D&D 5E In your Years of Gaming, How many Psionic Characters did you See played

[Guest 6801328]

At one point, I think every single person in our teenage gaming group (ca. 1982ish) got "lucky" (cough) on the psionics roll.

 

[Salthorae]

I saw one in 2e, played one in 2e. I've played a small handful in 3.x, but I was the only one in my group that did play any Psionics.

I love the stuff myself, but even with that of the probably hundreds of characters I've created over the years, I've played less than 10 psionic characters in the entire 26 years I've been gaming.

 

[Parmandur]

I think someone in College may have done a Psion of some sort for a one-shot? Not sure, though.

 

[Sacrosanct]

Played 1e since 1981 to 2012 (well, in 1989, 2e elements were included)

Rolled a 1e PC who had psionics, but never got played. In 2e, played one psionist (I actually thought the complete guide was interesting).

so, over 38 years, I played one. In the early 90s, another player played one once too in a 2e game when I was overseas in the military.

Most tables did not like them, or want them included.

 

[Theo R Cwithin]

Outside of Dark Sun, I only ever saw one psionic PC in someone's 2e homebrew about 25 years ago.
I've never played a psy PC myself, nor had a psy PC in a game that I DMed.

 

[Salthorae]

It is interesting that even in the microcosm that is EN World that less than 20% of respondents (small sample size still I know) use/play with psionics or have done, with any frequency.

If this community bears out Crawford's words, then it has to be true of the broader community. Probably also supported by their own past sales data.

 

[Einlanzer0]

Just thinking about the Jeremy Crawford quote that basically says the reason they didn't want to go with a new class for psions in 5e is because the previous versions, while they have their fans, just didn't get enough traction. And I can certainly see his point. 1e we saw quite a few psionic characters, but, that's because we cheated. Once psionics became a "class" in 2e and beyond, I almost never saw one played.

In fact, many of the DM's I played with flat out banned psionics for any number of reasons. So, I'm just tossing up a poll here to see how often people played in groups that had psionic characters. It's not meant to be exact, just a gut feeling.

Yeah and I don't think that's a good reason to try to turn it into a wizard tradition. In fact it seems like a lazy cop-out and should be called out exactly on those grounds.

If they are unwilling to do it right, they need to just leave it for homebrew

 

[Salthorae]

In fact it seems like a lazy cop-out and should be called out exactly on those grounds.

You need to slow your roll on accusing the WotC design team of laziness just because they don't put out the things you want.

I've seen you do it in multiple threads now and it's just flat out not true.

They are a small team that is putting out a lot of good content relative to their size. Quality content too, that is selling well and helping to grow the game & hobby by leaps and bounds over where it has been before.

Saying they don't want to design something because no one buys it is NOT a cop-out for a business.

 

[ccs]

20* - not counting NPCs/monsters & theorycraft.

1e = 5*
Only one of these I can say for a fact was actually rolled up. Of the other 4, two I suspect were rolled since if you were going to cheat you probably wouldn't pick crap.
* I said 5 because that's the ones I remember. There might very been a few more back about '82/'83 that've passed from memory.

2e = 10
5 were pre-gen characters in a Darksun game I played in at a local con.
The other 5 were in the only Darksun campaign I ever played in. It later about 6 sessions & ended in a TPK. Psionic characters were never used again by the group for the rest of 2e.

3x = 3
●Dumb Ass at the local shop. Built badly, played worse, lasted 2 sessions before getting killed & re-rolled an elf ranger....
●My friend Joel made some sort of psionic thrall master & tried to control just about everything we met. Note the word tried....
●My own foray into 3x psionics as a player. Meh.

4e = 1
A psionic tree thing. ....
It was allowed & survived as long as it did because I was not the DM.

Pathfinder 1 = 1
Using a 3pp book I built the Watcher from marvel comics.
A) to test out the system
B) to troll one of the other players.
After a few lvs the evaluation was deemed complete & the gag had run its course.

My conclusion: almost 40 years & 5 editions & I haven't yet found psionic rules I like & don't think they add anything (good) to the game.
The UA article will not see play when I DM.

 

[Gradine]

We had quite a few in our 3.5 Eberron campaigns. They were rare in other campaigns though.