearing subclasses like this
is getting the full suite
across the the concept of sanics in the
game and I think we’re gonna predict it
a place so next week we’ll talk about
core class features for the Sion which
in the process of that will also have to
start thinking about class features that
we’ll need for these the subclasses
essentially that that process will be
what are the things that all of these
characters need to be able to do and
then what are the things that they get
to do themselves so I hope that was fun
for everyone had a great time thanks
taking part chat for helping me solve
some of these issues
and I will see everyone next week so
take care
[Music]
Great stream today everyone! Chat was hopping, and the ideas are flowing. Can't wait for next week.

— Mike Mearls (@mikemearls) June 5, 2018

Psionic and spells – The Mike Mearls Happy Fun Hour!

May 30, 2018Zoltar Leave a comment

hey everyone welcome back to the Mike Romero’s happy fun hour I’m your host Mike Murrells the franchise creative director on Dungeons & Dragons apologies for the little bit of delay getting fired up we had just technical issues you know long after a long holiday weekend which i think is everything running but luckily a superhero appeared in the form of Shaun and got everything kicked off can’t seem ease off camera but he is the star of the show without him we’d I wouldn’t have screen to BAE so thank thanks much to him so this week psyonix so this weekend I did a lot of yard work which gave me a lot of time to think and really start pondering psyonix so we’ve got some interesting stuff here some interesting things so the chat we excited about sanics I hope we are I’m looking down at chat we’ve got things a little set up a little bit differently here with things angled yes everyone thank goodness for shown the so I want to show you something can you see if you can see off the screen right now I have it in read mode chat let me know if this is like really hard to read I thought maybe this would be easier to see because we’re going there’s no paved roads here Dini beyond is super handy dandy but it’s not gonna necessarily help us in this case because we’re talk about soundings and we don’t have it the system yet officially at least so the everyone just just give me a trip if you can’t see it but what I want to show you here is one of the several parts so we have a lot to talk about with psionics okay first thing I want to point out is so check it out I had some time this weekend I went ahead and started writing up stuff like so we can actually use it imagine like there’s some cachito Oh see there we go our trains Derek there’s a sonic spell list now yes there is released there might be so I want to talk about the part behind mics my nice big square shaped head the I’ll move stuff around I’ll flip for the pages this case I kind of like my head is useful the you know let me see if I can I’ll just try to zoom in just a little bit more there we go yeah there we go and actually this would be nice because uh I’ll walk you through page by page I know my my block shape balding head is in the way of some of the text but I always try to remember to not talk about a text till I’ve flipped it over so let’s talk a bit about what we’re looking at here so there’s several things that came to me while I was raking up crap from my backyard not always literally crap depending on how what the dogs eaten but the the first thing was if you remember the back when I first started doing the the sanic wizard I was complaining about oh we’ve got you know it’s so hard to do this because if you give you all these sonic powers then other classes can use them so the super obvious thing is to make a separate spell list psionic spells the and really what that does is it keeps things from falling into the hands of classes that I we don’t necessarily want using them so that was something which was just like I was complaining about it and starting trying to design around it and whatever just just make it a separate thing it’s easy right like it’s one of those such an obvious solution you just wonder why didn’t I think of that you know so so there you go so that’s our first thing so okay we have our sonic abilities they’re coming into the game we don’t have week we can use these subclasses now without necessarily things bleeding over to where we don’t want them to go the the arch range Derek the spell is sighs it’s TBD I think it might be like Ranger or warlock sized but it’ll kind of depend on what we actually want to do with the spell list the my if you look here at the psychic warrior under spell casting I under let’s see spells known right it calls out you know three first level spells of your choice from the psionic spell list so my goal would be that that spell list is robust enough that something like the psychic warrior doesn’t have to dip back into other class spell lists to get all its abilities so this is kind of like the first starting point now I think that this works pretty well for the subclasses if we want to do that so we talked before but having that middle ground for Dungeon Master’s who think I want to add some Sonics to my campaign but I don’t have to learn it in another entire system this I think could work pretty well the and as far as a Northland Kyle I think you how many’s how many spells they will have in total it how many I have in mind it’s hard to say I think it’ll be something where we’ll I’ll work on some of the subclasses and then eventually get to the class and kind of see where we end up I think I’d want to earn the side of having fewer rather than more because we can just pull in spells from the regular spell list and I think I would do that or the very least just give you access to them just to keep things simple because again one of the ideas here is we want to give you the flavor sanics without Dungeon Master’s having to learn a bunch of new rules all right so that’s but that’s only one part of what we’re talking about you know that’s kind of like what what that did for me was really conceptually make the subclasses have their own space it’s a shared thing across all these subclasses and I think it feels like it we’ll see I mean you don’t know you’re gonna do we’re gonna do play testing we’re gonna push ahead and see where we end up it might not work but at least it’s a promising path so that’s part one so part two I was thinking a lot about spell points and one of the things that’s struck me with spell points is where they sit conceptually in our design framework for fifth edition’ D&D one of our big things with 5th ed was to say we want to give you not as many choices as you may have found in 3rd or 4th edition but make those choices bigger and that’s what directly led to such a sub classes to sub-races this idea that I want to be an elf now what kind of else do I want to be I can be a high elf I can be a drow and those come with a lot of things and there’s a bundling to it the same thing with classes I class itself is just you know it’s a big choice I can be a wizard or I can be a fighter there’s a two very different classes and by design in fifth edition meant to be very different to feel different right I think that’s one of the things that that gives a role-playing game long legs you know you can play it for years is if you really feel like you can make genuinely different characters and then within that class you’re picking a subclass rather than saying every time you gain a level pick something we’re saying you pick one thing and you get to play through all of that there’s a lot of reasons why we did that I want to touch on a couple the main one being it’s much more accessible for new players or players who aren’t into optimization a player just says I want to be a great Archer so I can just go through and that you think the fighter or you know one of the the weapon abilities you know that menu of abilities again one of them is just it’s really good to arrange characters just just take that it makes the language of the game simpler you know as a player you know what you want to do so you just do it we’re not hiding it