Fully psionic fantasy campaigns?

[Driddle]

Looking for feedback from those of you who have played or are playing still in a psionic-themed fantasy campaign (ala Expanded Psionics and Complete supplements). The subgenre has been dismissed here often enough; I'm wondering how it's working for you and why your group decided to stick with it.

(The Complete Psi really filled out some glaring gaps for me with its mantles concept and two core class options that use that mechanism.)

I like the idea of a psi-instead-of-magic campaign, but I can't convince enough of my peers to take the plunge.

 

[Yair]

I like the idea too, but never played it. Someday, I might run a fully psionics pseudo Dark-Sun game: only psionic races (plus humans), only psionic (and non-magical) classes.

Someday.

I like the idea of a psi-instead-of-magic campaign, but I can't convince enough of my peers to take the plunge.

The new mantles and so on do seem to make that a possibility, but at the cost of robbing psionics of much of its flavor (however the fluff may scream otherwise). I don't like it. My idea of an all-psionics campaign is a campaign without psionic-clerics, thank you.

 

[Psion]

I think the healing capability of psionics is a little weak. I could see shucking off arcane magic rather easily, but excluding divine also would possibly lead to a very different campaign feel, and might require some other changes like reserve points.

Sangehirn, a PrC over on the WotC site, is sort of meant to slot in as a healer, but still has some limitations compared to divine casters.

Mindshadows would make a good high-psionics settings and most of the 3.0/pre-XPH material can be replaced with 3.5 material that has come out since, or be converted. But again, divine magic seems to be assumed there.

 

[Nifft]

I rather like the healing aspect. No one person is shoehorned into being "the healer".

There should probably be some kind of prestige class for people who want that role, but spreading out the cure burden seems to be a good thing IMHO.

Cheers, -- N

 

[Giltonio_Santos]

I had a psionics-only campaing running during last year, it may even be appearing as a Secular Games product later in 2007.

Instead of focusing in how psionics would fill in the holes left by magic, I decided to create adventures that would benefit of the unique characteristics of psionics. That means no focus on the warrior/scout/healer/blaster model; we opted to focus on situations that magic is not able to create, and things that psionics do better. We don't had Complete Psionics at the time, but even now, looking at mantles and the other stuff, I don't think they would make into our campaign.

Instead of taking the generic flavor of the Psionics Handbook, I worked on a unique flavor for elans, maenads, half-giants and xephs, and variants for some races on the PHB. Classes able to cast spells (divine or arcane) were banned, with a psychic variant for rangers. Prestige classes used were either the ones in XPsiH, or those of the DMG. I decided to give each of the prestige classes I was going to use a background as well, much like what is done in Oriental Adventures, with a line of "characters originated there train as this" for the main lands and organizations.

Players were having fun, but time issues put the campaign to a halt. In fact, I liked so much how it ended up, that I was willing to go through the same process for an Incarnum only campaign, though if this one ever happens, will be without any hope of getting published one day, unless Wizards makes a great move and open the Incarnum rules for third party publishers...

 

[SteelDraco]

I'm playing in such a campaign right now. We're all githzerai, working on retaking the Gith homeworld from the wilderness and whatever threats we encounter along the way to 'civilization'.

The DM went a little crazy with UA rules options for the game - we're all gestalt characters, with full githzerai abilities (so we're +2 ECL). There are only three races - high githzerai (the default from the XPH), h'ranmar githzerai (beast-blooded, with some animal traits and a more physical bent), and duk'kar (mentally-focused, bred by the illithid for their tasty brains). I'm guessing some of the XPH races will show up as the game progresses, though - there have been hints of other sentient life around.

The group is comprised of...

• H'ranmar Fighter/Ranger // Psychic Warrior, the party tank
• H'ranmar Fighter // Adept, very much a cleric, with both warrior and healer abilities. The DM modified a couple of the Ardent mantles so that she's more capable in the healer's role, though I'm not sure exactly what he did to them.
• High Githzerai Fighter // Soulknife, the other tank. He didn't want to learn psionic powers, so he's playing a soulknife.
• High Githzerai Monk // Psion (Telepath), mostly focusing on her martial arts stuff.
• Duk'kar Githzerai Psion (Kineticist) // Monk, not really using his monk abilities at all; he's the group's blaster.
• Duk'kar Githzerai Scout // Psychic Warrior, a skirmishing combatant with a focus on ancient archaeology. Which makes her, though it hadn't occurred to me before, an albino version of Lara Croft.

We did tend to divide ourselves into traditional party roles - tank, healer, blaster, etc. Nobody's great at the rogue stuff, though the monks and scout are all decent at sneaking, nobody is any good at traps or investigation. No people person, either - the highest Charisma in the party is, I think, a 12, with no ranks in social skills.

Judging our abilities is kinda hard, since we're all gestalt with an ECL, which we haven't dealt with much before. We're pretty tough, though - we managed to beat an illithid and several supporting monsters (some grimlocks, two voidmind ogres, and a pair of dominated gith monks) when we had four class levels each. 'course, one of us died doing it, but I was still impressed.

 

[Driddle]

I rather like the healing aspect. No one person is shoehorned into being "the healer".

There should probably be some kind of prestige class for people who want that role, but spreading out the cure burden seems to be a good thing IMHO.

Agreed.
I also like campaigns that require the players to actually work around massive injuries instead of their PCs soaking up damage like it's ... well, like a game mechanic.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

I like the idea, but I'd add Hyperconscious (Malhavoc) and Soulknife's Class Acts article from Dragon Magazine #341 (I believe)- both add fun and functionality to the psionics system, and the Soulknife article has many feats that are similar to but better drafted than some of the ones in Complete Psionics.

 

[Psion]

I like the idea, but I'd add Hyperconscious (Malhavoc) and Soulknife's Class Acts article from Dragon Magazine #341 (I believe)- both add fun and functionality to the psionics system, and the Soulknife article has many feats that are similar to but better drafted than some of the ones in Complete Psionics.

Definitely. The Mindscapes combat system in Hyperconscious is a must in a psi-heavy campaign.

 

[Giltonio_Santos]

In my game, we've found powers that protect or directly attack one's mind to be more than enough to emulate psionic combat. After some sessions, everyone was planning on taking Iron Will as the next feat of choice. It was strange like a generally sub-optimal choice became really good once they're taking mind thrusts at almost all combats...