D&D 5E (2024) Githzerai Psion? Thri-kreen Psion? Where's My Psion?

[Mind of tempest]

Good. Now tell me why it’s cool, and why it’s a good fit for my campaign setting.

what is your campaign setting?

 

[Corinnguard]

Now tell me why it’s cool, and why it’s a good fit for my campaign setting.

You might as well ask one of us what it is like to breathe. Psionics has popped up into every edition of D&D to the point where it has become familiar to anyone who role-plays in D&D. And it's difficult to put the familiar into words that another person who might never had the opportunity to role-play D&D to understand it. It just is and a number of us are okay about it being there for us to use or ignore.

I don't think any of us can satisfy you with an answer of what psionics is, how it works or if it is a good fit in your setting or anybody else's setting. Sure, we can try, but it's up to you to accept it or not accept it. To use or not use it in your campaign setting.

 

[Micah Sweet]

what is your campaign setting?

Excellent question. Is there a reasonable place in your setting for psionics?

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Excellent question. Is there a reasonable place in your setting for psionics?

Absolutely this. Eberron makes good use of psionics by tying it to alien dream entities and their meat-puppets. It feels like part of the world. Dark Sun makes good use of psionics as both apocalyptic mutant powers and a substitute for failing magic. Greyhawk and Forgotten Realms kind of have it because they are core rules, but don't really do anything with it aside from a few monsters. In a gritty medieval setting you really don't want it all. D&D already has too much magic and superpowers. In a modernish magictech setting it should be a good fit, but you still need to resolve how magic and psionic practitioners view each other. In Ravenloft, the Pathfinder approach is a better fit. etc.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Absolutely this. Eberron makes good use of psionics by tying it to alien dream entities and their meat-puppets. It feels like part of the world. Dark Sun makes good use of psionics as both apocalyptic mutant powers and a substitute for failing magic. Greyhawk and Forgotten Realms kind of have it because they are core rules, but don't really do anything with it aside from a few monsters. In a gritty medieval setting you really don't want it all. D&D already has too much magic and superpowers. In a modernish magictech setting it should be a good fit, but you still need to resolve how magic and psionic practitioners view each other. In Ravenloft, the Pathfinder approach is a better fit. etc.

You said your campaign though. You made the request from a personal perspective. What place does psionics have at your table?

 

[SkidAce]

Words don't always fall out of use because something else replaces them. The fall out of use because they are no longer relevant, specifically in this case because the pseudoscience it was based around has been thoroughly debunked.

But the issue isn't that D&D can't use the word, the issue is that it needs to explain what it is from scratch, because it will not have any implied meaning for most of WotC's target market. And no one seems to be willing our able to do that in a way that is not self-referential and makes it clear how it differs from regular magic.

Magic has also been "debunked" hasn't it? Yet we still tell stories with it as a concept.

 

[SkidAce]

Hey, I just turned 49!

Youngster....get off my lawn.

/jk

 

[Corinnguard]

Youngster....get off my lawn.

/jk

Define youngster in terms of age. I am going to be 55 in about 7 months.

 

[SkidAce]

In a gritty medieval setting you really don't want it all.

Hey, look into the Deryni series by Katherine Kurtz.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

You said your campaign though. You made the request from a personal perspective. What place does psionics have at your table?

My intent was a general, rhetorical “my”, not literally me.