behind you to figure out how these three things work together to actually make it work and so forth at the newer player for the less mechanically invested player it’s easier it’s also easier for us conceptually because we’re having bigger ideas like instead of instead of saying like hey this fighter is an archer but what we really mean to say is they took this and this and this and this and this we’re saying this fighter is an archer Archer is a subclass they picked Archer that’s just what they are or samurai or Eldridge Knight the so that’s the that’s kind of the reasoning behind going for fewer choices but bigger choices it also means our design going forward in the future can be a lot more evocative because when you’re designing something big you have a bigger complexity budget to play with you have a bigger power budget to play with and so when you’re looking across those like three to five class features you can build something that really is driven by having all these things build on each other rather than throwing out lots of individual little pieces where there’s powers and fourth edition or feats in third and relying on players to find the combinations because invariably as a designer your intent there is let’s let players build whatever they want I think that’s a little bit you know at the end of the day looking I worked on a ton of 3rd and 4th edition stuff your a little bit as a designer kind of you’re leaving a lot of your players out to dry like they just they don’t want to have to figure that out but you are also opening the door to just that’s where abusive combos come in you’re kind of assuming you know people will find combinations to express a say a unique story but in practice usually what happens is you have players driving combinations that are upsetting the power balance of the game and therefore making the game less fun for everybody you know whether intentionally or not I think a lot of cases people don’t you know they you do it that sounds cool or I just I want to get big damage number and then it might lead to an unhappy conversation the table so that’s all the reasoning vampire night on you a I’m hoping I don’t know about soon because we do have a schedule because remember you a feeds into our future products so often you see things in you a because we’re thinking of publishing them somewhere the and it’s not exactly sure where this might land because it’s still pretty early I know it can be frustrating it feels like it’s been forever for work in psionics but like we are committed to taking the time it necessary to make something really work for the community of D&D Player’s if you remember we took two and a half years playtesting v and there are still things like now I mean it felt great we launched it but there’s like back and like fix that up we didn’t quite know it there’s still things we missed right so for me play testing is super important we want to take our time so the so that’s why fifth editions philosophy is fewer bit bigger choices so then we come to yeah the bonus actions right hey call me tell me yes the house but that was such a big thing anyway don’t to get that don’t try sidetrack me alright China the so when they look at cyanic power points power points are really all about that optimization like lots of little choices combining to make a big choice I don’t know if philosophically they’re necessarily a good fit for 5e but also we already have that option the dmg so I don’t know if saying Sonics is defined by power points is necessarily a good path but that leads to the second idea I had all right because I was thinking okay I think a sign expel list can work I’m gonna skip past so I got the psychic warrior here I did this got the soul knife here yeah actually made me go slower so you guys consider don’t worry about reading it I’ll go back we’re only in like 15 minutes in so I want to get to the back I wrote up a couple of sonic spells waving a laser pointer in front of me that would definitely like oh hey well you know cat like right I did actually you know I was one of insistent putting the two back see in the game which I’m sorry or you’re welcome depending on your view on that race the and Wolford what I’ll do is ever has specific questions and I’ll try walk through things in a more detail what I want to do that was kind of show you go to the back here and look at some of these sound expels because this is where things started to come together for me so if you take a look let’s take a look actually mine fist is a boring one so I wrote these up you know said just to eat over this weekend I was like ok cool the one though that actual went to show you that I don’t know what I can’t get it the second page hang can edit this ok now we could see live as I try to use word alright so here’s how I’m gonna do let me just throw in a page break here and then you get to watch me try to figure out how it was I like doing that thing and this turns into 30 minutes of using ms word with alright so take a look at sense mind because this is what I want to use as the example here what I’m thinking of so since mine is a sanic can’t trip uses one action that might not be where it ends up because I wrote these up that I had an idea components none oh hey we’ve got kind of a little bit defining trait of soundex they don’t have Penta components but then take a peek at that concentration make the odd direction up to one minute might be wrong we might change that whatever this is a can trip that requires concentration okay so imagine this world let’s take a little peek at sense mind by shutting by shutting down your normal senses you extend your mind into the scenic landscape around you for the duration of the spell you are blinded and deafened so what I was thinking it was like you kind of sink into this other sensory world and you can use a bonus action to sense the presence of creatures within a 30-foot cone you learn the number of creatures within the cone in their creature type you cannot detect undead or constructs with the spell a flavor drawback because we traditionally have said undead or like very Hardware feckless onyx but whatever spell is blocked by one foot of stone why don’t you become a metal thin sheet of lead or three feet of water dirt that’s just pulled from the tech magic now imagine this you are a sonic character so we have this idea of disciplines and there are these things that build on each other so imagine if when I go in a sense mind great it’s can trip and let’s say this maybe sense mine’s a bonus action go into sense mind bonus action close my eyes block my hearing down the sensing Minds now imagine there’s a set of spell that our first level or higher that say something like when you have sense mine activate cast the spell it does things like you’re jabbing into people’s minds you’re taking control of their brains you know their prints yeah physically making your brain dancer I didn’t you’re taking control of them you’re reading their mind it’s a mode you go into and it’s kind of capturing this sense of I learn a thing and as I gain levels and I get more spell slots of higher level I’m getting better at it and I can get bigger effects out of it now imagine sense might and now I’m gonna I’m not gonna try to write this but you know whatever I’ll take notes on it so imagine that if that’s kind of like our baseline piece and let’s zoom the so much more oops no it’s still in so imagine that if that’s our sense mine thing which I actually might want to call it like you know enter mindscape I might give it a more you know flavorful main yeah flavorful name this probably becomes up to 10 minutes Caston time is probably one bonus actually and maybe instead of 30 foot code I’m gonna say a 60 foot cone and now I’m managing I’m just gonna make something up this is gonna be pseudocode but I’m just gonna kind of copy and paste it if I don’t know how we’d present this budge you can imagine there’s another spell you know and now what I probably want to do here is by show you okay you extend your mindful sonic landscape around you so imagine this it’s a you know whatever the