So what do you guys think of 2nd edition psionics?

[Incenjucar]

Like most things in 2E, really great premise, dubious and fiddly execution.

The base concept hasn't been done justice in ages in D&D, as even as soon as 3E the designers failed to understand what the point was and just turned them into variant wizards - WotC's history of not getting it is pretty immediate.

2E psionics being this kind of middle ground between magic, martial, and ki abilities, and good at thwarting spellcasters more than martials, was a really fun little addition that added a lot of depth, in the same way that mad science can do when applied to a setting, but while staying more compatible with traditional fantasy (granted this same era also had elves with cybernetic limbs).

But cripes the balance and randomness and sheer amount of stuff you had to do to use psionics was not great. 2E just loves to fill up matrices with pluses and minuses.

 

[DammitVictor]

Psionic combat is fun. Your attack and defense modes are fueled by your daily supply of psionic strength points, like all of your abilitires to do anything as a psionicist. Every single monster that has psionic attack and defense modes gets them for free.

Third Edition (3.0) had the same problem. It was the last edition to feature psionic combat in any way, shape, or form.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Like most things in 2E, really great premise, dubious and fiddly execution.

This is exactly it. Some really good ideas, some incredibly bad execution.

Contrary to some of the silly claims early in this thread, 2E was perhaps the only edition which actually "got" how psionics/psychic powers could fit into D&D and do something interesting. It just had terrible early-2E style mechanics.

What I'd add was, again contrary to some early claims, is that D&D actually could hugely benefit from having two magic systems, because in fantasy fiction, there are, very broadly speaking, two common approaches to magic:

1) Magic is arbitrary, powerful, and can probably do literally anything. In these settings magic usually is "spells" which need to learned, and which usually bend reality in pretty wild ways, popping beings into existence, cursing people, summoning ultra-flames from supernal realms, making everyone forget a name (not talking about Peter Parker though it did happen there too lol), and so on. Often stuff is fire-and-forget, in that once a spell has been cast, it continues. Everything from a Wizard of Earthsea to Harry Potter to Jack Vance is basically in this very broad category. As is D&D's main magic system.

2) Magic is not that powerful, cannot shatter or even necessarily bend reality much (instead working with stuff like heat, atoms, the body's own systems, and so on), but is specific abilities to do specific things, which often overlap extremely heavily with what some settings are called "psychic powers". Usually there aren't "spells", rather powers reliant on concentration, focus, willpower and practice/skill. There's no fire-and-forget here, generally - effects cease as soon as concentration is stopped.

Most fantasy settings have one or the other - trad fantasy, particularly that written by men, tends towards the former. However, fantasy written by women, particularly that which used to get labelled "romantic fantasy", is quite often the latter. Occasionally you have both - the obvious example is The Grishaverse (i.e. Shadow and Bone), where Grisha are generally using Type 2 magic (barring magical drugs and similar), but Type 1 magic does exist and is utterly terrifying. Arguably Robin Hobb's Assassin-verse also features both, though Type 2 is clearly the primary kind.

I think part of the reason D&D has so consistently shut out and misconceived mechanics has its roots in, sorry to say it, what is fundamentally sexism. I know some people will auto-bristle at that, but there we are. Male fantasy authors were strongly preferred by the trad/medieval fantasy crowd until very recently, anyone trying to pretend otherwise has the vast evidence of discussions about Blue Rose to contend with (particularly those in the '00s). So whilst this second type of magic was always common as a proportion of fantasy fiction being sold, it wasn't the kind of fantasy fiction selling to people who made decisions about D&D, at least not until more recently. Even now I still very much doubt either of D&D's current lead designers are familiar with say, Bardugo or Hobb, despite them being huge-selling fantasy fiction authors (I think Mearls might have been - because the Mystic was very much in-line with a kind of upgunned Type 2 magic, but D&D's current leads seemed entirely perplexed by what makes psionics different from just "casting spells"), though I suspect the younger designers likely are.

Anyway, that explains why 3E fundamentally didn't get it - the designers just didn't understand that kind of fantasy, on a profound level.

4E was a lot closer to it, I note, and again, that suggests to me that Mearls (or others involved with 4E's psionics), despite any other failings, did "get it" re: psionics.

 

[Azzy]

Oof. They were a bad tacked-on system that became easily unbalanced. I much preferred 3e's version.

 

[cbwjm]

Preferred 2e to 3e, though I know 2e could be more balanced. 4e's psionics was quite cool, I'd probably rate them higher than 3e.

