Talents and Psionics – MCDM Class for D&D5e – Analysis Part 3

MCDM had already created two classes (The Illriger and The Beastheart) and decided to create possibly the last MCDM class before putting all their efforts into their own RPG. Talents and Psionics are something MCDM has been promising since the company’s inception. One can only assume that it took so long to release them in order to ensure they created new mechanics for spell-like powers. They needed to feel special and unique, while at the same time not being OP or disappointing.

Due to the complexity and length of the document, we divide this analysis into three parts.

Psionics and Talents | Talents Psionics Specializations | Powers, Items, etc.

Powers

Powers from talents work just like spells do in the core game, but the team at MCDM played around a bit with this new subsystem they were creating for the game to create their own versions of spells, so even though you can only use up to 6th degree powers (the term degree is used rather than the level of the power), they still feel just as versatile (or even more so) than if you were using spells.

The manifestation dice mechanic lets you cast Fourth Order powers (or “manifest” as they call it) at level 1 and Sixth Order powers (the most powerful ones) at level 5. It feels suicidal to try to do this, especially since it can actually kill you if you do it poorly, but there are certainly moments where you do want to actually do this.

As for the powers themselves, many of them are just improved versions of spells. With a huge number of powers at your disposal, you won’t feel like you’re wasting space on something you already have; they just give you more options! The “Increed Order” section of powers (similar to casting a spell at a higher level) makes powers even more fun by giving you tons of new options. Usually spending a higher level spell slot means dealing extra damage, but here using a higher order makes the power much more versatile. Take the power Guise, for example:

Though it’s an improved version of the 1st level spell “Disguise,” the “Increase Order” section allows you to do a lot of weird and fun things with this power.

You can create all sorts of weird stuff by creating your own “spells” through these powers. For example, the 2nd Order Power, Read Order, allows you to know everything that has happened near any object you touch within the last 24 hours. Great for investigation. Some powers feel like they give you something very similar to what the subclass already offers, but I think this is mainly because the subclasses get access to what other subclasses have. A good example is the 4th Order Power, Fire Form, which has an effect very similar to Pyrokinetic’s Flame On ability. There are some very fun Orders. For example, Broadcast allows you to send a message to everyone within a mile like Eren Jaeger, or Detonate allows you to turn someone into a living bomb (great for villains to use on NPCs that PCs love, BWAHAHAA). Some powers have some very interesting story potential. A good example is Psychic Projection, which creates a replica of yourself that can’t interact much with its surroundings. Imagine this replica actually going berserk and believing itself to be your own entity. Some powers are very similar to existing spells, but are vastly improved by changes to their descriptions. The 6th power Brain Overload is similar to the Disintegrate spell, both of which deal a ton of damage and die when they hit 0HP, but this power actually sends a ton of energy to the brain, causing the target’s brain to explode. How cool is that?? The 6th power Souls Intertwined lets you create that cliched body-swap story you’ve seen a thousand times in the movies. It’s a recipe for a ton of fun at the table.

Gemstone Dragonborn

With five new ancestries (subraces) to choose from, the Gemstone Dragonborn offer players a choice of built-in psionic abilities from the get-go. They feature crystal armor similar to what the core dragonborn have, a choice of ancestry that grants one ability that can be used per short or long rest, and natural psionics and telepathy. Natural psionics allows you to choose one primary power from a list that can be manifested as a spell, while telepathy, as you’d expect, gives you the ability to speak telepathically with other intelligent creatures. Is this the only race with built-in telepathy?

Great achievement

There are five feats per page. Three of them are only available to PCs who can cast at least one power; the other two are free for anyone to take. These are mostly copies of other feats from the PHB that are about powers rather than spells (if you’re planning on creating a new magic system for 5e, you’ll probably want to add in more of these to keep powers at the same level).

Augmented Force is the power equivalent of Elemental Adept, but you can also treat immunities as resistances. Battlemind is almost the same as the power equivalent of War Caster, but you also get a mini-shield when you gain tension. Better Under Pressure is unique, adding a mechanic called “pressure points” to enhance dice results. Psionic Initiate is the talent equivalent of Magic Initiate, where you learn powers instead of spells. Psionic Trick is a unique feat that gives you telepathy, the ability to move 5 feet in any direction, and the ability to burn small objects until they break.

What’s really interesting is the way this is presented – the prerequisite for the first three feats is being able to cast the power, not being “talented”, meaning that if you’re playing any other class and you pick one of the last two feats, you’ll get the power to take any of the first three.

Psionic Items

Among the ten magic items, there are four unique items that grant some kind of psionic ability or power, such as flight or storing power in a headband. Then there are wands. There is a wand for each type of psionic ability available: Chronopathy, Metamorphosis, Pyrokinesis, Resopathy, Telekinesis, and Telepathy. Each grants a unique ability tied to the psionic type, as well as some charges of power. In a way, these are similar to Archmage wands, but all related to psionic abilities.

Psychic Creatures

As someone who enjoys monster design (and is a designer myself), I love checking out what MCDM has to offer on that front. As always, these monsters blew me away, using the same kind of action-oriented stat block as Flee Mortals (reviewed next month!). The art is pure, and the stat block itself is great to execute. This is mostly achieved by simplifying their own rules for how monster psionics work (which, for simplicity’s sake, work almost exactly like spells). The creatures in this section are split into Gem Dragons and NPC Talents.

Gem Dragon Monster

Instead of a variety of dragons like in most monster books, here we have six different dragons. I think each one focuses on a certain type of psionics. Each one is unique and has a name and lore tied to it, which makes them special and makes you want to add them to your campaign. We’ve already seen gem dragons in MCDM, both in Strongholds & Followers, Kingdoms and Warefares. However, back then they were hard to use because how psionics and talents worked hadn’t been defined yet. These remakes offer different stat blocks. I fell in love with Nelisardrim, the gem dragon, who is a bookworm. He studies from many sources, which contradict each other, and has a short attention span (that’s me :D)

NPC Talents

Like most bestiaries, there is an NPC section. This section contains three NPC stat blocks for each type of talent. These are Talented (CR4), Expert (CR8), and Master (CR12). These are simple and don’t contain a lot of explanation as we already know what each one does and the core abilities associated with the psionic specialization.

Adding War

I’ve only tried the Warefare system once, and both myself and my players really enjoyed it. However, I’m sure there’s still a lot we don’t know about the core design behind it, which makes it hard to fully judge the additions. But from what I’ve seen, the three new additions look pretty cool. I’ll have to try this again when I get warfare back in my game, and throw in some psionics.

Association

Matt has written a full fiction set in his world that, like many of his other works, will be released with the new MCDM RPG. Like his other works, this is a great way to showcase how they believe talents can shine in the game. If you’re the DM for a gifted character, or are playing talents yourself, you’ll find it very useful to read this text and get inspiration for how your character should run (or, as a DM, what trials to put in front of your character). It’s also a very entertaining read.