DnD’s Psionic Spellcasting system is severely underwhelming

Dungeons and Dragons doesn’t often come out with a brand new class, so we’ve been pretty excited about the Psion. This psychic character class was released in an Unearthed Arcana towards the end of May. But does it truly succeed at the fantasy of playing a psychic character?

This is playtest content rather than a finalized DnD class, still subject to changes ranging from balance tweaks to entire rewrites. We’ve already provided plenty of feedback for Wizards of the Coast about the Psion, writing about its unbalanced subclasses and problems with the conceptually amazing body horror Metamage. But if you thought we were done complaining, you underestimate how helpful we can be.

Personally, I think a weak point of this class is how poorly it differentiates psionic from regular spellcasting. Psions have a number of abilities that work with an Energy Dice mechanic we’ve seen in other DnD subclasses, but this only powers a few features. After that you get spell slots and levels like a regular caster, which makes the psychic feel a like a flavor of DnD Wizard or Sorcerer rather than its own thing.

But don’t worry, psionics isn’t exactly the same as regular magic. The Psion also gets a feature called Psionic Spellcasting that lets you cast spells without their material or verbal components. But this feels like such a minor change because it will almost never crop up in gameplay. It’s not enough to separate the Psion from other casters and make it feel like a fundamentally different type of magic.

For starters, I’m fairly certain that virtually no parties make material components a big component (ho ho) of play anyway. It seems like most groups handwave the mechanic, and accessories like component pouches and focuses exist specifically to remove the bookkeeping.

And you still have to use somatic components (gestures) which reduces the number of situations where not having to use your voice to cast spells is helpful. I suppose it’s good if someone casts Silence, you’re trying to be stealthy, or your spellcasting tools are confiscated, but that’s about it.

I think many players were hoping to see this class powered through something fundamentally different from spellcasting – a class that still gets to do loads of epic supernatural things but isn’t tied to the same features of spell slots and lists as every other caster on the class list.

Of course, it would’ve been trickier for Wizards to implement this, and much harder to balance. But Psionic Spellcasting as it stands is a pretty rubbish feature, and feels mostly like a cosmetic tweak for the class’ magic.

Let us know what you think of the Psion class over in our Discord. And don’t miss our great guides to all the DnD classes and the best DnD character creators.