Confusion as to the anti-psionics bias

[Loxagn]

Something I've never quite understood in 3.X. Why is there so much bias against psionics? I must just be missing something, because I hear from some people that it's actually quite balanced and makes more sense than Vancian casting, while from others I hear that it's the worst thing that ever happened to third edition and it's completely awful and nobody should ever use it.

Would someone be able to explain this to me? Maybe I'm just clueless.

[Silva Stormrage]

Something I've never quite understood in 3.X. Why is there so much bias against psionics? I must just be missing something, because I hear from some people that it's actually quite balanced and makes more sense than Vancian casting, while from others I hear that it's the worst thing that ever happened to third edition and it's completely awful and nobody should ever use it.

Would someone be able to explain this to me? Maybe I'm just clueless.

A LOT of it is simply just due to not understanding psionics and not realizing that the core casters are much worse. I believe its very similar to ToB in that regard. I frankly don't get how its that widespread though.

[RavynsLand]

It's kinda unbalanced, in that it's outrageously easy to use in proportion with how difficult it is. So, for me at least, psionics earn the same rage that a video-gamer gets when his opponent can beat him by smashing the buttons.

*pick random powers*

*augment to max level*

*crank DC's*

*spam*

[Vaz]

3.0 was garbage. 3.5 psionics is something people struggle to get their head around, or it gets intentionally broken by people not using their characters properly (namely cardinal rule #1, you cannot expend more PP than your manifester level)

[Coidzor]

People buy into myths (www.minmaxboards.com/index.php?PHPSESSID=a2h2f74cmvtm8rh15v2omd60l5&topic=1304), mostly.

Or they see that it's an alternate magic subsystem and decide that it's automatically too complicated and too much time investment for them to want to bother with learning it at all.

[Callin]

{scrubbed}




I apologize. Did not know.

[The Glyphstone]

Sometimes grognardism figures into it too.....pre-3E psionics were immensely convoluted and utterly unbalanced, so old-guard veterans who grew up on AD&D and 2E tend to instinctively recoil at the mention of psionics without re-adjusting perspective.

[Zanos]

As mentioned earlier, 3e psionics was pretty bad. A lot of people also miss the rule that you can't spend more PP than your ML on a single manifestation, leading them to believe that psions can nova much harder than they can at lower levels.

Personally I don't like the flavor of psionics. If you were to take all the flavor and replace it with "this is arcane magic" it is fine but in general I'm not a fan.

[almightycoma]

For me it has always been about flavor. In a setting with magic,demons, and dragons having a "magic brain that isn't magic I swear" seems a little unnecessary.

[Morty]

Your confusion may stem from the fact that nobody actually does it. Some people don't use it for whatever reason, but that's not quite the same as "hating".

[Ssalarn]

A LOT of it is simply just due to not understanding psionics and not realizing that the core casters are much worse. I believe its very similar to ToB in that regard. I frankly don't get how its that widespread though.

Very much this. Literally every single instance I've seen of someone thinking psionics was unbalanced was tied into them either not understanding the rules themselves, or them having been told by someone that the rules say something other than what they say.

An extremely common one ran something along the lines of "I can spend more PP to augment Mind Thrust! Since I have 10 PP at level 1 I can either do 1d10 10 times or 10d10 when I really need it!"

It doesn't work that way, but people thinking it did is where a lot of the misconceptions started.

[Coidzor]

For me it has always been about flavor. In a setting with magic,demons, and dragons having a "magic brain that isn't magic I swear" seems a little unnecessary.

It's only not magic if you don't use psionics-magic transparency, which is the default. :smallconfused: As it is, it's a source/way of accessing of magic that has its own subsystem and is all mind-based.


Your confusion may stem from the fact that nobody actually does it. Some people don't use it for whatever reason, but that's not quite the same as "hating".

"I can't be arsed to learn or care about it" for Psionics does seem to be much the same as "Fighters[and other martial types] were already good enough" for ToB as far as reasons why people never bothered to look at it when they have free access by default when they have a half-decent internet connection.

[Terazul]

For me it has always been about flavor. In a setting with magic,demons, and dragons having a "magic brain that isn't magic I swear" seems a little unnecessary.

Yeah, the guy who stares at you with pure mental power and sets you on fire, is way out of flavor in a fantasy setting. Much more than the guy looking through his book for the formula on which hand signs he has to do in order to ignite bat guano and throw it at the enemy.
Also yes always use transparency, seriously.

[Deophaun]

Yeah, the guy who stares at you with pure mental power and sets you on fire, is way out of flavor in a fantasy setting. Much more than the guy looking through his book for the formula on which hand signs he has to do in order to ignite bat guano and throw it at the enemy.
Also yes always use transparency, seriously.
Hey, this is about what's wrong with Psions, not what's wrong with sorcerers!

[BrokenChord]

Is it a free action to cry?

The people who mentioned how terribad 3.0 and 2E psionics have that part of the problem down absolutely. This coming from someone who prefers 3E to 3.5! Psionics were absolutely terrible, though in 3E, that wasn't based on being OP... Each discipline casted off a different stat. Ugh.

Nowadays... Well, as a system, power points are more powerful than slotted casting, though the powers aren't quite as broken, so some people just assume it's "casting, but better" without knowledge of said powers.

That, and also being on these boards. A lot of the time, people play wizards/clerics/whatever at home, and have their own notions of the classes' powers, either avoiding caster optimizing threads or knowing that those are specific instances of cheese because they've seen the balanced side in action themselves. Then they don't see anything about Psionics/Tome of Battle except optimization threads, and since they haven't seen anything else and optimized power is always going to appear insane to non-optimizers, they think that's the norm for the classes and thus conclude that the classes are unsalvageably broken beyond belief inherently.

[Techwarrior]

In my experience, it boils down to three things.

People who come from 2e and earlier, where Psionics was usually overpowered, and in most cases, completely separate from normal defenses and such. Because of this, Psions tended to dominate whenever the opposition was non-psionic.
People who look into splatbook subsystems (which Psionics is one of) are generally more experienced, capable players, and tend to make more optimized characters. This can lead to the rest of the party being really low-op, while the psionicist dominates. Thus, psionics gets looked down on in some groups for the wrong reasons. Hate the player, not the game.
People look at the rules for psionics and balk. At base, a Psion is a Wizard type character that can manifest in full plate, a tower shield, with an item in their other hand, in a Silence effect, while grappled without caring too much and giving no sign of their 'casting.' Such things are possible for other character types, but usually require build resources that psions don't. A psion can deal 20d6 damage with a 1st level power, but the person forgets that this still costs build resources, or 20 pp.

[illyahr]

I actually figured out the perfect flavor for psionic which fixed most of the problem that I had with them. Psionics are the discipline of focusing the mind, right? So have them hang out with monks. I saw an interesting monk fix a while back that I have used that removes some of the less useful monk abilities and instead gives them the psychic warrior's psionic ability. I use them in my campaign and it brings them up to fairly useful.

[The Glyphstone]

Nowadays... Well, as a system, power points are more powerful than slotted casting, though the powers aren't quite as broken, so some people just assume it's "casting, but better" without knowledge of said powers.
.

Point-for-point, power points are actually weaker than Vancian casting - a psion will almost always pay more, typically one 'spell level' worth of points, for an identical damage/save DC (3rd level Fireball at CL10, for example, compared to the 9 PP - equivalent of a 5th level spell - needed to manifest Energy Ball). What they are is unquestionably more efficient, being able to tailor exactly how much of your resources are needed for that particular attack.

[StreamOfTheSky]

Psionics is weaker than magic. However, sheer power and number of options aren't the only reasons to hate something. For me, I dislike psionics for a few reasons:

1. It's everything that's wrong with magic (IMO) ramped up to an 11. I hate how much a caster can nova and how if you don't find some way to shove in lots of encounters, they'll just run roughshod with all their highest level spells. Enter psionics. Where you can use your pp to manifest nothing *but* the equivalent of "your highest spell level" and blow out of points in short order. Not only can you, the augment system does everything it can to encourage/force you, from powers not scaling for free like spells do (especially the damage powers) to getting a bunch of ways to increase max spendable pp but not simply giving that as bonus pp -- you gotta spend it up to make use of these features.

2. Another thing I hate about magic is the "selfish caster." Being self-only makes a spell lower level than it should be, in the minds of the designers. So most of the best buffs are self only. So casters end up buffing themselves a lot instead of the classes that could use the help more. What's psionics do? It takes most of the converted-to-psionics spell buffs that worked on other people (like psionic fly or inertial armor) and makes them self-only! Screw you martials! I only help myself!

3. The transparency rules don't cover nearly enough stuff, if you allow psionic classes in the game, you either need to overhaul the entire thing or have lots of enemies as savvy and knowledgeable of psionics as you have of magic or else the psionics get to skate by, by virtue of being unknown. Lots of things will know about arcana or have spellcraft. Psionics? Not so much... And the fact you can easily manifest w/o giving any sort of visual or audible clue just makes it worse.

I know magic is stronger. I still dislike psionics. It's a more nova-based, selfish form of casting with fewer weaknesses to exploit that thrives on being inimitable to most published creatures/NPCs.

[Lycar]

Psionics were absolutely terrible, though in 3E, that wasn't based on being OP... Each discipline casted off a different stat. Ugh.
Actually, despite everything else that didn't work with 3.0 psionics *cough*psioniccombat*cough*, this actually endeared the psionics rules to me.

It is a well known fact that a good part of casters being overpowered in comparison to the melee types stems from the fact that they are SAD.

Now Psions? You basically pick your specialization by prioritising your attributes. Dump a stat and you've just cut yourself off from an entire discipline. Want the goodies from all the disciplines? You better have a really good set of rolled stats or a really generous point buy. Yes, for a 3.0 Psion, attributes actually matter. Nothing wrong with that.

The downside of psionics is that every psion is an egoist. There are very few powers that you can use to boost other people with. Which is a bit of a shame but then again, for those who know Rolemaster it neatly fits into the Arcanist, Channeler, Egoist set of power sources. :smallamused:

[12owlbears]

2. Another thing I hate about magic is the "selfish caster." Being self-only makes a spell lower level than it should be, in the minds of the designers. So most of the best buffs are self only. So casters end up buffing themselves a lot instead of the classes that could use the help more. What's psionics do? It takes most of the converted-to-psionics spell buffs that worked on other people (like psionic fly or inertial armor) and makes them self-only! Screw you martials! I only help myself!


I am a huge psionics fan and I hate anyone who does not love psionics as much as I do, however I will agree that this is a problem with 3.5 psionics. Their are the tactician and vitalist classes from pathfinder, but they don't really count in a 3e discussion.

[Honest Tiefling]

I have a bit of a problem of a power named Biofeedback in a world where everyone is having trouble wrapping their mind around this newfangled hygiene business. Were the world more advanced, (such as steampunk) and a sufficient explanation given for a crazy new magical power source(like what the Binder did), I'd be fine with it.

[Brookshw]

World building. It's a hassle to incorporate, it wasn't built into moat monster stats, its an extra complication and a lot of hassle to work into a campaign where an insignificant amount of the resources at my disposal were created with it in mind.

The whole spell casting systems argument however is hilarious. One set of make believe is better than another set of make believe?

[wayfare]

If you had more direct healing, and better buffing, you could split off the disciplines into a 3 or 4 classes that would hang around T3-4. Overall, the subsystem needs to work, but it is relatively balanced.

[squiggit]

I see a lot of people gloating about how they can't be bothered to learn the system and that's why they won't use it.

And another group complaining about how it's too self contained and weirder to integrate into the core game because it's too different. Another subgroup of those complaining about psionics being 'too sci fi'.


Psionics are the discipline of focusing the mind, right? So have them hang out with monks.

Slightly off topic but amusing, Monks in 4e are flagged as a psionic class.

[Gorr_the_Gastly]

Of course I love Psionics and most of my DMs hate them because without meaning too I tend to really optimize and find good ways to synergize my abilities so they believe psionics are far stronger then they are. In fact one DM has a rule if I do something odd and powerful and he asks all I have to say is "Psionics" and he handwaves it as fine because he has not fully mastered the system.

Of course the Erudite pulls the anything you can do I can do better and with one reading of their list they get virtually unlimited amount of powers per day especially with that one loop of powers that grants them endless PP over time.

[Thanatosia]

I think the biggest problem is it just doesn't fit. When you think fantasy, you think magic. It's intuitive, it's baked into the setting, it just feels right. Psionics just feels out of place.

It also just feels entirely unneccisary, Magic is pretty much making stuff happen with your mind and force of will. Why does there need to be two completely different systems to do that? It's redundant and out of place. I guess you could make a similar redundancy argument as to why do we needs Wizards AND sorcerors AND clerics AND druids AND wu-jen AND warlocks.... but it goes back to what feels right and what fits. NOw maybe if you are playing an exotic setting built around Psionics it would work better, but in your default fantasy cliche, Magic feels 'right' in a way that Psionics just don't.

[wayfare]

I think the biggest problem is it just doesn't fit. When you think fantasy, you think magic. It's intuitive, it's baked into the setting, it just feels right. Psionics just feels out of place.

...
...
You can bake anything into the setting. Psionics is Dresden Files magic. It really is.
none of the fluff is "baked in" you can call any subsystem by any other name. TBH, psionics makes a lot of sense compared to vancian casting -- gamers understand the idea of "mana" type systems pretty easily.

[Honest Tiefling]

Eh, I could see it that Psionics tap into the innate power of the mind, while mages tap into some sort of Arcane force in the world. I still have issues with some of the names, however.

[Gorr_the_Gastly]

Why do I have a feeling if it was called Mana or Magicka there would be no issues about 'out of place'

And no magic in the normal setting is not doing things with your mind. Its repeating memorized verses of an arcane language and waving your arms in weird goofy fashion.

even the sorcerer is not above needing to flail his arms like a spaz to cast a spell.

[Thanatosia]

You can bake anything into the setting. Psionics is Dresden Files magic. It really is.
Sorry but no, Dresden magic has a very different vibe and feel to it then Psionics. Mechanically there are probably lots of similarities, but i'm not talking crunch here, it's the fluff that feels all wrong and different. I admit there is even a certain overlap in the fluff, when Dresden talks about focusing his will to manifest it in reality - but there is a totally different vibe to how magic does that then how psionics does it.

And yes, you can make a setting where Psionics does fit in naturally, but that's not the default High Fantasy Lord of the Rings/Shannara/Game of THrones/whatever Dragons and Elves high fantasy that most people think of when you talk about a fantasy setting.

[squiggit]

And yes, you can make a setting where Psionics does fit in naturally, but that's not the default High Fantasy Lord of the Rings/Shannara/Game of THrones/whatever Dragons and Elves high fantasy that most people think of when you talk about a fantasy setting.

Honestly I think that's a bit backwards backwards. Psionics feels a lot more at place, especially in modern fantasy (not modern as in set in the modern time necessarily, but modern as in more recent publications) settings where magic is manifested through sheer force of will and the idea of slinging bat poop and bits of twine, waving your arms randomly about, chanting gibberish and then forgetting all about it a second later is utterly and completely alien.

[Gorr_the_Gastly]

I just got asked this the other night and I had to pause to think of the answer.

"Why in character can a wizard/sorcerer/cleric/psion run out of spells/powers and don't tell me game mechanics, how do they know these spells and then suddenly forget them."

I am not gonna go into my answer, but this is a good point to why the psionics are a little better as they had the easiest answer.

[Honest Tiefling]

Sorry but no, Dresden magic has a very different vibe and feel to it then Psionics. Mechanically there are probably lots of similarities, but i'm not talking crunch here, it's the fluff that feels all wrong and different. I admit there is even a certain overlap in the fluff, when Dresden talks about focusing his will to manifest it in reality - but there is a totally different vibe to how magic does that then how psionics does it.

And yes, you can make a setting where Psionics does fit in naturally, but that's not the default High Fantasy Lord of the Rings/Shannara/Game of THrones/whatever Dragons and Elves high fantasy that most people think of when you talk about a fantasy setting.

Not familiar with Dresden, (Read some novels, forgot said novels) but if I recall, the limitations of magic were huge and a huge thing of the setting. Then again, I am not a fan of shoving everything into a setting, and I often feel that settings suffer if they attempt too much rather then focus on what they are good at.

I wonder if it would be appropriate to set a challenge for people to make or find a high fantasy setting with the same feel of Lord of the Rings/whatever where psionics was baked in (not just, it was tossed in, but psions and psionics actually have an impact in the history and politics of the world) and worked.

[Gorr_the_Gastly]

Well thats a good idea, except how do you define those mechanics without referencing Sci Fi. If its just people manipulating the world via unseen forces well thats most high fantasy.

[Coidzor]

Eh, I could see it that Psionics tap into the innate power of the mind, while mages tap into some sort of Arcane force in the world. I still have issues with some of the names, however.

Everyone has some level of issues with the names of things, really. I'd almost swear it was some form of axiom.

[wayfare]

Sorry but no, Dresden magic has a very different vibe and feel to it then Psionics. Mechanically there are probably lots of similarities, but i'm not talking crunch here, it's the fluff that feels all wrong and different. I admit there is even a certain overlap in the fluff, when Dresden talks about focusing his will to manifest it in reality - but there is a totally different vibe to how magic does that then how psionics does it.

And yes, you can make a setting where Psionics does fit in naturally, but that's not the default High Fantasy Lord of the Rings/Shannara/Game of THrones/whatever Dragons and Elves high fantasy that most people think of when you talk about a fantasy setting.

The fluff can be applied to anything. You dont haveto call it "the power of the mind" you can call it mystic essence or something else.

Vancian casting doesnt really appear in much literature aside from the Vance books and the dnd books. Gandalf doesnt memorize spells, the harry potter folk are spontaneous casters, the butcher characters have energy reserves that are depleted, mages in dragon age have mana, same with diablo(pretty textbook memedieval horror fantasy), the other butcher folks are spontaneous casters who get tired. Anita blake just does her magic. Have not read too much conan, but what i've seen it is eeither spontaneous or ritual based. The Abhorsen books are spontaneous wth energy reserves. Magic the gathering is built on energy reserves.

Just saying, energy based casting is a thing, one that us well represented in fiction.

[Snowbluff]

Psionics is weaker than magic. However, sheer power and number of options aren't the only reasons to hate something. For me, I dislike psionics for a few reasons:

1. It's everything that's wrong with magic (IMO) ramped up to an 11. I hate how much a caster can nova and how if you don't find some way to shove in lots of encounters, they'll just run roughshod with all their highest level spells. Enter psionics. Where you can use your pp to manifest nothing *but* the equivalent of "your highest spell level" and blow out of points in short order. Not only can you, the augment system does everything it can to encourage/force you, from powers not scaling for free like spells do (especially the damage powers) to getting a bunch of ways to increase max spendable pp but not simply giving that as bonus pp -- you gotta spend it up to make use of these features.

2. Another thing I hate about magic is the "selfish caster." Being self-only makes a spell lower level than it should be, in the minds of the designers. So most of the best buffs are self only. So casters end up buffing themselves a lot instead of the classes that could use the help more. What's psionics do? It takes most of the converted-to-psionics spell buffs that worked on other people (like psionic fly or inertial armor) and makes them self-only! Screw you martials! I only help myself!

3. The transparency rules don't cover nearly enough stuff, if you allow psionic classes in the game, you either need to overhaul the entire thing or have lots of enemies as savvy and knowledgeable of psionics as you have of magic or else the psionics get to skate by, by virtue of being unknown. Lots of things will know about arcana or have spellcraft. Psionics? Not so much... And the fact you can easily manifest w/o giving any sort of visual or audible clue just makes it worse.

I know magic is stronger. I still dislike psionics. It's a more nova-based, selfish form of casting with fewer weaknesses to exploit that thrives on being inimitable to most published creatures/NPCs.

This, pretty much.

Number 1 pisses me off the most. I like the idea of augmentation, but most powers handle it poorly. Blasting is a good example of not meeting your full potential and wasting a ton of resources.

Psionics are only slightly weaker than the full caster classes, and they have options like Spell to Power Erudite as well. Combine with a fanbase that erroneously refers to it as a fixed version of casting and people assuming you're stupid for hating it, and you have something genuinely worthy of contempt.

Psychic Warriors are cool, though.

[Prime32]

And yes, you can make a setting where Psionics does fit in naturally, but that's not the default High Fantasy Lord of the Rings/Shannara/Game of THrones/whatever Dragons and Elves high fantasy that most people think of when you talk about a fantasy setting.Most people think of magic scientists who memorise spells in a level-based structure, cast them by throwing bat guano then forget how to use them? :smallconfused: Because I don't remember Gandalf doing that - he made his powers stronger when fighting greater enemies by displaying greater intensity and force of will, never required verbal/somatic/material components for them, and sometimes even channeled them through a crystal.

[wayfare]

This, pretty much.

Number 1 pisses me off the most. I like the idea of augmentation, but most powers handle it poorly. Blasting is a good example of not meeting your full potential and wasting a ton of resources.

Psionics are only slightly weaker than the full caster classes, and they have options like Spell to Power Erudite as well. Combine with a fanbase that erroneously refers to it as a fixed version of casting and people assuming you're stupid for hating it, and you have something genuinely worthy of contempt.

Psychic Warriors are cool, though.

Thats a player problem, though. I find that the caster 15 minute work day really only is an issue in hi-op games. In everything else i've run, folks tend to use their power ssparingly. Also keep in mind that a psion has fewer options thsn a wizard or even a high-level sorcerer. That means the psion is more likely to resort to brute force.

Psionics are more balanced than vancian casting precisely because there is a cap on how much you can nova. With a fullcasters, you are always at peak strength, and you are manifesting waaay more powers daily than a psion who is going nova.

[Loxagn]

Yeah, the points system makes a bit more sense to me, as well. I mean... okay, for the wizard who is in essence spending an hour each morning to 'pre-cast' his spells so that he can activate them on short notice later on, it sort of makes sense to have spell slots. So too with the Cleric and Druid, who must request boons to be granted from their deity.
But what about the Sorcerer? What about other Spontaneous casters? "I have x number of this type of spell, and x of this type of spell" doesn't seem to really gel with them.

Really the way it seems to me is that 'Magic' always comes from an outside source. You might have to study how to manipulate it, or you might be born that way, or have to ask someone for help manipulating it, but you're still manipulating an outside force to do your bidding.

Psionics, meanwhile, seems to come from within. They're more batteries than conduits, something that seems to be reflected in their point-based system.

Or maybe I'm just crazy and reading everything wrong.

[wayfare]

Yeah, the points system makes a bit more sense to me, as well. I mean... okay, for the wizard who is in essence spending an hour each morning to 'pre-cast' his spells so that he can activate them on short notice later on, it sort of makes sense to have spell slots. So too with the Cleric and Druid, who must request boons to be granted from their deity.
But what about the Sorcerer? What about other Spontaneous casters? "I have x number of this type of spell, and x of this type of spell" doesn't seem to really gel with them.

Really the way it seems to me is that 'Magic' always comes from an outside source. You might have to study how to manipulate it, or you might be born that way, or have to ask someone for help manipulating it, but you're still manipulating an outside force to do your bidding.

Psionics, meanwhile, seems to come from within. They're more batteries than conduits, something that seems to be reflected in their point-based system.

Or maybe I'm just crazy and reading everything wrong.

Nah, thats the standard interpretation. In thefforgotten realms, psionic characters even count as their own personal weave.

[danzibr]

As has already been said, it used to be unbalanced, and it continues to be unbalanced if people don't actually follow the rules.

Also, there are lots of tricks for doing pretty absurd things.

[Morty]

"I can't be arsed to learn or care about it" for Psionics does seem to be much the same as "Fighters[and other martial types] were already good enough" for ToB as far as reasons why people never bothered to look at it when they have free access by default when they have a half-decent internet connection.

I was unaware that unwillingness to learn something meant the same as hate. Once again, I suspect that the "hate" the OP mentions is a result of the Internet echo chamber.

[Loxagn]

I may have had a mistaken impression from the general distaste most I've talked to IRL have had towards 3.5 Psionics. I came on here trying to understand why that was so.

As this discussion has shown, the 'hate' isn't so much actual dislike so much as a lack of understanding, it seems. So, confusion cleared, problem resolved. Thanks for the response, everyone. :smallsmile:

EDIT: Thread title changed, so as to better reflect what I was actually trying to get at.

[Gnome Alone]

Most people think of magic scientists who memorise spells in a level-based structure, cast them by throwing bat guano then forget how to use them? :smallconfused: Because I don't remember Gandalf doing that - he made his powers stronger when fighting greater enemies by displaying greater intensity and force of will, never required verbal/somatic/material components for them, and sometimes even channeled them through a crystal.

Thanatosia can correct me if I'm wrong, but I think that's kind of a bait-and-switch. The issue is not Vancian casting (which is weird as [feces], yeah) vs. power points/mana (which does make more sense.)

The issue is that mages casting spells feels a lot more right than "DUDES I'M LIKE, A PSYCHIC! I'VE GOT PSYCHIC POWERS THAT AREN'T MAGICAL OR NOTHIN'!" for the typical "vaguely LOTR let's wonder around the forest and astonish peasants" setting that I'm guessing a sizable majority of players play in.

I imagine it's similar to the objection a lot of people have to Warforged. Or ninjas. (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0274.html) "Hey! I'm trying to wander around pseudo-medieval quasi-Europe here! Take your psychic ninja robots somewhere else."

[Shinken]

I just got asked this the other night and I had to pause to think of the answer.

"Why in character can a wizard/sorcerer/cleric/psion run out of spells/powers and don't tell me game mechanics, how do they know these spells and then suddenly forget them."

I am not gonna go into my answer, but this is a good point to why the psionics are a little better as they had the easiest answer.

Well, reading the fluff would help. :smallamused:
It's not that they "forget" the spells (that's AD&D), it's that casting a spell is a long ritual. Most of the ritual is done when the spell is prepared, leaving only a small bit left - you do that small bit when you actually cast it.
It doesn't apply to spontaneous casters, basically because they run on "juice", they just call it slots instead of power points.

[Prime32]

Thanatosia can correct me if I'm wrong, but I think that's kind of a bait-and-switch. The issue is not Vancian casting (which is weird as [feces], yeah) vs. power points/mana (which does make more sense.)

The issue is that mages casting spells feels a lot more right than "DUDES I'M LIKE, A PSYCHIC! I'VE GOT PSYCHIC POWERS THAT AREN'T MAGICAL OR NOTHIN'!" for the typical "vaguely LOTR let's wonder around the forest and astonish peasants" setting that I'm guessing a sizable majority of players play in.Who said they aren't magical? :smallconfused: You might as well complain that clerics have "DIVINE POWERS THAT AREN'T MAGICAL OR NOTHIN'" since they get to ignore material components, spells known and arcane spell failure. Psionics are Enlightenment Superpowers (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/EnlightenmentSuperpowers), same fluff as the monk which no one seems to have trouble fitting in.


Well, reading the fluff would help. :smallamused:
It's not that they "forget" the spells (that's AD&D), it's that casting a spell is a long ritual. Most of the ritual is done when the spell is prepared, leaving only a small bit left - you do that small bit when you actually cast it.
It doesn't apply to spontaneous casters, basically because they run on "juice", they just call it slots instead of power points.Spell slots still give you weird situations like "I don't have enough juice to cast read magic, but I can throw around another dozen apocalypse from the sky easily".

[ryu]

Who said they aren't magical? :smallconfused: You might as well complain that clerics have "DIVINE POWERS THAT AREN'T MAGICAL OR NOTHIN'" since they get to ignore material components, spells known and arcane spell failure. Psionics are Enlightenment Superpowers (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/EnlightenmentSuperpowers), same fluff as the monk which no one seems to have trouble fitting in.

Spell slots still give you weird situations like "I don't have enough juice to cast read magic, but I can throw around another dozen apocalypse from the sky easily".

Technically you could still read magic in that situation with a spontaneous caster if you wanted to by casting it from a higher slot. Kinda hilariously inefficient at that level absurdity but you could do it. I am assuming of course that you're talking spontaneous.

[Shinken]

Spell slots still give you weird situations like "I don't have enough juice to cast read magic, but I can throw around another dozen apocalypse from the sky easily".
Not really, no. You can always spend a higher spell slot to cast a lower level spell.

EDIT: swordsage'd

[Gorr_the_Gastly]

Again I would say its the name of the subrules. Psionics has a Sci Fi feel to it so people figure it doesnt fit. If it was called something else they would be fine with it.

Heck Sorcerers are basically psionic in that they are run on powers from within. Some would say the being who has no innate magical abilities who can just study books and cast spells doesn't fit high fantasy as really no commonly thought of book or movie shows that. Gandalf is a popular name to throw around, he is a sorcerer at best not a wizard as his powers come from within, yes he probably studied to control them but that does not make him a wizard in dnd terms and heck he is even more a psion due to not really needing anything.

Harry Potter is the same way, innate supernatural powers that must be trained to use, but can be used instinctively without issue (Disappearing glass anyone?)


AS for the comment on the Wizard casting rituals while they prepare in the morning and only finishing them. Then what aside from game mechanics stops them from just sitting down and performing new rituals when they run out? If I blow all my level 1 spells in a single encounter why can't I just sit down and prepare those rituals again?

[3WhiteFox3]

Not really, no. You can always spend a higher spell slot to cast a lower level spell.

EDIT: swordsage'd

that still has a scaling problem... I cast Read Magic using a ninth-level slot, and lose a casting of Time Stop with no benefit. Implying that it takes just as much energy to cast Read Magic as it does Time Stop. I'm sure there are possible theories that might explain it, but it's always bothered me that there are scaling problems with spellcasting.

[Blackhawk748]

AS for the comment on the Wizard casting rituals while they prepare in the morning and only finishing them. Then what aside from game mechanics stops them from just sitting down and performing new rituals when they run out? If I blow all my level 1 spells in a single encounter why can't I just sit down and prepare those rituals again?

I have never honestly figured that out, generally i assume its because they're tired or something, which is why i prefer Spell Points, which sadly help the wizard a tone more than they help the Sorc, but thats a whole different problem.

Personally i dont like the Psion, i dont like him for the same reason i dont like Wizards (though in the Psions defense it was 90% of the person playing it, where as with the Wizard i just hate preparing spells). Standard fluff treats (wizards mostly, the internet has a pretty huge Psion fan club) like GOD INCARNATE!!! AND THEY ARE THE BESTEST EVER!! Ya.... it gets REAL annoying when you have to put up with that a lot. Mechanically speaking im ok with Psionics, i simply dont want to deal with them and the only Psionic classes my players really ever want to play are Psy Warrior and Soulknife anyway, and im fine with those

[Thanatosia]

Thanatosia can correct me if I'm wrong, but I think that's kind of a bait-and-switch. The issue is not Vancian casting (which is weird as [feces], yeah) vs. power points/mana (which does make more sense.)

The issue is that mages casting spells feels a lot more right than "DUDES I'M LIKE, A PSYCHIC! I'VE GOT PSYCHIC POWERS THAT AREN'T MAGICAL OR NOTHIN'!" for the typical "vaguely LOTR let's wonder around the forest and astonish peasants" setting that I'm guessing a sizable majority of players play in.
Exactly! It's not about the specific Vancian Casting, it's the concept of magic being about manipulating arcane forces rather then using some wierd Brain-power. Psionics is just presented in a way that is more at home in a sci-fi setting then fantasy, you could take the exact same mechanics system and dress it up as magic, and it would be fine.

[Shinken]

that still has a scaling problem... I cast Read Magic using a ninth-level slot, and lose a casting of Time Stop with no benefit. Implying that it takes just as much energy to cast Read Magic as it does Time Stop. I'm sure there are possible theories that might explain it, but it's always bothered me that there are scaling problems with spellcasting.

Agreed completely. I'm just saying that the fluff here is not what Gorr said it was. Power points makes a lot more sense as juice than spell slots do, but they are both still juice.

[sonofzeal]

Back to Dresden Files, the title character makes a huge deal about "will", and the act of gathering up energy for a big effect, and of just plain exhausting himself magically by doing too many big things back to back . One could easily retranslate psionics into those terms by changing a few terms and keeping the mechanics identical.

[Gorr_the_Gastly]

It really does seem like if they had gone with a different name and just alluded to psionics this wouldn't be an issue.

The fluff favors Power Points or Spell Points as a system to be the primary system however, but I have heard (I have not read the book in a bit) that you calculate all your spell slots and trade them over into spell points which makes the wizard still outrageous in power even at the converted system.

The bias comes from those who feel that Fantasy is middle ages sword and board with a bit of folksy magic involved. Anythin that does not fit their view of Fantasy does not belong in their eyes. Give them a book and a funny hat and they would be fine with it.

[BrokenChord]

Gandalf is a popular name to throw around, he is a sorcerer at best not a wizard as his powers come from within, yes he probably studied to control them but that does not make him a wizard in dnd terms and heck he is even more a psion due to not really needing anything.

Sir, Gandalf is a Paladin. He's got the special horse, the Lawful Goodness, the sword proficiency, the minor magical abilities... Well, not always minor, but mostly, sort of like the Paladin spell list in general. :smalltongue:

[wayfare]

Exactly! It's not about the specific Vancian Casting, it's the concept of magic being about manipulating arcane forces rather then using some wierd Brain-power. Psionics is just presented in a way that is more at home in a sci-fi setting then fantasy, you could take the exact same mechanics system and dress it up as magic, and it would be fine.

Yep, glad to see that cleared up. There is nothing innate to the sub-system that makes it feel more sci-fi.

[BrokenChord]

Yep, so why are you arguing? There is nothing innate to the sub-system that makes it feel more sci-fi.

The only stuff being addressed right now is surface-level, though. Do you have any idea how many powers you'd need to rename and refluff to eke out the sci-fi?

[wayfare]

Sir, Gandalf is a Paladin. He's got the special horse, the Lawful Goodness, the sword proficiency, the minor magical abilities... Well, not always minor, but mostly, sort of like the Paladin spell list in general. :smalltongue:

More Specifically, he is a Planetar with Pally levels.

[wayfare]

The only stuff being addressed right now is surface-level, though. Do you have any idea how many powers you'd need to rename and refluff to eke out the sci-fi?

Just do it as it comes along. I've never done a count, but i suspect that around half of the powers are just psionicized versions of spells.

I mean, it's not like the powers are voice activated or anything. You can easily call schism "twinmind" and stuff like "astral x" really doesnt need to be renamed because astral creatures and spells exist in the conventional DnD setting.

[Terazul]

Everyone has some level of issues with the names of things, really. I'd almost swear it was some form of axiom.

It really is. Isn't the major difference just that most spells use Latin roots for their name choices, and psionics use Greek ones? Divination vs Clairsentience, Conjuration vs Metacreativity, etc. I can never understand how comparing say, Metamorphosis to Polymorph, that the former is more "sci-fi" for some reason.

Even if people wants to harp on all the crystals, that's also a thing really common with the other sub-systems: Arcane spells love using Emeralds and Rubies (often powdered) for a bunch of big-name spells. Divine spells can't get enough of diamonds. ...and then there's Incarnum.

[jedipotter]

I see it like this:


D&D has a set magic system. All the books use it. Then along comes book X, with another magic system. Why? What is the point? A wizard shoots a fireball, a psion manifests project energy fire. If your doing the same thing, er, why not just keep the same system?

[Gorr_the_Gastly]

Because if you changed a Wizard into a Arcane Scientist people would cry. But that is what they are, they are not innately magical or possess anything of use until they read a book. Wizard don't make sense in D&D at all because of the fact that ANYONE can do what they can do according to their own fluff. Anyone can pick up a spellbook, read the formula and words and cast a spell according to Wizard logic. Yes I know in fluff they are suppose to study arcane texts for years but, you dont see it in the mechanics do you?

Why do psionics exist? Well because they make more sense then the Wizard and have a more valid excuse to exist then the Wizard does. Sorcerers have innate magic, psionics have innate magic they fit the theme better. Wizards just happen to learn it through a How to for Dummies.

[wayfare]

I see it like this:


D&D has a set magic system. All the books use it. Then along comes book X, with another magic system. Why? What is the point? A wizard shoots a fireball, a psion manifests project energy fire. If your doing the same thing, er, why not just keep the same system?

Well, maybe you want the different fluff/flavor in your game. I play forgotten realms right now, and I have everything thats 3.5 legal in my game. Incarnum, Shadow Magic, Binders, ToB, etc. You can use the built in fluff to have a really fun game that explores how different cultures use magic.

