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View Full Version : Fear of Psionics and its Impact over 5 Editions in D&D



anthon
2020-12-28, 02:59 AM
Nothing quite strikes terror in the heart of game designers like Psionics. For whatever reason, it's always the the last thing on anyone's mind, the abused step child from some Grimm's Fable with no magic pumpkin.

You know what I'm talking about. "Psionics isn't magic!"
"psionics IS magic"
"psionics doesn't belong in D&D"
"psionics should be it's own class"
"psionics should be a subclass of monk"
"...a subclass of wizard"
"...have its own subclasses like soul knife and something-something-fire"
"...screw fire... something something-kinesis!"

here we are decades later...

"...-kinesis sounds too sciency... we need to fantasy it up by making MYSTIC..."
"dude... you just copied Last Airbender, why are you passing this off as psionics?"
"... Airbender? No way man, look, the whole fire, water, earth, and air powers of the Wujen are totally Psionic er.. i mean mystical!"

...

Does anyone even remember when Wujen was a Wizard class in Oriental Adventures? I think they did that for 1st, 2nd, and 3rd edition. Somehow it got rolled into Psionics.

Here's the thing.

I want you to imagine a nice fat Boris Vallejo Painting. Imagine it with all your might, and thousands of words of description with all that oil and color, flexing 1970s muscles, and politically incorrect scantily clad females...

Wait... what's this? A laser? A mutant in the distance? Is that a star ship? What? Why is there a star ship blasting beams of scifi energy in my precious fantasy barbarian scene? Even mr muscles' loincloth paint daubs are reflecting the sheen of that high energy beam...

How is this fantasy?!!

HERESY! HERESY I SAY!!!

...

But lets step back a moment. Did you know Babayaga's Hut was described as a 4 dimensional Hypercube? Back in some old dragon magazine, one of the most famous dungeons was actually defined as a science fiction concept.

And how many of your modern wizards are just imitating sciency sounding Psionic Concepts?

Telepathy? Teleportation? Telekinesis? Pyrokinesis?

"We call it Pyromancy"

But is it? Really? I looked up pyromancy once, it involved setting a fire and using it for divination. It didn't have anything to do with zippy fireballs or big gouts of magical dps flame. There was no burning people alive - although there were Buddhist curses for that.. somebody write up a Shukenja.

Seriously though. Much of modern flashy wizardry pulls straight from old movies like Carrie and Firestarter. Dr. Strange used tons of magic, but also tons of psionics. Whether anyone called it that - or instead called it Psions, Psychics, Clairvoyants, Mediums, or the Butcher's wife,

the tropes of stuff like Telekinesis, Mind Reading, Levitation, Force Fields, Phasing (Escape to Witch Mountain anyone?) are all very, very psychic, and only more recently, "magic". Some of the oldest magical stories and items come from the Mahabharata Indian epic, and frankly, India/Tibet is the trope capital for a very famous character archetype..

you might think its Merlin or Gandalf, some druid looking guy with a big beard, but it's not.

The Himalayas are the Trope capital of the Bald Meditating dude who levitates. Like in that Eddie Murphy movie, The Golden Child; the little bald monk demonstrates Telekinesis. Despite this EXTREMELY SCIENCY setting with all its scifi, that old movie had flying evil demon monsters and not even one Alien Space Ship...


This begs the question:

What are people not getting? Why are people hung up on removing Psionics from RPGs, D&D in particular, when it's been in the back of the AD&D Players handbook since the 1970s? We are talking over 40 years.

And go ahead, ask a Scientist about Psionics. They will call it anything but science. To them its no more scientific than the Thunderbolt of Zeus or a Magic mirror.

I think the community needs to stop griping about attack modes or bad design, and look at this niche genre with fresh open Eyes. It's been many years since Akira first aired and Carrie remakes abound. (Netflix's I am not Ok with this, and Stranger Things).

But should Psychics be their own thing?

Some games say yes. Some editions say yes. Others say no.

I would argue if your game benefits by having more than one power source, the answer is yes.

There's Faith based magic, which can be on/off switched by gods,
there's summoned/entity magic, which is basically non religious faith magic, including demon stuff or even gods/true names,
there's "sciency magic" where you use "unwritten Arthur C Clarke advanced rules of the planes" to do "magic" with formulas.

and of course, there's "i made up some word for my power source, like mana/life force/ki/spirit/essence/anime scream" and you spend that unit, which is refilled by resting/stealing souls/blood/sucking life from the wildlife/emotions of others/a magical magicians plumbing system in Fillery approved by the Library...
and then spent again, and who ever has the most "stuff" wins.

But What does Psionics have to say?

Psionics tends to present some key features about their power source that really do offer some unique insights:

1. you can have a psionic system absent of gods/demons/mystical hidden rules. Meaning the character's power base is consistent regardless of where they are. Variants of course contradict this, but we are forming an analysis of what Psionics has to offer, when and if it is different from magic.

2. you can have a power source which is based on knowledge/alignment/enlightenment/skill, instead of genetics/race. This isn't always true either. 7th son of 7th son = telekinesis or whatever - these are common magic/psychic tropes. But the potential to have a power source available to everyone with thousands of spare hours to stare at a pinwheel or try to make pineapples explode is appealing, and very different from brooding over thick leather bound grimoires chanting in latin, playing with daggers, blood, itchy poison oak, or going to seminary to learn how to pray and sing to the pope, again in Latin.

This is kind of interesting because you can take paladin/cleric-esque taboos, like poverty, chastity, or general kindness, honor, etc., and apply them without having to adhere to the trappings of a religion, or worry about some sky god taking your toys away. Carving out your own ethos can be an artistic endeavor.

3. psionics can be characterized as the renunciate power source. St. Francis for instance, could be seen as a Psychic, and more than one Saint is famous for Levitating, after spending a lifetime in poverty, austerity, and having vows very similar to the Dharma renunciates of India. So what im saying is you have a "wizard/ranged dps/utility" version of the Monk.

You might remember the final fantasy black mage, or the final fantasy monk. That trope exists in multiple RPGs. The monk is interesting because you can play with basically no equipment, nearly no money except for Inns, and wander through start to finish, with no dependency on magical items, books, weapons, etc. You had martial arts.

The psychic is potentially like that - having basically nothing but an Okra robe and they manage throughout life. The Old Indian texts called them Siddhas - masters of psychic powers.

Well, that's my 2 cents.

I hope to hear the many varied opinions of you all!

LibraryOgre
2020-12-28, 08:21 AM
I think the main problem with psionics is that it has frequently been an utter mess.

*1e psionics was broken in so many stupid ways. 1e is hostile architecture, but for game design.

*2e had two psionics systems... one of which made it terribly hard to improve as a psionicist (aside from gaining more powers), and the other of which had completely broken psychic combat as a centerpiece (it cost more, on average, to attack psychically, than you would do in PSP damage).

*3e had a pretty lackluster system, that was replaced by a pretty good system. But, IMO, while the system was mechanically good, it had, IMO, a vocabulary problem.

*4e was very different, but a lot like the rest of 4e.

I'm not familiar with 5e psionics.

But a lot of the problem with psionics in D&D is it's often sucked.

Imbalance
2020-12-28, 11:11 AM
I love the concept of mystical mentalist magic, but I seem to be in the minority. I like the flavor and options added by Tasha's to an extent, though I heard a lot of people calling them broken right off the bat. I like the notion of the Charles Xavier mind controller, or a psychic surgeon who can detach her own hand and have it crawl under a door to reach a switch on the other side, or the villainous Spock from Heroes who could steal your superpower directly out of your brain. There are already some ways to fluff some of these things, but I agree that I would prefer it to be treated as its own proprietary class or something, and am also stymied by the apparent disdain others harbor against it.

Willie the Duck
2020-12-28, 02:45 PM
Well, that's my 2 cents.

I hope to hear the many varied opinions of you all!

Moved up front to address the basic point that I appreciate you sharing your perspective. However, the totality of this post seems pretty rambly and I'm not sure if there was a specific point, so my responses may well miss the mark for what you wanted to talk about. A lot of that is due to the fact that I can't really tell where and when you are pro something or con something.

Nothing quite strikes terror in the heart of game designers like Psionics. For whatever reason, it's always the the last thing on anyone's mind, the abused step child from some Grimm's Fable with no magic pumpkin.
Not really. Psionics is used in all sorts of game systems, ranging from Traveller to GURPS to Bureau 13 to, heck, The World of Synnabarr. Likewise, oD&D, AD&D 1&2, and all of WotC D&Ds have had psionics in one form or another.
Mind you, D&D has often had problems with the implementation of psionics ranging from who should get them (wild talents vs. specific psi-based class vs. archetype), along with what has often happened where psionics have been a piece of add-on supplemental material which only somewhat well integrates with the existing game material, and what associated thematics go best with the base concept.


Does anyone even remember when Wujen was a Wizard class in Oriental Adventures? I think they did that for 1st, 2nd, and 3rd edition. Somehow it got rolled into Psionics.
There was not a OA book for 2e, but wu jen was a kit for wizards in the Complete Wizard's Handbook. Having those become psionics seems like someone following to the farthest logical conclusion the idea that psionics and monks* were related (which at least has some vague historical connection, as late-19th/early-20th century Western fascination with 'Oriental Mysticism' coincided with a a general belief in mysticism and was where a lot of the supernatural powers in the psionic arsenal were lumped together).
*The two only being related at a 'they're part of D&D's faux-oriental mélange' level.
*Yes, I am tapdancing around discussing how bad a lot of this is. Can I call something inspired by ~1900 Western thought racist without killing the thread?


Here's the thing.
I want you to imagine a nice fat Boris Vallejo Painting. Imagine it with all your might, and thousands of words of description with all that oil and color, flexing 1970s muscles, and politically incorrect scantily clad females...
Wait... what's this? A laser? A mutant in the distance? Is that a star ship? What? Why is there a star ship blasting beams of scifi energy in my precious fantasy barbarian scene? Even mr muscles' loincloth paint daubs are reflecting the sheen of that high energy beam...
How is this fantasy?!!
HERESY! HERESY I SAY!!!
What exactly is your point, or even position here? That psionics should or shouldn't be something? That you do or don't like mixing genres (because if you don't want sci fi in your D&D, you are 45 years too late -- certainly 40 using Expedition to the Barrier Peaks as a strong guidepost ).


"We call it Pyromancy"
But is it? Really? I looked up pyromancy once, it involved setting a fire and using it for divination. It didn't have anything to do with zippy fireballs or big gouts of magical dps flame. There was no burning people alive - although there were Buddhist curses for that.. somebody write up a Shukenja.
Yes, and Necromancy was more about contacting the dead for guidance than raising armies of zombies.


the tropes of stuff like Telekinesis, Mind Reading, Levitation, Force Fields, Phasing (Escape to Witch Mountain anyone?) are all very, very psychic, and only more recently, "magic". Some of the oldest magical stories and items come from the Mahabharata Indian epic, and frankly, India/Tibet is the trope capital for a very famous character archetype..
you might think its Merlin or Gandalf, some druid looking guy with a big beard, but it's not.
The Himalayas are the Trope capital of the Bald Meditating dude who levitates. Like in that Eddie Murphy movie, The Golden Child; the little bald monk demonstrates Telekinesis. Despite this EXTREMELY SCIENCY setting with all its scifi, that old movie had flying evil demon monsters and not even one Alien Space Ship...
Yes, that science fiction-adjacent movie uses 'Eastern Mysticism,' which is totally not magic for reasons which have no good explanation*.
*See aside above.



This begs the question:
What are people not getting? Why are people hung up on removing Psionics from RPGs, D&D in particular, when it's been in the back of the AD&D Players handbook since the 1970s? We are talking over 40 years.

Who? Who are these people 'hung up' on psionics? We are talking about a set of rules which have been in the game for over 40 years (for reference, psionics first showed up in oD&D's 1976's Supplement III: Eldritch Wizardry), and they have been in almost every version of the game since then until now, so why do you think people are 'hung up' in some way?


I think the community needs to stop griping about attack modes or bad design, and look at this niche genre with fresh open Eyes. It's been many years since Akira first aired and Carrie remakes abound. (Netflix's I am not Ok with this, and Stranger Things).
But should Psychics be their own thing?
Some games say yes. Some editions say yes. Others say no.
Okay, well the community not griping seems to be a pipe dream. However, you clearly seem to get that a lot of this back and forth is about the implementation of psionics in the game, but most of your points leading up to this seem to be discussing the very concept of psionics as a distinct concept. People who agree on what psionics are, and whether they should be in the game will have differing ideas about how they should be implemented.

MoiMagnus
2020-12-28, 03:14 PM
I think this debate has some link with the debates on the Vancian system.
For a lot of peoples, Psionic are just a mean to have spellcaster that don't follow the Vancian system (no spell slots, no spell components, etc).

Democratus
2020-12-28, 04:01 PM
Psionics has always had an odd place in the game. It's a throwback to the "weird science and fantasy" pulp tropes.

Originally, D&D was in a post-apocalyptic world with ancient civilizations that practiced super-magic and super-science. There were adventures with robots and ray guns right next to swords and spellcasters.

Barsoom and Middle Earth collided, along with R'lyeh and Hyperboria. It was a hodge-podge of crazy ideas all mashed together to create a kind of deadly "anything goes" environment.

As D&D matured, it became much more Tolkien and much less Tesla.

Anymage
2020-12-28, 04:18 PM
As D&D matured, it became much more Tolkien and much less Tesla.

You mean the version of D&D where hippo people were flying around on spaceships, or the version where my robot PC can ride around on a lightning train?

Granted you have many players who have very strong preferences for Tolkien flavor, and they often like or dislike books and settings based on that. But official D&D stuff has always been kitchen sink.

Democratus
2020-12-28, 04:29 PM
You mean the version of D&D where hippo people were flying around on spaceships, or the version where my robot PC can ride around on a lightning train?

I mean the public face of D&D:

Adventurer's League
Acquisitions Incorporated
Force Grey (Mat Mercer)
The Chain of Acheron (Matt Colville)
The D&D Movie (a bad movie, but very much classic fantasy and seen by millions)
Maze Arcana (Satine Phoenix)
Every D&D module published for 5th Edition



Classic fantasy is the dominant mindscape of D&D to the public at large.

Max_Killjoy
2020-12-28, 04:31 PM
That kitchen sink aspect doesn't help.

At least in my experience, a lot of players look at psionics and just say "ANOTHER magic rubric?". Looking at 5e, sorcerer eats into the "inherent power" space of psionics, monk eats into the "focus and inner discipline" space of psionics, and so on.

And the settings that specifically include psionics typically do a terrible job of integrating both magic and psionics into the cosmology coherently. Is psionics something entirely different from magic, another form of magic, or what? If it's just magic, why are there all these differents ways to access magic? What the heck is going on?

Anonymouswizard
2020-12-28, 04:38 PM
I love the concept of mystical mentalist magic, but I seem to be in the minority.

I also like psionics, and both the ideas of innate alien power and 'powers from enlightenment' that comes from it.

My next D&D character is planned to be a variant human Psi warrior with Telekinetic, Telepathic, Alert (for limited ESP), and then pumping dex and int as high as I can. Accolyte background to be a psychic warrior monk, and dual dao/scimitar because why not.

Now all I need is a feat that lets me dual wield blades with my mind.

Telwar
2020-12-28, 04:43 PM
I actually like psionics. I never played with them in 2e, but did play psionic characters in 3.5e (human nomad), 4e (elf telepath), and 5e (elf wu jen). And I'm perfectly fine with psionics in D&D as a different flavor of magic, but then again I'm used to the source priests from the Drenai Chronicles (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drenai_Series#Overview) being telepaths and astral walkers.

So I can't really talk about 1e or 2e, but with 3e on, I think the main issue is that psionics winds up as an add-on later in the game's life cycle, and so never got included in core development. That means it gets looked at as an example of power creep, whether or not that's the case, and that in turn puts it out of the core for the next edition, which just feeds into the cycle.

The main difference, at least in D&D*, seems to be using spell points, or PSPs, instead of spell slots, with a second, lesser difference in types of effects, which I think became less prevalent as editions marched on. And that leads to a potential issue where the psion/mystic can both nova much more and run out of steam much more than a regular slotted caster...be it like an example I saw here that someone's mystic fireballed the orcs in the castle several times and ran out of PSPs** or (as happened to my nomad in actual play) get into a big fight after porting the party all over Khorvaire that day and not having a wand/dorje/whatever. The complaints I see are that the psion player can nova as much as they want and not have to deal with the consequences, since they whine to the rest of the party that they need to pull back and nobody makes them limp along on fumes the rest of the adventuring day, and the DM doesn't have multiple encounters in the same day.


I'd personally love psionics to be part of Core D&D, so it all works at the same time, everything's taken into account, etc. There's enough fantasy that has psionics in it that I don't think it should be an issue. The main issue I see is deciding the effects that psionic classes should have available, and then designing spells/powers for them such to have usable options at each level...which is going to mean another, say 20% more spells in the spell section. I suspect, though, that the eventual Dark Sun book is going to have a Psorcerer subclass that's going to be their answer to psionics, and they'll move along and play Cyberpunk or whatever the new hot video game is.


* - This mostly references 3.5 and 5e. 4e psionics kind of adhered to the AEDU system, with the difference that they didn't have specific Encounter attack powers (except in the Paragon paths), but could instead augment their At-Will powers with PSPs for Encounter-power effects. Which was fine...except that the higher-level powers both were less efficient to augment and didn't do nearly enough to warrant their extra cost, so it wasn't uncommon for psionic PCs to skip the higher-level powers and thus have far more encounter-level powers by just using the lower-level powers over and over and over (with the greater # of PSPs they got at higher level) long after the rest of the party ran out of encounters and dailies, which is the COMPLETE OPPOSITE of the bookending editions' psionics.

** - "Dude, they were dead after the second fireball." "Well, I saw one twitch."

Scots Dragon
2020-12-28, 05:03 PM
Classic fantasy is the dominant mindscape of D&D to the public at large.

I'd argue that the more kitchen sink pulp fantasy is more classical than the supposed classical fantasy, which was only really properly popularised and codified in the 1950s.

Dungeons & Dragons is much more suited to its origins in the pulp subgenres.

anthon
2020-12-28, 05:41 PM
I actually like psionics. I never played with them in 2e, but did play psionic characters in 3.5e (human nomad), 4e (elf telepath), and 5e (elf wu jen). And I'm perfectly fine with psionics in D&D as a different flavor of magic, but then again I'm used to the source priests from the Drenai Chronicles (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drenai_Series#Overview) being telepaths and astral walkers.

So I can't really talk about 1e or 2e, but with 3e on, I think the main issue is that psionics winds up as an add-on later in the game's life cycle, and so never got included in core development. That means it gets looked at as an example of power creep, whether or not that's the case, and that in turn puts it out of the core for the next edition, which just feeds into the cycle.


i think many got exactly what I was getting at (summarizing the problem stretched over 40 years isn't exactly a 1 liner so sincerest apologies to those lost in my mental drift) but this statement really hits one of the nails on the head (the psionics issue is so large you can build a whole table with the nails)

It's not that psionics was power creep, its that introducing it as a step child add-on, an afterthought, meant people who are really strict to the rules of editions at hobby shops absolutely and utterly refuse to see anything outside the core book as anything but optional, and view with suspicion and hostility whatever changes to their native CORE landscape of balance is supposed to be.

And the Vancian parallel? Totally true.

Psionics for many was an escape from Vancian magic, especially if D&D was their first/early exposure to some concepts of magical systems. Final Fantasy 1, for example, was Vancian Magic, while Final Fantasy II (4 in japan) used spell points, very similar to the PSP system of Steve Winter in the AD&D 2e Complete Psionics Handbook.

Mental Harbingers and Attack Modes was clearly a pet idea that people in the industry loved a lot more than most of the players. Sometimes pet ideas turn into bad game mechanics. Attack/Defense Modes could have been seen like Weapons and Armor equipment lists for mental dungeons in mental battles, but I think they just led to confusing tables for lots of people.

I still love the idea of a mental construct fighting some other mental construct, like Christopher Reeves in Village of the Damned erecting a mental brick wall, or Professor X creating some mental glowing construct of a person or animal to fight another. This has some Hal Jordan/Sword in the Stone Dueling Wizards ideas behind it,

and you all probably know such concepts are basically the same premise behind YuGiOh and other Poke t Mon ster card games. It's the same as Blood Sport/Grappler Baki: What happens when two ideas clash?

