D&D General What’s The Big Deal About Psionics?

[Crimson Longinus]

In 5e, psionics is a kind of innate spellcasting. One can say, psionics is "a magical ability that is built into a race with magical origins". Some races, and some individuals, have a mind that is magically strong.

That's literally the sorcerer though.

 

[James Gasik]

The 2nd edition Psionicist was nowhere near as powerful as a Wizard. Their powers were unreliable and expensive. Only the fact that they could recover power points over the course of a day made up for that fact. Each power required an ability check, some with hefty penalties. And the only way to get better was to somehow get better ability scores, or give up a power selection choice to increase your check with another power by....1. People like to talk about disintegrate, but first you have to make a Con -6 (if memory serves) ability check after spending a ton of Psionic Strength Points, if you roll a 1 you get a "meh" effect (it's 2e, you roll under your check to succeed), and even then, the target totally gets a saving throw. And "save neg." is the absolute worst thing to see on a power in 2e; you're 20th level and you try to disintegrate anything close to your power? They probably have saves of like 4 or better on a d20 thanks to lots of Hit Dice (or magic items like cloaks and rings of protection). Effects with durations often had an upkeep cost of PSP's each round as well!

 

[Oofta]

Yeah, the issue is that the people who make the most noise about psionics 1) don't want it to be just spell magic and 2) want it to be as powerful and flexible as spell magic.

I mean, sure, a psionics system fully equivalent to the 3.5 XPH is easy. You rename the 5e sorcerer class "psion", use the DMG spell point option, create new subclasses for different flavors of psion, modify the spell list a bit, and replace the spells' verbal components with audio manifestations and somatic components with visual manifestations.

But anyone who would be satisfied with that mostly doesn't spend a lot of time talking about psionics on message boards.

Similarly, except for psionic combat (which was always a broken pile of brokenness), a system basically equivalent to OD&D or AD&D 1st edition psionic powers is pretty easy . . . because the obvious 5e mapping is single-power feats, maybe some psionic subclasses. But that sort of psionics is too restricted and weak to support a psion class (note neither OD&D or AD&D 1st edition had one), and well, as of Tasha's, we already have it anyway.

Rather, what the loudest psionics fans want is a whole alternate power system as powerful and flexible as spells but mechanically distinct, like the AD&D 2nd edition psionicist. Which means, in the practical realm of actual game design, something that will be too complicated and too unbalanced to be allowed at the vast majority of D&D tables, like AD&D 2nd edition psionics. And thus something with an inherently limited sales potential, and thus vanishing small likelihood of WotC ever publishing.

(Anything new, but merely just as complicated and just as unbalanced as the existing spell system, is too complicated and too unbalanced to gain wide acceptance. A new system inherently doesn't have the spell system's advantages of already being known and having been designed around. As a result, it would have to be simpler and more balanced to get wide acceptance, criteria that are in tension with each other and with the system being simultaneously as powerful and flexible as spell magic.)

Yeah my exposure to psionics basically boiled down to: casts spells that aren't spells so they don't have the same restrictions as spells (in 5E that would be counterspell, antimagic zones, etc) but otherwise can do everything a wizard can do. In addition, they have more flexible ways to recover their resources to continue casting. Oh and psionics are "mysterious" so your PC can't know how they work when you encounter them.

It's why it's never been allowed in any game I DM, it was just implemented as a straight power-up with few or any penalties. Could you design a psion class? Sure. Just not with the existing structure we have with D&D, there's not really much design room for them that hasn't already been covered. Inherent ability? Sorcerer, possibly switching intelligence for charisma and getting still spell for free. Mental focus and meditation? Monks. Implants? Artificer. I just don't see the niche other than having different labels in the current edition of the game, or in any past edition for that matter.

 

[James Gasik]

First of all, psionics/magic transparency is an optional rule, since it requires balancing on the part of the DM. Second of all, even if it's decided that psionics is 100% not magic, antipsionic spells are then totally added to the setting, as well as psionic monsters that pose no threat to non-psions, like the brain mole. Anyone who wants to play a psion and doesn't want to accept that the world is 100% adapted to their existence is a munchkin who can't be allowed to play anything but a sword and board Fighter to begin with.

 

[Yaarel]

That's literally the sorcerer though.

The way I look at it is, the Sorcerer concept is about a physical body that is magical. Psionics is about a conscious mind that is magically powerful, in the sense of mind over matter.

Neither should use material components. In the case of the Sorcerer, the body itself is like a magic wand, a living spell focus.

In the case of psionics, the mind wills a magic effect into existence, directly. The wish becomes true. There is no external source nor intermediary tool.

The Aberrant Sorcerer is a weird overlap, because the body itself is partly Aberration, thus the body itself, especially the brain, has innate spellcasting that is psionic. The farrealm is pure thought, but mutates a material body to incarnate that thought. So the body of the Sorcerer is imbued with ambient farrealm psionics.