But you can pretty much strip out the fluff of any of the systems and make it what you want, as well.

Right now I am going to take prepared vancian arcane casting and give it a psionic flavor:

To master psionics, the manifester concentrates on an image or "Imago" of the effect that he wants to generate. This image remains burned into the memory until its power is released into the living world. Meditation is key to this process, as an imago that is not fully mentally realized lacks the metaphysical substance to become real.

With years of patience and practice, the manifester can infuse the Imago with his personal power, giving this mental image the potential to become real. When needed, the manifester can draw up this quasi-real memory and project it into the world.

With more practice and study, the manifester can prepare multiple Imago ahead of time and can create many effects. However, once the manifester has produced his daily allotment of Imago, he must rest at least 8 hours to recoup the mental energy needed to engage in creation ex-nihilo.

[Tohsaka Rin]

*Crosses arms.* Honestly, I've never understood just how the arcane vancian system made sense.

Divine magic I get. Gods parcel out so much power, in so many little pieces, some bigger than others. Because they say so.

Arcane magic... Really makes no sense to me.

When I stop to think about it, it seems more sci-fi than psionics does.

Think about it; You're using little bits and bobs, making weird noises and gestures, and then POP! Something happens for basically no reason, to more effect than it has any right to.

It's like abusing glitches in a video game.

Read a book that's basically cribbed off of stuff others had done before (forum post), do weird things with some bits and bobs (a piece of fur and amber?). LIGHTNING BOLT because fur and a prop from Jurassic Park are rubbed together?

Personally, watching that guy in Krull mentally control that spinny blade with his mindy mental powers felt more like fantasy than having a bit of licorice root be the requirement to cast Haste. (I looked that one up. Silly as it can get.)

[Gorr_the_Gastly]

Sorcerers I get, they have innate magic that they kind of weave into the spell effect they want.

Wizards are a bad after school special run amok. Read a book kids and gain all the power of the cosmos.

Also I always thought Sorcerers shouldn't have needed material components.

[Prime32]

Arcane magic... Really makes no sense to me.

When I stop to think about it, it seems more sci-fi than psionics does.That's because Vancian casting comes from a series of novels set on future Earth, while psionics is based on Hindu/Buddhist mysticism (you know what a dorje (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dorje) is, right?).

Or maybe because you named yourself after a magic-user who stores their spells in crystals. :smalltongue:


Think about it; You're using little bits and bobs, making weird noises and gestures, and then POP! Something happens for basically no reason, to more effect than it has any right to.

It's like abusing glitches in a video game.That is the very definition of science and technology: abusing the "glitches" in physics to do things that were previously impossible. :smallamused:

[NichG]

Fluff isn't actually more easily mutable than mechanics. Its easy to say 'just reflavor everything to be something you like' but that's the equivalent to saying to someone 'just fix all the broken mechanics, sheesh!'. Both can be done, but its naive to think that its trivial to do either of them really well.

I think a deep rewrite of psionics to have a fantasy/mystical flavor that can sensibly coexist with arcane casting (as in it makes sense that they are two totally separate paths towards power in the same universe with no synergies between them) while leaving the mechanics alone would be an interesting project. I don't think its as simple as renaming power points to 'Mana' and getting rid of Biofeedback.

Divine casting makes sense as separate from Arcane because it's belief based, which is tied in to how the Outer Planes work, how gods work, etc - it's strongly connected to other things in the setting that basically 'explain' it. Arcane casting is more out there and unexplained, though many settings do make the attempt (the Weaves of the Forgotten Realms, for example). Psionics makes sense as a separate path as it is, but if you reflavor psionics to be just another way of manipulating the weave then you have the problem that it starts to look strange next to arcane magic (of course, if you were to replace arcane magic with psionics then that'd relieve some of that pressure).

Probably the best example of a setting where Psionics is really well-adapted and 'fits' in D&D would be Dark Sun. In Dark Sun, the various types of magic really are distinct, and psionics fundamentally has a different sort of role from arcane magic or divine magic: arcane magic is basically a sort of equivalent-exchange process and is sort of a bugaboo for technology gone wrong; divine magic is channeling strong elemental forces that were already present in the environment, essentially using the harshness and extremeness of the world itself as a power source; psionics is the magic the creatures of the world were forced to develop in order to survive in a post-apocalyptic land, so its very 'innate'-themed and has a sort of mutational feel. They're all distinct, they all have history and representation within the world, they're all thematically tightly woven together. That's something that a simple 'relabelling' can't achieve.

[Techwarrior]

As off-topic as it is, I know I read a really thorough, entertaining, and easy to fit into the game world description of Vancian casting as being similar to valences of electrons. If I find it I'll reference it.

[Snowbluff]

Thats a player problem, though. I find that the caster 15 minute work day really only is an issue in hi-op games. In everything else i've run, folks tend to use their power ssparingly. Also keep in mind that a psion has fewer options thsn a wizard or even a high-level sorcerer. That means the psion is more likely to resort to brute force. Nothing about this is cogent.

You just told me "this bad option is more balanced this way because I make it worse."


Psionics are more balanced than vancian casting precisely because there is a cap on how much you can nova. With a fullcasters, you are always at peak strength, and you are manifesting waaay more powers daily than a psion who is going nova.

Nothing about this is true.

There is nothing inherently more balanced about psionics.

[wayfare]

Fluff isn't actually more easily mutable than mechanics. Its easy to say 'just reflavor everything to be something you like' but that's the equivalent to saying to someone 'just fix all the broken mechanics, sheesh!'. Both can be done, but its naive to think that its trivial to do either of them really well.

I think a deep rewrite of psionics to have a fantasy/mystical flavor that can sensibly coexist with arcane casting (as in it makes sense that they are two totally separate paths towards power in the same universe with no synergies between them) while leaving the mechanics alone would be an interesting project. I don't think its as simple as renaming power points to 'Mana' and getting rid of Biofeedback.

Divine casting makes sense as separate from Arcane because it's belief based, which is tied in to how the Outer Planes work, how gods work, etc - it's strongly connected to other things in the setting that basically 'explain' it. Arcane casting is more out there and unexplained, though many settings do make the attempt (the Weaves of the Forgotten Realms, for example). Psionics makes sense as a separate path as it is, but if you reflavor psionics to be just another way of manipulating the weave then you have the problem that it starts to look strange next to arcane magic (of course, if you were to replace arcane magic with psionics then that'd relieve some of that pressure).

Probably the best example of a setting where Psionics is really well-adapted and 'fits' in D&D would be Dark Sun. In Dark Sun, the various types of magic really are distinct, and psionics fundamentally has a different sort of role from arcane magic or divine magic: arcane magic is basically a sort of equivalent-exchange process and is sort of a bugaboo for technology gone wrong; divine magic is channeling strong elemental forces that were already present in the environment, essentially using the harshness and extremeness of the world itself as a power source; psionics is the magic the creatures of the world were forced to develop in order to survive in a post-apocalyptic land, so its very 'innate'-themed and has a sort of mutational feel. They're all distinct, they all have history and representation within the world, they're all thematically tightly woven together. That's something that a simple 'relabelling' can't achieve.

I think this depends on how deep a re-write you are looking for. It is certainly possible to do a bottom-up rewrite of the system, but I've seen it work fine as "substitute magic". I've run psionics that way in the past, the trick is to have a very consistent meta-device that explains how and why magic works. Then when it comes to individual casting, ask your players to pick their powers and refluff them as needed. In this way, you get a very unique system where two folks could be using the same power that manifests differently: For one player, Vigor might be a a "force field" that absorbs damage. For another, their stature increases as positive energy bolsters the body.

[wayfare]

Nothing about this is cogent.

You just told me "this bad option is more balanced this way because I make it worse."


Nothing about this is true.

There is nothing inherently more balanced about psionics.

Limitations on power are balancing in d20 assuming level optimization across all players. Certainly you can make a full caster/manifester that is absolutely awful and can't really accomplish mush if you so chose/lacked the skill to know what powers/spells are most useful for you to take.

Limiting access to power is what brings the limited list casters closer to earth and the T3-4 balancing point.

This assumes that you consider all options on the table casters to be unbalanced. I do. Not everyone will agree with me.

Also, in what universe is a psion a "bad option"?

Also -- an INT 30 Psion who goes nova every round gets 22 maximum investment powers.
An INT 30 Wizard casts ~55 spells a day, all of them that auto-scale. It is not a 1:1 relationship, as not all powers require augmentation, but a wizard who Novas on all his best powers still has something left in his tank. A psion who burns through his powers has got nothing left. Thats a strong incentive not to Nova, as you have no magic missiles to fall back on.

[Snowbluff]

Limitations on power are balancing in d20 assuming level optimization across all players. Certainly you can make a full caster/manifester that is absolutely awful and can't really accomplish mush if you so chose/lacked the skill to know what powers/spells are most useful for you to take.

Limiting access to power is what brings the limited list casters closer to earth and the T3-4 balancing point.

This assumes that you consider all options on the table casters to be unbalanced. I do. Not everyone will agree with me.

Also, in what universe is a psion a "bad option"?
This is in response to what you quoted. I wasn't speaking about the psion for the selected portion specifically, but blasting. I think casters and manifesters can be overpowered depending on the usage and class, but it still doesn't change the factual inaccuracy of your response.

1) At level 20 before stat adjustments
Wizard: 4 9th level spells per day
Sorcerer: 6 of those
Psion: 17 ninth level (or equivalent) 200 power point powers.

Psions may Nova more than a similiar Vancian caster. The 15 minute workday is more of an issue for psions.

2) Blasting was the bad option. The biggest offender on the augmentation rules, this being awful is something you seem okay with. It's considered below par for a caster, but a manifester has to pay more to use these powers that already are inefficient.

[NichG]

I think this depends on how deep a re-write you are looking for. It is certainly possible to do a bottom-up rewrite of the system, but I've seen it work fine as "substitute magic". I've run psionics that way in the past, the trick is to have a very consistent meta-device that explains how and why magic works. Then when it comes to individual casting, ask your players to pick their powers and refluff them as needed. In this way, you get a very unique system where two folks could be using the same power that manifests differently: For one player, Vigor might be a a "force field" that absorbs damage. For another, their stature increases as positive energy bolsters the body.

The point is that when people complain about things like 'it just doesn't feel D&D to me' or 'it just doesn't feel fantasy', to the extent that they're unwilling to have it anywhere near their game, then their problems aren't going to be easily answered by suggesting they slap a new name on it or fix it themselves, because really good fluff is actually quite difficult to write and takes a fair amount of work.

Its entirely possible that in your case you basically did that work by thinking through it via the 'consistent meta-device' you used, or even that the people involved didn't have a big problem with the fluff of psionics in the first place - so the adjustments were elaborations, not fixes to something they considered problematic. Different tables get picky/bothered about different things - I find dinosaurs totally out of place in my fantasy, but for someone else it could be the coolest thing ever. I might not have any problem having a world whose ecology doesn't make sense, but it could really bug someone else.

In any event, doing the complete rebuild is useful for a DM who doesn't like psionics if for no other reason than it will give them a much deeper familiarity with them, and it will help them have a mental model of it that makes sense to them (which also means its more likely that other psionic things will be evenly distributed in the world, so it won't be such an outlier) - all of which contributes to reducing the clashing feel. But its completely understandable if someone didn't want to go through that kind of trouble.

[wayfare]

This is in response to what you quoted. I wasn't speaking about the psion for the selected portion specifically, but blasting. I think casters and manifesters can be overpowered depending on the usage and class, but it still doesn't change the factual inaccuracy of your response.

1) At level 20 before stat adjustments
Wizard: 4 9th level spells per day
Sorcerer: 6 of those
Psion: 17 ninth level (or equivalent) 200 power point powers.

Psions may Nova more than a similiar Vancian caster. The 15 minute workday is more of an issue for psions.

2) Blasting was the bad option. The biggest offender on the augmentation rules, this being awful is something you seem okay with. It's considered below par for a caster, but a manifester has to pay more to use these powers that already are inefficient.

As I said in my post, I don't really see the 15 minute work day crop up as an issue very often, but my table is pretty frugal with power. Most tables I play at have not had folks eager to throw out their top spells at a drop of a hat. That is admittedly not a high-mastery way to play the game, but I don't think that the 3.5 community is wholly interested in high-mastery play.

Are you saying that manifester Blasting, is unbalanced towards being over powered?

[wayfare]

The point is that when people complain about things like 'it just doesn't feel D&D to me' or 'it just doesn't feel fantasy', to the extent that they're unwilling to have it anywhere near their game, then their problems aren't going to be easily answered by suggesting they slap a new name on it or fix it themselves, because really good fluff is actually quite difficult to write and takes a fair amount of work.

Its entirely possible that in your case you basically did that work by thinking through it via the 'consistent meta-device' you used, or even that the people involved didn't have a big problem with the fluff of psionics in the first place - so the adjustments were elaborations, not fixes to something they considered problematic. Different tables get picky/bothered about different things - I find dinosaurs totally out of place in my fantasy, but for someone else it could be the coolest thing ever. I might not have any problem having a world whose ecology doesn't make sense, but it could really bug someone else.

In any event, doing the complete rebuild is useful for a DM who doesn't like psionics if for no other reason than it will give them a much deeper familiarity with them, and it will help them have a mental model of it that makes sense to them (which also means its more likely that other psionic things will be evenly distributed in the world, so it won't be such an outlier) - all of which contributes to reducing the clashing feel. But its completely understandable if someone didn't want to go through that kind of trouble.

True enough, and I believe that the playground actually hosts a Magic system using psionics rules homebrew that folks have reviewed well if folks are interested in seeing what that looks like, without having to re-write all the spells.

[StreamOfTheSky]

I have to say, I seem to be the reverse of most people.

I LOVE the fluff of psionics, it's really cool and welcome it, I vastly prefer it to how wizards gain their power, for example. Some of the powers are just so cool and stylish in what they do. What I hate about psionics is strictly the actual mechanics of it.

For most people, it seems to be the exact opposite. They hate the "sci-fi" (how is it sci-fi, exactly?) or weird feel of how psionics works. But they think the power points system is the greatest thing since sliced bread. I actually like Vancian casting (*gasp!* *people fainting*), there's nothing more ironic and sad than people agreeing that casters have real ultimate cosmic power and then whining about how it's not fair they didn't have the spell they wanted prepared and now they can't do something useful and "wah wah wah it's not fair!" I LIKE that "screw you, NO! You do not get to sack lower level spells to churn out another Time Stop! Deal with it!" is how magic works. Mages get way too many high level spells as it is, why on earth would I want to give them the option to pawn off all their lesser belongings to buy one more death laser?


True enough, and I believe that the playground actually hosts a Magic system using psionics rules homebrew that folks have reviewed well if folks are interested in seeing what that looks like, without having to re-write all the spells.

And, much as I hate the psionics mechanics, the Spell Points variant makes them look like a masterpiece work of art of game design.

[wayfare]

I have to say, I seem to be the reverse of most people.

I LOVE the fluff of psionics, it's really cool and welcome it, I vastly prefer it to how wizards gain their power, for example. Some of the powers are just so cool and stylish in what they do. What I hate about psionics is strictly the actual mechanics of it.

For most people, it seems to be the exact opposite. They hate the "sci-fi" (how is it sci-fi, exactly?) or weird feel of how psionics works. But they think the power points system is the greatest thing since sliced bread. I actually like Vancian casting (*gasp!* *people fainting*), there's nothing more ironic and sad than people agreeing that casters have real ultimate cosmic power and then whining about how it's not fair they didn't have the spell they wanted prepared and now they can't do something useful and "wah wah wah it's not fair!" I LIKE that "screw you, NO! You do not get to sack lower level spells to churn out another Time Stop! Deal with it!" is how magic works. Mages get way too many high level spells as it is, why on earth would I want to give them the option to pawn off all their lesser belongings to buy one more death laser?



And, much as I hate the psionics mechanics, the Spell Points variant makes them look like a masterpiece work of art of game design.

Can you link me the one you are talking about?

I don't think there's anything wrong with liking vancian casting mechanically. It is very unique, and while a lot of games use energy stats (exalted, for example), not many use a vancian type system. SO i totally get liking the mechanics.

[Deophaun]

And no magic in the normal setting is not doing things with your mind. Its repeating memorized verses of an arcane language and waving your arms in weird goofy fashion.

even the sorcerer is not above needing to flail his arms like a spaz to cast a spell.
Still Spell, Silent Spell, Eschew Materials. All Core. And then we get to the reserve feats, which are all supernatural abilities.

So yes, lots of magic in the normal setting is doing things with your mind.

[StreamOfTheSky]

Can you link me the one you are talking about?

I don't think there's anything wrong with liking vancian casting mechanically. It is very unique, and while a lot of games use energy stats (exalted, for example), not many use a vancian type system. SO i totally get liking the mechanics.

You mean the official spell points (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/magic/spellPoints.htm) variant?

It is....let's just say, poorly thought out (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?279233-3-5-You-know-what-Psi-is-overpowered-annoying&p=15043304&viewfull=1#post15043304), shall we?

I know you said the fan version on this site, but I'm skeptical that any version of spell points is much better, especially if you're not changing the spells themselves.

[wayfare]

You mean the official spell points (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/magic/spellPoints.htm) variant?

It is....let's just say, poorly thought out (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?279233-3-5-You-know-what-Psi-is-overpowered-annoying&p=15043304&viewfull=1#post15043304), shall we?

I know you said the fan version on this site, but I'm skeptical that any version of spell points is much better, especially if you're not changing the spells themselves.

There is one on here that was a bottom up rewrite. All of the core spells were written to function like psionic powers. I played with a group that had a caster using this system and it seemed pretty cool, though I was a scout and so never got any casting.

[jedipotter]

Why do psionics exist?


To make the spell point fans happy?

To sell another book to make WotC coast money?

To attract fans to ''new'' stuff. The fans that don't like the ''old'' stuff...

[AuraTwilight]

To make the spell point fans happy?

To sell another book to make WotC coast money?

To attract fans to ''new'' stuff. The fans that don't like the ''old'' stuff...

Or, to give an opinion that isn't needlessly bitter, some people like the aesthetic of psychic powers, and the concept has been present since AD&D but done fairly horribly until 3.5-ish despite demand for the concept to be done well?

[Snowbluff]

As I said in my post, I don't really see the 15 minute work day crop up as an issue very often, but my table is pretty frugal with power. Most tables I play at have not had folks eager to throw out their top spells at a drop of a hat. That is admittedly not a high-mastery way to play the game, but I don't think that the 3.5 community is wholly interested in high-mastery play. Well, it cuts both ways. Past a 15 minute day, a psion can really suck if played poorly. See below.


Are you saying that manifester Blasting, is unbalanced towards being over powered?
I'm saying it suuucks from a conceptual and mechanical standpoint. Augmentation is an interesting idea, but it was used inappropriately by the creators. Your average damage power takes a power point per dice roll through augmentation. So at level 12, a scorching ray deal 12d6, but an Energy Ray will deal similar damage for 12 PP, which is roughly 4 times the resource cost of a scorching ray. Blasting is already considered a waste of slots/points in most cases, but psionics manages to make it worse.

Personally, I think powers should scale better inherently, and have augmentation for better/higher level effects, or built-in metamagic.



Or, to give an opinion that isn't needlessly bitter, some people like the aesthetic of psychic powers, and the concept has been present since AD&D but done fairly horribly until 3.5-ish despite demand for the concept to be done well?

I think "making spell point guys happy" isn't entirely bitter. :smalltongue:

[Coidzor]

Personally, I think powers should scale better inherently, and have augmentation for better/higher level effects, or built-in metamagic

I think "making spell point guys happy" isn't entirely bitter. :smalltongue:

That would be nice, yeah.

I think it's really the tone that makes it in this case.

[Dimers]

Read a book that's basically cribbed off of stuff others had done before (forum post), do weird things with some bits and bobs (a piece of fur and amber?). LIGHTNING BOLT because fur and a prop from Jurassic Park are rubbed together?

Personally, watching that guy in Krull mentally control that spinny blade with his mindy mental powers felt more like fantasy than having a bit of licorice root be the requirement to cast Haste. (I looked that one up. Silly as it can get.)

Not that my players ever ask, but my gameworld uses coca leaves as the material component for Haste.

The lightning thing makes a little more sense than licorice for Haste, considering amber is very good for building up a static charge IRL.

[Coidzor]

Not that my players ever ask, but my gameworld uses coca leaves as the material component for Haste.

The lightning thing makes a little more sense than licorice for Haste, considering amber is very good for building up a static charge IRL.

Well, I suppose you're getting into the spirit of the original designers with that.

I didn't think bad puns ever made sense as far as why one would choose to make them. Something about the lowest form of humor and all that jazz. :smalltongue:

[wayfare]

Well, it cuts both ways. Past a 15 minute day, a psion can really suck if played poorly. See below.

I'm saying it suuucks from a conceptual and mechanical standpoint. Augmentation is an interesting idea, but it was used inappropriately by the creators. Your average damage power takes a power point per dice roll through augmentation. So at level 12, a scorching ray deal 12d6, but an Energy Ray will deal similar damage for 12 PP, which is roughly 4 times the resource cost of a scorching ray. Blasting is already considered a waste of slots/points in most cases, but psionics manages to make it worse.

Personally, I think powers should scale better inherently, and have augmentation for better/higher level effects, or built-in metamagic.




I think "making spell point guys happy" isn't entirely bitter. :smalltongue:

True, but as you say, blasting isn't really optimal for any caster build.

I think that using a single slot on something like energy ray isn't a total waste of time, in that you get 4 energy types for the price of one w/o substitution feats. As a wizard or maybe an Archivist you can get all the orb spells, and with some scrying/divination, you can probably be aware of 85% of the threats you are going to face in any given adventuring day and thus can prepare ahead of time. The Psion isn't going to compete on that level because it doesn't have the slots to burn.

That said, having a consistent hitter like Energy Ray that can be adapted to enemy resistances is nice, especially for players that want something that will work for most encounters and are not as good at changing tactics on the fly.

[Renen]

I think the biggest problem is it just doesn't fit. When you think fantasy, you think magic. It's intuitive, it's baked into the setting, it just feels right. Psionics just feels out of place.

It also just feels entirely unneccisary, Magic is pretty much making stuff happen with your mind and force of will. Why does there need to be two completely different systems to do that? It's redundant and out of place. I guess you could make a similar redundancy argument as to why do we needs Wizards AND sorcerors AND clerics AND druids AND wu-jen AND warlocks.... but it goes back to what feels right and what fits. NOw maybe if you are playing an exotic setting built around Psionics it would work better, but in your default fantasy cliche, Magic feels 'right' in a way that Psionics just don't.

Vancian casting feels right? The system where spells magically erase themselves from your head after casting?

And anyways, you can EASILY refluff psionics. I just always say that casters use the power thats all around them, while psions use power thats inside them.

Hey, just thought of a funny example imagine you need water to water something.

Wizard: "Oh great gods (powers) please grant us rain" *does the rain dance and chants*

Psion: "Hold on honey, ill go get some water from the well. Much more reliable than what our crazy neighbour's doing"

And to answer the point about some "OP psionic tricks" we have my friend the immortal ice assassin, and his army of chain gated monsters.

[Prime32]

I'm saying it suuucks from a conceptual and mechanical standpoint. Augmentation is an interesting idea, but it was used inappropriately by the creators. Your average damage power takes a power point per dice roll through augmentation. So at level 12, a scorching ray deal 12d6, but an Energy Ray will deal similar damage for 12 PP, which is roughly 4 times the resource cost of a scorching ray. Blasting is already considered a waste of slots/points in most cases, but psionics manages to make it worse.

Personally, I think powers should scale better inherently, and have augmentation for better/higher level effects, or built-in metamagic.Damaging powers deal 1d6 damage per manifester level, every 2 extra points adds +1 damage per ML and +1 DC? An ML19 energy ray, equivalent in cost to a 10th-level spell, would deal 246.5 damage (19d6+180).

[Shinken]

Vancian casting feels right? The system where spells magically erase themselves from your head after casting?


That hasn't been the fluff for about 15 years, man.

[Renen]

That hasn't been the fluff for about 15 years, man.

You know what I mean... so many people nowadays know the "mana" system from every video game ever, but psionics is weird?

Btw whats exactly the current wizard fluff? Havent looked at fluff things for a while. Do they basically have a limited space in their head for spells?

[Shinken]

You know what I mean... so many people nowadays know the "mana" system from every video game ever, but psionics is weird?

Btw whats exactly the current wizard fluff? Havent looked at fluff things for a while. Do they basically have a limited space in their head for spells?

I explained it here (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?344451-Confusion-as-to-the-anti-psionics-bias&p=17371837&viewfull=1#post17371837).

[NichG]

Vancian casting feels right? The system where spells magically erase themselves from your head after casting?

And anyways, you can EASILY refluff psionics. I just always say that casters use the power thats all around them, while psions use power thats inside them.

Hey, just thought of a funny example imagine you need water to water something.

Wizard: "Oh great gods (powers) please grant us rain" *does the rain dance and chants*

Psion: "Hold on honey, ill go get some water from the well. Much more reliable than what our crazy neighbour's doing"

And to answer the point about some "OP psionic tricks" we have my friend the immortal ice assassin, and his army of chain gated monsters.

As far as fluff goes, this is extremely incomplete (its also not really a 'refluff' per se, its an 'explanation' without changing anything). There's no integration with the setting, no real explanation of where that 'internal power' comes from, no reason why learning to channel one kind of power doesn't teach you also to channel the other kind of power, no reason for the particular breakdown of what does what, etc. Magic is a big deal in any D&D setting that has it and its very tightly integrated at every level of things. A completely separate, equally powerful magic system should also be given the same level of importance, or it just seems tacked on and random.

This is why I really think Dark Sun is the place to look to see psionics integration done right. Every power source in the setting has a role in the setting's history, they're all distributed in distinctive ways that are sensible for what they're supposed to be in the setting, etc.

[Boci]

I explained it here (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?344451-Confusion-as-to-the-anti-psionics-bias&p=17371837&viewfull=1#post17371837).

So why does it take just as long to partially cast 3 spells as it does to partially cast 29?
Why can't you counter a wizard preparing his spells?
Why can a wizard prepare his spells in an anti-magic field?
How does this work for spells with a casting time that exceeds an hour? Shouldn't the preparation casting of that spell also take longer?

There are fluff problems here too, people are just much better at ignoring them.

[Shinken]

So why does it take just as long to partially cast 3 spells as it does to partially cast 29?
Why can't you counter a wizard preparing his spells?
Why can a wizard prepare his spells in an anti-magic field?
How does this work for spells with a casting time that exceeds an hour? Shouldn't the preparation casting of that spell also take longer?

There are fluff problems here too, people are just much better at ignoring them.

No one is saying this fluff is perfect. All I'm saying is that "fire and forget" has not been the fluff for years now.

[Boci]

No one is saying this fluff is perfect. All I'm saying is that "fire and forget" has not been the fluff for years now.

Fair enough. On the flip side, people who say psionics don't fit into D&D because they lack components seem to conveniently forget about the existence of SLA whenever they make that argument.

[Coidzor]

I explained it here (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?344451-Confusion-as-to-the-anti-psionics-bias&p=17371837&viewfull=1#post17371837).

That's always seemed to me to be mostly just a slight clarification of *how* said spells get erased from one's mind. :smallconfused: Since it's an incomplete explanation, it still ends up relying upon the precedent of the past, which is why it never seems to address why one can't just keep on doing the rituals ad nauseum, because it's still relying on burning up part of the caster's brain.

[Terazul]

As far as fluff goes, this is extremely incomplete (its also not really a 'refluff' per se, its an 'explanation' without changing anything). There's no integration with the setting, no real explanation of where that 'internal power' comes from, no reason why learning to channel one kind of power doesn't teach you also to channel the other kind of power, no reason for the particular breakdown of what does what, etc. Magic is a big deal in any D&D setting that has it and its very tightly integrated at every level of things. A completely separate, equally powerful magic system should also be given the same level of importance, or it just seems tacked on and random.

Well yeah, most settings don't tend to integrate by default things that came after them. All settings aren't created equally, and I still don't think that's a good reason for anything against psionics. Plus there's all sorts of problems going on here:
Sorcerors are pretty much just "Well these guys naturally have magic no for reason, maybe because of dragons?", so it's not much better than psionics in terms of integration except that hey, arcane magic is already a thing! They just spontaneously grab it somehow but still require all the hand waving and verbal mumbo jumbo that wizards do for some reason. Also, learning to channel arcane power doesn't teach you to channel divine, so I don't see why psionics suddenly has to fulfill this expectation either. Add to the fact there are tons upon tons upon tons of PrCs, classes, ACFs, feats, and everything else under the sun classified under "you mysteriously learn to use this one type of magic/power/skill in ways nobody else understood before", and it becomes much easier to just accept it as another power source.

That said, Dark Sun and Eberron do a good job of integration. But I never understood how it could be that much harder to toss in a "there's a group of monks/sect of people/number of people across the world who just happen to take this approach to power".

[Shinken]

That's always seemed to me to be mostly just a slight clarification of *how* said spells get erased from one's mind. :smallconfused: Since it's an incomplete explanation, it still ends up relying upon the precedent of the past, which is why it never seems to address why one can't just keep on doing the rituals ad nauseum, because it's still relying on burning up part of the caster's brain.

I recommend that you actually read the fluff instead of relying on my simplification, because it is quite clear that is nothing like fire and forget in the fluff.

[Coidzor]

I recommend that you actually read the fluff instead of relying on my simplification, because it is quite clear that is nothing like fire and forget in the fluff.

I suppose it has been a while since I read the fluff so other things may have crept in, but it certainly left me with the impression of still being the same shape when all was said and done. Ah, well.

[phantomorchid]

Personally, I really enjoy playing a Psion Kineticist maenad. I wanted to make a character with a Roald Dahl's 'Mathilda'-feel to it. Kineticist is the discipline that allows me to move stuff around and wreak havoc by sheer frustration/inspiration. Maenad gives my character a hint of "bat**** crazy". Originally I wanted to play a wilder, but ended up with Psion as a compromise between me and the DM. I am very, very happy about how all of this turned out.

But it is not just the powers and the opprtunities that gives me a kick here. I am hyped about psionic limitations as well. Sometimes you really have to strategize a lot in order to benefit from you powers. If the characters in a group never intended to be classic adventurers, their skills are not neccesserily tailored for companionship. Character background must be reflected in their abilities.
Also, the Psicrystal is about to grant us a lot of roleplay. Might not be a good thing in-game, but very hilarious from the sideline. It bears two personality-types; Bully and heroic. And chaotic good. These days, as it may communicate with the whole group telepathically on its own accord, the crystal harass and dare people into doing absurd and dangerous things. All. The. Time.

Psionics are not like other casters. Psionics are different, they are meant to be different and should be played differently. If you want some standard tank or healer, look somewhere else.

[NichG]

Well yeah, most settings don't tend to integrate by default things that came after them. All settings aren't created equally, and I still don't think that's a good reason for anything against psionics.

Its a good reason against anything, if integration into a setting is important to you and that thing fails that test. Just because its a difficulty endemic to the staged release model that was used for D&D doesn't mean its not a flaw, it just means that its difficult to tack on completely new systems after the game has already released and have them feel as integral as the core stuff.


Plus there's all sorts of problems going on here:
Sorcerors are pretty much just "Well these guys naturally have magic no for reason, maybe because of dragons?", so it's not much better than psionics in terms of integration except that hey, arcane magic is already a thing! They just spontaneously grab it somehow but still require all the hand waving and verbal mumbo jumbo that wizards do for some reason. Also, learning to channel arcane power doesn't teach you to channel divine, so I don't see why psionics suddenly has to fulfill this expectation either. Add to the fact there are tons upon tons upon tons of PrCs, classes, ACFs, feats, and everything else under the sun classified under "you mysteriously learn to use this one type of magic/power/skill in ways nobody else understood before", and it becomes much easier to just accept it as another power source.


To be fair, I've found the sorceror/wizard division to be sort of ridiculous too, but at least they use the same spell lists - its clear they're both tapping the same 'thing'.

As far as arcane vs divine, there's a strong underlying reason that is well integrated for that. Divine magic is driven by the belief mechanism that powers the Outer Planes, and the direct intervention of beings of power who can 'grant' spells. The whole 'cleric of a belief' thing is a new 3ed artifact - in earlier editions it was there vestigially, but it capped out around 2nd level spells. It makes perfect sense that if a cleric needs to be personally imbued with spells by Pelor or whomever, learning to let go and let Pelor work through you isn't going to help you learn how to actually work the weave yourself, because someone else is doing the finnicky stuff and for you its all about making that connection.



That said, Dark Sun and Eberron do a good job of integration. But I never understood how it could be that much harder to toss in a "there's a group of monks/sect of people/number of people across the world who just happen to take this approach to power".

Because that's not real setting integration, its just a band-aid. It doesn't actually make the thing significant or tightly woven with the world, it just makes it random that 'oh hey, there's just this random group of people that use this thing and no one else bats an eye'. Magic is a big deal - you can make reality sit down and shut up, reshape the world, etc. It has guilds, shops, and is tightly bound with the experiences and behaviors of even non-mages in the setting. Just the idea of 'be scared of wizards because they could turn you into a frog!', for example. Clerics - same deal, everyone in a setting will be impacted by the presence of gods and their proxies on the material plane, the conflicts between them, etc. But psions are just as powerful, just as transformative - having them just be 'oh there's a random group of monks high up in the mountains with this' feels like a cop out.

Now that said, you can integrate psionics tightly when you do your own setting design. But it does take serious work to make it good. Same with Tome of Battle or other add-on systems. That's by no means saying it isn't worth doing, but it does mean that it does have to add enough to the game mechanically to make it worthwhile (which is definitely true for ToB, for example).

[Qwertystop]

My analogy of how prepared casting works is as follows:

Let's say the Wizard has a big box with a hole on one side and a bunch of levers on the other. Pushing a lever makes a spell effect come out of the hole. Each lever is stuck. He only gets a certain amount of grease every day, and the levers for each spell level need different kinds of grease. Pulling the levers squeezes out the grease, but applying more grease could allow more pulls.

Now, the levers are spells known, the stuckness is whatever the universe has that makes a place not a constant flux of random magical effects, and the greases are magical energy built up through training. Preparing a spell is applying magical pressure to reality so that one precisely-measured action can break through and cause magic.

[Terazul]

Magic is a big deal - you can make reality sit down and shut up, reshape the world, etc. It has guilds, shops, and is tightly bound with the experiences and behaviors of even non-mages in the setting. Just the idea of 'be scared of wizards because they could turn you into a frog!', for example. Clerics - same deal, everyone in a setting will be impacted by the presence of gods and their proxies on the material plane, the conflicts between them, etc. But psions are just as powerful, just as transformative - having them just be 'oh there's a random group of monks high up in the mountains with this' feels like a cop out.

But that's the thing! It doesn't have to be a random group in the mountains any more than a generic wizard guild is a random group is my point. If there's shops and guilds and all sorts of things for magic (which is reality-warping), there's no reason it cannot be simply assumed psionics would have the same thing. :smallconfused: You go down the street and there's the church, the wizard den, and the mind parlor. Divine magic usually gets all the fun integration via rival gods and whatnot, but default arcane magic is usually just... there (sometimes also in turn being associated with a god who threw it into the mix in the first place), with a handful of big name wizards and one or two organizations. I still don't see how it's so much more "integrated" than psionics is by saying "psionic characters exist", other than it was there first.

By virtue of existing, it's significant.

[Rubik]

World building. It's a hassle to incorporate, it wasn't built into moat monster stats, its an extra complication and a lot of hassle to work into a campaign where an insignificant amount of the resources at my disposal were created with it in mind.It's exactly as hard as adding magic. That's it. When commoners see a monster ravaging the town hurling balls of fiery death, it doesn't matter to them whether it's psionic, arcane, or divine, since they're functionally identical, in-world.


I think the biggest problem is it just doesn't fit. When you think fantasy, you think magic. It's intuitive, it's baked into the setting, it just feels right. Psionics just feels out of place.When I think "psionics," I think "magic." What was your point, again?