In Philosophy class, you hear professors talk about the Unstoppable Force vs. the Immovable Object. This trope is carried over into stuff like Wolverine's Adamantium, Dark Phoenix vs. (insert big bad), and "Will a Vorpal Sword Cut it?"

So yes, D&D has mental constructs battling each other. That's kind of the Jungian Archetype at its best: Paladin/Knight in Shining Armor vs. Lich/Dragon/Pit Field. You see this clash of Ideas when Gandalf faces the Balrog and roars "YOU SHALL NOT PASS!"

This is the essence that was supposed to be attack/defense modes...

but failed. again, and again... for decades.

By the time 5th edition came along, there was so much "psionics isn't core. psionics is broken. psionics suck. psionics is magic. psionics isn't magic and doesn't belong"

that the entire sweep from 2014 ish through 2020 saw 0 implementation of Psionics at an officially sanctioned Table. Instead, you have this "mystic" thing. And I think in the future,

if we don't address this, it will continue to feed a cycle of ostracism into future editions.

Many of you are like me, you like the concept of Psionics, but see it either ostracized or implemented badly.

I think though, one of the solutions is ironing out what Tropes makes psionics work, and addressing the over-lap issues and flaws.

>Using Psionics to escape Vancian restrictions is definitely a flaw.
>Seeing Psionics as anti-vancian then using Sorcerers as an excuse to not have them is a flaw of psionics too.

When you see Psionics as only genetic (mutants from X men or Heroes?) then as a class its de-facto ostracizing, and not inclusive. In 2021, inclusive is probably nigh mandatory...

and considering Psionics was originally for everyone who had sentient-sapient mental capacity (in Darksun literally everyone) it was always intended to be an inclusive power source.

Steve Winter's whole "psionic powers come from within, not without, and are definitely not magic or subject to dispel magic/magic resistance" worked really well i think, for saying "this is NOT magic."

The 5e mystic originally started down this line, but then defaulted back to spells.

When 5e psionics were going to start making use of the intelligence saving throw, or an intelligence Armor Class, I was enthusiastic, because it really felt like its own animal. It wasn't a dog or a cat. it was a 9 tailed fox with its own bag of tricks.


Whatever the community wants psionics to become though, it should be something that stands on its own two legs apart from other class/power sources.

Nifft
2020-12-28, 06:26 PM
I want you to imagine a nice fat Boris Vallejo Painting. Imagine it with all your might, and thousands of words of description with all that oil and color, flexing 1970s muscles, and politically incorrect scantily clad females...

Wait... what's this? A laser? A mutant in the distance? Is that a star ship? What? Why is there a star ship blasting beams of scifi energy in my precious fantasy barbarian scene? Even mr muscles' loincloth paint daubs are reflecting the sheen of that high energy beam...

How is this fantasy?!! There was no genre conflict between "fantasy" and "lasers" back when D&D kicked off.

Some of the most famous D&D modules played with the concepts of sci-fi ships crashing into fantasy worlds, and those modules followed in the footsteps of fantasy giants (Conan, Dying Earth, Fafhrd & Grey Mouster, etc.).




But lets step back a moment. Did you know Babayaga's Hut was described as a 4 dimensional Hypercube? Back in some old dragon magazine, one of the most famous dungeons was actually defined as a science fiction concept.

And how many of your modern wizards are just imitating sciency sounding Psionic Concepts?

Telepathy? Teleportation? Telekinesis? Pyrokinesis? Yup. As a concrete example, Detect Thoughts (3.5e) was originally called ESP (1e).




What are people not getting? Why are people hung up on removing Psionics from RPGs, D&D in particular, when it's been in the back of the AD&D Players handbook since the 1970s? We are talking over 40 years.
I see those arguments as more about status than fact.

The trappings of Tolkien-esque fantasy ("High Fantasy") are regarded by some as having higher status than "kitchen sink" settings where you have silly fun as a barbarian with a magic sword stabbing a robot for its rod of electrical recharging.




I think the main problem with psionics is that it has frequently been an utter mess.

*1e psionics was broken in so many stupid ways. 1e is hostile architecture, but for game design. 1e Psionics felt like it was supposed to be "balanced" by two factors:

1 - It was rare. This is obviously not great game design, but look at 1e rolled stats and 1e classes (where you only got better classes if you rolled well, and also you got +% XP for rolling well). The guy was at least consistent with this bad idea of rarity "balancing" OP.

2 - If you actually used your extra-good powers, your whole party got attacked by psionic monsters. These monsters had free attack and defense modes, so you with your limited power point pool were basically hosed against them.

Attack modes and defense modes seemed like they were mostly there to punish PCs who interacted with the system.


*2e had two psionics systems... one of which made it terribly hard to improve as a psionicist (aside from gaining more powers), and the other of which had completely broken psychic combat as a centerpiece (it cost more, on average, to attack psychically, than you would do in PSP damage).

*3e had a pretty lackluster system, that was replaced by a pretty good system. But, IMO, while the system was mechanically good, it had, IMO, a vocabulary problem. 2e and 3.0e seemed to codify and systematize the attack & defense modes, but without understanding that they were punishment rather than power.

3.5e psionics was perhaps the best balanced magic system in 3.5e. Not perfectly balanced, of course, but usually much better than any of the alternatives.

Regarding vocabulary... in 1e, the higher category of psionic powers was named "Sciences".



https://i.imgur.com/CkO6FOL.png



*4e was very different, but a lot like the rest of 4e. Personally I liked the 4e psi stuff, but yeah it was its own thing.

Segev
2020-12-28, 07:22 PM
*3e had a pretty lackluster system, that was replaced by a pretty good system. But, IMO, while the system was mechanically good, it had, IMO, a vocabulary problem.


Could you elaborate on the vocabulary problem, please?

Tanarii
2020-12-28, 08:39 PM
Psionics is just magic for science fantasy settings.

But it's okay to put science fantasy in your magical fantasy kitchen if it fits what you want.

Personally I'm a fan of having it be a crashed alien spaceship or weird dimension you're temporarily exploring before it gets cut off again, with some phat loots you bring back. But I like that for magical stuff too. That means I don't have to worry about tippyverse in the base world. Maybe just for a isolated corner of it, like Glantri, or off the edge of the map, like Alphatia.

It would help if Psionics wasn't usually such a mess. 1e, 2e, and 3e were all disasters with first release. 2e revised was ... okay. I've heard 3e revised was similar. 4e was probably best out the door, but that's because 4e gave a very sound structure for bolting on new modifications to the system.

Lord Torath
2020-12-28, 08:58 PM
Psionics is just magic for science fantasy settings.

But it's okay to put science fantasy in your magical fantasy kitchen if it fits what you want.

Personally I'm a fan of having it be a crashed alien spaceship or weird dimension you're temporarily exploring before it gets cut off again, with some phat loots you bring back. But I like that for magical stuff too. That means I don't have to worry about tippyverse in the base world. Maybe just for a isolated corner of it, like Glantri, or off the edge of the map, like Alphatia.

It would help if Psionics wasn't usually such a mess. 1e, 2e, and 3e were all disasters with first release. 2e revised was ... okay. I've heard 3e revised was similar. 4e was probably best out the door, but that's because 4e gave a very sound structure for bolting on new modifications to the system.2nd Edition Revised was awful. The first 2nd Edition version was much better, and all it needed was a rule to let you improve power scores as you level up.

The Revised psionics system is busted. It failed at both of its stated aims of being less confusing and easier to use.
- First off, you need to determine an MTHAC0 for every psionicist or wild talent. It's not trivial, and I've lost count of the number of people I've had to help figure theirs out.
- Next you need to calculate a MAC for absolutely every living thing a psioncist could conceivably want to use a power on. Yes, even that. This is also not a trivial calculation. It's not hard, but it's not simple, either. And it adds a substantial load on the DM when stating out encounters. Again, I've had to help multiple people figure theirs out.
- The Revised psionics stripped out the Power Score and Natural 20 results, which removed a lot of flavor to the psionic powers, and removed the drawbacks from powers like disintegrate.
- Then there are psychic contests. In Core psionics, these are trivial to resolve. It's a pair of adjusted ability checks, and the highest successful roll wins. In Revised, to resolve a contest between two psionicists, the lowest successful roll wins. Fine. But between a psionicist and a non-psionicist - say, in a telekinetics attempt to wrest a weapon from the grip of a warrior - the psionicist wants the lowest successful roll, but the guy trying not to lose their spear wants the highest successful roll. If both rolls are successful, determining the winner is *not* trivial. Again, it's not really hard, but it's time-consuming to determine the winner, and it's not immediately apparent just from looking at the die rolls.
- The real problem is psychic combat. In Core 2nd Edition, it's a series of adjusted ability score checks (like the psychic contest mentioned above) and you need to win three of these with your attack mode to establish contact. In revised, you establish contact by running your opponent completely out of PSPs. But every attack costs more PSPs than the average damage it inflicts on your target. You know what? Seika said it better than I can (https://www.dragonsfoot.org/forums/viewtopic.php?p=2048064#p2048064).
- And since Contact has been changed from something that connects you to another's mind to a NWP that gives you access to telepathic psionic attack modes, the only way to open a mind is to ask nicely, or to psionically attack it. You cannot connect to someone's mind without their knowledge, which makes powers like Invisibility, False Sensory Input, ESP, and several others effectively useless. Plus, anyone who's mind you have opened can kick you out pretty easily. Telepathy has been hamstrung.
- After removing the Contact power, Revised still provided MACs and PSP costs for the powers that make using Contact on other species easier. But since Contact has been removed, Reptile Mind, Plant Mind, and Insect Mind have no purpose.
- Both the PO:S&P and Revised Dark Sun books still require you to purchase The Complete Psionics Handbook, Dragon Kings, and The Will and the Way to get full descriptions of all the psionic powers. Except now you've got 4 (or 5) books, plus a Dragon Annual to flip through to find precisely what you're looking for.

RedMage125
2020-12-28, 11:43 PM
"We call it Pyromancy"

But is it? Really? I looked up pyromancy once, it involved setting a fire and using it for divination. It didn't have anything to do with zippy fireballs or big gouts of magical dps flame. There was no burning people alive - although there were Buddhist curses for that.. somebody write up a Shukenja.




Yes, and Necromancy was more about contacting the dead for guidance than raising armies of zombies.


Technically, all forms of "X-mancy" were forms of divination. Piscomancy used the movements of schools of fish, Ornithomancy was the movements/cries of birds, Oneiromancy was interpretation of dreams, Cartomancy is using cards (so Tarot is cartomancy), and even Tyromancy, which was divination based on the curds and fermenting of cheese...I wish that was a joke, but it is not.

On topic, I agree that the main issue with the "fear" of psionics has been that it was tacked on, and seen either as power creep and/or poorly implemented (based on edition). Which only further perpetuated the cycle, as it would be left out of the "default/core" for the next edition. I heartily agree that 4e was the most balanced, but, as Tanarii said, that was primarily because 4e was a system that was designed from the beginning to allow for such "modular" add-ons to fit in well.

Duff
2020-12-28, 11:46 PM
In D&D specifically Psionics seems to have run into 2 main issues -
If it's not functionally different to magic, then a Psion is just a wizard in a less funny hat.
If it is functionally different, then it needs a different mechanic. And designing a good mechanic is hard to get right and even if gotten right, will not please everyone

So, why do you want psionics?
If it's purely a style thing, then you just call your user of magic a Psion or a mystic or whatever, change hats, and off you go. In some versions you can take feats in still and silent casting if you like, or maybe sweet-talk your DM into letting you do that for free but with some other trade off.

Or do you want there to be a different source of power? Why?
I can think of a few reasons:

You want to have stories of going to places so far from the normal that magic itself doesn't go there. But that's hard to balance* if you have some characters who've lost magic and some who are just fine
You like the idea of being able to do an end run around "[affect] magic". So when the enemy casts dispel magic, your psionic flight doesn't change, detect magic doesn't make your psionic sword glow etc. Also difficult to balance* if psionics is rare since the counters will be too. But if Psionics are common then you loose the end run.
You have a 2nd magic system you want to use which is incompatible with D&D magic. So, you know how there's much talk about power balance, especially for wizards? Now do it all again.


I think those 2 main problems can't be solved until you make a definite decision about why you want Psionics in you game.



* I know, not everyone cares about balance. Systems are much easier to just hack as needed if you don't care about that, so I'm assuming for this post that we do

anthon
2020-12-29, 01:03 AM
In D&D specifically Psionics seems to have run into 2 main issues -
If it's not functionally different to magic, then a Psion is just a wizard in a less funny hat.
If it is functionally different, then it needs a different mechanic. And designing a good mechanic is hard to get right and even if gotten right, will not please everyone

So, why do you want psionics?
If it's purely a style thing, then you just call your user of magic a Psion or a mystic or whatever, change hats, and off you go. In some versions you can take feats in still and silent casting if you like, or maybe sweet-talk your DM into letting you do that for free but with some other trade off.

Or do you want there to be a different source of power? Why?
I can think of a few reasons:

You want to have stories of going to places so far from the normal that magic itself doesn't go there. But that's hard to balance* if you have some characters who've lost magic and some who are just fine
You like the idea of being able to do an end run around "[affect] magic". So when the enemy casts dispel magic, your psionic flight doesn't change, detect magic doesn't make your psionic sword glow etc. Also difficult to balance* if psionics is rare since the counters will be too. But if Psionics are common then you loose the end run.
You have a 2nd magic system you want to use which is incompatible with D&D magic. So, you know how there's much talk about power balance, especially for wizards? Now do it all again.


I think those 2 main problems can't be solved until you make a definite decision about why you want Psionics in you game.



* I know, not everyone cares about balance. Systems are much easier to just hack as needed if you don't care about that, so I'm assuming for this post that we do

Muchness this.


But let me present a NEW IDEA to people.

When you look at your soul knife character subclass, for whatever reason, this idea has survived through multiple edition revisions. It's not a Psionicist, but it is a Subclass of Psionicist that really stuck with people. You can see it reappear in Pillars of Eternity the video game.

A bit of history:
When the first character class for psionics came out, it was an expanded version of the PHB, and sorted like the Druid/Monk classes in 1e.

https://i.ibb.co/1nNpFjL/psionicist1e-ADn-D-Evidenceof-Existing.png


Other variations have included things like the Adepts, Telepaths, and various breakdowns of 5-6 Science Categories, like the Nomad/Psychoportive type from 3.0, the Wilder from 3.5, or the Wujen Elementalist from 5e Mystic. What these were, generally speaking, is akin to the Necromancer, Enchantress, and Invoker types of Wizard specialists, or like Specialty Priests from Forgotten Realms.

Despite being very different from each other, they were all under the same Big Tent of Psionics for their respective editions.
...
But when I look at some of the narrative challenges of what makes a psionicist/psychic, far more critical to differentiating them isn't their category of powers, i.e., which powers they have,

but how their powers work.

More than one player has complained Psionicists have too many different, often unwanted powers. You are forced to assign slots of things in weird chains in 2e, or forced to fill in dead slots in later editions. Sometimes it makes sense, other times not so much. You easily end up with something creeping further and further away from what you want. I had a player who tried making a Psychic medium based on Umbrella Academy, and they ended up with a whole suite of powers completely off base.

Some key issues I've seen are

Q. is psionics magic?
A. What if the answer is both.

as in, there's a subclass where psionics is magic
and a subclass where it isn't?

what about Mutants? Mutants are definitely NOT magic... but neither are many meditating monastic types. And some are. Uh Oh! We have a Venn Diagram of Overlap already:

Take a Tibetan Prayer Wheel Diamond Sutra style Psionicist. To them, psionics is:
1. magic
2. religion
3. learned

but is it a mutant power? No. Some people in their mythology can be born with greater powers, or reincarnated with greater power than other infants, but they aren't mutations of existing humans in the same way Heroes, The Gifted, or Legion handles things.

Also, ever notice Mutant powers aren't really learned?
they are inherited. Like the 5e Sorcerer dragon subclass, where you inherit good AC, Wings, Elemental Resistance, and so on.

By comparison, the Warlock learns/Earns their powers. Some mutants /do/ learn, as Professor X, Jean Grey, and Legion all had to. But notice a pattern in those three?

They were all human looking psychics with more than one power.

Wild Talents introduces Psionics as an idea about mutants, or gifted people, where it's random what you get, and you can cultivate that thing you have, but it doesn't develop further.

Wizards generally don't have this fundamental question, about whether they will only ever know one spell their whole lives, or go through apprentice school and learn dozens.

THAT, I think is a fundamental difference between psionics and many other systems.

Q. What about ethical code? Isn't that ethos a religion?
A. I think it can be. And it's totally possible for it to be unrelated to gods

in Chinese fantasy movies, the gods have something called Cultivation. (they have a similar concept in Tenchi Muyo). The mortals can even become immortals with enough cultivation, and learn super powers similar to gods as they practice more. This is very similar to the Guru relationship (such as the Autobiography of a Yogi). This pattern of Master-Student-Ascension is repeated throughout Tibet, with people like Milarepa and Padmasambhava - Famous Tibetan heroes on par with the Boddhisattvas and Taoist immortals.

Cultivation is a concept tied to knowledge, but also moral behavior. It doesn't necessarily mean Austeries or Filial Piety or some other Piety to a pantheon, but there does seem to be a code of conduct - like the old Paladin/Cavalier from AD&D - which acts like alignment restrictions, or Alignment QUESTS required to make it to the next level (druids, monks, and kensai from AD&D will be familiar with level-up quests and duels, and those familiar with Dragon Lance Wizards of High Sorcery should know about moral/life threatening tests in the tower).

So what im saying, is this ethical dimension of a Psionicist Class or Subclass is a major building block, and it can greatly differentiate one psychic archetype from another.

A transcendent monk psychic with a plethora of learned abilities,

vs.

a morally bankrupt mutant with a single, well practiced wild talent,

i think these are sharp contrasts.

Millstone85
2020-12-29, 08:45 AM
Where sorcery is intuitive, wizardry is methodical and theurgy is assisted. This, unless I am very very mistaken, is widely accepted as D&D lore that transcends campaign settings. But once you introduce ki, psionics or incarnum, you have to go deeper into a theory of magic that may not be welcome everywhere.

Personally, I am okay with the 5e PHB's claim that all official settings have some version of the Weave, an ambient thingamagic that sorcerers, wizards and clerics are all reliant on, which may be tangled or torn in certain regions of the world. But I know that many people are not okay with that. Even among Forgotten Realms players, the idea that sorcerers do not have all the mojo within themselves, or that even divine agents would have trouble with a wild or dead magic zone, doesn't seem all that popular.

So if in your world, say, a sorcerer uses the power of their blood, a wizard uses the power of their mind, and a cleric uses the power of their soul (with divine guidance), then there is little room for monks, psions or incarnates. Well, monks still get to be martial artists, but ki is less special.


You want to have stories of going to places so far from the normal that magic itself doesn't go there. But that's hard to balance* if you have some characters who've lost magic and some who are just fineThere is also the possibility of using areas where ambient magic works differently. Like a tower where highly-specialized arcane research was conducted, galvanizing a certain school of spells at the expense of the others. Or a planar manifest zone, where certain damage types become ineffective while others are maxed out. A psion would gain no bonus or malus from such an area.

Morty
2020-12-29, 08:56 AM
D&D's entire appeal and raison d'etre is being familiar, or "iconic" if you will. And whatever might have happened before, for at least 20 years now, D&D's brand involves magic, but no psionics. 5E's whole underlying purpose was to retreat to safe ground - psionics are controversial, so it wasn't going to rock the boat by introducing them. That's the long and short of it.

That having been said, if you want to use psionics, why not... play something else? "Fantasy but with psionics" is admittedly not too common in general, but for instance Savage Worlds lets you use psychic powers and magic together without any fuss.

Tanarii
2020-12-29, 09:11 AM
2nd Edition Revised was awful. The first 2nd Edition version was much better,
You're wrong, but that's okay.

Democratus
2020-12-29, 09:15 AM
And whatever might have happened before, for at least 20 years now, D&D's brand involves magic, but no psionics.

