D&D 5E In your Years of Gaming, How many Psionic Characters did you See played

[Sadras]

I played an elan psion in very short-lived 3.5e campaign that ended abruptly.
He was absolutely amazing.
That is the extent of our experience with psionicists

 

[TwoSix]

Had a couple psionicists in 2E, saw a bunch of psionic characters in 3e (mostly wilders, though). Had a couple people play the Dreamscarred Press options in PF. Had a monk and an ardent in 4E.

I did observe that more casual players tended to branch out from the PHB less, so psionic characters tended to be played by those with more game experience, at least in 2E and 3E. Casual players that I helped walk through the psionic rules seemed to enjoy it, though, as they generally though points were easier to manage than slots.

 

[iserith]

I like psionics in Dark Sun campaigns and basically nowhere else.

 

[Raunalyn]

Yeah, you and I talked about this last night. In 3e, I really only had one or two players to play psionic characters. However, in 2e, I had a long running Dark Sun game that had quite a few. So, I think it depends on the campaign.

I am not disagreeing with Jeremy about the popularity. Overall, I like the approach of having psionic subclasses to each of the core classes, but I question the implementation.

 

[jgsugden]

When available, psionics have been utilized proportionately.

When introduced, they often get used as "the new thing". Some players avoid them, but others are drawn to them.

I've played them rarely, personally, because the mechanics of the classes have not appealed to me in any of the prior editions since AD&D when I didn't know any better.

However, I've gone out of my way to carve out a place and special rules for psionics in my homebrew world - and give it a rarity that explains why you never see it early in an edition.

 

[basaipete]

I made a deal with my players, they didnt play psionic classes/characters and I didnt use psionic bad guys (with the exception of mind flayers as they have always had mechanics that worked without the full psionic ecosystem). That kept psionics at bay for all but two campaigns over the last 32 years. In the rare cases that players wanted to venture into this area everyone had fun but overall found the 1e implementation way overpowered, 2e unnecessarily complicated, and 3e uninteresting. I dont really care if they implement in 5e as I expect it to continue to be rare in my games.

 

[Demetrios1453]

Saw quite a few in 2e after the Complete Psionisist book came out, including one in a long-running campaign that went on for years. I had a single one in a 3e campaign I was running, but that campaign didn't last very long...

 

[jayoungr]

I said never, but then I realized that wasn't quite true. In a world-hopping 5E campaign I'm running, we have two homebrew Force users from the Star Wars universe; I guess those count as psionic characters.

But in straight-up fantasy D&D, I've never seen it. (Been gaming regularly for about 15 years at this point.)

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

I think we dabbled a little with psionics in 1e, but eventually decided that system was for the birds and everyone's psionic talents just faded away. In 2e, there was one psionicist/thief halfling. In Dark Sun, everyone had wild talents, but if I recall correctly, most of the PCs rarely used them. No one used psionics in 3e (though I will say that I liked Green Ronin's Psychic more than the official psionic classes). Then in 4e, we had one Battlemind.

So in 30+ years of gaming, I can say I've seen two dedicated psionic classes get used.

 

[Umbran]

I don't think I've seen a single psionic D&D character in play in my presence... for over 25 years?