cloud sanic spell don’t know what level would be it’s one action its ranges that say 100 feet opponents none duration is instantaneous got it in one and what this just says is you know our our pseudocode while you have enter this could be you know this is maybe like the sonic static this is not something we do but there you go just this idea that I have a say it’s a it’s first of all spell slot and then I have enter mindscape I throw this up I’ve got concentration going and now I can do things like I’m gonna flood the air with Sam ecstatic just making everything you have this disadvantage on wisdom saves or creatures of your choice you write things like that let’s see paladin Davros the interaction connects and spell casting imagine in this case they would be they would just be spells for the interactions but we would have an option if you want to make them different the what else we got here I thought I thought so another question about the oh they call me Tomy worried about its concentration one of things I thought about and this might be something that would just do I mean I’m like 90% thinking I would do this is that these this enter mindscape ability here may have something like this but and that this is not final cut but the spells duration cannot be ended due to damage whatever we throw in something there that says your constant things that could break your concentration can mess you up but not taking damage is not one of them and that just might be a signature thing just so you’re not constantly worrying about it the data love swing DeeDee meets inside out it’s exactly right that’s the look a trooper does the return of Sonic’s mean will get thought eaters again yes the crazy platypus guys one of things I thought about what this is that does mean with some of these creatures we could potentially have some really interesting interactions between if we get our rules right what I’m imagining is if I’m psionic and I’m using one of these sonic and rips I might have a creature that sonic that may say something like you know any gate dependent how I get the wording right we don’t want to make it complicated but we might be able to pull out some of that feel of like the sonic combat like hey I’m gonna sanic mode you’re in a sonic mode that means we can enter a different way what I was picturing in my head was just something really simple like if I’m in if I’m in a sonic mode and you’re in a sonic mode – there was just something I can do on top of my turn – just her a little psychic energy yeah you like basically a clash of the minds the you know maybe a rider on top or there’s like this sort of struggle for sonic dominance the way I kind of thought of it is it’s almost like you know in in in Wharf area this idea of air supremacy like there might be some struggle to like control the airspace well in this case the Sanok space around a battlefield I don’t know though I think I’d want to design basically though the functional spells first and then see where that goes I think it’ll be fun though right if Sonic characters were afraid of like the thought eater and they maybe they never read any the most characters might not even notice them it’s only when you’re like in a sonic mode the treatment can interact with the creature but that’s getting a bit ahead of ourselves it’s more on the flavor stuff but the the oh yes and tell me I think in this case the blinding and death thing I would pull this out originally that was when I was thinking just as a can trip because essentially it’s like a detect magic it’s very useful divination can trip so I think he I would get rid of that good call that was more when it was a flavorful and it had to sit alongside other countries the a can trips as divination tools we try to be very careful of because we don’t want they’re so easy to spam we don’t want the game to become the Dungeon Master’s running the game and the player is just like I use my sense life I use sensing you again and again and again and they could slow the game down so but in this case I’d be ok with it because there might be some other thing we’re throwing here earth just kind of assumed that this is gonna take up some of the complexity of your character good play test and we’ll come that off but the so the what’s kind of fun about this though is I talked last week about the Summoner so one thing you can imagine just do a quick copy paste here is that you could have a canned trip that summons a creature in 3rd edition in the 3/5 psionics book there was this idea of astral constructs so we could have one faster construct again the pseudo-code don’t try to play with this oh because it’s gonna make no sense could be one bonus action range say 30 feet points none constructs it and it’s basically you summon a and let’s just say one-hit die asshole construct and in the can trip mode it might be you know it uses your actions to do stuff yeah it’s a can trip it’s pretty simple and you need to control it now the benefit here is it’s basically it’s an up gunned mage hand I could like use my actions to make it move around go grab stuff while I’m just standing still and then what you could then do is you know upgrade HD with spell slots that’s an easy one you could give it special abilities we talked last week one of the things could be I create my astral construct then I look you know I pick one creature and I pull one of its spheres out and fuse it with the astral constructs so now what ever else sees this kind of like you know ectoplasmic creature the creature have targeted seems like its greatest fear now I’m standing there bearing down on it it could be a way to deliver a motion-control type effects you could see someone you really trust so you’re willing to you to do whatever you say right the arch rage Erica the question about psychics in general will there also be room for how categories are magic interact you know the like divine in arcane the the one tricky thing is we’ve never really done that so if we were to go back and do it there would be some amount of rewriting existing material and we’re always a little really crazy about doing the axe I thought it added weren’t clear if the complexity that added added in would be worth it the the raping ROG please make an astral summoner class don’t shoehorn it into an existing thing I think what we’ve got here is that this would be something that would really come to life in the mystic class itself because one of the things this kind of gives to the third point one of the things about this when you look at this construction of spell well wizard could take this and spend their spell slots and cancerous on it like reggaeton playing the psychic wizard no problem I can do this but you’re not really gonna have any spell sorry class features that speak to this spell because you’re sort of riding on top of the wizard chassis and then as I thought about that felt kind of right you know when you think about the eldritch Knight compared to a wizard they’re really specialized you know there’s some restrictions on which schools they can use and their class features are really about combining fighting with spell casting so what I imagine is that the full mystic character class probably built on the cleric chassis that’s where it’s built right now d8 hit died not getting your multiple attacks you’re really relied on and that’s that’s what a lot of the issues with the mystic came from trying to do so many things up one chassis so what this would do is we’d really focus on saying the mystic rather than having to include the soul knife rather than having to include the psychic warrior we like for me one of the hints that you’re dealing with a kind of an incoherent class a class that’s doing too much is when you have to give out weapon and armor proficiencies based on subclass now it’s not a given right some classes that works I think the cleric it actually works pretty well because we start you with medium and then we’d say is this more of a marshal most domains a pretty marshal in flavor so you got your heavy armor but I think that’s okay because you’re used to thinking of clerics is kind