Did you fact check this? :smallsmile:

Morty
2020-12-29, 09:19 AM
Did you fact check this? :smallsmile:

I'm fully aware existed psionics have existed in 3E and 4E. I'm also aware that they were subject to the controversy the OP is describing. And I know what 5E did with them. So yes, I did indeed fact-check this.

Anonymouswizard
2020-12-29, 09:23 AM
Where sorcery is intuitive, wizardry is methodical and theurgy is assisted. This, unless I am very very mistaken, is widely accepted as D&D lore that transcends campaign settings. But once you introduce ki, psionics or incarnum, you have to go deeper into a theory of magic that may not be welcome everywhere.

I did quite like how 4e tied psionics in, but that could be YMMV.

As a side note, a lot of the issue with psionics is that they either tread on the toes of the Sorcerer (if inborn) or the Monk (if Englightenment based). I personally don't have a problem with it, I like my psychics and the limitations psychic powers can bring to the table.

I've been trying to work on a Psychic class for 5e, going in a very different direction tot he official version of psionics. Psionics is related to ki, but instead of training your body you train your senses, eventually developing to first limited telepathic ability, thank a limited increase to skills, and then finally developing into either a Clairvoyant or full blown Telepath (at the moment, might add more later). Unlike mages a psychic cannot have powers from all over the place, they must specialise in one area which brings with it a specific set of powers,

I find this works for me. Other psionics fans might disagree. Other people might just not want psionics at all.

Of course, it's not going well because I'd much rather run other systems that tend to have psionics either built-in or easily creatable with the existing rules.

Max_Killjoy
2020-12-29, 09:27 AM
You're wrong, but that's okay.

Why are they wrong?

Max_Killjoy
2020-12-29, 09:34 AM
As a side note, a lot of the issue with psionics is that they either tread on the toes of the Sorcerer (if inborn) or the Monk (if Englightenment based). I personally don't have a problem with it, I like my psychics and the limitations psychic powers can bring to the table.


That's part of what I was getting at above.

Of course, even the magic of the base classes doesn't mesh in some cases... would love to see more functional interaction between Sorcerer and Monk mechanics, for example. But that would require mechanics from different classes to work together, and clearly the devs didn't give a fig about that. Any synergies are accidental, and it shows.

LibraryOgre
2020-12-29, 09:53 AM
Could you elaborate on the vocabulary problem, please?

Looked back over it; it's less severe than I recall. A few powers are obtusely named, but I remembered it being a lot worse.

Anonymouswizard
2020-12-29, 10:06 AM
That's part of what I was getting at above.

Of course, even the magic of the base classes doesn't mesh in some cases... would love to see more functional interaction between Sorcerer and Monk mechanics, for example. But that would require mechanics from different classes to work together, and clearly the devs didn't give a fig about that. Any synergies are accidental, and it shows.

Honestly I wouldn't have a major problem with D&D dropping the Sorcerer.

They won't, because many people would have an issue with it. But those people wouldn't include me.

Although the devs of 5e very much did not intend synergy between class mechanics, and I'd argue that's because they didn't intend characters to mix the classes at all. I'm about 8% certain multiclassing is o the game to avoid backlash, and that the developers intended archetype mixing to be handled by subclasses.

I do think psionics has a place in 5e, even as a full class. But I don't think WotC has put enough effort into making it meaningfully different, whether mechanically or conceptually.

Keltest
2020-12-29, 10:14 AM
As far as it goes, my perception of the problem with psionics is that its always come down to "we already have magic, how can we make it meaningfully different, and is it worth doing?" with developers generally answering no to the last question. They have a system for magic already. Adding in a second overlapping system doubles with work without doubling the gains. Thats going to be a pretty hard sell for what amounts to a flavor change a lot of the time. If you want a science fantasy setting, just call wizardry psionics and call it a day. Cut the material and somatic components or refluff why you need them and boom, you have a working system, at least for 5e spellcasting. Heck, make it a feat if you want to have both. "psionic spellcaster: You can ignore somatic components and material components without a gold piece cost when you cast a spell." There are a lot of easier ways to just nudge the existing system into place than to try and bolt on something fairly niche thats the same but also completely different.

Quertus
2020-12-29, 10:29 AM
You know, I was just about to create a thread to post a realization I'd just had, when I saw this thread, and realized that it would fit here perfectly.

The realization? In 2e, magic item drops were random. Fighters (and everyone, really) were completely dependent on random rolls to see what they were going to be able to do, magic-wise. Same with Wizard spells: you got 0 spells you leveled - it was only a matter of loot that determined your abilities.

Enter the Psionicist, who got to choose their powers they leveled up. (Sure, the Cleric got all their spells, too, but who cares - they were just considered a walking box of bandaids).

Now, random loot was random - a 1st level character could end up with a Vorpal sword, +5 armor and shield, and a Ring of 3 Wishes. But *personal* magic - that of Wizards and Clerics - was strictly bounded by your level¹.

Enter the Psionicist, who got to choose their most powerful powers² starting at level 1.

Personal magic was also bounded by 8 hours of continuous rest, prayer, study. Or was that just Wizards? But a Psionicist would gradually regain power from resting… or even during light activity.

2e psionics didn't really "fit".

¹ unless you were an NPC in a module like Halls of the High King…
² with a few exceptions, mostly in the "metamagics" category


I think the main problem with psionics is that it has frequently been an utter mess.

*1e psionics was broken in so many stupid ways. 1e is hostile architecture, but for game design.

*2e had two psionics systems... one of which made it terribly hard to improve as a psionicist (aside from gaining more powers), and the other of which had completely broken psychic combat as a centerpiece (it cost more, on average, to attack psychically, than you would do in PSP damage).

*3e had a pretty lackluster system, that was replaced by a pretty good system. But, IMO, while the system was mechanically good, it had, IMO, a vocabulary problem.

*4e was very different, but a lot like the rest of 4e.

I'm not familiar with 5e psionics.

But a lot of the problem with psionics in D&D is it's often sucked.


Could you elaborate on the vocabulary problem, please?

I'll second that desire - and not just for 2e.


2nd Edition Revised was awful. The first 2nd Edition version was much better, and all it needed was a rule to let you improve power scores as you level up.

The Revised psionics system is busted. It failed at both of its stated aims of being less confusing and easier to use.
- First off, you need to determine an MTHAC0 for every psionicist or wild talent. It's not trivial, and I've lost count of the number of people I've had to help figure theirs out.
- Next you need to calculate a MAC for absolutely every living thing a psioncist could conceivably want to use a power on. Yes, even that. This is also not a trivial calculation. It's not hard, but it's not simple, either. And it adds a substantial load on the DM when stating out encounters. Again, I've had to help multiple people figure theirs out.
- The Revised psionics stripped out the Power Score and Natural 20 results, which removed a lot of flavor to the psionic powers, and removed the drawbacks from powers like disintegrate.
- Then there are psychic contests. In Core psionics, these are trivial to resolve. It's a pair of adjusted ability checks, and the highest successful roll wins. In Revised, to resolve a contest between two psionicists, the lowest successful roll wins. Fine. But between a psionicist and a non-psionicist - say, in a telekinetics attempt to wrest a weapon from the grip of a warrior - the psionicist wants the lowest successful roll, but the guy trying not to lose their spear wants the highest successful roll. If both rolls are successful, determining the winner is *not* trivial. Again, it's not really hard, but it's time-consuming to determine the winner, and it's not immediately apparent just from looking at the die rolls.
- The real problem is psychic combat. In Core 2nd Edition, it's a series of adjusted ability score checks (like the psychic contest mentioned above) and you need to win three of these with your attack mode to establish contact. In revised, you establish contact by running your opponent completely out of PSPs. But every attack costs more PSPs than the average damage it inflicts on your target. You know what? Seika said it better than I can (https://www.dragonsfoot.org/forums/viewtopic.php?p=2048064#p2048064).
- And since Contact has been changed from something that connects you to another's mind to a NWP that gives you access to telepathic psionic attack modes, the only way to open a mind is to ask nicely, or to psionically attack it. You cannot connect to someone's mind without their knowledge, which makes powers like Invisibility, False Sensory Input, ESP, and several others effectively useless. Plus, anyone who's mind you have opened can kick you out pretty easily. Telepathy has been hamstrung.
- After removing the Contact power, Revised still provided MACs and PSP costs for the powers that make using Contact on other species easier. But since Contact has been removed, Reptile Mind, Plant Mind, and Insect Mind have no purpose.
- Both the PO:S&P and Revised Dark Sun books still require you to purchase The Complete Psionics Handbook, Dragon Kings, and The Will and the Way to get full descriptions of all the psionic powers. Except now you've got 4 (or 5) books, plus a Dragon Annual to flip through to find precisely what you're looking for.

Your post was so thought-provoking, I'm currently at way with myself. Kudos!

On the one hand, this (plus the changes to the skill system) were the predecessors to the 3e "d20” system, which undeniably *was* less confusing and easier to use than 2e. So I can't fault giving every power a MAC (DC), and giving the Psionicist a single MTHAC0 (bonus) as being anything but easier than the previous system of powers having unique bonuses, and keying off different stats.

On the other hand, having to flip through multiple books to understand your power is more complex than the previous incarnation… so, by trying to save the customers money by not reprinting everything in one book, they inherently failed at their goals.

On the one hand, powers did not improve, and that paralleled skills not improving, either - there was no need for such a mechanic.

On the other hand, the revised Skills and Powers stuff *did* have skills, save DCs, and power scores all improving.

Segev
2020-12-29, 10:36 AM
Psionics has had more or fewer differences from other subsystems depending on edition. 1e, it used a “mana point” system (PSP) and was entirely random whether you had it. You got a random chance of minor or major powers, and if you got them, it was pure boon. 2E brought the brown splat book with the psionicist class. Still used PSP, but had a feat-tree-like progression as you leveled to pick your powers.

3.0 made it more similar to spellcasting, with powers known and levels like spell levels, but kept the “mana point” resource as “pp.” It introduced the unique experiment of making each Discipline use its own stat. Or maybe it brought that from 2E; I forget. Either way, that was considered less than great. 3.5 made it more like magic yet again with class-based manifesting stats. The introduction of feats you could commit pp to, later made into the psionic focus mechanic, was a further bit of uniqueness. As was the augmentation concept rather than direct ML-based power increases.

I don’t know 4e’s psionics well enough to comment, and 5e hasn’t been able to settle on a subsystem it likes.

3.5 had a lot of experimental magic subsystems. Incarnum used a point pool that rarely was spent, but was invested and shifted around, coupled with a limited number of “slots” for unique powers to invest them in. Binders used a modular suite of powers you could grab that got better with levels. Tome of Battle brought us a half-way point between feats and spells, with maneuver levels, maneuvers known, and the encounter-power “readied” mechanic.

Most of those subsystems were brought to PF by DSP. Though PF itself gave us a number of classes using a subsystem where each class had a unique pool of points very closely related to the number of levels in that class to fuel class features. Magus arcana, investigator inspiration, occultist mental focus... somehow, they also kept these feeling somewhat “fresh” and like differing mechanics between the classes with small differences in how they’re used.

Any new subsystem needs its own mechanic that can unify its effects and give it a distinct feel. That’s what 5e psionics design has struggled with: coming up with that system. The sorcerer’s SP seem to get in the way of simply using a 3e-like power point system. As does upcasting as a concept get in the way of augmentation being something special.

Personally, I’d like to see a combination of incarnum and psi, where power points are invested into powers for ongoing effects and then spent for big effects.

LibraryOgre
2020-12-29, 03:29 PM
There are a number of inaccuracies in here that should be addressed.There are a number of inaccuracies in here that should be addressed.


Same with Wizard spells: you got 0 spells you leveled - it was only a matter of loot that determined your abilities.

Not BtB. Specialists always got a spell, and the DMG said that all wizards should gain a spell upon attaining a new spell level (old cover DMG, p. 41, "Acquisition of Spells Beyond 1st Level", under "Going Up in Levels"). It's nowhere near as generous as the 3.x version, but it's been there since the get-go in 2e (to say nothing of stuff like PO).



Enter the Psionicist, who got to choose their most powerful powers² starting at level 1.


Also not true, due to the restrictions on power choice.

For example, the most powerful ability of a Psychokineticist (leaving aside the High Sciences introduced in Will and the Way) is probably Disintegrate (Create Object and Detonate are also powerful, but still). To get Disintegrate, you had to have Telekinesis as your first science (at level 1). Telekinesis as written is horrible, but to get Telekinesis, you need to have two Devotions that don't require it... from which you get to pick Animate Shadow, Control Light, Control Sound, Molecular Agitation, or Soften. You wouldn't be able to get Disintegrate until level 3, with your second science. Telepathy was likewise heavily dependent upon a single prerequisite, but it really needed 2... without Mindlink (science) and Contact (devotion), you weren't going much of anywhere in Telepathy.

Disintegrate at level 3 is still a lot more free than you see in Wizardry, of course... but it also had two points of failure (power score and saving throw), and had a 5% chance of targeting you, no matter how skilled you were.

ETA: Related: I did a rework of 2e psionics (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?623383-2e-Psionics-Unification) to include some material from both CPH and S&P

Phhase
2020-12-29, 04:26 PM
The way I like to explain Psionics ties in with the way I define magic, which makes things a little neater for me. Everyone knows the Weave, right? It's the source of magic. Wizards and Sorcerers tap it to create effects. Magic itself is just an energy, like heat. It can exist naturally in nature (where druids get it from), it can be tapped from the Weave (Sorcerers being born knowing how, wizards learning to do it through analysis), it can be channeled into oneself by an outside entity (A god or patron), or it can "come from within" as psionics puts it. What does this "comes from within" mean? Well, simply put, monk is to psionic as fighter is to wizard. The fighter and the wizard both practice in order to increase their physical or mental grasp of outside forces (weapons, or the weave). The monk and the psionic practice in order to increase their psychical or mental grasp of inside forces (innate physical capabilities of the body and mind).

Essentially, through rigorous training and mental focus, the psionic creates their own personal Weave inside their mind, which they then tap for power. Of course, this personal Weave begins completely blank (Think of traditional spells like Fireball as programs or scripts contained within the code of the Weave), and one must work with the energy through the lens of their own mind and body, making things like enhancing the mind, senses, soul, and body far easier, but things like throwing Fireballs a bit more complex, though still achievable to some extent.

As for whether or not magic and psionics interact, I have no idea, that's a game balance nightmare. Flavorwise I like them being alien to each other and unable to affect each other, but balancewise whoof.

Millstone85
2020-12-29, 08:08 PM
Essentially, through rigorous training and mental focus, the psionic creates their own personal Weave inside their mind, which they then tap for power.I am a big fan of the personal weave, and I have further headcanon about it:

The average Joe unknowingly has an aura of abjuration, essential to their survival in a magical world.
An arcane spellcaster has an aura like a coat of weaving needles, for the manipulation of ambient magic.
A divine spellcaster has an aura that acts as a channel for their deity, deities or other guiding principle.
A monk has an aura like a second body, made most obvious by followers of the Way of the Astral Self.
A psion has an aura that tries to be a world unto itself, autonomously rearranging matter and space.

Devils_Advocate
2020-12-29, 08:57 PM
Would 3.5's Autohypnosis skill (https://www.d20srd.org/srd/psionic/skills/autohypnosis.htm) cover some examples of "non-magical psionics"? My impression is that "psionics" isn't really used as a term for stuff like that, but exclusively for magical superpowers like mind-reading and telekinesis. In which case, well... of course psionics is magic. It may be magic more likely to be found in "science fiction", where it typically won't be called "magic", but an elven wizard in a magical fantasy world who sees a psionicist levitating and blasting stuff with force lightning isn't going to think that that "isn't magic". Psionics is a different type of magic than spellcasting, but there's plenty of that, like a druid's wild shape and magic items and so on, and stuff that interacts with magic in general and not with spells in particular will obviously interact with psionics, what with psionics totally being magic and all.

Duff
2020-12-29, 10:08 PM
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I've been trying to work on a Psychic class for 5e, going in a very different direction tot he official version of psionics. Psionics is related to ki, but instead of training your body you train your senses, eventually developing to first limited telepathic ability, thank a limited increase to skills, and then finally developing into either a Clairvoyant or full blown Telepath (at the moment, might add more later). Unlike mages a psychic cannot have powers from all over the place, they must specialise in one area which brings with it a specific set of powers,

I find this works for me. Other psionics fans might disagree. Other people might just not want psionics at all.

Of course, it's not going well because I'd much rather run other systems that tend to have psionics either built-in or easily creatable with the existing rules.

Would you make Psionics a kind of magic for "[effect] magic", allow there to be spells of "[effect] Psionics" or have psionics be a rare effect that has as an advantage the limited counters?
Or something else to address this question?

Lucas Yew
2020-12-30, 12:15 AM
Personally I'd meld Psionics into Sorcerer and treat them as the ultimate Innate Magic class, free from Old Vancian and silly VSM components (getting other restrictions to counterbalance that, I'm fine with). This idea probably stems from my home language (Korean), which traditionally does not linguistically distinguish "psionics" from other innate "superpowers".

anthon
2020-12-30, 05:01 AM
I did quite like how 4e tied psionics in, but that could be YMMV.

As a side note, a lot of the issue with psionics is that they either tread on the toes of the Sorcerer (if inborn) or the Monk (if Englightenment based). I personally don't have a problem with it, I like my psychics and the limitations psychic powers can bring to the table.


This really got me thinking. Psionics can be theoretically powerful (Carrie, Firestarter, Akira, End-game Spock from Heroes, etc.) but most of the time they are implemented as weird, weirdly broken, or weak.

That's not my argument, that's just something most of you have probably experienced. Psionics were quirky in ways they didn't have to be to try to inject balance in all the wrong places. (Poor Vancian wizards went through this rite of passage with crappy weapons and low hp)

So instead, I would like to Mention some core weaknesses of psionics.

1. if you are drunk, muddle headed, or suffering from a concussion, your dizziness, cloudy headed-ness, and general lack of coherent THOUGHT makes your psionics CRAP FU.

That's right, you get promoted to CRAP-FU. Your accuracy would suck because of vertigo, and since psionics traditionally is all about control, concentration, and focus, losing focus could mean your THAC0 sucks, the complexity of your mental images is weak or deranged, or you simply can't form a coherent anything - much less a mental projection or complex pattern.

Generally, a priest's god can choose to respond whether or not their follower is drugged or knocked senseless. If benevolent or protective, the god would likely grant spells AS A CONSEQUENCE of their follower being mentally abused.

2. Complexity of Patterns and Formulas isn't using an exterior pattern or intelligence. It's all on you, or your subconscious. For example, try imagining you have the power to form objects from thin air. Now imagine you have to pull off the Dr. Manhattan hat Trick of doing it one molecule at a time, and know where all the little bits go. Making something like a wall of diamond would actually be easier than making an apple. Making a blurry storm of wind and trash would be way easier than forming an ice sculpture of a swan.

A wizard conjures or summons things mostly intact, in accordance with the pattern of the spell, but a psionicist can't rely on Theurgy or the intelligence of the magic to "just figure it out".

3. Targets: A magic missile automatically hits because that's what magic can do - the magic is doing the thinking. A Psionicist could be fooled by poorly guessing distance, being unable to track and focus (like waving your hand over a flame to not get burned) long enough to get a good effect.

A psionicist is weird in the subconscious range too.

A sleeping psionicist should still be manifesting powers, while if blacked out, possibly manifesting no powers except psychometabolic type reflexive stuff (Carapace from Darksun for example).

A wizard should not be sleep casting unless they are sleep walking or sleep talking with verbal components. Meanwhile, a Cleric should have full access to their deity even while having a nightmare, and in some cases, their dreams would be literal encounters with their god or its messengers.


Mutant vs. Enlightenment
Mutant is the reflexive biological DNA/Ancestor Psychic. This is much like many sorcerer archetypes that talk about bloodlines. Aliens, Spelljammer Races, Githzerai, etc. These types of powers might be completely functional drunk or disoriented. Some might even trigger that way. On the flip side, such innate powers might gain little or nothing from sobriety, clear headedness or lack of emotions. Some powers may be emotion fueled (like the 3.5 wilder) and spending tons of time on a mountain top meditating might yield zero benefits.

