Psionics Review: Keith Baker
ft. Exploring Eberron and Chronicles of Eberron
The world of Eberron was designed with psionics in mind from the very start, although it doesn’t center them like say the Dark Sun campaign setting. Instead, psionics are largely associated with the continent of Sarlona - an optional slice of the game that a psionics-averse GM can simply ignore for their game. In both of his major Dungeon Masters Guild releases, Keith Baker and supporting designers have fleshed out the psionics of Eberron.
If you’re interested in reading more from me about psionics, check out the tag page!
Exploring Eberron
Released in July 2020, Exploring Eberron is a major expansion to the lore of Eberron by Keith Baker with additional design from Will Brolley, Laura Hirsbrunner, and Wayne Chang. The psionic elements consist of support for Eberron’s signature psionic race, kalashtar, through additional lore, two racial feats, and a cleric domain designed with the kalashtar religion in mind.
Kalashtar
Presented for 5e in Rising from the Last War, Exploring Eberron significantly expands upon kalashtar and their role in the world.
Ancestry Lore. In Rising, kalashtar are introduced through the lens of their conflict with the Dreaming Dark, as well as a table of “quirks”. Exploring Eberron chapter 2 focuses more on what it means to play a kalashtar outside of the conflict with the Dreaming Dark, diving into the risen fiends that bonded with ancient monks to create the kalashtar (Chapter 8, the bestiary, contains some new quori stat blocks as well as why Keith returned to referring to quori as fiends like they were in past editions rather than Rising’s classification of quori as aberrations). The kalashtar entry in chapter 2 also talks about where a kalashtar might come from for a the default Khorvaire-based campaign, whether it’s from the distant land of Adar, as part of a major kalashtar community in Khorvaire, or even as an orphan who has little understanding of their psionic capabilities. The section concludes with how to flavor bard, cleric, paladin, and warlock class abilities as manifestation’s of a character’s psionic power — a consistent theme within Keith Baker’s work that will be expanded upon in the later release Chronicles of Eberron.
Quori Bond. A half feat boosting Wisdom or Charisma, Quori Bond provides an always-on 1d4 bonus to a skill and a 1/day free casting of a second level spell. The skill and spells are pre-set and paired, themed to one of four quori lineages - e.g. a hashalaq quori provides a boost to persuasion and provides 1/day cast of suggestion. Quori bond isn’t as powerful as just getting expertise via Skill Expert for a dedicated face character, but if you already have expertise (e.g. as a Bard or Rogue) then the extra 1d4 can boost you to new heights. Spell-wise, mind spike and crown of madness are the two weakest options due to directly competing with ordinary combat options, while suggestion and the enhanced wrathful smite slot more naturally into patterns of optimization.
Thoughtsinger. Another half feat boosting Wisdom or Charisma, Thoughtsinger focuses on a kalashtar’s telepathic abilities. First, it boosts the Mind Link trait to allow a kalashtar to link up to six creatures at a time. Second, it allows the kalashtar to take the help action on anyone they’re linked to, regardless of distance. This does work with other ways to enhance the help action, such as the Mastermind Rogue, but the real point of the extended distance doesn’t require action optimization - it’s to let you easily and freely provide help outside of combat, such as during a heist or other scenario where the party is split and accomplishing multiple objectives at once. This is limited by the 1 hour duration of the Mind Link feature; you have to touch base fairly regularly to continue the linkage, and everyone linked needs to be together for each refresh of the duration.
Design Analysis. While most “psionic races” have lore that starts and ends with “They have innate psionic powers”, perhaps detailing preferred disciplines or how those psionics play into cultural roles and hierarchy, kalashtar stand out for their unique and deep lore. The idea of having two beings, two souls, sharing a single body - the kalashtar and their bonded quori - speaks to many struggles with identity. Are you a product of your environment, a reflection of environmental destiny, or are you your own person distinct from your family? For many, the “quirky” nature of Kalashtar and their different ways of thinking parallel the neurodivergent experience. No matter how you spin it, playing a kalashtar opens the door not just to innate psionic power but fascinating questions about identity.
Mechanically, the two feats are solid options, with Quori Bond being the generally stronger of the two. While neither would be the lynchpin of optimization like Sharpshooter, this is frankly a good thing. Both have clear psionic theming and do a good job of building on the existing themes within the kalashtar race in distinct ways.
Mind Domain
Affiliated with the Path of Light, the Path of Inspiration, and even Cults of the Dragon Below, the Mind Domain crosses divine magic with psionic power. Outside of Eberron, various psionic-affiliated deities exist although they tend to be relatively fringe and get significant makeovers between editions.
Domain Spells. All clerics get an additional ten spells to prepare for free; the Mind domain is very offensively tilted, with most requiring Wisdom saving throws. Only command is already on the cleric spell list, and while about half the spells overlap in function (offensive crowd control), several key additions provide unique utility, namely detect thoughts and telekinesis. Simply put, these spells do a lot to sell the Mind domain cleric as a wielder of psionic power.
