Unearthed Arcana: The Psion | D&D

We've got a really fantastic unear arcana. Tell me about the scion. Why are people always so excited for this type of, you know, psychic magic?

This is the class that unlocks the like full potential of their mind and is able to unleash all sorts of incredible effects, telepathy, telekinesis, but also far far far beyond that. This whole unear arcana just goes so far down the rabbit hole on what that fantasy is and how it feels every part as rich and exciting and heroic as a wizard, as a warlock, as a cleric, all of those things. We have four full subasses, a host of mechanics that go through the class as a whole, as well as some spells and some wild talent feats for people who want to dabble in psionic uh powers but not want to go whole hog into the class.

Yeah. So, this is a really really big uh UA article that we've been able to put together. For those that do not know, what are psionics?

magic that's from the mind, right? They can cast a spell without the verbal or material components with some caveats. Obviously, when you do that, especially with the material part, you're essentially removing the uh the spellcasting focus.

You don't need a rod. You don't need a wand. This lets the scion basically use their brain as the focus.

To be clear, psionics are actually already present in fifth edition. Uh we actually have a couple of very fun, wonderful psionic classes in the 2024 players handbook. Um we have the sci warrior, we've got the soul knife, we've got aberant sorcery.

Uh and so this UA is not necessarily introducing something new. It's building on kind of this foundation that we've set for ourselves in the uh in the players handbook in the revised rules. The core mechanic of the scion is uh the psionic dice mechanic.

Uh and this is something we've seen in both the soul knife and in the sci warrior. They give you either access to these bite-sized new psionic abilities or they give you ways to creatively psychically enhance what you already can do. Uh and so we took kind of that principle and made that the foundational principle for this entire class.

In the base scion class, we have subasses. Yes. One of the first ones we have is the metamorph.

Yes. Tell me about the metamorph. What is the flavor that's being captured here?

It's the mind over matter class. It is the idea that your mind is so powerful, that your psionic ability is so powerful that you can reshape flesh itself. That it is the ability to look at someone and telekinetically make their heart start beating again.

Stuff like that. Uh that is kind of the vibe that we're going for with the metamorph. It is the subclass that can uh morph and stretch their own limbs because their mind supersedes the limits and reality of their body.

And one of those things they can do is briefly transform their limbs into uh organic weapons. They can spring a blade from their forearm made of bone. They can uh clump and me and harden their flesh into a mole.

The next subclass we have is the sigh warper, which I love. It's a teleporter. You are really controlling the battlefield.

Yes. Really changing space. Being so like psionically powerful and so mentally powerful that you can just change reality and change where things are positioned.

It's it's like the chess master of uh the scion subasses. A lot of the abilities here focus on repositioning not only yourself uh but your allies uh and drawing power from uh being able to psychically warp space in that way. Telekinetically pushing or pulling a creature has a lot of flexibility because a creature as we say in the rules in 2024 can willingly fail a save.

So, you can pull your buddy out of danger. You can push your barbarian further ahead to get closer to the monster. You can uh as the cy warper, you can teleport that creature uh somewhere horizontal to you.

And if there's a pit or, you know, a dip in the floor, well, you can just teleport them over that. So, the cy warper is definitely going to be a subass that rewards creative thinking. So, we have the psykinetic, which is a a beefy damage dealer.

Yes, this is our our damage dealer, but they're also a little bit of our force dealer. Uh the archetype here for the psychinetic is the force field person. And it's the person who creates these force constructs that block things or blasts people away or moves people through force rather than like uh this sort of uh warping of space.

The goal with the psychinetic was to feel very offensive oriented in your abilities. And to emphasize that you have an enhanced attack mode. defense mode will come up, but also you'll you're more incentivized to lean into that archetype of destructive uh destructive telekinetic energy.

The final subclass in here is the telepath. The telepath is, you know, along with the psychonetic, the quintessential scion, right? They have an expanded telepathy.

They can uh talk to multiple creatures simultaneously through that. Love utility for the party. Yeah.

And also an empowered defense mode. Yes. So the psychonetic is I am very strong on the offense.

The telepath is I'm very strong on the defense and I can uh even uh expand that benefit to my party uh to creatures in range of my telepathy. And then we have all these wild talents. Yes.

Which you you you worked on extensively. What what what is the purpose of these wild talents? So wild talent feats are basically meant to be, hey, you want a taste of psionics, but you don't want to play a full scion or a full psionic subclass?

Here you go. Or you can just double down on everything or you can double down and get really specific in how your psionics manifest. Uh I think of the very classic archetype we have of uh the fire starter.

Uh this the person who could just mentally start fires. And that was something that I personally loved. And I don't know what that says about me, but um being able to sort of just like start those fires with your mind was such such a cool sort of character trope and visual that we really wanted to bring, but it didn't quite fit in our subclass modeling.

And so what we did was we took that sort of uh that trope and we made it into a feat that really anyone can take. So anyone can be a psionic arsonist. you can be a psionic artist.

Um, and it basically uh like uh looking at the pyrochinesis feet uh which is our um our fire starter feet. Uh it gives you the ability to just mentally change damage type uh into fire damage. Uh so if you are a playing as a scion and you want to really lean really hard into that fire starter archetype, you get a bunch of uh spells that deal psychic damage natively with the pyrokinesis feet.

can change that psychic damage into fire damage and really lean heavy into that archetype. Uh you also get a bunch of spells that also lean into uh the pyrokinetic archetype and uh that help you cast and do even more fiery fiery damage. Uh and that's just one of many yeah one of many like some of these talents are like kind of trickster wild talents where you can add your intelligence modifier to persuasion or deception check but then you also can disguise self.

Yep. And so that's what I love about all these wild talents is you can have a little bit of psionic uh in you or you can really sculpt the character in a very modular way cuz it it could be ice powers, it could be lightning, it could be a little bit more of the body morphing stuff. Um there's a ton of these.

It kind of covers like everything you could wish for. There's ones that are uh almost like grandchildren of the scion subasses. So, if you want a taste of like the metamorph but not in a full going full scion, uh you can have uh there's little wild talents that give you a little bit of taste of that sort of psionic life manipulation or the flesh manipulation.

Uh if you want a little bit of that uh sort of telekinetic power that you get in the psychinetic, but you don't want to do the full subass, we have the psychineticist uh wild talent feat for you to try out. I know everyone's going to be extremely excited for this unear arcana. I know I am.

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