 

[Uni-the-Unicorn!]

Having researched the history of psychic phenomena in general and psionics specifically, I have learned a few interesting things that I would like to share as background and history... which I will try to recall off the top of my head, as I'm away from my notes.

One: the history of mental abilities that are specifically not magic go back thousands of years in human history. Especially in the mythology of India. Therefore, magic and psi / psychic stuff are not the same thing, psi / psychic powers are not another version of magic, and they never have been the same. Having said that, magical effects that duplicate the mental powers I am referring to, and blending of the line between magical and mental have also been a thing, both in history and especially in more recent times, which leads to a lot of modern confusion of the two.

WotC using the same mechanics for both didn't help, despite making it easy for newcomers to pick up.

Two: the term "psionics" was invented and coined by a certain pulp novel writer who combined "psi" and "electronics" and used it to mean "electronics that used units of mental energy to function". Incidentally, said units of mental energy were called "psions (plural), and psion (singular)".

Sorry WotC, you didn't invent it, and you're not even using it correctly. (Assuming that the original definitions have primacy and precedence. )

Beings who could use psions of mental energy to produce effects or power psionic equipment were usually called "heroes / heroines / villains / aliens / etc., with Psi abilities", sometimes Espers, especially later on. This swiftly became popular, and a wide spread acceptance of the terminology soon embedded itself into fantasy, and more especially into space opera and science fiction. Eventually, the term psionics came to replace the term Psi as the more common usage.

Three: the term Psychic was more associated with the communication with the spirits of the dead, seances (especially in the early to mid 1900s), certain magical traditions such as the Chaldean, the Babylonian, or the Witch of Endor... and again with people who cheat and deceive others for money, power, and influence. It is only in modern times that the term psychic has been diluted and used to mean all Psi phenomena and powers in general. The term psychic has also been largely overshadowed by the term psionics.

Four: the term bionics actually comes from the term psionics, not the other way around, in the sense that it is electronics that interface with biology. Though it is rare to see actual devices that are powered by biology in the original sense of the word, as opposed to cybernetics. The Dark Sun lifeshaped grafts would count as wetware, rather than bionics. Should units of biological energy be called bions then? I think perhaps the term Bio-E became more prevalent thanks to TMNT.

Five: the resurgence of interest in psychic phenomena in the 1900's coincided roughly with an increasing trend rejecting the pseudo-mystical and mystical traditions of magic / majik / magick / etc., (and occasionally mystical-religious) trappings so often donned by the many deceivers looking to take financial, political, religious, mental, and social advantage of susceptible people.

Six: there were many documented cases of mental phenomena in the 1800s and 1900s (research titanic references for just a few of the many) that people were trying to reason about and understand, and the idea of psi phenomena resonated with those who rejected the magical or mystical and sought a more scientific explanation for such. Ironically, many modern scientists reject one of the very things that contributed its part to the advances of scientific research of the era.

Seven: the 50s, 60s, and 70s contributed their bit to openmindedness and the rejection of the rat race, which had various influences on how Psi and Psychic phenomena was viewed, perceived, and accepted (or rejected).

It was this accumulated history that the creator of the original psionic rules in Supplement III: Eldritch Wizardry drew upon in 1976. Those rules, and the powers therein, have heavily influenced the concepts of Psi, the Psychic, and psionics ever since.

In the original edition, "psionic abilities" function like discrete abilities.

In 1st edition, more definitions (and rules) were given, and three powers were added.

When 2nd edition came out, psionics had been removed, as Gygax had indicated he would do in a Dragon Magazine article; even though 2nd ed was published after he was booted from the company.

Later in 2nd ed, the "psionic world" Dark Sun was released, where "magic was hated and feared, while psionics were accepted in daily life"... and ironically (or maliciously) did not contain any rules for psionics - you had to buy a second book, the Compete Psionic Handbook in order to get the Dark Sun psionic system. This is notably the first time the Attack Modes and Defense Modes were converted to powers (not in 3.5 as many believe).

Containing references to both Greyhawk and Forgotten Realms, it officially if backhandedly applied psionics to both 2e worlds in addition to the world of Athas.

Two more books with psionics were released for 2nd ed Dark Sun: Dragon Kings, and The Will and the Way (which introduced epic level psionics for the first time to D&D, called High Sciences, as well as revising the 2e psionics system).