of you know having the different garb they wear based on their thing my secret thing is aside I always liked playing clerics and light armor like playing clerics of nature or who are of the sea really I wear leather armor ever really high dexterity and high wisdom and I might be more of an archer or your arm using finesse weapons or something like that the and so the idea being that when I was working on the mystic and really having a stretch like these these subclasses just feel like different classes and that’s what kind of helped fuel some of this so maybe throw in some more questions here mr. quaint 11 could enter mindscape be more robust as a common class feature of psionic subclasses that’s the thing I would yeah that I would want to look at and this would be part of the next phase of the design step is one of the tensions that this approach does have if I have my psionic subclasses in the Senate class where do I one of what goes in the spell list that they share that I know is now Universal versus what becomes unique to the class because making the classes unique elements really stand out I’d want I want to do that by making them really feel like these the signs of a true psionic master so it would really matter it really depend on where he put those things one thing for instance that I could see doing this again off the top of my head but have some rule for just the sign at core class is that they might be on the maintain concentration on to sign at Kent trips at once and so then you just immediately feel I’m a lot more versatile right I can play these other classes and really focus on one can trip in one style but if I want to be real master of a bunch of them I want to play the mystic the falling of our twenties Derrick yeah like the tech magic will be universal right so rather than saying sonic detect magic we would just say the detect magic spell is on is on your spell list and then we might just have a class feature or somewhere say look your your components are none if you’re using it as a psionic user but I don’t know if we want to go that far and that would probably just rest on the class itself rather than the other classes the so yeah um yeah defiant Mars kicked with spell slots that’s that’s a good way to think of it if your Magic the Gathering player yeah this idea that you play some cards the kick mechanic is I have to save a card it could be two mana total whatever color it’s like a 1/1 creature that does something when it’s tapped and it could save this card is kick to get some +1 +1 tokens or you get cast the spell effect it’s kind of how I feel this except that card stays in play and then I keep spending men on it to activate it and it’s got a lot more abilities on it the so yeah the I think this could be a pretty interesting approach because what I wanted to do was capture that flexible feel of spell points without using spell points because I just felt like we were really struggling against this idea of that that really high little have a high level of precision that spell points allow for just not necessarily fitting into the default design idiom of fifth edition the because that is really about this points make a lot of sense if you’re saying I want you make lots of small choices that then combine into reflect your character as a whole or your characters actions so the this I think might be a good middle ground but wise I also think about it what it really means is if you decide I want to use the spell point system so I’m going to just go to the dmg and use it essentially translates into something that looks a lot like spell points from earlier editions where it’s you’re using a can trip that’s zero points you know can trips cost or free and then I’m spending points to augment that can trip I’m giving this thing special effects a new additional powers and so on now one thing to keep in mind going to come up here to mine spike this is just our simple damaging sanic spell I don’t think this would necessarily be one that would be concentration because I don’t want to I don’t wanna go hog-wild love this and assume everything has to work this way so it’s also possible that rather than being can trips these can be reclassified as something else and in this the within the subclasses it could just say hey you get a sanic let’s say discipline and so we know they’re distinct from Canter’s one thing that why I kind of like that is that the it makes it distinct in your mind you know we could write things we could write a class feature that says hey you can you can concentrate on two disciplines at once I’m not worried about if in the future we add other can trips that require concentration and there’s some weird cross effects there that I don’t intend so this might be a case where some specificity could help the it also just might be and it’s a nice little callback to an existing term we’ve used the but I imagine these these would just appear on the spell list as you know your spell list a jerk and trips here’s your disciplines here your spells that’s that it’ll be a new category the Harmelin wordsmithing thank you data this way always always strive to maximize Mike Romulans in the pallet pallette endeavors would you still include the visual odd auto honorable displays of using Sonics how with a contract to hide them I’m kind of thinking that for you know and my initial thing was throwing in components none making Sonic’s a lot more subtle but I’d want to think about that a bit Oh arts my drip out mine spike is already a second little spell that I steal there already is a name we’ll call this mine strike just give down whatever it’s thanks calling that out the thing was too good to be true if it’s out there the so yeah the what I think the key here would be the is just making sure that this system doesn’t get too sprawling my main worry right now I’m thinking about it is let’s good let’s take a look at our astral construct right I’m looking all the things that I’ve got here you know I can update upgraded state dice with spell slots some of the special abilities would be you know inspire motions yeah we get so like you have damage boost attack like spells what I don’t want is to make this overly complicated to the point where if playing mystic I’ve got like my disciplines and I’ve got all my spells of autumn and specific disciplines and how many spells do I have to give you to make sure that’s that’s satisfying without being overwhelming because naturally I think you know especially if we stick this idea that the mystic and concentrate out of multiple disciplines there’s a natural very big stress on the number of spells now and if I was to say one thing that does like when I see new players dealing with D&D the number of spells you know it’s I don’t want to say we may have been too generous in the core game I just worry that there’s a gap between learning D and E and then mastering I know a lot of spells especially when you’re picking through which spells do wanna prepares a wizard or just you know as a cleric going to the entire cleric spell list so now that wouldn’t be as much of a weary on something like the mystic the because we are assuming that’s coming up in a span ssin so you’re probably a little bit more comfortable with mechanics at that stage most we assume we don’t assume beginning players for instance own the zenith ARS guide or Morton Kamen’s in fact there’s a quick aside because today is the release day for morning canyons time of those one thing I’ve noticed in actually this is was something we wanted people talking about more to use compared to Volos saying o Volos is probably the better purchase for the new DM because warden Candis is more for higher the higher challenge monsters and plainer stuff it’s actually by design that’s something we think of we want it to be pretty clear if you go to your friend for friendly local game stores a new player if someone’s there working at the store who knows the DND line they understand kind of what the sequencing is you know it’s not like what book should I get next on know it’s like well it makes sense if you’re running this type of