Psionics Review: Anthony J. Turco Part 1
The Korranberg Chronicle: Psion's Primer
Possibly the most thorough psionics system available for 5e, The Korranberg Chronicle: Psion's Primer is a whopping 174 pages of pure psionics content. The cover — illustrated by Olie Boldador — promises ‘A complete psionics system by Anthony J. Turco’. It pulls strongly upon the design of the 3.5 Expanded Psionics Handbook, which I’ve reviewed previously.
The introduction outlines the theory of the book; it’s written for Eberron but can be reflavored to other settings. Furthermore, psionics are “foreign and mystic” to the everyday person, but is nonetheless a “form of magic”. The introduction then explains specific sources and wielders of psionic power, both in Eberron and in other settings.
Psionics
Before getting to how you access psionics in this book (chapters 1–3), it’s important to understand how the book implements psionic powers (chapter 4). The basic rules (e.g. casting times, targeting) are similar to spellcasting, so I’ll focus on the differences.
Basic Features
Schools of Magic. Psionic powers have their own set of six disciplines — clairsentience, metacreativity, psychokinesis, psychometabolism, psychoportation, and telepathy — harkening back to prior editions of D&D and similar to the other systems that have been reviewed.
Components. Psionic powers do not use the standard VSM components; instead, they have Auditory and Observable displays that alert nearby creatures that a psionic power has been used.
(Mostly) Not Spells. Psionic talents (cantrips) are spells for all rules purposes. Psionic augments (leveled spells), are not spells for most rules purposes, with the exception that they are subject to dispel magic.
Power Points
These rules are embedded into each individual class, but the commonalities make them worth describing here. Rather than spell slots, powers draw upon a singular pool of psi points; a full manifester has 178 psi points at 20th level, which refresh upon taking a long rest. Powers are priced at a rate of 2 psi points per equivalent spell level, so a first level psion with 4 psi points has the equivalent of a first level wizard with 2 spell slots.
Furthermore, manifesters have a psi limit that works similarly to a maximum spell level, starting at 2 and increasing by 2 more every odd level until it caps out at 10 at 9th level, matching the maximum spell slot progression of a spellcaster through 5th level. The full manifesters — the psion and empath — each have a unique feature that lets them increase this limit so they can emulate spells of 6th level and higher.
Talents
The core of the psionic power system are talents, the psionic version of a cantrip. All talents have a duration of “Focus”, which lasts until you use another talent, are knocked unconscious, or are subject to a dispel effect. Talents provide a mix of passive and active benefits; for example, while focusing on the mind thrust talent, a manifester can use their action force a Charisma saving throw against 1d10 psychic damage. Swapping active talents generally takes a bonus action, which has implications for the action economy of manifesters.
Augments
Each augment is tied to a base talent, and can only be manifested if you’re focusing on that talent; in effect, your choice of cantrips determines what spells you can access. These associations are conveniently summarized in two pages devoted to “Psionic Talent Trees”, listing the talents and their associated augments.
The other big change from spellcasting is the resource cost; powers have a base psi cost, and instead of upcasting can have an intensify listing that improves their effects in exchange for additional power points. Every 2 points spent to intensify a power raise the effective spell level by 1. Like spells in the Player’s Handbook, what can or cannot be intensified has some general rules (most damage spells can be intensified), but exceptions abound.
Talent Trees
Building a psionic character revolves heavily around the Psionic Talent Trees; with twenty available talents, a manifester is simply more limited in their power selection than an equivalent spellcaster. This section will briefly summarize both the talent and its available powers.
Aura Beacon. The passive talent simply illuminates the area around you. The powers vary in function but usually require concentration and are generally themed to affecting all enemies or allies in the area immediately around you.
Autonomous Vitality. The passive talent provides advantage on death saving throws to nearby allies. The augments are focused around healing and removing conditions
Battle Trance. This passive talent lets you ignore disadvantage on melee attacks. The powers are all bonus actions or reactions and enhance weapon attacks in various ways.
Blind Spot. This active talent provides a personal invisibility in one on one situations. The augments are various forms of offensive telepathy, such as the potent crisis of breath and crisis of life that cause a creature to forget to breathe or induce a heart attack respectively.
Ectoplasmic Object. This active talent allows you to conjure a simple mundane item. The augments vary from direct damage in ectoplasmic bolt to powerful conjuration effects like spectral shell that reshape the battlefield.
Energy Ray. This active talent is a simple ranged power attack, dealing 1d8 damage at a 90’ range. The augments are a wide range of cold, fire, lightning, and thunder damage effects, mimicking the four options of the base power.