Enlightenment Can be either an Ethical angle, or an intellectual/occult knowledge level. Sometimes both. Wizardry is usually some branch of this. You study arcane sigils and components and formulas to learn the rules of repeatable reliable empirical special effects. Thus everybody's fireball is 20ft radius and has d6s for damage. All the apprentices learn something like Shield or Magic Missile. It's Formulaic. But whether or not you skinned Arcamore's familiar or helped an old lady across a mud puddle last night has zero impact on the success of your formulas.


This kind of knowledge based psionics can exist. There's plenty of fan fic about super-brain people who learned hidden solutions to philosophy. Schopenhauer or even Crowley: Will=Manifest type stuff. Mental Giants. Alien civilizations that are just so much more Clear on the dimensional space that they Grock how things work, and if we thought like they did, we could do it too, and hopefully not disintegrate our neighbors by accidentally pushing them away in the 4th dimension.

But far less Strange than these ideas of Super Intelligence/Hidden knowledge/perception, is the notion of Ethical/Taboo based psychic ability. There's stories about yogis with siddhi(psychic powers) who after lifetimes of obedience to principles later abuse them by doing harm or being egotistical, then lose some or all of their powers, or suffer some kind of curse, karmic backlash, or retaliation. A girl in a Wushu movie who abuses the illusional face power to steal identities of beautiful maidens might later end up with a horribly scarred ugly face and near blindness.

Quid Pro Quo, or in some cases, accumulated reincarnation penalties for instance.

Hybrids of mystery knowledge + ethical codes are even more common than pure versions of big brain vs. saintly super powers. Monastic Saints in both the East and West have both males and females with typical Psychic abilities including communication with animals, telepathy, and levitation.

But the important thing about these categories, is that they come with their own flaws.

A moral powered hero can always be exploited through their dependents or locals. Heroic Paladin superman will always try to save louis lane, or even kittens from trees. That makes them busy and not meddling in the affairs of the evil Lich Luthor in his skyscraper Castle of Doom.


Super Brain guy requires high mental attributes. No beating around that bush, FEAR of ALL FEARS: Stat minimums. It's not so bad as a flaw though, because if you are given pools for stats, point buy, or roll + arrange to taste,

a stat requirement always means some other stat has to be sacrificed. Maybe you want a con of 16 for better hit points, but that Big Brain requirement says 16 has to go into Intelligence.


Generally, Wisdom is your Ethos stat, and Intelligence is your Big Brain stat. Since Mystics of history are often hybrids of ethics and hidden knowledge, that means you have 2 Prerequisites, i.e., 2 less dump stats.

anthon
2020-12-30, 11:16 PM
As far as it goes, my perception of the problem with psionics is that its always come down to "we already have magic, how can we make it meaningfully different, and is it worth doing?" with developers generally answering no to the last question. They have a system for magic already. Adding in a second overlapping system doubles with work without doubling the gains. Thats going to be a pretty hard sell for what amounts to a flavor change a lot of the time. If you want a science fantasy setting, just call wizardry psionics and call it a day. Cut the material and somatic components or refluff why you need them and boom, you have a working system, at least for 5e spellcasting. Heck, make it a feat if you want to have both. "psionic spellcaster: You can ignore somatic components and material components without a gold piece cost when you cast a spell." There are a lot of easier ways to just nudge the existing system into place than to try and bolt on something fairly niche thats the same but also completely different.


I think this bolded sentence right here strikes at the heart of the problem.

We should first ask this question regarding other power sources. Watch how irritating this gets:

we already have magic, how can we make ki meaningfully different, and is ki worth doing?

we already have magic, how can we make cleric powers meaningfully different, and is cleric magic worth doing?

we already have magic, how can we make bards meaningfully different, and is song magic worth doing?

we already have magic, how can we make illusionists meaningfully different, and is illusion magic worth doing?

we already have magic, how can we make shadow mages meaningfully different, and is shadow magic worth doing?

we already have mages, how can we make steampunk meaningfully different, and is technology worth doing?

we already have mages, how can we make druids meaningfully different, and is nature magic worth doing?


Ad Nauseum.

First of all, some of you may have noticed that Magic Resistance, Spell Resistance, and Dead Zones, or the rules of the Weave will not apply at all to the some members of the above list. In some cases, the Weave is only partially influenced, such as the case of Shadowfell. Sometimes not at all, such as mechanical clockwork devices made of brass and powered by steam. Some campaigns don't even have a Weave. I never used the Weave theory in Dark Sun nor Dragonlance. It wasn't a thing for me in Planescape either. Greyhawk - doesn't ring a bell. Forgotten Realms doesn't get to dictate reality for game settings outside itself. That's the height of cosmological narcissism.

Should a Fighter's strength be reduced from 18 to 9 because he enters a dead zone?

Should a Wizard's intelligence be reduced from 18 to 9 because you cast Antimagic Shell on him?

Should a Lich's centuries of knowledge be erased from memory because he enters the dispel magic aura of a Holy Avenger?

...

These questions seem absurd, but you never give the same defense against the absurd for psionics. For some interpretations of psionics, it's like exercising a muscle or studying hard. Do their muscles deflate in these seals? Does their brain go smooth and become a tabula rasa like feeble mind? Until we can embrace the concept of psionics possibly being "natural" the idea that it would be resistant to anti-supernatural special effects doesn't click.
...

One of the biggest tragedies in metaphysical understanding of Game design was when S. Williams decided his inspiration for Spells and Magic would be the Force from Star Wars. To most sensible human beings (and a lot of other-kin), that statement completely omits the most obvious: That the Force is Psionics. How did this book on making mages more magical get away with data-mining and plagiarizing such a fundamental cultural hero to Psionics as star wars?

Should fans of psionics really put up with this?

Note that the illusionist used to be an independent class. Then they were erased and sucked into the mage.
Then the psionicist was largely shelved but you got the Sorcerer. Then you got the warlock.

Now you even have monk wizards and wizard fighters with fireball.... you have this giant circus of stuff.

But no Psionics? I feel like Psionics are being bullied. And so are their fans.

Segev
2020-12-31, 01:09 AM
Illusionist got "sucked into" wizard because it really is just one school of magic, and always was kind-of weird to be the only one with its own special subclass. Druid got further removed form Cleric because it really was its own class. Illusionist was, in a lot of ways, the proto-sorcerer; the big allure of the Illusionist was early and sometimes exclusive access to the Shadow Evocation/Conjuration line of spells, which let them "prepare" multiple spells in one slot.

Tanarii
2020-12-31, 03:46 AM
I think this bolded sentence right here strikes at the heart of the problem.

We should first ask this question regarding other power sources. Watch how irritating this gets:
The answer to the majority of what you're asking turns out to be: no, we don't really need different subsystems for all those things. They're mostly just aspects of magic.

Ortho
2020-12-31, 03:59 AM
I think this bolded sentence right here strikes at the heart of the problem.

We should first ask this question regarding other power sources. Watch how irritating this gets:

we already have magic, how can we make ki meaningfully different, and is ki worth doing?

we already have magic, how can we make cleric powers meaningfully different, and is cleric magic worth doing?

we already have magic, how can we make bards meaningfully different, and is song magic worth doing?

we already have magic, how can we make illusionists meaningfully different, and is illusion magic worth doing?

we already have magic, how can we make shadow mages meaningfully different, and is shadow magic worth doing?

we already have mages, how can we make steampunk meaningfully different, and is technology worth doing?

we already have mages, how can we make druids meaningfully different, and is nature magic worth doing?


Ad Nauseum.


Clerics, bards, illusionists, shadow mages, and druids all use the same magic system: spell slots. It's not the magic system that makes the classes unique (except ki).

I don't know what steampunk's doing on that list. It's a genre, not a character option.



Should a Fighter's strength be reduced from 18 to 9 because he enters a dead zone?

Should a Wizard's intelligence be reduced from 18 to 9 because you cast Antimagic Shell on him?

Should a Lich's centuries of knowledge be erased from memory because he enters the dispel magic aura of a Holy Avenger?


Memory and stat increases don't come from magic, so no.



These questions seem absurd, but you never give the same defense against the absurd for psionics. For some interpretations of psionics, it's like exercising a muscle or studying hard. Do their muscles deflate in these seals? Does their brain go smooth and become a tabula rasa like feeble mind? Until we can embrace the concept of psionics possibly being "natural" the idea that it would be resistant to anti-supernatural special effects doesn't click.


And therein lies the problem: psionics are, by definition, supernatural. There's a reason it mainly shows up in sci-fi and fantasy.

Anonymouswizard
2020-12-31, 05:57 AM
And therein lies the problem: psionics are, by definition, supernatural. There's a reason it mainly shows up in sci-fi and fantasy.

And my view basically boils down to 'it's all supernatural power gubbins, why arbitrarily ban one variety of gubbins'.

Now at the end of the day if a GM bans psionics in their world I'll be annoyed but don't with it. It's the players who get annoyed at me using it out saying this type of mystic gubbins shouldn't be in the game that cause me problems. Yes there are orders of telekinetic warriors, so what it's my world, and no you can't play a druid, the class's redundancy with the Nature Cleric means there's no place for it in my world.

Also, if you try to pull Angry GM's trick of banning anybody who asks to play a psychic you've outed yourself as a bad GM. You're obviously not working with your players, instead you're offering an option, and then when a player takes that option you're making assumptions about them and throwing them out of the group.

Now I am all for D&D possibly shaking up the system it uses for psionics, and all for them being defeated by anti-magic defences if that's what's needed for game balance. But my favourite Sorcerer subclass is the Aberrant Mind, so even if they work exactly like magic I'd still like to play a psychic.

anthon
2020-12-31, 02:15 PM
And my view basically boils down to 'it's all supernatural power gubbins, why arbitrarily ban one variety of gubbins'.

This is totally one branch of psionics. As this guy says:

And therein lies the problem: psionics are, by definition, supernatural. There's a reason it mainly shows up in sci-fi and fantasy.

And I think that's part of the apparatus of fear game designers are fleeing from. So far, who has acknowledged the crux of the magic/no magic problem? The default answer is to assume its always magic/supernatural and that makes it easier, but then the same argument is used to dismiss psionics. The same argument used to dismiss psionics however, is also capable of dismantling 3/4ths of all classes into oblivion.

Mage flavor of the week.
...

But what if we focus on a new idea, the idea that what we think is reality isn't relevant - D&D doesn't take place in our universe or obey our universe rules - we have no weave of Mystra or inner elemental planes for instance. So why can't psionics be perfectly natural in a multiverse where stuff like inner planes and 150ft Roc birds exist?

Better still, is what we think of as reality, in fact, reality?

sage journals/Measuring Intuition: Nonconscious Emotional Information Boosts Decision Accuracy and Confidence
The long-held popular notion of intuition has garnered much attention both academically and popularly. Although most people agree that there is such a phenomenon as intuition, involving emotionally charged, rapid, unconscious processes, little compelling evidence supports this notion. Here, we introduce a technique in which subliminal emotional information is presented to subjects while they make fully conscious sensory decisions. Our behavioral and physiological data, along with evidence-accumulator models, show that nonconscious emotional information can boost accuracy and confidence in a concurrent emotion-free decision task, while also speeding up response times. Moreover, these effects were contingent on the specific predictive arrangement of the nonconscious emotional valence and motion direction in the decisional stimulus. A model that simultaneously accumulates evidence from both physiological skin conductance and conscious decisional information provides an accurate description of the data. These findings support the notion that nonconscious emotions can bias concurrent nonemotional behavior—a process of intuition.

Wired magazine/Mind Over Matter Princeton University human minds influence machines study
Dunne, a developmental psychologist, is far from the mad scientist type. But she is doggedly determined to prove what most physicists have never thought possible: that the human mind can change the performance characteristics of machines. Mind over matter, as it were. Sound crazy? The work at the PEAR lab has consistently shown that "normal" volunteers - not people who purport to have any psychic powers - can indeed influence the behavior of micro-electronic equipment with their minds, with their consciousness. This is done without the benefit of electrodes and wires - and without anyone being permitted to give the machine a good whack. Nearly a hundred volunteers have conducted 212 million REG trials during the 15 years of the lab's existence, and the research shows a tiny but statistically significant result that is not attributable to chance. The volunteers didn't even have to sweet-talk the machine into its deviations the way Dunne has just done. Some of the "operators" merely stare broodingly at the display, focusing their minds to beat the silicon into submission. Others let their thoughts wander or read a book. Two-thirds of the volunteers have been able to affect the REG in the direction they had intended (to select more high or more low numbers), while only half of them would have produced those results by chance. A few of them have gotten results that, when expressed in a graph, are so distinct the PEAR scientists can recognize these volunteers' patterns at a glance. Dunne refers to such patterns as "signatures."

The effects that the volunteers accomplish are very small, but amazing. "The operators are roughly altering one bit in 1,000," explains Michael Ibison, a British mathematical physicist who has come to work for a year at PEAR after stints at Siemens, IBM, and Agfa. "That means if you had a coin toss, psychokinesis could affect one of those coin tosses if you tossed a thousand times."

The question isn't whether these studies were found to be empirical, irrelevant, or debunked. The question is whether we can accept a universe in which the unaided non-ritual, non-theurgical, non-mystical and yes, non-magical ability to have Extra Senses (ESP), or Action at a Distance (Telekinesis).

Can a universe exist where these things are ordinary, or if not ordinary, natural?

There's nothing ordinary about a Tardigrade, a creature that can survive 99.9% absolute Zero or the Vacuum of space, but it's not magical. Turritopsis dohrnii is an effectively immortal jellyfish capable of reversing its stages in life under stress, but it's real. Henrietta Lacks had cancerous blood cells later known as the immortalized human cell line.
Dean Karnazes was a human being who once ran non stop for over 80 consecutive hours. The man ran 350 miles non-stop. He didn't use Expeditious Retreat nor drink Constitution potions. He wasn't on any drugs. There were no glowy god beings in the clouds waving magical fans at his back.

Throughout history, you might find some human beings who have impossible strength (like Louis Cyr of Canada), can perform monstrous mathematical equations like a living calculator, or can perfectly copy in photographic detail an image glanced once. People do Awesome things on those compilation videos with bikes, high dives, or Parkour jumps.

Sometimes an astounding ability seems like its genetic, a Mutation of a Mutant;

and other times, like the Speed Rubiks Cube kids, it's from intensive training. People have had dreams for thousands of years in every continent with precognitive properties on par with high level spells, but they didn't cast any spells. The DIA and CIA dumped a lot of money into Stargate for people claiming to have Astral Projection abilities to spy during the cold war with mixed, but not negative results.

There's millions of people who think some of all of this is pseudo science,

but there's also millions of people who think some or all of this is fact.

But if it is fact, then it means ordinary people can have special abilities with no magical causality whatsoever. Being completely natural, special effects which require the "magical" flag to interact, instead have no hold, and vice versa: these unique abilities might have no positive amalgamation synergy at all:

a Psychic Tossed into a Circle of Wizards or Priests trying to do a group metamagic spell might provide Zero bonus, and their lack of "magical circuits" might actually disrupt, rather than amplify the spell.

So I think it's important to see the possibility that some "Subclasses" of Psionicist exist which simply are not magical, and do not participate in the benefits or penalties of being thus acquainted with those circles.

Sorcerers and Spell points have been around for decades. Modern Edition Cantrips have infinite cast. Calling Anti Psionic Theory purely a Vancian issue of game balance is not sincere.

Willie the Duck
2020-12-31, 02:42 PM
There's nothing ordinary about a Tardigrade, a creature that can survive 99.9% absolute Zero or the Vacuum of space, but it's not magical. Turritopsis dohrnii is an effectively immortal jellyfish capable of reversing its stages in life under stress, but it's real. Henrietta Lacks had cancerous blood cells later known as the immortalized human cell line.
Dean Karnazes was a human being who once ran non stop for over 80 consecutive hours. The man ran 350 miles non-stop. He didn't use Expeditious Retreat nor drink Constitution potions. He wasn't on any drugs. There were no glowy god beings in the clouds waving magical fans at his back.

Throughout history, you might find some human beings who have impossible strength (like Louis Cyr of Canada), can perform monstrous mathematical equations like a living calculator, or can perfectly copy in photographic detail an image glanced once. People do Awesome things on those compilation videos with bikes, high dives, or Parkour jumps.

Sometimes an astounding ability seems like its genetic, a Mutation of a Mutant;

and other times, like the Speed Rubiks Cube kids, it's from intensive training. People have had dreams for thousands of years in every continent with precognitive properties on par with high level spells, but they didn't cast any spells.

I think a lot of people, particularly those who are tired of wizards being able to reshape the game playing-field, but fighters are regularly limited to a designer's conception of what a IRL person could do (often well below accomplishments like Karnazes'), would suggest that the term for such a character ought to be 'fighter' or 'rogue,' and not some breed of psionicist.

Max_Killjoy
2020-12-31, 03:11 PM
And my view basically boils down to 'it's all supernatural power gubbins, why arbitrarily ban one variety of gubbins'.

Now at the end of the day if a GM bans psionics in their world I'll be annoyed but don't with it. It's the players who get annoyed at me using it out saying this type of mystic gubbins shouldn't be in the game that cause me problems. Yes there are orders of telekinetic warriors, so what it's my world, and no you can't play a druid, the class's redundancy with the Nature Cleric means there's no place for it in my world.

Also, if you try to pull Angry GM's trick of banning anybody who asks to play a psychic you've outed yourself as a bad GM. You're obviously not working with your players, instead you're offering an option, and then when a player takes that option you're making assumptions about them and throwing them out of the group.

Now I am all for D&D possibly shaking up the system it uses for psionics, and all for them being defeated by anti-magic defences if that's what's needed for game balance. But my favourite Sorcerer subclass is the Aberrant Mind, so even if they work exactly like magic I'd still like to play a psychic.

"Angry GM" should probably rename his page "Petty Spiteful GM".

You have the right approach -- basing what mechanical bits are available on your actual setting -- but I've run into more than a few players who get TICKED that they can't play this or that class or subclass in a particular game, something about "but it's in the rules, why can't I?"

Segev
2020-12-31, 03:26 PM
The answer to the majority of what you're asking turns out to be: no, we don't really need different subsystems for all those things. They're mostly just aspects of magic.

Why doesn't - or shouldn't - ki use spell slots, too?

What makes psionics "psionic" as opposed to "wizardry" or "divine spellcasting?" The obvious bits are, perhaps, a lack of verbal and material components. The Force suggests somatic components might yet be a thing, though those seem more dramatic than necessary. Is that it, though? Or is psionics more characterized by a greater reliability, perhaps? That's not exquisitely represented in earlier editions, but the use of power points rather than spell slots at least makes things a little smoother, since you can't "run out" of high-level spell slots until you're low on juice in general.

3e experimented with a number of subsystems, as I went over in a previous post. I think more subsystems can make things more interesting, though I do think some of 3e's efforts were more "subsystems for subsystems' sake" rather than really trying to capture something specific.

So, the question comes back to: what should psionics be, that it is psionics and not "just magic?" Should it use spell slots, or does it, like ki, need its own subsystem?

I think DSP's update to 3.5's psionics for PF is actually really, really good, myself, but I don't know that it works directly converted to 5e.

Theoboldi
2020-12-31, 04:09 PM
"Angry GM" should probably rename his page "Petty Spiteful GM".

I do still wonder why so many people praise his half-baked, self-important ideas as the best thing since slice bread.



So, the question comes back to: what should psionics be, that it is psionics and not "just magic?" Should it use spell slots, or does it, like ki, need its own subsystem?

I think DSP's update to 3.5's psionics for PF is actually really, really good, myself, but I don't know that it works directly converted to 5e.

For me, at least, psionics has always thematically felt like a poor fit with vancian casting. The components, the implied rituals, and the reliance on specific, individual spells are a poor fit for how that kind of supernatural power is typically imagined.

I personally prefer an approach like 5e's Mystic, or the psionics from Stars without Number. It's more about certain disciplines and broad powers that the psychic has, and then grows more powerful and versatile within. Note that this can be slotted into a more generic magic system, but D&D's spellcasting in particular does not get the same feel across.

