Tell more about Psychics and Psionics why are they so rare in settings and lore?

This while Psionics and monks do crazy shit through their internal energies.

>Magic is a part of every sorcerer, suffusing body, mind, and spirit with a latent power that waits to be tapped. Some sorcerers wield magic that springs from an ancient bloodline infused with the magic of dragons. Others carry a raw, uncontrolled magic within them, a chaotic storm that manifests in unexpected ways.

Nope, internal power.

Core 3.5
>Special Attack: Psionics
>Telepathy, mental combat and psychic powers—psionics is a catchall word that describes special mental abilities possessed by various creatures. These are spell-like abilities that a creature generates from the power of its mind alone—no other outside magical force or ritual is needed. Each psionic creature’s description contains details on its psionic abilities.
>Psionic attacks almost always allow Will saving throws to resist them. However, not all psionic attacks are mental attacks. Some psionic abilities allow the psionic creature to reshape its own body, heal its wounds, or teleport great distances. Some psionic creatures can see into the future, the past, and the present (in far-off locales) as well as read the minds of others. Psionic abilities are usually usable at will.

>[Unlike spells,] no other outside magical force or ritual is needed.

Yes, sorcerers' ability to cast spells is innate rather than learned. However, these spells work by manipulating outside forces.

>generates from the power of its mind alone—no other outside magical force or ritual is needed

d20srd.org/srd/psionic/psionicPowersOverview.htm#metacreativity
>A metacreativity power draws raw ectoplasm from the Astral Plane

1/6th of all psionic powers draw on outside forces.

>You tend not to find spaceships and dragons in the same stories any more
I miss spelljammer.

The way that sounds to me is that they're just using ectoplasm as the building material, not for the power source.

It's like lobbing rocks at an enemy with telekinetic abilities: The rocks are part of the effect, but not the source of it.

Psychic powers have more connotations with sci fi even if they end up doing the same shit as magic.

I think the writers got the Astral and Ethereal planes confused.

In most fiction where "astral plane" shows up, everyone exists on both the physical and astral planes at once. When a wizard/shaman/Professor X projects themselves in "astral form", they just detach their astral half and it travels around as a ghostlike being, immune to most attacks. This is what D&D would call ethereal.

Personally I prefer the blue magic.

youtube.com/watch?v=fs93c9KavvU

We all do, user. But better to let it lie quiet in it's grave, and bring out old books to bask in the memories, than to see what WotC would do with it now.

In 2e, people used to play psyonics at level 1 as an attempt to get more power than a level 1 wizard. It didn't really work, because you still only got one discipline, and a lot was RND.

Dark Sun

D&D 3.X confused the Astral and Ethereal Planes, but not for the reason you cited.

In 1e and 2e, the Astral Plane was the realm of pure thought and spirit, while the Ethereal Plane is the dimension of primordial matter and energy. The Ethereal Plane's protomatter was used as the basis for many spells of raw creation, including the forging of demiplanes.

3.X's metacreativity psionics draws upon a new concept of Astral "ectoplasm," which does not make as much sense as Ethereal protomatter.

I think the biggest issue is it tends to get added as an afterthought in settings that already have robust fluff on magic users and their place in the world.

To have psionica fit, you need to have them widespread as a baseline, and actually justify how they differ from magic. Dark Sun is a good example of this.

I miss 4th edition too.

Because no matter what logic or justification, they don't feel right and that's all that matters. Logic ends where feelings begin.

sorcerers ARE magical creatures. Their magic is in their bloodline. most are some form of draconic blood, but any sort of magical beast can be magiced into fuggin a mortal race and spitting out a more or less "human" but with some of the inate magic of the parent magic race. any normal human wizard can learn how to cast fire breath, but only a sorcerer with a red dragon bloodline can just do it naturally.

Blue is for plain unflavored magic.

Metacreativity was such a shitty thing to add.
It's just psychoporting ectoplasm to the prime and then psychokineticly shaping it. But they just needed a 6th discipline so there was one for each stat....