campaign buy this book if you’re just starting as a DM but you want more monsters let me start with Volos then grow into Morton Kamen’s so things like that so it is something we keep in mind you know whatever product that this might show up in since it would be later on in the release schedule we can probably afford to add a little more complexity or sumn mastery this might inspire can be your first character so you might draw on some of your knowledge of playing a wizard or some like that so okay so this is basically what the kind of the three pieces coming together are get this idea of a sonic spell list so now I can safely fence off those effects I don’t want every wizard to get it also means that if you just don’t have a sign a character in your game you don’t have to worry about this stuff because that was another worry I had was okay great we give you soundex whether you like it or not as a dungeon master now any wizard or any cleric and start picking these spells up and that’s just I don’t know if I want to burden every DM with that so that solves that then we have this idea that if we have these disciplines or can trim disciplines are basically up gun can trips not power wise but more in flexibility wise where do those rest and those delivering a lot of our sonic flavor and then having a full Sonic class that can really specialize in these things and make them come to life in a way that the subclasses can’t quite match the subclasses are hitting their flavor but it’s the mystic class that can really bring it all together so the m draco how would you release the revised ranger that is still something which is in process so a quick aside on that we are putting together another update survey for the game as a whole I think it’s gonna come out maybe in the fall or late summer the idea is what we want to do is if you remember if you’ve been playing this long or take part in our surveys about two years ago we did a big survey maybe three years ago now on the basically the the to the game the game came out we want to ask you about the character classes what did you if it was working what did you feel was not working that was where we learned there were a lot of issues with the Ranger and the way of four elements monk very high dissatisfactory like noticeably so compared to everything else everything else is kind of clustered around together you know there’s a ranking but the bottom ranked thing other than the Ranger was was not so far from the top rank thing that we’re worried so that’s how we identified those problems now that Zan’s is out we want to rerun that survey to see how have things changed especially because we have so many new players coming in before we start making like real changes like and if we make a change we’re gonna commit to it or giving you a new option we just want to verify that with a few more years under a you know a few more years of tread on the tire so to speak we’re not making a quick shift that maybe people don’t need as much so the arc trader derick the server results are actually we are pretty we don’t publish the full raw numbers we talk about them in general but that is something that falls into what we consider to be a trade secret so that’s not something which like has where we’re not spending money in time to generate all this you really useful information for us and then just just publish it the UM but we do always try to talk the community so you when you’re looking at what we’re doing we can say hey here’s what we learned and so this is why we’re working on this I always I like that we can we can frame things in terms of the feedback there are a lot of things that which are kind of go more into the business side of things that we don’t necessarily want to share the all right so the yeah Mad Hatter him do people still care about these old problems I mean it’s not quite exactly the question the main thing is in a universe where you have more options to the Ranger and more options to the classes is this still as big of a problem now to be my point of views I don’t think we’ll see much shift because I think the I think what we’ll see is the overall happiness the ranger will probably go up but I still think that the Beastmaster Ranger is gonna have some real serious issues because one thing I’ve even looked let’s let’s look whatever we walk through here right I just described the canned trip for astral construct is essentially I mean the hit dice thing aside I’m using a canned trip and when I think like thus weakest expression of having an allied creature on the table it ends up looking a lot like the animal companion which is probably doesn’t speak very well if the animal companion actually functioning well as something which is a subclass defining feature so but we also again we don’t want to rush ahead and make a change to the core game we might be being we might be in a position where being too conservative especially for like if you’re engaged enough for the game to be like on this stream chatting about design geekery with me you’re probably like why I just fixed this but we always have to keep in mind the real strength of D&D is the new players coming in so we’re really person may be overly cautious about disrupting that we really just don’t have me a position that we’re getting people confused when they’re coming in the game so it’s something we’re always very clearly aware of and I think at the end it’s good for everybody because it means more players means it’s easier to get a group where it’s if you don’t want to DM it’s easy to find another DM so it’s something we’re really aware of the okay so we’re wandering all over the place for stream associate about Sonic so let me walk you through the psychic warrior now this is just something I put together over the weekend so kind of drawing on some of the stuff so this isn’t final but I want to show you some of the stuff I built out here so spell casting this is just what it is right this shouldn’t be anything bizarre here what I imagine though if we did go with this idea the the the disciplines that this would probably say you learned too can trips and you also learn a discipline so I kick destroyer so essentially this was a pretty simple straightforward thing what I wanted to do between psychic destroyer and psychic guardian was pick up this idea of the using your sonic energy to augment yourself so psychic Ghost Rider is essentially a converted spell slot into psychic damage on an attack kind of like a smite psychic Guardian was convert your sight your spell slots into a shield effect for your allies so or yourself so you’re good at protecting you’re good at harming this is probably something where instead of being a bonus action actually right now this is just pill pickups mic so it’s not it has no action here I’d probably cost both of these with your reaction just to kind of have you the sense of my offense or defense this round if you’re gonna its new spell slots psychic storm is when you cast a sonic can’t rip or use the attack action your turn hostile creatures than ten feet of you seen feet of your and if you take psychic damage equal to W intelligence mod minimum one so this is just this is their add some extra damage it’s essentially the extra attack you get when using a can trip that’s the comparison for the Yeller tonight sonic recoveries when you use second wind you regain this first level spell slot now it’s an expended for several spell slots you can’t use this to pile up extra spell slots the opposite of time potency eyeliner it’s sonic surge at 15th bubble you gain the ability to channel additional psionic power when user action surge ability till the end of your next turn if your attack or spell causes a creature to take psychic damage that creature takes an additional one D 10 psychic damage H you can only take this digital damage once during your turn this is one I’m not as crazy about but just it’s a good you know this done is a very strong argument this but what it does is it encourages you to attack lots of people which might not actually be not always the best strategy so and then mind cleaver your