Fighter Martial Archetype: Psi Warrior 5e

Review by Sam West, Twitter:@CrierKobold

The Psi Warrior takes the established resource pool in Battle Master and gives it a flavorful telekinetic twist. You have a pool of d6s that let you mix stabbing with brain blasts. Psi stuff always feels very “super hero” to me; your Gambit from X-Men, both badass with a bow staff and have the ability to move stuff with your mind. That’s not really my thing, but I do know its a beloved archetype a lot of players flock to. If you’re one such player, Psi Warrior will deliver on that fantasy pretty well, all while giving you a bunch of new toys to explore the world with while empowering your martial capabilities.

3rd Level: Psionic Power

Psionic Power is the core of the subclass: you get twice your proficiency bonus Psionic Energy Dice (4 when you pick this subclass up at 3rd level) that can fuel three powers: Protective Field, Psionic Strike, and Telekinetic Movement.

Protective Field is a force bubble that reduces incoming damage by the rolled dice + int mod. New reactions are usually great, and this is no exception. Psionic Strike lets you sink the dice for damage like a divine smite. Both of these options always consume a dice in a way you’d expect. Neither are game shakingly powerful boons, but both are great reasons to get a +3 or more Int to scale both your defense and offense capabilities.

Telekinetic Movement gets a free use that comes back on short rest, and then can be used extra times by expending dice. Want to empower your fighter out of combat? Throwing things around with your mind is definitely a way to do that, and getting a free use every short rest leads it to feeling like a free out of combat boon alongside your combat options. A 30 ft. pool of a large or smaller creature has so much potential that most spells won’t reach until 4th or 5th level slots. The creature needing to be willing is a bit of a bummer, but with the frequency of uses, this kind of feature is exactly what I want to see on my fighters.

Psionic Power comes together to paint a clear, simple picture. You can spend dice to block or deal more damage, and can additionally spend those dice to get more uses of your basic telekinetic utility. A solid start that works great in multi-class builds thanks to the PB scaling. The fact that all the dice come back on long rest with a bonus action spare one each short rest too makes it feel like a deep well of resources you can lean on in all tiers of the game.

7th Level: Telekinetic Adept

Telekinetic Adept scales up your Psionic Power with additional ways to spend your ever growing pool of dice, but in a way that also gives you more free uses of new abilities.

Psi-Powered Leap is a once per short rest temporary fly speed that you can reuse by spending dice. If it only ever cost you dice it’d still be a fine improvement, but it not necessarily competing with your damage from Psionic Strike makes it so much more fun to use. You always get one bonus action for a fly speed per short rest, no competition for your resource. You don’t have to forgo damage to get some utility out of this, which is a really clean way to encourage you to use all of your abilities.

Telekinetic Thrust empowers your Psionic Strike further without asking you to consume any more dice; it just tacks on a bonus shove or prone to the hit on a failed save. If it took extra dice I’d be pretty iffy on it- getting it for free makes your Psionic Strike feel so much stronger, as now any strike can knock something prone and offer advantage on melee attacks. With a bow you can even knock things within 30 feet of you off edges or into damaging area spells. An incredible improvement to an entirely fine damage boon. The once per turn limitation of Psionic Strike does severely limit the potential of this improvement, but seeing as you’re going to have a gigantic pool of dice replenishing frequently, you’ll find round after round you’re getting Psionic Strike off and weaponizing the save.

10th Level: Guarded Mind

Guarded Mind, unlike the prior features, gives you an exclusively competitive option with your other powers for your dice on top of resistance to psychic damage. The benefit of simply ending a charmed or frightened condition is pretty solid, but not something I’m over the moon about to get. Against some enemies, this will be a way to mitigate all of their threat, while most of the time it’ll be a passive boon you’ll benefit from one time or less per long rest.

15th Level: Bulwark of Force

Bulwark of Force follows in Psi-Powered Leap’s footsteps, giving you a free use per short rest of mass half-cover while also letting you spend dice to get the feature again if you want it. A bonus action to offer 1 + your Int mod creatures (normally 3-4) +2 AC from psionic half-cover will be a major free party buff to have access to. This will thrive particularly at tables that don’t play around with cover too much, as it doesn’t stack with more half-cover, but most of the time, regardless of table, you’ll be able to use Bulwark of Force reliably encounter to encounter to make every threatened ally a bit harder to hit.

18th Level: Telekinetic Master

Telekinetic Master is a 5th level spell you get a free cast of that deeply satisfies the fantasy Psi Warrior wants. The bonus action attack doesn’t quite make up for the quantity of attacks you're missing out on, as attempting to throw around creatures and objects doesn’t really scale with the rest of what you’re doing, but I can forgive these sins for just how satisfying this conclusion to the subclass is.

Even compared to full casters, you’re going to have more access to Telekinesis. Out of combat, you’ll often just feel like you have access to all of this to throw around 1,000 pounds worth of objects.
Being able to get the bonus action attack with a psionic strike alongside this is cute, but I don’t think it's something you want to be doing all that actively in 17th level fights as a fighter. You probably want to be attacking three to four times.

All Together

Psi Warrior promises a fantasy and delivers on it at basically every level. The option isn’t radically powering up every one of your attacks like some other fighter subclasses do, but instead gives you some fun telekinetic tricks to expand out how you can interface with the world in ways you’d want. Double your proficiency bonus uses of the powers, with one bonus per short rest, feels like a pretty deep well of abilities, and when you add on the free use of Bulwark of Force, Telekinetic Movement, and Psi-Powered Leap, you end up with a huge quantity of stuff to do every fight.

Fighter’s core class is majorly lacking in just having abilities, and Psi Warrior addresses that core problem in a pretty satisfying way. This feels like it could be a core class that subclasses would specialize further. If this theme speaks to you, Psi Warrior is an excellent subclass to play with. You can definitely get a lot of mileage out multi-classing it, too; five levels in Psi Warrior fighter with the rest into a full caster like Wizard or maybe doing some neat stuff with Artificer could be a really fun direction to explore.

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Fighter 5e