Seventh Path vs Occult Adventures-What differentiates them in fluff?

[Thealtruistorc]

So I was looking through Occult Adventures the other day when I noticed something odd. Most of the fluff is very similar to that posed in Dreamscarred Press' Seventh Path book, what with the emphasis on connections, focuses, and interaction with the spirit world. As a person who likes both and wants to use both in his game, I'm wondering what the best way would be to differentiate them.

What makes a psionic channeler of spirits different from a psychic one? What enables conduits to do so many things that differ so greatly from a spiritualist? How does a psionicist interact with the spirit world compared to a psychic? I'm curious as to how you would handle this, and what you might change about either source in order to make them work better together.

[Alea]

This is precisely what DSP's Psionics Augmented: Occult series focuses on. The living legend (http://dreamscarred.com/product/psionics-augmented-living-legend-pdf/) and a bunch of archetypes (http://dreamscarred.com/product/psionics-augmented-mind-soul-pdf/) have already been released in that line, and both include an introduction that talks about the similarities and (more importantly) the differences between psionic power and occult magic.

And really, despite the unfortunate choice by Paizo to use a lot of psionic words and label everything “psychic magic,” they are pretty different. Psionic power is all internal power, while occult magic manipulates external connections—emotional connections, conceptual connections, historical connections, spiritual connections, etc.

As for Seventh Path’s Athanatism discipline, its focus on spirits and the dead means it has more to do with history and spirituality than most psionic power, which is probably the source of the similarities you’re looking at. Unfortunately, I’m not as familiar with Seventh Path—I own it, but I haven’t had an opportunity to make a character with it yet.

[Prime32]

Athanists definitely touch closer on psychic magic territory than most psionicists.

I don't see this as a problem though. There's already overlap between the spell lists of classes that get their spells from completely different sources, and things like gish classes and clerics with the Magic domain.

You could think of it this way: Athanists are to Occultists what Soulknives are to Fighters.
Soulknives don't know as much about combat as a fighter, but they can use their psionic power to create powerful tools that make up for it. Athanists don't have the depth of knowledge of psychic magic that occultists do, but they can learn to perform a very basic form of it by e.g. generating energy from their bodies that's attractive to ghosts.