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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ezrael" data-source="post: 1017360" data-attributes="member: 6262">I tend to view magic and psionics as related forces. Working up the background for my next campaign, (since we'll be doing a reboot soon) I view magic as an energy created by the existence of living things, a thought-field (if you've read about Sheldrake's Morphic Resonance or the Implicate Order theory, I admit to cribbing from that) that is created by the process of life and becomes ever more sophisticated as life does. Thinking beings, when they came into being, began creating concepts which gave rise to conceptual entities, egregores that are almost personifications of the concept they embody. As these grow more sophisticated they become what we call 'gods' and 'spirits.' These beings can grant magical abilities to those who follow or serve them (your Cleric, your Druid, your Shaman, etc) or one can choose instead to try and come to terms with the vast energies throughout existence either through a gift in the blood (inherent magics like a Sorceror) which allows one to directly tap the energy without the assistance of a conceptual entity, or through rigorous training to alter the mind so that it is capable of harmonizing itself with the eddies of the thought-field, creating a tap through which those powers can be directed (Wizards and other learned mages).Psions and psychic warriors, on the other hand, don't directly interact with the thought field as those who use magic do. Because the field is generated by the existence of living beings, especially those who can think, it is in effect like a pool created by run-off, the field composed of shed thought-force from all those component individual thoughts and lives. Psions and psychic warriors learn or are born with the ability to in effect dam up their individual thought energies, so as to make use of the reserve of their own power (thus the point expenditures to activate a psionic power) like a private internal hydroelectric dam. They can access the thought field (which could in D&D terms be considered equal to the Astral Plane, a place of pure thought) to create Astral Constructs and so on, but they initially use their own inner energy to do so.As related concepts, the two (in this version) are considered the same for purposes of interaction, as is suggested in the Psionics Handbook.</blockquote>

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