It also just feels entirely unneccisary, Magic is pretty much making stuff happen with your mind and force of will. Why does there need to be two completely different systems to do that? It's redundant and out of place.It's far easier to use, especially for newbies. It also doesn't have the stupid "fire and forget" mechanics that clunky, horrible spell-slots have. It's much better as a spontaneous casting system because it's designed as such, and having a dedicated system designed for it makes quite a lot of difference in how it plays from a player standpoint. Otherwise, why have wizards, sorcerers druids, clerics, bards, paladins, duskblades, and every other spellcasting class? Why not just use wizards? They cast magic spells, right?


I guess you could make a similar redundancy argument as to why do we needs Wizards AND sorcerors AND clerics AND druids AND wu-jen AND warlocks....Exactly.


but it goes back to what feels right and what fits.Magic = Magic. This "point" really isn't one.


NOw maybe if you are playing an exotic setting built around Psionics it would work better, but in your default fantasy cliche, Magic feels 'right' in a way that Psionics just don't.I think impressing your will on the world using your inner strength and being a wellspring of magical power is a heck of a lot more magical than mapping out equations and memorizing programs that bend physics for you.

[Brookshw]

It's exactly as hard as adding magic. That's it. When commoners see a monster ravaging the town hurling balls of fiery death, it doesn't matter to them whether it's psionic, arcane, or divine, since they're functionally identical, in-world.

Disagreed. It's an extra element to have to factor into an already bloated system. Not just creatures but also how a world functions. The more elements you add, the more complex the planning and designing gets and the more I find I have to invest time. Me? Not interested. Other things to do with the time. OP asked so there's my answer.

[Boci]

Disagreed. It's an extra element to have to factor into an already bloated system. Not just creatures but also how a world functions. The more elements you add, the more complex the planning and designing gets and the more I find I have to invest time. Me? Not interested. Other things to do with the time. OP asked so there's my answer.

But you don't have to make it a chore. Any blanks spots on your camp? PC came from there. No blank spots? Lithid experimentation, maybe a lost art, maybe not. There, done.

[Prime32]

Disagreed. It's an extra element to have to factor into an already bloated system. Not just creatures but also how a world functions. The more elements you add, the more complex the planning and designing gets and the more I find I have to invest time. Me? Not interested. Other things to do with the time. OP asked so there's my answer.In what possible setting is there room for monks, sorcerers and clerics of philosophies but not for psions? :smallconfused:

If you switched from 3e to 4e mid-campaign would you tell the monk player that, because monks are in the Psionic section now, his background no longer makes sense and he can't use that character any more?

[Rubik]

Disagreed. It's an extra element to have to factor into an already bloated system. Not just creatures but also how a world functions. The more elements you add, the more complex the planning and designing gets and the more I find I have to invest time. Me? Not interested. Other things to do with the time. OP asked so there's my answer.My character enjoys raining elemental death of all types down on his enemies, blasting with abandon while laughing maniacally. He can blow things up with fireballs, iceballs, and explosive balls of electricity, and can fire bolts of energy and make things explode.

From what you're saying, it's entirely obvious, so this should be easy. Is he a psion, or a warmage with Energy Substitution?

[Coidzor]

World building. It's a hassle to incorporate, it wasn't built into moat monster stats, its an extra complication and a lot of hassle to work into a campaign where an insignificant amount of the resources at my disposal were created with it in mind.

Wherein lies the hassle? That's what I want to know. Have you actually done so? What did you actually have to do when you did or what did you feel you had to do that stopped you from following through?

Is one of your objections really that most monsters aren't psionic when most of them aren't spellcasters either? If not, then what do you mean by that it wasn't built into most monsters and what's the actual problem with that?


Disagreed. It's an extra element to have to factor into an already bloated system. Not just creatures but also how a world functions. The more elements you add, the more complex the planning and designing gets and the more I find I have to invest time. Me? Not interested. Other things to do with the time. OP asked so there's my answer.

Are you doing the full Tippyverse-esque treatment where you look at how every possible expression of power or magic would alter the world/society then? :smallconfused: It almost sounds like that's what you're alluding to, at least from how I'm reading you.

[NichG]

But that's the thing! It doesn't have to be a random group in the mountains any more than a generic wizard guild is a random group is my point. If there's shops and guilds and all sorts of things for magic (which is reality-warping), there's no reason it cannot be simply assumed psionics would have the same thing. :smallconfused: You go down the street and there's the church, the wizard den, and the mind parlor. Divine magic usually gets all the fun integration via rival gods and whatnot, but default arcane magic is usually just... there (sometimes also in turn being associated with a god who threw it into the mix in the first place), with a handful of big name wizards and one or two organizations. I still don't see how it's so much more "integrated" than psionics is by saying "psionic characters exist", other than it was there first.


It doesn't have to be, but look at this thread. Almost everyone suggesting refluffing psionics to make it suit people's tastes better have given the 'random group' style answers - 'you want it to be less sci-fi, just rename biofeedback' or 'you want it to be integrated, just make some random group that has it'. It is possible to do a good job with it, but that doesn't mean that people do. My point in this thread has never been 'psionics are bad because...', my point has been 'if you want to address complaints about fluff, you have to take them seriously'.

Arcane magic is integrated because of a very unfair advantage, but a real one none-the-less - it is the bread and butter of the fantasy genre, so its instantly familiar to, well, everyone. Not Vancian casting per se, but 'wizards with pointy hats' and the like. If you took the psionics system as written, renamed everything, and got rid of arcane magic but replaced it with psionics everywhere and called that magic, then actually that might work out just fine (this also means converting every wizard and sorceror in the setting into a psion). But having both in means there's a clash - it means psionics has to be 'that other magic that isn't magic' which means it needs a lot more work.

Now, that said, in setting material arcane magic and its users are pretty solidly represented. Its not just 'a few NPCs/organizations', its tons of them. In Forgotten Realms you have tons and tons of NPCs being arcane magic users and having that be a defining characteristic - Elminster, Vangerdehast, the Simbul, Manshoon, Halastar, all of the Thayans, etc. There are multiple nations who are defined basically by their relationship with arcane magic (Thay, Netheril, and Halruaa in particular - to a lesser extent arguably Myth Drannor as well). In Dragonlance there's the Tower of High Sorcery and the robed wizards, which are moderately central to the setting. For Dark Sun, arcane magic is the entire reason the setting is a post-apocalyptic wasteland.

I'm less familiar with Greyhawk and Eberron so I can't list things off so easily for them. I'll grant that arcane magic is fairly weakly integrated in Planescape.


It's exactly as hard as adding magic. That's it. When commoners see a monster ravaging the town hurling balls of fiery death, it doesn't matter to them whether it's psionic, arcane, or divine, since they're functionally identical, in-world.

This would be true, except that magic has already been added to basically every D&D setting for you. Psionics you have to add yourself. Writing a new Faerun or Greyhawk or Eberron is not as easy as just running one out of the box.

[Rubik]

This would be true, except that magic has already been added to basically every D&D setting for you. Psionics you have to add yourself. Writing a new Faerun or Greyhawk or Eberron is not as easy as just running one out of the box.You know all those sorcerers running around the campaign setting, slinging fire and doing sorcerer-things? Yeah. Some actually have "psion" on their character sheet.

Ow. That was so difficult I think I might've strained something.

Those of us saying it really don't joke about when we say it's easy to add psionics to a campaign world. It's another type of magic, and manifesters are another type of caster. So they use different kinds of spells. It's not like anyone but the wizards and psions will know the difference in the campaign world, after all.

[Renen]

Its a good reason against anything, if integration into a setting is important to you and that thing fails that test. Just because its a difficulty endemic to the staged release model that was used for D&D doesn't mean its not a flaw, it just means that its difficult to tack on completely new systems after the game has already released and have them feel as integral as the core stuff.



To be fair, I've found the sorceror/wizard division to be sort of ridiculous too, but at least they use the same spell lists - its clear they're both tapping the same 'thing'.

As far as arcane vs divine, there's a strong underlying reason that is well integrated for that. Divine magic is driven by the belief mechanism that powers the Outer Planes, and the direct intervention of beings of power who can 'grant' spells. The whole 'cleric of a belief' thing is a new 3ed artifact - in earlier editions it was there vestigially, but it capped out around 2nd level spells. It makes perfect sense that if a cleric needs to be personally imbued with spells by Pelor or whomever, learning to let go and let Pelor work through you isn't going to help you learn how to actually work the weave yourself, because someone else is doing the finnicky stuff and for you its all about making that connection.



Because that's not real setting integration, its just a band-aid. It doesn't actually make the thing significant or tightly woven with the world, it just makes it random that 'oh hey, there's just this random group of people that use this thing and no one else bats an eye'. Magic is a big deal - you can make reality sit down and shut up, reshape the world, etc. It has guilds, shops, and is tightly bound with the experiences and behaviors of even non-mages in the setting. Just the idea of 'be scared of wizards because they could turn you into a frog!', for example. Clerics - same deal, everyone in a setting will be impacted by the presence of gods and their proxies on the material plane, the conflicts between them, etc. But psions are just as powerful, just as transformative - having them just be 'oh there's a random group of monks high up in the mountains with this' feels like a cop out.

Now that said, you can integrate psionics tightly when you do your own setting design. But it does take serious work to make it good. Same with Tome of Battle or other add-on systems. That's by no means saying it isn't worth doing, but it does mean that it does have to add enough to the game mechanically to make it worthwhile (which is definitely true for ToB, for example).

I think WotC really expected DMs to be able to make their own fluff. But I guess nowadays if something isnt fluffed well for you, you dont bother refluffing it. You just write the whole thing as impractical and stupid.




Let's say the Wizard has a big box with a hole on one side

Man... I just lost it... cmon, someone must have thought of how to use a box with a whole on one side...

@NichG
So... if you are saying psionics and arcane clash, then what about:
Divine? It clashes if psionics does.
Warlocks? They got "wierd magic thats not magic" too
Shadow magic? Much clashing, so wow
Wu jen? (Because it was already brought up)
ToB? Because some blame it for being magic for martial classes

Need I go on?

[toapat]

I recommend that you actually read the fluff instead of relying on my simplification, because it is quite clear that is nothing like fire and forget in the fluff.

Actually, your simplification is accurate to the works of Jack Vance. It really is Fire and Forget for Wizard upto 4th.


The problems fluff wise are Late to the party and "Feels good, Tastes horrible"

balance wise, its less exploitable then Vancian but more powerful and more specialized to doing what is bad with vancian, and it accounts for the second most broken book in the game. It has interesting ideas but they are implemented poorl




Theoretically, if we were to take systems from across the run of the game:

Psionics would be toned down in power but specialized into spontaineous casters. Fluffed as Mana users, they would form the bulk of the casters.

Vancian would be limited to the thaumatuge (i personally dont agree with the wizard archetype being available to players. There is too much power invested in the concept) and Priest. Ritual casting would be dragged from 4th, reworked, and weakened to be available to everyone, but the vancian casters get the most bang for their buck. 1 of their spells is worth 5 times what anyone else can cast, but everyone else gets much more equivalent power. If a mage (sorcerer doesnt really work as the name when it uses a different system entirely, and psion is likewise bound in name) can throw 20 9th level equivalents, the thaumatuge could only cast 3.

Vestiges and Incarnum would be worked together, with Druid and Monk being moved to these. Druid would litterally shapeshift when they bind where as a monk would have a spectral aspect overlaid like with standard incarnum.

ToB would have influences on the combat mechanics of the system, and small parts would be retained for the mundanes but mundanes should not need a Casting system in their design to compete.

[Snowbluff]

My little brother is working on a system like that. The wizards are vancian, and only use their spell points to add effects to spells like metamagic. Sorcerers are spell point casters, and may add bonuses on the fly. One focuses on their Spell Research skill for spell slots (like Attunement in Dark Souls), while the other focuses on their Mana stat.

True, but as you say, blasting isn't really optimal for any caster build.

That said, having a consistent hitter like Energy Ray that can be adapted to enemy resistances is nice, especially for players that want something that will work for most encounters and are not as good at changing tactics on the fly.
I would never employ it against genuine threats. The only reason why I would use an orb was if none of my other spells would be utterly ineffective, or if the target was near death. Energy Ray has the same problem, but you also tack on Spell Resistance and a substantially higher cost. It's much worse no matter how you weigh it. This is just an example of psionic power augmentation being horribly implemented.

[NichG]

You know all those sorcerers running around the campaign setting, slinging fire and doing sorcerer-things? Yeah. Some actually have "psion" on their character sheet.

Ow. That was so difficult I think I might've strained something.

Those of us saying it really don't joke about when we say it's easy to add psionics to a campaign world. It's another type of magic, and manifesters are another type of caster. So they use different kinds of spells. It's not like anyone but the wizards and psions will know the difference in the campaign world, after all.

Yeah 'those of you' tend to rather discount the opinion of anyone who says that fluff should actually matter, like you're doing right here. Its fine to say 'it doesn't bother me if something is just there for mechanics', but don't be surprised when other people have different priorities and find it unsatisfying.

Having there be different ways of 'magic' without actually having reasons or sense to them in the setting is an example of bad fluff/mechanics integration, and it leads to the 'fantasy kitchen sink' where things just feel random. If that doesn't bother you, great - enjoy! But it does bother some of us, and for those of us that mind your answer is basically useless.




I think WotC really expected DMs to be able to make their own fluff. But I guess nowadays if something isnt fluffed well for you, you dont bother refluffing it. You just write the whole thing as impractical and stupid.


The expectation that fluff is easier than mechanics to make up on your own is a common error. Bad fluff is easy, but good fluff is hard. We've had lots of examples of bad fluff in this thread as flippant answers for why fixing the fluff of psionics should be easy.

If you're willing to take the time and effort to do good fluff and good setting integration, then you can make anything work. If you're willing to take the time and effort to do a real mechanical fix to Truenaming that can work too. But it really does take a willingness to actually think deeply about what role a particular thing is going to have in the entire campaign setting and world, not just an off-the-cuff 'change the names and pretend its magic'.

There's nothing stopping anyone here from, say, making 3 organizations that are central in the politics of their setting that are predominantly fed via psionics, decide what opinions the other organizations/philosophies have about psionics, create a story of how psionics came about/relates to underlying cosmology, make sure that a significant fraction of NPCs are psionic and an even greater fraction know about it and take it into account in their worldview, philosophy, and the sorts of topics they discuss, and integrating psionics into the history of their world. That is, in fact, 'the right way' to use psionics.

But when it comes down to it, it seems like what most people do is to slap down a token monastery of psionic monks when a player wants to take levels of Psion, and then they just ignore it from then on. And that's what makes it feel really out of place, because it is in fact out of place in those campaigns.




@NichG
So... if you are saying psionics and arcane clash, then what about:
Divine? It clashes if psionics does.


Explained this already in a previous post.



Warlocks? They got "wierd magic thats not magic" too


Arguably so! If you just throw warlocks into the game with no other integration, they have the exact same problem as psions. So yes, potential clashing here.



Shadow magic? Much clashing, so wow


Shadow magic is well-integrated in the Forgotten Realms setting. No clash.



Wu jen? (Because it was already brought up)


Well integrated in the setting it comes from (Rokugan). Toss them into, say, Greyhawk, and yes, they clash.



ToB? Because some blame it for being magic for martial classes


Yes, ToB clashes if you don't do anything to integrate it.

What it comes down to is, don't give me a setting where its all medieval pseudo-European fantasy and peasants believe in wizards and clerics, and then randomly there's a shugenja or a ninja or a Cherokee shaman or a super-intelligent dinosaur with psionic powers. If you're going to have shugenja and ninja and Cherokee shamans and psychic dinos, make them integral to the setting and the world and actually have everything tie in in a sensible and meaningful way. If the only way you can think to do that is 'there's a tiny country where psions come from' then I'm going to call that a pretty superficial job of integrating it.

[Rubik]

Yeah 'those of you' tend to rather discount the opinion of anyone who says that fluff should actually matter, like you're doing right here. Its fine to say 'it doesn't bother me if something is just there for mechanics', but don't be surprised when other people have different priorities and find it unsatisfying.

Having there be different ways of 'magic' without actually having reasons or sense to them in the setting is an example of bad fluff/mechanics integration, and it leads to the 'fantasy kitchen sink' where things just feel random. If that doesn't bother you, great - enjoy! But it does bother some of us, and for those of us that mind your answer is basically useless.So, tell me, what's the fluff difference between a fire-based Energy Ball and a Fireball? An electric Energy Bolt and Lightning Bolt? Concussion Blast and Magic Missile? Psionic Minor Creation and Minor Creation? Psionic Fabricate and Fabricate?

[Captnq]

Here's my two coppers.

I hated Psionics. I got enough requests that I finally made the psionomicon Handbook.

Psionics isn't bad.

By my rating system, there are only 55 powers that are "too good not to take". As opposed to the hundreds of spells. In fact, about 30% of those "too good" powers are actually just revamped spells.

Yeah, 50% of the powers come with built in Heighten spell Metamagic feat the way the feat should have been written. It would cut down on BS like, "Cure light wounds. Cure serious wounds, Cure X wounds, Cure X+1 wounds." Holy-lee crap what a crap-ton of wasted space. I can see how they wanted to cut down on redundant powers to save on space in the printed book. The automatic scalability actually is a feature as far as I'm concerned, and I'm a DM. I don't play the game, i just run it.

Now If you want to run a psionic character and your DM freaks out, just give him a copy of the Psionomicon (my sig file, its in the EVD) and tell him you won't take any of the purple powers. Trust me, the blue ones are still quite awesome. I can see how being able to make gallons of goo that can put objects in stasis might be off putting for some DMs. Me? When I look at Psionics, they really do look limited.

Yes, I know. They got some cool tricks. The problem is, they have a really limited number of cool tricks. You take out those 55 powers, you reduce any psionist to a Tier 4, maybe tier 3 if the player is REALLY good at optimizing. A wizard? Damn they got some fun stuff. They got metric tons of fun stuff. To remove every spell that would reduce a wizard down one tier, you'd have to ban about five hundred spells. I mean that, literally.

Psionists really start to sound like a broken record. If you are optimizing, you wind up with about ten different builds with minor variations. Now with a sorcerer (a much better comparison to a psionist, really), I could choose spells a hundred different ways and handle the builds a hundred different ways and each one would look rather different.

So, for me, psionics major problem is, it's kinda boring.

[Brookshw]

Wherein lies the hassle? That's what I want to know. Revamping most races, reconsidering how their internal power structures may shift based on alternative sources of "power". Prejudices, cultures, power structures, etc.
Have you actually done so? To some extent yes. It was a hassle.
What did you actually have to do when you did or what did you feel you had to do that stopped you from following through? Well, pretty much answered this I think but revamping the entire setting to incorporate an element it wasn't designed with.


Is one of your objections really that most monsters aren't psionic when most of them aren't spellcasters either? If not, then what do you mean by that it wasn't built into most monsters and what's the actual problem with that? The monsters are the most noticeable expression but simply having to replan how everything works. That's effort. Any magic is already world changing, adding more is more potential for change that requires forethought and planning for how you treat it.


Are you doing the full Tippyverse-esque treatment where you look at how every possible expression of power or magic would alter the world/society then? :smallconfused: It almost sounds like that's what you're alluding to, at least from how I'm reading you. Why yes, to some extent I am. A cohesive world is preferable, no? Preferably not hi op, but mid op. I'll admit some of this is reminiscent of the hassle that was 2e dark sun and having to incorporate it into the world. Not the mechanics (though yes they were a hassle) but I didn't care for having an extra element in the world function to track.


But you don't have to make it a chore. Any blanks spots on your camp? PC came from there. No blank spots? Lithid experimentation, maybe a lost art, maybe not. There, done.

Not sure what you mean by camp, typo/autocorrect? Meant map? So the PC's are from "there". Okay, what's there? How do whatever "powers" feel about that place? Who's running to take advantage of it? How does it change the existing balance? A lost art? Lost by who? What else was lost? Who's looking for it? All great plot elements but do seem to force the incorporation of many campaign elements.


In what possible setting is there room for monks, sorcerers and clerics of philosophies but not for psions? :smallconfused: Mine apparently.


If you switched from 3e to 4e mid-campaign would you tell the monk player that, because monks are in the Psionic section now, his background no longer makes sense and he can't use that character any more? Is that something you do, switch editions mid campaign:smallconfused:? Huh.


My character enjoys raining elemental death of all types down on his enemies, blasting with abandon while laughing maniacally. He can blow things up with fireballs, iceballs, and explosive balls of electricity, and can fire bolts of energy and make things explode.

From what you're saying, it's entirely obvious, so this should be easy. Is he a psion, or a warmage with Energy Substitution? So by your own admission you can already manage your character concept without the existence of psionics? As that seems to be the "obvious" (not that I know exactly where you're pulling this opinion from) then I don't see the problem with excluding them :smallconfused:

[NichG]

So, tell me, what's the fluff difference between a fire-based Energy Ball and a Fireball? An electric Energy Bolt and Lightning Bolt? Concussion Blast and Magic Missile? Psionic Minor Creation and Minor Creation? Psionic Fabricate and Fabricate?

If there's no difference, then there being two completely different mechanical systems to achieve them is an incoherency between fluff and mechanics.

Mechanics/fluff integration means that if something has fluff saying it does something, the mechanics should support that, but also that if there is something mechanical in the system the fluff should support it too. If you have two classes where their only difference is mechanical, but they're identical fluff-wise, then that means the fluff is not actually supporting the mechanical distinctions.

As I said in a previous post, if you totally got rid of arcane magic and just called psionics 'arcane magic' then that'd be fine. But having both at the same time ends up clashing.

[Renen]

@NichG
So we can agree that fluff needs changing for most things right? Because if you say that something doesnt clash but name a specific setting, then its not a good point. Because we already know a setting where psionics doesnt clash, yet we are seeing more hate on it that on shadowcasting or warlocks.

Also, as my buddy Rubik is trying to put it: why not just change the fluff in one sentence, by saying "its magic".
I really really dont think players will sit down at a campfire and go "hey here's how I cast my spells". In character, if you have 1 guy who can use fabricate to make an item is exactly the same as a guy who uses psionic fabricate. Sure, mechanically they might be different, but in character ainto no one needs to know. You can just say that psionics is a magic discipline with an "exotic spell list". Boom! You just explained why they have some new "spells".

But really, people dont like psionics because it's so hard to say that psions alter the worldby using "power from within"? Like warlocks (if I remember my fluff)
Cmon, not wanting to fix the fluff is just lazy. I can think of a dozen ways to explain psionics from being a different type of magic, to power from within, to saying that its a different way of asking the universe to bent the rules for you.

[squiggit]

Yeah 'those of you' tend to rather discount the opinion of anyone who says that fluff should actually matter, like you're doing right here. Its fine to say 'it doesn't bother me if something is just there for mechanics', but don't be surprised when other people have different priorities and find it unsatisfying.

Why does not having the same arbitrary sticking point as you suddenly turn into "not caring about fluff"?

[ryu]

Why does not having the same arbitrary sticking point as you suddenly turn into "not caring about fluff"?

For example the position of all the original fluff being terrible nonsense to begin with and we're better off making our own to improve the quality of the game.

[TuggyNE]

Psionics is just presented in a way that is more at home in a sci-fi setting then fantasy, you could take the exact same mechanics system and dress it up as magic, and it would be fine.

You're welcome (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?194002-3-5-A-Translation-of-Vancian-Spellcasting-to-Psionic-Mechanics).


True enough, and I believe that the playground actually hosts a Magic system using psionics rules homebrew that folks have reviewed well if folks are interested in seeing what that looks like, without having to re-write all the spells.

Yep, linked above.


So by your own admission you can already manage your character concept without the existence of psionics? As that seems to be the "obvious" (not that I know exactly where you're pulling this opinion from) then I don't see the problem with excluding them :smallconfused:

Superior mechanics? Micro-fluff questions that don't affect the larger world much, like the weirdnesses of spell preparation vs daily psionic meditation?

The point he was making is that, based on some more obvious external fluff questions it's impossible to distinguish psionics and magic, not that there is literally no observable distinction, ever.

[Shinken]

For example my opinion that all the original fluff is terrible nonsense to begin with and we're better off making our own to improve the quality of the game.

Fixed that for you.

[ryu]

Fixed that for you.

Now see that would be a rightful edit if it weren't already phrased in a non-factual manner. The position that all of the base fluff is terrible and should be rewritten. Not the fact, not the scientific theory, not even firmly held objective stance. Just the position.

[geekintheground]

arent spell slots/power points metagame abstractions? same with spell/power level? and what about names, cant "Fireball" be "Ball of Flame" or something? it seems that the only thing in game that differentiates the two systems is the fluff of where the power comes from, which doesnt REALLY differentiate the two because both psionic characters and sorcerers get power because theyre awesome (well, its a self based power).

then again, im still new to psionics and might be missing something.

[TuggyNE]

arent spell slots/power points metagame abstractions? same with spell/power level?

No to both; there are magic items and spells that allow a Wizard or other prepared caster to regain one or more spell slots, and there are quite a number of effects that gate very precisely on spell level (such as globe of invulnerability). Whether the characters call them "spell slots" and "spell levels" is of course not known, but we do know that they are aware of the concepts.

[toapat]

arent spell slots/power points metagame abstractions? same with spell/power level? and what about names, cant "Fireball" be "Ball of Flame" or something? it seems that the only thing in game that differentiates the two systems is the fluff of where the power comes from, which doesnt REALLY differentiate the two because both psionic characters and sorcerers get power because theyre awesome (well, its a self based power).

then again, im still new to psionics and might be missing something.

Yes and no. Spellslots are abstractions, but they dont change that when a Wizard casts read magic in a 9th level slot, its equivalent to using the Heroshima bomb to light a candle for reading. Sure, they both provide illumination, but one of those is normally intended to destroy a city. a Powerpoint is more like a given amount of physical or mental exertion of the character. a character with full PP is like someone who just got up, once they have cleared them all out they are half asleep (or should be. Doubt its actually represented in the rules)

Caster Level is the purely mechanical abstraction however.

[geekintheground]

Yes and no. Spellslots are abstractions, but they dont change that when a Wizard casts read magic in a 9th level slot, its equivalent to using the Heroshima bomb to light a candle for reading. Sure, they both provide illumination, but one of those is normally intended to destroy a city. a Powerpoint is more like a given amount of physical or mental exertion of the character. a character with full PP is like someone who just got up, once they have cleared them all out they are half asleep (or should be. Doubt its actually represented in the rules)

Caster Level is the purely mechanical abstraction however.


No to both; there are magic items and spells that allow a Wizard or other prepared caster to regain one or more spell slots, and there are quite a number of effects that gate very precisely on spell level (such as globe of invulnerability). Whether the characters call them "spell slots" and "spell levels" is of course not known, but we do know that they are aware of the concepts.

i see. thanks guys, knew i could count on forumites to correct me :smallsmile:

[Rubik]

If there's no difference, then there being two completely different mechanical systems to achieve them is an incoherency between fluff and mechanics.There are differences when playing as a player. The mechanical portion changes, of course, which is very important to the game from a player's perspective. People in this thread are arguing against the fluff, and there doesn't have to be any difference, fluff-wise, between a sorcerer and a psion, except psions gain their power through force of will, meditation, and self-reflection, whereas sorcerers gain theirs through force of personality (and throwing poo at enemies, which is horribly stupid, I think). But psionics is no different than spellcasting in the game world at large when it comes to the grand scheme of things.


Mechanics/fluff integration means that if something has fluff saying it does something, the mechanics should support that, but also that if there is something mechanical in the system the fluff should support it too. If you have two classes where their only difference is mechanical, but they're identical fluff-wise, then that means the fluff is not actually supporting the mechanical distinctions.The only difference between a fighter and a warblade is mechanical. They have the same basic fluff. That doesn't mean that nobody should ever play a warblade because the fighter already exists, since the warblade actually makes sense from a fluff-perspective, and fighter doesn't. The same applies between psion and sorcerer. Fluff-wise, they're very similar (crystals and all), but the psion actually makes sense, while there are a lot of incongruencies to the sorcerer (see the aforementioned "nuke to light a candle"). That, and, again, the mechanics are very important to the player, which is why someone would actually play one.


As I said in a previous post, if you totally got rid of arcane magic and just called psionics 'arcane magic' then that'd be fine. But having both at the same time ends up clashing.How? You have a sorcerer and a psion in the same party. They choose different "spells" and fill different roles. They're not matter and antimatter, suddenly imploding upon meeting each other, any more than a cleric and a wizard or a dread necromancer and a beguiler do.


Revamping most races, reconsidering how their internal power structures may shift based on alternative sources of "power". Prejudices, cultures, power structures, etc. To some extent yes. It was a hassle. Well, pretty much answered this I think but revamping the entire setting to incorporate an element it wasn't designed with.This really doesn't make any sense, considering that "psionics = magic," and adding a psion to the world is no more disruptive than adding an artificer, beguiler, or a spellthief, tiers notwithstanding.


The monsters are the most noticeable expression but simply having to replan how everything works. That's effort. Any magic is already world changing, adding more is more potential for change that requires forethought and planning for how you treat it.They require no more planning than adding a sorcerer to the game, since the default is magic/psionics transparency (ie, psionics = magic), so this point holds no water.


Why yes, to some extent I am. A cohesive world is preferable, no? Preferably not hi op, but mid op. I'll admit some of this is reminiscent of the hassle that was 2e dark sun and having to incorporate it into the world. Not the mechanics (though yes they were a hassle) but I didn't care for having an extra element in the world function to track.Again, this holds no water. Adding any player to the group adds an element to keep track of, so if that's too complex for you, perhaps you shouldn't be DMing.


Not sure what you mean by camp, typo/autocorrect? Meant map? So the PC's are from "there". Okay, what's there? How do whatever "powers" feel about that place? Who's running to take advantage of it? How does it change the existing balance? A lost art? Lost by who? What else was lost? Who's looking for it? All great plot elements but do seem to force the incorporation of many campaign elements.How do the "powers" feel about the spellthief's magic? The party sorcerer's? I don't see your point as to how this is a bad thing.


So by your own admission you can already manage your character concept without the existence of psionics? As that seems to be the "obvious" (not that I know exactly where you're pulling this opinion from) then I don't see the problem with excluding them :smallconfused:The mechanical difference in the world at large is nigh identical, so any DM who is fine with a sorcerer should be okay with a psion. However, the mechanical differences are extremely important to the player, since that affects how he interacts with the game world, but not how it interacts with him (aside from his buffs and how they affect incoming effects, anyway). Psionics has effects that magic doesn't have, but they're basically somewhat exotic spells. There's also the fact that spell slots are an absolute pain in the arse to keep track of, and augmentation runs much more smoothly. Power points are more organic, and they have a much different feel for a player, and encourage a somewhat different playstyle. However, Bob the Balor, Sara the Succubus, and Terry the Tarrasque really don't care whether Maxi the Magician is using slots or points, since "Argh, that hurt!" is all they really care about.

[Ansem]

Now see that would be a rightful edit if it weren't already phrased in a non-factual manner. The position that all of the base fluff is terrible and should be rewritten. Not the fact, not the scientific theory, not even firmly held objective stance. Just the position.
Still an opinion, as it's not a fact.

[TuggyNE]

Still an opinion, as it's not a fact.

He was, er, objectively describing the characteristics of a position some people hold. I.e., an opinion. :smallsigh:

What do they teach them in these schools?

[Brookshw]

Superior mechanics? Micro-fluff questions that don't affect the larger world much, like the weirdnesses of spell preparation vs daily psionic meditation?

The point he was making is that, based on some more obvious external fluff questions it's impossible to distinguish psionics and magic, not that there is literally no observable distinction, ever.

And those are some of the issue we have disagreements on, I don't see "Micro-fluff questions that don't affect the larger world much" as the situation, my stance and opinion would be that if permitted I'd have to adjust the world substantially and don't care to which is where my bias resides. Could they be integrated with enough work? Probably, not my cup of tea though.

The mechanics question, shrug, I personally don't have much problem with the game saying standard casting (spell slots) works as it does because that's how magic works.



This really doesn't make any sense, considering that "psionics = magic," and adding a psion to the world is no more disruptive than adding an artificer, beguiler, or a spellthief, tiers notwithstanding. Well, the first example seems to have indeed had a massive effect on the world it was intended for, Eberron, and was deeply integrated. My experiences with integrating psionics likewise lead to a large scale modification. Work I'm not interested in.


They require no more planning than adding a sorcerer to the game, since the default is magic/psionics transparency (ie, psionics = magic), so this point holds no water. Not especially, sorcerers already work off of arcane which is built into the game. Arcane/Divine and a new element "Mind" is something a bit different I should think even if it's still part of "Magic".


Again, this holds no water. Adding any player to the group adds an element to keep track of, so if that's too complex for you, perhaps you shouldn't be DMing. Bit of a personal shot there mate. Remember, this is a game the explicitly grants the DM the decision regarding what books outside of core are to be permitted and quite a bit of other responsibilities. If you dislike the DM making those decisions maybe you shouldn't be playing D&D. Also players are an intrinsic part of the game so your off on that one.


How do the "powers" feel about the spellthief's magic? The party sorcerer's? I don't see your point as to how this is a bad thing. I believe that was in reference to it's not quite as simple as tossing them in some corner and then forgetting them if you want world cohesion.



The mechanical difference in the world at large is nigh identical, so any DM who is fine with a sorcerer should be okay with a psion. However, the mechanical differences are extremely important to the player, since that affects how he interacts with the game world, but not how it interacts with him (aside from his buffs and how they affect incoming effects, anyway). Psionics has effects that magic doesn't have, but they're basically somewhat exotic spells. There's also the fact that spell slots are an absolute pain in the arse to keep track of, and augmentation runs much more smoothly. Power points are more organic, and they have a much different feel for a player, and encourage a somewhat different playstyle. However, Bob the Balor, Sara the Succubus, and Terry the Tarrasque really don't care whether Maxi the Magician is using slots or points, since "Argh, that hurt!" is all they really care about. If it's just the mechanics then why not refocus the discussion to the Spell Points variant in UA? Why the need for Mind Magic? What is it exactly that Psionics are offering you that you can't already get in the game exactly other than an alternative mechanics system?

[Renen]

Erm, it offers sifferent spells for one.
But hey if you like we can just give the wizard every spell list ever. Because god forbid people wanna play a non arcane caster.

And that alternative mechanics system is a big deal to the player. Maybe I find it easier to manage PP that spell slots? Maybe I like my lil psycristal. And the magic variant with spell points is baaaaaad, so it's not a valid substitute

[NichG]

@NichG
So we can agree that fluff needs changing for most things right? Because if you say that something doesnt clash but name a specific setting, then its not a good point. Because we already know a setting where psionics doesnt clash, yet we are seeing more hate on it that on shadowcasting or warlocks.


You mean Dark Sun? I don't get what you're saying here at all.

There are lots of reasons to dislike a thing. I'm not claiming to have the answer that explains the entirety of the dislike for psionics or anything like that, but I am trying to show why the answers given by people in this thread to those who are complaining about the fluff part aren't sufficient to resolve their concerns. When I read this thread, I saw a lot of people being dismissive of people with fluff concerns because - clearly - they didn't actually understand the underlying cause of that disconnect. People were more concerned with bashing those who didn't like the fluff rather than actually understanding why they didn't like it. So I'm trying to expose the deeper issue, so that the people who are being so dismissive might actually understand why (for some people at least) there might be a deeper problem.

People doing a half-assed job on fluff is a fairly common phenomenon, and it leads to a sort of resentment of the things they screwed up in the same way that DMs doing railroad plot or putting Mary Sue NPCs in their games causes players to be sensitive to those issues. The difference is that everyone seems to think 'my fluff is so much better than the default!' because people don't actually call them on it or analyze it critically.



Also, as my buddy Rubik is trying to put it: why not just change the fluff in one sentence, by saying "its magic".
I really really dont think players will sit down at a campfire and go "hey here's how I cast my spells". In character, if you have 1 guy who can use fabricate to make an item is exactly the same as a guy who uses psionic fabricate. Sure, mechanically they might be different, but in character ainto no one needs to know. You can just say that psionics is a magic discipline with an "exotic spell list". Boom! You just explained why they have some new "spells".


I would argue that in character, they do in fact need to know. The way that they are accessing power is mechanically very different. If the fluff is the same but the mechanics are different, then you have the issue of bad mechanics/fluff integration, which is a separate but also significant problem.

