Jace Beleren is a human planeswalker from Vryn who is adept with blue magic. He is the Living Guildpact of Ravnica and a founding member of the Gatewatch.

«It’s good to learn from your failures, but I prefer to learn from the failures of others.»

Brilliant, curious, and always in control, Jace is a master of mental magic: spells of illusion, deception, and mind reading. His powers allow him to manipulate enemy mages by countering their magic or using their spells against them. An adept analyst, he has an optimized plan (and a backup plan) for every situation.

Growing up as a magical prodigy on his home plane, Jace Beleren sought out the training of the mysterious sphinx Alhammarret. Under the sphinx’s training, Jace learned to control his abilities. However, when Jace discovered that Alhammarret had been using him for political manipulations, he confronted his master in a fierce mental battle. The battle badly damaged Jace’s memories and caused him excruciating pain. This distress ignited his Planeswalker spark, tearing him away from his home plane.

Jace awoke on Ravnica, his memories shattered and his former identity forgotten. During this time, he formed a romantic attachment to Liliana Vess, only to learn that she too was manipulating and deceiving him.

Jace’s absence of memory now fuels his insatiable appetite for knowledge and truth. His need to uncover and understand the unknown has lead him to Zendikar and back to Ravnica, where he solved his greatest puzzle yet: the Implicit Maze. His achievements earned him the title of Ravnica’s Living Guildpact, where he serves as the magically empowered arbiter between the city’s many guilds.

After aiding in the defeat of two of the Eldrazi titans on Zendikar, Jace took an oath to keep watch over the planes of the Multiverse as part of the Gatewatch. The Gatewatch offers him the opportunity to think and act on a larger scale, which intrigues him as a mental challenge in addition to appealing to his sense of responsibility. Jace can’t walk away from an unsolved mystery. He believes everything that exists can be understood, and he dreams of one day knowing everything there is to know.

On Zendikar, he learned the history of the Eldrazi from Ugin, the Spirit Dragon, and he burned with the desire to know more about them—which brought him to Innistrad in search of Sorin Markov. His visit to the plane is complicated by his relationship with Liliana Vess, who has a close connection to Innistrad. Given their past romance, he is attracted to her and cares about her, but he doesn’t trust her at all.

In Dungeons & Dragons

Jace Beleren is, at his core, a mentalist, with powers including telepathy and illusion. This places him way closer to psionic classes than to arcane ones. Some time ago we built him as a mystic, an Unearthed Arcana class. This time we’ll give it another try, but as a classic spellcaster.

Among the most notable powers Jace has shown, there are mind-magic related ones, such as telepathy, body swapping, mind blasts, thought probing and memory alteration. In the cards, most of his signature spells are related to illusions, counterspells (which will be represented as spells) and card advantage (which flavorfully is linked to a high intellect and ability to strategize adequately). At his pinnacle, Jace can make someone forget how to breathe or erase memories and replace them with whatever he wishes, essentially rewriting that person’s life. To start with, we were thinking of creating Mind Magic as a Sorcerous Origin, but Jace is smarter than he’s charismatic, so we’ll keep him as a wizard. Form the class features granted by Enchantment and Illusion, the first one was more fitting (particularly the Alter Memories feature at 14th level), as his signature spells will just be that: spells selected. Treating him as an Enchanter, now we only need to turn some of his powers into mechanics. There are very few spells that stun their targets, so we’ll create one based on the mind flayers insidious psionic attack.

MIND BLAST
3rd-level Enchantment

Casting Time: 1 action
Range: Self (15-foot cone)
Components: V, S
Duration: Instantaneous

You project a mental attack, and the psionic energy makes the air ripple around you as your victims try to protect their minds futilely taking their hands to their heads in agony.

You emit a psionic blast directly into the minds of every creature close to you. Each creature in a 15-foot cone must make an Intelligence saving throw. A creature takes 3d8 psychic damage and is stunned until the end of your next turn on a failed save, or half as much damage on a succesful one.
At Higher Levels. When you cast this spell using a spell slot of 4th level or higher, the damage increases by 1d6 for each slot level above 3rd and the radius by 5 feet for every two levels above 3rd.

Have you tried the Mystic class in your D&D game? How did it go? Tell us in the comments!