The Arcana Forge

I'm playing an Svirfneblin Order of the Awakened Mystic in a campaign. My DM is very open to homebrew and in fact is strongly encouraging some of us to try the blood hunter or gunslinger. He recently handed out some magic weapons, and I got a magic light crossbow with some neat abilities and some very evocative fluff around it (of gnomish make, linked to a great battle between goblins and gnomes, glows in presence of goblinoids, requires blood to work, and I'm thinking looks something like this). The problem is... I can't use it. Order of the Awakened is fantastic out of combat, but in combat (aka a good 50% of our game nights) I'm mostly limited to either a little 1d8 cantrip or the potentially very overpowered save or suck Occluded Mind part of Conquering Mind discipline. A nice crossbow is great for the first few levels, but not nearly as good after when people start getting more attacks. I'm not trying to be a perfectly optimal fighter, given my utility, but at least being competitive when I need to (say a creature with psychic or charm immunity) would be very nice.

To help combat both of those issues, I was thinking of creating a ranged attack based lesser Immortal discipline, then asking if I can swap out Conquering Mind for that one. I have a few small ideas, but need quite a bit of help to get things balanced and well worded. For the focus, I was thinking of having it give something like the archery fighting style, or something like the Elemental Weapon discipline's focus from /u/zDnD 's Psionic Handbook. As for the discipline features, I feel like it should be similar to the abilities of the Psionic Weapon discipline, but able to work on ranged weapons. A scaling damage feature like Lethal Strike or Elemental Weapon's Empowered Strike would be nice, and I'm absolutely in love with how Empowered Strike scales. Limiting the psi points spendable by your proficiency bonus is brilliant and stops the ridiculous amount of burst damage Lethal Strike can do even at first level. Given that I'm hoping to buff ranged attacks, I think LS's 1d10 per psi point is right out, and Empowered Strike's 1d6+and additional effect might be overpowered as well. I have no idea what I'd want to make the mid tier 3 or 5 psi point feature, or if one is needed at all. For the high level ability, I was thinking spending 7 psi points could do something like Conjure Volley, with the working title of Psionic Barrage. My problems with that are that Conjure Volley is pretty powerful for a 5th level spell (considering it's a ranger exclusive they get only at very high levels), and with the flexibility of psi points, a 7 point discipline and a 5th level spell don't always seem equivalent. I also couldn't figure out the flavor of that or how it'd look. Conjuring thousands of arrows works perfectly for a Ranger, less so for a Mystic.

I'm also having trouble with, well, the thing even Wizards of the Coast seems to be having trouble with. Making sure it doesn't step on other class' toes. Much like how Lethal Strike is very similar to a Paladin's smite, the thing I'm proposing is a lot like a Rogue's sneak attack at a point cost, and a Conjure Volley clone would obviously step on the Ranger's toes a little, and at a far earlier level. Some good fluff could help that, but mechanical changes help even more. Any ideas?

There may well be a reason there's no ranged psionic discipline, but from what I can tell at the moment, it's only missing because the class is unfinished, and it would definitely help my character in both concept and combat potential if one were to exist. I'm open to any help or suggestions you guys can give, even if it's just to tell me the entire concept of it is ridiculously unbalanced for some reason I've failed to consider.

/r/UnearthedArcana Thread