Ideally, each mechanic has a fluff reason for existing and each bit of fluff is supported by a mechanical backbone. Otherwise you get the situation where the fluff is just a paint job and is basically irrelevant to the 'real' game underneath, or the mechanics are getting in the way of being able to perform large-scale reasoning about the world as a whole.



But really, people dont like psionics because it's so hard to say that psions alter the worldby using "power from within"? Like warlocks (if I remember my fluff)
Cmon, not wanting to fix the fluff is just lazy. I can think of a dozen ways to explain psionics from being a different type of magic, to power from within, to saying that its a different way of asking the universe to bent the rules for you.

And again, this 'its trivial to fix by dropping a flippant explanation' thing comes out. Just repeating this over and over does not actually make it any better. This answer doesn't address setting and history integration, deeper explanation, etc.


Why does not having the same arbitrary sticking point as you suddenly turn into "not caring about fluff"?

When people discard the opinions of others with a flippant response, thats a strong signal that they 'don't care' about the same things that that other person does. Its behavior designed to make the complaint go away, not actually resolve it, and that usually comes from a lack of common ground.

'Just rename the powers you don't like' is sort of the same as telling someone to 'just suck it up'.


There are differences when playing as a player. The mechanical portion changes, of course, which is very important to the game from a player's perspective. People in this thread are arguing against the fluff, and there doesn't have to be any difference, fluff-wise, between a sorcerer and a psion, except psions gain their power through force of will, meditation, and self-reflection, whereas sorcerers gain theirs through force of personality (and throwing poo at enemies, which is horribly stupid, I think). But psionics is no different than spellcasting in the game world at large when it comes to the grand scheme of things.

Mechanics/fluff integration requires that distinction between mechanics = distinction between the fluff.



The only difference between a fighter and a warblade is mechanical. They have the same basic fluff. That doesn't mean that nobody should ever play a warblade because the fighter already exists, since the warblade actually makes sense from a fluff-perspective, and fighter doesn't. The same applies between psion and sorcerer. Fluff-wise, they're very similar (crystals and all), but the psion actually makes sense, while there are a lot of incongruencies to the sorcerer (see the aforementioned "nuke to light a candle"). That, and, again, the mechanics are very important to the player, which is why someone would actually play one.


To implement Warblades well, they should have different fluff than fighters. Games in which they are the same are doing a half-assed job of it.

The background of Warblades is that they practice a number of specific schools of martial arts, each with distinctive abilities. In-world, a character can see a Warblade using e.g. White Raven and recognize those abilities as White Raven abilities. They might be able to conclude that this means that the Warblade trained at a certain school or a branch of that school where White Raven was invented. There may be other NPCs who are also White Raven practitioners who could be known about, and perhaps the set of schools that Warblades can take maneuvers from all have a sort of reciprocal agreement to teach eachothers' disciples. But then when you see someone with Shadow Hand abilities, you know that they're not a Warblade and trained at different schools (or they were a special case - e.g. they took a feat to get a bit of ToB training from a wandering master or whatever)

A Fighter then would be someone who didn't train in those particular schools, but might have been a career soldier instead. The fact that the Fighter is mechanically very generic makes it hard to actually do good fluff for Fighters - its almost the absence of a class rather than anything else. Banning the 'fighter' class from the campaign and requiring people to take Warblade instead would probably improve a campaign both on the mechanical and fluff levels. Or redoing the fighter to have a bunch of 'front line soldier/guardsman' class abilities that were very thematic of a more aggregate combat experience than a solo-warrior like a Warblade would have (things like formation fighting stuff and mass melee stuff come to mind for this).



How? You have a sorcerer and a psion in the same party. They choose different "spells" and fill different roles. They're not matter and antimatter, suddenly imploding upon meeting each other, any more than a cleric and a wizard or a dread necromancer and a beguiler do.


This ground has already been tread. Divine magic and arcane magic are well-separated. Beguilers and dread necromancers require setting integration work - in their case its actually made easier by the fact that they're so incredibly specialized and have a lot of spell list overlap with other casters that you can easily fit them in as belonging to the same power source as either divine casters or arcane casters, but with some sort of very narrow training.

Psions are a completely new kind of wizard. Its sort of like saying 'oh, yeah, there's this energy source called Naquadah which is everywhere and easy enough to tap that a tribe of aboriginals have made a naquadah generator to drive off intruders, but our modern world with all of its energy needs and knowledge of power generation simply hasn't bothered to figure it out or make use of it'. The existence of an additional high tier power source is, setting-wise, a fact that should be extremely relevant. It should be a huge freaking deal. Having just the bare minimum needed to explain why there's a PC with these powers in the party means that there's a huge inconsistency in the setting.



This really doesn't make any sense, considering that "psionics = magic," and adding a psion to the world is no more disruptive than adding an artificer, beguiler, or a spellthief, tiers notwithstanding.


The tiers determine how much of an impact the characters with those abilities are going to have on the world. Which in turn determines how strange it is when there's no mention of psions ruling nations, nations with specific policies about psionics, psionic guilds, famous psions, wars fought with and over psionics, etc.

No one will miss the Truenamer, since mechanically a Truenamer can't really do much (till they hit Lv20). If they're almost unknown in the world that's consistent with their mechanical abilities.

But imagine a setting where arcane magic existed and in principle you could buy scrolls of any level spell in cities of reasonable sizes, magic items, etc. But no one knew what a wizard was and no wizard had ever done anything important in the history of the setting, and people generally didn't know that magic existed. It'd be incredibly unstable - either this is a setting where magic has just emerged, or its a setting that is going to be turned into the Tippyverse by the one PC that becomes a wizard and doesn't have this apparent allergy to doing anything significant that all the rest of the wizards in the world seem to have. Its a poorly thought out setting.

Now, put some reason why the wizards are staying hidden - there's an oppressive church that wipes out arcane casters as soon as they show any signs of talent (T1 vs T1 - fight!), or literally there are only seven wizards on the planet at any given time due to cosmic constraints, or there's a World of Darkness Mage mechanism that basically screws up the karma of anyone seen using magic openly, then it starts to make more sense - because you've taken the time to actually integrate things into the setting at a deeper level and have actually thought about the subsystem as part of the world and not just some module that a PC is bringing in but which caught you completely off-guard.



The mechanical difference in the world at large is nigh identical, so any DM who is fine with a sorcerer should be okay with a psion. However, the mechanical differences are extremely important to the player, since that affects how he interacts with the game world, but not how it interacts with him (aside from his buffs and how they affect incoming effects, anyway). Psionics has effects that magic doesn't have, but they're basically somewhat exotic spells. There's also the fact that spell slots are an absolute pain in the arse to keep track of, and augmentation runs much more smoothly. Power points are more organic, and they have a much different feel for a player, and encourage a somewhat different playstyle. However, Bob the Balor, Sara the Succubus, and Terry the Tarrasque really don't care whether Maxi the Magician is using slots or points, since "Argh, that hurt!" is all they really care about.

What this is saying is 'this provides enough of an advantage to me to make some effort over'. Which means that, if you really believe that, you should make the effort and integrate it right - build the setting from the ground up to give psionics equal footing as arcane magic, have as many psionics-driven events in history as arcane, etc. If psionics isn't bringing enough to the table to make that worthwhile, then you could ditch arcane magic entirely and have all arcane guys be psions, or you could just not bother with psionics. They're all valid ways to go.

[Larkas]

Hmmm...

From a DM's perspective, psionics could be a little more micromanagement-intensive. You don't simply strike out a spell you've used, you have to deduct PP every time you cast/manifest something. That could be off putting.

From a player's perspective, the whole augmenting thing could also introduce/worsen player paralysis. A player could play with the book open on each power to read upon augmenting each turn, which could be even worse than reading each spell each turn.

Please note that I'm playing the devil's advocate here, I don't actually think either of those points would be problematic, I just didn't see anyone bringing them up yet.

Anyways, don't use UA's spell point variant. Use this one (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?194002-3-5-A-Translation-of-Vancian-Spellcasting-to-Psionic-Mechanics). It was already linked up thread, and it revamps the whole casting system from the ground up by taking SP in consideration.

Lastly, a minor aside, as someone was discussing this up thread: there are no wu jen in Rokugan.

[Renen]

So you heavily restrict your players by fluff?
So binders are a no, warlocks are a no, rainbow servant is a no, probably whole ToB is a no, just because you want there to be an institution for every kind of thing that the llayers are doing? (Warlock college, rainbow servant temple etc)

[Shinken]

So you heavily restrict your players by fluff?
So binders are a no, warlocks are a no, rainbow servant is a no, probably whole ToB is a no, just because you want there to be an institution for every kind of thing that the llayers are doing? (Warlock college, rainbow servant temple etc)

I don't do that in my games, but it's not a bad thing, really. Keeping a consistent setting is a noble goal.

[NichG]

So you heavily restrict your players by fluff?
So binders are a no, warlocks are a no, rainbow servant is a no, probably whole ToB is a no, just because you want there to be an institution for every kind of thing that the llayers are doing? (Warlock college, rainbow servant temple etc)

Generally my process is the following. When the previous campaign ends, I ask the players which are going to return and generally what sort of game they're interested in. I may pitch an idea or two of my own. That way I get a feel for whether or not there are particular things that really do belong in the game or things that people don't care about. If no one is interested in psionics, then I'll include it only if I have some particular idea that can make it work well. I will generally include ToB whether or not anyone asks for it because its mechanically very critical to 3.5ed running smoothly for melee archetypes.

Then I build the setting for the next campaign, taking the various elements that have been included and working them into the world. Other things may make it in if I have a particular 'use' for them at this stage - this generally means that Binders will make it in, because they're a very useful way to tie in the idea of forces that are powerful but can only touch the universe weakly, which is good for being able to have multiple scales in a plotline. I will also at this point often add a few new subsystems from homebrew that aren't in the basic sourcebooks, either based on player request or because I have some use for them in the world, and then will tie them to things.

Once that's done, I make a document that's sort of a PHB revised explaining what is and isn't in the world, how each thing is integrated into the world, etc, to varying degrees. This may be something simple like 'the headquarters for arcane research is in Mahora' or 'the 9 schools of the Tome of Battle originated in the area around Samidare' or 'the city of Fissure has a lot of necromancers because of the ancient ruins deep below, in order to control the undead population'. These are things that any character can know - no checks involved - and are the common lore of the setting. I'll often use these bits and pieces as non-essential hints later on; sometimes players notice, sometimes they don't. Often these bits and pieces become inspirations for the players to do particular things in sandbox mode - 'I want to go study in Mahora' or 'I want to explore the ruins at Fissure' or 'I want to make a new Tome of Battle school and have it rise to prominence in Samidare'.

This entire process takes anywhere from a few weeks to two months, and players are encouraged to help. After that, I have the material for a 2 year campaign. The more of these I run, the quicker it gets, because there are certain 'canonical' fluffs for things at my table - my players know that e.g. I often like having things like vestiges be part of the plot so they can expect that Binders will be a thing, so I don't have to go through as much work to integrate them since it just happens automatically.

If on the other hand I'm running in an existing setting, the prep-time is shorter but actually adapting to the classes the players want to play becomes much more difficult since you have to go against not only the absence of things from the setting but also people's pre-knowledge of the setting. When I started DMing I was running existing settings far more often and this problem kept coming up - occasionally I'd ban things based on fluff, or adapt things, or ask players to play something else, but it was always somewhat unsatisfying. That's part of the reason I primarily run custom settings now, because it means I really can start from a blank slate and fill it in with the things that the players themselves want to be important, and have those things actually be significant to the world and the plot rather than just throw-ins.

[Moonshine Fox]

I'll admit some of this is reminiscent of the hassle that was 2e dark sun and having to incorporate it into the world. Not the mechanics (though yes they were a hassle) but I didn't care for having an extra element in the world function to track.


Gotta stop you right there. Dark Sun was designed for psionics. Magic was a much feared and hated thing (and was illegal in most city-states) in that world since it quite literally, turned the sun dark and the world into a desert wasteland (and possibly is responsible for The Grey). EVERYONE had psionics in Dark Sun, and I mean EVERYONE! The monsters had psionic based powers, not magic. Casting magic in that game was more troublesome as you had to figure out how much of the landscape around you was destroyed (if you were a defiler) or how many more spells you could cast in the area before pulling a magical 'salt the earth' (if you were a preserver). You didn't have to do any incorporating into that world, it was done for you with NPCs, items, skills, guilds, temples, schools, professions and more all devoted to the study of the various disciplines.

Though the mechanics could be a hassle at times, and really annoying when you failed the role for your big power, leaving you without enough PSP to try again and dooming the party to a nasty death by Silt Horror.

[Prime32]

To implement Warblades well, they should have different fluff than fighters. Games in which they are the same are doing a half-assed job of it.

The background of Warblades is that they practice a number of specific schools of martial arts, each with distinctive abilities. In-world, a character can see a Warblade using e.g. White Raven and recognize those abilities as White Raven abilities. They might be able to conclude that this means that the Warblade trained at a certain school or a branch of that school where White Raven was invented. There may be other NPCs who are also White Raven practitioners who could be known about, and perhaps the set of schools that Warblades can take maneuvers from all have a sort of reciprocal agreement to teach eachothers' disciples. But then when you see someone with Shadow Hand abilities, you know that they're not a Warblade and trained at different schools (or they were a special case - e.g. they took a feat to get a bit of ToB training from a wandering master or whatever)Not quite. Disciplines exist everywhere, and while certain schools or regions might have a particular focus on one or the other, the boundaries between them are fluid. A guy who knows mainly Iron Heart and Stone Dragon maneuvers didn't necessarily study at the same place as an Iron Heart/Diamond Mind practitioner - both schools just developed similar techniques through convergent evolution (IIRC some of the strongest strikes in taekwondo and kickboxing are near-identical, simply because there's only so many ways to kick good). The Temple of Nine Swords didn't create the martial disciplines, it was just the first large-scale attempt to categorise them so that they were easier to refine.


A Fighter then would be someone who didn't train in those particular schools, but might have been a career soldier instead. The fact that the Fighter is mechanically very generic makes it hard to actually do good fluff for Fighters - its almost the absence of a class rather than anything else. Banning the 'fighter' class from the campaign and requiring people to take Warblade instead would probably improve a campaign both on the mechanical and fluff levels. Or redoing the fighter to have a bunch of 'front line soldier/guardsman' class abilities that were very thematic of a more aggregate combat experience than a solo-warrior like a Warblade would have (things like formation fighting stuff and mass melee stuff come to mind for this).There's also "a fighter is a guy with strong fundamentals".


Psions are a completely new kind of wizard. Its sort of like saying 'oh, yeah, there's this energy source called Naquadah which is everywhere and easy enough to tap that a tribe of aboriginals have made a naquadah generator to drive off intruders, but our modern world with all of its energy needs and knowledge of power generation simply hasn't bothered to figure it out or make use of it'. The existence of an additional high tier power source is, setting-wise, a fact that should be extremely relevant. It should be a huge freaking deal. Having just the bare minimum needed to explain why there's a PC with these powers in the party means that there's a huge inconsistency in the setting.

The tiers determine how much of an impact the characters with those abilities are going to have on the world. Which in turn determines how strange it is when there's no mention of psions ruling nations, nations with specific policies about psionics, psionic guilds, famous psions, wars fought with and over psionics, etc.But they get their powers from the same source as monks, who are rare and reclusive by nature. :smallconfused:

And, well, there is mention of psionics in most settings by default. Aboleths (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/aboleth.htm), coautls (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/couatl.htm), mind flayers and a few other creatures all have psionic abilities, it's just their Core stats reference spells for their effects so that you can use them without needing to own the XPH. (the XPH has replacement statblocks for them which reference psionic powers instead, and also retcons duergar as psionic). Plus, all of these creatures are established in fluff as experimenting on/blessing people in order to grant them powers similar to their own.

[Moonshine Fox]

Psions are a completely new kind of wizard. Its sort of like saying 'oh, yeah, there's this energy source called Naquadah which is everywhere and easy enough to tap that a tribe of aboriginals have made a naquadah generator to drive off intruders, but our modern world with all of its energy needs and knowledge of power generation simply hasn't bothered to figure it out or make use of it'. The existence of an additional high tier power source is, setting-wise, a fact that should be extremely relevant. It should be a huge freaking deal. Having just the bare minimum needed to explain why there's a PC with these powers in the party means that there's a huge inconsistency in the setting.

The bare minimum is that the PC knows what his powers are and how to use them, but doesn't know where the come from. Psionics can be a very rare thing in-game depending on your setting, so rare that most don't know about them or can use them. It can be that in that "advanced world" when someone starts to devolop psionic powers, they are mistaken for magic and they are sent to the right school to train and become wizards instead, while the 'aboriginal tribe' just uses them as is. It really depends on how previlent you want them in setting.

(PS, Naquadah wasn't figured out by humans because, while it was an element present in the galaxy at large, it didn't exist everywhere. Earth being one of the places where it didn't occur naturally)

[Prime32]

It can be that in that "advanced world" when someone starts to devolop psionic powers, they are mistaken for magic and they are sent to the right school to train and become wizards instead, while the 'aboriginal tribe' just uses them as is.This is an idea I'm fond of (http://brilliantgameologists.com/boards/index.php?topic=11438). Look at, say, Harry Potter. Wizards who haven't yet studied magic are able to do all kinds of things that would normally be impossible, but they can't do so reliably. Beings like goblins and house elves have similar powers, but more developed since they're not allowed access to wands.

[Moonshine Fox]

Something I've never quite understood in 3.X. Why is there so much bias against psionics? I must just be missing something, because I hear from some people that it's actually quite balanced and makes more sense than Vancian casting, while from others I hear that it's the worst thing that ever happened to third edition and it's completely awful and nobody should ever use it.

Would someone be able to explain this to me? Maybe I'm just clueless.

There has been a lot of things said and a lot of people falling into arguing, but I'll give my thoughts. Personally, I think the bias boils down to two things, precedent and history.

Precedent is shorter so I'll go with that first. Basically, every Sci-Fi game on the planet that wants to have magical supernatural type powers but doesn't want to make it seem like they're crossing the streams (cause oh no we might get some fantasy in our high tech), called their magic psionics and powers of the mind and such. A lot of people can't seem to set that aside and see it as some horrible travesty that something "sci-fi" could have a place in a "fantasy" game. (I encourage people to look to Shadowrun which mixes the two right).

As for history, this might get a bit long so please bare with me.

Psionics was put into D&D by TSR back in the 1st edition as a little percent chance roll the DM could do to see if a player had these "strange powers of the mind". This was fleshed out more in the AD&D 2nd edition book Complete Psionics Handbook, and they where game changing. Before that, from a mechanical (non-roleplay) standpoint, all the classes kinda ended up the same. A fighter of any given level was the same as every other fighter of the same level. Only equipment made them different from their fellows. Same with Paladins, rangers, and so on. Spellcasters had it a little better in that a different spell selection could give you a bit of different play-style, but back then there wasn't huge tomes filled with hundreds of spells to choose from, spell lists where much smaller.

Psionics however came in and gave a player an unprecedented ability to play the same class in a staggering number of different ways. Want to play an information gatherer, grab powers from Clairsentient and Telepathic disciplines. Want to be a front line guy, Psycometabolism and Psycokinetic. Be an active mobile player, Psycoportation. You could play it all differently and you gained powers that wizards couldn't touch for a long time such as telekinesis. Powers weren't gained based purely on level, but also on other powers you had, giving you a feel of building up. Want to learn to disintegrate something? First you have to learn how to soften it and agitate it's molecules. It felt far more like a fluid skill based class in a game that only had ridged, static level builds before this. They where also the first caster class designed for medium to short range combat, making up for a lack of heavy armor, weapon training, or high THAC0 with powers designed to augment themselves via knowledge, mobility, and self buffs. Psionics also had the first relatively easy way of creating magical items! Intelligent ones at that. Wizards had to undertake epic quests and spend permanent Con points to create even simple items (seriously, the book that went into item creation used in-game fluff text in parts of a wizard creating a wand of fire, and at the end the wizard thought that next time she'll just raid a red dragons lair as that would be easier). This gave psionicists a level of power that no other class had, and scared a lot of DM's since they didn't realize just how hard it was to use the psionic power for item creation.

Like with many such open things though, it left itself open to being abused. Power gamers and optimizers flocked to it and beat it into submission like a red-headed stepchild. Many outright bent or broke the rules to get even more power and DM's didn't know enough about the system their players where bringing in to stop them (personally I found rocks falling always settled their hash). It gained such a reputation that most DM's just wouldn't let it be touched. They just heard rumors of "3rd level disintegrate" and never bothered to listen to anything beyond that. Or would let it into play, but so heavily restrict things or punish players for using their powers as to make it pointless and not fun to play a psionicist. It left many of us who didn't go for game breaking and wanted to teach our DM's about it a bit on the bitter side.

When Wizards announced they where bringing back psionics, we where excited! The thing we love so much coming back in a more balanced form? Excellent!! (rock guitar riff!) Many flocked to it and wanted to play them, especially when they became fully viable with the 3.5 update. Sadly you had a rather large number of DM's who still had this knee-jerk 'it's broken!' reaction to the word psionics, and with players exploiting their DM's lack of knowledge on how they work re-enforcing that train of thought, you have a lot of people nowadays who simply hate the system out of habit or because of bad experiences they may have had in the past with bad players or DM's. You also have that, outside of the old 2nd ed Dark Sun (I know nothing about 4th so won't include that as part of my opinion) and a little bit of Eberon and Forgotten Realms, psionics have never had a strong presence in D&D settings, which leads DM's who don't like the 'PCs are outside the norm' mentality to just dismiss them because they aren't really mentioned in most books and don't really have formal groups/guilds/schools and whatnot outside of what they themselves have to create, even though settings leave a lot open for just such a reason. The default campaign setting for Wizards D&D games has been Greyhawk, which has little to no psionic presence. A chuck of that can be blamed on Wizards, as they treated psionics like the red-headed step-child and gave the system no support outside of the Complete Psionic book, and no attempts at integration into setting books that they put out after the Psionics Handbook.

Basically it boils down to people being burned in the past and not wanted to give it another try, people not understanding how the psionic manifesting works (and seeming to often don't want to learn), and people who have to have it have a large presence in their setting and don't (or are incapable) want to do the work (even though most reasonable players will work with DM to create awesome things). Oh, there's also people who thing it's too "sci-fi", but I'll admit to having nothing but disdain for that one after as many years and games as I've played.

[Brookshw]

Gotta stop you right there. Dark Sun was designed for psionics. Fair enough, I suppose it was the constant flipping between systems that was annoying. Still though, having to integrate it into a world to an equivalent extent as arcane/divine magic is quite the undertaking (though divine did have a much reduced presence in DS). Dark Sun, while an over extension of that integration perhaps, is certainly an example of how much things can change and how much work would need to be done.
Magic was a much feared and hated thing (and was illegal in most city-states) in that world since it quite literally, turned the sun dark and the world into a desert wasteland (and possibly is responsible for The Grey). snip Casting magic in that game was more troublesome as you had to figure out how much of the landscape around you was destroyed (if you were a defiler) or how many more spells you could cast in the area before pulling a magical 'salt the earth' (if you were a preserver). Ya know, I never did look at the 3e DS material, did they simplify that at all?

[NichG]

Not quite. Disciplines exist everywhere, and while certain schools or regions might have a particular focus on one or the other, the boundaries between them are fluid. A guy who knows mainly Iron Heart and Stone Dragon maneuvers didn't necessarily study at the same place as an Iron Heart/Diamond Mind practitioner - both schools just developed similar techniques through convergent evolution (IIRC some of the strongest strikes in taekwondo and kickboxing are near-identical, simply because there's only so many ways to kick good). The Temple of Nine Swords didn't create the martial disciplines, it was just the first large-scale attempt to categorise them so that they were easier to refine.

There's also "a fighter is a guy with strong fundamentals".


You could do this, but I would say that it isn't as good as delving into it more deeply and actually having each thing have a real history and cause/relationship with the world. If you cite convergent evolution and just stop right there, then what you've done is taken things that are mechanically meaningful but declared that they have no fluff meaning - you're making the game world a more impoverished place. The right way to go about this (and much more difficult) would then be to go a step further and say 'okay, what is the underlying cause for this convergent evolution - what is the reason why there are particular 'moves' that seem to be baked into the universe/humanoid condition/etc?'. This could lead to various other elaborations, such as, say, Thri-Kreen being unable to learn maneuvers from the standard schools because their physiology is simply different (but having things of their own) - or to some underlying model of where the 'power' behind the maneuvers comes from that explains why there are only specific ones, or whatever.

For something like martial maneuvers, I'd tend to go with the historical explanation rather than the cosmic one - it fits the theme better.

You can run a game where magic is just this thing that happens, no explanation. You can also run a game where magic is the way it is because of certain historical events in the early era of the cosmology, and those things tie together lots of unexplained or seemingly random facts about the craziness that is arcane magic in D&D. The second, in my book, is simply a much better campaign/setting than the former.



And, well, there is mention of psionics in most settings by default. Aboleths (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/aboleth.htm), coautls (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/couatl.htm), mind flayers and a few other creatures all have psionic abilities, it's just their Core stats reference spells for their effects so that you can use them without needing to own the XPH. (the XPH has replacement statblocks for them which reference psionic powers instead, and also retcons duergar as psionic). Plus, all of these creatures are established in fluff as experimenting on/blessing people in order to grant them powers similar to their own.

This is the first step on the road to integrating things in a cohesive manner, but it is not yet complete. Here's an example of how I might follow from here:

You have a few facts you can try to tie together. The logical endpoint of this might be that psionics comes from the Far Realms, and that gives you a way to logically tie it into various things in the campaign. It is uncommon because Far Realms portals are uncommon, but in areas where illithids have been active there's a tendency for psionics to emerge in the background population. Now you can connect this to historical events - a city which rose to prominence due to strange magical powers their populace developed, until one day that city simply stood empty - every one of its people mysteriously missing. Maybe there's a secret order of people devoted to fighting against the emergence of psionics because its use weakens the barrier to the Far Realms. A couple psionic organizations who have Lovecraftian things going on within their ranks, and who have very asymmetric relationships with the various governments in the world - some embrace them for what they can achieve, others have standing orders for their execution that they refuse to explain.

Anyone with a sufficiently advanced education (e.g. non-peasants) might well be interested in psionics having heard about the few places in history where they cropped up, and would be able to list off the various onset points. Peasants would recognize the names of the places which imploded, but wouldn't know why. Governments in the know might want to contact psions in order to track their movements and see if another emergence event is about to occur, or use psions as a typhoid Mary to try to take out an enemy, or take a risk with them due to the power they represent.

In general, psionics would require exposure to either strong psionic use, Far Realms-y ideas or objects, or direct experimentation. Those who use it would have a tendency to react differently to things of strange geometry or insane aspect. Maybe when a psionic character hears a madman speak, it makes perfect sense to them but not to the fighter standing next to him. In a campaign like this, I'd probably add a lot of opportunities to pick up Wild Talent as a bonus reward for interacting with such things. There would also be a fair number of plotlines in the actual campaign as played revolving around the effects of psionics and their source.

That's the kind of thing I'm getting at. And of course, you don't have to do it that way in particular - you could do something more like Dark Sun's integration or something completely different. But doing 'something' about it is necessary to make it really cohesive.


The bare minimum is that the PC knows what his powers are and how to use them, but doesn't know where the come from. Psionics can be a very rare thing in-game depending on your setting, so rare that most don't know about them or can use them. It can be that in that "advanced world" when someone starts to devolop psionic powers, they are mistaken for magic and they are sent to the right school to train and become wizards instead, while the 'aboriginal tribe' just uses them as is. It really depends on how previlent you want them in setting.


Super-rare but super-powerful doesn't really make all that much sense, unless there's actually an environmental cause (e.g. in the above example, a nearby group of Illithids experimenting on them). Otherwise those psionic powers are going to be discovered and tapped relatively quickly by PCs if no one else. Either way, that aboriginal tribe should not just be a random group of 100 people in the jungle, but should be a major force in the world.

Its sort of like the economy-breaking stuff such as Wall of Iron and Wall of Salt in arcane magic. If you want a world that makes sense, you need to resolve it - either by altering the spells, altering the economic value of iron and salt, making all wizard guilds fantastically rich and controlling the economy at their whim, or having some other strong explanation to resolve the anomaly (or by having a gentleman's agreement that NPCs don't do it and PCs won't either, which is equivalent to altering the spells). Otherwise you have a highly unstable world, where the first PC who realizes this thing will go and crash the economy.

(Having a world that can change is important, but if that change is too easy or relies on the stupidity of NPCs then it cheapens it when the PCs actually do change the world)



(PS, Naquadah wasn't figured out by humans because, while it was an element present in the galaxy at large, it didn't exist everywhere. Earth being one of the places where it didn't occur naturally)

I basically needed a random example of an energy containing thing that people'd recognize, but Naquadah is actually very well integrated in Star Gate. If there was just one planet with Naquadah and you never heard about it again, that would be an example of integrating it poorly.

[Moonshine Fox]

Fair enough, I suppose it was the constant flipping between systems that was annoying. Still though, having to integrate it into a world to an equivalent extent as arcane/divine magic is quite the undertaking (though divine did have a much reduced presence in DS). Dark Sun, while an over extension of that integration perhaps, is certainly an example of how much things can change and how much work would need to be done. Ya know, I never did look at the 3e DS material, did they simplify that at all?

3rd ed Didn't have a Dark Sun setting. Wizards ignored it till 4th (which I haven't looked at) like they did with all of the old TSR settings outside of Forgotten Realms. Psionics though has as much or as little undertaking in integrating them as you want it to have.

It was a major part of Dark Sun with arcane magic being maligned and divine magic being elemental based rather then god based, but in other settings it had a much smaller presence. Still there, but rare, which few practitioners and little to no schools/guilds, and not known about or understood by most outside of scholars or learned adventures. Dark Sun was supposed to be a flip from the standard in other settings where magic was dominate and psionics were rare.

TSR did a good job of integrating it into the background of most of their settings, just because Wizards dumped on it doesn't mean it didn't/doesn't exist. If you have to make it have a large presence in your game but don't want to do the work that's fine, but that doesn't mean the system is bad or worthy of hate, it just means you don't want to deal with it. Personally I'd put the player who wants to play a psionicist do all the legwork, then it's part of the world and you don't have to deal with it much!

[geekintheground]

if psionics=magic, there isnt a whole lot more integration to do... some of the famous arcane magic users in the past have just had "psion" on their sheet. ESPECIALLY the ones famous for enchantments. psionics has influenced the history of your world and been in plain sight the whole time, people just lumped it together with arcane magic. if you WANTED to be more specific, it would just be altering a few things, not overhauling the whole world... or at least, thats how I see it. :smalleek:

[Moonshine Fox]

Super-rare but super-powerful doesn't really make all that much sense, unless there's actually an environmental cause (e.g. in the above example, a nearby group of Illithids experimenting on them). Otherwise those psionic powers are going to be discovered and tapped relatively quickly by PCs if no one else. Either way, that aboriginal tribe should not just be a random group of 100 people in the jungle, but should be a major force in the world.

Its sort of like the economy-breaking stuff such as Wall of Iron and Wall of Salt in arcane magic. If you want a world that makes sense, you need to resolve it - either by altering the spells, altering the economic value of iron and salt, making all wizard guilds fantastically rich and controlling the economy at their whim, or having some other strong explanation to resolve the anomaly (or by having a gentleman's agreement that NPCs don't do it and PCs won't either, which is equivalent to altering the spells). Otherwise you have a highly unstable world, where the first PC who realizes this thing will go and crash the economy.

(Having a world that can change is important, but if that change is too easy or relies on the stupidity of NPCs then it cheapens it when the PCs actually do change the world)


Um, you forget that psionics (outside of Darksun) is VERY rare. Around 1 in 1000 (or 1 in 100 but the old d100 die roll) have it, and many of them probably don't ever realize what they have and develop it beyond a basic stage. Many of those who develop these powers, will probably end up adventurers. PCs are supposed to be cut from a different cloth then NPCs. That's why a few years of adventuring can give a wizard power that the stay at home wizard takes decades if not centuries to gain. Also, psionics has never been more powerful AS A WHOLE then magic. Hell, in the current system arcane spellcasters are more powerful due simply to having a tomes of varied and potent spells to pick from. In 2nd ed, a psionicist could be pretty potent in his field, hopping planes and locations, shapechanging, moving objects with a skill no wizard could match. Hell, with enough work they could even selectively negate aspects of reality in regards to themselves! But they couldn't touch wizards when it came to blasting nor the mass utility and more-then-myself defensive options. Plus the ability of a wizard to change spells from day to day to gain useful spells that they rarely used but suddenly needed.

There is always ways to break a game world if you want, it's just a fact of gaming. When your PCs abuse a system, you warn them not to, then punish them if they keep doing it (ie, the wall thing, a dwarven clan doesn't like you cutting into their iron sales, so they send people to kill you).

I think you may be injecting a bit to much reality into a rule crafted fantasy world. Crafting a world can be a lot of fun, detailing out the entire history of a craft is a bit much. Leave some room for players to come up with their own cool ideas as well.

[Renen]

Theres no dark sun in 3rd ed? And all this time I thought that when my pdf stated:
Requires the use of the Dungeons & Dragons, Third Edition Core Books published by Wizards of the Coast, Inc. This product utilizes updated material from the v.3.5 revision.

I thought it meant it was 3.0 or 3.5 material *goes to cry in a corner*

[NichG]

Um, you forget that psionics (outside of Darksun) is VERY rare. Around 1 in 1000 (or 1 in 100 but the old d100 die roll) have it, and many of them probably don't ever realize what they have and develop it beyond a basic stage. Many of those who develop these powers, will probably end up adventurers. PCs are supposed to be cut from a different cloth then NPCs. That's why a few years of adventuring can give a wizard power that the stay at home wizard takes decades if not centuries to gain.

There are other threads about this, but actually NPC wizards also can gain power. The assumption 'the PCs are special snowflakes' is one you can use behind a campaign, but its not one you have to use. And if you do use it, you have to explain it or its just another thing that seems random and arbitrary.

A rate of 1/1000 is actually not very rare for something as special as a varied supernatural power-set. Take anything else where there are supernatural elements to the story - the few characters with supernatural powers have an impact on the world that's well over the impact of a thousand peasants. That's what makes them interesting, what makes them central to the story - they're a giant lever that a few people can use to impact the world.

That lever works as well for PCs as NPCs, unless there's a particular reason why only the PCs are getting it - at which point, that reason becomes plot. And because of the nature of a lever like that, many more people know about when it's used than the people who get to use it. So even if 1/10000 or 1/100000 become high-level psions, the actions of those high-level psions are still going to be noticed by the 100k others.

Otherwise it just feels like fantasy kitchen sink - stuff is there, but its non-interactive and doesn't actually cohere with the other things in the setting. And what that means is that you can't actually use setting logic and get right answers, which means that there's no grand strategic level or mystery level to the campaign. Which also means that if the players are going to figure things out, they have to be spoonfed the answers so that also increases the degree of railroading. Now, that's a bit of an escalation from just doing a bit of a bad job with psionics, but if you have things that don't make sense in the campaign then players will not expect things to make sense in general. Do it too much and you train your players to not actually think in terms of in-world things rather than just metagame things.


Also, psionics has never been more powerful AS A WHOLE then magic. Hell, in the current system arcane spellcasters are more powerful due simply to having a tomes of varied and potent spells to pick from. In 2nd ed, a psionicist could be pretty potent in his field, hopping planes and locations, shapechanging, moving objects with a skill no wizard could match. Hell, with enough work they could even selectively negate aspects of reality in regards to themselves! But they couldn't touch wizards when it came to blasting nor the mass utility and more-then-myself defensive options. Plus the ability of a wizard to change spells from day to day to gain useful spells that they rarely used but suddenly needed.


Psions are Tier 2, which means they may not be omnipotent but they have a fair set of utterly powerful abilities, certainly enough to transform a campaign setting if they focus in the right directions. Slap one down in, say, a d20 Modern setting and they can rule the world if they want to.



There is always ways to break a game world if you want, it's just a fact of gaming. When your PCs abuse a system, you warn them not to, then punish them if they keep doing it (ie, the wall thing, a dwarven clan doesn't like you cutting into their iron sales, so they send people to kill you).