Tanarii
2020-12-31, 04:20 PM
So, the question comes back to: what should psionics be, that it is psionics and not "just magic?" Psionics is magic for science fantasy. So to be not "just magic" you use it in a science fantasy setting. Or use it to bring science fantasy flavor to your medieval fantasy setting, in which case it's another kind of magic.

If you want it in D&D you just need to figure out what you personally consider thematically appropriate magic powers, and use those aspects of the Magic system. Edit: for example a subtle casting sorcerer focusing on enchantments, divination, and telekinetic spells, using the spell point variant, would check a lot of the common boxes desired.

Segev
2020-12-31, 04:34 PM
Psionics is magic for science fantasy. So to be not "just magic" you use it in a science fantasy setting. Or use it to bring science fantasy flavor to your medieval fantasy setting, in which case it's another kind of magic.

If you want it in D&D you just need to figure out what you personally consider thematically appropriate magic powers, and use those aspects of the Magic system. Edit: for example a subtle casting sorcerer focusing on enchantments, divination, and telekinetic spells, using the spell point variant, would check a lot of the common boxes desired.

So vancian casting in a science fantasy setting would be “psionics?”

To me, the aberrant mind sorcerer only brushes adjacent, the same way the psychic mage archetype in DSP’s product does. It’s a way to have a psi-flavored mage, but it isn’t really psionic.

LibraryOgre
2020-12-31, 04:36 PM
Personally, I like differentiating magic types by mechanics... it's part of why I'm not a huge fan of AD&D's Wizard/Cleric split because, aside from spell acquisition, they have very much the same mechanics... prepare a list of spells for today, and that's what you can cast, and how many times.

Compare this, for example, to my Savage Worlds Shadowrun, where I use the same basic ruleset, but have four or five different ways to pick up powers (Physads are different than Cybernetics are different from Sorcery are different from Conjuring are different from Decking... all using the same basic suite of powers). Or Mages and Clerics in Hackmaster... mages use spell points, with 1 spell per spell level that they can cast at normal cost, but can otherwise cast anything they know, spending more spell points, and spending spell points on anything they cast to improve the spell. Clerics know all the spells of their priesthood for every level they have achieved, but they mostly only memorize 1 spell per day per level. Mages have spell fatigue, clerics do not. The different mechanics help create the sense of difference in the magic, making them feel distinct.

Anonymouswizard
2020-12-31, 05:00 PM
"Angry GM" should probably rename his page "Petty Spiteful GM".

You forgot 'prescriptive', whenever I've read his 'advice' it's always smelt of 'one true way'ism.


So, the question comes back to: what should psionics be, that it is psionics and not "just magic?" Should it use spell slots, or does it, like ki, need its own subsystem?

I think DSP's update to 3.5's psionics for PF is actually really, really good, myself, but I don't know that it works directly converted to 5e.

Honestly, if it wasn't for 5e's Fatigue being sosevere I'd say psionics should be fatigue-limited. But that would be incredibly hard to balance, you'd likely be saving against fatigue every round, and only want a level every few combats at mosr)/

Max_Killjoy
2020-12-31, 07:19 PM
Why doesn't - or shouldn't - ki use spell slots, too?

What makes psionics "psionic" as opposed to "wizardry" or "divine spellcasting?" The obvious bits are, perhaps, a lack of verbal and material components. The Force suggests somatic components might yet be a thing, though those seem more dramatic than necessary. Is that it, though? Or is psionics more characterized by a greater reliability, perhaps? That's not exquisitely represented in earlier editions, but the use of power points rather than spell slots at least makes things a little smoother, since you can't "run out" of high-level spell slots until you're low on juice in general.

3e experimented with a number of subsystems, as I went over in a previous post. I think more subsystems can make things more interesting, though I do think some of 3e's efforts were more "subsystems for subsystems' sake" rather than really trying to capture something specific.

So, the question comes back to: what should psionics be, that it is psionics and not "just magic?" Should it use spell slots, or does it, like ki, need its own subsystem?

I think DSP's update to 3.5's psionics for PF is actually really, really good, myself, but I don't know that it works directly converted to 5e.

At some point in the last year or whatever, I was trying to model a small group of characters into 5e, to see if it could be done. It turned out that the character given power by his god was better modeled using the UA Mystic mechanics, while the character who had inborn innate power was better modeled with Monk-Rogue-etc mechanics.

Linking power source to mechanics to aesthetics can create a mess, and it shows up again in Psionics, but maybe in the form of "what's the power source?" and "what's the character's technique of mastering it?"

Quertus
2020-12-31, 08:14 PM
Generally, a priest's god can choose to respond whether or not their follower is drugged or knocked senseless. If benevolent or protective, the god would likely grant spells AS A CONSEQUENCE of their follower being mentally abused.

Meanwhile, a Cleric should have full access to their deity even while having a nightmare, and in some cases, their dreams would be literal encounters with their god or its messengers.

You know, it would be nice if 6e structured itself such that having a deity was viewed as an *advantage* of being a Cleric.


I do still wonder why so many people praise his half-baked, self-important ideas as the best thing since slice bread.


You forgot 'prescriptive', whenever I've read his 'advice' it's always smelt of 'one true way'ism.

Angry feels like he has the answers. That is very attractive to some people.

IMO, Angry has an all but unparalleled intellect for deducing the correct questions to ask. *What* he talks about is utterly brilliant.

Unfortunately, his answers to those questions are all but invariably wrong.

If you go to Angry's site, read everything, and respond to it all with, "you're wrong, it should be…", that is one of the best RPG educations one could get. Because no one else will make you evaluate the important questions like Angry.

anthon
2020-12-31, 09:39 PM
Why doesn't - or shouldn't - ki use spell slots, too?

What makes psionics "psionic" as opposed to "wizardry" or "divine spellcasting?"

i made a collage of ideas, with one row for wizards and one row for psionics

https://i.ibb.co/2tw3XWp/psionics-v-magic.png

With Psionics, you see patterns like:

Teleport
Telekinesis
Telepathy
Force Fields
Levitation
Pyrokinesis
Astral Projection
Mind Control
Phasing
Precognition
Aura Perception

And various meditation type stuff like surviving extreme climates, walking on fire or water, and fasting for weeks without starving or dying of thirst. Some of these people can focus their will into things like pushing heavy objects, bending metal objects like spoons, or taking a kick from a horse, etc.

Healing touch, or transferring an injury or illness from a victim to one's self also seems pretty common. Longevity as a result of all that meditation/austerity/dieting seems pretty common too.

I do not disagree that one branch of what Psionics is, seems to be extreme Martial/Fighter abilities.

Many psionicists seem to be bald, hermit headed with beards, or look like Wudang Mountain types.

They are almost always seen in a Lotus position or similar with some kind of meditation deal. Otherwise, they look just like everyone else. Sometimes their eyes glow. Once in a while they have Aura powers, or even visible auras.

* Their powers seem to perpetually have skill checks, not just when they are learning them.

* They don't normally have contingency effects.

* Their effects immediately shut off without their concentration

* their effects don't normally have an "off switch" so if they turned their allies into sludge, that doesnt mean their allies can be brought back with dispel magic.

* if they lost control of their powers, they could accidentally turn themselves into sludge, again with no reversal spell to remove the undesired effects. All powers are a One way wood chipper, for better or worse.

* nose bleed/migraine/caughing up blood to use powers trope. Basically, their hit points are inevitably tied to their powers whenever they use powers higher than their skill level...

and like i said, their base skill level is peanut, not bag of peanuts.

PhoenixPhyre
2021-01-01, 10:28 AM
Here are my (non-mechanica, rough draftl) thoughts about psionics (which I do want to include, but haven't yet):

Terminology
* Fantastic == supernatural from the point of view of real life Earth. Dragons, rogues evading point-blank fireballs, barbarians getting harder to hurt when they're angry, talking animals, etc.
* Magic == supernatural from the point of view of the fantasy world. All magic is fantastic, but not all fantastic things are magical. Spells, magic items, mostly. Coherent effects that require special forces. Resonant effects that impose an altered reality on the surrounding world and go away when the input is stopped (generally); tied to an effect creator (caster, etc).

Magic things are vulnerable to antimagic (counterspell, dispell, etc) because they're structured, resonant effects that can be disrupted. Baseline fantastic things cannot be so disrupted. This means that antimagic fields don't actually destroy all "magic" (ie fantastic nature), but simply decohere any artificial impositions on the (already fantastic) nature.

Enhancer vs Invoker
I consider there being a spectrum here, between those who manipulate internal energy to change their own body's response to things within the framework of the world (enhancers) and those who mostly use internal energy to provoke external effects. Basically affects only self <--------> affects only others. Most actual psionic people are somewhere in between.

Enhancer-style is fantastic, not magical. It works with existing things, making them better and covering for their flaws. It's mostly about "going with the flow" of the world and using leverage to direct it toward desired outcomes, rather than directly imposing an artificial framework on top of reality. It probably should use Wisdom as its "casting stat" to denote the connection between self and world and making them move in harmony.

5e monks (especially Way of the Open Hand) and Shadowrun physads both fit comfortably toward this end of the spectrum, with Four Element monks being more toward the center.

Invoker-style is mostly magical. You use your internal energy to provoke EFFECTS on the outside world, leaving yourself mostly unchanged. Even when you do change yourself, it's much more outside of nature--you change your shape, not just redirect your ki to hit faster. Direct, flashy energy manipulation, telekinesis, telepathy, etc are hallmarks of the Invoker style. This could either be Charisma (force of will/force of self) based or Intelligence (knowledge and academic learning) based.

You could make a passable "pure invoker" by giving an Aberrant Mind sorcerer spell points instead of slots and by mutating around their spell list a bit.

Psionics vs "Vancian" magic
One big difference, for me, is that psionics feel like they should use some form of a "mana" system. Ki, spell points, whatever. Those toward the enhancer end give up deep pools for no-cost effects/capabilities and not being vulnerable to counter-magic, while those at the invoker end get deeper pools in exchange for being more fragile and less physical and more vulnerable to counter-magic.

Avenues I see myself creating
* A real "psionic" sorcerer subclass. Almost a pure invoker, focused on kinetics, telepathy, and energy blasts.
* A psionic fighter/mindblade. Hybrid, invoking a blade of energy but also enhancing physical capabilities.
* A psionic rogue/mindblade. Can invoke blades, but more about manipulating luck. Maybe throws energy blades, a la Gambit's cards? Dunno.

anthon
2021-01-01, 11:12 PM
Enhancer vs Invoker
I consider there being a spectrum here, between those who manipulate internal energy to change their own body's response to things within the framework of the world (enhancers) and those who mostly use internal energy to provoke external effects. Basically affects only self <--------> affects only others. Most actual psionic people are somewhere in between.



Psionics vs "Vancian" magic
One big difference, for me, is that psionics feel like they should use some form of a "mana" system. Ki, spell points, whatever. Those toward the enhancer end give up deep pools for no-cost effects/capabilities and not being vulnerable to counter-magic, while those at the invoker end get deeper pools in exchange for being more fragile and less physical and more vulnerable to counter-magic.


i like these two concepts.

i agree self sourced power: Self FX
and self sourced power: External FX

sounds about right.

As to mana, some systems of psionics seem mana based, and others seem skill based (or nosebleed based O.o). In wushu movies with immortals and taoists flying around, they often talk about spending thousands of years of essence to achieve some super special effect, or blocking some energy beam, then do a token coughing blood scene.

The psionic equivalent of this is the Nose-Bleed. Side effects of pushing far include migraines, dizziness, and unconsciousness. This is actually really similar to the Channeler Mechanic in Spells & Magic from 2e AD&D.

I loved the channeler, most of my wizards ended up going that path instead of vancian, even though you have to be about level 12-16 before it pays off (not so useful in low level campaigns). Sure, you could die casting a spell, but you had more "on your terms" magic.

But the question then, is whether this is a good definition of Psionics? After all, it comes with:

Nosebleeds
Migraines
Pushing limits
Spell Shaping
Spell Points
Possible death


The answer is no. It didn't feel like psionics. Using spell points and nose bleeds to cast magic missile, is still casting magic missile.

When I look at the images in my psionics/wizards collage, what I notice is an intensity of focus, and the eyes. Perception.

Perception and Meditation seem heavily ingrained in psionics.

Equipment stereotypes are a bit different too.

A wizard's robes tend to be elaborate and covered in sigils, a psionicist's robes are usually simple or weirdly sci-fi
A wizard probably has a magical wand, amulet, staff, and spell book;
A psionicist probably has a crystal, simbiot, vajra (weird tibetan doodad), or something from another world

like, there's certain themes.

Wizards tend to be Scheherazade and Camelot/Grimms inspired,
Psionicists tend to be Atlantis and Pyramid inspired.

In Cindi Lauper/Jeff Goldbloom's Adventure "Vibes" there was this big glowing psionic pyramid. There's a similar theme in the crystal skulls of Indiana Jones.

Both of these settings speak to fantasy time periods with stuff like armor, spears, and swords, but the flavor of fantasy is different. P.F. Hamilton's Neutronium Alchemist has humans split into Adamists and Edenists, the latter being telepathic connected to living ships.

Living ships, tree ships, and organic versions of technology seem like a big trope for psionics, akin to the armies of undead or rotting black towers and crypts for a necromancer, or spiders and web themes for Drow.


I wish i could get this tip of the tongue issue about Perception/Intense Focus for Psychics. I think you all know what i mean though - staring intently at something always makes me think of psionics.

Maybe have VARIABLE initiative for Psionics? Stare longer at stuff = better?

that would definitely be a unique mechanic.

Segev
2021-01-02, 02:32 AM
Maybe have VARIABLE initiative for Psionics? Stare longer at stuff = better?

that would definitely be a unique mechanic.

The trouble with such a mechanic lies in how long combats last in both RL time and game-mechanic rounds (not to mention in-game time). In most games I've played in, combats that run for hours of RL time take 1 to 7 rounds to play out, depending on the system and the medium of play and the experience of the players. But 3 rounds is often the case in 5e, in my experience. "Stare at it longer" could translate into "don't actually do anything in the combat," or "wait until the last round to do something," etc.

Now, you mention initiative, so having it be once per round but it knocks your init down is a possibility...but it also is not much of a cost at that point. Initiative is useful, but not something that can't be given up easily enough (and sometimes is advantageous to).

One possibility that might work in 5e would be to simply crib the general mechanic of Incarnum/Veilweaving/Akashic essence from 3.5 and DSP's work in PF. But instead of shaping soulmelds, the psionic character knows certain powers, and can move his psychic focus between them. I still like the idea of also having an "expend the power points" option, but that's potentially not adding enough to be worth it. I think Mystic did something similar, but tried to do too much in one class, which is why it flopped. The devs wanted a single class to playtest the mechanic, but the mechanic probably needs multiple subclasses for other existing classes as well as 1-2 full classes with their own subclasses to really test out.

anthon
2021-01-02, 03:12 AM
The trouble with such a mechanic lies in how long combats last in both RL time and game-mechanic rounds (not to mention in-game time). In most games I've played in, combats that run for hours of RL time take 1 to 7 rounds to play out, depending on the system and the medium of play and the experience of the players. But 3 rounds is often the case in 5e, in my experience. "Stare at it longer" could translate into "don't actually do anything in the combat," or "wait until the last round to do something," etc.

Now, you mention initiative, so having it be once per round but it knocks your init down is a possibility...but it also is not much of a cost at that point. Initiative is useful, but not something that can't be given up easily enough (and sometimes is advantageous to).

One possibility that might work in 5e would be to simply crib the general mechanic of Incarnum/Veilweaving/Akashic essence from 3.5 and DSP's work in PF. But instead of shaping soulmelds, the psionic character knows certain powers, and can move his psychic focus between them. I still like the idea of also having an "expend the power points" option, but that's potentially not adding enough to be worth it. I think Mystic did something similar, but tried to do too much in one class, which is why it flopped. The devs wanted a single class to playtest the mechanic, but the mechanic probably needs multiple subclasses for other existing classes as well as 1-2 full classes with their own subclasses to really test out.

one possibility of the Men who Stare at Goats Mechanic,

is the notion of
1. active concentration DURING staring (build up can be interrupted)
2. a time unit curve:

curve 1. initiative points lost:
bonuses: low
cons: you could get interrupted by someone noticing you staring if they act before your lowered initiative number is reached. Your staring begins at the higher initiative, and your Glaring/Staring has an ever increasingly obvious "notice" bonus to perception or insight checks for SENTIENT creatures.

Animals on the other hand, trigger their fight/flight instincts - some freeze in place, being watched, others realize they are being watched and flee, and more aggressive types begin barking/attacking. Pack animals might howl for backup, or be frightened and flee if the Aura of the Psychic is way stronger than the animals..

Curve 2. Rounds lost:
bonuses: medium
cons: entire rounds are lost. If you are trying to do something, you have to maintain the equivalence of eye contact and uninterrupted concentration. You can possibly move, taking a move action at walking speed, or levitate etc. at similar "slow" speeds, but you can't do stuff like attack or sprint, you are easily flanked, and while you can theoretically walk slowly to hide behind a bush, you must maintain a visual/Sensory path to your target. So you could hide behind rose bushes, or on the other side of a fish tank, but you couldn't hide behind a brick wall. 3/4 cover would be the best you could hope for. Full cover would negate your stare.

Curve 3. Minutes lost:
bonuses: medium
cons: same as rounds

Curve 4. Hours lost:
bonuses: High
Cons: same as minutes, plus a level of exhaustion

Proposed map of scaled curve:
1+2+3+4... because this adds up to +10
thus +4 "somethings" takes -10 initiative.

the next scale is 1 round, 3 rounds, 6 rounds, 10 rounds (i.e. 1 minute)

Bonus/Time: requires concentration, 3/4 or less cover, can only move after effect.
+1, -1 initiative
+2, -3 initiative
+3, -6 initiative
+4, -10 initiative or whole round

+5, 1 round, concentration, 3/4 or less cover, can only move slow, limited actions
+6, 3 rounds
+7, 6 rounds
+8, 10 rounds or 1 minute

+9, 2-9 minutes or similar transition unit; concentration, 3/4 or less cover, + possible level of exhaustion
+10, 10 minutes
+11, 30 minutes
+12, 60 minutes

+13, hours?, +1-2 levels of exhaustion.


What the numbers mean?

Depends on the edition. The above material is crudely setup for 5e. It's saying something +1-12, so perhaps on a skill total equivalent of power?

Example: some large dragon gods have a Passive Perception of 36, so +12 on that sort of scale would require 24 points from someplace else, such as level, attribute bonuses, etc. Some classes in that system have a "double proficiency bonus" so you might see something like 1d20 + 5-10 from stat +6-12 from double proficiency bonus = 12-32.

Put another way, spending an hour straight staring at something for an effect is a +12 bonus. Naturally, if the target moves out of the way, this hour was wasted.

As cumulative bonus Psychic Strength Points:
The scale could be slightly more precise and have even bigger scaling points. Initiative with various bonuses can hit around 26-30, thus going past 10 is possible, especially when you instead of skill equivalent (like a stealth check of 19) you are talking about point costs to active a power, or measure its overall power total. Spell points for higher level spells in Spells & Magic for example, charged 60 points for a Wish, but only 4 points for a Magic Missile. That was a curve from 4-60, with fireball and cone of cold being around 15-20 points.

So the next number after -10 is -15, then -21, then -28. Whatever your initiative is, that would determine your maximum round 1 bonus points (good incentive to take initiative feats).
5 points: -15
6 points: -21
7 points: -28

I don't think there's a point in going to 8 points/-36 initiative, as the stats and dice don't support it, but it's there for reference. When your initiative total drops to 0 or less, your Stare Bumps into "full round/next round".

After that, you might go:
8 points: round 3
9 points: round 6
10 pts: round 10/1st minute

then you have /3/6/10/15/21/28/36/45/55 minutes +9 more, for a total of 19,
and your first hour block is 20 points.

then you have 3/6/10/15 hours, and since people sleep about every 16 hours, we are done, with 24 maximum points,
and 5-7 points maximum within a single initiative set.

There's no particular reason to stick to triangle numbers. We could use anything. Odd numbers, square numbers, 3/5/8/13 numbers, etc. Triangle numbers are just easy to remember and used in 3.5e

Segev
2021-01-02, 11:54 AM
I think the cons on rounds lost are the highest; beyond that, it's not combat-doable anyway (at least in 5e D&D).

