Unearthed Arcana Why UA Psionics are never going to work in 5e.

[CleverNickName]

That's right, Psionics, despite being iconic, historic, and possibly popular, are already fighting an uphill battle because having normalized powers isn't cool enough, even if it is literally the only way to get player-psionics into 5e.

(snip)

It's not that the people who want psioncs to be special are wrong, but that ship has more or less sailed and the people who are voting against normalization are basically just ensuring that if they can't have it their way, nobody can. Even if they don't realize it.

(snip)

Once again, there is a dedicated group of people who are ride-or-die for the Psion Class and will vote against any attempt at a subclass. Granted, it's far more likely that we will get a psionic class printed at some point, but until that comes to pass any psionic subclass is going to get unnecessary negative feedback on “principle”, because there might be a chance that WotC stops making at the psionic subclasses.

In conclusion: The UA Psionics are never going to make enough people happy because the people who are interested in UA and want psionics are divided into opposing “all-or-nothing” camps. In order for psionics to make it past UA you would need to somehow appease enough of everyone all at once, which I don't see as happening unless maybe they actually push out an entire books worth of UA that lets most people have something.

This is the biggest issue I have with the Unearthed Arcana surveys. (And polls in general; you don't need to look far to see parallels in this behavior and the behavior of voters.) There are better strategies for measuring excitement and collecting feedback. @Fenris-77 is right: WotC needs to not give so much weight to negative feedback on these surveys and find a way to focus on the positive.

 

[Chaosmancer]

Warhammer 40,000 is a weird example... at first glance, it would look like there is only psionics, and in what they actually call "magic" it is just psionics (or their special naming, psykers).

However, some followers of Chaos are going way beyond what we actually think of psionics into things that are really just magic.

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That images above? That's magic. They call it "oh those are just really good psykers," but that's MAGIC.

Especially when you look at Age of Sigmar, where pretty much everything that Chaos does in 40,000 is pretty confidently described as magic.

In 40,0000/Age of Sigmar, they are really just interchangeable words.

Technically not.

I've read stories with psychics able to manipulate matter on a subatomic scale, or form pocket dimensions. I'm pretty sure there was even one where a psychic created an entire plane of existence, including sentient beings, and just projected it out of their mind and into reality.

And this gets into the problem, for Warhammer, there is no difference, but they called it "Psionics".

In DnD, we called it magic first.

 

[Aldarc]

Comic books are a bit of a unique problem. Because none of it was originally written to go together, and was eventually all collected together.

But they are together and magics/psionics do coexist. Saying that it's only because of its piecemeal development kinda moves the goal posts of the question.

However, if you look at how it works, all of those sources (Miracles, Magic, Weird Science, Psionics) pull from an identical list of powers. The Blast power does 1d6 to 3d6 damage depending on how many power points you put into it, and you roll your associated skill. And this is true for all four "sources". So again, it would work closer in DnD to just making Psionics magic.

I'd say a similar guess for Numenera and Cthulhu in that they come from the same root source. In Cthulhu, as I understand it, using any sort of power is tapping into the powers of either the Elder Gods or the Great Old Ones, gaining telepathy from encountering some horror or reading a book and utilizing a ritual to call on a dark star are all using the same power source. It isn't understood, but that is the point. Numenera is a sci-fi setting, if memory serves me, and everything is actually nanite technology and mutations from genetic tinkering (from what little I saw of the setting in the past)

As I said, I'm fine with making psionics magic, but it's still a separate magical tradition in Savage Worlds than both divine and arcane supernatural powers. This is largely the point. I think that there is a hidden argument in the "is psionics magic?" debate. I sometimes get the feeling that the real question is not so much "is psionics magical?" but rather "if psionics is magic, why not just play a wizard?" It feels like the actual debate centers around the wizard class wanting to gobble up everything magical as part of its purview, including psionics. I don't like that, and I would prefer that psionics was treated as a separate tradition of magic or supernatural powers.

Go the Pathfinder 2 route and call it "Occult" magic rather than psionics. Boom. Pseudo-science flavor is gone. But then you can put a lot of the weird mind/body/spirit magic/spells into Occult that covers what is typically regarded as psionic.

 

[Urriak Uruk]

Technically not.

I've read stories with psychics able to manipulate matter on a subatomic scale, or form pocket dimensions. I'm pretty sure there was even one where a psychic created an entire plane of existence, including sentient beings, and just projected it out of their mind and into reality.

And this gets into the problem, for Warhammer, there is no difference, but they called it "Psionics".

In DnD, we called it magic first.

Pretty much. I do think for D&D, we should really be thinking of psionics as just a source of magic, as opposed to it being an output.