There can be creatures that have minds but not brains. In an animistic view, a certain rock might have a mind with a powerful psionic influence, but its body is a normal rock.

This relates somewhat to the D&D concept of a psionic disembodied mind that is pure mind without any body or brain.

As an astral being, an angel is made out of thought, namely a thought construct, an "intellect". In 1e, celestials and fiends are similarly psionic, relating to the astral plane as a realm of thoughts.

In sum, the Sorcerer is about body, and psionics is about mind.

 

[Minigiant]

Rather, what the loudest psionics fans want is a whole alternate power system as powerful and flexible as spells but mechanically distinct, like the AD&D 2nd edition psionicist. Which means, in the practical realm of actual game design, something that will be too complicated and too unbalanced to be allowed at the vast majority of D&D tables, like AD&D 2nd edition psionics. And thus something with an inherently limited sales potential, and thus vanishing small likelihood of WotC ever publishing.

I disagree with it being inherently unbalanced.

Anything that is new that is unbalanced could have been designed balanced.

If something is unbalanced, that's the designer's fault for not putting things in the parameters accepted as balanced.

 

[Yaarel]

I disagree with it being inherently unbalanced.

Anything that is new that is unbalanced could have been designed balanced.

If something is unbalanced, that's the designer's fault for not putting things in the parameters accepted as balanced.

Most unbalance comes from unrelated mechanics, which by itself is fine but becomes broken when combining in unpredicted ways. Because of combos, increasing complexity within the system inherently destabilizes it and causes unbalance.

In 3e, the character build of Pun-Pun demonstrated how hopelessly unfixable the 3e system is be ause of its gratuitous complexity of different systems that combo. Psionics wasnt part of how Pun-Pun destroyed 3e, but complexity itself.

Oppositely, I want normal psionics that use normal 5e mechanics and normal medieval flavor. I am tired of D&D having a psionic ghetto. I want mainstream psionics that are in the anniversary edition core books and suitable for any prominent D&D setting. I dislike psionics whose weird mechanics would break 5e - or be subpar compared to other fullcasters! - and whose weird flavor will never see future support.

I want normal magic that a mind can do.

 

[The-Magic-Sword]

I mean, its psychic powers, that are different from 'Magic' because the texture of having different sources of magic are different is narratively interesting and because 'espers' as a fantasy trope tends to have a very different feeling from the fiction around spells and stuff. Part of the fun of that is just that it comes from a very different place, and a different set of values.

People have a preference for that to have a different mechanical expression because the fantasy of something tends to be most emphasized when it has its own deliberate sense of mechanical texture that differentiates it. It just hooks into your brain differently when they do that.

So even in 4e, the fact that there was a psi point system attached to the powers helped a lot to give it that sense of being its own thing.

 

[The-Magic-Sword]

Most unbalance comes from unrelated mechanics, which by itself is fine but becomes broken when combining in unpredicted ways. Because of combos, increasing complexity within the system inherently destabilizes it and causes unbalance.

In 3e, the character build of Pun-Pun demonstrated how hopelessly unfixable the 3e system is be ause of its gratuitous complexity of different systems that combo. Psionics wasnt part of how Pun-Pun destroyed 3e, but complexity itself.

Oppositely, I want normal psionics that use normal 5e mechanics and normal medieval flavor. I am tired of D&D having a psionic ghetto. I want mainstream psionics that are in the anniversary edition core books and suitable for any prominent D&D setting. I dislike psionics whose weird mechanics would break 5e - or be subpar compared to other fullcasters! - and whose weird flavor will never see future support.

I want normal magic that a mind can do.

You're looking for Occult magic in Pathfinder (as of 2e) technically, it compresses the magic of the mind and soul into the normal magic system, but as its own spell list and category alongside arcane, primal, and divine. It still uses spell slots and stuff, and is fully integrated into the magic system in the world.

There's a great in-universe essay in secrets of magic that delves into its true nature and why its different, but how it works, and the flavor is all massaged to fit just fine, its the 'weird stuff' hags do and that the lovecraft stuff runs off of-- but in reality its like the magic of belief and narrative and the connections between things. Its less rigorous than Arcane because its so heavily influenced by the emotions, thoughts, and beliefs of the caster but it also touches a very different part of the universe.

You have Psychics coming out, but Bards are naturally Occult as well, and some Witch Patrons, and some Sorcerer Bloodlines, and some Summoner Eidolons are Occult. My personal favorite Occult thing is the high level Dream Council spell that lets you gather people from across the planet in their dreams to have a conference.

 

[Yaarel]

So even in 4e, the fact that there was a psi point system attached to the powers helped a lot to give it that sense of being its own thing.

4e has the best conceptual space for psionics. There are different power sources, and psionic is one of them: psionic, arcane, primal, and divine, even martial.

I guess the weird mechanics is why never really hot into the 4e psionic classes.