Not at all the point, and also bad DMing. Punishing an out of character problem (power struggles with the DM) via in-game events is a mistake, as is rewarding attention-seeking behavior by making the entire campaign about hunting down the misbehaving PC. A gentleman's agreement is the right option here as far as getting the behavior to stop when its a form of acting out, but if this is used too much then it can feel restrictive against player creativity.

I want to do as much as possible to make it so that a player can think fully about the tools available to them and use them to the best of their ability - anything they can come up with that could work should work, because that encourages creative play. There are things that are obviously acting out (Pun-Pun, etc), in which case the out of game resolution of the underlying problem is needed, but in other cases I don't want to cramp their imagination.

[Renen]

The point isnt that psions are weak (as you pointed out they ARE t2) but that arcane and divine casters outdo them by alot. Ice assassin and chain gating says hi.

[Larkas]

There is an official 3E update for Dark Sun in Dragon and Dungeon and an unofficial, but endorsed, one at Athas.org.

By the way, the first magic-users in Athas were psionicists. The fluff implies that these guys were experimenting with the arcane when they messed up and ended the Blue Age. You could go the other way around in a "regular" world to explain why psionics came to be and why it's so closely related to magic.

Since we're talking about official settings, does Greyhawk's Scarlet Brotherhood include psionicists? That would make A LOT of sense!

[NichG]

The point isnt that psions are weak (as you pointed out they ARE t2) but that arcane and divine casters outdo them by alot. Ice assassin and chain gating says hi.

Nuclear weapons beat chemical explosives, and missiles beat guns, but that doesn't mean that you can remove guns from the history of the modern world and not change anything.

[Renen]

Nuclear weapons beat chemical explosives, and missiles beat guns, but that doesn't mean that you can remove guns from the history of the modern world and not change anything.

Sorry. Can you rephrase?

[NichG]

Sorry. Can you rephrase?

How about this: just because wizards have godlike power doesn't mean that the demi-gods are irrelevant. A guy who has the ability to change his shape into anything, create demiplanes, go anywhere, create animate things to serve him, rebuild someone's mind from the ground up, permanently swap bodies, read minds, control people, etc can all do those things even if there's someone else who can do all that more or less plus also make ice copies of things and chain-gate Solars. Each of those things, on their own, could totally transform a setting.

[Renen]

My point is just that if we have wizards, psions are hardly a problem. Sure, they got tricks, but not nearly as bad as wizards. So if the wizards arent a problem, psions shouldnt be either.

And while fluff can be an issue, I doubt it is a very difficult thing to fix. Hell, 1/2 the PrCs have to have some society that trains you in order to get into it.

[Brookshw]

If you have to make it have a large presence in your game but don't want to do the work that's fine, but that doesn't mean the system is bad or worthy of hate, it just means you don't want to deal with it. Well yes, that was indeed my opinion on the matter. "World Building" was rather the issue.
Personally I'd put the player who wants to play a psionicist do all the legwork, then it's part of the world and you don't have to deal with it much! That's certainly one approach and I'm in favor of throwing some of the world building aspects to the players but I don't think something that, at least as I would implement it, would be so integrated is something I'd be able to disengage myself from. More on this in a moment.


if you WANTED to be more specific, it would just be altering a few things, not overhauling the whole world... or at least, thats how I see it. :smalleek: That without a doubt is something a bit dependent upon the campaign. I for one enjoy Planescape and use it as the basis for quite a bit of mine. As Todd Stewart was kind enough to answer a few questions and update his story hour recently I have 'Loths on my mind and will use them as an example. First, none have psioinics (at least that I can find in the MM1-3, FF, MoTP, Planar Handbook, and google seems to point me to a few homebrew). Not a big problem at first. As Loth's get higher ranked and gain expanded magic abilities you eventually get up to the Arcanoloths and Ultraloths. If one of the most powerful is based on arcane magic why wouldn't there be a psionic counter part? Which would have a higher rank in their social structure, the arcane or psion? Normally an Arcanoloth would move up the ranks to an Ultraloth, so would a psionic loth do the same or would we need an alternative competitor for the top spot? The entire upper echelons would need to be re-evaluated and potentially revamped for psionics to have an integrated part in the setting as I see it. That's just one race. What would it mean to the devils hierarchy? Are there now psionic pit fiend? The celestials? Do new types of inevitables need to be homebrewed? What about the planes? Do psionics have a special place in limbo where reality can already be warped but with a thought? What about the astral?

I don't have answers to these questions but would want them answered in order to feel like there is a cohesive setting. That however is a substantial amount of work. I find it unsatisfactory to simply say "well it's magic" but not having any distinction and leave it at that, especially when arcane and divine magic already have deeply integrated elements in the world.

And of course now I'm thinking of a secret sept of psionics loths and alternative Ultraloths perhaps created by one of the Baernaloth's hidden behind the scenes working on completing their third tower to augment psionics intending to challenge the general for leadership of the 'loths? That in itself could be an interesting campaign. The scope and entirety of this is not really something that I could just hand off to a player though.

[Moonshine Fox]

Well yes, that was indeed my opinion on the matter. "World Building" was rather the issue. That's certainly one approach and I'm in favor of throwing some of the world building aspects to the players but I don't think something that, at least as I would implement it, would be so integrated is something I'd be able to disengage myself from. More on this in a moment.

That without a doubt is something a bit dependent upon the campaign. I for one enjoy Planescape and use it as the basis for quite a bit of mine. As Todd Stewart was kind enough to answer a few questions and update his story hour recently I have 'Loths on my mind and will use them as an example. First, none have psioinics (at least that I can find in the MM1-3, FF, MoTP, Planar Handbook, and google seems to point me to a few homebrew). Not a big problem at first. As Loth's get higher ranked and gain expanded magic abilities you eventually get up to the Arcanoloths and Ultraloths. If one of the most powerful is based on arcane magic why wouldn't there be a psionic counter part? Which would have a higher rank in their social structure, the arcane or psion? Normally an Arcanoloth would move up the ranks to an Ultraloth, so would a psionic loth do the same or would we need an alternative competitor for the top spot? The entire upper echelons would need to be re-evaluated and potentially revamped for psionics to have an integrated part in the setting as I see it. That's just one race. What would it mean to the devils hierarchy? Are there now psionic pit fiend? The celestials? Do new types of inevitables need to be homebrewed? What about the planes? Do psionics have a special place in limbo where reality can already be warped but with a thought? What about the astral?

I don't have answers to these questions but would want them answered in order to feel like there is a cohesive setting. That however is a substantial amount of work. I find it unsatisfactory to simply say "well it's magic" but not having any distinction and leave it at that, especially when arcane and divine magic already have deeply integrated elements in the world.

And of course now I'm thinking of a secret sept of psionics loths and alternative Ultraloths perhaps created by one of the Baernaloth's hidden behind the scenes working on completing their third tower to augment psionics intending to challenge the general for leadership of the 'loths? That in itself could be an interesting campaign. The scope and entirety of this is not really something that I could just hand off to a player though.


Planescape did indeed have psionics. Again, they weren't common, and magic use far outweighed them, but ironically a psionicist had a lot of advantage on the planes since he didn't have to worry about planer distance to his god or most planer warping that happened to spells since his power came from within.

As for your statements, outer planer creatures often have psionic powers. Many Baatezu and Tanar'ri could learn psionic powers, though few put in the work to do so. Same with Solars, Astral Devas, and Planetars. The Arcanaloth did indeed have a very strong ability with psionic powers, being the equivilent of 13th level psionicisits back in 2nd ed. Also, seen in 2nd and reused in 3rd are the the Githyanki of the Astral Plane and the Githzerai of Limbo. Both were established psionic races until 3rd ed Monsters Manual, since that was before Wizards came out with the Psionic Handbook. When they did, the those races were updated to change their psionic-like magical abilities back to full psionics. Same thing happened with the Duergar and the Mind Flayers. There are many psionic creatures roaming the Ethereal Plane and you have the gemstone dragons on the inner planes.

Also I have to ask. Especially when dealing with the infinity that is Planescape, why put that much work into something unless the characters are going to encounter it as part of the campaign?

[PairO'Dice Lost]

On the subject of "why have two different mechanics for the same flavor?": Someone mentioned a few pages ago that Harry Dresden is a good example of a character using psionic mechanics and magic flavor, making him a reflavored psion. Actually, I'd say he's a cerebremancer (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/psionic/prestigeClasses/cerebremancer.htm), and further, that every single wizard in his world is a cerebremancer.

In the Dresdenverse, the more powerful the effect you want, the more complex it is to achieve--anyone can try to kill someone with a big blast of fire, but making a more precise and controlled blast of fire usually requires a focus of some sort, and killing someone from across a city requires a big ritual with outside power sources--so magic is divided in-world into Evocation and Thaumaturgy.

Evocation (http://dresdenfiles.wikia.com/wiki/Evocation) works based on just shoving energy around: it is "quick and dirty" magic with the four elements plus force/spirit, used "without rituals," can be "used on the fly," is " drawn directly from the wizard's will and turned loose," is "useful for throwing around a lot of energy," and doesn't require any sort of magic words, hand-waving, or props (though most wizards use them as mnemonic devices). Common uses of it include blasting people with fire or cold or lightning, whatever you want to use at the time (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/psionic/powers/energyBolt.htm), tossing people around with kinetic energy (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/psionic/powers/telekineticManeuver.htm), creating "veils" that convince people watching that you're not there (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/psionic/powers/cloudMind.htm), convincing someone not to want something anymore (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/psionic/powers/aversion.htm), creating reactive shields of force to protect you (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/psionic/powers/mentalBarrier.htm), scrambling people's brains (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/psionic/powers/mindThrust.htm), and wonderful stuff like that. Harry has run into special thorned bindings that stop you from using Evocations (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/psionic/items/universalItems.htm#psionicRestraints). Harry can put lots of extra oomph into his Evocations at the cost of wearing himself out faster (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/psionic/psionicFeats.htm#overchannel).

Thaumaturgy (http://dresdenfiles.wikia.com/wiki/Thaumaturgy) works on symbolic magic: most spells require symbolic links like "blood, hair or nail clippings," and before performing a Thaumaturgic ritual Harry has to do things like gather specific components, draw magic circles, consult dusty old tomes, and things like that, and once the ritual is done it can often be bound into a one-shot object or otherwise held for later. Common uses of it include calling up demons to make them do things for you (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/planarBindingLesser.htm) or ask them questions (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/contactOtherPlane.htm), find people (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/locateCreature.htm) or things (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/locateObject.htm), open portals to the Nevernever for quick transportation (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/shadowWalk.htm), curse people (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/bestowCurse.htm). call up and question people's ghosts (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/speakWithDead.htm), animate zombies and skeletons (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/animateDead.htm), create unpassable mystic barriers (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/wallOfForce.htm), ward your home (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/magesPrivateSanctum.htm), create illusions of yourself (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/mislead.htm), and wonderful stuff like that. Harry has a ring that stores up kinetic energy for tossing people around with later (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/magicItems/rings.htm#ram). Harry has a bound spirit that advises him (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/feats.htm#improvedFamiliar).

Not only that, but there are non-wizard practitioners that can only do either Evocation or Thaumaturgy, not both, but are generally more skilled in their one area than wizards who are more broad in their talents (i.e. limited practitioners are single-classed with specialist PrCs). On the Thaumaturgy side we have people like Binder who can summon lots of demons at once (http://www.minmaxboards.com/index.php?topic=2791.0) and Mortimer Lindquist who talks with and controls ghosts (http://brilliantgameologists.com/boards/index.php?topic=3310.0); on the Evocation side we have Aristedes who mind-controlled a small cult (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/psionic/prestigeClasses/thrallherd.htm) and Fix the Summer Knight who is all about fire (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/psionic/prestigeClasses/pyrokineticist.htm).

So there we have an example of a setting with two very different systems of magic (both in flavor and mechanics) that both fall under the heading of "magic" and are treated as basically the same thing. You don't need two different origins to make that make sense, it's fine to say "Some people can use Evocation psionics, some can use Thaumaturgy magic, some can use both, and that's the way it works."

[NichG]

My point is just that if we have wizards, psions are hardly a problem. Sure, they got tricks, but not nearly as bad as wizards. So if the wizards arent a problem, psions shouldnt be either.


Okay, so somehow two arguments got crossed and I responded to something you said meant for someone who was complaining about power issues, or vice versa, because 'too powerful' was never my complaint.



And while fluff can be an issue, I doubt it is a very difficult thing to fix. Hell, 1/2 the PrCs have to have some society that trains you in order to get into it.


This however is my point. Fluff is actually moderately difficult to fix if you want to do it well - at least as difficult as fixing mechanical bugs in things.

As for the PrCs, they can be a problem sometimes. But usually, they're not a big deal. In most cases the PrCs aren't adding completely new sets of physics/cosmology to the campaign setting, just special training for casting magic missiles really well or other such small things. In other cases, the PrCs are in fact fairly well integrated into the setting (the various Harper things for example) or are actually helping to achieve fluff/mechanics integration (PrCs associated with specific deities helping to make the deities distinctive in both fluff and mechanics, such as the Radiant Servant of Pelor).

[Brookshw]

snip It's certainly true that 2e Planescape incorporated it, and considering the scope of the setting plenty of reason to do so. That was also an edition that had more integration as has been discussed. It was not necessarily as integrated as DS had, but it was there. It's not in 3.0/3.5 unfortunately and it feels like further development is required to really have a nice cohesive setting. This, of course, is personal preference and taste but there are certainly elements that could require examination, and the further you pull back the lens the more there is.

Also I have to ask. Especially when dealing with the infinity that is Planescape, why put that much work into something unless the characters are going to encounter it as part of the campaign? First, to have a well rounded world in my mind to create that campaign, 2nd, inevitably they would. The alternative, not having psionics to be encountered, is where I landed considering how I'd feel the integration would have to take place.

[Boci]

Not sure what you mean by camp, typo/autocorrect? Meant map? So the PC's are from "there". Okay, what's there? How do whatever "powers" feel about that place? Who's running to take advantage of it? How does it change the existing balance? A lost art? Lost by who? What else was lost? Who's looking for it? All great plot elements but do seem to force the incorporation of many campaign elements.

But they don't, you can just ignore them, and be no worse off than if a character was plying a caster. Or you could incorporate those elements as the game unfolds. There, two ways to allow a psionic character, neither of which involve any more initial effort than a caster.

And I was being vague because I have no idea what your campaign world is like, so I cannot answer those questions without the context. Lost by whom? Whoever made it, lithids experimentation on humans in my origional example, possibly doing the Thoon era of the mindflayer history.

[Moonshine Fox]

It's certainly true that 2e Planescape incorporated it, and considering the scope of the setting plenty of reason to do so. That was also an edition that had more integration as has been discussed. It was not necessarily as integrated as DS had, but it was there. It's not in 3.0/3.5 unfortunately and it feels like further development is required to really have a nice cohesive setting. This, of course, is personal preference and taste but there are certainly elements that could require examination, and the further you pull back the lens the more there is.

That's the point I'm trying to make though. D&D does have an established history in the presence of psionics in many, if not most, of it's campaign settings. The key issue here is that when Wizards finally did come out with a psionics book for their 3rd edition, they threw it out there and then never talked about it again, treating the whole thing like a diseased leper rather then something rare, but with a history. That's also why so much psionic material is fan made.

[CrazyYanmega]

So, tell me, what's the fluff difference between a fire-based Energy Ball and a Fireball? An electric Energy Bolt and Lightning Bolt? Concussion Blast and Magic Missile? Psionic Minor Creation and Minor Creation? Psionic Fabricate and Fabricate?

The difference is one is right, and the other is WRONG.

Maybe it's because I'm stupid and a birdbrain, but I really see Vancian casting vs Psionics as an F-22 Raptor vs a Harrier. Tome of Battle is... an Apache Helicopter?

...

Unyu?

This made sense when I wrote it.

[toapat]

*Snip*

the comparisons you are looking for are:

Vancian Casting: B-52 Stratofortress
Psionics: B-1 Lancer
Tome of Battle: A-10 Thunderbolt II

[Captnq]

You know, this is a fun thread and all, but I'm curious as to how many people talking about psionics actually play with it. Because, as a DM, I find it wonderfully handy.

[toapat]

You know, this is a fun thread and all, but I'm curious as to how many people talking about psionics actually play with it. Because, as a DM, I find it wonderfully handy.

unfortunately the last time i played was 13 years ago. Being 7 and practically illiterate was not condusive to understanding the game.

[Moonshine Fox]

You know, this is a fun thread and all, but I'm curious as to how many people talking about psionics actually play with it. Because, as a DM, I find it wonderfully handy.

I've been playing it since The Psionics Handbook came out back in second ed. I played through the full powers of the Darksun setting with multiple characters. I didn't play much with the first 3rd ed Psionics Handbook as I didn't feel it was a good follow-up, but I picked it back up with 3.5 and now pathfinders system.

[NichG]

You know, this is a fun thread and all, but I'm curious as to how many people talking about psionics actually play with it. Because, as a DM, I find it wonderfully handy.

Out of seven D&D campaigns I've run (two Planescape, four custom setting, one 2ed D&D), one had a significantly psionic PC and another PC who was thematically but not mechanically psionic (they were playing a Githzerai), and another had certain vague references to psionics that basically no one ever took me up on or explored much. The campaign with the psionic PCs had some psionic enemies/plot points, but I didn't have a use for it in the other D&D campaigns. Note that in all but one of these campaigns, there was no ban on psionics - just a lack of player interest.

Out of four non-D&D campaigns I've run (two Planescape using a 7th Sea ruleset, two custom system), one had significant psionic themes and characters (one of the Planescape ones).

Out of the various D&D campaigns I've played in (four major, various minor), psionics only featured in one of them - again, there was a single psionic PC and a number of psionic subplots centered around that PC.

Out of the five or so non-D&D campaigns I've played in, psionic themes featured significantly in one of them (an Adventure! cross all-Whitewolf campaign).

[Ssalarn]

Fluff isn't actually more easily mutable than mechanics. Its easy to say 'just reflavor everything to be something you like' but that's the equivalent to saying to someone 'just fix all the broken mechanics, sheesh!'. Both can be done, but its naive to think that its trivial to do either of them really well.


I disagree. Fluff is just story, you can make up whatever story you want to fit the mechanics. The mechanics, on the other hand, involve math, and math (as our nation's dearth of qualified teaching professionals in the fields of math and physics can tell you) is hard.

Just do a search on the number of graduates with literary and creative writing degrees as opposed to degrees in the hard sciences. This will bear out. Fluff (see also - "making stuff up") = easy. Math = hard.

[NichG]

I disagree. Fluff is just story, you can make up whatever story you want to fit the mechanics. The mechanics, on the other hand, involve math, and math (as our nation's dearth of qualified teaching professionals in the fields of math and physics can tell you) is hard.

Just do a search on the number of graduates with literary and creative writing degrees as opposed to degrees in the hard sciences. This will bear out. Fluff (see also - "making stuff up") = easy. Math = hard.

The reason fluff seems easy is that there isn't an objective way to measure when its bad or wrong the same way there is for math. If you do math wrong, a computer or another mathematician can tell you 'hey, you screwed this up'. If you make up dumb stories, its very hard for someone to objectively point out why your stories are dumb or bad.

So the result is there are a lot of people who think the stuff they make up is the greatest thing since sliced bread... and you get all sorts of terrible stuff coming out of that. Just look at, for example fanfic. Lots of creative types who think they're great writers and are putting out what amounts to drivel - Drizzt clones, self-insert stories, Mary Sues, overuse of deus ex machina, setting elements that are entirely for self-gratification or as aesops for their political views, etc. Out of that morass there are in fact a few good bits of work, and if you could actually get people to agree objectively on what those are (I suggest using money as a test - require a $5 contribution to the author to vote in their favor) then I bet you'd find that there are about as many 'successful' creative types out there, fractionally, as there are people with hard sciences degrees compared to the bulk.

I can generate a table or a simple argument to show why there might be problems if, say, 5% of all attack rolls involve cutting off your own foot in a critical failure. I can't do the same thing to show as easily why there might be problems if you run a game where vampires sparkle and everything is a pop culture reference. That doesn't mean that in the second case there won't be problems, it just means its harder to prove ahead of time.

[The-Mage-King]

To implement Warblades well, they should have different fluff than fighters. Games in which they are the same are doing a half-assed job of it.

The background of Warblades is that they practice a number of specific schools of martial arts, each with distinctive abilities. In-world, a character can see a Warblade using e.g. White Raven and recognize those abilities as White Raven abilities. They might be able to conclude that this means that the Warblade trained at a certain school or a branch of that school where White Raven was invented. There may be other NPCs who are also White Raven practitioners who could be known about, and perhaps the set of schools that Warblades can take maneuvers from all have a sort of reciprocal agreement to teach eachothers' disciples. But then when you see someone with Shadow Hand abilities, you know that they're not a Warblade and trained at different schools (or they were a special case - e.g. they took a feat to get a bit of ToB training from a wandering master or whatever)

A Fighter then would be someone who didn't train in those particular schools, but might have been a career soldier instead. The fact that the Fighter is mechanically very generic makes it hard to actually do good fluff for Fighters - its almost the absence of a class rather than anything else. Banning the 'fighter' class from the campaign and requiring people to take Warblade instead would probably improve a campaign both on the mechanical and fluff levels. Or redoing the fighter to have a bunch of 'front line soldier/guardsman' class abilities that were very thematic of a more aggregate combat experience than a solo-warrior like a Warblade would have (things like formation fighting stuff and mass melee stuff come to mind for this).



You could do this, but I would say that it isn't as good as delving into it more deeply and actually having each thing have a real history and cause/relationship with the world. If you cite convergent evolution and just stop right there, then what you've done is taken things that are mechanically meaningful but declared that they have no fluff meaning - you're making the game world a more impoverished place. The right way to go about this (and much more difficult) would then be to go a step further and say 'okay, what is the underlying cause for this convergent evolution - what is the reason why there are particular 'moves' that seem to be baked into the universe/humanoid condition/etc?'. This could lead to various other elaborations, such as, say, Thri-Kreen being unable to learn maneuvers from the standard schools because their physiology is simply different (but having things of their own) - or to some underlying model of where the 'power' behind the maneuvers comes from that explains why there are only specific ones, or whatever.

For something like martial maneuvers, I'd tend to go with the historical explanation rather than the cosmic one - it fits the theme better.


Personally, regarding maneuvers, I make disciplines universally prominent. Everyone who knows about fighting can tell an Iron Heart maneuver at a glance, but they have different names for the same move.


Disciplines are just classifications of techniques. A downwards slash is a downwards slash, regardless of name or weapon.


What matter for me is styles. I use what Callos (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=11314559&postcount=5) says here, in the second part of the post. Makes things run smoother, in my eyes, without much issue involving houseruling.

I can certainly see some races being unable to learn 'normal' maneuvers, but so long as they have arms and legs, most should be fine.

[Ssalarn]

I can generate a table or a simple argument to show why there might be problems if, say, 5% of all attack rolls involve cutting off your own foot in a critical failure. I can't do the same thing to show as easily why there might be problems if you run a game where vampires sparkle and everything is a pop culture reference. That doesn't mean that in the second case there won't be problems, it just means its harder to prove ahead of time.

Fortunately you've got this great cooperative story-telling medium to test things out in, and as dozens of posters in this thread have touched on, veritable truckloads of fantasy references to assist. Dresden Files, Gandalf, most types of magic seen in anything by Glen Cook, the magic seen in Steven Erickson's Malazan series, all of those are things labeled "magic" that have more in common with the mechanics of the psionics system than Vancian casting.

There's a pretty big step between telling your players that you're introducing psionics into the game as a kind of variant magic similar to any of the above or using your own basis, and trying to sell them on the short story you wrote about being rescued from your mundane life by Captain Kirk and being whisked away to explore the stars.

One of those will make them very uncomfortable, and the other will probably receive a "Okay, sounds like it could be interesting". Which one of course may vary a little bit by table.

[Loxagn]

You know, this is a fun thread and all, but I'm curious as to how many people talking about psionics actually play with it. Because, as a DM, I find it wonderfully handy.

I was actually asking because, while I'm pretty familiar with 3.5 in general, I've only just started really paying attention to psionics, and it intrigued me. I really do want to play one. Hard to find a DM, though...

[Ssalarn]

You can maybe start by finding or requesting a PBP or something, those are usually a little easier to organize, and it'll get you some ground time with the system.

[NichG]

Fortunately you've got this great cooperative story-telling medium to test things out in, and as dozens of posters in this thread have touched on, veritable truckloads of fantasy references to assist. Dresden Files, Gandalf, most types of magic seen in anything by Glen Cook, the magic seen in Steven Erickson's Malazan series, all of those are things labeled "magic" that have more in common with the mechanics of the psionics system than Vancian casting.


The same could well be said for mechanics. I regularly test out both. From experience, you can screw up either if you aren't careful and get something that is unbalanced (mechanics-wise) or trite/shallow/insipid/impossible to take seriously with fluff. I also have a good feel right now for what works and what doesn't after doing this for awhile.

The idea of 'test' is that you actually look to see if something works poorly so that you can improve it. If 'my players didn't walk off in a huff' is your only standard, then you aren't going to get very far. You can't learn anything if you refuse to recognize the need to improve. If you ignore differences in quality in the fluff and just say 'good enough' then your fluff isn't going to improve.

[Brookshw]

That's the point I'm trying to make though. D&D does have an established history in the presence of psionics in many, if not most, of it's campaign settings. The key issue here is that when Wizards finally did come out with a psionics book for their 3rd edition, they threw it out there and then never talked about it again, treating the whole thing like a diseased leper rather then something rare, but with a history. That's also why so much psionic material is fan made.

I get the feeling we're not especially in disagreement about anything. Yes, in 2e it had a presence and was much better incorporated in many instances. To bring it into 3.5, well, there's where I see the work even utilizing the previous materials for world design (almost all of mine which I foolishly disposed of about 12 years ago). It's not a miniscule undertaking to reintroduce it and re-evaluate how it should be factored in, especially as it's now been reclassed. You had a pretty good post earlier regarding it's mechanics so I'll mention the psionic battles with the five attacks and defenses which, unless I missed it, seemed like one thing you had skipped a bit on.


You know, this is a fun thread and all, but I'm curious as to how many people talking about psionics actually play with it. Because, as a DM, I find it wonderfully handy. 3.5 - hmmmm, think I may have let it slide in once though I don't quite recall. 3.0, had a player who ran a psion for at least two years, I can't recall any others offhand but there may have been at least one or two others. 2e, quite a bit.


But they don't, you can just ignore them, and be no worse off than if a character was plying a caster. NichG has done a pretty good job outlining why just glossing over such things isn't for everyone. If I'm redoing my living room and think I'd like some new drapes I can't just leave it at that, what color, shape, style? It's not a perfect analogy but it's generally a good thing in my mind to have something built into a cohesive well rounded whole. Something just tacked on with no explanation doesn't really cut it, and something like "another" type of magic begs many many questions as I see it. What exactly are you suggesting should be ignored? There from some place which shouldn't have any bearing? That feels very empty when it comes to a world with depth. Alternatively it feels a bit tantamount to telling me to ignore players backstories, something I think most people would frown upon. I may be misunderstanding you so please let me know where I'm in error.


Or you could incorporate those elements as the game unfolds. A quick slap job as I go is generally going to produce a shallower end product rather than having considered what the end will be before I get there. I once went to look at a house owned by a carpenter, probably a pretty bad one. Additions had been tacked on poorly, angles were terrible, bad light, poorly placed windows, basement walls weren't finished and were exposed to dirt and roots (I have no idea if it was even up to code, doubt it), after a good look over I certainly wasn't interested in buying it. If the house had been planned in it's entirety before it was built I'm sure it would have been much better. Back to the game working out how these things figure into the world give you histories to explore, better ideas on how to incorporate foreshadowing, and so forth, so much more when you know in advance.


And I was being vague because I have no idea what your campaign world is like, so I cannot answer those questions without the context. Lost by whom? Whoever made it, lithids experimentation on humans in my origional example, possibly doing the Thoon era of the mindflayer history. That's rather the point though, you can't just drop it in, there are questions to be answered. Something to the effect of "it's a one time/isolated phenomena with no world impact" feels a bit contrived. Remember though, this is all personal taste, if the OP wants to know why people have a variety of opinions against psionics, here's mine.

[Boci]

A quick slap job as I go is generally going to produce a shallower end product rather than having considered what the end will be before I get there.

This makes no sense. You are basically saying you never change the story or add new stuff as it develops, as it would produce shallower results.


That's rather the point though, you can't just drop it in, there are questions to be answered. Something to the effect of "it's a one time/isolated phenomena with no world impact" feels a bit contrived. Remember though, this is all personal taste, if the OP wants to know why people have a variety of opinions against psionics, here's mine.

I can't just drop it into a setting I know nothing about. But if you gave me the setting info (which a player would have access to), I bet I could make it fit.

And what about my idea of lithid experimentation on humans doing the Thoon era of their civilization?

[TuggyNE]

This makes no sense. You are basically saying you never change the story or add new stuff as it develops, as it would produce shallower results.

I guess some people are just that perfectionist.

Personally, I certainly prefer to consider the ramifications of something, but banning a subsystem because I don't feel like doing that in full and can't be satisfied with anything less than the absolute best seems a little excessive.

[Togo]

This makes no sense. You are basically saying you never change the story or add new stuff as it develops, as it would produce shallower results.

I've bolded the words you've added to his opinion, as a result of which it now doesn't make sense to you.

Adding new material takes effort if you do it properly. Not all new material is suitable for the end result you have in mind. Therefore you stop and consider new material, and decide whether you want it in your game.

Most of my games don't include psionics. They also don't include wu jens, spirit shamans, various FG-specific races, dragonlance material, gunpowder, blaster rifles, killer robots, effigies, ToB-based classes, spell points, katanas, magical trains, dragonmark houses, quintessence, extended rules for magical traps, swiftblades, or, for reasons I've never been able to properly articulate, kobolds. I have the rules for all of them.

Apparently this either means I hate psionics, or that I'm biased against psionics, depending on which version of the OP you go with.

[Togo]

I guess some people are just that perfectionist.

Personally, I certainly prefer to consider the ramifications of something, but banning a subsystem because I don't feel like doing that in full and can't be satisfied with anything less than the absolute best seems a little excessive.

So... all your games include gunpowder weapons? Taint? Spelljammer ships?

[ryu]

So... all your games include gunpowder weapons? Taint? Spelljammer ships?

You mean yours don't?

[Amphetryon]

So... all your games include gunpowder weapons? Taint? Spelljammer ships?

How did you get to that conclusion, from the quoted text?

[Boci]

I've bolded the words you've added to his opinion, as a result of which it now doesn't make sense to you.

No I understand what he is saying, I'm just asking given that DM's will always adapt their stories and setting as they develop, why is this not an option for a psionic character?


Most of my games don't include psionics. They also don't include wu jens, spirit shamans, various FG-specific races, dragonlance material, gunpowder, blaster rifles, killer robots, effigies, ToB-based classes, spell points, katanas, magical trains, dragonmark houses, quintessence, extended rules for magical traps, swiftblades, or, for reasons I've never been able to properly articulate, kobolds. I have the rules for all of them.

Apparently this either means I hate psionics, or that I'm biased against psionics, depending on which version of the OP you go with.

And what if a player wanted to ply a psion and incorporated it into the setting via his backstory?

[NichG]

No I understand what he is saying, I'm just asking given that DM's will always adapt their stories and setting as they develop, why is this not an option for a psionic character?


Well, if you can figure out a way to make a sudden change in the physics of the universe still be consistent with every single thing the PCs have encountered or observed both directly and indirectly, and take the effort to integrate it carefully and thoroughly, then this is fine! Congrats, you've just spent the necessary effort to do this well. But saying 'oh by the way, now there are psions' is not doing this well.

If you weren't willing to expend the effort when you didn't have to worry about introducing glitches in the matrix before the game started, then why would you think it'd be any less effort to do after the game started and you had to balance all the existing factors? If psionics wasn't worth the effort before, it isn't going to be worth the effort after.



And what if a player wanted to ply a psion and incorporated it into the setting via his backstory?

I think the thing you keep missing is that 'I come from a village of psions' doesn't count as really incorporating something into the setting. Doing it well requires a much more thorough job. Something beyond the extent of the sorts of things that character backstories can feasibly contain.

[Boci]

I think the thing you keep missing is that 'I come from a village of psions' doesn't count as really incorporating something into the setting. Doing it well requires a much more thorough job. Something beyond the extent of the sorts of things that character backstories can feasibly contain.

The point you seem to be missing is that I cannot incorporate psionics into a setting when I don't know anything about the setting. And besides, its not "village of psions", its "lithid experimentation upon humanoids during the Thoon era of their civilization". And let me repeat, I can do better if I get to see the fluff of the setting the game takes place in.

[NichG]

The point you seem to be missing is that I cannot incorporate psionics into a setting when I don't know anything about the setting. And besides, its not "village of psions", its "lithid experimentation upon humanoids during the Thoon era of their civilization". And let me repeat, I can do better if I get to see the fluff of the setting the game takes place in.

Yeah, I've never claimed it can't be done well. Just that it requires effort to do so, and that the effort vs reward may often not be worth it. But, as a player, there's a limited degree of what sorts of setting development you can legitimately do in your backstory - you cannot write in secrets for the PCs to discover (because you'd already know them), and if your character backstory is a 1000 year breakdown of history of the Illithid empire and how it has influenced Cormyr and Silverymoon, that's going to be far too much side-content for a backstory, especially if you spring it on the DM during the first session or something.

Now, if you say 'next time I really want to play a psion, and heres an idea involving the Illithids' at the end of the previous campaign, then as a DM that gives me direct reason to make that effort (there is significant player interest) and, over the next however many weeks before the next campaign starts, those ideas can be fleshed out and made a deep part of things. My inclination in that case would be to run an all-psionics campaign and really focus on it, having that illithid experimentation be the fundamental 'source of the supernatural' in that setting. ToB and other side-systems that I wanted to retain would be redone as being explicit examples of psionics.

That'd let me do plotlines about the various factions in the world attempting to ramp up their understanding to the point where they can replicate the initial illithid experimentation and make their own psions rather than rely on random genetic flareups. From there I could do a couple different things - psionics-as-closed-timeloops, psionics as communication with the world-brain, etc - which would probably set the overall thematic direction of the campaign and point towards its possible resolutions. Given the theme, I'd probably also drop the existence of divines from that setting, or have them be sort of collective psionic epiphenomena due to the combined beliefs of large numbers of latent psions.

[Boci]

Yeah, I've never claimed it can't be done well. Just that it requires effort to do so, and that the effort vs reward may often not be worth it. But, as a player, there's a limited degree of what sorts of setting development you can legitimately do in your backstory - you cannot write in secrets for the PCs to discover (because you'd already know them), and if your character backstory is a 1000 year breakdown of history of the Illithid empire and how it has influenced Cormyr and Silverymoon, that's going to be far too much side-content for a backstory, especially if you spring it on the DM during the first session or something.

Now, if you say 'next time I really want to play a psion, and heres an idea involving the Illithids' at the end of the previous campaign, then as a DM that gives me direct reason to make that effort (there is significant player interest) and, over the next however many weeks before the next campaign starts, those ideas can be fleshed out and made a deep part of things. My inclination in that case would be to run an all-psionics campaign and really focus on it, having that illithid experimentation be the fundamental 'source of the supernatural' in that setting. ToB and other side-systems that I wanted to retain would be redone as being explicit examples of psionics.

That'd let me do plotlines about the various factions in the world attempting to ramp up their understanding to the point where they can replicate the initial illithid experimentation and make their own psions rather than rely on random genetic flareups. From there I could do a couple different things - psionics-as-closed-timeloops, psionics as communication with the world-brain, etc - which would probably set the overall thematic direction of the campaign and point towards its possible resolutions. Given the theme, I'd probably also drop the existence of divines from that setting, or have them be sort of collective psionic epiphenomena due to the combined beliefs of large numbers of latent psions.

That's cool and everything, but I really don't see why it only works in all psionics campaign. Obviously this isn't going to come up in first session, if it did this entire discussion is moot because the DM has already okay-ed the psion character, if the player is showing up to the first session with the sheet and backstory.

I don't see why you would need weeks of planning to make this work. In all likelihood the DM doesn't have a perfect, year by year time table of what happened in the setting, and Thoon would be pretty removed from the humanoid kingdoms, so its rise and fall could be covered in a player's backstory. And I don't see why a player cannot have a secret in their backstory that the character doesn't know, the player is generally going to know loads of stuff about the game the character doesn't.