tax leave behind traces of disrupt its disruptive psychic energy if you hit a creature with a weapon attack you cause it to become vulnerable to psychic energy until the end of your next turn once you use this ability you get if it’s its cooldown as short or long rest again that works on a psychic destroyer and a lot of your spell’s taking a look at the way of the soul knife so this was similar what we talked about last week I don’t think I did anything really oh wait did I copy and paste something and then yes I did psychic lash slash shows up twice but I think I just don’t need it delete one so anyways so we got the sole knives coming in this lets you do psychic piercing slashing or bludgeoning with your arm strikes I through the range here in addition you can use a bonus action increase the reach of your arm strikes by 30 feet until the end of your turn I don’t wanted that to sit on the bonus action so you sort of thought like which way do I want to go with my action this turn don’t hit someone from far away I’d wanted to do something more exotic so the after so you know for psychic surgery why not adjust to be maximizing psychic damage yeah that could be good you know because then we’re staying within the bounds of what the system expects it’s a pretty good a suggestion Grum will fist the let’s see okay i go back to reading mode i can because i’m reading and now we get to do like mike learns how to use ms word here we go and just chat just chime in if this is a little small the so way of the soul knife i’ll click over to here get my head out of your way no it’s not yeah that’s gonna the river okay so my head’s gonna be in the way doing it sorry everyone that is not working the way I thought it would the okay sorry my head’s gonna be in the way cuz I can’t get it to I could have sworn it was going over once by page mode no it’s going over both pages at once okay again welcome to my Camaros is happy fun hour where we learn to use microsoft word a program which i’ve used for like 25 years now and still and barely proficient with your welcome so here we’ll just kind of go here I’ll zoom in a bit so maybe he comes in so we’ve got we talked to this last week with psychic slash essentially building on the way of the open hand this idea that when you flower your blows you get to pick a sonic effect to drop on top of your own arms drinks it’s a life drain gives you temp it points invoke terror lets you make someone frightened of you these all basically last for one round I’m invoke wrath disadvantage on everyone except you astral slide teleport someone ten feet away and synaptic overload this is where you tag someone with vulnerability to psychic damage until the end of your next turn that vulnerability uh Graham Rufus thinking of that it might be showing up a little too often so that would be maybe going up max damage then we’re getting more of a combo rather than just everything’s overlapping but we’ll see our site this tied into some of the flavor we talked about last week this idea that these characters may be being almost like bounty hunters they they’re good at like honing in on people so as an action sector creature you can see this is meant amuse outside of combat so it’s an action creature makes a wisdom save it has no knowledge that you forced it to tempt the saving throw so this is kinda like it’s almost like a passive attack you’re not hitting someone so hard they notice it and if they’ll save you learn if the creature shares any aspects of its alignment with you you learn its current hit points its current attitude and intentions toward you or one other creature object or location of your choice in addition for the next 24 hours or until you use this ability again you can use an action to determine the creatures distance and direction from you one of these I’ve tried to do here was this idea that if you want to learn multiple things you have to proc multiple saving throws off the target and one you know one successful saving time of the target shuts you down so there is a little bit of a planning element here you don’t just get to learn everything for free you’ve got to try it a few times do you just you know learn one thing and then wait cuz you want to attract this guy you know it’s a little bit of a decision for the soul my figure if they want to do spectral blades you can cause your blades to phase through physical objects and defenses once during your turn you can choose to forego one arm on unarmed strike in place of forcing your creature within the reach of that stack to make a deck saving throw failed save it takes your unarmed strikes damage half or half of it succeeds this is capturing the idea of the attack that can’t miss maybe I’m just phasing through your defenses to disrupt your life force that might need to be a restriction of this psychic damage only so we’re just basically in fifth and if we have an effect like that it becomes a dexterity saving throw because it’s purely can you get out of the way your armor can’t help you rather having a touch of AC or anything else the psychic forum is essentially this is something I liked I just threw it in if you were last week we talked this idea that the energy you manifest to make your blades you can become that that energy use it to become your entire form so the bonus action you gain resistance to all types of damage fly speed of 30 and the ability to pass through solid objects but not and your mood within them it’s been if it lasts for one minute it cools down on its cooldown as long rest cool down it would need some extra language there so but that’s the gist the gist of it then we come to the wizard and this is what we talked about yeah I kind of thought about the wizard what do you get so what let’s say let’s have a frank talk about sanics Sion do we like Sion or do we like mystic chat let me know I’m gonna I’ll take a look I keep an eye over there to see where we go I kind of I like mystic is the class name because it just feels like something that is more it’s a little bit feels like something people would say in the role of D&D that I can picture you walking in to a tavern and say oh he’s a mystic rather he’s a Sion but I see a lot of Sion loved a few words me there maybe the class should be the Sion Crawford I think like Sion if you stick around for his show coming up next you can ask him but I’ll probably throw a poll up on Twitter the and see where that goes but the I mean yeah Daedalus a mystic is very gentle yeah that’s pretty generic the and Professor nightshade mystics are too much like soothsayer yeah I could see that you think mystic it just doesn’t quite match it see okay we’ll see but now I had Sion here for the Wizards maybe the mist maybe the wood becomes the blue Jen but that feels – I’m not crazy about that because that’s just like if essentially if you use I think I was looking up online I think wow Jen I think it’s Chinese derived it’s just kind of funny like the you know the Chinese word for wizard means like psionic wizard that’s just okay don’t know if I necessarily like that makes sense rather get something more something a little more interesting and then level we do a Chinese translation someone will find a way to translate it the yeah okay so maybe we’ll just go Sion I’ll Mentalist grumbles yeah okay known as mentalists boom I like it this is what we talked about a couple weeks ago essentially what we’re giving you is an op gun Espie feature you know it’s kind of interesting because this is this is kind of giving you disciplines maybe I might redesign this based on what I’ve done with Sonic so far I will see this basically gave you access to detect thoughts but it improved it in some ways I won’t go through need at all because if you just look at the spell they see it let’s use the spell with bonus actions instead of actions you get telepathy at the second level this does not tell you you can grab spells from the sonic spell is Jax I just did not even get to it it’s working on the weekend folks can’t carry down the telepath just you get telepathy telekinetic mind essentially let you cast telekinesis early normally