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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Dave Turner" data-source="post: 2428547" data-attributes="member: 12329">It just seems to me that setting assumptions about psionics and the questions that surround those assumptions are too much to swallow. I don’t follow why it would be likely that the fleeing humans wouldn’t want to bring psions with them.  The kalashtar have several racial features (social bonuses and a bonus to disguise themselves as humans) that make it plausible that they were amongst the emigrating humans.  Further, it you would have to assume that the fleeing Sarlonans had never seen any altruistic or morally good psionic individuals and were carrying an irrational prejudice against psionics in general.  While this might have been the case some of the time, it’s a larger assumption to assume it always happened.  Surely there were at least a few instances in which the kalashtar and the humans fought and died together against the Inspired, which would go a long way towards reducing human prejudice towards psionics.  Remember that humans in D&D are the curious and practical race, ready to accept new ideas and situations more easily than other races. Is it really plausible that no significant numbers of psions emigrated from Sarlona during the Inspired conquest?  The second wave of emigration didn’t happen in a single day, I assume.  It probably occurred over a number of years (probably decades) as the Inspired gradually took control of an entire continent.  Some of the kalashtar went into hiding in Adar, but is it reasonable to assume that a number significant enough to introduce psionics on a moderate scale in Khorvaire didn’t somehow find their way to the eastern shores?  It wouldn’t have to be a mixed boat of humans and kalashtar, since surely there were sufficient numbers of kalashtar to fill a boat or two on their own?The previous paragraph assumes, moreover, that the only psionic beings in Sarlona at the time of the Inspired invasion were kalashtar.  The kalashtar had a 300 year head start on the quori.  In those three centuries, shouldn’t we assume that some (if not many) humans managed to learn psionics from the peaceful kalashtar?  Keith Baker mentions in the Ask Keith Baker FAQ (Thanks for the link, Glyfair!):I can understand some kalashtar caution for the first century after their arrival in Sarlona, but three centuries worth?  As far as I know, there’s no mention of kalashtar being jealous guardians of psionic power.  Further, once a few humans learned psionics, then the horse is out of the barn.  They can teach it to more and more humans without the assumed kalashtar racial bias against teaching psionics to non-kalashtar.  Humans are practical and inquisitive as a race, so they’re predisposed to spread psionics.  We have no evidence to suggest that the humans were at war with the kalashtar prior to the arrival of the Inspired.  The kalashtar are modified humans, so it’s certainly plausible that the “converted” humans were quickly reabsorbed into human society.  There was no external threat to all of humanity in the form of the Inspired for the first 300 years that the kalashtar were in Sarlona.  If the politics between human kingdoms in Khorvaire is a guide for how human kingdoms relate to one another, the Sarlonan kingdoms were probably embroiled in their own wars and conflicts.  It’s fair to suggest that some kalashtar were just integrated into the social fabric of the human kingdoms and joined in the same wars and conflicts.  This, in turn, would suggest that the kalashtar would be disposed to teach psionics to Sarlonans.  Humans would spread it amongst themselves from there.That last point throws into stark relief how the designers approach to psionics grates against on of the central themes of the setting.  The cultures of Eberron have made aggressive and practical use of all supernatural energies available to them.  If psionics are not present on Khorvaire, then we have to swallow all the tortured assumptions I’ve listed above about psionics somehow having been contained to Sarlona after the arrival of the kalashtar 1800 years ago.  If that’s all too much for you to swallow, as I hope it is, then psionics arrived on Khorvaire approximately 1200-1500 years ago.  Should we now assume that in one thousand years, psionics didn’t spread across Khorvaire?  The cultures of Eberron are ruthless in the dissemination and practical application of arcane and divine energies across Khorvaire.  Within the context of the setting, why wouldn’t the races of Khorvaire do the same with psionic energy?.  There is no satisfactory answer for that question that doesn’t invoke metagame considerations.  This is where I became disillusioned with part of Eberron.  On the whole, I do like Eberron.  Were I to run a D&D game, I would set it there.  But Eberron’s implementation of psionics is no better than any other non-Dark Sun D&D setting.  It’s not enough to point to the fact that the rationale for psionics was present in the setting from Day One.  That distinguishes Eberron from other settings (like FR, for example) in their timing, but not their content.  FR also has an in-setting explanation for what psionics is and where it comes from.  The level of information regarding psionics in Eberron and FR is practically the same.  It just so happens that FR didn’t include it at the start of the setting and Eberron did.  Eberron does not integrate psionics into it’s setting any more than FR does.  I understand that there are metagame reasons for this.  But the writers and designers of Eberron were so focused on the metagame (and, ultimately, quite unconcerned with psionics in itself.  It seems clear that there isn’t a serious psionics fan in the bunch) that the setting-based treatment of psionics was slapdash and riddled with these ridiculous assumptions that I’ve outlined above.Eberron is a great setting, but not for psionics.  I am disillusioned with the idea that Eberron is accommodating of psionics in any meaningful sense.</blockquote>

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