I should add that the initiative count lost mechanic weirdly encourages you to have the lowest initiative. If you're the last person to act in the round, it doesn't matter how many initiative counts you "pay" to "wait through," because you still get as many of them as you need prior to the next round starting, except now nobody else can act until you're done. This is somewhat easily rectified by saying that if this puts your initiative below 1, the remaining "ticks" are subtracted from your next round's initiative and you have to keep Concentrating the whole time.

If you're taking minutes, then you're not in combat, and you're basically casting a ritual. Only now, you're getting more effect out of it than normal, at as little cost (which I think 5e treats as "practically none") as a ritual, which only gives you the minimal effect of whatever spell you're casting (i.e. no upcasting).

Hours, you add a level of exhaustion, but here, you're probably not doing this on an adventuring day anyway. "Staring" for hours is likely done on a day off, so if you're exhausted when it's done, you just rest up, and the long rest removes that level of exhaustion. Again, minimal to no real cost, aside from declaring that this is like item crafting in 3e: something you do during downtime.

It's kind of like a mechanic I've wanted to make work for magic for years, but have realized just probably doesn't work in a game rather than a narrative story: casting spells makes you younger, and that IS the limiting cost. But if the spells have a noticeable impact of years lost, that's a finite number of castings in a given character during a campaign, since campaigns don't operate on year scales (and certainly not over decades) on a regular basis. If they don't have a notable cost in years, then it's practically no-cost. There's a reason RPGs use limiting resources that refresh by the hour, day, or (at most) week.

Similarly, a mechanic based on manifestation time needs to operate meaningfully on the time scale of combat. It needs to leave you able to act regularly before combat is over but also still be a real cost. The "initiative count delay" version is the only one that meets this requirement, and it's still a pretty low cost, unless interruption during manifestation is a regular issue (in which case it needs to be actually pretty buff, since interruption means the effect fails and you basically didn't get to act).

Luccan
2021-01-02, 03:12 PM
I was always thought the issue in AD&D was that it was a bunch of separate rules that you had to be lucky to be able to interact with. But if I recall you could still be subject to psionic attack if you weren't psionic, you just couldn't do anything about it (except try to kill the guy doing it first). And also anyone who was psionic also got free abilities of vastly different power level at questionable cost.

LibraryOgre
2021-01-02, 03:32 PM
I was always thought the issue in AD&D was that it was a bunch of separate rules that you had to be lucky to be able to interact with. But if I recall you could still be subject to psionic attack if you weren't psionic, you just couldn't do anything about it (except try to kill the guy doing it first). And also anyone who was psionic also got free abilities of vastly different power level at questionable cost.

Depends on the rules.

AD&D, across both editions, had 3 different psionics rulesets.

The 1e rules were an appendix in the PH, like the Bard. They were, IMO, confusingly written, and psychic combat was even worse. However, non-psychics were pretty much immune to psionic combat, except for psychic blast.

The Complete Psionics rules were pretty solid, but *very* MAD... Intelligence, Wisdom, and Constitution were all necessary for a well-rounded psionicist, and a couple powers called on Dex or Charisma, as well. Improving powers was difficult and expensive, so if you didn't have good stats, you were gonna be bad as a psionicist. Psionic combat wasn't bad... a non-psychic was pretty vulnerable, but at least it took two rounds to get set up (one round to Contact, one round to start doing nasty things to their brain). A functional psychic would take at least 3 rounds to do... it took three successful psychic attacks to open a mind, and you only got 2 per round, chipping away at your own PSPs to do it.

Skills and Powers (also known as the "Way of the Psionicist" rules for Dark Sun R&E) were their own kind of mess. While they made psionic powers improve automatically (rolling against a set Mental Armor Class based on the power, with an ever-increasing mental ThAC0), they borked psionic combat to the point where you were better off putting up your psychic defenses and punching the guy in the nose.

All three had a system of "wild talents", as they got called in 2e... folks with psychic powers unrelated to their class. 2e introduced the psionicist, who had psychic powers as a main class feature.

anthon
2021-01-02, 04:07 PM
regarding staring at goats and free/out of combat actions:

this is sometimes true, but more narrative control. Like in one of the threads someone was talking about how to take down a prismatic wall. A clever poster suggested waiting 10 minutes.

if you need 6 minutes for the troll army to mobilize from disparate cave chambers to wait on the other side of the prismatic wall, then minutes 1-5 are critical for the party to take down the wall and escape being vastly outnumbered. Adding a variable die roll to the "and then you roll dice and cross your fingers" type take down of the hypothetical wall could push the presumptuous psychic to hold till the last minute to try to eek out their maximum bonus, lest they fail one check and then start all over.

Fatigue can also be problematic with ambushes. While in a perfect setting you might have fatigue + rest - which makes for a good Meditation to create/modify new powers, it's also dangerous if you have enemies, or random hungry flying monsters who just happen to be sailing the skies over your meditation spot.

Tactically, wanting things to always be out of combat and thus not a problem is where you'd want mechanics to be anyway. Paying someone to stand guard while you meditate, or hiding your spell research lab so your new spell creation experiment doesn't explode as a consequence of interruption by nosy busybodies (or the talkative rambunctious and drunk barbarian of the party) - these are tactical considerations for "what ifs"


----

I agree with the problem of how non-psionicists interacted in some editions with psionics. Just calling it Magic didn't really solve the problem either - think of how many classes had no defense vs. stuff like Power Word, Temporal Stasis, or Magic Jar. Heck, even magic missile is totally busted vs. lower level classes - low initiative, instant death, no save, no attack roll. So switching to "magic" is NOT an honest way to "defend" the various non psionicists.

Instead, the messy 2.5e players option presented some good ideas (slashing their PSPs and getting rid of maintenance cost was NOT one of these good ideas)

Mental Armor Class/ MAC

This is a static target difficulty. People with more mental defense have more of it, just like regular AC.
(kinda like will saves)

Stackable MAC bonus proficiency slots:
keep slotting MAC bonuses, and eventually you have a super high mental AC.

Base bonuses from high intelligence or wisdom: This makes good sense.


However, there's two problems:
1. not everything is telepathy
2. what to do about PSPs/PPs/Mental Points?

I once suggested a Psionicist should use their PSPs as their hit points on the Astral Plane, since it was the plane of thought. Other classes would have perhaps a variation of "hit dice" based on their class and mental stats. So like, Wisdom/Intelligence would be Dexterity (mental AC) and constitution (Astral HP).

The breakdown would then be a big debate about who gets the d12, who gets the d10, and who's stuck with the d4 per level? Perhaps having those MAC bonus proficiencies would add higher Astral HP, or you could flip around things like this:

Astral HP is a demonstration of mental strength/willpower, so reinforced Will would go here
buying the MAC bonus proficiency would add an extra d4-12 each time you bought one, modified by your Will Power/Wisdom like buying a Hit Die?

Mental AC might manifest as mental constructs, like Brick Walls or Dodgy Ideas, so

Non-Psionicists would have Defense Modes purchased for proficiency slots

Lord Raziere
2021-01-02, 05:07 PM
.......honestly? I don't think the problem is with the mechanics of psionics.

its that psionics has no actual/weird place in most of the published worlds. Forgotten Realms and Dragonlance would like to ask you what psionics is and where is it among their factory-standard fantasy settings. Ravenloft is too gothic/horror themed to have time for psychic stuff. the only two settings that have any real presence or role for psionics in their world in my mind at least, are: Eberron and Dark Sun.

thing is, in Eberron? its kind of its own thing. sure its built into the setting with the kalashstar, the quori, the riedran continent, xoriat and so on, but you can completely ignore it if you want. Xoriat isn't a threat unless a literal astronomical event happens, the kalashstar are mostly off in their monasteries being jedi meets steven universe, the continent of riedra is oppressive and secretly a quori thing but most players aren't going to care unless the game starts and focuses on it.

while Dark sun is the only setting I can think where psionics is outright unavoidable because arcane magic drains life energy from the land and caused the whole apocalyptic situation to begin with so having a form of magic that doesn't make the druids cry even more tears while you try to fix this wasteland with its use is pretty vital.

thing is you can't just get rid of psionics: illithids practically run on it and its one of DnD's iconic foes. like its legit one of the things they actually have copyrighted and thus can't be used by other game designers in their DnD-likes. and since Eberron is still popular enough to get its own books, its not as if you can take out major parts of the setting without causing huge upsets. so there are reasons why psionics is around, you can't really explain these things without it. but at the same time they're not exactly the main focus see? its possible to ignore both of these things and thus while they're there, psionics is.....kind of there but not really and its up to the GM to make sure its there enough for people to care, you get me? because while the assumption of wizard schools and temples to gods is pretty much a given for DnD, I don't really know what the equivalent is for psionics and I don't think anyone assumes to encounter a psion in normal DnD play, as a player or as an encounter. they're just one of the many zany weird things that could possibly happen among others.

to really get psionics to matter you have to explain what their place is in the world and how they interact with people- and no protecting people from their own little threats created just for them, don't count. because that its still shuffling them into a corner for people to ignore. you need to integrate them into the worlds they inhabit and figure out how they are presence in them. what their goals, hopes, dreams, fears, relationships and so on among everyone else. they have to participate in what everyone else is participating in, or whats the point? but since psionics seems to be optional, I doubt we're going to get that solved any time soon.

Luccan
2021-01-02, 06:55 PM
To be fair, it seems psionics was always intended to be strange and rare compared to the normal magic of the setting. In 1e less than a handful of the PHB races could be psionic and even then rolling for it made the chance of developing more than a minor talent very, very unlikely. 2e had exactly 1 class for the system and while 3.X significantly increased that number, it also includes more than a few secretive societies (Elans, the Psychic houses, Synads) dedicated to psionics, implying a level of obscurity. So if you want to keep that feeling, you can't make it a big setting focus. Part of the reason Dark Sun is unique is because psionics are so common and that's in part because magic kills the planet, essentially swapping the two systems' places. Also, I looked it up and Faerun does have several psionic organizations. Most seem fairly insular.

Tanarii
2021-01-02, 07:33 PM
thing is you can't just get rid of psionics: illithids practically run on it and its one of DnD's iconic foes. like its legit one of the things they actually have copyrighted and thus can't be used by other game designers in their DnD-likes. And yet somehow Mind Flayers are in every edition without psionics. And have to revised just like everything else when psionics is bolted on later.

Anonymouswizard
2021-01-02, 07:52 PM
And yet somehow Mind Flayers are in every edition without psionics. And have to revised just like everything else when psionics is bolted on later.

I mean, they're generally psionic in the core rolled, it's just that doesn't mean anything beyond 'gets some special abilities and/or spells they might be able to ignore the components for'. And if it's just going to be for monsters poisoning doesn't need any rules beyond that, Illithids are scary because they get this strange 'Mimd Blast' poeer from having brains that can generate and project the energy.

You can have psionics in the rules without them being a PC option, and they don't tend to need much in the way of rules.

Depending on the ruleset they might not even be any different rules-wise. I'm Modern AGE psychic powers and magic user the same rules by default, and only differ in terms of what stat you roll to cast and what Abilities you can learn. It works perfectly fine, RAW neither of them require any kind of VSM components anyway, although the game does suggest that if you're running a game with both that one should use the optional 'resist fatigue' casting method instead of the standard Power Points one

anthon
2021-01-02, 08:41 PM
And yet somehow Mind Flayers are in every edition without psionics. And have to revised just like everything else when psionics is bolted on later.


wut

https://i.ibb.co/P4nq5Yy/psionic-mindflayers-78.png

anthon
2021-01-02, 08:51 PM
To be fair, it seems psionics was always intended to be strange and rare compared to the normal magic of the setting. In 1e less than a handful of the PHB races could be psionic and even then rolling for it made the chance of developing more than a minor talent very, very unlikely. 2e had exactly 1 class for the system and while 3.X significantly increased that number, it also includes more than a few secretive societies (Elans, the Psychic houses, Synads) dedicated to psionics, implying a level of obscurity. So if you want to keep that feeling, you can't make it a big setting focus. Part of the reason Dark Sun is unique is because psionics are so common and that's in part because magic kills the planet, essentially swapping the two systems' places. Also, I looked it up and Faerun does have several psionic organizations. Most seem fairly insular.


I totally agree with the specialness of a thing being important to its functionality. If everyone could fly or teleport it would quickly lose whatever strategic advantage it presents (not to mention that childhood sense of wonder and feeling different, or empowered to make a difference). Meanwhile, some stuff, like fixing a broken limb or busted teeth is universally welcome, so healers exist in almost every RPG in one form or another.

Weird thought:
back in the mid 80s, there were probably more psionic shows than magic shows. Practically every Steven King Movie (Tommy Knockers, Firestarter, Carrie, Dead Zone), Star Wars, and Scanners were all psionic themed. There were a handful of magical cartoons (hobbit, last unicorn, flight of dragons). You can go back to Escape from Witch Mountain to see even more psychic stuff. Today you've got a pretty heavy dose of Psionics with stuff like Stranger Things and Mandalorian,

but while people say Psionics is a flavor of Magic, when i watched shows like Merlin, I got the impression many make Magic a flavor of Psionics. I mean, if your core "magic set" is levitation, mind reading, and telekinesis with no spell books, chants, or gestures,

don't get mad if people think "Psychic" first.

Tanarii
2021-01-02, 09:01 PM
wut

https://i.ibb.co/P4nq5Yy/psionic-mindflayers-78.png


AD&D counts as a bolt on.


^--Not really I'm just doubling down for entertainment purposes. Good correction.

anthon
2021-01-03, 12:38 AM
AD&D counts as a bolt on.


^--Not really I'm just doubling down for entertainment purposes. Good correction.

Yeah you took that like a Prince. Hats off to you.

Im old, so for me, i got into AD&D about the same time the Psionicist Handbook was coming out and Dark Sun was becoming a campaign setting. While I was raised on Dragonlance (novels included) my early DMs showed me all the scary cool books, like Banned Deities and Demigods.

I shall endeavor to get a tally on how many Statted creatures/entities in that Book have Psionics and append this post accordingly.

Edit: I found 120 Psionic Creature/Entity entries in the Deities and Demigods book from 1980. This does not include the vast number of gods that were specifically immune to psionics, nor the many others that had "Nil" for their psionic abilities.

it is therefore my conclusion that Psionics were quite Copious in AD&D, and not some foot note in a splat or bolt on until much later.

The 5e rejection and apprehension of Psionics is the most extreme anti psionic sentiment over 6 generations of editions.

Tanarii
2021-01-03, 01:56 AM
I mostly played BECMI not AD&D. But it makes sense that the mind Flayers would actually have psionics, since psionics was actually in the PHB.

I just went and checked, looks like Mind Flayers were originally released at the same time as Psionics in Eldritch Wizardry. Interestingly ... demons were introduced in the same book. And they were (except for Vrocks) psionic as well.

Edit: looks like Mind Flayers in the Strategic Review #1 only had mind blast.

GentlemanVoodoo
2021-01-03, 04:09 AM
The only real fear of psionics for D&D I have was how the systems were handled. Fluff aside they had poor execution with different systems that at their core are gimmicks to be different for the sake of being different. 3rd edition was a nightmare with the whole manifester level nonsense and power points to keep track of when it could have just followed the normal magic casting system of the edition. While though psionics did have a bit of an easier implementation in 4th edition it again still had the power point and various alterations you can do of their powers. From a DM stand point that was a nightmare to keep track of. Now in 5th edition what psionic classes are released have Psionic Energy dice for the Soul Knife and Psi Warrior.

Again gimmick system for the sake of being different when they are not needed. The only way I have seen a psionic class done right to fit the edition's magic system was what Pathfinder did with the Occult classes. Granted it is a different game but frankly Pathfinder is 3.75 D&D and the mechanics of the classes were made to fit with 3rd edition's magic system with some very minor alterations. For 5th edition system consistency is at least seen with the Aberrant Mind option of the Sorcerer but really makes me wonder if that same design philosophy will be followed when other psionic classes are released.

Segev
2021-01-03, 10:01 AM
The only real fear of psionics for D&D I have was how the systems were handled. Fluff aside they had poor execution with different systems that at their core are gimmicks to be different for the sake of being different. 3rd edition was a nightmare with the whole manifester level nonsense and power points to keep track of when it could have just followed the normal magic casting system of the edition. While though psionics did have a bit of an easier implementation in 4th edition it again still had the power point and various alterations you can do of their powers. From a DM stand point that was a nightmare to keep track of. Now in 5th edition what psionic classes are released have Psionic Energy dice for the Soul Knife and Psi Warrior.

Again gimmick system for the sake of being different when they are not needed. The only way I have seen a psionic class done right to fit the edition's magic system was what Pathfinder did with the Occult classes. Granted it is a different game but frankly Pathfinder is 3.75 D&D and the mechanics of the classes were made to fit with 3rd edition's magic system with some very minor alterations. For 5th edition system consistency is at least seen with the Aberrant Mind option of the Sorcerer but really makes me wonder if that same design philosophy will be followed when other psionic classes are released.

I strongly disagree. Psionics is different for the same reason that tome of battle doesn’t use maneuver slots and exactly mimic spellcasting. 3.5 was actually pretty solid, and DSP did some great things making it even better in Pathfinder.

Psychic magic from Pathfinder, by contrast, winds up feeling like it’s just a poor cousin to normal magic due to using the magic system that divine and arcane magic share, despite the occult adventures classes otherwise dripping with flavor (if not good and balanced design).

Tanarii
2021-01-03, 10:39 AM
For 5th edition system consistency is at least seen with the Aberrant Mind option of the Sorcerer but really makes me wonder if that same design philosophy will be followed when other psionic classes are released.
I haven't seen the Aberrant Mind, but utilizing the existing Magic system with subclasses is definitely the way they should go. And avoiding new mechanics just for the sake of being different. Which is the feedback I've provided on psionic UA I've responded to.

Anonymouswizard
2021-01-03, 10:52 AM
Well, the Psychic Warrior and Soulknife use an altered version of the Superiority Die mechanic. So that fits in with not being different for difference's sake.

And the Aberrant Mind Sorcerer is cool. But you know, it's not a real psychic, more a supermarket with a few psychic trucks. Doesn't even get any psionic dice.

Keltest
2021-01-03, 01:04 PM
Well, the Psychic Warrior and Soulknife use an altered version of the Superiority Die mechanic. So that fits in with not being different for difference's sake.

And the Aberrant Mind Sorcerer is cool. But you know, it's not a real psychic, more a supermarket with a few psychic trucks. Doesn't even get any psionic dice.

Psionic dice are seriously overrated. You cant even threaten them into compliance because they know that youre bluffing about the HCL bath unlucky dice get.

anthon
2021-01-03, 07:44 PM
I strongly disagree. Psionics is different for the same reason that tome of battle doesn’t use maneuver slots and exactly mimic spellcasting. 3.5 was actually pretty solid, and DSP did some great things making it even better in Pathfinder.

Psychic magic from Pathfinder, by contrast, winds up feeling like it’s just a poor cousin to normal magic due to using the magic system that divine and arcane magic share, despite the occult adventures classes otherwise dripping with flavor (if not good and balanced design).

i think i saw some decent psionic rules in OGL Horror, and there was some descent stuff in Forbidden Kingdoms Master Codex, both for the D20 system. Monte Cook's Call of Cthulhu had a tiny smattering of Psionics, with an idea that really could have been developed. I think OGL had the workings of a Pyrokinesis skill.

The problem with 5e in terms of opening up new ideas for splats is the lockdown on new skills.
By not having "new skills" in splat books have much (if any) precedent, there's less mechanical toys to play with for shaping new concepts.

Likewise, because of the concentration mechanic, lack of solid enchantment rules, and ubiquity of magic among the classes (my Celestial Warlock Paladin vs. your Hexblade Cleric of War, etc.), along with the purge of so very many magic items or nerfing thereof,

there's this stilted template contraption of hoops that turns all new classes into Subclasses, and by granting the core class abilities of Class A, they are given only a Sample pack of Defining abilities in Subclass B.

Thus if Class A is 80% of what defines your class, and only 5-15% of it matches Psionics,

you will never get more than 25-35% of a Psionicist using the 5e rubric of "make it a monk/fighter/mage and then add 2d4 abilities to flavor it"

Psionics isn't a flavor.

