Psionics: Yea or Nay?

[JeffB]

4e is not too different from the core mechanics nor too complicated.

Excellent- may have to take a look-see at PHB3 then!

However, it can be argued that psionics in 4e are not balanced.

Hmm..not so good- will def have to take a long look-see at Borders before I purchase

 

[Achan hiArusa]

What? Call them Player Char Toons.

 

[Goblyn]

PCTs? Sounds like a drug.

 

[Desdichado]

I've long toyed with the idea (from 3.5, where they had a really nifty psionics book, supplemented by a Complete Psionic too) of having psionics replace magic entirely. There are no wizards, sorcerers, druids, bards, or clerics. Rangers and Paladins have to use the spell-less options from Complete Warrior. Many of the DMG prestige classes would also be disallowed.

Instead, we get psions, wilders, soulknives, psychic warriors, ardents, divine minds and lurks. Plus all the psionics prestige classes.

Instead of elves, dwarves, halflings, gnomes, half-elves and half-orcs, I'd have elan, maenids, kalashtar, xeph and dromites (and maybe half giants and duergar, although I'm not a fan of the LA+ races) join humans as playable races.

Gith fit in there somewhere too. Maybe hobgoblin led goblinoid totalitarian, expansionist super-power empires that made all blues into state-sponsered soldiers or something. The Dreaming Dark was an obvious foe. I wasn't ever a huge fan of aboleths or mindflayers, so I wasn't sure how much I wanted to include them or not.

I never really did anything other than tinker with a potential setting a tiny bit, though. One of these days, maybe I'll actually make something outta that...

 

[Celebrim]

Magic is supposed to be explicable?

If I understand you, I think we are basically in agreement, although I might not have done the best job of explaining my side of it.

Magic need not be explicable, but its precisely the metaphysics I'm complaining about when I say that the result is incoherent. Yes, D&D is first and foremost a 'kitchen sink' game, but as early as when I was 14 I started to question the 'kitchen sink' approach and started to try to give my game a coherent cosmology and ground the games magic in the 'physics' (or metaphysics) of the world.

I think psionics ends up in D&D precisely because 'powers of the mind' are so vaguely defined. Once you start thinking about what the term means, it quickly becomes clear that these esoteric powers of the mind are little different than what wizardry has while wearing a different label. The differences mainly manifest themselves at the mechanical (game) level. If you start at the world level and build up to 'esoteric powers of the mind', I don't think you'd end up with both wizards and psions. You might have binders and shamans or socerers and clerics, but fundamentally psions are just wizards in a different dress. And, to the extent that they are not, you'd probably have wizards with very different flavor than traditional D&D wizards.

 

[Doug McCrae]

D&D wizards have pretty much every superhuman power going - invisibility, shapechanging, curses, teleportation, mind reading, superhuman strength, etc - with healing and protective stuff going to the cleric. So in terms of effects, of end results, you don't need much more than a wizard. But in terms of the way those end results are generated - spellbook, memorisation, Vancian periodicity - D&D has been very limited for most of its history.

So maybe what people are looking for with psionics is not new effects - there's nothing new there anyway - but new means of generating those effects - spell points and the like.

As you say, Celebrim, the scope for new development in D&D is other means of generating effects such as true names, summoning spirits or whatever.

 

[Celebrim]

D&D wizards have pretty much every superhuman power going - invisibility, shapechanging, curses, teleportation, mind reading, superhuman strength, etc - with healing and protective stuff going to the cleric. So in terms of effects, of end results, you don't need much more than a wizard. But in terms of the way those end results are generated - spellbook, memorisation, Vancian periodicity - D&D has been very limited for most of its history.

So maybe what people are looking for with psionics is not new effects - there's nothing new there anyway - but new means of generating those effects - spell points and the like.

I would agree. But lets say we did have a generic system of magic divorsed from spellbooks and Vancian preperation, then that system would be equally applicable to 'Wizards' or 'Psions'. When you get down to it, Wizards as we normally think of them coming from a D&D background and the consensus modern fantasy tropes it helped to create are just guys that study, mediate, and prepare their minds to create physical effects through the force of their will. And, that's a fairly adequate description of 'Psions' as well. The only differences we tend to pay attention to are whether you accomplish that with a little help from chanting, arm motions and the occasional ball of bat guano, or whether you've got a bunch of cystals and similar foci. But its worth noting that crystals and similar foci are themselves just the trappings of a certain style of magic, and the reputed magical properties of crystals was listed in the 1st edition DMG.

As you say, Celebrim, the scope for new development in D&D is other means of generating effects such as true names, summoning spirits or whatever.

I personally feel that redressed, the 3.0 era Sorcerer is a pretty darn flexible and fairly generic class capable of emulating just about any magic user of any sort in fiction - including Psions (whatever 'psion' means, which is not clear to me at all since historically 'psychic' powers are just magic).