[NichG]

That's cool and everything, but I really don't see why it only works in all psionics campaign. Obviously this isn't going to come up in first session, if it did this entire discussion is moot because the DM has already okay-ed the psion character, if the player is showing up to the first session with the sheet and backstory.

It works best in an all-psionics campaign, because that places the focus on the thing of interest and allows it to be thoroughly explored. Beyond just 'I have this set of mechanics' it means that the story itself is going to be about psionics. No extraneous or random or arbitrary elements - everything is tightly integrated and important.

If I had someone who really wanted to play an Incarnum user, the campaign would have a significant focus on the nature of the soul. If I had someone who really wanted to play a Shadowcaster, then the campaign would have a significant focus on the contrast between the shadow weave and the normal weave or at the very least would involve the demiplane of Shadow. Heck, if I've got a rogue in the group I'm going to want to drop in some heists or thieves guild subplots or things like that.

This whole '6 random mismatched people show up at a tavern and go kill some orcs' is fine for beer and pretzels, but its possible to do a lot better. And having played in that sort of well-integrated game, I know that its worth it to shoot for in my own DMing - its a completely different experience.



I don't see why you would need weeks of planning to make this work. In all likelihood the DM doesn't have a perfect, year by year time table of what happened in the setting, and Thoon would be pretty removed from the humanoid kingdoms, so its rise and fall could be covered in a player's backstory. And I don't see why a player cannot have a secret in their backstory that the character doesn't know, the player is generally going to know loads of stuff about the game the character doesn't.

You're doing it again - making the 'remote village' to avoid the work of a deeply integrated system. By immediately jumping to 'the Thoon would be pretty removed' you're essentially saying 'psionics won't have an impact on the world'. But that's bad setting integration. If something is going to feature in the campaign (and a PC having a specific subsystem means that it will feature significantly), then it should have an impact on the world.

As far as why a player can't have secrets in their backstory, its because then you can't have the player participate fully in solving mysteries based on those secrets. Its a pain to try to maintain constant separation between things you know and things your character knows, so its better if you can run things so the player can use the fullness of their knowledge to think about what's going on and thereby doesn't need to basically be mentally hobbling and second-guessing themselves all the time. I want the player to be able to engage as fully as possible, which they can't do if they have to juggle a bunch of in and out of character secrets.

[Boci]

It works best in an all-psionics campaign, because that places the focus on the thing of interest and allows it to be thoroughly explored. Beyond just 'I have this set of mechanics' it means that the story itself is going to be about psionics. No extraneous or random or arbitrary elements - everything is tightly integrated and important.

If I had someone who really wanted to play an Incarnum user, the campaign would have a significant focus on the nature of the soul. If I had someone who really wanted to play a Shadowcaster, then the campaign would have a significant focus on the contrast between the shadow weave and the normal weave or at the very least would involve the demiplane of Shadow. Heck, if I've got a rogue in the group I'm going to want to drop in some heists or thieves guild subplots or things like that.

This whole '6 random mismatched people show up at a tavern and go kill some orcs' is fine for beer and pretzels, but its possible to do a lot better. And having played in that sort of well-integrated game, I know that its worth it to shoot for in my own DMing - its a completely different experience.

See below. I find this approach inorganic if it is always used. Nothing wrong with doing it, but if this is the approach taken every time, then its artificial nature becomes increasingly more noticeable.

And so what if you cannot use the players mechanics in the story? A character is more than the mechanics of their class's subsystem. Use their hopes, fears, and dreams instead.


You're doing it again - making the 'remote village' to avoid the work of a deeply integrated system. By immediately jumping to 'the Thoon would be pretty removed' you're essentially saying 'psionics won't have an impact on the world'.

But look at Thoon, specifically its location and its capabilities. Its in the Underdark, and the units specific for combating humanoid are the infiltration units. There is little reason to assume that the defeat of Thoon would register significantly in the history books of the humanoid kingdom, because the war would have been a secret one, thought by a few, highly trained adventurers. The defeat of Thoon would have been a major battle, but it would have been thought in the underdark, and the stories of a glories battle field would be there's to tell. "Them" being the non-Thoon mindflayers and whatever allies they could muster (I'd go with Drow, because I like them. But dueger could also work.)


But that's bad setting integration. If something is going to feature in the campaign (and a PC having a specific subsystem means that it will feature significantly), then it should have an impact on the world.

No, you are falling into the very pitfall you think you are avoiding, you are making an artificial world, by giving a subsystem major setting significance solely because the PC is using it. The plot may rerolve around the PCs, but the world shouldn't. In RL, western martial arts has all but faded from common knowledge, whilst easterm martial art florishes. To have some subsystems that barely feature anymore becase they didn't catch on it far more organic than to weave it heavily into the setting just because a player is using it.

And see above, an invention of Thoon has little reason to feature heavily in humanoid society.


As far as why a player can't have secrets in their backstory, its because then you can't have the player participate fully in solving mysteries based on those secrets. Its a pain to try to maintain constant separation between things you know and things your character knows, so its better if you can run things so the player can use the fullness of their knowledge to think about what's going on and thereby doesn't need to basically be mentally hobbling and second-guessing themselves all the time. I want the player to be able to engage as fully as possible, which they can't do if they have to juggle a bunch of in and out of character secrets.

That's only if you make the secret plot centric for an extended period of time. And even if you do, its easily solved. Change details, telling the player you are, but not which ones. Now they need to legitimately keep guessing because they don't know which parts apply and which parts have been changed.

Edit: Also there are plenty of games where experienced players will know LOADS of things that their characters won't. World of Darkness and Warhammer 40k being the two most notably ones I can think. If players can enjoy a game where the system requires you to pretend you do not know stuff I think a player can handle a secret in their backstory.

[Togo]

So... all your games include gunpowder weapons? Taint? Spelljammer ships?How did you get to that conclusion, from the quoted text?

They're all subsystems that regularly don't get included in games.

He was claiming that 'not being able to do a full job of incorporating it into a game' was not a good reason to exclude a subsystem, so I assume he includes all subsystems in his own games. The DMG has a nice subsystem for blaster rifles and laser weaponry.



The point you seem to be missing is that I cannot incorporate psionics into a setting when I don't know anything about the setting. And besides, its not "village of psions", its "lithid experimentation upon humanoids during the Thoon era of their civilization".

Which didn't happen in most of my games


And let me repeat, I can do better if I get to see the fluff of the setting the game takes place in.

I'm sure you can. And if we're creating a collaborative world together, in which we all engage in and contribute to the game setting, then if you could make a better job of the incorporation than can easily be demonstrated on an internet message board, I'd probably allow psionics.

However, for most of my games, I create the game world myself without significant input from the players. Contact time with the players is at a premium, and we don't want to spend time in game design that could be spend playing. The game world is a fairly detailed place and has a consistent metaphysic. You can't easily shoehorn in an extra magic system, even a rare one, and incorporating it properly would involve many detailed changes. If the gameworld has an obvious role for psionics, I include it, and if it doesn't, I don't.

[Boci]

Which didn't happen in most of my games

And what would happen if you decided it did?


I'm sure you can. And if we're creating a collaborative world together, in which we all engage in and contribute to the game setting, then if you could make a better job of the incorporation than can easily be demonstrated on an internet message board, I'd probably allow psionics.

However, for most of my games, I create the game world myself without significant input from the players. Contact time with the players is at a premium, and we don't want to spend time in game design that could be spend playing. The game world is a fairly detailed place and has a consistent metaphysic.

That's a shame, your really limiting the world you can produce with just one mind working on it.

Edit: I'm not saying all players should contribute equally, or as much as the DM, and obviously the DM will probably need to make changes, and not use some ideas. But if you are just going to flat out reject world building suggestions solely because they come from the players and not from you, that's nothing but a limitation.


You can't easily shoehorn in an extra magic system, even a rare one, and incorporating it properly would involve many detailed changes. If the gameworld has an obvious role for psionics, I include it, and if it doesn't, I don't.

You keep saying, but I fail to see how it is true. To me, its just seems to stem from the inorganic world building notion that a PCs power much feature significantly in the campaign world. A PC should fit in as much as possible, but their mechanics don't have to.

[NichG]

See below. I find this approach inorganic if it is always used. Nothing wrong with doing it, but if this is the approach taken every time, then its artificial nature becomes increasingly more noticeable.

And so what if you cannot use the players mechanics in the story? A character is more than the mechanics of their class's subsystem. Use their hopes, fears, and dreams instead.


I play a game with wizards and dragons and elves because I'm interested in the concepts and themes one can explore related to wizards and dragons and elves (or more generally, the idea of fantasy, mythological thinking, and the corporealization of abstract aspects of human existence). If I want to play or run a psychological thriller, D&D would not be my go-to system, because having elephants in the room like magic would distract from the subtlety I'd be trying to go for.

From my point of view, a bundle of pure mechanics is worthless. It had better be introducing interesting ideas and themes into the campaign, or I definitely do not want it there at all, if for no other reason than having that sort of clear line encourages 'mechanical' thinking to become separated from 'story' thinking in the players and you end up having at best two games going on simultaneously and at worst two separate sets of players in the same group, who focus primarily on one or the other.



But look at Thoon, specifically its location and its capabilities. Its in the Underdark, and the units specific for combating humanoid are the infiltration units. There is little reason to assume that the defeat of Thoon would register significantly in the history books of the humanoid kingdom, because the war would have been a secret one, thought by a few, highly trained adventurers. The defeat of Thoon would have been a major battle, but it would have been thought in the underdark, and the stories of a glories battle field would be there's to tell. "Them" being the non-Thoon mindflayers and whatever allies they could muster (I'd go with Drow, because I like them. But dueger could also work.)


The same argument can be made of 'look at where I put that village I came from, its so remote that it makes sense that no one else in the world knows about it'. The problem isn't the logic of whether or not Thoon would be significant to the world, the problem is the intentional choice of a source that is so rare and isolated that basically you're forcing it to not be significant to the world. Which, at the end of the day, results in the same thing - a major subsystem that really should be a tightly interwoven aspect of the world gets buried out of convenience. Which means that when it does somehow crop up outside the underdark, it seems random and arbitrary.

So basically, you're providing the exact opposite of what I'm asking for - something tightly integrated with the world. Instead you're providing a rationalization that tries to make the problem go away without actually addressing it. Which tells me that you aren't actually interested in exploring the themes of psionics, and at that point as a DM I'd much rather you have told me 'look, I hate Vancian casting but psionics is a reasonable mechanical system, can we do something about that?' and actually addressed the problem directly rather than dancing around in a way that could harm the campaign. Because then sure, I'll just throw together a spell point variant on arcane magic or something and we can move on - we avoid fantasy kitchen sink and you get your mechanical concerns addressed.

Whereas if you do actually care about the themes, then this trying to bury it somewhere out of the way seems really self-defeating.



No, you are falling into the very pitfall you think you are avoiding, you are making an artificial world, by giving a subsystem major setting significance solely because the PC is using it. The plot may rerolve around the PCs, but the world shouldn't. In RL, western martial arts has all but faded from common knowledge, whilst easterm martial art florishes. To have some subsystems that barely feature anymore becase they didn't catch on it far more organic than to weave it heavily into the setting just because a player is using it.


Actually, I'm preventing the PCs from being 'special snowflakes' by virtue of picking intentionally rare subsystems. The world should in fact revolve around the players - running Shadowrun for people who want to play Exalted is self-defeating; if you tell me that psionics is a theme you want to explore, then I'm going to engage with that.

But once you've actually expressed an interest in various themes out of character, your PCs will be part of an integrated world. They will not be 'the only guy with psionics within 8000 miles' - if you have a psion, there will be other psions, and people will generally know about psions.


That's only if you make the secret plot centric for an extended period of time. And even if you do, its easily solved. Change details, telling the player you are, but not which ones. Now they need to legitimately keep guessing because they don't know which parts apply and which parts have been changed.

At which point we're back to where we started, with the DM expending a lot of effort on it.


Edit: Also there are plenty of games where experienced players will know LOADS of things that their characters won't. World of Darkness and Warhammer 40k being the two most notably ones I can think. If players can enjoy a game where the system requires you to pretend you do not know stuff I think a player can handle a secret in their backstory.

This is part of the reason I tend to make custom settings for each subsequent campaign. It allows there to be real deep mysteries left in the world.

In the last campaign I ran, magic was based on eight elemental forces that all reacted explosively to one another. One of the PCs became an arcane researcher and discovered the relationships between those eight forces and a set of otherwise somewhat mysterious 'unified' forces which corresponded to their combinations and permutations at much higher levels of energy in the presence of catalysts that would suppress their explosive interaction. As a result, he was able to explain why certain higher level spells worked the way they did and was able to create some novel effects by combining spells other people had not been able to. That plotline could happen because the player didn't know ahead of time what the underlying system for magic was in the cosmology of that campaign; if he had, then all of the exploration would have been basically fake and very unsatisfying. Another player delved deeply into the underlying reason why there were character levels and was able to find ways to dynamically swap around templates at some XP cost, forcibly level-up other people, etc. Another player investigated the source of anti-magic effects in the world and discovered something called Dark Mana. All of these things relied on the players not having deep pre-knowledge of those secrets, and comprised a large chunk of the campaign.

In a previous campaign, the characters investigated the reason why magic could not resurrect anyone. In another campaign (Planescape), the characters investigated the underlying nature of belief-based reality and the details of how exactly belief shaped things - something they could do because I took the very vague statement from Planescape that 'everything is from belief' and gave it a concrete, yet initially hidden representation within the world that they could interact with, observe consistently, etc. If they had known ahead of time that my underlying model was that belief biased the wavefunction collapse of the multiverse and 'picked out' particular sets of possibilities, there wouldn't've been much of a campaign.

[Boci]

The same argument can be made of 'look at where I put that village I came from, its so remote that it makes sense that no one else in the world knows about it'. The problem isn't the logic of whether or not Thoon would be significant to the world, the problem is the intentional choice of a source that is so rare and isolated that basically you're forcing it to not be significant to the world. Which, at the end of the day, results in the same thing - a major subsystem that really should be a tightly interwoven aspect of the world gets buried out of convenience. Which means that when it does somehow crop up outside the underdark, it seems random and arbitrary.

So basically, you're providing the exact opposite of what I'm asking for - something tightly integrated with the world.

1. Just because humans are unaware of Thoon does not mean it is buried. In the Underdark, certain cultures would know of Thoon, and remember it very vividly. The mere name could silence the room. You're being humanoid centric now as well. Not only does the character's mechanic have to be well known in the setting, they have to well known in the surface humanoid areas of the setting, solely because that's the part of the game will take place in.

Why do you insist on such an inorganic way of integrating the mechanic of character?

2. There are only so many times I can this: I can do a better job if a have a actual setting, rather than vague notions.


Which means that when it does somehow crop up outside the underdark, it seems random and arbitrary.

Would it seem random and arbitrary for an enemy wizard to yell "You thrall of Thoon, your fey magic shall not best mine!" High int, all knowledges as class skills so he has heard of Thoon, and he recognizes the tell tale signs of the magic they developed. Now the player has a reason to specifically research it.


Instead you're providing a rationalization that tries to make the problem go away without actually addressing it. Which tells me that you aren't actually interested in exploring the themes of psionics, and at that point as a DM I'd much rather you have told me 'look, I hate Vancian casting but psionics is a reasonable mechanical system, can we do something about that?' and actually addressed the problem directly rather than dancing around in a way that could harm the campaign. Because then sure, I'll just throw together a spell point variant on arcane magic or something and we can move on - we avoid fantasy kitchen sink and you get your mechanical concerns addressed.

Its hard enough getting DMs to accept psionics into a game, how hard will it be to get "my previous DM's homebrew"? Players may like psionic, and want to try out an official source.

Plus now we have even to explore. We've gone from an difficultdiscovery "Thoon made psionis" (assuming the Underdark races don't play an important part in the narrative), to nothing. You have put effort into homebrew, that reduces the amount of plot hooks available.

[NichG]

1. Just because humans are unaware of Thoon does not mean it is buried. In the Underdark, certain cultures would know of Thoon, and remember it very vividly. The mere name could silence the room. You're being humanoid centric now as well. Not only does the character's mechanic have to be well known in the setting, they have to well known in the surface humanoid areas of the setting, solely because that's the part of the game will take place in.


I'm being consistent with what you've told me. Now, if you wanted an Underdark campaign, I'm sure that can be arranged.



Why do you insist on such an inorganic way of integrating the mechanic of character?


If 'organic' here means 'fantasy kitchen sink', then I can't say I care for it at all. Chekov's Gun is a trope for a reason - it works.



Its hard enough getting DMs to accept psionics into a game, how hard will it be to get "my previous DM's homebrew"? Players may like psionic, and want to try out an official source.


A good start would be to actually be honest with the DM about your reasons for wanting something. Trying to use the 'officialness' of a source to trick them into including something is getting off to a really bad start. Once you go adversarial, it should be no shock when you start getting randomly shut down by the DM for arbitrary reasons - you haven't been honest with them, and when things don't add up about your behavior they'll have an intuitive understanding of that even if they can't put their finger on it exactly, and as a result will generally start to treat your proposals and characters with suspicion. Which will lead to even more hostile DMing, and so on.

As for the 'wants to play official', I'll admit that 'canon-seeking' players are a personal pet peeve. I put no real value in a player's desire to play 'official D&D' and would generally warn them ahead of time 'this is probably not the table for you if you really care about RAW or canon or official sources'.


Plus now we have even to explore. We've gone from an difficultdiscovery "Thoon made psionis" (assuming the Underdark races don't play an important part in the narrative), to nothing. You have put effort into homebrew, that reduces the amount of plot hooks available.

Not really any new effort in this case - there are plenty of point pool based casting systems out there. I'd propose three options to the party: the spell point system I used for all casting in my previous campaign, Advanced d20 Magic's system with Fort saves swapped to Will saves and components made mandatory, or 'everyone is psionic but everyone calls it arcane magic and there are no wizards'. My strong suggestion would be the first since that was basically what we came up with after playing - and liking - Advanced d20 Magic but having problems with some of its effects.

[Boci]

I'm being consistent with what you've told me. Now, if you wanted an Underdark campaign, I'm sure that can be arranged.

No you're not. You're insisting that the mechanics a character used be shoehorned not only into the setting at large, but which specific care to make sure the surface dwellers in bulk know about it. This is an arbitrary requirement coming solely from you.


If 'organic' here means 'fantasy kitchen sink', then I can't say I care for it at all. Chekov's Gun is a trope for a reason - it works.

Organic as in not making a mechanic setting importance solely because a player is using it. Do you really not see what I mean?

A DM should not try to make the world 100% complete on his first try, because subsequent addons will make it better.


A good start would be to actually be honest with the DM about your reasons for wanting something. Trying to use the 'officialness' of a source to trick them into including something is getting off to a really bad start. Once you go adversarial, it should be no shock when you start getting randomly shut down by the DM for arbitrary reasons - you haven't been honest with them, and when things don't add up about your behavior they'll have an intuitive understanding of that even if they can't put their finger on it exactly, and as a result will generally start to treat your proposals and characters with suspicion. Which will lead to even more hostile DMing, and so on.

Hello straw man. Two things wrong with this line of argument:

1. Why would you assume I wouldn't be honest with the DM?

2. If this was a real game, I would have access to at the very least the cliff notes of the definitive setting. I lack this here, which for the third or fourth time, hampers my ability to integrate a sub system.

3. Just to be clear, this isn't a real game, we do not know each other, we are not talking face to face, so attempting to cut and paste the template of this conversation into real life is an exercise in pointlessness. This kinda relates to points 1 and 2, but is more general.


As for the 'wants to play official', I'll admit that 'canon-seeking' players are a personal pet peeve. I put no real value in a player's desire to play 'official D&D' and would generally warn them ahead of time 'this is probably not the table for you if you really care about RAW or canon or official sources'.

So you don't care about them wanting to get experience with a coll but rarely used subsystem that could be used in other games, despite the fact you previously said the game should focus on the players?


Not really any new effort in this case

But do any of these have the plot hooks of the Thoon idea? Like the edit you missed:

Would it seem random and arbitrary for an enemy wizard to yell "You thrall of Thoon, your fey magic shall not best mine!" High int, all knowledges as class skills so he has heard of Thoon, and he recognizes the tell tale signs of the magic they developed. Now the player has a reason to specifically research it.

[Togo]

That's a shame, your really limiting the world you can produce with just one mind working on it.

I prefer to use collaborative worlds, but I generally don't have the face time with the players.


Edit: I'm not saying all players should contribute equally, or as much as the DM, and obviously the DM will probably need to make changes, and not use some ideas. But if you are just going to flat out reject world building suggestions solely because they come from the players and not from you, that's nothing but a limitation.

Depends on how you construct worlds. Refusing suggestions simply because they come from a player would be bad, but fortunately no one here has suggested that. Refusing suggestions because they take time and effort to integrate them properly into the game world is only sensible, and doing otherwise would be a serious limitation on world-building.


You keep saying, but I fail to see how it is true. To me, its just seems to stem from the inorganic world building notion that a PCs power much feature significantly in the campaign world. A PC should fit in as much as possible, but their mechanics don't have to.

You may be happy to have mechanics entirely divorced from the flavour of the setting, but I prefer there to be interaction between the two. Ideally a set of a mechanics should be enough to change the flavour, by altering the pattern of decisions and outcomes.

The bottom line is that other people run games that differ from yours, and that they have concerns that simply aren't an issue in your games.

[Boci]

The bottom line is that other people run games that differ from yours, and that they have concerns that simply aren't an issue in your games.

Of course I understand that. What I don't understand is why people who pride themselves on complex world building insist on having the mechanics of the PC worked into the setting as a whole, despite that not being a requirement to good world building, and automatically doing that being detrimental to verisimilitude.

Also I don't get what you mean by this:


You may be happy to have mechanics entirely divorced from the flavour of the setting, but I prefer there to be interaction between the two. Ideally a set of a mechanics should be enough to change the flavour, by altering the pattern of decisions and outcomes.

The thing about "the flavour of the setting" to me is that, a setting exists outside the scope of the story too. So by not weaving the mechanics of psionics into the narrative in an immediately obvious way, but rather one that would have been immediately obvious in another time/place (specifically Lithid culture, the Underdark, say two hundred years ago), you strengthen the flavour of the setting, but having a hidden reminder that things happen before, outside the spotlight of the narrative, and things will continue to happen afterwards to (by implication).

[illyahr]

The thing about "the flavour of the setting" to me is that, a setting exists outside the scope of the story too. So by not weaving the mechanics of psionics into the narrative in an immediately obvious way, but rather one that would have been immediately obvious in another time/place (specifically Lithid culture, the Underdark, say two hundred years ago), you strengthen the flavour of the setting, but having a hidden reminder that things happen before, outside the spotlight of the narrative, and things will continue to happen afterwards to (by implication).

See, this is where the disconnect occurs. To a lot of DM's the setting and story are deeply interwoven. Adding a new mechanic to the campaign (adjusting the setting) has serious repercussions on the story in place. I'm not saying your way is wrong, just that some people do things differently.

[Boci]

See, this is where the disconnect occurs. To a lot of DM's the setting and story are deeply interwoven. Adding a new mechanic to the campaign (adjusting the setting) has serious repercussions on the story in place. I'm not saying your way is wrong, just that some people do things differently.

Okay, and what benefit does that have? The story is already by necessity going to be focused on the characters, what advantage is there to also warping the world around them? This isn't necessarily addressed at, its to any DM who uses this methods, why do they think this is a good approach? Would you consider not customizing the world to the PCs?

And to answer my own question (only in reverse obviously), I think explorer a world that has existed before and will exist after you is far more rewarding than exploring a world built with you in mind, but yeah, if the players wanted i, I would customize the world to their characters, but it would feel weird. For starters, in addition to being inorganic, it means if a characters dies or retires, or a new player joins, any class that wasn't played initially won't be available, because the world wasn't made with it in mind. I don't have this problem with my approach.

[NichG]

No you're not. You're insisting that the mechanics a character used be shoehorned not only into the setting at large, but which specific care to make sure the surface dwellers in bulk know about it. This is an arbitrary requirement coming solely from you.


Or alternately, 'psionics is offlimit during a surface-dwelling campaign because the surface dwellers do not know about it or have interaction with the underdark'. Which doesn't actually get you what you want, so I didn't bother to mention it as a logical possibility.



Organic as in not making a mechanic setting importance solely because a player is using it. Do you really not see what I mean?
A DM should not try to make the world 100% complete on his first try, because subsequent addons will make it better.


No, I really do not see what you mean as far as a positive trait. This supposed 'organic' feature as you're describing it to me says 'arbitrary' or 'random' or 'disconnected'. Its by no means a positive thing.

Flexible is one thing - things that haven't been encountered yet should be free to change so as to improve the flow of the campaign. But 'haven't been encountered yet' includes not just overt encounters but also implied ones, things that could be determined through logical processes based on what is currently known.



Hello straw man. Two things wrong with this line of argument:

1. Why would you assume I wouldn't be honest with the DM?


Because you haven't been honest with us in this conversation. You said as much in your previous post, where when I mentioned you just wanting the mechanics you agreed and said the problem was getting your former DM's homebrew in, so using psionics as a proxy. So basically this entire discussion about the fluff and good worldbuilding has been on a somewhat dishonest ground on your part - because you're not actually trying to make the worldbuilding or setting better, just trying to get us on the other side of it to back down on our requirements.

That sort of thing comes through in behavior and speech, even if it wasn't intended as a discrete act of lying. This sort of thing is very common with players who suspect that the DM will not actually let them have what they want if the DM knew the real reason (either from past experience or lack of trust), which results in all sorts of train wrecks later on when the DM or the player is caught by surprise due to the different underlying assumptions.



2. If this was a real game, I would have access to at the very least the cliff notes of the definitive setting. I lack this here, which for the third or fourth time, hampers my ability to integrate a sub system.

3. Just to be clear, this isn't a real game, we do not know each other, we are not talking face to face, so attempting to cut and paste the template of this conversation into real life is an exercise in pointlessness. This kinda relates to points 1 and 2, but is more general.


My thesis here has always been that for me, subsystems should be integrated in the world to give rise to a world that makes sense and which I can think logically about and run consistently. Furthermore, that I have a limited time and span of themes with which to integrate such systems, and that given that constraint I will focus on those subsystems that are either thematically useful or which resonate strongly with what my players want. Psionics has categorically been something that has not been worth the effort, either from my point of view as DM or from my players' point of view. I gave a detailed process by which I take into account all of those factors, and have given statistics by which psionics has generally not been worth the time.

Your objection is 'look, it isn't hard at all if the players are on board'. But if the players are on board, that gets caught at an earlier stage of my campaign creation process - when the players tell me what they're interested in playing and I use that to determine where to place the effort.

If my players really wanted psionics that would indicate that its worth the effort, and I gave examples of things I could do in order to bring that into the game - that's why 'the real game' example matters. Because if no one at the table wants psionics - players or DM - why the heck should I actually bother to include them?

So really, what is your problem with this approach?



So you don't care about them wanting to get experience with a coll but rarely used subsystem that could be used in other games, despite the fact you previously said the game should focus on the players?

The game should absolutely focus on the players. Thats why I surround myself with players who share my tastes to some extent and want to play the game I want to run. I'd rather just be honest and tell a player 'I don't run the kind of thing you're looking for' than spend two years having a power struggle with them over the system.



But do any of these have the plot hooks of the Thoon idea? Like the edit you missed:


Absolutely - they have all the plot hooks associated with arcane magic, plus whatever else I have time to come up in the time freed up by not having to focus on psionics at all.



Would it seem random and arbitrary for an enemy wizard to yell "You thrall of Thoon, your fey magic shall not best mine!" High int, all knowledges as class skills so he has heard of Thoon, and he recognizes the tell tale signs of the magic they developed. Now the player has a reason to specifically research it.

We're getting off track here by getting into specific NPC behaviors.

[illyahr]

Okay, and what benefit does that have? The story is already by necessity going to be focused on the characters, what advantage is there to also warping the world around them? This isn't necessarily addressed at, its to any DM who uses this methods, why do they think this is a good approach? Would you consider not customizing the world to the PCs?

The players would be able to intuit things about their world without being told. The story doesn't necessarily focus on the PC's, but they can affect it's outcome. Weaving everything together isn't important for a hack-n-slash adventure, but suits players who like to have their efforts affect the world at large. Basing the world around the PC's is a fun way to do a series of mini-quests, but in a larger campaign of war, intrigue, and fate-of-the-world stuff? The PC's are not that important until higher levels. As long as the players are having fun, though, it's just a matter of perspective. Fun is fun, no matter how you go about doing it.

Suffice it to say, people have different ideas on what is fun. You may not understand why others consider something fun, just as some don't understand what you like in a campaign, but that's just how things work out sometimes.

[Togo]

No you're not. You're insisting that the mechanics a character used be shoehorned not only into the setting at large, but which specific care to make sure the surface dwellers in bulk know about it. This is an arbitrary requirement coming solely from you.

All decisions about a game world can be described as arbitrary. Including deciding to include psionics.

Requiring that a player character be an active part of the campaign world is a requirement yes, but it's also a sensible requirement, and one that can help make a better game. It's no less arbitrary to demand that your character's background be held in a bottle, touching nothing in the game world.

I'm not really understanding your objection here. You ask why a particular decision is made, it is explained why it has been made, you decry it as an arbitrary decision, and demand the opposite. Why is it bad to run games one way rather than another?


Organic as in not making a mechanic setting importance solely because a player is using it. Do you really not see what I mean?

I really don't see what you mean. Can you explain? What is a mechanic setting?


2. If this was a real game, I would have access to at the very least the cliff notes of the definitive setting. I lack this here, which for the third or fourth time, hampers my ability to integrate a sub system.

Why does it matter whether you can integrate a subsystem? In my games, we don't have enough time to work together, In NichG's he wants to keep enough of the setting secret that integrating extras runs into problems that he has explained to you. The basics of collaboration involve respecting the boundaries of other contributors, which means that the DM is still entitled to say no to psionics for reasons that won't necessarily be clear to you as a player, which in turn means that you still have the same problem you're facing now. The idea that you can research the setting and suggest your own changes doesn't change that in the slightest. So why do you keep on bringing it up?

[illyahr]

I really don't see what you mean. Can you explain? What is a mechanic setting?

I think they meant "mechanic setting-important" on that one.

[Boci]

Or alternately, 'psionics is offlimit during a surface-dwelling campaign because the surface dwellers do not know about it or have interaction with the underdark'. Which doesn't actually get you what you want, so I didn't bother to mention it as a logical possibility.

So what happens is one of the Underdark dwellers who is psionic goes to the surface? They cease to exist, magically become a arcane class?


No, I really do not see what you mean as far as a positive trait. This supposed 'organic' feature as you're describing it to me says 'arbitrary' or 'random' or 'disconnected'. Its by no means a positive thing.

I'm struggling to see how I can convey my ideas more clearly, but maybe this will. Its an imperfect example, but shares similar notions:

PC: "Hey, in this game you have set in our modern world, I wanted to play a martial artist, but not an eastern, a western. Here's some example pictures of Germanic knights practicing it"

DM: "Oh but you're a PC, and hardly everyone knows about western martial arts. Now I will have to rewrite western pop culture so that western martial arts play just as important a role as eastern martial arts"

PC: "Or I could just use a relatively unknown fighting style..."

You see what I mean? Obviously not a a perfectly accurate example, but replace "eastern martial arts" with "arcane magic" and "western martial arts" with "psionic". Psionics does not have to be well known just because a PC is using it.


because you're not actually trying to make the worldbuilding or setting better, just trying to get us on the other side of it to back down on our requirements.

That sort of thing comes through in behavior and speech, even if it wasn't intended as a discrete act of lying.

You're wrong. I genuinely believe in what I am saying about good world building, as a DM and a player. I just think it is side note that a player may want experience with a class they can use in other groups is also worthy of consideration.


Your objection is 'look, it isn't hard at all if the players are on board'. But if the players are on board, that gets caught at an earlier stage of my campaign creation process - when the players tell me what they're interested in playing and I use that to determine where to place the effort.

You may think my "good worldbuilding" was just a excuse, but it isn't, I genuinely believe in it. So its not just that. I do think subsystems should be allowed in a game without them being integrated into the setting by and large, and the setting will be better because of it.


If my players really wanted psionics that would indicate that its worth the effort, and I gave examples of things I could do in order to bring that into the game - that's why 'the real game' example matters. Because if no one at the table wants psionics - players or DM - why the heck should I actually bother to include them?

Yes, but the problem comes when you try and cut and paste my words here to a real life conversation. In real life, I probably would have opened with "Hi, my names Zoltan. How ya doing?" not "I want psionics"


So really, what is your problem with this approach?

Good world building, which takes into account that things can exists without featuring majorly in the , and on a side note a preference for experience with an official class that thus has a greater chance of me being able to reuse it in another DM's game.


Absolutely - they have all the plot hooks associated with arcane magic, plus whatever else I have time to come up in the time freed up by not having to focus on psionics at all.

Your version isn't going to get the players to venture into Thoon. Mine could. Plus how does your common magic system have the same plot hoks as an incredably rare one?


We're getting off track here by getting into specific NPC behaviors.

I was demonstrating a potential plot hook my version has that your "arcane caster with spell points".


The players would be able to intuit things about their world without being told. The story doesn't necessarily focus on the PC's, but they can affect it's outcome. Weaving everything together isn't important for a hack-n-slash adventure, but suits players who like to have their efforts affect the world at large. Basing the world around the PC's is a fun way to do a series of mini-quests, but in a larger campaign of war, intrigue, and fate-of-the-world stuff? The PC's are not that important until higher levels. As long as the players are having fun, though, it's just a matter of perspective. Fun is fun, no matter how you go about doing it.

Most of the things you listed above are just good game design. How many of those happen only if the story AND game setting revolve around the PCs?


All decisions about a game world can be described as arbitrary. Including deciding to include psionics.

Requiring that a player character be an active part of the campaign world is a requirement yes, but it's also a sensible requirement, and one that can help make a better game. It's no less arbitrary to demand that your character's background be held in a bottle, touching nothing in the game world.

I'm not really understanding your objection here. You ask why a particular decision is made, it is explained why it has been made, you decry it as an arbitrary decision, and demand the opposite. Why is it bad to run games one way rather than another?

That is why I asked what DM who use the "setting revolves around the PCs" approach to world building why they think that's a good approach? Because I wanted to hear what they had to say.

Also I didn't demand the opposite, I said always, automatically making the PCs mechanic world centric is bad.

I really don't see what you mean. Can you explain? What is a mechanic setting?[/QUOTE]

What illyahr said.


Why does it matter whether you can integrate a subsystem? In my games, we don't have enough time to work together, In NichG's he wants to keep enough of the setting secret that integrating extras runs into problems that he has explained to you. The basics of collaboration involve respecting the boundaries of other contributors, which means that the DM is still entitled to say no to psionics for reasons that won't necessarily be clear to you as a player, which in turn means that you still have the same problem you're facing now. The idea that you can research the setting and suggest your own changes doesn't change that in the slightest. So why do you keep on bringing it up?

But you don't lose anything by including psionics with my Thoon explanation, not even any time, because its a self-contained event that only opens up if the DM wishes it to.

If you want to elaborate on it, sure that will take time, but its your own choice. And its a quest, planning them will always take time.


I think they meant "mechanic setting-important" on that one.

That's it, thanks.

[Togo]

Of course I understand that. What I don't understand is why people who pride themselves on complex world building insist on having the mechanics of the PC worked into the setting as a whole, despite that not being a requirement to good world building,

Because it allows you to do things with the game that you otherwise couldn't do. It's not the only way to run a game, but it is an entirely valid approach, and I'm not sure why you have a problem with it.


and automatically doing that being detrimental to verisimilitude.

It's not. For that statement to be true, it would need to be the case that there exists no game world where integrating the mechanics of the PC into the mechanics of the setting results in the same or increased verisimilitude.

[Talya]

(1) The existing "Vancian" magic system is the base, automatically part of the system. Psionics are not. Psionics adds "Spellcasting Type 2." We don't really need another spellcasting system. It doesn't really add anything new, and ramps up the complexity.