Lord Torath
2021-01-04, 09:30 AM
Skills and Powers (also known as the "Way of the Psionicist" rules for Dark Sun R&E) were their own kind of mess. While they made psionic powers improve automatically (rolling against a set Mental Armor Class based on the power, with an ever-increasing mental ThAC0), they borked psionic combat to the point where you were better off putting up your psychic defenses and punching the guy in the nose. (emphasis mine)Yeah, that's what I said, too. Seika set me straight (https://www.dragonsfoot.org/forums/viewtopic.php?p=2048064#p2048064). Spoiler Alert: Even putting up a defense is a bad move.

LibraryOgre
2021-01-04, 11:44 AM
Yeah, that's what I said, too. Seika set me straight (https://www.dragonsfoot.org/forums/viewtopic.php?p=2048064#p2048064). Spoiler Alert: Even putting up a defense is a bad move.

They ****ed the math in that so goddamn hard. :smallbiggrin:

Tanarii
2021-01-04, 08:29 PM
Yeah, that's what I said, too. Seika set me straight (https://www.dragonsfoot.org/forums/viewtopic.php?p=2048064#p2048064). Spoiler Alert: Even putting up a defense is a bad move.If you are a psionic character you must put up a defense. Failure to do so will automatically result in an open mind.

Millstone85
2021-01-04, 08:45 PM
An idea I had for 5e psionics was to retool V/S/M components.

Vibrant (V)
Most disciplines release psychic vibes that even untrained minds can notice. Creatures near the psionic disciple (typically close enough to be involved in combat) get a sudden sense of alertness, for example recoiling or turning around as if something had crept up on them. At the DM's discretion, creatures wholly unfamiliar with psionics might chalk the experience up to their imagination, or develop vague suspicions against the disciple if they are aware of the character's presence. By default, all nearby creatures become aware of the disciple's position.

Somatized (S)
A discipline can induce a momentary change in the disciple's appearance. Levitating hair or conspicuous veins are commonly associated with psionics. If the disciple is lightly or heavily obscured, a somatized component does not call this obscurement into question (the disciple's eyes might become one solid color, but they will not glow in the dark).

Manifest (M)
Some disciplines must manifest as a construct of light before they can produce any other effect. The most common manifestation is a halo around the disciple's head, sometimes composed of runes or fractal patterns (and here, yes, the character's eyes might glow). Whatever form the discipline takes, the disciple sheds bright light in a 5-foot radius.

All these are classic ways to signal an active psion to the audience, both in general fiction and in D&D art (Or was it just 4e? Anyway, I liked it). More importantly, this would solve the problem of psionics devaluating the Subtle Spell feature of the sorcerer.

Anonymouswizard
2021-01-04, 09:35 PM
If you're adding components to psionics I'd go for Aural, Visual, and possibly something like Tactile? Going with the different ways the power can be sensed.

And I'd possibly go with psychic foci as an important part of the system. Not in the sense of 5e's 'use to replace material components' version, but in the sense of relatively common and mundane objects used to help powers. Especially the more divination-based powers, I want psychics finding things using dowsing rods and telling the future with playing cards (and maybe bundles of sticks as well). A wizard needs an object for a spell, a psychic just needs an aid to help them focus.

Millstone85
2021-01-05, 05:56 AM
If you're adding components to psionics I'd go for Aural, Visual, and possibly something like Tactile? Going with the different ways the power can be sensed.My reason for keeping the V/S/M letters is so these psionic components can easily be applied to spells. Indeed:

Several monsters possess the "Spellcasting (Psionics)" trait. Playable gith similarly get racial spells through either "Githyanki Psionics" or "Githzerai Psionics".
The various UA articles had several examples of psionic disciplines that let you cast a spell.
The way I would design psionic disciplines is as upcastable cantrips, something I think would sufficiently set them apart from arcane/divine spells while avoiding the creation of an entirely separate power system.


And I'd possibly go with psychic foci as an important part of the system. Not in the sense of 5e's 'use to replace material components' version, but in the sense of relatively common and mundane objects used to help powers. Especially the more divination-based powers, I want psychics finding things using dowsing rods and telling the future with playing cards (and maybe bundles of sticks as well). A wizard needs an object for a spell, a psychic just needs an aid to help them focus.I don't like psionics requiring objects. Maaayybe crystals. (http://i1.cpcache.com/product_zoom/1189529090/psionics_tshirt.jpg)

Lord Torath
2021-01-05, 12:23 PM
If you are a psionic character you must put up a defense. Failure to do so will automatically result in an open mind.Not as written. Maybe you've got some house rules or something to that effect, but no, as written, your mind is closed until you run out of PSPs (Way of the Psionicist from the Revised Dark Sun Setting p7). If you can cite book and page number, though, I'm open to being proven wrong.

Segev
2021-01-05, 02:34 PM
Not as written. Maybe you've got some house rules or something to that effect, but no, as written, your mind is closed until you run out of PSPs (Way of the Psionicist from the Revised Dark Sun Setting p7). If you can cite book and page number, though, I'm open to being proven wrong.

I don't have the book on hand at the moment, but I thought I remembered 2e being that all psionic minds are open if not defended, too. That would've been from the Complete Psionic book that has the Psionicist. Maybe it changed between that and Revised Dark Sun? (Or maybe I'm misremembering.)

LibraryOgre
2021-01-05, 03:06 PM
I don't have the book on hand at the moment, but I thought I remembered 2e being that all psionic minds are open if not defended, too. That would've been from the Complete Psionic book that has the Psionicist. Maybe it changed between that and Revised Dark Sun? (Or maybe I'm misremembering.)

In S&P, all minds begin as closed. Non-psychics can be contacted with one successful psychic attack against their MAC; psychic minds need to be depleted of PSPs, first.

However, the fun part in S&P is closing an open mind. A non-psychic makes a save v. paralyzation (with a -4 if they've been subject to a power). The non-psychic can attempt to close their mind the round after it is opened. A psychic whose been opened can't try to close it for 1d4+1 rounds, AND they have to do it with a Wisdom check at a -3.

So, a psychic who has been battered open has a far worse chance of actually closing their mind, and can't do it as quickly.

Gods, that system was so messed up.

Lord Torath
2021-01-05, 03:19 PM
I don't have the book on hand at the moment, but I thought I remembered 2e being that all psionic minds are open if not defended, too. That would've been from the Complete Psionic book that has the Psionicist. Maybe it changed between that and Revised Dark Sun? (Or maybe I'm misremembering.)In Core Psionics, (Complete Psionics Handbook version) the Contact power always fails against a psionicist who doesn't want the contact. A careful reading of the rules for psionic combat (p25) says that if you don't use a defense, your opponent still needs three successful hits with a telepathic attack to establish Contact. The defense modes give you a chance to oppose their attack modes, but it doesn't look like they are required.

The text below describes five telepathic assaults, or attack modes, that are used to establish contact with a closed mind. It also describes five telepathic defenses, which can help prevent such attacks from succeeding.Plus, if you're out of PSPs (or want to preserve them for other powers), Mind Blank is a defense mode that costs nothing to use.

Willie the Duck
2021-01-05, 03:34 PM
However, the fun part in S&P is closing an open mind. A non-psychic makes a save v. paralyzation (with a -4 if they've been subject to a power). The non-psychic can attempt to close their mind the round after it is opened. A psychic whose been opened can't try to close it for 1d4+1 rounds, AND they have to do it with a Wisdom check at a -3.

So, a psychic who has been battered open has a far worse chance of actually closing their mind, and can't do it as quickly.

Gods, that system was so messed up.
I feel like that one might have been deliberate, and hewing to the notion that the psychically aware were more sensitive to psychic phenomenon and thus more vulnerable to psychic attack (ex: X-Men's Jean and Rachel Grey continuously being taken over and suborned by psychic opponents). We always just said that psionics had 'minds like a steel trapsieve.'

Segev
2021-01-05, 04:38 PM
Thanks for the review of the old system. I know I always thought it lame, even when I wanted to like it as a teenager. The whole psychic attack modes thing is just badly done.

Making them into just more powers is probably the best thing 3.PF psionics did for them.

Then PF went and introduced dreamscape/mindscape combat, which has all the problems of earlier edition psychic combat, but is even less coherent. I suppose it at least uses something closer to the same system as everything else, but still, it's a nightmare to understand and abstracts things that don't need abstraction for the sake of making it...run faster, maybe?

I think they'd have been better off actually treating it as a Demiplane of Dreams that could be accessed psychically, and had things happen there simultaneously to the real world when people entered "mindscape combat." With or without bodily entering the dream plane.

Duff
2021-01-05, 06:50 PM
And yet somehow Mind Flayers are in every edition without psionics. And have to revised just like everything else when psionics is bolted on later.

I for one, find non-Psionic mindflayers unsatisfying. This may not be logical or reasonable. It may be because I first encountered mindflayers as psionic 1st Ed monsters.
But I'd rather they skip the Illithids until they've decided how to do psionics in new editions

Segev
2021-01-05, 07:03 PM
I for one, find non-Psionic mindflayers unsatisfying. This may not be logical or reasonable. It may be because I first encountered mindflayers as psionic 1st Ed monsters.
But I'd rather they skip the Illithids until they've decided how to do psionics in new editions

Illithids have often had a list of powers rather than being psions. The mind blast is usually enough to sell their nature to me.

anthon
2021-01-06, 02:11 AM
Illithids have often had a list of powers rather than being psions. The mind blast is usually enough to sell their nature to me.

i would like to maintain for all witnesses that i approve of the idea of SOME psionic builds being magic and SOME being totally NOT magic.

Concerning the old school mind flayers, for me, psionic monsters were natural. We grew up on Stephen King movies and also Played Rifts. My 1st character in that system was a Mind Melter. So obviously, tentacle villains with psychic powers is normal. D&D has lots of far realm/exotic/old one type bad guys, from the stars or other dimensions.

I think whenever your campaign gets weird or far out, it's an excellent time to toss in Psionic monsters, and eventually, Psionic characters.


When i get to thinking about what makes psionics, i think it has everything to do with PERCEPTION.

Like, mind reading is perceiving thoughts.

Unlike everybody else, Psionicists have TWO-WAY perception. Perception is normally receive input-only.

But psionics seems to be taking whats in your head - your mind's eye, and sending or outputting that beyond your self.

So like, passively, a person might perceive their own heart beat,
but then if they can modify that rhythm, you have biofeedback: Psionics.

You first feel/sense something, then you want to feel/sense that same thing differently, and input flips to output.

Telekinesis is action at a distance, sure,

but first the normal person sees the rock, and maybe they imagine the rock being somewhere else. A Desire for it to move.
The Psionicist though, makes it match that internal imagining, they make that desire come true.

When a cleric of a plain god prays, they have to do their song and dance, praying with their lips, burn stuff, maybe kill a goat or two, in the hopes that the Rite, or some magical rules, or simply a Sky being with good eye sight will peer through the clouds, and listen with their superman hearing, and answer their call.

But when a cleric of a more advanced god prays, they can do it with or without the song and dance. They can pray in their minds if their tongue has been cut out be the evil Prince. They can be tied up or in chains, unable to prostrate themselves, but still the words they form in their heart are sent up to their god, who hears these words...these words are their thoughts.

Because the second god is reading the cleric's mind. That's telepathy. And that's psionic.

Nifft
2021-01-08, 04:01 AM
I feel like that one might have been deliberate, and hewing to the notion that the psychically aware were more sensitive to psychic phenomenon and thus more vulnerable to psychic attack (ex: X-Men's Jean and Rachel Grey continuously being taken over and suborned by psychic opponents). We always just said that psionics had 'minds like a steel trapsieve.'

The idea that psions were more vulnerable to psychic combat was key to 1e, where psychic combat was a punishment rather than a benefit.

When you used your powers, you got a special wandering monsters check, and the monsters which showed up didn't need to spend points. So yeah, it's consistent (IMHO in a bad way).

LibraryOgre
2021-01-08, 11:50 AM
The idea that psions were more vulnerable to psychic combat was key to 1e, where psychic combat was a punishment rather than a benefit.

When you used your powers, you got a special wandering monsters check, and the monsters which showed up didn't need to spend points. So yeah, it's consistent (IMHO in a bad way).

I tend to describe 1e's game design as "Hostile Architecture".

PhoenixPhyre
2021-01-08, 11:56 AM
I tend to describe 1e's game design as "Hostile Architecture".

It does reflect Gygax's attitude (as it seems from others' descriptions, can't speak to actuality) that the DM and the players are on opposite sides of things.

Willie the Duck
2021-01-08, 03:25 PM
It does reflect Gygax's attitude (as it seems from others' descriptions, can't speak to actuality) that the DM and the players are on opposite sides of things.

I'm sure Gygax would hate that interpretation (he would state strongly that the DMs job is to neutrally arbitrate the world that exists, etc. etc.), however that's a reasonable interpretation of the game rules that we ended up getting from him. This individual scenario being one case, but also the monkey-paw interpreting of wishes, ear-seekers to foil thieves doing the reasonable thing of listening at doors, those admonitions in the AD&D DMG about how if someone tried to hide while being observed or climb while wearing armor or whatever else you should tell them 'they can always try' etc... yeah, it seems pretty adversarial. I have been told by people who were there at EGG's home table that this came about as kind of a friendly-adversarial oneupsmanship between Gary and the other rotating DMs and Ernie Gygax, Rob Kuntz, and a few of the other most-often-players who were really good at reading the DM and out-thinking them (and then the DM coming up with a new trick and the cycle repeating). However, since a lot of that context never percolated through to the rest of us, it sure does look pretty hostile.

Luccan
2021-01-08, 03:29 PM
IIRC, the 1e DMG also didn't have a real editor, just some kid Gary hired. Not a situation that gives the sort of person who looks their boss in the face and says "are you sure you want to say it like that?"

anthon
2021-01-08, 04:22 PM
i can't be sure if magic was seen as more evil back then,

like from the period of tolkien animation or wizards, to flight of dragons and last unicorn, you had a handful of "evil magician" B movies, but often enough, those B movie wizards were also just using Psionics (TK, Telepathy, Mind Control)

but i can be sure many psionics were horror film related. It was designed to scare people. Children of the Damned, Scanners, etc.
Disney kid gloved them with escape from witch mountain but even then had a creepy almost Shining feeling to it (another creepy psionicist/ghost horror film)

By the time of Chevy Chase it had a more light hearted feel to it. But the vein of "this screws people over and that scares them" was already ingrained.


Gygax originally intended players to be the heroes of a story, as stated in his DMG, but he got more hostile, possibly from battling wits with certain types of players and angry lawyers. He stuck his name on Oriental Adventures and Unearthed Arcana though, and those heavily amp players, in contrast to his Annihilation orb trap instant death dungeons. The body of his work is sufficiently internally conflicted that I would see it more like "random magic alpha cards found under the bed" instead of "this is an orderly school of thought for how to conduct games, monsters, and balance".

PhoenixPhyre
2021-01-08, 04:26 PM
The body of his work is sufficiently internally conflicted that I would see it more like "random magic alpha cards found under the bed" instead of "this is an orderly school of thought for how to conduct games, monsters, and balance".

Among many other reasons, this is why I don't worship at the shrine of Gygax. Or even treat appeals to Gygax with any authority. What Gygax did and intended is of historical interest to me, but doesn't influence how I play or interpret things in D&D. It's out of his (now dead) hands now.

anthon
2021-01-08, 04:39 PM
Among many other reasons, this is why I don't worship at the shrine of Gygax. Or even treat appeals to Gygax with any authority. What Gygax did and intended is of historical interest to me, but doesn't influence how I play or interpret things in D&D. It's out of his (now dead) hands now.

Generally agree. I look at his stuff as "oh, something good here, let's use that".

ironically most of the good stuff i liked about Gygaxian works were actually contested for ownership in court. But I liked stuff like Knights in Shining Armor, Cool Martial Arts (1980s style action hero/Wuxia Matrix martial arts, not disappointment McDojo does 1d3 and can't beat your elementary school bully/ogre martial arts), and Lovecraft type stuff.

That's one thing that really gets my goat. People limiting their imaginations because of some Sacred Cow to the publisher, when the publisher themselves got ruined or wrecked over copyright. Of course the kid at the table wants a light saber and use it to fight Cthulhu.. no. he doesn't want to call it a lazer Sword or fight a Squid headed knock off named "Cthonion"TM.

I think Psionics got caught up in that mess for literally reasons like those - pop culture limitations on publishing. Who knows how many Niven novel ideas went to the trash heap instead of the TSR box because of it.

Roleplaying is about smashing ideas together and seeing if we can get our own Los Alamos from the sparks.

PhoenixPhyre
2021-01-08, 04:56 PM
Generally agree. I look at his stuff as "oh, something good here, let's use that".

ironically most of the good stuff i liked about Gygaxian works were actually contested for ownership in court. But I liked stuff like Knights in Shining Armor, Cool Martial Arts (1980s style action hero/Wuxia Matrix martial arts, not disappointment McDojo does 1d3 and can't beat your elementary school bully/ogre martial arts), and Lovecraft type stuff.

That's one thing that really gets my goat. People limiting their imaginations because of some Sacred Cow to the publisher, when the publisher themselves got ruined or wrecked over copyright. Of course the kid at the table wants a light saber and use it to fight Cthulhu.. no. he doesn't want to call it a lazer Sword or fight a Squid headed knock off named "Cthonion"TM.

I think Psionics got caught up in that mess for literally reasons like those - pop culture limitations on publishing. Who knows how many Niven novel ideas went to the trash heap instead of the TSR box because of it.

Roleplaying is about smashing ideas together and seeing if we can get our own Los Alamos from the sparks.

Probably a tangent, but one thing I've been running into as I write my own kitchen-sink[1] setting (and trying to follow copyright/trademark at least at some level) is coming up with "new takes" on existing things (races especially, but monsters too occasionally) that are both recognizably "inspired by X" and far enough away from X to not raise any objections. So I've got tentacle-faced creatures who reproduce through parasitic larvae, but I don't use the name (trademark) and have distinctly changed their nature[2]. And I probably haven't gone far enough.

[1] A goal to have, somewhere in the setting, every player-allowed race option and as many of the classes as make sense. And have it all gel together, so no just throwing them in wherever.
[2] They don't need brains, although they enjoy them. They were originally designed to stay in the larval form and act as basically passive information gatherers, resting in people's heads. Then a demon intervened with the !aboleth who were the agents of this design (working for a larger power) and twisted them. There are still many "cooperative" tentacle-monsters who enter symbiosis with their host. They're water associated, not the far realms, and they can breathe water. Plus several other changes.

Lord Raziere
2021-01-08, 05:14 PM
Probably a tangent, but one thing I've been running into as I write my own kitchen-sink[1] setting (and trying to follow copyright/trademark at least at some level) is coming up with "new takes" on existing things (races especially, but monsters too occasionally) that are both recognizably "inspired by X" and far enough away from X to not raise any objections. So I've got tentacle-faced creatures who reproduce through parasitic larvae, but I don't use the name (trademark) and have distinctly changed their nature[2]. And I probably haven't gone far enough.

[1] A goal to have, somewhere in the setting, every player-allowed race option and as many of the classes as make sense. And have it all gel together, so no just throwing them in wherever.
[2] They don't need brains, although they enjoy them. They were originally designed to stay in the larval form and act as basically passive information gatherers, resting in people's heads. Then a demon intervened with the !aboleth who were the agents of this design (working for a larger power) and twisted them. There are still many "cooperative" tentacle-monsters who enter symbiosis with their host. They're water associated, not the far realms, and they can breathe water. Plus several other changes.

There is a way to help do that:
simply find things that are flaws in the things you like that keep it from being your ideal version of that thing.

for example, lets take the idea of Jedi and Sith. for some people they are good as they are, but to me they have flaws: their powers are too morally slanted, because I'd want to play something with sith like aesthetics but without the villainy that comes with it. so my goal is to make something much like Sith from Star Wars but without any evil involved so I can going around being a badass hero who shoots lightning at people while wielding a lightsaber. y'know a less paladin and blackguard take on the concept. If I want to make my own star wars inspired thing, I'd basically make a heroic sith order kind of thing first to make it different and so I could have fun being sith without consequence.

basically, take something thats flawed to you, then fix it into the way you want it to be. I'm sure you can find something that you don't like completely.

