Hello adventurers of all shapes and sizes! Welcome to my spellbook and thank you so much for checking out the 64th feat we’ve been covering on this feat series andtoday we’re looking at dnd 5e wild talent feat now this is a very interesting feat in the way that it’s more of a mechanic and experiment mechanic than a feat itself. So this is found in the unearthed arcana and it is another one of wizards of the coast attempts at psionics in 5e.
I think it’s very interesting how they went about it, i would certainly not recommend this feat for the vast vast majority of characters. Maybe if you’ve been playing 5e for a couple of years and it’s not really challenging to you anymore and you’re running a one-shot in that case i might allow it but in an actual campaign that there’s no way, there’s just too many things to keep track of.
If you don’t have complete trust in your players to know exactly what they’re doing and be honest with you there’s a good chance they can kind of muddle things up but i’ll get into that a little bit more as we progress. This is gonna be a longer post by the way there’s just a lot that needs to be covered here. Let’s take a look at the description at least the initial description and then we’ll kind of go from there.
Table of Contents
Description
You awaken to your psionic potential, which enhances your mind or body. Increase one ability score of your choice by 1, to a maximum of 20, to represent this enhancement. You also harbor a wellspring of psionic power within yourself, an energy that ebbs and flows as you channel it in various ways. This power is represented by your Psionic Talent die, the starting size of which is a d6.
Very cool stuff, so right off the bat better than most feats just through virtue that you can pick any ability score. It is important to make a note on your player somewhere which ability score you pick because this ability score actually factors in and to a couple of the other features and abilities relating to psionics in 5e. We’re going to be covering a lot of that in an another article but for this article we’re just gonna focus on wild talent. I kind of go from there. That being said let’s checkout exactly what this feat lets you do.
What This Feat Lets You Do.
So you can do one of the two main things. Psionic Talent Options. You can use your Psionic Talent die in the following ways: Psi-Boosted Ability: When you make an ability check with the ability increased by this feat, you can roll your Psionic Talent die and add the number rolled to the check. You can choose to do so before or after rolling the d20, but before you know whether the check succeeded or failed.
Psi-Guided Strike: Once on each of your turns when you hit with an attack roll that uses the ability increased by this feat, you can roll your Psionic Talent die after you make the damage roll and then replace one of the damage dice with the number rolled on the Psionic Talent die.
Which is a very interesting mechanic in the way that it’s, it makes me remember a lot of the battle master combat maneuvers and you get to add your maneuver die but this one replaces it. So it’s pretty interesting. The first ability kind of reminds me of discount luck as it were cuz you don’t realy get to roll with advantage or disadvantage but you can add the roll. Very similar to guidance in that way i suppose but it’s very limited in terms of scope, so that initial ability you increase it’s got to be important. So now that we’ve gone over the uses of for your psionic talent die let’s actually it take a look at how its sizing works.
Changing the Die’s Size. If you roll the highest number on your Psionic Talent die, it decreases by one die size after the roll. This represents you burning through your psionic energy. For example, if the die is a d6 and you roll a 6, it becomes a d4. If it’s a d4 and you roll a 4, it becomes unusable until you finish a long rest. Conversely, if you roll a 1 on your Psionic Talent die, it increases by one die size after the roll, up to its starting size.
This represents you conserving psionic energy for later use. For example, if you roll a 1 on a d4, the die then becomes a d6. Whenever you finish a long rest, your Psionic Talent die resets to its starting size. When you reach certain levels, the starting size of your Psionic Talent die increases: at 5th level (d8), 11th level (d10), and 17th level (d12). If you have a Psionic Talent die from another source, such as a class feature, you don’t get more than one die; use only the one with the largest starting size. Psi Replenishment. As a bonus action, you can calm your mind for a moment and restore your Psionic Talent die to its starting size. You then can’t use Psi Replenishment again until you finish a long rest.
It’s very cool stuff! As i mentioned earlier on a long rest to reset but a fret not this actually scales due to the fact that it works a lot like a cantrip. So as you go up in level it actually increases the size of it. Very interesting stuff! so assuming you roll the one on the d12 and then use your either the second time as a bonus action which we’ll get into in a little bit here.
It could potentially go as high as d20 which is a very very interesting stuff. I don’t know like it’s i feel like this is better as a class ability but i’ll talk about that in a little bit. And then if you have a it from another source, so if you have two sources that give you a psionic die which is likely to happen if this makes it into the main game, you don’t get more than one die, you only use one and you use the one with the largest starting size. Which makes logical sense. So now let’s talk about psi replenishment, It is how you gain an additional use of your psionic talent die. So as a bonus action you can calm your mind for a moment and restore your psionic talent die to it’s starting size and then you can’t use psi replenishment again until you finish a long rest.
So basically every day you can get two of them. I don’t really know how i feel about this mechanic because it implies that it’s meant to be used within combat and i don’t know it is interesting. Now let’s take a quick look at the walkthrough and just make sure we are all on the same page and then i’ll get to my personal thoughts right after.
Walkthrough
So you start out by getting one plus one to any stat, the stat selected acts as a modifier for other psionic abilities. It’s also the main focus of the psionic abilities as well. You gain a psionic talent die, which starts as a d6. This die can be used in several ways such as adding to a check or an attack roll based off of the stat you picked earlier. Your talent that increases when you roll the lowest outcome and decreases when you roll the highest outcome.
The base die increases based off of a character level and you can use a bonus action once per long rest to regain the die.
It’s kind of the simplest way i can really describe how this feat works. It’s pretty complicated in of itself, it does i really only recommend it for experienced players. Now let’s get to my personal thoughts on it.
Thoughts
So it is obvious, as most of you know that 5e is going to have more psionic classes. We already one for sure in you a that i can access on dnd beyond atleast i know there have been others in the past, other attempts at this. I do not know whether or not be a psionic is going to be a full-on class in dnd 5e as of yet.
In previous editions it was but in those editions it was also ludicrously overpowered and it was very difficult to play and i know that given the current nature of 5E and the recent culture on min maxing and making the most powerful builds, i think wizards is very apprehensive as to whether or not to make this sound like its own class and if they do how they’re gonna go about it without making it game breaking or leading to potentially broken multi-class.
I think this is a fair way of experimenting with it that way players can introduce psionics to every class and figure out which works better. We will be covering all of the psionic UA feats in the immediate future here so keep an eye out for those. But all of them seem to be applicable to very specific classes…some martial, some not, it’s very interesting how they’re setting it up, i like the idea of nisei ike’s coexisting with in each class as sub classes i think that makes a lot of sense, i think that’s the way it was gonna go with this.
That being said, as it relates to these feats in particular, some of them are very good others outrageously terrible compared to what they used to be and i will be providing my insight with you on those, this is just kind of part of the growing pains of dungeons and dragons 5e as it relates to unearthed arcana, they change, they tweak, they re release and psionics is kind of something that’s been talked about for a very long time years for sure we’ve been talking about it for years.
Conclusion
In any case i’m very excited to see what comes out of it. I think this is a good direction. Yeah that being said, let me know what you guys think down beneath in the comment section, are you excited for psionics, are you dreading it, have you ever already played around with it maybe i don’t know. Let me know down beneath, i hope you all have a great day and as always happy casting my friends.