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

[Eric V]

Obviously none in 5E, but they were common in 2E and 4E games I played and ran, and I saw several in 3E. I've seen way more Psionic types than, say, Druids or Barbarians, heck, even than single-class Rangers.

I agree that the wizards by another name approach is weaksauce. The non-wizard style Psionics users always got more play (including the original, Roguish Psionicist).

Same sort of experience. Psions were more popular than druids, sorcerers, bards...they saw a lot of traction at the table.

 

[Shiroiken]

I'd say about a dozen or two over 30 years, mostly from 1E and 4E. In 1E we saw a few, but I suspect mostly because of cheating. As a class in 2E and 3E it wasn't particularly popular, and I found many DMs banned them. Our stint in 4E ended not too long after the PHB3 came out, but we still saw a few of them getting played (probably my largest experience). Overall I'd put them at about 1% or less of all characters played.

 

[Zardnaar]

More than a few classes like Monks. Only have started seeing monks much in 5E. 2E once allowed I had a always Psion type player.

3.5 variant wizard say one twice. No Darksun and late in the edition for the 3.5 one limited though as we dumped 3E not to far after getting the book and switching to Pathfinder/3.5 hybrid.

 

[Enrico Poli1]

Not much.
But they're necessary for Dark Sun.

Back in 2e, psionics was a good but unbalanced system, very different from magic.
Difficult to use in normal play. But with Dark Sun, It just worked wonders. So I love 2e psionics.
With 3rd edition, psionics become essentially a new magic system. Functional, but a lot less interesting then 2e. So when I play Dark Sun, I use the 2nd edition rules, mostly because of the Psionic system of 2e.

I hope that in 5e they are able to capture the spirit of the original system.

 

[Giltonio_Santos]

Answered "Not much and certainly less common than PHB classes", but it's more complicated. A more correct description would be "all the time in our Eberron and Dark Sun games but almost never anywhere else".

 

[Blue]

Had to vote Lemon Curry, because my answer is "depends on setting and edition".

Setting wise they were plentiful in Darksun (which I played in AD&D 2nd and 4e) - it seemed if you weren't a psionic character you still likely had a wild talent. Common in Eberron (which I've played in 3.x and 4e). FR and some other settings were rare unless it changed by edition.

Edition wise AD&D (2nd?) had rules for a random chance for a wild talent while gaining a level (perhaps if certain criteria was met), so they would show up. Actually, because it was a small chance each level, high level parties would have more than low level parties.

3.5 and especially 4e had published psionic classes, so we'd see them occasionally. More in 4e in my experience. But 5e hasn't had any officially published yet, so I haven't seen a single one.

 

[Oofta]

I was pretty active in public gaming from Living City on and I don't remember a single psionicist. Maybe someone played one and it just didn't stand out as such (which probably would have been particularly true in 4E).

I had a DM at one point who liked to throw NPC psions at us now and then, but that was it.

 

[Zardnaar]

Thinking about it more until 5E saw them more than.

Bards (saw twice 2E+3E)
Druids
Monks (seen once in 3E)
Sorcerers
Barbarians (pre 3E)

 

[Talltomwright]

I had a player who was always a psionicist in 2E. We liked psionics so much I came up with a setting based around conflict between psionics, divine and arcane magic with a totalitarian church using psionics inquisitors to hunt down other psionicists and mages. The players seemed to have fun as rebel magic users hunted by the state. But it only worked because psionics felt genuinely different, not just flavour text.

There was also a lot of fun around setting up traps or monsters resistant to one form of magic but vulnerable to others.

 

[jasper]

Under 20 to include 2E. Less once I left high school because back then Professor X and Scanners were way cool. I hated running Psi combat because it took so long. The only COOL thing about psi, was if was on the psi list and you cast a the same spell a mind flayer may show up to eat your brain. I don't want them in 5E.