PhoenixPhyre
2021-01-08, 05:18 PM
There is a way to help do that:
simply find things that are flaws in the things you like that keep it from being your ideal version of that thing.

for example, lets take the idea of Jedi and Sith. for some people they are good as they are, but to me they have flaws: their powers are too morally slanted, because I'd want to play something with sith like aesthetics but without the villainy that comes with it. so my goal is to make something much like Sith from Star Wars but without any evil involved so I can going around being a badass hero who shoots lightning at people while wielding a lightsaber. y'know a less paladin and blackguard take on the concept. If I want to make my own star wars inspired thing, I'd basically make a heroic sith order kind of thing first to make it different and so I could have fun being sith without consequence.

basically, take something thats flawed to you, then fix it into the way you want it to be. I'm sure you can find something that you don't like completely.

Oh absolutely. I've been trying to do so--one reason for this whole project is that I'm not particularly enthused about a lot of the underlying lore of D&D, even if I like the manifestations of that lore. But copyright is tricky and making sure that I'm on the right side of that line (even if no one would ever care because it's not like this will ever get published more than on my own personal website or used by anyone but me) has involved lots of re-thinking and especially renaming. Because trademark is much brighter line. I can't (with safety) use a whole chunk of the races--anything outside the SRD and out of the public domain has to be at minimum renamed (and stats not provided) or has to be completely rebuilt AND renamed. I'd love to use the names, but I try to obey the law...

kalkyrie
2021-01-08, 05:39 PM
But lets step back a moment. Did you know Babayaga's Hut was described as a 4 dimensional Hypercube? Back in some old dragon magazine, one of the most famous dungeons was actually defined as a science fiction concept.

Oh, it's better than that. You are correct in that there's a version of it in Dragon #83.

However it got turned into a full length adventure later on, which is available now via various sites (ie, DMsGuild - https://www.dmsguild.com/product/17358/S5-The-Dancing-Hut-of-Baba-Yaga-2e?it=1).

It's one of the best adventures I've read, and is totally off-the-wall bonkers.
One memorable quote from the book is "to the inhabitants of Tokyo, a six-foot tall human PC is a 430 foot tall giant. Unless they are careful, the PCs will squash dozens of innocent civilians with every step". And yes, they get to fight Godzilla.

Pardon my geeking, but I thought people deserved to know of the craziness of this gem.

anthon
2021-01-09, 08:23 PM
Seems like there were big problems with making mental contact,

attack modes, and defense modes.

The 2e core mind blank that cost zero made lots of people happy, because even though defense modes were quirky, at least you could always have a closed mind.

Most of us think of minds like an Onion, or Inception layers, perhaps with shallow people having fewer layers of the Jawbreaker, and more robust minds have thicker stronger layers.

Something like a Wizard or a Veteran of Prison Camp torture might have many layers of defense.

I think too much emphasis on telepathy happened. Most of us want telepathy to exist, but also want stuff like Telekinesis stuff, Pyrokinesis, Hydrokinesis like water shaping.

some of the best powers were grossly over looked, and themes like the Psychometabolic powers were either OP for their cost or over Priced and useless. Death field vs. a +1 initiative? Srsly?

i was really embarassed by the telekinesis rules - 3 pounds per -1... is actually worse than the 1+2+3+4... rule of AD&D per point or whatever spent.

I think Psionics seen as a force of nature, like a Dragon in the form of a Man/Woman, there's something Cool about that. Having a Psionic class that radiates fear as if they were some supernatural force, because of reputation or Aura/DBZ aura, that's cool too.

Pex
2021-01-09, 09:53 PM
2E Psionics was badly done. It was possible to Disintegrate someone at level 3. It was all you could do that day, but you could do it. At the other end, it was also possible to kill yourself with a few different powers just by the random luck roll of the d20. Then there was the blatant unfairness of the monsters never having to spend power point to do psionics and never risked killing themselves. I understand now why PCs and NPCs don't follow the same rules, but this was going too far in different rules. 2E was notorious for that.

The 3.0E version was a nice idea on paper of using different ability scores for the different disciplines, but it didn't work in practice. I liked how 3.5E did it, at least before the unnecessary nerfs of the second psionic book most people ignored. It consolidated to Intelligence and provided decent enough points to do stuff. Dreamscarred Press improved it for Pathfinder compatability. Those who complained it was too powerful almost always forgot two things: 1) You cannot spend more power points on a power than your level no matter what you do. 2) Powers don't scale with level. You need to spend extra points on low level powers if you want to increase their effect. This was my favorite system.

JoeJ
2021-01-10, 03:18 AM
The biggest problem I've had with psionics has always been the aesthetics of having two different "magic" systems, one for psionicists and the other for everybody else. It just seems to me that the universe should be more elegant than that. I'd have no objection to a psionic system in which a character would have something along the lines of: "As an action, you can psionically cast the Detect Thoughts spell, requiring no components. You can do this a number of times equal to your Intelligence modifier (minimum 1 time), and regain expended uses after a short or long rest. Intelligence is your casting attribute for this spell."

Lord Raziere
2021-01-10, 03:34 AM
The biggest problem I've had with psionics has always been the aesthetics of having two different "magic" systems, one for psionicists and the other for everybody else. It just seems to me that the universe should be more elegant than that. I'd have no objection to a psionic system in which a character would have something along the lines of: "As an action, you can psionically cast the Detect Thoughts spell, requiring no components. You can do this a number of times equal to your Intelligence modifier (minimum 1 time), and regain expended uses after a short or long rest. Intelligence is your casting attribute for this spell."

Well here is the thing: there is something called "Magic-Psionics Transparency"


Combining Psionic And Magical Effects
The default rule for the interaction of psionics and magic is simple: Powers interact with spells and spells interact with powers in the same way a spell or normal spell-like ability interacts with another spell or spell-like ability. This is known as psionics-magic transparency.

Psionics-Magic Transparency
Though not explicitly called out in the spell descriptions or magic item descriptions, spells, spell-like abilities, and magic items that could potentially affect psionics do affect psionics.

When the rule about psionics-magic transparency is in effect, it has the following ramifications.

Spell resistance is effective against powers, using the same mechanics. Likewise, power resistance is effective against spells, using the same mechanics as spell resistance. If a creature has one kind of resistance, it is assumed to have the other. (The effects have similar ends despite having been brought about by different means.)

All spells that dispel magic have equal effect against powers of the same level using the same mechanics, and vice versa.

The spell detect magic detects powers, their number, and their strength and location within 3 rounds (though a Psicraft check is necessary to identify the discipline of the psionic aura).

Dead magic areas are also dead psionics areas.

this is the default rule about psionics in the dnd 3.5 srd.

what does this mean?

psionics and magic might actually simply be the manipulating the same energy. the difference is how they use it, not what is being used. simply say that psionics is the same magic just with a different machine making it go through different processes and it becomes incredibly elegant. like two different kinds of computers: the codes may be different, but they still use electricity.

Millstone85
2021-01-10, 05:18 AM
this is the default rule about psionics in the dnd 3.5 srd.Which looks fine by me. Well, almost.

As previously mentioned, I adhere to the "personal weave" interpretation of psionics. That is, a wizard relies on an ambient field that may have different properties in certain regions of the world, such as being torn/dead or tangled/wild, while a psion carries with them a field of their own creation.

Under that interpretation, things like dispel magic or antimagic field would be active attempts at disrupting the Weave, and might work just as well against the personal weave of a psion. On the other hand, a psion should not care about dead or wild magic zones, which are just local properties of a Weave they do not use.

Or, under your "computer" comparison, a wizard has hacked their way into the grid that controls all the doors, elevators, nano-replicators and other gizmos of the area, while a psion is a cyborg that goes go-go gadget. Dispel magic and antimagic field are EMPs that are a problem to both, while dead and wild magic zones are local blackouts of the grid.

Pex
2021-01-10, 07:34 AM
Transparency was a change. In the original 3.0E there was no transparency. Dispel Magic had no affect on psionics. Dispel Psionics had no affect on magic. Transparency was an optional rule. I'm guessing enough people complained it was made official for 3.5E.

Anyway, a curious psionic power from 2E never made a comeback. I forget its name. You create a bubble of time dilation. One round in the bubble is one hour outside the bubble. You can choose to be in or out of it when you create it. The bubble can be large enough to encompass a combat area. Had it been in 3E I'm sure it would be a 9th level power, but I'm guessing the lack of a saving throw for those inside made it not work. Giving a saving throw and determining what happens when some make it and others do not would be a logistical nightmare to figure out. Still, I was disappointed it never returned.

Anonymouswizard
2021-01-10, 08:05 AM
The 3e default is transparency, limiting transparency or removing it entirely are optional rules. I remember the book said that it's the default mainly for balance reasons (many monsters have Spell Resistance, almost none have Power Resistance).

Segev
2021-01-10, 11:23 AM
Transparency was a change. In the original 3.0E there was no transparency. Dispel Magic had no affect on psionics. Dispel Psionics had no affect on magic. Transparency was an optional rule. I'm guessing enough people complained it was made official for 3.5E.

Anyway, a curious psionic power from 2E never made a comeback. I forget its name. You create a bubble of time dilation. One round in the bubble is one hour outside the bubble. You can choose to be in or out of it when you create it. The bubble can be large enough to encompass a combat area. Had it been in 3E I'm sure it would be a 9th level power, but I'm guessing the lack of a saving throw for those inside made it not work. Giving a saving throw and determining what happens when some make it and others do not would be a logistical nightmare to figure out. Still, I was disappointed it never returned.

Sounds like a close cousin, in terms of utility, to time stop.

Pex
2021-01-10, 11:34 AM
The 3e default is transparency, limiting transparency or removing it entirely are optional rules. I remember the book said that it's the default mainly for balance reasons (many monsters have Spell Resistance, almost none have Power Resistance).

Huh, I guessed I switched them around over the years. Oh well, I stand corrected.

Tanarii
2021-01-10, 12:31 PM
Not as written. Maybe you've got some house rules or something to that effect, but no, as written, your mind is closed until you run out of PSPs (Way of the Psionicist from the Revised Dark Sun Setting p7). If you can cite book and page number, though, I'm open to being proven wrong.hmmm. It's not as explicit as I remembered.

Closest is probably extrapolation from "A character activates a psionic defense at the beginning of a combat round. This defense protects against all psionic attacks launched at the character in that round." PO:S&P p148

We always interpreted the defense rules to mean you activate the defense, or else you have none. And none means the attack hits automatically, because no defense. I also recall it being ruled as opens the mind, but maybe it was automatically hits and removes PSPs per attack form. Either way, it makes a lot more sense than "you can not to defend yourself and they have to roll to hit anyway"

I can see how someone would interpret the rules that last way, nothing in the defense rules explicitly specifies what happens if you choose not to use them. It's not a common sense interpretation of them, the common sense interpretation is the rules assume you must/will always use a a defense, until you run out of PSPs. But I can see it as a rules parsing interpretation of it not saying otherwise.

Lord Torath
2021-01-10, 07:02 PM
The Revised defense modes do nothing but adjust your MAC. If you don't use a defense mode, then you just have your normal MAC, same as anyone else.

anthon
2021-01-10, 07:23 PM
The 3e default is transparency, limiting transparency or removing it entirely are optional rules. I remember the book said that it's the default mainly for balance reasons (many monsters have Spell Resistance, almost none have Power Resistance).

I loved Steve Winter's explicit "psionics isn't magic" opacity. it lent itself to the Horror of Psionics, a theme that carries over into many cross over campy shows. The audience becomes numb to magic as the new normal, so you inject this new thing into the world that has its own way of doing things, and then horror or hijinks ensues. In Hellraiser 4 and Toward the Terra, there was a theme about how the bulk of humanity had adapted to Super advanced Technology, which rivaled the supernatural power, but the supernatural power was still feared by the masses. Magic Transparency radically dilutes not just player characters, but also all the far realm horrors, and thus the horror aspect its associated with.


What i really liked about Psionics was how different it felt from Magical Systems. Not just that the magical systems were vancian, but that they had level tiers for instance.

Psionics by comparison had skill trees (an idea it should have used more of, especially for persnickety imbalancers like disintegrate) and Dark Sun Will and the Way Meditation Rules,

so instead of sculpting a new spell, you re-sculpted an existing power. Rules weren't perfect, like splicing powers didn't always make sense, and the x1.5 to x2 didn't make much sense for DPS vs. AOE, but the kernel of something good was there.

if i had to correct some of the Psionics from that era, I'd probably revise the Damage modifier so that:
1 modification increases a plus by a plus 1 (+1->+2)
1 modification increases a damage by a plus 1 die (2d6->3d6)
and probably make Volume/Surface AOE an AOE with the -2 to -4 major change,
while making length/range AOE a 0 penalty/minor change.

i'd probably triple the length of skill trees

as to telepathy, that would be mostly flushed/modified since it's a mess, but fixing the Meditation Linear/Curve and the Skill Tree chains would probably do the most Good in terms of Balance while changing the least rules.

MTHAC0 is a great idea, honestly, it basically says "as you level, a wild talent improves a little bit, a psionicist improves a lot"
this concept could be expanded to have stuff like "wizard" "cleric" and "rogue" THAC0 versions to reflect different Tiers of Psionic Class dedication.

Ettina
2021-01-25, 04:09 PM
I loved Steve Winter's explicit "psionics isn't magic" opacity. it lent itself to the Horror of Psionics, a theme that carries over into many cross over campy shows. The audience becomes numb to magic as the new normal, so you inject this new thing into the world that has its own way of doing things, and then horror or hijinks ensues. In Hellraiser 4 and Toward the Terra, there was a theme about how the bulk of humanity had adapted to Super advanced Technology, which rivaled the supernatural power, but the supernatural power was still feared by the masses. Magic Transparency radically dilutes not just player characters, but also all the far realm horrors, and thus the horror aspect its associated with.


What i really liked about Psionics was how different it felt from Magical Systems. Not just that the magical systems were vancian, but that they had level tiers for instance.

Psionics by comparison had skill trees (an idea it should have used more of, especially for persnickety imbalancers like disintegrate) and Dark Sun Will and the Way Meditation Rules,

so instead of sculpting a new spell, you re-sculpted an existing power. Rules weren't perfect, like splicing powers didn't always make sense, and the x1.5 to x2 didn't make much sense for DPS vs. AOE, but the kernel of something good was there.

if i had to correct some of the Psionics from that era, I'd probably revise the Damage modifier so that:
1 modification increases a plus by a plus 1 (+1->+2)
1 modification increases a damage by a plus 1 die (2d6->3d6)
and probably make Volume/Surface AOE an AOE with the -2 to -4 major change,
while making length/range AOE a 0 penalty/minor change.

i'd probably triple the length of skill trees

as to telepathy, that would be mostly flushed/modified since it's a mess, but fixing the Meditation Linear/Curve and the Skill Tree chains would probably do the most Good in terms of Balance while changing the least rules.

MTHAC0 is a great idea, honestly, it basically says "as you level, a wild talent improves a little bit, a psionicist improves a lot"
this concept could be expanded to have stuff like "wizard" "cleric" and "rogue" THAC0 versions to reflect different Tiers of Psionic Class dedication.

I can't comment to the specific mechanics of 2e because I've never played it, but I really like "psionics is the weird magic that magic-users don't understand" idea.

Nowadays we generally tend to call everything that involves doing stuff the laws of physics don't allow "magic", but in earlier time periods, the differences between different power sources and types were seen as much more important. For example the difference between a medieval person being called a saint vs a witch wasn't whether or not they were believed to have done supernatural stuff, but what the power source of their supernatural stuff was thought to be. Did it come from God, or something else?

I'd like to see more stuff playing with the idea that just because someone is a spellcaster doesn't mean there's not stuff that would freak them out like spellcasting would freak out a modern person. And psionics, in D&D lore, is often tied to the weirder and scarier monsters, aberrations and so forth. The idea of making a PC who can do magical things most people associate with illithids and such is a fun idea. And the idea that someone who thinks they understand magic would be even more freaked out because they're not following the rules of magic ("how tf did you do that in the anti-magic field?") is especially fun.

Sure, it's hard to balance, but I think it's worth the effort.

Lucas Yew
2021-01-27, 10:06 AM
An idea I had for 5e psionics was to retool V/S/M components.

Vibrant (V)
Most disciplines release psychic vibes that even untrained minds can notice. Creatures near the psionic disciple (typically close enough to be involved in combat) get a sudden sense of alertness, for example recoiling or turning around as if something had crept up on them. At the DM's discretion, creatures wholly unfamiliar with psionics might chalk the experience up to their imagination, or develop vague suspicions against the disciple if they are aware of the character's presence. By default, all nearby creatures become aware of the disciple's position.

Somatized (S)
A discipline can induce a momentary change in the disciple's appearance. Levitating hair or conspicuous veins are commonly associated with psionics. If the disciple is lightly or heavily obscured, a somatized component does not call this obscurement into question (the disciple's eyes might become one solid color, but they will not glow in the dark).

Manifest (M)
Some disciplines must manifest as a construct of light before they can produce any other effect. The most common manifestation is a halo around the disciple's head, sometimes composed of runes or fractal patterns (and here, yes, the character's eyes might glow). Whatever form the discipline takes, the disciple sheds bright light in a 5-foot radius.

All these are classic ways to signal an active psion to the audience, both in general fiction and in D&D art (Or was it just 4e? Anyway, I liked it). More importantly, this would solve the problem of psionics devaluating the Subtle Spell feature of the sorcerer.

Hmm, that's quite an opposite approach to PF1's take on Psychic Magic. It focuses on how to "detect" psionics usage, while PF1's Thought and Emotion components are there to mostly define how to "disrupt" castings.

anthon
2021-02-04, 05:38 AM
Hmm, that's quite an opposite approach to PF1's take on Psychic Magic. It focuses on how to "detect" psionics usage, while PF1's Thought and Emotion components are there to mostly define how to "disrupt" castings.

yeah one of the things that makes most psionics scary is the lack of components.

making a new triple component option definitely creates a variant of magic, but it also unecessarily robs the whole class of its mystique at the same time it makes the noticeable psionic powers less special.

Certainly some psionic powers are so amped up they become visible. That's usually a bad thing.

meanwhile, if someone is sitting there doing mantras and in lotus position, or grasping a crystal necklace,

or worse, grasping a a crystal necklace that's glowing while their hair goes all anti gravity -

with psionics these have meaning. What meaning you might ask?
the mantra/lotus/crystal stuff means the psychic is weak. They are using crutches or delving into higher level psionic stuff before they are ready.

but when stuff starts glowing, when audible buzzing happens, when their eyes start glowing and their hair starts flowing like water and the little pebbles start falling up instead of down, that's some DBZ shiz. its a bad portent with meaning.

Identical meaning to creatures with Legendary and Lair abilities like "Regional Effects".

I've always believed psionics is better presented as dragons/aberrations and less like "hello, my name is Harry Geller, where's Spoon Bending 101?" magical school.

if you watch scanners or firestarter you get the idea. They are a fear radiating being. Even in Akira this was true.

Switch over to that old David Lynch movie being remade this year, Dune. "My name is a killing word" says Moadib. He yells at a dude and he explodes - sure, that's scary. Like a breath weapon. But what's really creepy is the prophecies surrounding him. How beings lightyears away are terrified and having visions.

There is a mystique about Psionicists.


And there's a sort of Secret Spy fear about their lack of components. That they could be among us, doing horrible things. Manipulating states or killing indiscriminately. The whole village or nation would be terrified and suspicious. But this is all before any visuals happen.

When actual visuals happen, it's even worse. Dudes lifting off the ground and having their necks snapped like rag dolls. Even other supernatural beings BTFOing.

What about Wizards?

9/10 times when a Wizard is portrayed as scary, its because that wizard is using Psionic tropes.
torching people with pyrokinesis, reading their minds and erasing their memories, levitating in cool matrix like camera angles, causing heavy objects to lift, etc. The magneto tropes.

A Pure mage should probably be summoning something or casting elaborate pentacle spells or using mighty magic items. But im telling you flat out, 9/10 times when they flex, they use the Psionics Playbook.