Psionics

This. Add too many weird power sources, and I might as well be playing Mutants and Masterminds

I dunno, I liked 4e's power source system as it didn't go 'Magic/Not magic'. Power sources are about where stuff flows from, not if you are magical. Arcane is a long step away from 'All magic' like it's been portrayed at other times.

The mechanics generally don't let you be John Carter.

the dragons?

>GURPS

No. Mind Flayers.

Personally I'd favour it as an alternate approach to magic. Having it as a sorcerous origin for instance.

It's the lack of coherent flavor that speaks directly to players. Everybody can close their eyes and picture a wizard, a druid, a cleric. A bit of thought can give you a keen idea of what a sorcerer, a warlock, a paladin, and other caster archetypes might be like. Meanwhile, the core Psionic flavor derives from turn of the century new age mysticism that most players don't really know much about, and those who do tend to find it laughable bullshit.

My usual solution to this is to say that psionics are just another discipline of arcane magic, and that John Q. Psion basically looks like a wizard only with crystals instead of books. My current solution, however, is I'm running a game set in a fantasy world undergoing an industrial revolution, so I'm actually treating Psionics the way they were intended, with mediums and crystal healing and ectoplasm and all that good shit.

Fun fact: We get devas and aasimar from the same source as half of psionics.

John Carter can see carbonized electrons with his bare eyes.

Thirding this. I don't need "Magic" and "Scifi Not-Magic" alongside it.

I actually prefer stuff like Faerun's Shadow Weave as an alternative way of getting around ordinary magic limitations, because it's still explicitly magic.

I'm pretty sure he went on to become the Emperor of Mankind.

While I agree that there isn't a coherent vision of what constitutes a psion, I think your assumption that the collective vision of what constitutes
>a wizard, a druid, a cleric.... a sorcerer, a warlock, a paladin, and other caster archetypes
is unified is.... a bit of a stretch. MAYBE if we ONLY look at people who have only played a single edition of D&D, who do not read fantasy novels, don't watch fantasy movies/series, and aren't at all familiar with fairy-tales: THEN the vision could become unified... and that does describe an alarmingly large portion of the "3.PF and 5e only" crowd, but that does not constitute a unified vision within "the community" (if you can even call it that.)

Different forms of magic.

Wizards learn to manipulate magic through rote learning
Warlocks are shown how by their patron
Sorcerers have the power in their blood
Psions meditate on the nature of reality

I would say rather than try to condense psionics into a single class it's best spread out among the existing classes (at least as far as DnD is concerned) In this way you can start to really make use of the flavor of psionics without butting heads against the already existing magic;

Then again, I feel a majority of the classes that exist don't really need to and could be better served as feats but that's my opnion.

It's not necessarily unified, it's just that you can grab someone off the street and demand they describe a wizard and they'd be able to get out some points. In other words, the themes and concepts we attach to "wizard" are so strong that a first time player (and they're the ones you really need to win) can pick up a book, see a class called "Wizard", and know what it is and whether they'd like to be one or not. First time player has no idea what a psion is. Not even the basic pictures of psions in most books really help.

I think a major part of the problem is that the source material psions draw from is so far removed from the standard fantasy setting most D&D reflects that it's impossible to really draw on the original flavors and have it come out recognizable. The original psions had psychic surgery as a power, in a game that didn't recognize actual surgery as a skill. How are you going to involve spirit photography in a game where photography doesn't exist? How do you have a character say "I'm a psychometabolist" if most characters haven't even heard of metabolism?

As a result, we're forced to make up not just character concepts, but flavor and themes for entire setting concepts that, generally, DMs don't have to unless they want to and players aren't expected to have to deal with. I'd honestly be happier if they stripped out the new age-y stuff and started over with "psychic powers" as the baseline. I think you could keep the crystals around and most players would get the significance, but a lot of the more elaborate psionic flavor is basically just trying to graft concepts better suited to steampunk into a fantasy setting that rarely even rises to the level of renaissance.

I've never spelled renaissance right on the first go like that.

That it's not the default.

>What, if anything, is wrong with Psionics in D&D?
Nothing, really, it's just a thematically different magic system, that runs alongside magic.