1st Level. To start, the Mind domain gets two features in addition to domain spells — Psychic Force is the simpler of the two, allowing you to swap any and all radiant damage for psychic damage. Given the relative rarity of radiant resistance (some celestials, crystal dragons, and a handful of others) compared to psychic resistance (a number of humanoids, emerald amethyst and deep dragons, and a variety of aberrations), alongside the almost complete lack of psychic vulnerability (literally just flumphs) compared to radiant vulnerability (any shadow-themed undead), this is a feature that exists to augment the flavor of the subclass and should not be interpreted as something to optimize around.
The far more powerful feature is Flash of Insight, which provides a free reroll on an ability check twice per short rest. Furthermore, you get a bonus to the reroll equal to half your level with a minimum of +1. Even in the context of a combat-heavy dungeon crawl, this works on initiative rolls to ensure that you can open up fights with hard-hitting spells. Outside of dungeon crawls, the Mind domain seems most inclined to invest in Charisma as a secondary stat to act as the party face or Intelligence to act as a knowledge repository, although you could absolutely use background proficiencies to dip into the various Dexterity based ability checks.
2nd Level. Channel Divinity: Psychic Feedback pairs both with other offensive casters in the party as well as the Mind domain’s own spell list. By itself, the feature lets a cleric use their reaction and Channel Divinity into disadvantage for a single creature’s Wisdom saving throw, a fair trade that can help a party punch through legendary resistances or massively swing the tide of a fight. With an ally, the feature gives some convenient bonus damage, although the damage isn’t so much it should be exclusively played towards.
6th Level. An unusual design in the era of fifth edition, Gestalt Anchor provides a flat +2 bonus to mental saving throws for allies within 10 feet of the cleric. Like the paladin’s aura, there is a tension here - standing within range of the aura significantly increases the risk that multiple people can be the target of a mind blast or other mental attack, but when the party is already fighting in confined quarters it’s an invaluable ten percentage point boost. Furthermore, if the mental attacks are in the form of single target disables, such as a dominate person, the aura both puts the cleric within range of restorative spells as well as helping the initial roll to resist.
8th Level. Potent Spellcasting is an ordinary feature seen on many other cleric subclasses, but reinforces the Mind domain as a backline spellcaster. The domain does not provide any sort of weapon or armor proficiencies that might encourage being near the front line, and the domain spells are all best utilized at some range.
17th Level. An impressively straightforward subclass capstone, Bend Reality allows a Mind domain cleric to turn a failed saving throw into an almost-guaranteed success by replacing the result of a roll with a 20. Furthermore, this feature is usable once per short rest. While many save DCs at high levels are north of 20, making them literally impossible for anyone without a positive modifier or proficiency (e.g. Dyrrn from Rising has a save DC of 23, putting several abilities out of range even alongside Gestalt Anchor), this ability can make a big difference for anyone with a weak-but-still-possible saving throw bonus. Furthermore, while not RAW, many groups opt to make a 20 an automatic success regardless — a change that was proposed but has since been scrapped from the playtest documents for the 2024 core rule updates.
Design Analysis. The Mind domain is a short and fairly simple subclass, relying on the existing mechanics of 5e like psychic damage and Wisdom saving throws to convey the psionic flavor rather than elaborate sub-systems. It’s still a cleric subclass, an incredibly powerful base chassis that arguably doesn’t even need a subclass to be as potent as most other class+subclass combos. The additions from the Mind domain are on par with competing options and only somewhat overlap thematically with the Order domain from Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything, however the Order domain is significantly more martial and focused on assisting its allies compared to the offensive spellcasting potential of the Mind domain.
Chronicles of Eberron
Released in December 2022, Chronicles of Eberron is a broad collection of essays by Keith Baker with mechanical support designed by Imogen Gingell. The psionic support comes in chapter 21, “Riedra”, under a heading appropriately titled “Psionics in Fifth Edition”.
Reflavoring
The first chunk of the section is an in-depth exploration of what it means to make something psionic, framed by the chapter’s focus on the empire of Riedra.
Riedra’s society is built on a foundation of everyday psionics … but there’s no dedicated psionics system in fifth edition. So how do you run a campaign there? How can you make a Dreaming Dark assassin feel different from a mundane rogue? How do you make psionics feel truly alien?
Under “Mechanics versus Flavor”, Keith highlights three fully fleshed out psionic character concepts with just the PHB options. The first is the “Tactile Telekinetic”, a child with incredible telekinetic abilities that’s mechanically a halfling urchin barbarian. The second is the “Thoughtstealer”, a telepath that’s mechanically a college of lore bard. The third is the “Mindbreaker”, a psychokineticist that’s mechanically a fiend pact warlock - unlike the others, this one would appreciate a bit of DM support with changing various damage types to psychic, although the 3.5 psychokineticist was plenty capable of dealing other damage types. In addition to these full concepts, he provides other ideas for how to capture psionic flavor with existing 5e player options, such as by framing ki as an expression of psionic power.
