D&D (2024) We have Arcane, Divine, and Primal lists now. Why not Psionic?

wouldn't "legendary warriors develop martial power to such an extent that their abilities are the equal of magical abilities" inherently imply that their abilities aren't magical in any sense???
Yes. That is why I looked up something from 4e, to be more precise about what 4e officially says.

The designers did speak about "martial magic". But officially, stayed shy of fullon magic. Even so, Martial is "superhuman".

So officially, 4e makes the Martial source "nonmagical" but virtually "magical" in the sense of "superhuman" and equaling magical capabilities.
 

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Not directed to me, but my answer would be no. I am one of the people who has a problem with psionics for the entire life of the game. And I've played them in every edition because we thought they would be fixed every time a new edition were released. They weren't. Almost every time, it didn't work out like we had hoped. 4E was the only edition we didn't have a mechanical problem, but we had a preference problem.
  1. I played in 1E when another player rolled randomly and got a broken wild talent. Even they became unhappy because they felt awkward about being so much more powerful than the rest of us.
  2. I played in 2E in a Dark Sun game. We had hope because it was a full system for everyone to participate in! But it had terrrrible mechanics that leaned into mindscape battles on completely different initiative than the rest of combat. The Contact system and pretty much everything leaned into unnecessary complexity. The sci-fi flavor was so discordant too.
  3. I DM'd in 3E in and the power point system was BUSTED. In just one Eberron campaign, one player would use all kinds of RAW broken combos to great effect that made everyone else feel small (like creating copies of himself who could each manifest two primary powers, to overwhelm enemies with crazy alpha strikes). He said "It's balanced because all the PPs come out of my pool." When he alpha striked one BBEG and it just released something worse (it was a cascading 3-tier encounter), he got so pissssed. While that was the worst, I never had a good experience in 3E. Psionics was used as a way to subvert power and expectations and surprise people (but never did it in a good way).
  4. I DM'd in 4E. To be honest, power-wise, it wasn't bad to me because classes were so similar. But it was never picked up and played in a long-term campaign because the one guy who considered it said it didn't feel different enough, and psionics had to be different.
  5. For 5E, no one in my groups wanted to playtest the UA Mystic, so I did some white-room play. It was different. But it didn't seem like it was going to make the majority of psionics fans happy.
Anecdotally, most people who seem to LOVE psionics seem do so because they want a full alternative to magic. It seems they prefer the way psionics works (or more accurately, they prefer how they think psionics should work) over the way that D&D magic works. Subtle, powerful magics that alter reality without V,S,M components, and fit neatly into Discipline themes that make better sense than magic schools (some like the way 3E tied them to ability scores too.) More like the Force in some Star Wars RPGs. Some want it to not count as magic at all, and ignore magic resistance.

But that vision doesn't fit alongside D&D magic. Psionics is its OWN way of presenting an entire replacement system for Magic. Psionics deserves to be the primary way "magic" works in a game, and needs inherent rules and monsters that follows those rules so they interact well. It's too big to be an alternative that is shoe-horned into balancing against the D&D magic system. Not one edition has done it well.

Looking at the history of D&D, there is enough Psionic design space to dedicate a large sourcebook to it. They literally did that in 3E. But it still didn't work for our tables. Now if Wizards creates a sourcebook and campaign setting that leans into Psionics, maybe they can get it right. And if they got it right, I might play around with it for a campaign. But the concept itself is too big to shoehorn in to the base rules. I don't have faith that it can be done right.
Almost.

I dont think we need different spells, just a different way of gaining and using spells.

Take disciplines and put spells into them. Give guidelines to make your own themed disciplines, give each official discipline a focus passive effect, make a variant of the modify spell like the new wizard has for modifying your mind powers, and let us use psi dice or spell points or something not spell slots to cast them.

There are over 500 spells in the game. Most of them are flavorless. Having a few classes and subclasses that can cast these spells in unique ways could be a great way to satisfy more diverse ttrpg taste.
 

Yes. That is why I looked up something from 4e, to be more precise about what 4e officially says.

The designers did speak about "martial magic". But officially, stayed shy of fullon magic. Even so, Martial is "superhuman".

So officially, 4e makes the Martial source "nonmagical" but virtually "magical" in the sense of "superhuman" and equaling magical capabilities.
that still doesn't make martials magical though, being superhuman and 'virtually magically' is still not magic, because magic is a Specific Thing
 

Almost.

I dont think we need different spells, just a different way of gaining and using spells.

Take disciplines and put spells into them. Give guidelines to make your own themed disciplines, give each official discipline a focus passive effect, make a variant of the modify spell like the new wizard has for modifying your mind powers, and let us use psi dice or spell points or something not spell slots to cast them.

There are over 500 spells in the game. Most of them are flavorless. Having a few classes and subclasses that can cast these spells in unique ways could be a great way to satisfy more diverse ttrpg taste.
But those spells need complete rewrites so they fit the psionic theme, rather than magic. For example, 3E had a 3rd level psionic power called "Whitefire" because psion-players didn't want to reflavor "fireball". They wanted their own identity.

Psionics deserves to lean into the flavor that psionics lovers want. Not a reskin.
 
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Yes. That is why I looked up something from 4e, to be more precise about what 4e officially says.

The designers did speak about "martial magic". But officially, stayed shy of fullon magic. Even so, Martial is "superhuman".

So officially, 4e makes the Martial source "nonmagical" but virtually "magical" in the sense of "superhuman" and equaling magical capabilities.
So... not magic at all whatsoever full stop.
 



Superman is explicitly vulnerable to magic. Within DC, magic is a specific thing, like lightning is different from fire in D&D. Pre-WotC D&D understood psionics and magic as different categories of supernatural energy with different properties.
He was weak to magic because it doesnt interact with durability since spells and curses are reality warping powers. Modern day was impacted by DNDs artificial seperation of these terms, so your explanation is true in 2023, but not the 1950s.
 

He was weak to magic because it doesnt interact with durability since spells and curses are reality warping powers. Modern day was impacted by DNDs artificial seperation of these terms, so your explanation is true in 2023, but not the 1950s.
D&D was created in the 1970s so I don't especially care about the 1950s.
 

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