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

[Yaarel]

Yeah I have a player who feels similarly that it dilutes the 'psionic' flavor too much to link it those other things, it essentially encapsulates a few different ideas and mixes them in the same way elementalism is primal but still somewhat distinct from plant magic and life force healing.

You've got the psionics, you've got the shadow stuff, the 'raw spirit power' stuff, the cosmic horror stuff, even ki is allowed to be Occult.

For me the most important psionic themes are:

Animistic

• prescience (divination, spacetime, fate, outofbody, clairvoyance, teleportation)
• telepathy (enchantment and illusion)
• shapeshift (psychometabolism and healing)
• primal (earth, water/river, air/wind, fire/sunlight, plus plants)

Popculture

• prescience
• telepathy
• telekinesis (force, fly, Arcane Armor, Magic Missile, Unseen Servant, Tiny Hut, Fly, Wall of Force, etc) - please actual telekinesis not a floating hand

 

[Vaalingrade]

Ok not to start a fight, but I LOATHE how people point to Pun-Pun as an "example" of 3.x's balance.

And why would you use him when 3.5 made Natural Spell core?

 

[Tales and Chronicles]

I think one good way of doing a Psion is to have them make ability checks against a set DC as is they were making a skill check, but with magical effects. Then tack on the psionic dice from the first psionic subclasses where the die changed it size if you rolled the max number on the die to bolster the ability checks.

Like:

Betrayal: make a DC 13 Charisma check against a target within 30 ft that you can see then roll a psionic die. On a success the target must make an attack against its closest ally, moving up to half its speed without provoking AoO if necessary. You add the result of the roll on the damage die if the target's attack hits.

 

[nevin]

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!

ummm no in 2e at high levels a Psionicist could do things like Psychic surgery and take away other characters skills, levels and knowledge. If the higher level powers were used properly a kineticist could reflect nearly all damage directed at them back at the enemy. They were insanely powerful and there were only 2 or 3 spells between arcane and divine that could prevent any psionic abilities. The only spell that would fix Psychic surgery was WISH. It was a hokey system and really sucked at low levels but the power of Psionicists at high level was at least that of a wizard possibly even came out a bit ahead, if just because few knew the rules well enough to prepare for them.

 

[Yaarel]

I think one good way of doing a Psion is to have them make ability checks against a set DC as is they were making a skill check, but with magical effects. Then tack on the psionic dice from the first psionic subclasses where the die changed it size if you rolled the max number on the die to bolster the ability checks.

Like:

Betrayal: make a DC 13 Charisma check against a target within 30 ft that you can see then roll a psionic die. On a success the target must make an attack against its closest ally, moving up to half its speed without provoking AoO if necessary. You add the result of the roll on the damage die if the target's attack hits.

How does the Wish spell become an ability check? Or some of the other powerful high level effects? Without becoming broken or unusable like 2e?

 

[James Gasik]

Uh, you mean THIS Psychic Surgery?

 

[Hussar]

The issue is...
That only works if you build psionics with arcane, divine, primal magic.

Useless you can 20,000% promise that nonpsionic classes can't get the psionic spells without being multiclassed majority in psionic classes. Otherwise you get massive power creep. "My wizard is going to use a psionic spell that targets something the BBEG wasn't designed to defend against and I'll apply a bunch of spell feats and class features on it. Ooops his mind is goo."

Psionics as Spells is Power Creep
Psionics as Not Spells is Buttload of Extra Reading.

Choose one.

Not really. We already have "psionic" spells in the game. And no particular power creep. Is Mind Sliver power creep?

5e is grounded enough that power creep isn't really much of an issue. Cantrips are baselined at a particular die of damage and so are most damage spells of any given level.

And, I'm struggling to think of a non-damaging effect that you would have in psionics that wouldn't at least be pretty comparable to an existing spell.

I mean, how is that "Betrayal" effect above not simply a Crown of Madness spell with a 1 round effect? It's already in the game.

 

[nevin]

I must be confusing the 2e stuff with the old Deryni Psioncis that came out in 1e in Dragon because of the books.

 

[Minigiant]

Not really. We already have "psionic" spells in the game. And no particular power creep. Is Mind Sliver power creep?

Yup.
Mind Sliver lets you target Int with a rarely resisted damage type.
Mind Whip is too.
Big power boosts for Wizards and Sorcerers.
Imagine if there were Psychic spells for every spell level that a Wizard could take.

 

[James Gasik]

I just wanted to clarify, Nevin. There was always the possibility that you were referring to something in one of the later sourcebooks, but the Complete Psionicist's Handbook was clunky, hard to use, and fairly tame. Plus there were several spells that at least partially protected you from telepathic powers, such as Protection from Evil (raises power scores by 2), Mind Blank (though they got a save) and Free Action even prevented Domination!

(You might wonder why a player would ever like 2e's system, since I'm the first to admit it was kid of backwards. One thing was it was unique, magic didn't work this way. The other was, it's actually quite balanced in that powers could fail, and you could only do so much at a time, and there were limitations- Psychic Surgery takes multiple TURNS -not rounds; in AD&D a turn is 10 rounds-. But at the same time, since you could recover PSP's over the course of one day, you weren't one and done after a combat or two.)