Depends really on the class/creature you're referring to. Psychic warriors are what fighters should have been, psions are like different wizards, and psionic monsters shit on unprepared parties.
Soulknives are fun, and a good alternative to assassins.

Not really much else to be said for psionics. Maybe you could say that having to learn more rules sucks, but then again, that's tabletop gaming for you.

This is a problem with DnD because it never gave an environment or backdrop for Psionics to stand on it's own. Sure, there's eberron and Dark Sun but you still have fucking wizards and clerics and druids and shit still being the primary focus while it' just so happens psionics exist there.

If they actually sat down and made a setting top to bottom that focused on the individual flavors they came out with I feel they would be more widly accepted but then you have every sperg that looses a few layers of cheeto dust whenever a setting isn't ye olden realistic europe with faggot elf songs, beer swilling midgets and god wizards and emasculated martials.

>What, if anything, is wrong with Psionics in D&D?

If we are talking 3.5 the issue is people not fully reading the rules and or bull shitting about a few (but very important) limits of what they can do. Case in point is power points per round. It is capped at your caster level if you do not use one of the feats to let you go over that limit. Not following that takes them from mostly balanced to very broken.

What's that power they get where they can make attacks on multiple targets?

I've had multiple players insist that power lets them attack a character and all their sunder-able items in a single round.

>Sure, there's eberron and Dark Sun but you still have fucking wizards and clerics and druids and shit still being the primary focus while it' just so happens psionics exist there.

Well, not in Dark Sun. Psionics is supposed to be the default there, and Clerics aren't even really supposed to exist, and Wizards are supposed to be massively limited because of that whole thing about killing the world.

>It's not necessarily unified, it's just that you can grab someone off the street and demand they describe a wizard and they'd be able to get out some points.
Yes, but not more than if you said "describe a psychic"
>I think a major part of the problem is that the source material psions draw from is so far removed from the standard fantasy setting most D&D reflects that it's impossible to really draw on the original flavors and have it come out recognizable.
I mostly draw my material from things like Conan, John Carter, Solomon Kane, Elric, and the like, so it tends to fit in just fine in my games without any more suspension of disbelief than magic and dragons.

>pay gurps
Basically an esoteric exercise on the subject at hand that would be extremely expensive to acquire otherwise
>play dungeons and dragons
Basically lobotomize yourself.

GURPS is best.

Sell me Dark Sun Mythras.

So we get two race people rarely use coherently with their settings from the same source as a class that people rarely use coherently with their setting? I'm surprised, truly.

Not them (and more familiar with RQ6), but sorcery fits with defiling, specifically tapping (draining life and energy from something to power your magic)

Psionics would be similar to Folk Magic, what with it being common for everyone.

How does it translate at high power-level? Remind yourself that characters start at 3rd level and that most truly powerful heroes are epic 20th level psionist multiclasser that can try to morph into elementals or dragons.

Nothing, it's been there since the very beginning (OD&D), before even most of the other standard D&D stuff that came in later with AD&D.

Man, I love this new RQ vs GURPS meme. Especially those 2 pics.

For a standard D&D type setting that does psionics well, look at the Lone Wolf gamebooks.

4e combined psionics with the monk class. Which seems odd but considering thematic and mechanical similarities between Psi and Ki points it was actually pretty good fit in my opinion.

Of course it also made everybody follow encounter power system. But that's neither here nor there.

Personally I always felt the fairly arbitrary distinctions between clerical spells and wizardly spells was more unimmersive myself. A priest is effectively a wizard with healing. He has to do a spell list and everything.

At least psionic tries distinguish itself with a casting different system.

>Of course it also made everybody follow encounter power system. But that's neither here nor there.

That's... actually false. The Monk followed the encounter power system, but all the other psionic classes used a point system. They had no encounter powers.

I don't see how that can possibly be the case, given that psionics are significantly weaker than vancian casting in 3.x

Maybe with the essentials revision. But I'm pretty sure they followed the same strict at will/encounter/daily systerm.

All the classes did. Even the Martials.

Except psionics.

FFS man, here

funin.space/compendium/class/Psion.html
funin.space/index.php?search=psion&folders[]=power

The only encounter powers they have is utilities, everything else runs on power points or is daily.