I think you’d have to be I love and level the cast at this lets you cast it it’s six level but instead of making the spell better it includes some drawbacks which then eventually fall away once you’re high enough level to cast all the time and then we just we improve those features so yeah that’s where we ended up so I think that the the school of psionics would need to get some revisions based on this introducing disciplines so that brain fighting no crazy I just you forget it fighting brains big giant brains elder brains beware the alright so the infinite core how important you think separating Sonic’s and spell casting ins through the lens of something like darks and even so that that is a big question I you know I kind of feel like while there are story reasons to make them separate that it runs back into this does the cost of keeping those the two things separate and having two systems run in parallel and then have to chart out all their interactions is it worth it are you getting the flavor that you want out of that to a sufficient level and I don’t know if you are in running so went back when I played in ran three five I had players use psionics and I never really felt that going that path was really worth it now that’s just me that’s what I think I would do with this design is make Sonic’s part of the existing magic system and then ask in the subsequent playtester raise does that feel like it’s working would you rather have them driven further apart because I think if you’re a long time player you’ve lived in the world where psionics was different so I kind of want to add invite everyone that’s inviting you to live in a world or the same and then see does that feel good does that work because I do one of the things that’s always been interesting with Sonics is that the it’s something which is fairly popular but it’s not a given for campaigns I really think there was if when Sonics especially in 3 5 you could probably learn a lot about a gaming group by whether they use psyonix or not and my experience was the groups that were ok with a lot of optimization we’re totally fine with Sonics because that’s just how they played and then the groups that really just like wacky characters were okay with sanics and that you and then everyone else was just not interested they didn’t like they didn’t like the wackiness and they didn’t like the power level the because I think the optimizers was just not the puzzle to solve you know it’s everyone’s throwing up play on wires characters so sure however you get there it’s fine then I think the players the campaign’s are more likely just make interesting characters my experience is a lot of those teams and players don’t really care about power level so they would just think odd to be cool to play a Sion with just like these disciplines whatever and they weren’t seeking out like hey how can i optimize my points the but I think is just a matter of the dm’s ability or desire to learn more rules so I think what I’d like to do is try to move things so it’s a bit more easier for DMS to pick up and feel like they can integrate them into the campaign and to see more use of them overall again it’s tricky because the Sonics were popular especially in 3 5 in 4th we just did kind of I mean had to exist within the power system so it wasn’t quite the dramatic difference that you saw in 3rd direction you know we’re trying to go that way but yeah um kittens and mittens Mike do you think mystic sonic would be its own book release no probably not I would rather put it in another book either like the dark Sun setting book which you yourself kids and men’s point out or I could see some future date if we do another book legs and that’s an F saying if I won’t be as far as we did but it’s probably yours off I could see this showing up in dark Sun I could see this showing up as a chapter in that book the one nice thing I like about this approach is if we’re combining this sort of spell list and style of spell with a discipline into one package and then have a sort of subclasses in a class and orbit around it it makes it very nice like here’s a chapter do you use this chapter or not in your game I wouldn’t want to try to make it an entire book on its own because I think that would force us to do more with it than we want to if you’re typically speaking for us a hardcover book has to be about 160 pages and I don’t know if we would be able to fill those 160 pages in a satisfying way as opposed to like a 64 pages that’s a really meaty feature of a book the poor yes so if in there I don’t want anyone reporting this is news right though but just you know the sometimes people can overreact to stuff what if you make sure people understand where we’re coming from yeah this entire approach right if you hate it or you love it be hate it take solace in the fact we could play test this and Everton will hate it that’s done if you like it tamper with your enthusiasm with the realization that if everyone hates this then win play test then we’re knocking it we’re not gonna do it at the end of the day the communities in the driver’s seat and as a designer I love that because it just means I can afford to try wacky things because I know we’re gonna validate it with everyone watching who’s playing and DMing you know so in a lot of ways it’s very liberating you know I didn’t get I know it can be frustrating sometimes you know I’ve questions what the Ranger and stuff people want stuff change really quickly but we want you we’re in this for the long haul so that’s kind of one of the drawbacks that except you know that to hit the claw quality level we want to aim for it means we moved me slower than you think the yeah so I think we are at about less than five of my understanding is Jeremy Crawford is gonna be up next talking bit more about the sort of final design step he doesn’t I mean I talked to him a bit about this morning about the stuff so if you guys are hanging around for that stream and ayran shot asking him questions the he might have no idea talking about the but yeah this is something though initially he liked the static discipline concept so we’ll see we’ll see workouts the but yeah so everyone I’m gonna throw a poll up on Twitter when I get back to when I’m on able to tweet without thinking to meeting or something like that caris to see where the mystic Scion vote breaks down think about this stuff I’m gonna the dosti I’m gonna start announcing settings to alright everything all the plans up here see if you’re sonic you better reach out through this live video feed and read my mind for all the stuff we’re gonna announce it stream of annihilation that’s not screamin at Eastern stream of many eyes this weekend and then the stuff we can’t announce this coming weekend but it’s still on our future but anyway thanks so much everyone this has been I love the show I love being able to share of the stuff with everybody I find it so inspiring it’s so much fun and I kind of like you know seeing the Argon’s play out and where we’re gonna come from because really this entire thing it is a community endeavor right the end of the day D&D is all about us collectively and how we play the game of what we want out of it so yes defiant Mars time to transcribe and go homebrew yes exactly that should be like how I end all the things like homebrew build stuff the and help push the conversation of D&D forward so thank you very much for tuning in and next week we’ll probably on what I’ll do is maybe you start tinkering around with some more other disciplines flesh tomorrow the one drawback to doing this on camera right now is I haven’t done this yet so it’s nice to do it and then talk about it then start doing it on camera rather than just try to make it up as we go completely so thanks for yes I the stream and many eyes will be recorded of the winter live stream and release it on youtube so tune into twitch over the weekend submit can’t catch a live check out our our YouTube channel we’ll have clips there and the entire videos alright take care everyone and I’ll see you all this weekend so tune in to watch my games [Music]

