JustPlayItLoud
2011-09-27, 02:44 PM
There's an idea I've been kicking around in my head for awhile, an all psionics world. A world where magic no longer exists and has been displaced by psionics. I polled a few friends who have been playing regularly just to think about the idea of a psionics only world and give me some feedback. Instead of feedback I got "THAT WOULD BE AWESOME YOU SHOULD RUN THAT" pretty much immediately. I haven't played regularly in five years, but I've been wanting to get back into it for a while now, so I figure now is as good a time as any.
I'm going to split this into two separate threads, one for mechanics and crunch for the homebrew forum, and one for fluff and flavor for the world building forum.
Crunch version:
I'm gonna be running this in 3.5, and all I have as far as mechanics so far are ideas for base classes.
Barbarian - I see no reason at all to change a completely non-magical class for a psionics only world
Bard - I really like a lot of the fluff and crunch of Dark Sun, and the 3.5 version from athas.org has a bard with no spellcasting, so I'll be using that
Cleric - With no magic, the cleric is now a worthless class. It's out
Druid - Axed like cleric, but also see ranger
Fighter - See barbarian
Monk - I think I'm going to leave them unchanged. Some of their abilities function similarly to magic, but I don't think they require magic to function at all
Paladin - With no magic and no link to the upper planes, there's no way in this world for the paladin to exist mechanically. Would there be a specific non-magical class that would fit ideologically and somewhat mechanically also? I originally planned for LG or LN crusaders would replace them in the world, but decided ToB just doesn't fit the world. I might reconsider down the line, but for now it's out
Ranger - I want two rangers. I want to have one that loses spellcasting in favor of getting favored terrain also, as well as maybe some sneak attack perhaps. It would basically be a combination of the regular and urban ranger. I also want a wildshape variant ranger. What does the most popular wild shape variant lose? Is spellcasting enough of a tradeoff, or would they need to sacrifice some other class abilities? I might import the natural weapons combat style from Pathfinder
Rogue - Basically unchanged aside from trading out the now-defunct UMD for UPD instead
Sorceror and Wizard - See cleric
Psionic classes - I'm obviously including these, but in light of how awful they made the 3.5 soulknife, I'll probably reintroduce an updated version of the 3.0 soulknife PrC
What I'm currently struggling with is reintroducing some psionic variants of some of the more popular monsters. Mind flayers and both the races of Gith will feature prominently, but they can't be the only monsters. What monsters translate well to psionics?
Any other cool crunchy ideas?
I'm going to split this into two separate threads, one for mechanics and crunch for the homebrew forum, and one for fluff and flavor for the world building forum.
Crunch version:
I'm gonna be running this in 3.5, and all I have as far as mechanics so far are ideas for base classes.
Barbarian - I see no reason at all to change a completely non-magical class for a psionics only world
Bard - I really like a lot of the fluff and crunch of Dark Sun, and the 3.5 version from athas.org has a bard with no spellcasting, so I'll be using that
Cleric - With no magic, the cleric is now a worthless class. It's out
Druid - Axed like cleric, but also see ranger
Fighter - See barbarian
Monk - I think I'm going to leave them unchanged. Some of their abilities function similarly to magic, but I don't think they require magic to function at all
Paladin - With no magic and no link to the upper planes, there's no way in this world for the paladin to exist mechanically. Would there be a specific non-magical class that would fit ideologically and somewhat mechanically also? I originally planned for LG or LN crusaders would replace them in the world, but decided ToB just doesn't fit the world. I might reconsider down the line, but for now it's out
Ranger - I want two rangers. I want to have one that loses spellcasting in favor of getting favored terrain also, as well as maybe some sneak attack perhaps. It would basically be a combination of the regular and urban ranger. I also want a wildshape variant ranger. What does the most popular wild shape variant lose? Is spellcasting enough of a tradeoff, or would they need to sacrifice some other class abilities? I might import the natural weapons combat style from Pathfinder
Rogue - Basically unchanged aside from trading out the now-defunct UMD for UPD instead
Sorceror and Wizard - See cleric
Psionic classes - I'm obviously including these, but in light of how awful they made the 3.5 soulknife, I'll probably reintroduce an updated version of the 3.0 soulknife PrC
What I'm currently struggling with is reintroducing some psionic variants of some of the more popular monsters. Mind flayers and both the races of Gith will feature prominently, but they can't be the only monsters. What monsters translate well to psionics?
Any other cool crunchy ideas?