So wizards gain magic through research and study. Sorcerors are born with innate magical power, usually from a bloodline. Warlocks are gifted magical power from an external powerful source.

Psionics should just be considered another source; from mental conditioning and training, and simply how frickin strong a creature's brain power is.

The output however, is just more magic.

 

[Minigiant]

Warhammer 40,000 is a weird example... at first glance, it would look like there is only psionics, and in what they actually call "magic" it is just psionics (or their special naming, psykers).

However, some followers of Chaos are going way beyond what we actually think of psionics into things that are really just magic.


That images above? That's magic. They call it "oh those are just really good psykers," but that's MAGIC.

Especially when you look at Age of Sigmar, where pretty much everything that Chaos does in 40,000 is pretty confidently described as magic.

In 40,0000/Age of Sigmar, they are really just interchangeable words.

Well in Warhammer fantasy, there is Divine mage, Arcane magic, and Psychics

Divine magic comes from a Chaos god or a racial god. Used by chaos sorcerers and human priest.
Arcane Magic comes from loose "winds of magic". The most common type of magic.
Psychics is magic that comes from your mind and is what DA ORCS USE TO KILL HUMIES AN STUNTIES!

 

[Urriak Uruk]

Well in Warhammer fantasy, there is Divine mage, Arcane magic, and Psychics

Divine magic comes from a Chaos god or a racial god. Used by chaos sorcerers and human priest.
Arcane Magic comes from loose "winds of magic". The most common type of magic.
Psychics is magic that comes from your mind and is what DA ORCS USE TO KILL HUMIES AN STUNTIES!

I forgot that orcs in Warhammer Fantasy were essentially psychics...

I'm always kind of amazed at how Games Workshop is the company that defined the pop-culture vision of orcs, being green-skinned brutes. Even Warcraft copied them (and the Zerg copied Tyranids, yes I'm mad).

 

[Minigiant]

I forgot that orcs in Warhammer Fantasy were essentially psychics...

I'm always kind of amazed at how Games Workshop is the company that defined the pop-culture vision of orcs, being green-skinned brutes. Even Warcraft copied them (and the Zerg copied Tyranids, yes I'm mad).

Psychics who think they are clerics. But Mork and Gork are too busy foighting to grant spells. Orcs lucked out that they have psionics and their faith triggers it.

That magic WFB one of the oldest game settings with magic and psionics.

I'm always kind of amazed at how Games Workshop is the company that defined the pop-culture vision of orcs, being green-skinned brutes. Even Warcraft copied them (and the Zerg copied Tyranids, yes I'm mad).

I don't know if the rumors are true. But I've heard that Starcraft was originnaly supposed to be a 40k game and and it fell through. Blizzard retooled the assest what they had and made it into Starcraft to not waste it.

 

[Aldarc]

I don't know if the rumors are true. But I've heard that Starcraft was originnaly supposed to be a 40k game and and it fell through. Blizzard retooled the assest what they had and made it into Starcraft to not waste it.

Close. Warcraft was supposed to be Warhammer Fantasy. By that point, Starcraft was meant to be Starcraft, though likewise strongly influenced by Warhammer 40K, but with space rednecks.

Edit: Incidentally, the funny voices that Rob Pardo made for the orcs when you clicked on them in Warcraft 2 was what pushed Blizzard into "redeeming" the orcs for Warcraft 3.

 

[TwoSix]

As I said, I'm fine with making psionics magic, but it's still a separate magical tradition in Savage Worlds than both divine and arcane supernatural powers. This is largely the point. I think that there is a hidden argument in the "is psionics magic?" debate. I sometimes get the feeling that the real question is not so much "is psionics magical?" but rather "if psionics is magic, why not just play a wizard?" It feels like the actual debate centers around the wizard class wanting to gobble up everything magical as part of its purview, including psionics. I don't like that, and I would prefer that psionics was treated as a separate tradition of magic or supernatural powers.

I think this is definitely a case where D&D's weird mix of broad, toolkit classes and classes with specific narratives make expansion more difficult.

 

[Urriak Uruk]

Close. Warcraft was supposed to be Warhammer Fantasy. By that point, Starcraft was meant to be Starcraft, though likewise strongly influenced by Warhammer 40K, but with space rednecks.

Edit: Incidentally, the funny voices that Rob Pardo made for the orcs when you clicked on them in Warcraft 2 was what pushed Blizzard into "redeeming" the orcs for Warcraft 3.

Yeah, even if Warcraft and Starcraft were always meant to be their own properties, it is almost shameful how much the two ripped concepts whole cloth from Warhammer. Thankfully both have developed since their conception into their own things, but still is a little gross considering the successor is more popular than it's inspiration.

I mean, look at the difference;