(2) I hate power-point type systems. They remind me of when I played Rifts back in high school...where we had P.P.E. for magic and I.S.P. for psionics. It also makes me think I should see a blue mana bar on a screen somewhere. (Yes, I also dislike hit points. But they're already there.)

(3) Flavor. I've never had a desire to PLAY them. Psionics always feels more sci-fi (psi-fi?) than Fantasy to me. From Charles Xavier to Lyta Alexander, I tend to associate psi abilities with a different genre. I don't like the style.

[Togo]

I think they meant "mechanic setting-important" on that one.

Still doesn't make sense. The point is nothing to do with whether a mechanic is important, but rather whether it exists within the setting and the implications on the setting have been considered. Why would it matter how well-known or important it is?

[Boci]

Because it allows you to do things with the game that you otherwise couldn't do. It's not the only way to run a game, but it is an entirely valid approach, and I'm not sure why you have a problem with it.

Because I don't see any advantages, and I listed what I thought were the strong points of non-PCs centric world building. Coul you list an example? I am genuinely curious.


It's not. For that statement to be true, it would need to be the case that there exists no game world where integrating the mechanics of the PC into the mechanics of the setting results in the same or increased verisimilitude.

Note the clause automatic. There;s nothing wrong with doing it, but doing it automatically, solely because the player's choice of class for their character. Because a world should not suddenly change because a player decides to go psion instead of wizard. It should be the same world as there was before, only now the story involves a psion, not a wizard.
Yes the origin of the psion class needs to come from somewhere, but it doesn't need to effect the whole world, and certainly not immediately.

If you are okay with "Thoon made psions" piece of fluff when there are no psionic PCs, I feel you should be okay with it when there are as well. For reasons I have explained multiple times.

[Ssalarn]

PC: "Hey, in this game you have set in our modern world, I wanted to play a martial artist, but not an eastern, a western. Here's some example pictures of Germanic knights practicing it"

DM: "Oh but you're a PC, and hardly everyone knows about western martial arts. Now I will have to rewrite western pop culture so that western martial arts play just as important a role as eastern martial arts"

PC: "Or I could just use a relatively unknown fighting style..."

You see what I mean? Obviously not a a perfectly accurate example, but replace "eastern martial arts" with "arcane magic" and "western martial arts" with "psionic". Psionics does not have to be well known just because a PC is using it.



So much this. A player wanting to play a psion does not automatically mean he's asking the DM to rewrite the campaign world so that psionics is common. PCs in general are supposed to be relatively rare and heroic individuals. Maybe my ability to manifest psionics is a highly unlikely result of various influences in my family tree resulting in me being born with unusual capabilities (pretty much the same explanation as sorcerers). Maybe my psychic warrior was trained in a remote dojo or monastery that has uncovered these techniques over centuries or even millennia of martial practice, evolving in the same way as monks but focused on entirely different avenues of thought or technique.

Wanting to play a particular class that uses an uncommon power source does not mean that the DM needs to rewrite his world to make it a common thing. It just means that he needs to allow enough room in his world for the player to evolve their own roots and story. D&D is, after all, cooperative story telling. I worry that DMs who keep too tight a rein on the elements of their campaign world are missing out on a lot of the true fun the game has to offer when a group of creative people come together and each tell their piece of the unfolding story. I, and most of the people I've played with over the years, am not looking for someone to tell me about my character. I'm looking for someone to set the stage so I can tell everyone about my character. I don't need a DM to create an entire nation based on my chosen class or power source; I just need one willing to let me tell my story.

[NichG]

So what happens is one of the Underdark dwellers who is psionic goes to the surface? They cease to exist, magically become a arcane class?


A couple possibilities:

- This is something that happens with some regularity (e.g. the Underdark is connected to the surface) and so there is impact. People who live in Waterdeep or other places with Underdark connections know about the raiders with strange non-magical magic. Governments and significant NPCs are aware and have reached some sort of sets of decisions with respect to it, and it isn't actually an unknown or a mystery.

- This is something that never/rarely happens, in which case why does your particular PC get to be the one example of it happening? The guy playing the wizard doesn't have a corresponding cool advantage that his powers are completely unknown to the other people in the main region of the game, or that he could start a rennaisance by introducing a lost/unknown form of magic to the world, or whatever. In any other game than D&D, this kind of thing would require you to expend a significant build resource to get it. So one could certainly do that - it costs +1 LA to take levels in anything 'rare' - but in D&D paying combat ability for fluff ability or vice versa generally doesn't work too well as a mechanic (witness the Paladin) so I'd be inclined against it. Another possibility is to run a campaign where the point of the campaign is in fact that the PCs are weird/special snowflakes, in which case I'm going to have to go and figure out the reason why that's the case and make the plot about that. Doing that every so often can be fun, but doing it every campaign is pretty limiting.



I'm struggling to see how I can convey my ideas more clearly, but maybe this will. Its an imperfect example, but shares similar notions:

PC: "Hey, in this game you have set in our modern world, I wanted to play a martial artist, but not an eastern, a western. Here's some example pictures of Germanic knights practicing it"

DM: "Oh but you're a PC, and hardly everyone knows about western martial arts. Now I will have to rewrite western pop culture so that western martial arts play just as important a role as eastern martial arts"

PC: "Or I could just use a relatively unknown fighting style..."

You see what I mean? Obviously not a a perfectly accurate example, but replace "eastern martial arts" with "arcane magic" and "western martial arts" with "psionic". Psionics does not have to be well known just because a PC is using it.


The fact that 'martial arts' is different than 'my personal flavor of physics', and other such things? Like it or not, D&D does put more plot potency on a T2 character than a T5 or T6 character. A civilization missing a particular style of martial arts isn't a big deal outside of a Wuxia setting where 'martial arts' actually is code for 'supernatural powers' - no one is going to go to war over trying to steal the technique for a kotegaeshi or something like that. But 'hey, theres this power that lets us rewrite reality, but we're not going to bother to do anything about it or look into it' is really not the same thing at all. Nor for the matter is something like Binders - 'hey, there are vestiges of incredibly old, knowledgeable, and powerful beings on the edge of the void - lets not actually bother to look into this', even if they may not be quite as powerful, or Warlocks - 'hey, it looks like demons are giving power to people in order to make their way into the world, guess we should just ignore that right?'.

Even if a given nation has utterly failed to successfully exploit that knowledge and doesn't have a psion amongst them, and the inventors have the actual knowledge successfully bottled up and secret, it should still be a Big Deal. That secretive nation will be on everyone's minds, and people will have something to say about them: 'how do their mages cast without components?!', etc.



You're wrong. I genuinely believe in what I am saying about good world building, as a DM and a player. I just think it is side note that a player may want experience with a class they can use in other groups is also worthy of consideration.


If a player just wants to mess with a system for a bit without much commitment to it, oneshots are a good way to do that. Otherwise, what part of 'if a player expresses interest I can make the campaign about that system' is unclear?

The reason I suspect your motives here is that you aren't just asking me to run a game where a player can 'experience this class', you're asking me to do it specifically in a way that I consider to be a bad campaign with poor integration between mechanics, fluff, and setting. What's weird to me is, nothing I've said says that the player can't actually do this but you're still objecting over the fact that I said 'okay, but I'm going to make it part of the setting'. That is what makes it seem to me as if what you really want has nothing at all to do with playing a psion.



You may think my "good worldbuilding" was just a excuse, but it isn't, I genuinely believe in it. So its not just that. I do think subsystems should be allowed in a game without them being integrated into the setting by and large, and the setting will be better because of it.


Okay, then we simply fundamentally disagree on what makes a good setting or story. To me, things have to make sense. It does not make sense that something as huge as reality-shaping power ends up being confined to some random corner of the underdark unless there is an underlying reason beyond 'no one has bothered to export it yet'.



Your version isn't going to get the players to venture into Thoon. Mine could. Plus how does your common magic system have the same plot hoks as an incredably rare one?

I was demonstrating a potential plot hook my version has that your "arcane caster with spell points".

I should say, given the descriptions of former campaigns that I posted a bit back, obviously I have all sorts of secret magic systems and things like that going on. But the key thing is, they're all integrated into the setting and are all still significant. If there's a magic system that involves 'treating life like a story instead of like a world bound by logic', then that points to the existence of creatures made of living story, incursions from another reality, and an equivalent to the Pact Primeval between the forces of that universe and the one the players are in - things that became important later on in the story; and all of that was tied to the fact that one side of the night sky was always bright, which the PCs eventually discovered the reason for and everything clicked together.

But also, that 'secret magic system' wasn't just something tossed in where a PC started with it. No one knew about it, you couldn't get trained in it, but the PCs discovered it by being in a situation which was anomalous for the world - e.g. they got to have it first because they were the first ones to get there, because of in-game actions. And then when they got to a wider world that had been exposed to it earlier, they found that in that world it wasn't so secret.

On the other hand, a common magic system can give you tons of plot hooks because people know about it and can make their own conclusions without being fed information from the DM. For example, I ran a campaign where there was a common magic system that allowed various forms of artist to evoke different magical effects with their art - writers could take control of people, dancers could manipulate their personal time and their state of being, painters could scry on people through their paintings or make portals, etc.

Because the magic system was common, the players could get the cues and figure things out - that guy is behaving strangely, maybe there's a Writer involved! Or, something is weird about these hallways, could it be that an Architect has adjusted the structure? That allowed them to respond to hints and clues that they wouldn't've been able to otherwise. It also mean that 'maybe there's a Writer involved' became a reasonable conclusion, whereas for a super-rare magic system 'maybe there's a Psion involved?' would be ridiculous.

[Togo]

I'm struggling to see how I can convey my ideas more clearly, but maybe this will. Its an imperfect example, but shares similar notions:

PC: "Hey, in this game you have set in our modern world, I wanted to play a martial artist, but not an eastern, a western. Here's some example pictures of Germanic knights practicing it"

DM: "Oh but you're a PC, and hardly everyone knows about western martial arts. Now I will have to rewrite western pop culture so that western martial arts play just as important a role as eastern martial arts"

PC: "Or I could just use a relatively unknown fighting style..."

You see what I mean?

No, not really.

DM: "But that doesn't make any difference. You still know it. You still learned it from somewhere, they still learned it from somewhere, people who have an expert interest in martial arts and fighting style will still know about it, we still need to consider how people will react when they see it. So we have to work out what to do about elements of your background that appear in the game, existing martial experts in the setting and what level they understand it at, whether are competitions and a whole cultural background around it, and so on...

PC: Oh, so how many people know about it doesn't make any difference...

DM: Not really, no. We also have to consider how any edge cases between your capabilities and those of potential opponents might stack up. The rules cover the basics, but there are some interesting encounters coming up that I'll have to work out to see how their special abilities interact with yours.

PC: We could just assume that my rules trump everyone else's...?

DM: Then we need to define what the skill actually covers. We need to be clear what you mean by 'Western Martial arts', which could cover everything from Smallsword and Backsword manoeuvres through English fencing-based pugilism and bastard sword fighting of the Italian school, to entirely unarmed styles, like Cornish Hug Wrestling. Since I'm trained in three of these styles already, we may have different views on how they actually work.

PC: So it's not possible then?

DM: Oh, sure it's possible. It'll just take me some time to fully integrate into the game. After all <chuckles> it's not like you're trying to change the way reality itself works, or even introduce something into a setting that wasn't there to begin with.

PC: Oh, um... So what about this "Randian psychic actualisation blast" power. It works just like having a gun, except that it isn't a gun, no one can take it away from you, it runs on a power point total rather than bullets, and it's existence means that reality doesn't the work the same way as you assumed it did when the rest of the setting was written. You allowed a martial arts variant, and allowing this is exactly the same.

DM: ??!

[Togo]

Because I don't see any advantages, and I listed what I thought were the strong points of non-PCs centric world building. Coul you list an example? I am genuinely curious.

You don't see any advantage in the PC's background, interests, abilities and background forming part of the game?


Note the clause automatic.

No one has suggested doing anything automatically.


There;s nothing wrong with doing it, but doing it automatically, solely because the player's choice of class for their character.

Ok, so you agree that there's nothing wrong with having a world with no psions in it?


Because a world should not suddenly change because a player decides to go psion instead of wizard. It should be the same world as there was before, only now the story involves a psion, not a wizard.

That is a change to the world. It's certainly a change to the setting. And it's absolutely a change to the story.


Yes the origin of the psion class needs to come from somewhere, but it doesn't need to effect the whole world, and certainly not immediately.

It does if you planned to have the PC's background, or the PC's capability, or the metaphysics of the game world feature as part of the plot or setting.


If you are okay with "Thoon made psions" piece of fluff when there are no psionic PCs,

I'm not. As previously described.

[Amphetryon]

They're all subsystems that regularly don't get included in games.

He was claiming that 'not being able to do a full job of incorporating it into a game' was not a good reason to exclude a subsystem, so I assume he includes all subsystems in his own games. The DMG has a nice subsystem for blaster rifles and laser weaponry.

That assumption simply doesn't follow from his stated position, though. Hence my confusion.

[Boci]

A couple possibilities:

- This is something that happens with some regularity (e.g. the Underdark is connected to the surface) and so there is impact. People who live in Waterdeep or other places with Underdark connections know about the raiders with strange non-magical magic. Governments and significant NPCs are aware and have reached some sort of sets of decisions with respect to it, and it isn't actually an unknown or a mystery.

Sounds good. Reasonable explanation, fits in with the fluff, plenty of plot hooks and development. Would this work for you in your game?


The fact that 'martial arts' is different than 'my personal flavor of physics', and other such things? Like it or not, D&D does put more plot potency on a T2 character than a T5 or T6 character. A civilization missing a particular style of martial arts isn't a big deal outside of a Wuxia setting where 'martial arts' actually is code for 'supernatural powers' - no one is going to go to war over trying to steal the technique for a kotegaeshi or something like that. But 'hey, theres this power that lets us rewrite reality, but we're not going to bother to do anything about it or look into it' is really not the same thing at all. Nor for the matter is something like Binders - 'hey, there are vestiges of incredibly old, knowledgeable, and powerful beings on the edge of the void - lets not actually bother to look into this', even if they may not be quite as powerful, or Warlocks - 'hey, it looks like demons are giving power to people in order to make their way into the world, guess we should just ignore that right?'.

Even if a given nation has utterly failed to successfully exploit that knowledge and doesn't have a psion amongst them, and the inventors have the actual knowledge successfully bottled up and secret, it should still be a Big Deal. That secretive nation will be on everyone's minds, and people will have something to say about them: 'how do their mages cast without components?!', etc.

But what advantage would a nation with psions and mages have over a nation with mages? Arcane magic is stronger, and most of the uses of arcane magic are not terribly improved by a lack of somatic and verbal components. In fact, the only real use they have is vs. mages, and since this involves the element of surprise, so they have a vested interest in keeping their presence on the quiet. Other nations would know about them, and would try to learn the secrets. Very intrigue heavy and spyish. And the PCs could stumble upon it.

NPC Mage: Thralmack has sent a ghost mage. We need you to help find and stop them.

PC: What's a ghost made?

NPC mage: A mage capable of casting spells without the use of components. Their spells cannot be identified without magic.

PC: What? Why don't we know about them?

NPC Mage: Thralmack isn't going to tell you, and most mage academies don't want people panicking. Its not as if commoners are going to be able to tell the two apart, ghost mages are smart you see, they will often fake the components to a spell. Its what makes them so hard to tell apart.

Of course with the above explanation, maybe other nations don't even know about ghost mages. They could just think "Thralmack mages all know how to cast spells without components, and their spells cannot be identified." Would they really think the logical conclusion was "an entire new form of mage"? As oppose to "well trained mages with a secret technique that makes them potentially dangerous in certain, specific circumstances".


The reason I suspect your motives here is that you aren't just asking me to run a game where a player can 'experience this class', you're asking me to do it specifically in a way that I consider to be a bad campaign with poor integration between mechanics, fluff, and setting. What's weird to me is, nothing I've said says that the player can't actually do this but you're still objecting over the fact that I said 'okay, but I'm going to make it part of the setting'. That is what makes it seem to me as if what you really want has nothing at all to do with playing a psion.

Okay, then we simply fundamentally disagree on what makes a good setting or story. To me, things have to make sense. It does not make sense that something as huge as reality-shaping power ends up being confined to some random corner of the underdark unless there is an underlying reason beyond 'no one has bothered to export it yet'.

Of course the Underdark has been explored. Does that mean it hold no secrets?


No, not really.

Two problems:

1. The point of that exercise was that you could have a character with a rare fighting style/power source, without the whole world knowing about it?

2. So you're arguing slippery slope? That player is just being unreasonable, which isn't an argument.


You don't see any advantage in the PC's background, interests, abilities and background forming part of the game?

Never said that. I said I don't see the advantage of always doing so, to the point where if you cannot work the subsystem meaningfully into the immeidate nerrative you will simply not allow it.


No one has suggested doing anything automatically.

Yes they have. Hence why psionics will only work in a game where psionics features heavily.


Ok, so you agree that there's nothing wrong with having a world with no psions in it?

If no one wants to play psionics, then sure there's no problem with not specifically putting them in. But there is a different between not immeediatly including them and not including them full stop. Plus it is a shame if someone wants to play them and cannot.


That is a change to the world. It's certainly a change to the setting. And it's absolutely a change to the story.

It HAS to change the story. But it doesn't have to change the world and setting in any obvious way, because the world and setting exist outside the bounds of the current story.


It does if you planned to have the PC's background, or the PC's capability, or the metaphysics of the game world feature as part of the plot or setting.

Why? Why cannot psionics exist through reasons that are irrelevant to the humanoid lands where the game starts? Are they the centre of the multiverse? What if psionics come from another plane?


I'm not. As previously described.

But why? You lose nothing by including it. It takes no time, and you now have potential plot hooks with that tibit, and some interesting fluff. Worst case scenario you ignore the plot hooks and fluff and lose nothing.

[NichG]

Sounds good. Reasonable explanation, fits in with the fluff, plenty of plot hooks and development. Would this work for you in your game?

Yes, this'd be fine.



But what advantage would a nation with psions and mages have over a nation with mages? Arcane magic is stronger, and most of the uses of arcane magic are not terribly improved by a lack of somatic and verbal components. In fact, the only real use they have is vs. mages, and since this involves the element of surprise, so they have a vested interest in keeping their presence on the quiet. Other nations would know about them, and would try to learn the secrets. Very intrigue heavy and spyish. And the PCs could stumble upon it.

So one obvious advantage is 'twice as many mages', in the sense that affinity towards being a Psion and affinity towards being a Wizard aren't going to be mutually inclusive (yes, high Int is important, but assumedly there will also be other factors). Training time may differ as well. Wizards and psions also function differently in the details which means that there'd be certain structures/organizations/etc to best make use of the resource in a strategic and tactical fashion - probably something which requires a bit of deeper analysis to really get 'right'. Psions for example tend to be powerful specialists, which means that they can actually exceed wizards within their specialities over certain level ranges - this means that a smart distribution of specialists can do better than just throwing generalists at it.

Putting aside the combat side of things, there are social impacts. Wizards are a representation of 'knowledge is power', whereas psions are more of a representation of 'mental discipline and will is power'. If that idea is strongly represented in the host nations then it can influence the character of their society as a whole. The counter-culture to those ideas would also be different in each case; thematically wizardry tends to fall in with accusations of heretical or atrocity-committing behavior (necromancy, summoning demons, etc), whereas psionics tends to be more ethically neutral and its detractors may be more concerned about elitism or power being conferred by an accident of birth. So those things can also impact the society they're in.



(Ghost mage example)

Of course with the above explanation, maybe other nations don't even know about ghost mages. They could just think "Thralmack mages all know how to cast spells without components, and their spells cannot be identified." Would they really think the logical conclusion was "an entire new form of mage"? As oppose to "well trained mages with a secret technique that makes them potentially dangerous in certain, specific circumstances".

They likely would. Doubly so if I were running it (its an unpopular choice, but I always preferred the idea of running psionics without magic/psionics transparency. Its a different kind of power, a different set of laws of physics, so it makes sense to me that its not interchangeable). Within that context, the one nation would notice that Detect Magic fails to detect the spells of a 'ghost mage'. That would be a big deal. Their scholars would be up in arms trying to figure it out.


Of course the Underdark has been explored. Does that mean it hold no secrets?

There's a secret and there's a '*wink wink nudge nudge*secret'. What you were describing sounds like the second one - a secret just because of some accident of setting-wide laziness, rather than because its truly hidden. Its sort of a 'I want this to be a secret but I still want to be able to buy dorjes in shops' kind of secret.

Basically if it really is that secret (and given the scale of importance of the secret), the PC just showing up with it really strains credulity. In some sense, this is about making the world not revolve around the PC, in the sense that the PC doesn't get to just start the game as an exemption to the fact that there's some world-shattering secret left undiscovered deep in the Underdark.

Incidentally, in response to your call for 'what kinds of things can you only run in a world that revolves around the PCs' I want to point out that what I'm describing is actually not making the world revolve around the PCs - its requiring the PCs to play people who are actually from roughly the same world as the NPCs. If a player says 'I want to play with psionics' and I say 'okay, I'll run Dark Sun', thats not me distorting the setting in order to make it fit the PC, thats me choosing to run a game in which a psionic PC makes sense. Its not like I'm taking Faerun and making it into Dark Sun, I'm just deciding that its better for me to run a game with psionic PCs in the one setting instead of the other.

With custom settings, everything is customized. If my players like anime-styled stuff I'll run an anime-themed setting. But that's not really 'warping the world to fit the anime powers that one guy wanted', thats again just running a setting in which I can provide a satisfying and enjoyable experience given the fact that my players are (implicitly or explicitly) asking for something specific.

[Boci]

Yes, this'd be fine.



So one obvious advantage is 'twice as many mages', in the sense that affinity towards being a Psion and affinity towards being a Wizard aren't going to be mutually inclusive (yes, high Int is important, but assumedly there will also be other factors). Training time may differ as well. Wizards and psions also function differently in the details which means that there'd be certain structures/organizations/etc to best make use of the resource in a strategic and tactical fashion - probably something which requires a bit of deeper analysis to really get 'right'. Psions for example tend to be powerful specialists, which means that they can actually exceed wizards within their specialities over certain level ranges - this means that a smart distribution of specialists can do better than just throwing generalists at it.

Putting aside the combat side of things, there are social impacts. Wizards are a representation of 'knowledge is power', whereas psions are more of a representation of 'mental discipline and will is power'. If that idea is strongly represented in the host nations then it can influence the character of their society as a whole. The counter-culture to those ideas would also be different in each case; thematically wizardry tends to fall in with accusations of heretical or atrocity-committing behavior (necromancy, summoning demons, etc), whereas psionics tends to be more ethically neutral and its detractors may be more concerned about elitism or power being conferred by an accident of birth. So those things can also impact the society they're in.



They likely would. Doubly so if I were running it (its an unpopular choice, but I always preferred the idea of running psionics without magic/psionics transparency. Its a different kind of power, a different set of laws of physics, so it makes sense to me that its not interchangeable). Within that context, the one nation would notice that Detect Magic fails to detect the spells of a 'ghost mage'. That would be a big deal. Their scholars would be up in arms trying to figure it out.

:smallbiggrin: Do you see what just happened? Us two, other the internet, arguing via an internet forum, have, in half a day, made the framework for introducing psionics to a setting. Imagine what would happen if we hadn't been arguing but working together, and knew each other, and so where using IM, or talking face to face.

So do you think that just maybe the problem of not being able to get psionics to fit with your setting, could be over stated?


There's a secret and there's a '*wink wink nudge nudge*secret'. What you were describing sounds like the second one - a secret just because of some accident of setting-wide laziness, rather than because its truly hidden. Its sort of a 'I want this to be a secret but I still want to be able to buy dorjes in shops' kind of secret.

That is a fair point. I think one reason I was so insistent on this is because people often say its so much effort. So I proposed this method which is meant to be easy to slot in, and then it seemed you and I spent more time arguing over it than coming with a mutually satisfactory alternative.


Basically if it really is that secret (and given the scale of importance of the secret), the PC just showing up with it really strains credulity. In some sense, this is about making the world not revolve around the PC, in the sense that the PC doesn't get to just start the game as an exemption to the fact that there's some world-shattering secret left undiscovered deep in the Underdark.

Can you really call psionics "earth shattering" in a world with arcane magic? Its only edge is how unknown it is. Now if it were the other way around, a world with psionic being introduced to arcane magic, the tag "earth shattering" would be apropriate?


Incidentally, in response to your call for 'what kinds of things can you only run in a world that revolves around the PCs' I want to point out that what I'm describing is actually not making the world revolve around the PCs - its requiring the PCs to play people who are actually from roughly the same world as the NPCs.

That is a good point. I think what got me was saying "I need to incorporate your character into the setting", yet the end result was "Therefor you cannot play this character". I know you offered an all psionics campaign, which is really cool of you, but I think a group should be able to play mixed with psionics and non-psionics as well, if that suits them better.

Especially since, wouldn't that logic mean NPCs couldn't suddenly be psionic with no warning? That sounds like it would be a memorable encounter, and as long as the PCs are then informed after wards how it happened in a way thy can potentially harness for themselves, they shouldn't be calling foul.

[NichG]

:smallbiggrin: Do you see what just happened? Us two, other the internet, arguing via an internet forum, have, in half a day, made the framework for introducing psionics to a setting. Imagine what would happen if we hadn't been arguing but working together, and knew each other, and so where using IM, or talking face to face.

So do you think that just maybe the problem of not being able to get psionics to fit with your setting, could be over stated?


No, I actually don't. Half a day - lets call that 8 hours, multiplied by the number of subsystems and things which would require this effort in all published D&D sources (Warlocks, ToB, Shadowcasting, Truenaming, Binders, Psionics, Divine magic, Arcane magic, Incarnum, about a class-worth of snippets from PrCs - I'm looking at you Green Star Adept!, Wu Jen/Shugenja/ Maho from L5R, Weapons of Legacy, Dragonmarks/Eberron stuff, planar Factions things, guns and laser pistols, plus who knows what else), plus perhaps a +50% time adjustment for detailing the stuff we did in broad strokes. That's 192 hours. A bit of an exaggeration? Maybe. But even a half a day is a lot of time to spend on something that isn't important at all.

Thats why my position is that nothing should by default be expected to be included. Spending effort for a reason is fine, but inflicting all of that on a campaign for no other reason than to keep the options open for a new character halfway through the campaign is silly. Its better to focus in on what people are explicitly pursuing, make one or two of those things a really central aspect of the campaign, and explore them deeply - if someone wants to play something that really doesn't fit, I don't think its unreasonable to ask them to wait for the next campaign to come around.

Its sort of like, if you were playing vampires in World of Darkness and someone wanted to bring in a Solar because they really want to try out Exalted, its generally better to say 'okay, the next campaign will be an Exalted campaign' than 'okay, you can play a Solar'.



That is a fair point. I think one reason I was so insistent on this is because people often say its so much effort. So I proposed this method which is meant to be easy to slot in, and then it seemed you and I spent more time arguing over it than coming with a mutually satisfactory alternative.

Well it does take effort. Just because something takes effort doesn't mean that it can't or shouldn't be done. But it does generally mean that there should be a good reason for doing it and that the effort should be recognized (e.g. don't ask the DM to help you fit in psionics, then go 'oh, I changed my mind, lets do incarnum instead' just before the first game).



Can you really call psionics "earth shattering" in a world with arcane magic? Its only edge is how unknown it is. Now if it were the other way around, a world with psionic being introduced to arcane magic, the tag "earth shattering" would be apropriate?


I'd say its still earth shattering. Its as if in the modern world we discovered a fifth fundamental force or something like that. Even if we didn't immediately know the optimal ways to exploit it, the fact that its a whole new way of interacting with the universe means that the potential is there for all sorts of stuff we couldn't do before.

For example, from the point of view of an organization or government in the setting, there aren't going to be so many Lv17 anybodies that they become interchangeable. So the 9th level powers on the arcane and psionic side will be rare resources. That guy with Metafaculty is a big deal, and is no less so just because there's a wizard with Gate or a cleric with True Resurrection. All of them basically have abilities that can reshape the world. That potential is the sort of end-game that makes it a big deal even when most of the time you're talking about low level shmucks slinging around magic missiles and energy bolts.

I mean, I've been in a campaign where we started with 'when you apply an aetheric current to aluminum, its inertial mass is temporarily' and ended up using it to build flying time machines. Small things that break the rules of the world can be made into big things with time and study and development.


Especially since, wouldn't that logic mean NPCs couldn't suddenly be psionic with no warning? That sounds like it would be a memorable encounter, and as long as the PCs are then informed after wards how it happened in a way thy can potentially harness for themselves, they shouldn't be calling foul.

So I guess this comes down to trust between players and DM. When I'm a player, my viewpoint is that the DM can give NPCs/etc any strange powers he wants, but as a PC I will always be constructing a mental model of the world and I will aggressively pursue explanations and anomalies in character. However, I will never tell the DM 'you can't do that' or 'how could he have that power?' or things like that. I will assume that everything the DM throws at us is information that is consistent with the rest of the universe - including things I don't know yet - and will act on that rationale. But if it turns out to be impossible for my character to harness a particular power, I'm okay with that too - so long as I can still fit the information about it into a sensible world view. E.g. I'm fine with 'oh, that power comes from Asmodeus and you could get it but you'd NPC out as his thrall' - that's still information I can act on, even if I can't get the goodies themselves.

With a DM who runs consistent games, that works beautifully. That NPC had a weird power? Okay, there must be something to it, lets investigate! It also works with a DM who is flexible and listens to the player thought process and fixes up their glitches after the fact. Where it doesn't work so well is with DMs who lose track of their own game or do a lot of arbitrary things and don't bother having internal rationales.

As a DM, my ideal player would also behave in this way. In practice of course you can't get ideal players.

[Togo]

That assumption simply doesn't follow from his stated position, though. Hence my confusion.

Why doesn't it? Can you expand?

[Terazul]

PC: "Hey, in this game you have set in our modern world, I wanted to play a martial artist, but not an eastern, a western. Here's some example pictures of Germanic knights practicing it"

DM: "Oh but you're a PC, and hardly everyone knows about western martial arts. Now I will have to rewrite western pop culture so that western martial arts play just as important a role as eastern martial arts"

PC: "Or I could just use a relatively unknown fighting style..."

You see what I mean? Obviously not a a perfectly accurate example, but replace "eastern martial arts" with "arcane magic" and "western martial arts" with "psionic". Psionics does not have to be well known just because a PC is using it.

This actually happened pretty much exactly one of the times I played a Psion. Our group would show up, handle business, and someone would always inevitably call my character a Wizard, because they weren't familiar with his techniques, but that was the closest thing they could ascribe to it. The "I'm not a wizard." response became a running gag. And no, he was by no means the only psion in the world. There were plenty, just as there were wizards, sorcerers (one in the party), mystical death-palm monks (again, in the party), and paladins that used shotguns (you guessed it), plus all the other things in between. Typically, even from within the party most characters don't understand how the other characters do their things they do, they just accept it as a discipline they didn't delve into. I don't see why it's expected that everyone in the world needs to.

[Amphetryon]

Why doesn't it? Can you expand?

Not without hijacking the thread into a multi-page dissertation on formal logic and argument construction, no.

[Boci]

No, I actually don't. Half a day - lets call that 8 hours, multiplied by the number of subsystems and things which would require this effort in all published D&D sources (Warlocks, ToB, Shadowcasting, Truenaming, Binders, Psionics, Divine magic, Arcane magic, Incarnum, about a class-worth of snippets from PrCs - I'm looking at you Green Star Adept!, Wu Jen/Shugenja/ Maho from L5R, Weapons of Legacy, Dragonmarks/Eberron stuff, planar Factions things, guns and laser pistols, plus who knows what else), plus perhaps a +50% time adjustment for detailing the stuff we did in broad strokes. That's 192 hours. A bit of an exaggeration? Maybe.

Seriously? Maybe a bit of an exaggeration? It would not be 8 hours. It was 8 hours, for 2 strangers, arguing on the internet, in a forum, one of the more inefficient ways of communication. If we were friends, this would have taken one hour, two tops.

Arcane and divine magic do not count, they are already part of the default setting, and if they aren't, then they have been explicit ruled out (as oppose to simply not concluded), and so do not need to be remade in. Warlocks = fiendish sorcerors, so you don't need extra effort for them.

So going by popularity, that ToB, Binder, incarnum and psionic. There, 8 hours. Really not a great deal. Plus, its time spent with a friend. (Okay, so that should technically knock it up 12-16, but still, spending that with a friend on two separate occasions is not a big chore).



But even a half a day is a lot of time to spend on something that isn't important at all.

You don't think that would be a cool quest for PCs, what we just worked out with the ghost mages?


Its sort of like, if you were playing vampires in World of Darkness and someone wanted to bring in a Solar because they really want to try out Exalted, its generally better to say 'okay, the next campaign will be an Exalted campaign' than 'okay, you can play a Solar'.

That's not the same. Those are two separate games not even set in the same world, with far more contained setting lore than D&D.



Well it does take effort. Just because something takes effort doesn't mean that it can't or shouldn't be done. But it does generally mean that there should be a good reason for doing it and that the effort should be recognized (e.g. don't ask the DM to help you fit in psionics, then go 'oh, I changed my mind, lets do incarnum instead' just before the first game).

Again, where is this coming from? And besides, the method we worked out gives the DM something to use even if psionics don't end up being used by the PCs. But I am wondering why you feel "don't be a jerk" deserves special mention. I mean Dms also shouldn't go through with this and then change their mind at the last moment.


I'd say its still earth shattering. Its as if in the modern world we discovered a fifth fundamental force or something like that. Even if we didn't immediately know the optimal ways to exploit it, the fact that its a whole new way of interacting with the universe means that the potential is there for all sorts of stuff we couldn't do before.

If you are going with no transparency then sure, but with transparency, no, I'm not seeing it.


So I guess this comes down to trust between players and DM. When I'm a player, my viewpoint is that the DM can give NPCs/etc any strange powers he wants, but as a PC I will always be constructing a mental model of the world and I will aggressively pursue explanations and anomalies in character. However, I will never tell the DM 'you can't do that' or 'how could he have that power?' or things like that. I will assume that everything the DM throws at us is information that is consistent with the rest of the universe - including things I don't know yet - and will act on that rationale. But if it turns out to be impossible for my character to harness a particular power, I'm okay with that too - so long as I can still fit the information about it into a sensible world view. E.g. I'm fine with 'oh, that power comes from Asmodeus and you could get it but you'd NPC out as his thrall' - that's still information I can act on, even if I can't get the goodies themselves.

With a DM who runs consistent games, that works beautifully. That NPC had a weird power? Okay, there must be something to it, lets investigate! It also works with a DM who is flexible and listens to the player thought process and fixes up their glitches after the fact. Where it doesn't work so well is with DMs who lose track of their own game or do a lot of arbitrary things and don't bother having internal rationales.

As a DM, my ideal player would also behave in this way. In practice of course you can't get ideal players.

That's a perfectly reasonable stance, just two observations:

1. Doesn't that mean NPCs aren't operating on the same rules as PCs, if they can be the first people to have an unknown power, but PCs cannot?

2. Should you as a DM structure make rulings based on the assumption that your players will not be ideal?


Not without hijacking the thread into a multi-page dissertation on formal logic and argument construction, no.

As an outside observer, why didn't you just say "puny mortal my raw intellect would scorch your mind"? At least that could have potentially been funny, and no less smug. If you aren't going to clarify something, don't bother bringing it up.

[NichG]

This actually happened pretty much exactly one of the times I played a Psion. Our group would show up, handle business, and someone would always inevitably call my character a Wizard, because they weren't familiar with his techniques, but that was the closest thing they could ascribe to it. The "I'm not a wizard." response became a running gag. And no, he was by no means the only psion in the world. There were plenty, just as there were wizards, sorcerers (one in the party), mystical death-palm monks (again, in the party), and paladins that used shotguns (you guessed it), plus all the other things in between. Typically, even from within the party most characters don't understand how the other characters do their things they do, they just accept it as a discipline they didn't delve into. I don't see why it's expected that everyone in the world needs to.

If a guy showed up at my door and demonstrated that he could make flames come out of his hands, my first response would be to think/ask 'how the heck are you doing that?'. If the response was 'its magic', my second response would probably be 'how does that work?' (or 'teach me', or 'prove it'). I would not think 'oh, well, okay then, thanks for dropping by'.