As the Dark Line was not continued into 3rd edition, WotC declared that Athas.org was the official sponsored source of all 3rd edition Dark Sun content, all of which would be co-owned with WotC, an unprecedented legal status unique to all the Other Worlds sites hosting discontinued lines, which has never been officially rescinded, and is mostly, if not completely, ignored these days.

Psi/psychic powers and magic are both fictional made up supernatural abilities. From that stance, the are the same.

I, and many others, use magic in this sense to mean any ability or power that is supernatural (ie, not real world)

 

[Alzrius]

I'm on the record as liking AD&D 2E psionics a whole lot.

 

[Jack Daniel]

2e psionics? I loved 'em. I only have experience playing with the original (CΨHB) system and never saw the revised Dark Sun/Skills & Powers version in action, but one player in particular in my old high school group consistently played psionicists in our 2e games, and we never ran into any overwhelming balance problems. (Granted, we also played in a very loose, narrative way back then and never did anything that might stress the system, let alone break it.) Power checks were fiddlier than they needed to be, and psionic combat was something of a nightmare to figure out, but the flavor that psionics brought to the table made it all worthwhile. And even though my group converted to 3e immediately and used both the 3.0 and 3.5 psionics rules as soon as they were available, I think we all agreed that they were only a pale shadow of the 2e rules.

At some point between the release of Castles & Crusades and the early OSR clones (OSRIC, BFRPG, etc.), I gave up on 3e and went full BECMI/RC. When that happened, I went through a very minimalistic phase, where I was rejecting the inclusion of psionics in my campaigns based purely on a principle of parsimony — part and parcel of accepting Basic D&D's paradigm of race–classes and general lack of specialist subclasses (though I did keep the ones in the RC). I took it as axiomatic that psionics were unnecessary in a game where magic already filled their "niche."

The reason I did keep using the RC subclasses (paladin/avenger, druid, and mystic/monk) was that I just loved monks. I considered them so essential to the identity of D&D that it would never do to run a campaign without them. Therefore, it should probably come as no surprise that even back in my 2e playing days, I was flirting with psionic versions of the monk class, like this one, which was one of at least three fan-written monks that I found on the internet back in the day (before I had a 1e PHB or a copy of OA, and well before The Scarlet Brotherhood had come out). I never got the chance to play 4e, but if I had, I would've wholeheartedly approved of its having made the monk a canonically psionics-powered class.

So nowadays, I do use psionics in my Basic games — the version found in PX1: The Basic Psionics Handbook, by New Big Dragon Games. It is, in a word, excellent. Structurally, the powers look just like 2e; but mechanically, they're both simplified (e.g. no power checks or other super fiddly bits, PSP costs are regularized) and have their power-level reined in. Also, in a major improvement to game balance, the disciplines by default have to be learned in a strict order by every psionicist — psychometabolism first, clairsentience second, psychokinetics third, etc. It really helps the game to have the powerful telepathic and psychoportative powers kept out of the hands of low-level PCs. That said, while PX1 has both a mystic class (that resembles a nerfed 2e psionicist) and a monk class (one that resembles the RC mystic more than either the Blackmoor monk or the 1e monk), for my own games I combine them into a single psionics-using martial artist class called the ascetic.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

I liked both 2Ed and 3.X Psionics for different reasons. Each had strengths and flaws.

One thing WotC did marginally better than TSR in this situation is that 3.X psi got more support, both through official products and through 3PP.

 

[nevin]

While I owned the books, it wasn't until 3rd edition D&D that I actually began playing. Nonetheless, I owned several books and one of my favorites was the Psionics Handbook. It's the only version of the psionicist that I have seen that actually felt like it's own thing: PSPs instead of spell slots. Six disciplines instead of Eight schools of magic. Power checks. The contact subsystem. Attack and defense modes. Some very strange powers...

But I have never actually seen the psionicist in play. The books will tell you that they are no better or worse than any other class but putting that conceit aside for a moment, what were the psionicists actually like in play? Did they outshine other classes? Were they a poor man's wizard? did anyone actually bother with contact powers? Did power checks add or subtract from the experience?

problem with 2nd edition psionics was they came out around the time the Deryni books were popular and they added powers that really could F**** up a game like psychic surgery. so if you thinka wizard being able to modify memory is bad go read 2nd edition psychic surgery. you could take away class levels, modify memories. Effectively rewrite the brain. The mechanics weren't bad but some of the powers in the base edition were just over the top game breaking even some of the lower level ones.