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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Sword of Spirit" data-source="post: 7867973" data-attributes="member: 6677017">As a general comment on psionics as sci-fi "magic"...That's the wrong way to look at it in D&D. Or rather, it's an incomplete way to look at it.Replace the word "psionic" with "psychic".That's the deal, right there. Sure, the difference between "psychic" and "magic" gets blurred in real world beliefs, but in common perception there is a pretty clear distinction between a psychic--like Eleven from Stranger Things--and a spellcaster. Look at fiction based on contemporary earth, and most psychics versus spellcasters are easily distinguished.We could have a debate about what distinguishes one from another, but the basic point is that there is a clear distinction in perception. Part of that is the general lack of spellcasting components, mystical symbols, and arcane lore. I think the strongest places you blur the lines are with psychic abilities granted by supernatural agents. And maybe that's what people are thinking of when they can't see a strong difference. But I don't think that's a good model for D&D, which has traditionally made psionics basically be psychics with their own innate abilities gained from some sort of "mutation" of birth or training.I think sci-fi makes use of psychics for the very reason that they are normally perceived as distinct from spellcasters. Yes, they are just sci-fi's way of reproducing the sorts of things that magic does, but sci-fi uses psychic abilities instead of traditional magic for the express reason that people don't see them as the same!I just feel like people are taking an intellectual debate about the nature of magic and using it as justification for why the common perception of the difference between a psychic and a spellcaster isn't sufficient to inform D&D design.Assuming the published one is as similar to the last UA as I think it is, Infuse Item is the big one, though Magical Tinkering, Arcane Armament (I'm not sure that one made the cut), and Spell-Storing Item all seem like reasonable candidates.</blockquote>

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