Granted, its not capable of emulating the highly open and flexible spellcasters of certain RPG systems, but its to me not at all clear that those systems actually do a good job of emulating magic users of fiction or myth. There are alot of reasons I feel that, but the basic evidence of that is that games featuring open ended flexible magic never in practice play out like the magic users of fiction who are almost always in one way or the other more limited in their actual application of magic. Magic users of fiction almost always find a way to only have access to just enough magic to accomplish the plot. Rarely do you see them display open ended continual power; even in a series like 'Wheel of Time' or 'Avatar: The Last Airbender' where it seems to be implied, there are always plot reasons why that awesomeness isn't going on all the time. Players rarely feel themselves so constrained and so unwilling to change the world when they have access to phenomenal cosmic power.

To handle this, open ended magic systems must either accept that the players are veritable magical demigods right from the start, or else must severely limit the power of magic. But neither solution seems to me to actually emulate the magic of most fantasy fiction, which seems to allow for amazing world changing effects just not necessarily 'at will'.

To me, much of what is wanted in 'Psionics' seems to me highly circular. People seem to feel that it feels 'psionicy' if and only if it has a certain mechanical system, but that that system to me seems solely a game artifact. To be perfectly honest, when someone says that they want 'Psionics' in a game, beyond the request for a certain mechanical system I have absolutely no idea what they mean and I'm not sure that they do either.

 

[Doug McCrae]

The Vancian wizard, who holds spells in his mind, and can become more powerful by expanding his mental capacity, could be seen as a step or two closer to a psychic than the traditional Western hermetic wizard who relies on knowledge, ritual and paraphernalia.

I think psionics come more from the Oriental traditions - meditation, yoga. The power comes from within, from harnessing the kundalini or chi - personal energy. No trinkets or books, nothing external is needed. Practice and training is, though.

I understand that the Eastern tradition had a big influence on Western occultists in the 19th century through Theosophy and the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, resulting in the picture becoming more unclear.

But if you see wizards as guys with books, knowledge, wands, amulets and rituals, drawing on external sources of energy such as demons, spirits or simply forces in the 'natural' world and psychics as guys who have meditated for years to harness their own personal energies, eschewing all paraphernalia, then you have systems that feel quite different. The Vancian mind expanding element blurs the boundary somewhat and should probably be done away with if the two are to be strongly distinguished.

That's D&D heresy, tho.

 

[Ariosto]

To be perfectly honest, when someone says that they want 'Psionics' in a game, beyond the request for a certain mechanical system I have absolutely no idea what they mean and I'm not sure that they do either.

Jaunting, deep space my dwelling place, the stars my destination. A telepath shunned from the ESP Guild and living among normal people, a demolished man. A new breed of "gestalt" being, more than human. Hiding from persecution and pogrom, slan.

The gifted psychic is a mutant, possessed of innate power by birth. It is typically not treated as a religious charisma, although it may be considered an anti-religious "abomination". It invokes no gods, nor usually has might to contend with them. It taps no domain of True Names and Words of Power, commands no eternal and universal symbols. Its essence is part of the created world rather than part of the creating ground of being.

It is sharply limited, especially in a given individual, often to but a single narrow talent. It is not by any stretch "the power to do anything"!

 

[Celebrim]

Jaunting, deep space my dwelling place, the stars my destination. A telepath shunned from the ESP Guild and living among normal people, a demolished man. A new breed of "gestalt" being, more than human. Hiding from persecution and pogrom, slan.

Which is fine, but that's all basically genera words for 'science fiction magician' (and specifically Alfred Bester). So are you saying that when people want 'psionics', they mean that they want science fiction genera tropes rather than fantasy ones? Spaceships, FTL travel, computers, ray guns, that sort of thing?

The gifted psychic is a mutant, possessed of innate power by birth.

It's never really been said in D&D whether Wizards are gifted, and possessing of a innate power by birth. It probably varies from campaign to campaign even if you stick to strictly Vancian spellcasting whether people are born Wizards or whether anyone with sufficient intelligence to become literate can become a Wizard. And, its worth noting that a Sorcerer is just on one level as 'mutant, possessed of an innate power by birth'. How is a sorcerer not a psionic?

It is typically not treated as a religious charisma, although it may be considered an anti-religious "abomination". It invokes no gods, nor usually has might to contend with them.

But neither then is the traditional D&D wizard.

It taps no domain of True Names and Words of Power, commands no eternal and universal symbols.

But while that flavor is implied by Wizards, its not a particularly strongly implemented aspect of D&D. The rules, if there are any, governing 'true names' have always been vague. It's never really said how and why spellcasting works. And in any event, its not at all clear that the sorcerer for example does or does not tap 'words of power' or whether they just manifest innate power and authority, yet they have basically the same spell list as a wizard.

Its essence is part of the created world rather than part of the creating ground of being.

I googled 'creating ground of being' and came up only with this page. I have no idea what that term of art means, nor am I sure what differentiates it from 'the created world'. Are you trying to say that psyches are made (by application of technology?) not born? Or are you trying to say that they are born and not made, like say a sorcerer?

It is sharply limited, especially in a given individual, often to but a single narrow talent. It is not by any stretch "the power to do anything"!

So a Sorcerer then?