Keith here does give a nod to the idea of varying magical-psionic transparency, although from the setting’s beginning there was an assumption that magic and psionics intermingled without consequence. While he doesn’t name a specific set of rules, he generally gestures to third-party publishers as being a good place to find in-depth psionics rules that would be necessary to playing a game without magic-psionics transparency.
Inspired Player Characters. Diverging from the question of whether psionic classes or subclasses are strictly necessary, Keith addresses the question of how to play an Inspired - the rulers of Riedra and natural antagonist to any kalashtar. His suggestion is a simple one; either play a rogue Chosen who’s found a way to avoid possession, likely through a magic item, or through playing a warlock with a quori as the patron.
Design Analysis. Fundamentally, Keith is right; fifth edition doesn’t try to do mechanical diversity. Spellcasting progression is neatly divided up into full casters, half casters, and third casters; there’s far fewer derived stats; and generally speaking, rules systems are condensed. The places where the current game fails to do this stand out because everything else has been simplified. Flavor is rarely conveyed through mechanical restrictions; there’s no actual rules behind each paladin oath or warlock pact, it’s just a bundle of aesthetics that can be painted over without consequence. Even damage types rarely matter, as highlighted by the Mind domain’s Psychic Force feature.
Psionic Feats
Four psionic feats expand upon the options presented in Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything. For my review of the Telepathic and Telekinetic feats, use the following link.
Each of these options is a half feat that can improve any of the three mental stats, alongside providing a second-level spell that can be cast not only without a spell slot but without components once per day. Like the spellcasting feats in Tasha’s, these spells can also be cast with a character’s spell slots.
Psionic Egoist. Harkening back to the psychometabolic discipline of old, psionic egoist significantly improves temporary hit point gain by letting you add your proficiency bonus to each instance - a big boon to repeatable thp gain like heroism or a twilight cleric’s channel divinity. The associated spell, enhance ability, is an appropriate one; either a long-duration free advantage on ability checks, or 2d6+prof temporary hit points via bear’s endurance. This is the most optimization-oriented of the feats, as without outside sources of temporary hit point gain it’s not very good, but with them it can add significant durability.
Psionic Nomad. Providing minor levitation and the iconic misty step, Psionic Nomad is most directly comparable to Fey Touched. In place of learning a 1st-level divination or enchantment spell and gaining a 1/day cast, this feat gives an at-will bonus action that lets you ignore difficult terrain as well as getting to ignore the verbal component of misty step for the 1/day cast. Thematically, this feat absolutely captures the idea of a nomad; from an optimization perspective, it appears to be about equal in utility, varying based on how much your DM uses difficult terrain in encounters and how much your character already uses their bonus action.
Psionic Seer. Certainly the oddest of the bunch, Psionic Seer allows a character to check the other side of walls once per short rest by concentrating for a minute in addition to granting the augury spell. Despite being very explicitly non combat oriented, it seems most at home in a traditional dungeon crawling adventure — being able to silently check the contents of a room is useful when deciding to proceed, and augury is best when it’s deciding simple courses of action, like “should we pull this potentially trapped lever”. It’s worth noting some unusual features of augury being the spell of choice. For one, it has a non-recurring costly material component, without which you can’t cast the spell with your spell slots. Furthermore, if you do buy the material component and have the ability to cast rituals, the 1/day cast no longer becomes about bypassing the spell slot cost but simply hastening the casting time from 11 minutes to 1 minute (it’s possible that ignoring the VSM components is still otherwise helpful, although given the limited capabilities of the spell it’s unlikely a silent cast would be helpful).
Psionic Shaper. Last but not least is Psionic Shaper, which grants the ability to at-will conjure mundane objects as an action and the summon beast spell. You can only conjure one object at a time and its cost must be 25 gp or less in addition to being no larger than 5 feet on a side. This allows almost any weapon, only excepting the greataxe, greatsword, the hand and heavy crossbows, and the longbow. It furthermore allows most adventuring gear, only excepting consumables that go in bottles and objects with very expensive glass lenses. One obvious use for this is as a far superior version of the Artificer’s The Right Tool for the Job feature — only needing an action to replicate a set of tools is a huge difference from needing a full hour, even if either way you could easily buy a set of tools and just have them on your person. As for the granted spell, being able to skip the 200 gp initial investment is useful for games where you don’t immediately have that much money to spend on an expensive material component. Furthermore, permanently altering the type of the summoned spirit from beast to construct can make it immune to certain kinds of effects. While this feat alone is insufficient to fully capture a shaper from past editions, it still oozes with flavor and captures the capabilities of one.
