[D&D]Psionics only -- anyone tried it?

[drothgery]

Hmm, never done it, but here's some things you want to think about...

1) Healing. While XPH psionics offers some limitted healing through Empathic Transfer and Body Adjustment, this is a lot less than what Clerics, Druids, or even Bards or Paladins can bring to the table.

2) Converting minor spellcasting classes. The major spellcasters (wizard, sorcerer, cleric, and druid) are certainly gone in an all-psionics campaign, but some of the archetypical classes of D&D are minor casters, and you might want them to stick around.

If Paladins and Rangers are reasonable archetypes in your campaign, you'll probably want to turn them into non-spellcasting variants.

Convering the Bard, a sort of mid-major caster, is more difficult; probably the class needs to be rebuilt as a psionics-using class with something like the psi-warrior's progression and a different power list.

3) Other things psionics are bad at (relative to arcane or divine magic) are going to be hard to do. Psionics aren't good for buff effects cast on others, or illusions, or necromancy just for a start.

 

[Jackelope King]

I'm running such a game now. Psionics is the major casting force in the game, with warlocks being secondary "witches" living outside the mainstream casting method of "the scientific study of psiocalculus". The major differences I've noticed both in developing the game and running it have been:

- Groups have less endurance, since psionic casters have poor spell endurance to begin with and the game largely lacks effective healing magic. Furthermore, psionics definitely lacks creature comfort spells (like the ol' rope trick, tiny hut, secure shelter, magnificent mansion, hero's feast and the like). Between a lack of magical healing, the difficulty in raising the dead, and a lack of "convienience" magic, psionics fits what I see magic as slightly better than core magic.

- In order to access the more powerful (and often indespensible) magicks of a given level, a character needs to be a specialist, or he needs to be willing to sacrifice a feat to do so long after the power became accessible to a specialist. All the big-tickets like teleport fall into this sort of power structure... either a specialist has access to it or the party suffers through until a non-specialist can spend a feat on it a few levels lowers.

- All my favorite abberations have a much nicer home in the setting

- Magic seems a little darker and a little more sophisticated in most cases. I'm not creating a magical missile of force: I'm impaling you with a piece of otherworldly crystal. I'm not scaring you to death: I'm actually disrupting your autonomic nervous system and interfering with your normal breathing patterns.

- The setting itself is one of a stalled Age of Enlightenment, where an Age of Exploration was brought to a crashing halt with the destruction of the motherlands of two great empires, leaving the colonists and natives of the land of Aedin more or less alone in the world. Because of the atmosphere of the game, I have psionics representing all at once the divine power of the church, the scientific understandings of natural philosophers, the ancient magic of shamans, and even the enlightened traditions of eastern philosophies of all stripes. It's a very one-size-fits-all system, and the lack of definite divine magic means that uncertainty about the nature (or even existence) of the gods of the game is quite reasonable, which again fits the ambiguity and confusion I'd like the game to represent.

- The psionic races described in the XPH translated very well to either otherworldly spirits from beyond the veil (the dromites, elans, giths, and druegar) or as different human societies (the half-giant, maenad, and xephs) with very little tweaking. The only non XPH races in the game at the start were an Aztec-like race of my own design and a very slightly modified race of humans, though as I developed the setting further I included heavily modified illumanians, aasimar, and even neanderthal. I also experimented with including kalishtaar for awhile, but decided that I was happier without them... though I did steal plenty of their racial background from Races of Eberron.

 

[Kesh]

I've considered doing this myself. However, I'd also use the Incantation rules from UA for some of the things that psionics can't handle, as well as offering non-psions some magic at a heavy price (Taint).

 

[Kristivas]

I'd love to try such a game, but it would lack quite a bit in healing and AoE damage dealing.

Still, I'm a HUGE fan of psionics. I played in a campaign where wizards were hunting down psionic-types and it was awesome.

 

[Ferrix]

I'm running a PbP here that is mostly psionics, only a few minor forms of nature/shamanic magic exists and they are only in the hands of a few specific cultures/races. It's an interesting experience.

 

[Greg K]

Nope, I haven't tried it. If I were to, I wouldn't use the XPH. I would use the Psychic's Handbook from Green Ronin.

 

[MatthewJHanson]

I DMed something like this. One thing I did, which I would suggest, is giving body adjustment and body purification a range of touch, to deal with the lack of clerics.

 

[comareddin]

Back in the days of second edition, we had one very long Darksun campaign. As there were no preservers in our group, we did not encounter arcane magic very much except for the occasional defiler, or some veiled alliance members. For those who do not know, darksun is a heavily psionic world where almost everyone has at least some minor talent. It worked really fine, but I don't know if it was due to the lack of arcane magic or the unique feeling of the darksun setting with its thri-kreen, sorcerer kings, endless deserts... Ah good old memories...

Com

 

[Thasis]

The idea seems intressting. I'm obssessed with Magic though. Plus I've been playing in the same campaign setting for pretty much my whole entire D&D-life and I don't plan to switch so I don't have TO much time for experimination. On the other hand my world is flat and goes on forever so atleast one of the infinite numbers of continets might have no-magic and only psionics.

 

[Nifft]

I'm jealous. I'd like to play in one (or DM one) but my group is less 'psionically gifted' shall we say.

-- N