Imbue Psicrystal. This passive talent provides a psionic familiar that ends if you change your focus. Powers include both crystal-themed area damage spells as well as the elaborate mind palace and lesser eidolon powers. Furthermore, the solicit psicrystal power allows the psicrystal to maintain its own focus and concentration in addition to your own.
Intertial Transference. This active talent allows you to move your allies in place of their own movement. The augments are a mix of potent buff and debuff spells; accelerate is a psionic haste, inertial nullification works similarly to banish, and even an indirect area damage spell with gravitic spike.
Mind Thrust. This active talent forces a Charisma save against 1d10 psychic damage. The augments are a variety of offensive telepathy spells with an emphasis on inflicting psychic damage plus a condition.
Mindblade. This semi-passive talent provides a 1d8 melee weapon that uses your psionic ability instead of Strength for attacks. The associated powers either enhance attacking with the mind blade or allow for performing area attacks with the mindblade.
Mindlink. This semi-passive talent provides continuous telepathy to a single creature within the 120’ range; swapping the target is a bonus action. The augments are a mix of offensive and supportive telepathy effects, with the offensive powers placing less emphasis on damage and more on status effects.
Mystic Displacement. This active talent allows you to teleport nearby loose objects. The augments are largely offensive psychoportation powers, with several (such as decerebrate) using this theme to inflict large single target damage; it’s not just about baleful displacement. This is also the talent that provides planar travel via mystic caravan.
Primal Metabolism. This active talent forces up to two nearby creatures to make a Constitution throw against 1d6 acid or poison damage. The augments are offensively oriented psychometabolism spells, with acid and poison damage as recurring features alongside personal buffs like titanic form.
Psychic Hammer. This active talent forces a creature within 30’ to make a Constitution save or take 1d6 force damage and fall prone. The augments aren’t just offensive telekinesis effects though; negate, a psionics-only version of counterspell (because counterspell only works against spells, not powers) falls under this talent.
Psychic Static. This passive talent penalizes the ability checks of nearby creatures, but makes them aware of you; this is good for initiative and deception but bad for stealth. The augments are concerned with emotional manipulation — rage, ennui, pacification, confusion all fall under this talent.
Sixth Sense. This passive talent provides advantage on initiative. The bulk of the augments are various forms of clairsentience that simply acquire useful information, but destiny deluge is a single target damage spell that also stuns, and the high level avert fate effectively acts as a legendary resistance.
Speed of Thought. This semi-passive talent boosts your speed and lets you stand up from prone for free. The psychoportation augments allow you to teleport yourself, allies, and enemies, but none of them are sources of damage.
True Shot. This passive talent lets you ignore disadvantage on ranged attacks. The augments are a mix of bonus action and reaction powers to use alongside weapon attacks, direct enhancements to weapon attacks, and full on actions that replace normal weapon attacks.
Verve. This passive talent suppresses biological needs such as eating, breathing, and sleeping; long rests still require no more than “light activity”. Augments are focused on personal defense or mobility, with the exception of assimilate, a large source of single target necrotic damage that attempts to literally absorb a creature’s life force into your own
Wild Talent. This active power provides three varied utility functions, akin to druidcraft, prestidigitation, or thaumaturgy. The augments are a mix of powers that didn’t quite fit under the other talents, but tend towards supportive rather than offensively oriented.
Prime Psionics - a FVTT module for dnd5e
If you’ve like the sound of this system and play online with Foundry, I’ve written a (free!) module that implements the rules for these powers as their own item type, completely separate from spells, as well as adds manifester as a distinct type of progression from spellcaster.
Psionic Classes
Rather than trying to embody all of psionics in a single class, Psion’s Primer provides three brand new classes alongside three subclasses for existing classes. The obvious strength here is more design flexibility and providing a wider array of options; the downside is this makes Psion’s Primer the most intimidating set of options to dive into from sheer length alone.
Psion
While not the first alphabetically, the psion gets first billing in this review because it’s the iconic psionics user based on intelligence.
Basics. The psion matches the wizard with a d6 hit die, pitiful weapon proficiencies, no tool or armor proficiencies, and only two skills, plus Intelligence and Wisdom saving throws.
Psionics. As a full manifester, the majority of the psion’s class features are found in chapter 4. The psion starts knowing three talents plus an additional from their subclass, gaining an additional talent at levels 4 and 10. They start with 5 augments and gain an additional most levels, finishing with 21 at level 20.
Power Siphon. Once per long rest, when a psion succeeds on a mental saving throw, they can use their reaction to regain power points equal to their psi limit. This feature is extraordinarily narrow; most days it probably won’t trigger at all, and there’s no guarantee it’ll trigger when the additional psi points even matter. Despite a superficial similarity to Arcane Recovery, it’s nowhere near as broadly useful; plus, it stops scaling at level 9.
