UA Psion: Updated Spells

 For our last post on the Psion Unearthed Arcana, we'll be looking not at the brand-new spells (which I covered in the first post) but rather all the spells that are getting potential revisions. These spells come from either Xanathar's Guide to Everything, Tasha's Cauldron of Everything or Fizban's Treasury of Dragons (the latter of which has the Gem dragons, who all have psionic powers).

Heads up, this could be very short, depending on how much these spells change.

Intellect Fortress:

This spell appears unchanged except adding Psions to the classes that can pick it up.

Psychic Scream:

The only subtle difference here is that it no longer requires a creature to be killed by the damage, only to reduce their HP to 0 to cause their head to explode. This is actually functionally important, as this spell can instantly kill a player character who would otherwise simply go unconscious. (Most DMs have monsters die once reduced to 0 HP, so it shouldn't change things when a PC uses it against monsters/NPCs.)

Raulothim's Psychic Lance:

Again, one subtle distinction: if you can't see the target and use their name to target them instead, you must use their actual name, not a nickname, alias, or pseudonym. Interestingly, this actually makes the importance of "true names" kind of a big deal - it could be a cool lore reveal in the middle of combat, as frustrating as it might be for the player casting this.

Tasha's Mind Whip:

This spell has actually gotten a pair of nerfs. The old version calls for an Intelligence saving throw and deals 3d6 psychic damage on a failed save or half as much on a success, with a failed save also preventing reactions until the end of their next turn and forcing the target to choose between an action, bonus action, or movement on their next turn. The UA version changes this from reactions to just opportunity attacks, and also makes the target choose between an action or bonus action, but they can still use their movement regardless.

    The change to opportunity attacks is likely to prevent this from shutting down a creature with "legendary reactions," such as the stat block for Vecna, which is funny, because the 2025 Monster Manual went back to more traditional legendary actions. Clearly a nerf no matter which way you slice it.

And that's actually it - the other spells, Summon Astral Entity, Telekinetic Crush and Telekinetic Fling are all brand new.

So, given how short this post is:

I think it's an interesting choice to make the Psion use Spellcasting. It's one of those ideas that in theory I find a little safe and boring, but I also understand how this system is tried-and-true, and especially as someone who remembers the craziness that was the Mystic, this is a much more workable solution. It also lets the class dovetail better in multiclassing situations.

I do think it's a bit funny, though, that the Psion's spellcasting is arguably inferior to the Aberrant Sorcerer's Psionic Spellcasting feature, which allows ignoring all spell components. I think there probably needs to be something extra to really make Psions feel like a different kind of spellcaster.

I also worry that their Psionic Energy Die progression simply matching that of the Soulknife and Psi Warrior might wind up feeling insufficient - those subclasses have the rest of their base class to rely on.

Another thing that is just a little peeve of mine is that treating PEDs as both a resource and a die that you can roll leads to some odd moments: you can expend a PED and wind up rolling more than one of them, or even sometimes expending multiple PEDs but only rolling one of them.

I think it would probably work better if they were "Psi Points."

That said, I also think you run into some weird overlap here - many have noticed some similarities to the Sorcerer, and I am left wondering a bit what an Aberrant Sorcerer is if the "Stephen King character with mental powers" archetype is now its own separate class.

These aren't dealbreakers, but given that this would be a brand-new, fully-fledged class, I'd hope we see future iterations of the Psion in future UAs before it gets published (and given that this doesn't match the theme of any announced book coming this year, I suspect we might).