If we are slaving this conversation to D&D...
1. Magic is made of sacred cows which never change while Psionics is reinvented every edition.
2. Magic is a force in and off itself. Forgotten Realms handled this with the Weave. Dark Sun explained it as unnatural reappropriation of life force. Many settings never fucking bothered to go into magic theorey other than I don't have to explain shit, it's magic. Psionics always originated internally to the being using it (not to say magic didn't sometimes as well). In some editions and in some settings, psionics are magic. In Forgotten Realms it was noted that Psions generate their own weave. Which is horrifying in implication.

If we are free of D&D, psychic powers were often magic for settings that didn't want magic. Fantasy settings usually aren't adverse to having magic, so no need for the rebrand. Some stories drew a steep divide between the power of bloodline, the power if study and the power of discipline, others freely mixed and mingled.

Can't focus on a snowflake in a snowstorm.

Star Wars (until they ruined it in Episode 1)

Fallout.

>In Forgotten Realms it was noted that Psions generate their own weave. Which is horrifying in implication.
What implication would that be?

In general psionic powers have simpler effects than spells, and can't be anchored to things other than the caster or imbued with their own intelligence. In exchange, individual powers are often more versatile and efficient than their arcane equivalents.

Tapping into the Weave is like downloading an app, whereas psions have to rewire everything by hand.

Because Tolkien didn't write about psychics and psionics.

Elves were telepathic.

Jedi before the Prequels and the EU.

How was it different in the prequels?

Purple is bardic or psychic magic.
Negative energy magic is deep blue bordered by light blue.
Lightning must be light blue.
Necrotic damage must be black bordered by sickly green glow.

Thats how it fucking works

The Weave is Mystra's body in some bits of lore.
The implications of what the Realm Crystal sphere actually is, especially with the 3x (the edition where Psions generate their own weave) is that being Mystra is really just being a high level Psions.

>ANH: Now the Force is what gives a Jedi his power. It's an energy field created by all living things. It surrounds us, it penetrates us, it binds the galaxy together.

>Empire: For my ally is the Force, and a powerful ally it is. Life creates it. makes it grow. Its energy surrounds us. Combines us. Luminous beings are we, not this crude matter! You must feel the Force around you.

>Phantom Menace: Midichlorians are microscopic lifeforms living inside all living cells.

So that, combined with how Jedi went from space samurai practicing a spiritual religion to superheroes kinda hurt some of the fun.

It's to bad so many people feel this way as I really preferred the Expanded Psionics Handbook to every iteration of Vancian casting.

Poor anne mccafrey, wth her dragon spaceships.

Because psionics is thought to be more scientific which supposedly jars with the more mystical settings of fantasy. That's it really. Also grognards tend to hate it in their settings because AD&D 2e or 1e, I can't remember which, fucked up its implementation.

Of course scifi has always had a place in fantastic realms. In the most beloved settings from D&D and many older books from the 80s and 70s there have been laser guns, mind magics, crashed spaceships, and other scifi elements. Heck there is an entire setting that is basically sci fantasy- Spelljammer.

Or they have a tiny form of divine spark within them, making them shards of divinity. Or they are what naturally should be what casters are and that Mystra as a god is facilitating more magic than is natural by replicating a world spanning form of what comes naturally to psions. There are more possibilities than that she is just some high powered psion.

Even though I love vancian casting, that was also a fun casting system. For pure flavor though, Truenaming has it beat even though it's literally unplayable without much needed houseruling.

Shouldn't psionics be able to move molecules and atoms, and thus change the composition of objects with telepathy? It always seemed to me that psionics were unnecessarily gimped. There's no reason, really, why a psionic with sufficient power and a decent understanding of chemistry and/or physics couldn't replicate >60% of all spells. Elemental spells, at least.

That's like saying that because you have hands you should be able to rearrange molecules. Even with an understanding of those forces, telekinesis may simply lack that level of precision.

How are they moving things? If they're generating raw kinetic energy with their minds, then surely there are other more useful applications of that power than just push wildly. What prevents them from using/creating tools for increased precision?

In general, psychic powers are shitty because they make no sense.
If it's spiritual in nature, why not call it magic?
If it's completely material, where the hell does all that power come from? You're not seriously telling me the human brain can channel enough power to fold a car in half.
It's stupid and inconsistent, and another power fantasy people want to separate from magic because WE'RE SCIFI or WE'RE BETTER THAN WIZARDS or MUH INTERNAL POWER.
If anything, it should be like the Force, even if you want to put in midicholorians.