Think I found the last piece for psionics while working on the backyard!

May 28, 2018Zoltar 1 Comment

I’ve always found physical work is a great way to relax the mind while pondering a problem. Think I found the last piece for psionics while working on the backyard. Tuesday is going to be fun.

— Mike Mearls (@mikemearls) May 27, 2018

So, working on the concept of a shared pool of resources that psionic characters choose from. Making this work proved so obviously, stupidly easy that I am going to give you a preview of my next Happy Fun Hour. (1/2)It’s a spell list that you gain access to only if you choose a psionic class. Non-casters pick up and use the cantrips. This class-less spell list can also be used by the mystic. It’s going to be fun diving in on Tuesday. (2/2)

— Mike Mearls (@mikemearls) May 27, 2018

I’m having a hard time parsing this tweet but I’m incredibly excited to see new/better psionic rules. Maybe this is clearer – imagine there’s a new school of magic called psionics. As a default, none of those spells appear on any class’s list. You have to choose a psionic subclass, and it tells you that you can now choose spells from that list.

— Mike Mearls (@mikemearls) May 27, 2018

Yup

— Mike Mearls (@mikemearls) May 27, 2018

If a Mystic uses a discipline as a bonus action can they also use one as an action?

April 6, 2018Zoltar Leave a comment

if a mystic uses a discipline as a bonus action can they also use one as an action? For spellcasting: phb says noI’d allow it

— Mike Mearls (@mikemearls) November 5, 2017

Mystic, can I still take any discipline?

January 13, 2018Zoltar Leave a comment

Sorry if this has been asked but I’m trying to rebuild my Mystic to the newest one. Can I still take any discipline? Like, I’m not stuck with associated disciplines for the order, right? You can take any

— Mike Mearls (@mikemearls) December 3, 2017

Iirc you get a little boost for using matching one

— Mike Mearls (@mikemearls) December 3, 2017

Is there any benefit to taking ones associated to the order like the previous build, or is it a free for all now? Iirc you get a little boost for using matching one

— Mike Mearls (@mikemearls) December 3, 2017

Mystic’s Psionic Restoration can revive as long as “no missing parts”. That count for being cut in half if we have both halves?

January 6, 2018Zoltar Leave a comment

Mystic’s Psionic Restoration can revive as long as “no missing parts”. That count for being cut in half if we have both halves? if you have both halves, you're good!

— Mike Mearls (@mikemearls) October 25, 2017

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The Psionic Class pt2 – The Mike Mearls Happy Fun Hour!

The Psionic Class – The Mike Mearls Happy Fun Hour!

The Mystic Class – The Mike Mearls Happy Fun Hour!

Psionic and spells – The Mike Mearls Happy Fun Hour!

Think I found the last piece for psionics while working on the backyard!

If a Mystic uses a discipline as a bonus action can they also use one as an action?

Mystic, can I still take any discipline?

Mystic’s Psionic Restoration can revive as long as “no missing parts”. That count for being cut in half if we have both halves?

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