Expanded Knowledge. At levels 6, 10, and 18 the Psion gains an additional four talents or augments known; learning an augment requires knowing its associated talent, but that talent can be picked from this feature the same time as the augment. These bonus powers can significantly expand the flexibility of a psion, allowing them to cherrypick augments by picking up two pairs of talents and augments per time they get this feature.
Power Surge. Psion’s increase their psi limit by trading away maximum hit points, growing in strength each time it’s used. However, power surge has strict usage limits; once at 11th, twice at 13th, three times at 15th, and four times at 17th. Because it grows in strength each time it’s used, a psion is effectively only able to cast higher level powers by first casting their lower level ones; a 16 psi point power requires first using the 12 and 14 options. At 17th level the cumulative toll of all four activations is 20 maximum hit points; with a constitution bonus of 0, that psion would start the day with 70 hit points, so four activations bring them down to 50, a nearly 30% reduction. This is only a maximum HP reduction, so it’s not additional damage if the psion has already taken damage, but it’s nevertheless a substantial reduction in durability.
Psychic Mastery. Paralleling the wizard’s Spell Mastery feature, Psychic Mastery provides a broader benefit by enhancing an entire talent and its subsidiary augments, allowing you augment up to 5 psi points of powers per turn for free (if you spend more than that, you still pay full cost).
Subclasses
The psion has three subclasses available to it at first level. Each provides a free talent known. Further features come at levels 2, 6, 10, and 14.
Dominator. This telepathy-oriented subclass grants the mindlink talent to start. At second level, Dominators gain access to the command spell as a 2-point power, with the added benefit that the verbal instruction can be delivered telepathically instead. Mesmerize at 6th level lets a psion do an impression of the sorcerer’s Heighten Spell metamagic for telepathy powers, spending 3 psi points to inflict disadvantage on a saving throw. The end of tier 2 feature, Subtle Control, prevents creatures from knowing they were the subject of your telepathy effects, a game changer for more socially oriented campaigns. The final subclass feature, Seize Concentration, is a specialized anti-caster feature that lets a psion steal concentration effects once per short rest for a large sum of power points. All told this subclass delivers exactly what you’d hope for and expect from a telepath, but is by no means necessary for telepathy powers to be effective for other types of manifesters.
Kineticist. The evoker of psion subclasses, Kineticists start off with the energy ray talent. Furthermore, they choose an Energy Specialization — cold, fire, lightning, or thunder — that limits the rest of their subclass features. Intense Ray at 2nd level boosts the damage of energy ray by the psion’s intelligence modifier, a useful boon since energy ray scales by increasing the number of rays rather than just the damage die. At the same level Energy Acclimation offers resistance to the chosen damage type, providing more of an incentive to specialize in fire despite the risk of enemy resistances. 6th level brings Ardent Energy, which for 5 points per power lets you ignore damage resistances. Level 10 further enhances energy ray by letting Kineticists deal their Intelligence modifier as damage on a miss. Level 14 ups the ante by letting Kineticists spend 13 points to downgrade an immunity to a resistance with their Relentless Energy Feature (this can’t be combined with Ardent Energy to turn an immunity into normal damage), while their own Energy Acclimation upgrades to provide total immunity to their chosen damage type. In short, the Kineticist is a dedicated blaster caster with reliable damage from energy ray and the ability to punch through the most common impediments for a mono-type spellcaster.
Sidebar: The product page has a clarification from the author that Elemental Adept would work with energy ray but not any augments, and Relentless Energy was not intended to synergize but does by the text as written.
Shaper. This subclass starts with the imbue psicrystal talent and its necessary component. Psychic Construct at 2nd level grants the project eidolon power, scaled down from a 5 point augment to a 2 point augment. Sustained Eidolon at level 6 turns the eidolon into a semi-permanent pet, giving the Shaper flexibility to use talents besides imbue psicrystal while still maintaining the pet. This further improves at level 11 with Emancipated Eidolon, which allows a Shaper to command their eidolon with only a bonus action.
In addition to these features, a 2nd level Shaper gets to pick a path of customizations that carries forward to level 6 and 14 features. Manifest Form at 2 provides a passive feature, Manifest Function at 6 provides a new action, and Improved Manifest Form at 14 improves the passive benefit. The first path, Xoriat, passively protects the eidolon from enemy attacks while its active is an area confusion effect around the eidolon. The second path, Dal Quor, creates an aura of magical darkness around the eidolon while the active is an upcast dissonant whispers. The third path, the Sea of Siberys, passively provides improved mobility while the active effect is a banishment-like effect that removes a creature from the battlefield. All three have their uses and depend on party composition and DM preferences; if the Eidolon is never targeted, Xoriat won’t have much of an effect, while if it’s constantly the first option for enemies then Xoriat provides the highest value.