Incidentally psionics doing that is why they're so shit to play compared to all but the worst AEDU classes. Almost like they used AEDU for a reason or something.

I wouldn't say they are bad, but they definitely have a "why would I EVER do anything else?" syndrome going on. They should have released them one by one, instead of doing it all at once to mature the design or something.

I think they could have made it work IF they provided incentive to swap about powers rather than hammering the same one again and again.

Okay went and dust off my old 4e books.

The 4e Monk is explicitly psionic and does follow the standard 4e encounter system.

You're right though about the Psion (the actual class at least) it doesn't actual have strict encounter powers as such. Rather it could augment it's at will powers with a set number of points per encounter point.

Which I have to admit I wasn't adware of. It's a fairly interesting way of doing it.

Yeah, Monk is the outlier. He was supposed to have his own power source called "ki", which is assumed to have worked with his full disciples system.

The Monk wasn't supposed to be Psionics originally, which is a lot of it.

I also really liked Full Discipline. It should have been used more.

Shit to play isn't the same thing as being a shit class.

IDK, I feel like I'd have loads of fun with an ardent, even if all I did was set up charges all day every day.

>Hey GM, I want to play this class
OK
>You have to read a whole new rulebook, with pervasive effects on almost every element of the game and profound implications for your setting
Get fucked

Since we're on the subject is there any other systems apart from DND where Psionics and Magic both exist but aren't just the same thing with a different name?

In Warhammer it's basically the same thing.

In Star Wars the Force furfill basically both for the most part

Shadowrun as far as I know doesn't have anything like psychics at all.

Only example when I can think of is Witch Girls Adventures. Where mentalism is a distinct type of magic, but can be cast with the mind stat and occasional non witches because it's a type of poorly understood "mind magic" and not "good old-fashioned witchcraft"

GURPS is garbage and you know it.

/thread

95% of TTRPG players come from either 3.5, 5ED or PF. I know hating those is cool and everything.
But either way, you don't need those to make a stereotype Wizard, Druid or Cleric, since those have strong real-life cultural parallels in western popular culture.

Meanwhile, the closest real-life parallel that psions have is that awkward new-wave pothead aunt that is always rambling about alternative medicine, hippie nature bullshit and eastern culture shit like feng-shui and meditation.

Druids are nothing more than hippie wildlife clerics.

Your taste is the only garbage here, my dude.

Basically any superhero system?

Nothing. Personally, I would like to have psionics included as the main sort of Int-based magic in a setting, to further contrast it with divine magic and more arcane types that would come from gods and bloodlines or daemonic pacts.

You mean asides from the part it became the universes anti-aberration cure-all in 4e, or the fact that in 3.5 it was literally an evolved form of Psyker power derived from Eldar that survived the fall but got blasted so fucking far away from the galaxy they ended up in the local lightspace of the D&D cosmos, and interbred with humans producing the modern psions?

That and astral seeds, and it touching upon top-level Eldritch lovecraftian break the fucking game bullshit like a lot of 3.5 stuff does, but it's some extra special sort of eyeballs in your brain levels of Cthulian bullshit?

Actually, M-Space, a spinoff of Mythras, has a fully developed Psionics system that follows the "More points you pump into it = greater effect" model. It can scale up quite nicely to the level you're describing.

Also you're able to completely customize the Magic systems as a GM. Each system is simply a method of casting spells, along with a fitting spell-list. You, as a GM, are free to mix and match spell-lists in order to create Cults, what essentially allows you to create game balance and uniquely flavored casters in the system. Creating an option with a specific caveat for each Dark Sun Caster archetype is more than do-able.

Beyond that, a deadly combat system, plenty of survival rules, and the Classic Fantasy Supplement(Which you could also call the D&D100 supplement) and you can easily recreate the Dark Sun experience in greater detail using Mythras.

If it is a thing it is not in the srd because i just checked.

In OD&D, it was implanted about as poorly as AD&D content.
Cherry on top, those rules were the least organized of OD&D's.

In AD&D, it was basically just a shitty port of the OD&D rules.
The organization was a but better, but still amount Gygax's worst.

