D&D 5E Dark Sun doesn't actually need Psionics

[Ovinomancer]

EDIT: Null Psi Field is meant to be the "Dark Sun doesn't need psionics" vote. Apologies for trying to be too clever and ending up in unclear.

Look! A Poll! Wonder what it does?

Dark Sun doesn't actually need psionics to be Dark Sun. Ultimately, the role of psionics in Dark Sun is to provide character options, but psionics don't directly address the central themes of the setting. You can have a perfectly cromulent Dark Sun game without psionics at all. It's not a necessary part of the setting, and the thing most easily severed from it without much change. I know, I know, lots of people liked psionics in Dark Sun, but it didn't define the setting, it just let you have wizards that didn't trip over the arcane magic is bad detail, or clerics when there were no gods. Peel off the psionics and your still left with an extremely flavorful setting with lots of room for play. Add it in, and you have pretty much the same thing just with some different character options. In fact, to say another bad thing, given how badly screwed wild talents could be in psionic conflicts in pre 3e D&D (I didn't do any Dark Sun post 2e), it might even be beneficial to avoid psionics in Dark Sun for non-psions/non-lucky-as-hell characters.

Anyway, I've said the horrible thing, now it's time to argue about it. Discuss.

 

[Aldarc]

I would say that one of the central themes of Dark Sun is how the planet has become a harsh and seemingly alien world from the one it once was with creatures evolving bizarre mutations to survive that. I always saw psionics as factoring into that theme.

 

[iserith]

Dark Sun fan here. If I squint hard enough, I can see the argument. But I'm also dimly remembering the novels that I admittedly read a long time ago in high school involving some measure of psionic content. Plus a lot of the weirdness of the monsters comes from having psionics.

I think you are correct though. It could be played without psionics. I think I'm happy to wait for good psionics rules to come out though before giving it a go.

 

[Laurefindel]

Yes, Dark Sun needs psionics.

Psionics as a third kind of magic concept doesn’t (absolutely) require new classes or new mechanics.

Bards actually make good psionics, and so can sorcerers.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Poll is strange, but I agree with the thread title. I actually think the reason Dark Sun was originally given psionics is it served as ready made mutant powers table.

 

[UnknownDyson]

Forgottten Realms doesn't need gods, said no one.

You can't just go into that setting and be a Wizard or a Sorcerer, if you are seen casting arcane magic and aren't affiliated with a Sorcerer King, you are branded a defiler and hunted down.

One of the biggest fears that people have about a Dark Sun release is that we will receive a watered-down bastardized version that throws away the deadliness of the setting in favor of having things like clerics.

 

[Ovinomancer]

Okay, let me redirect slightly, as my point seems to be not very clear:

What central theme in Dark Sun is removed if you take psionics out, other than just not having psionics?

Dark Sun, to me, was awesome because it subverted the tropes of fantasy and mixed in post-apocalyptic themes. The coolest stuff in Dark Sun, again to me, was never mind magics, but instead the defiler/preserver duality. Psionics always felt like a way to ignore that divide and have "normal" magic. As such, it is not required for any of the major themes of Dark Sun. Instead, it's loved not because it made the setting work but because people liked the mechanics, and that's cool but not necessary to have to do Dark Sun well. The argument that's commonly made is that you need a psionics system to do Dark Sun well, and I don't think you do, at all. Dark Sun would work perfectly fine without psionics.

@iserith and @Paul Farquhar's points about making monsters more weird is certainly a good one, but I'm not sure you need psionics to do that.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

@iserith and @Paul Farquhar's points about making monsters more weird is certainly a good one, but I'm not sure you need psionics to do that.

I wasn't thinking about monsters specifically.

It's more that Dark Sun started out as Gamma World in D&D, so one of the things player characters get is a mutant ability.

But the important thing about Dark Sun is it is post-apocalypse, and mutations are a trope of that genre.

The apocalypse is an environmental collapse brought about by the over-exploitation of a finite resource. I'm sure WotC want to lean into the topicality of this aspect, and aren't really bothered much about the Gamma World tropes in 2021.

 

[delericho]

No Dark Sun without psionics for me. If that's what the choice comes down to, I'd rather they did something else than did "Dark Sun" without psionics rules.

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

Back in the day, we technically had everyone with their wild talents in Dark Sun, but we almost never used them. Maybe in a do-or-die situation, a player might be looking over their sheet and say "well, I'll give this wild talent a shot." So I would say that Dark Sun can exist quite happily without them.