Empath
A wisdom-based psionicist, the Empath is framed as being powered by emotions and using their power to support their allies.
Basics. A d8 hit die, shield proficiency (but no armor), wisdom and charisma saving throws, and two class skills is better than the wizard but only just barely. However, in place of armor they have access to the Focused Defense feature, which provides an AC of 10 + Dex + Wis; for a wisdom-based class, this is approximately equivalent to medium armor.
Psionics. The empath is a full manifester, which means the bulk of the class power should be expected to come from its access to the psionics subsystem. Like the psion, the empath starts knowing three talents plus an additional from their subclass, gaining an additional one at levels 4 and 10. They also know a number of augments equal to their level plus four, never skipping a level like the psion.
Enlightenment. Once per short rest an empath can spend a minute with an ally to upgrade one of their skill or tool proficiencies to expertise; this upgrade lasts until the ally takes a rest. This ability upgrades with an additional use per short rest at levels 10 and 18.
Sublime Power. This is the empath’s way to access spell effects of 6th level and higher; once per long rest they can increase their psi limit for a single power activation to the equivalent of a full caster’s maximum spell slot. This benefit is extremely limited compared to a full caster, although their level 19 penultimate feature allows them to upgrade twice per day.
Transcendence. The empath capstone provides a range of passive benefits; resistance to BPS damage; immunity to aging, disease, and poison; and an effective +3 bonus to Strength, Constitution, Dexterity, and Intelligence saving throws. While generally useful, especially given its permanent status, it’s also entirely defensive in nature and won’t reshape campaigns like some other capstones (e.g. the paladin subclass capstones) are capable of.
Subclasses
Available at first level, the empath has three subclasses available to it. Each provides a talent and five of its augments, spread across class levels 1 to 9. Features come at levels 1, 3, 6, and 14.
Mystic. Providing the autonomous vitality talent, the mystic also grants the guidance cantrip, which it can faux-augment into augury by expending psi points. At 3rd level it provides Aura of Awareness, which lets allies within 30’ add their proficiency bonus to initiative checks. Reinforcing the supportive theme of the subclass, the level 6 feature Healing Mantra improves the hit points restored by the Mystic’s healing powers. The level 14 feature, Aura of Celerity, grants allies within the 30’ aura access to a bonus action dash. All told this is a solid subclass that provides meaningful support features, but not in the overwhelming or game-breaking way that some cleric domains like Twilight can do.
Occultist. This subclass grants the sixth sense talent as well as a weaker version of reliable talent (the minimum roll is 8, rather than 10) for Intelligence checks to recall lore. At 3rd level this subclass grants the thaumaturgy cantrip, which the subclass can faux-augment to cast speak with dead. The 6th level feature, Occult Vision, provides an additional 60’ of darkvision and the ability to read all writing. Finally, the level 14 feature, Pronounce Omen, gives the choice between providing outright immunity to a damage type to an ally for 1 minute or a lighter vulnerability (only +Wis damage, rather than doubling) to a damage type to an enemy, with no save to prevent the effect. There’s two key limits; the first is that Pronounce Omen is only available once per long rest, and the second is it uses the Occultist’s concentration and can consequentially be broken by targeting the Occultist. All told the first thirteen levels are a utility, and more specifically knowledge, focused subclass; the level 14 feature changes this by providing a potent combat option that requires some team coordination to maximize in effectiveness.
Wilder. Granting psychic static talent alongside martial weapon and medium armor proficiency, this subclass seems to at least initially lean towards a more hybrid style. The third level feature Wild Surge is somewhat reminiscent of the Berserker rage; gain advantage on an attack/impose disadvantage on a saving throw and a bonus 1d12 psychic damage in exchange for a chance at gaining a stack of exhaustion. The level 6 feature, Psychic Fury, provides a Divine Strike type buff to weapon attacks. The level 14 feature, Volatile Mind, grants a unique form of resistance to enchantment, illusion, and telepathy spells. All told this is a weak subclass by modern standards; hybrid martial-caster characters are expected to have much more effective attacks than this subclass grants, and it’s not even clear that attacking with a weapon is even better than the offensive options available to other subclasses. The mindblade talent is certainly necessary for weapon attacks to be relevant, but swapping your focus between mindblade and the other useful talents you have as an empath costs a bonus action.
That’s All For Now!
Psion’s Primer is a large book, and properly reviewing it requires more than one piece; next time we’ll look at the third base class, the Icon, as well as the variety of other psionic options for players and dungeon masters.