The 2e Complete Psionics were OK, but leaned too hard on NWPs.
The Will and The Way a best.
The Players Option psionics were the "does not work" kind of broken. Not playtesting is bad, m'kay?

The 3e psionics shoehorned a bunch of crap.
The 3.5 psionics made no effort to mesh with the 3.5 monsters.

4e psionics were good, IIRC.

Not too familiar with 5e psionics. Something about not having enough options?

Thank you Duck- and Froganon for shilling the two best systems

Not the user who asked, but I think this is the second time I've wanted to use a system other than D&D to run a D&D setting. I don't actually like Dungeons & Dragons, so this'll let me actually run Dark Sun. (The first time was with Planescape, but I can't remember what system I wanted to use.)

>implanted
*implemented
>but
*bit

>What [...] is wrong with Psionics
Gary "Thesauruses Are Basically Highscool Diplomas" Gygax failed to appreciate context in one too many sci-fi novels, and decided to bastardized the word.

>Basically any superhero system?

Not really. Most superhero system lump all powers types all under the same rule set even if their suppose to be from totally different backgrounds.

>Meanwhile, the closest real-life parallel that psions have is that awkward new-wave pothead aunt that is always rambling about alternative medicine, hippie nature bullshit and eastern culture shit like feng-shui and meditation.
So what you're saying is you DO have a real-life point of reference.

I always prefer to fluff mine off of Hindu Yogis and similar "aesthetic mystics".

Also Vivec. Because more games need a piece of Vehk

My latest psionic character was somewhat inspired by old-school Christian mysticism. I love using mystical traditions as inspiration for Psionics; I like the mechanics, it doesn't take a huge deal of refluffing to make it work, and it keeps the parts of psionic fluff that I like.

>old-school Christian mysticism.
Mind explaining a bit to me? I'm sadly unfamiliar with the older christianity mythos. Is it anyhing like how Kabbalists were like a mathmancers?

My character is more based on the idea that through prayer, meditation, and asceticism, one can gain direct experience of, and eventually union with, God. (The Sun, in his case.) He believes that his powers are a product of his devotion, and that their continued growth is a sign that he's on the right path. I've deliberately left it up to the GM if he's right or not.

>Not too familiar with 5e psionics.
This is what we've got so far, and it isn't finished.

Anima: Beyond Fantasy

d20srd.org/srd/psionic/powers/energyMissile.htm

>multiple targets
>creature or object

Too many unintended interactions that lets them break the game in 3.X. Blatantly overpowered in 2nd. Youd have to play 4th/5th in order to play them in 4th/5th. Idk about first, never played it.

>But either way, you don't need those to make a stereotype Wizard, Druid or Cleric, since those have strong real-life cultural parallels in western popular culture.
And the psychic doesn't? Seriously, unless your ONLY reference for what is fantasy is D&D, and even then only certain editions, existing archetypes aren't in short supply.

I loved the Dreamscarred Press version of Psionics for allowing psychics to be more than just an odd type of mage. Especially the psionic IronMan-ish class.

My group got a kick out of playing an entirely psionic party. We were giggling and giddy when we all got captured by the bad guys because we knew we would be easily escaping and slaughtering the enemy within their hidden base with our mental and physical powers that didn't give a shit spell components or magical knickknacks. The DM did emphasize how most NPCs thought we were weird for various reasons, including how we just stared at each other while communicating telepathically. Having a permanent telepathic network not only allowed us to share hit points and buffs, but meant we never actually spoke to each other much to the discomfort of those not indoctrinated into the party.

>multiple targets
>creature or object

>I've had multiple players insist that power lets them attack a character and all their sunder-able items in a single round.

>Saving Throw: Reflex half or Fortitude half

This is not a attack roll, just saying. The other poster said attack not force a save.

Having said that it is a very strong power

Energy missile is the staple power of blaster-psions.

Does that really work? You have to roll a save for every destroyable item on you?

Oh heavens no, you have to make a save for yourself, and each targeted item. The power manifests 5 missiles, each one which can target a creature, or an object. Each object that is on a creature's person can "make a save" using the wielder's save.