Design Analysis. Simply put, these feats are a smash hit of design. Each neatly matches the template set by Telekinetic and Telepathic while providing unique abilities that call back to the psionic disciplines of old. They aren’t the most powerful feats, which is a good thing, but each provides compelling character building hooks that go far beyond raw power. Tying into the previous point about reflavoring, if you like the abilities but don’t want the psionic flavor it’s certainly doable to frame the abilities as magical in an arcane or primal fashion, just as many people reflavor the capabilities of Fey Touched and Shadow Touched.
Psionic Weapons
Perhaps the most unusual offering of the book are the psionic weapons and the sentira shards that enhance and empower them.
A common psionic armament found among the ranks of Riedra’s Harmonious Shield is the sentira lens, a handheld ranged weapon that can focus a wielder’s psionic potential to fire a harmful bolt of telepathic energy.
The weapons are similar to crossbows, featuring light, hand, and heavy variants, but their damage is a die step lower and psychic instead of piercing. More significant is the psiactive property, which replaces the ammunition property and changes the key ability from Dexterity to your choice of Intelligence or Charisma. They have a shot counter equal to twice your proficiency bonus and can be recharged with either an action or a bonus action. Also worth noting is that these weapons are expensive, with even the light version costing 50 gp, the heavy costing 100, and the hand costing a whopping 150 gp.
Balance-wise, these weapons aren’t doing anything special; to make proper use of these you’d need both high Intelligence or Charisma and features that incentivize attacks over cantrip (like Extra Attack), without already having a better alternative like eldritch blast, the Armorer Artificer’s Armor Model, or the Battle Smith Artificer’s Battle Ready. These aren’t even eligible for the Improved Pact of the Blade invocation as that names the additional options (the PHB bows and crossbows). The best two options are as a ranged option for a bard with the College of Swords or Valor, an otherwise Strength-based paladin, or a Eldritch Knight/Psi Warrior fighter. Of these options, only the College of Valor makes much sense to use one of these as a primary weapon, as everyone else has strong incentives to stay in melee or prioritize non-Intelligence/Charisma abilities and would only use the weapon as a backup weapon (A fighter in theory could prioritize Intelligence over Strength/Dexterity, but that would require sacrificing AC, a more than fair trade).
What truly makes the weapons interesting are the sentira shards - anxiety, disgust, fear, misery, and tranquility. Created with a “much more focused emotional resonance”, they can be affixed to a sentira lens with ten minutes of work (a sentira lens can only have one sentira shard). The common versions (anxiety and tranquility) can be used once per day, the uncommon versions (disgust and fear) have three charges per day and turn the affixed lens into a +1 weapon, and the rare version (misery) has three charges per day and turn the affixed lens into a +2 weapon.
Design Analysis. While the sentira lenses may not be the most optimal weapons for most any build, they certainly are cool and bring in some of the sci-fi feel that psionics often asks for. Furthermore, emotional theming is an underrated part of psionics; combined with the unique system of affixing the shards to weapons, the sentira shards really stand out.
The Analysis
Even combining both of these books, there’s not a ton of mechanics; one subclass, six feats, and a handful of weapons make up the entirety of the psionic player options.
What Went Right
Feeling Like Psionics. Each and every option is dripping with psionic flavor, not only tapping into basic expectations like “emphasizing mental stats” but making impactful callbacks to psionic mechanics of past editions.
Edition Coherency. While these are new player options, they don’t break expectations of how 5e works, a big risk with third party content. The closest is the Sentira lens weapons, but by avoiding making them best-in-class options nobody will feel they have to engage with the sci-fi mind beam weapons.
Mechanical Balance. Each and every option is in that goldilocks band of not too strong that introducing them drastically shakes up the game but not too weak that players feel bad for picking them. Some are certainly more niche, like Psionic Egoist, but for mechanically minded players that’s just an invitation to experiment.
Setting Flavor. Each and every psionic option not only reinforces specific character themes but builds up the world of Eberron. Kalashtar worshipping the Path of Light have faith leaders with potent mental powers; soldiers in the Empire of Riedra wield strange and unique weapons. These options are designed with a specific setting in mind and deliver on that promise.
What Didn’t
Limited Scope. While the psionic options certainly hit the design and page count goals, those goals were still set small. This was a good choice from an overall product standpoint, but if you’re not otherwise interested in the excellent Eberron lore in these books, these books will struggle to justify their ~$30 pdf price points.
Conclusion
Like Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything, Keith Baker’s psionic options aren’t a full psion class. Unlike the official take from Wizards of the Coast, Keith is unafraid to commit to integrating character options into the flavor of the world. All of the options both read and play well, and come as part of books full of top tier worldbuilding.
Product links: Exploring Eberron and Chronicles of Eberron