Similarly, I find the idea of a world where there are no people who ask questions kind of preposterous. Sure, maybe the paladin with the sawed-off isn't the curious sort, but there will be people who wonder 'why?', 'how?', etc. People will tell stories, even (or especially) about things they don't understand. Information spreads.

One thing I really don't like about a lot of D&D games is the ennui of it. The idea of 'Oh, well, a wizard, whatever, no big deal' or 'Oh, he died last week? Who paid for the rez?' or things like that kind of destroys the point of having those things in the game for me. So treating it as 'oh, no big deal, its just another magic' is pretty much the opposite of what I want.

[Boci]

One thing I really don't like about a lot of D&D games is the ennui of it. The idea of 'Oh, well, a wizard, whatever, no big deal' or 'Oh, he died last week? Who paid for the rez?' or things like that kind of destroys the point of having those things in the game for me. So treating it as 'oh, no big deal, its just another magic' is pretty much the opposite of what I want.

So people should find something that has always been a part of their world and is relatively widely practiced in it strange, because it isn't part of your world?

A wizard should still be a big deal, but in a world which academies, they are kinda like Chinese acrobats, which more practical applications available to their skill sets.

If you want to alter rez magic that's fine, but you cannot just leave it as it is and then pretend it doesn't exist.

[Blackfang108]

But even a half a day is a lot of time to spend on something that isn't important at all.

If it's not important, why are you going out of your way to make psionics, et. al., as difficult as possible to include in your campaign?

[Terazul]

If a guy showed up at my door and demonstrated that he could make flames come out of his hands, my first response would be to think/ask 'how the heck are you doing that?'. If the response was 'its magic', my second response would probably be 'how does that work?' (or 'teach me', or 'prove it'). I would not think 'oh, well, okay then, thanks for dropping by'.

If goblins were attacking your village, and a dude showed up and blasted them with fire, in a world where goblins and magic exists, I seriously doubt this.

And even if it was the case, there is nothing to stop them from explaining it just as a (probably really annoyed) wizard could. You're really going out of your way to make this difficult. Unless every time you see a paladin holy dude who hits things you want an explanation of why he uses a greatsword over a longspear, why that druid nature guy has a wolf while the other one has a falcon, why that cleric other holy guy wears heavy armor while the other one wears robes and reads books, I don't really see it as relevant.

Also, yeah, sorry D&D is by default really high magic. Even the smallest villages can have a local spellcaster. Wizards, clerics, and everything else are common enough that while you acknowledge they do stuff, you don't go out of your way to care how (unless you were planning on learning it, in which case, hey! You're a PC so who cares). Most commoners are too busy being commoners to care about specifics.

[Togo]

Two problems:

1. The point of that exercise was that you could have a character with a rare fighting style/power source, without the whole world knowing about it?
So why did you choose a fighting style that's an established part of the setting already? (The modern world in fact includes western martial arts, and many people do in fact know about it).


2. So you're arguing slippery slope?

Not that I'm aware of. I was arguing, amongst other things:

1) That incuding an obscure style that few people have heard of can still cause problems.

2) That western martial arts isn't a good comparison to psionics, so I included something that came closer to the mark.



You don't see any advantage in the PC's background, interests, abilities and background forming part of the game?

Never said that.

I said I don't see the advantage of always doing so,

I never argued that you should always do so. You asked for an example of where it would confer an advantage, so I gave you one.



No one has suggested doing anything automatically.
Yes they have.
No, they really haven't. People keep saying they don't generally do X or Y and you ask them why they automatically or always ban X or Y. I feel this misunderstanding is central.


Hence why psionics will only work in a game where psionics features heavily.

No, people aren't arguing that psionics must feature heavily, they're arguing that featuring them even lightly involves a fair amount of work. That's why your example of a PC coming from a remote village that noone has heard of was rejected - not because PC's aren't allowed to come from remote villages, which is what you're suggesting the position is, but because coming from a remote village doesn't solve the problem.


But there is a different between not immeediatly including them and not including them full stop.

??? No doubt, but I'm not getting what you mean here.


Plus it is a shame if someone wants to play them and cannot.

Sure. It's also a shame when people can't play intelligent flying cats, magical ponies, or superheroes. But no one is suggesting that everthing must be included in every game. So all we're arguing about is whether it reasonable to ban something (psionics in this case). It kinda has to be, doesn't it?


It HAS to change the story. But it doesn't have to change the world and setting in any obvious way, because the world and setting exist outside the bounds of the current story.

Of course it doesn't have to. But I tend to run games where it does. What's wrong with that?



It does if you planned to have the PC's background, or the PC's capability, or the metaphysics of the game world feature as part of the plot or setting.Why? Why cannot psionics exist through reasons that are irrelevant to the humanoid lands where the game starts? Are they the centre of the multiverse? What if psionics come from another plane?
Then they'd still be part of the PC's background, and the metaphysic of the game.


But why? You lose nothing by including it.

You'd lose my own secret background history of the ithillid race, that becomes a plot point during session 12. You'd also change the metaphysics of the game, by including a second magic system.

Again, there are games where this would not make a huge difference. But there's nothing wrong with running games where it would.

[Togo]

Not without hijacking the thread into a multi-page dissertation on formal logic and argument construction, no.
Ok, then we'll agree to disagree. If you change your mind, feel free to PM.

[Anlashok]

Basically. It's a weird system with different fluff and some people don't like it, and as this thread shows people will come up with fantastical and nonsensical reasons to try to justify their dislike for whatever reason

[Togo]

So I guess this comes down to trust between players and DM. When I'm a player, my viewpoint is that the DM can give NPCs/etc any strange powers he wants, but as a PC I will always be constructing a mental model of the world and I will aggressively pursue explanations and anomalies in character. However, I will never tell the DM 'you can't do that' or 'how could he have that power?' or things like that. I will assume that everything the DM throws at us is information that is consistent with the rest of the universe - including things I don't know yet - and will act on that rationale. But if it turns out to be impossible for my character to harness a particular power, I'm okay with that too - so long as I can still fit the information about it into a sensible world view. E.g. I'm fine with 'oh, that power comes from Asmodeus and you could get it but you'd NPC out as his thrall' - that's still information I can act on, even if I can't get the goodies themselves.

With a DM who runs consistent games, that works beautifully. That NPC had a weird power? Okay, there must be something to it, lets investigate! It also works with a DM who is flexible and listens to the player thought process and fixes up their glitches after the fact. Where it doesn't work so well is with DMs who lose track of their own game or do a lot of arbitrary things and don't bother having internal rationales.

As a DM, my ideal player would also behave in this way. In practice of course you can't get ideal players.

This is also how I tend to run my games. And how one of my regular groups plays them. The overall effect is really special, simply because you can throw out a clue to something simply by using an unfamiliar mechanic, or violating the expected metaphysic of the game in some way.

[Boci]

So why did you choose a fighting style that's an established part of the setting already? (The modern world in fact includes western martial arts, and many people do in fact know about it).

Not that I'm aware of. I was arguing, amongst other things:

1) That incuding an obscure style that few people have heard of can still cause problems.

2) That western martial arts isn't a good comparison to psionics, so I included something that came closer to the mark.

You are taking it too literally. My point was, there is nothing unbelievable about a fighting style/power source not be commonly known within a setting, and was using a real example in an attempt to demonstrate it. I wasn't trying to claim western martial arts = psionics.


I never argued that you should always do so.

So then we agree a character can be psionics without always rewriting the setting lore to make it play a more prominent role? Because if not then you appear to always do so for psionics.


No, they really haven't. People keep saying they don't generally do X or Y and you ask them why they automatically or always ban X or Y. I feel this misunderstanding is central.

So where have people said that psionics can be included in a game without rewriting the setting lore to make it play a more prominent role?


No, people aren't arguing that psionics must feature heavily, they're arguing that featuring them even lightly involves a fair amount of work. That's why your example of a PC coming from a remote village that noone has heard of was rejected - not because PC's aren't allowed to come from remote villages, which is what you're suggesting the position is, but because coming from a remote village doesn't solve the problem.

But it wasn't a remote village no one had ever heard of. It was an established part of DnD fluff, the location, the race, and culture.


??? No doubt, but I'm not getting what you mean here.

Just because you don't start the game with psionics as part of the setting doesn't mean you cannot account for it later.


Sure. It's also a shame when people can't play intelligent flying cats, magical ponies, or superheroes. But no one is suggesting that everthing must be included in every game. So all we're arguing about is whether it reasonable to ban something (psionics in this case). It kinda has to be, doesn't it?

But if someone wanted to play an intelligent magical pony, would you direct them to druid class? Work with them? So why is a request for psionics met with "no way"?


Of course it doesn't have to. But I tend to run games where it does. What's wrong with that?

I'm just curious why you wouldn't allow a player to make a psionic character.


Then they'd still be part of the PC's background, and the metaphysic of the game.

And why is that a problem?


You'd lose my own secret background history of the ithillid race, that becomes a plot point during session 12.

Okay, since you said you value player input, could you offer an alternative way of incorporating the idea? Or since I'm not a player could you tell me the secret backstory so I can better incorporate it myself?


You'd also change the metaphysics of the game, by including a second magic system.

Don't you mean 3rd? Unless you already dropped arcane and divine. And have no other subsystems like the artificer.


This is also how I tend to run my games. And how one of my regular groups plays them. The overall effect is really special, simply because you can throw out a clue to something simply by using an unfamiliar mechanic, or violating the expected metaphysic of the game in some way.

That how I play my games as well. Only I use that aspect of them to help player make the character they want, be that psionics, or subsystem, even homebrew if its reasonable. You apparently do not however.

[NichG]

Seriously? Maybe a bit of an exaggeration? It would not be 8 hours. It was 8 hours, for 2 strangers, arguing on the internet, in a forum, one of the more inefficient ways of communication. If we were friends, this would have taken one hour, two tops.

Arcane and divine magic do not count, they are already part of the default setting, and if they aren't, then they have been explicit ruled out (as oppose to simply not concluded), and so do not need to be remade in. Warlocks = fiendish sorcerors, so you don't need extra effort for them.

So going by popularity, that ToB, Binder, incarnum and psionic. There, 8 hours. Really not a great deal. Plus, its time spent with a friend. (Okay, so that should technically knock it up 12-16, but still, spending that with a friend on two separate occasions is not a big chore).


I'm going to disagree on the time to do it well, the efficiency of forums, all of this really. I also think you're being a bit presumptive about wasting other people's times when you conclude that 8 hours for something which may well not even see play or be relevant at all is no big deal. That's a full work day and we can measure the value of that in various ways both qualitative and quantitative, but its certainly significant.

(And warlocks as 'fiendish sorcerors' is being dismissive again.)



You don't think that would be a cool quest for PCs, what we just worked out with the ghost mages?


This isn't an argument for psionics, just an argument for running a game that has things going on.

There's lots of cool quests one could do. No reason to go to psionics in particular to look for quest hooks. It doesn't actually bring in anything in its own right for this sort of thing. I could just as well have it be 'symbol-using mages', 'alchemists', 'summoners of the wisps of the Nether', 'twisted ones', 'living gates', 'tamed Vasuthant probability manipulation drives', or any number of other ideas.



That's not the same. Those are two separate games not even set in the same world, with far more contained setting lore than D&D.


Depends on each DM's particular tendencies when running campaigns, don't you think? They're mechanically part of the same system, so
someone could just as easily argue for their conclusion as they could argue for the inclusion of psionics in a campaign setting in D&D that was designed without them being included.

D&D is very broad, but it can be used to do very specific things. If I'm running Harry Potter D&D taking place in a wizard school where everyone is playing a wizard, then a Psion is as out of place as the Solar in the Vampire game. If I'm running Conan in D&D, then the book-wizard would ironically be out of place but the psion would be a better fit (just call them wizards). If I'm running D&D Victorian Steampunk then maybe I can use both with significant adaptation.

But they're all as much different worlds as Exalted vs Vampire, and different things belong in different ones of them.



Again, where is this coming from? And besides, the method we worked out gives the DM something to use even if psionics don't end up being used by the PCs. But I am wondering why you feel "don't be a jerk" deserves special mention. I mean Dms also shouldn't go through with this and then change their mind at the last moment.


If we went through all of that and ended up not using psionics, I would feel like you had wasted my time basically pushing really hard for something you didn't even want. Thats why I think 'don't be a jerk' deserves special mention, though I didn't phrase it that way.

'You should run include psionics because I want to play one' means there's a real reason to go through all the effort and back and forth. 'You should include psionics because I feel like insisting on it but no other real reason' is wasting my time. The latter is a sort of power struggle, and a pain to deal with - it tells me that this is going to be a problem player.



That's a perfectly reasonable stance, just two observations:

1. Doesn't that mean NPCs aren't operating on the same rules as PCs, if they can be the first people to have an unknown power, but PCs cannot?


Absolutely, but thats actually better for the game in general. NPCs serve a different purpose in the game than PCs do - same with monsters. If a DM wants a monster to have 10000hp, even if there's no way they could have that much by the HD rules without also having insane saves and hp, I'm fine with that and don't expect my PC to be able to get 10000hp the same way, because the monster is serving a different purpose in the game. What the DM has to deal with and keep track of is also different than what the players do - in general, the DM's avatars will be mechanically more simplistic than the PCs because the DM doesn't have time to give each one the same degree of optimization or familiarization that the players can do with their own characters.

Note that, even by the book, NPCs do operate by different rules than PCs. Diplomacy doesn't work on PCs, NPCs get different wealth, different classes, different ability distributions.



2. Should you as a DM structure make rulings based on the assumption that your players will not be ideal?


Sure. But it also means that its important for me to be selective about my players and make sure that we're actually looking for close to the same thing. Some problems would be larger than other problems.

- For me, its an absolute requirement that my players be okay with homebrew, going so far off the RAW that its unrecognizable, ignoring/replacing canon, etc.

- Its also an absolute requirement that they make at least some effort to understand the social metagame surrounding the game. This includes a few things. A big one is that you should play in a way that makes the game fun for everyone, and that out-of-character fun trumps in-character factors if the two directly conflict, e.g. PvP only if the participants won't take it personally, no screwing someone over 'because my character would', etc. Another one is that its my job as GM to make sure the game remains interesting, fun, sufficiently challenging, and stable - so if you end up being OP compared to the other characters they might get rules-illegal buffs, or if you find an infinite loop its going to get shut down, things like that.

- Its a strong requirement that my players are okay with in-game challenges being able to be solved via player ability rather than strictly character ability. This mostly covers social things and 'figuring out things'. But if someone is going to get bent out of shape because the guy playing the 8 Int fighter figured out a puzzle, that would be a problem in my group. Players saying to eachother 'your character wouldn't do that' or 'your character isn't smart enough to do that' is verboten.

- Regardless of who my players are, whatever I run is going to be complicated, convoluted, strange, and to a large degree cerebral; thats just my style of game, and there are better people to go to for beer&pretzels. Players that get bored out of combat may have problems, and if they can't stand mystery/investigation stuff then its definitely going to be a problem.

- I prefer players who are self-driven and have a lot of initiative. This is something that can be developed though, so its not a requirement. I tend to try to design my campaigns to bring this out in people and teach them how to do it (designing for non-ideal).

- I prefer players who will engage with the game on both story and mechanical levels in such a way that they're smoothly intertwined. This is also something that can be developed, and its pretty rare, so I have to cast a pretty wide net here. I also try to design campaigns to bring this out in people.



This is also how I tend to run my games. And how one of my regular groups plays them. The overall effect is really special, simply because you can throw out a clue to something simply by using an unfamiliar mechanic, or violating the expected metaphysic of the game in some way.

Yes, this exactly. I love this sort of campaign. Sort of spoiled me for everything else, actually.

[Boci]

I'm going to disagree on the time to do it well, the efficiency of forums, all of this really. I also think you're being a bit presumptive about wasting other people's times when you conclude that 8 hours for something which may well not even see play or be relevant at all is no big deal. That's a full work day and we can measure the value of that in various ways both qualitative and quantitative, but its certainly significant.

So you are willing to have this debate with a stranger you will never meet, but not a friend you DM for? And you disagree that forums are less efficient than talking? Aha....


(And warlocks as 'fiendish sorcerors' is being dismissive again.)

Maybe I was being dissmisive, but my logic is clear. What did I miss? (I wouldt be surprised if I did, but both classes seemed to involve the blood of magical creatures in their heritage).


This isn't an argument for psionics, just an argument for running a game that has things going on.

There's lots of cool quests one could do. No reason to go to psionics in particular to look for quest hooks. It doesn't actually bring in anything in its own right for this sort of thing. I could just as well have it be 'symbol-using mages', 'alchemists', 'summoners of the wisps of the Nether', 'twisted ones', 'living gates', 'tamed Vasuthant probability manipulation drives', or any number of other ideas.

Absolutely correct. But if a player wants to play psionics, in a non-psionic group, doesn't this mean the effort is probably worth it? You allow them to play the character they want, and get some plot hooks out of it.


'You should run include psionics because I want to play one' means there's a real reason to go through all the effort and back and forth. 'You should include psionics because I feel like insisting on it but no other real reason' is wasting my time. The latter is a sort of power struggle, and a pain to deal with - it tells me that this is going to be a problem player.

...well done Captain Obvious? Seriously, I do not know why this is here. I was well aware of that simple level of etiquette. I'm bad, but not that terrible.


Absolutely, but thats actually better for the game in general. NPCs serve a different purpose in the game than PCs do - same with monsters. If a DM wants a monster to have 10000hp, even if there's no way they could have that much by the HD rules without also having insane saves and hp, I'm fine with that and don't expect my PC to be able to get 10000hp the same way, because the monster is serving a different purpose in the game. What the DM has to deal with and keep track of is also different than what the players do - in general, the DM's avatars will be mechanically more simplistic than the PCs because the DM doesn't have time to give each one the same degree of optimization or familiarization that the players can do with their own characters.

Note that, even by the book, NPCs do operate by different rules than PCs. Diplomacy doesn't work on PCs, NPCs get different wealth, different classes, different ability distributions.

Okay, but then why can't PCs also break the rules occasionally?


- I prefer players who will engage with the game on both story and mechanical levels in such a way that they're smoothly intertwined. This is also something that can be developed, and its pretty rare, so I have to cast a pretty wide net here. I also try to design campaigns to bring this out in people.

Okay, but then wouldn't you enjoy a player who wants to justify playing (insert x subsystem/homebrew) in your setting? Then why are you so obsessed with how much effort incorporating these subsystems are?

[Klarth]

How is psionics any different from sorcery?

[Brookshw]

Go to work for a day and miss out on all the fun!


I guess some people are just that perfectionist. Don't know if I'd go that far but striving towards a desired end is generally a good thing, yes?


Personally, I certainly prefer to consider the ramifications of something, but banning a subsystem because I don't feel like doing that in full and can't be satisfied with anything less than the absolute best seems a little excessive. "Absolute best" is far too loaded but I'd settle for "satisfactory integration with cohesion that it feels like an stable element of the setting that adds depth". What meets this criteria and the expected ROI will vary wildly and some may or will (or in my case bluntly state "do") feel the payoff isn't worth it.



But it wasn't a remote village no one had ever heard of. It was an established part of DnD fluff, the location, the race, and culture. It was dumped into a corner and minimalized as much as possible in terms of being a part of the setting. It's a substantial part of a proposed adventure, or possibly a campaign, but that isn't necessarily to say the same thing as a setting. It may very well be a fun campaign for that matter but it's a very different thing than the objection. Can I look at this niche area you've carefully set aside and ask myself how do psionics exist among the elves? Does it change society? Should I reexamine the fall of Myth Drannor? Dwarves? Since we're doing FR it seems (disclaimer: haven't used that as a campaign setting in a long time) the Zhentilar? The Red Wizards? We're asking about the underdark eh? Should drow cities have social revolutions as the scales of power are now tipped against Lolth and divine magic? What should that mean in regards to anyone who interacts with the underdark? You seem to have already addressed a few elements of this but I don't feel that the lens has been pulled far enough back.



But if someone wanted to play an intelligent magical pony, would you direct them to druid class? Work with them? So why is a request for psionics met with "no way"? :smallconfused:Druids are already accounted for in the base game and any setting I can think of, psionics aren't. Apples and oranges there mate.

I get it, we have fundamental disagreements about this. At this point I think we've explored this so I'm not sure what we're hoping to accomplish. The goal of the thread was to understand why a bias against this. At this point it seems we're ready for a new thread regarding the hows, whens and whys of incoporating subsystems, variants and other options on a world building level.

[Boci]

It was dumped into a corner and minimalized as much as possible in terms of being a part of the setting. It's a substantial part of a proposed adventure, or possibly a campaign, but that isn't necessarily to say the same thing as a setting. It may very well be a fun campaign for that matter but it's a very different thing than the objection. Can I look at this niche area you've carefully set aside and ask myself how do psionics exist among the elves? Does it change society? Should I reexamine the fall of Myth Drannor? Dwarves? Since we're doing FR it seems (disclaimer: haven't used that as a campaign setting in a long time) the Zhentilar? The Red Wizards? We're asking about the underdark eh? Should drow cities have social revolutions as the scales of power are now tipped against Lolth and divine magic? What should that mean in regards to anyone who interacts with the underdark? You seem to have already addressed a few elements of this but I don't feel that the lens has been pulled far enough back.

And you're saying you would be unwilling to do this with a player or players? Despite the fact that they want to play a psion and doing this will give you a load of cool setting lore, as your questions just demonstrated?

[NichG]

So you are willing to have this debate with a stranger you will never meet, but not a friend you DM for? And you disagree that forums are less efficient than talking? Aha....

You keep saying things like this, but I did point out that if I had a player interested in playing a psion, that would be enough reason to go through the effort to do things properly.

And the reason I'm willing to have this debate with a strange I'll never meet is that the actual exercise of debate and clarifying/exploring points is itself an entertaining thing for me (plus I have the time right now thanks to some sluggish simulations I let finish). Setting construction can be entertaining too, but the two things actually suit fairly different moods for me, especially since the setting construction I'd be doing right now would be for a game that's well underway.



Maybe I was being dissmisive, but my logic is clear. What did I miss? (I wouldt be surprised if I did, but both classes seemed to involve the blood of magical creatures in their heritage).


Warlocks cast all day long - literally they could sit there shooting a bolt of energy out of their hands every 6 seconds until they got tired and decided to stop. Their invocations work similarly. Sorcerors on the other hand have a limited pool and use spells that map onto what Wizards can cast. Therefore, there is a significant mechanical difference that needs to have a corresponding fluff difference, and again that has to be integrated into the setting. If Sorcs and Warlocks are the same, then why can't a Warlock cast spells (a Sorc can arguably use a Reserve feat to shoot bolts of power out of their hand all day long, but we've just moved the issue to explaining reserve feats, and reserve feats are still distinct from a Warlock as they tap an existing spell whereas for Warlocks there is no spell of that sort to tap).



Absolutely correct. But if a player wants to play psionics, in a non-psionic group, doesn't this mean the effort is probably worth it? You allow them to play the character they want, and get some plot hooks out of it.


Why does this particular player have such particular desires - not only do they want their character to be psionic, but they want no one else's to be too? At some point I'd call shenanigans or say 'mind your own character'.



Okay, but then why can't PCs also break the rules occasionally?


(technically the PCs can't in practice break the rules because they always need to bounce whatever they do off the DM for it to be actualized, so its more like the DM breaking the rules for them.)

Anyhow, one has to clarify what 'breaking the rules' means exactly. Depending on how you mean it, the response is anything from 'absolutely they can' to 'because it cheapens their successes' to 'because that would damage the integrity of the campaign and make things not fit together coherently'.

The thing to recognize is, even when you're breaking RAW, you're still following rules - those rules are the structures that make the campaign function correctly. That basically means anything from rebalancing things to keep the game challenging to fixing exploits to creating the disequilibria that motivate the PCs (e.g. there is something they can get which they do not already know how to have) to enforcing consistency of the setting. Ideally, you're breaking the rules not because 'hey this is awesome I can do anything' but with a particular purpose in mind.

So when the PCs break the rules, there must be a similar consideration. If someone pulls off a stunt and you let it work even if the rulebook says it doesn't, its because their breaking of the rules makes the game better for everyone - it enables a sort of fluid thinking that running things too tightly would forbid, which helps with creativity.

But if its just breaking the rules because 'you get to, so I will too', then it serves no such purpose. If its 'I want this, so even if it damages consistency let me have it' then that's actually harming the campaign not helping it.



Okay, but then wouldn't you enjoy a player who wants to justify playing (insert x subsystem/homebrew) in your setting? Then why are you so obsessed with how much effort incorporating these subsystems are?

I've said it something like 10 times now I think, that if a player wants something then that justifies the effort. What I'm against is this idea that 'well, you should include psionics even if no one at the table cares enough to play one' which you've suggested in a few posts and other people have also pushed. I'm also against the idea of including it poorly if you do end up including it (e.g. the dismissive sorts of justifications).

[Boci]

You keep saying things like this, but I did point out that if I had a player interested in playing a psion, that would be enough reason to go through the effort to do things properly.

Okay, sorry I missed that.


Warlocks cast all day long - literally they could sit there shooting a bolt of energy out of their hands every 6 seconds until they got tired and decided to stop. Their invocations work similarly. Sorcerors on the other hand have a limited pool and use spells that map onto what Wizards can cast. Therefore, there is a significant mechanical difference that needs to have a corresponding fluff difference, and again that has to be integrated into the setting. If Sorcs and Warlocks are the same, then why can't a Warlock cast spells (a Sorc can arguably use a Reserve feat to shoot bolts of power out of their hand all day long, but we've just moved the issue to explaining reserve feats, and reserve feats are still distinct from a Warlock as they tap an existing spell whereas for Warlocks there is no spell of that sort to tap).

Fair enough, pact vs. blood hertage makes the most sense then. Or at least to me.


Why does this particular player have such particular desires - not only do they want their character to be psionic, but they want no one else's to be too? At some point I'd call shenanigans or say 'mind your own character'.

I only said that because I only ever saw you say you'd allow psionics if the whole group was playing it, which I don't think should be a requirement.


I've said it something like 10 times now I think, that if a player wants something then that justifies the effort. What I'm against is this idea that 'well, you should include psionics even if no one at the table cares enough to play one' which you've suggested in a few posts and other people have also pushed. I'm also against the idea of including it poorly if you do end up including it (e.g. the dismissive sorts of justifications).

When did I say 'well, you should include psionics even if no one at the table cares enough to play one'? Maybe it wasn't obvious, but I have been framing my posts under the assumption that a player wants to play psionics.

And who else said it? I'm curious.


I'm also against the idea of including it poorly if you do end up including it (e.g. the dismissive sorts of justifications).

Hate to sound like a broken record, but its really hard to integrate an idea into the fluff of the setting when I don't have a specific setting. Do you want to try and integrate wizards into the fluff of my homebrew setting? Remember, don't do it poorly.

[NichG]

I only said that because I only ever saw you say you'd allow psionics if the whole group was playing it, which I don't think should be a requirement.

Its more that the whole world has to 'play' it. That's not the same thing as the whole group choosing the play it. Dark Sun, for example, doesn't require you to play a Psion, but psionics is definitely not a one-PC-plus-offscreen thing in that setting. You could still play a fighter or even a wizard if you wanted of course (or even a psionic fighter given how Dark Sun 2ed worked).



When did I say 'well, you should include psionics even if no one at the table cares enough to play one'? Maybe it wasn't obvious, but I have been framing my posts under the assumption that a player wants to play psionics.

And who else said it? I'm curious.


Tried a quick thread-scan, but this thread is looong. The only particular quote I can remember is where you mentioned something about 'even if you don't have a psionic PC, look at all the plot-hooks we generated'. I think in general I got this feeling because somewhere on page 5 I made the point about it taking effort to do but that being okay if there was a reason (e.g. a player really wanted to play a psion). Then for four pages after that, despite me constantly restating that, people still attacked that stance.

I don't think anyone directly said 'no, you must include psionics even if no one uses it'. But the responses to 'if a player wants to play a psion, we'll go and make a setting with sensible psionics integration, but otherwise I won't bother' were pretty vociferous, which gives the impression of people defending the inclusion of psionics itself, not just the ability of a player to play a particular class.



Hate to sound like a broken record, but its really hard to integrate an idea into the fluff of the setting when I don't have a specific setting. Do you want to try and integrate wizards into the fluff of my homebrew setting? Remember, don't do it poorly.

Its a bit unfair to take a summary of my position about general approaches over the last 5 pages and assume that it's a specific request for you to 'integrate psions right now!'. It's not. Its a statement that we each have standards for our campaigns, and if someone says 'you can easily meet your own standards and include this', there's no way they can actually support that statement in general. Someone might be able to do so. Someone else's standards might preclude it being easy to do. But an external observer can't judge that difficulty accurately without first understanding those standards in detail, as well as the structure of the campaign.

In that sense, you're sort of making my point for me. 'It's easy' is a judgement that's so hard to back up, precisely because it is so dependent on the details of the campaign and what the DM wants out of it. If a DM says 'no, that would take a lot of time and effort for my game to do to my standards', then you basically have to take their word on that - because even if you could do it relatively quickly given all the details, you can't judge how quickly they would be able to.

[Brookshw]

And you're saying you would be unwilling to do this with a player or players? Despite the fact that they want to play a psion and doing this will give you a load of cool setting lore, as your questions just demonstrated?

The question of this thread was why a bias which is the one I've responded to. You're asking a very different question.

[Boci]

Tried a quick thread-scan, but this thread is looong. The only particular quote I can remember is where you mentioned something about 'even if you don't have a psionic PC, look at all the plot-hooks we generated'.

Wasn't that in response to you bringing up a player going through all this and then not playing the psion? The very point that gave me whip lash because I had no idea where it came from?


I think in general I got this feeling because somewhere on page 5 I made the point about it taking effort to do but that being okay if there was a reason (e.g. a player really wanted to play a psion). Then for four pages after that, despite me constantly restating that, people still attacked that stance.

I only joined the discussion proper half way through page 6. I would have missed that point. I never saw you restate it.


I don't think anyone directly said 'no, you must include psionics even if no one uses it'. But the responses to 'if a player wants to play a psion, we'll go and make a setting with sensible psionics integration, but otherwise I won't bother' were pretty vociferous, which gives the impression of people defending the inclusion of psionics itself, not just the ability of a player to play a particular class.

As is usual there is vorticity on both sides. I'm sure I came off harshly at times, and let me assure you, so did you occasionally.


In that sense, you're sort of making my point for me.

Except I'm not. As soon as I tell you about the fluff, you'll probably see two ways wizards could still be around:

1. 0.2% survived to begin with
2. Powerful wizards could have plane hopped "through" the apocalypse as it spread out across the planes

I'm not saying its going to be just as easy to integrate psionics, but if all you go on about is how hard it is, how much effort it will take, then it sounds like you've already given up on it.


'It's easy' is a judgement that's so hard to back up, precisely because it is so dependent on the details of the campaign and what the DM wants out of it. If a DM says 'no, that would take a lot of time and effort for my game to do to my standards', then you basically have to take their word on that - because even if you could do it relatively quickly given all the details, you can't judge how quickly they would be able to.

I just don't buy this defeatist attitude. To me, these kind of challenges are what D&D is about. Even if solution isn't found:

1. Friends spent time together talking about a hobby
2. The DM helped a player, who is presumably interested in world building, see how you could attempt to alter a setting

That's the worst case scenario. And there are loads of other benefits. I just cannot understand why you would want to avoid doing this.


The question of this thread was why a bias which is the one I've responded to. You're asking a very different question.

Its kinda relevant to the topic though. Any reason you don't want to answer it? At least I think whether you would allow X in a game under Y circumstances is relevant to a question about a bias against X.

[Togo]

So then we agree a character can be psionics without always rewriting the setting lore to make it play a more prominent role?

In some games, I'm sure it's possible. In my games, it generally isn't possible to introduce psionics into a game that doesn't already feature it without needing extensive changes. It's nothing to do with prominence.


So where have people said that psionics can be included in a game without rewriting the setting lore to make it play a more prominent role?

It depends on the game. What you asked was whether I would include psionics in my games, and generally I don't.

Again, I don't see why a game that doesn't include psionics is any more controvertial than one that doesn't include gunpowder.


But if someone wanted to play an intelligent magical pony, would you direct them to druid class? Work with them?

Not as default. If the group wanted to play a game that included characters such as magical ponies, I'd probably do a game based around that. But I probably wouldn't try and stretch an existing setting to include a magical pony unless there was a good reason to. It probably wouldn't suit the game I had in mind, and it probably wouldn't suit the game the other players had in mind either.



Then they'd still be part of the PC's background, and the metaphysic of the game.
And why is that a problem?
Because the games I run tend to feature metaphysical concerns and player backgrounds as part of the storyline, setting and gameworld. Adding psionics to that means I have to change them.


Okay, since you said you value player input, could you offer an alternative way of incorporating the idea?

Not without spending time on it. As I said before, I rarely have the time with the players to do this.


Or since I'm not a player could you tell me the secret backstory so I can better incorporate it myself?

That wouldn't be any quicker than doing it with the player.


That how I play my games as well. Only I use that aspect of them to help player make the character they want, be that psionics, or subsystem, even homebrew if its reasonable. You apparently do not however.

Depends on the game. For most of my games, no I don't focus on incorporating as broad a range of optional rules as possible, because that's not the type of variety I'm looking for, or that my players tend to look for. I put my efforts into other areas. Psionics doesn't typically make it as a priority.

For games which are all about players playing as wide a range of characters as possible, I don't tend to use D&D as a game system, preferring to customise the game system itself.

[Togo]

That's the worst case scenario. And there are loads of other benefits. I just cannot understand why you would want to avoid doing this.

Because it's part of building a world, that's intended for a particular group, and a particular game. Doing it in general or in abstract doesn't really help.

Is there some reason why it's worth doing this for psionics, but not worth doing this for blaster rifles and laser weapons? The arguement would seem to be identical in either case.

[Boci]

Again, I don't see why a game that doesn't include psionics is any more controvertial than one that doesn't include gunpowder.

Can you explain why? A mean a bit more detail than just "the meta physics of the game". I'm interested in the nature of the metaphysics system, and how it could interact with arcane, divine and psionics.


Depends on the game. For most of my games, no I don't focus on incorporating as broad a range of optional rules as possible, because that's not the type of variety I'm looking for, or that my players tend to look for. I put my efforts into other areas. Psionics doesn't typically make it as a priority.

For games which are all about players playing as wide a range of characters as possible, I don't tend to use D&D as a game system, preferring to customise the game system itself.

Okay, but then isn't your only real reason for not using psionics that your players don't want to play psionics? That seems to be more relevant than how appropriate they are.


Because it's part of building a world, that's intended for a particular group, and a particular game. Doing it in general or in abstract doesn't really help.

That point was grounded very firmly in the notion that a player had asked the DM to include psionics, so it wasn't general or abstract. It was concrete and specific, which was why I couldn't understand not doing it.


Is there some reason why it's worth doing this for psionics, but not worth doing this for blaster rifles and laser weapons? The arguement would seem to be identical in either case.

Off the top of my head: because neither of those offer as complete a character as psionics do (and yes I am aware you still have their personality, backstory and hopes and dreams).

[NichG]

I'm not saying its going to be just as easy to integrate psionics, but if all you go on about is how hard it is, how much effort it will take, then it sounds like you've already given up on it.

'Given up' is a strange term to use here. That presumes that basically I have some benefit that I would like to derive from psionics, try to integrate it, fail, then go 'I can't do this!'. Its more like 'Okay, there's this thing, doesn't really do much for me, so I'll just leave it out; hey internet guys, stop bugging people to include it already, for some of us its not worth the trouble and our players don't care about it either.'


I just don't buy this defeatist attitude. To me, these kind of challenges are what D&D is about.

When it comes to personal discussion with friends its one thing, but when its random internet guys asking 'why don't you like this?' and not taking 'its meh and it clashes with arcane magic for me unless I jump through a lot of hoops' as an answer, then its a lot more presumptuous of them. Of course, it makes sense if this point would seem random to you, because the origin of it was a page 4 discussion. Basically, my first post in the thread was in response to someone saying something like 'thinking its too sci-fi isnt a good reason because you can just rename the powers'. My argument was 'no, doing it well requires more effort than just renaming a few powers', and the entire thing spiraled from there.