Theorhetically, if you wanted to make sure you could damage a dude, you could target him once, and four of his favorite possessions.

Just make everyone psionic then.
>Everyone?
EVERYONE.
>Even the Fighters?
Especially the Fighters.

Looks interesting. Finding a system with the right vibe to play in Dark Sun is complicated, all new implementations are either incomplete (5e hacks) or lack the feel of the universe (fuck 3.5 and 4e). AD&D is very cluncky in retrospect too, Psionics felt good but they were pretty much made for Dark Sun in that edition.
Actually, w40k is probaly a lot more in line with the feeling of Dark Sun, what with lethality and psychic powers... but the system sucks balls.
I'll make sure to check M-Space out.

>or lack the feel of the universe (fuck 3.5 and 4e)

wonder how I can tell you haven't played DS in 4e?

M-Space acts like it's a separate system, but really, you need Mythras for it to work. All of the core rules are stripped down or simplified, and only stuff like laser guns, spaceships, and Psionics feel complete. You need Mythras to refer to to get clarity and substance.

>Energy missile is the staple power of blaster-psions.

Yes and no. Only Kineticist get that power. Every Psion gets one Discipline at level one and thus access to"the powers restricted to that discipline". The restricted powers are for the most part the nicer powers. Energy Missile is one of those restricted powers.

dandwiki.com/wiki/SRD:Psion_Discipline_Powers

Most of the time the people I play with go for Nomad because it is(only way Psions get fly, Egoist for healing, or Shaper for Astral Construct. Keep in mind with restricted powers "He can’t even use such powers by employing psionic items."

Going Kineticist means that you are going hard core blaster in a casting class that its big point is only needed one or two power know for damaging dealing.

Dreamscarred Press just did a minor touch up on the 3.5 version of Psionics plus a few new class's. I do like what they did with the soulknife however.

>Most of the time the people I play with go for Nomad because it is(only way Psions get fly, Egoist for healing, or Shaper for Astral Construct.
A few things.

First, I DID specifically say blaster-psion.

Second, anybody can take it with a feat, just two levels later than the kineticist, and the Psion even gets a bonus feat at lvl5 which is ideally placed to take it for any non-kineticist psion

Third, getting flight two levels earlier is a nice reason to go nomad, and recieving healing two levels earlier is a VERY nice reason to go Egoist, but I've never seen astral construction as anything but garbage.... basically it's a more versatile, but objectively worse, version of every other summon spell, and unlike the summon-spells, there's no set of feats or class features that can make it a standard instead of full-round, functionally making it useless. In truth, when I've experienced "high-optimization" psions (I use quotes because psions are not high-op to begin with) aiming for high level, the discipline focus is largely chosen because of skills.

Best magic system is Palladium Books/Rifts.

Best magic FLUFF: Sure
Best magic SYSTEM: oh dear god no

It does integrate magic and psionics as two different-but-similar elements in setting, while not making either feel redundant, which is sort of what a lot of the thread was talking about. Naturally, it's rifts, so the mechanics are garbage, but hey... it's rifts.

It's a redundant distinction when magic exists. Just have it be mind magic instead of some pseudoscience pseudomystical xmen thing. Plus it screwed up a lot of mechanicul assumptions in 3.5 because monsters that normally had spell resistance had no psionic resistance.

Spell resistance and power resistance are by default the same thing.

So?
I mean it's a power that sends out multiple projectiles like magic missile and you can choose to attack whoever or whatever you want with them.
If a player wants to attack everything someone is carrying then they're not using those blasts to take down other enemies and sundering generally just throws away treasure anyway.
I'm just really not seeing how this is overpowered or whatever especially in relation to some of the shit wizards can pull.

Psionics should be completely included/integrated with the Core books.

I like psionics, but that's going a bit far

At least in 5e my complaint is that it isn't sure which flavor of psionics it wants to go with, so it simultaneously tries to mix Eastern mysticism psionics, modern "sci-fi" psionics, and New Age crystal bullshit psionics. Each of those flavors, individually, could be interesting, but mixed together it just feels tonally inconsistent and drab.

Thats not a frog, thats my ballsack with legs and an angry face.

Not by default. DMs are given a laundry list and asked to choose.