Magic-psionics transparency in Eberron: yay or nay?

[blargney the second]

In your opinion, is there supposed to be magic-psionics transparency in Eberron or not? (This is for a 3.5 game, natch.)

Corollary: what's it like running with the Psionics Are Different option?
-blarg

 

[Siberys]

It's how I always ran psi in 3.5, but it's easier to go with transparency.

I had to write up some HR to clarify what could and could not interact. I remember making some powers to disrupt magic and vise-versa.

Don't know what's happened to that doc since; I wrote them HRs ages ago, and have since moved to other systems.

 

[Twiggly the Gnome]

In your opinion, is there supposed to be magic-psionics transparency in Eberron or not? (This is for a 3.5 game, natch.)

I think the assumption is transparency, Eberron doesn't really play up the pseudoscience angle. Psionics is mind magic, inspired by dreams and madness.

 

[Aus_Snow]

I suspect Eberron is more well-suited to the transparency option, but I've generally gone halfway, when DMing 3e. Basically, I set up several distinct types of magic, one of which is 'psionics' (renamed), and each can affect all the others, but at something of a penalty to checks and so on.

This has worked well for my games, but, as I said, Eberron strikes me more as a 'they are fundamentally the same' type world.

 

[Glyfair]

In your opinion, is there supposed to be magic-psionics transparency in Eberron or not? (This is for a 3.5 game, natch.)

It is specifically up to the DM in the ECS. Keith has stated that he prefers the middle ground option (I forget if there is a term for it) between the two extremes.

 

[Asmor]

If you don't use the transparency, then you really need to work hard to make sure that psionics is fully accounted for. You basically need to take everything about magic... and then make psionic analogs to those things. Big pain in the butt.

Otherwise, you wind up with big scary creatures who are utterly defenseless to psionics because they were created without the assumption of psionics' existence, and things like that.

Too much hassle for too little reward, imho.

 

[Spatula]

Either option works, depending on what feel you're trying to achieve. We always used 100% transparency, more for the sake of simplicity than anything else. Using the different option results in a lot of headaches - basically the players and NPCs have to double up on any sort of counter-magic. Mindblank isn't enough as it won't protect against psionics; you need mindblank the spell and psionic mindblank the power to really ward yourself against mental intrusion and scrying.

But there's always the appeal of making abominations and the quori truly alien, which I think the different option is good for. The party's normal defenses are useless against the strange mind powers of the illithid, etc. What always bothers me with this tack, though, is that by the same token, divine magic should probably be similarly different than arcane magic. Also, if you have psionic PCs, they will simply blow through the defenses of regular magical monsters.

 

[Vurt]

We use psionic/magic transparency in our Eberron campaign, but with a little twist to preserve some of the flavor that psionics are just a little different:

Knowledge (arcana) can be used as Knowledge (psionic), and vice versa, but with a -5 penalty. Similarly with Spellcraft and Psicraft. The idea is that the fundamentals are the same, but the implementation of magic and psionics are different enough that it takes more work to identify what exactly is going on.

Since spells like dispel magic and SR would presumably work by interacting with the fundamental aspects of magic, the transparency works for most other practical aspects, with the occasional exception thrown in to stir things up from time to time.

 

[Asmor]

We use psionic/magic transparency in our Eberron campaign, but with a little twist to preserve some of the flavor that psionics are just a little different:

Knowledge (arcana) can be used as Knowledge (psionic), and vice versa, but with a -5 penalty. Similarly with Spellcraft and Psicraft. The idea is that the fundamentals are the same, but the implementation of magic and psionics are different enough that it takes more work to identify what exactly is going on.

That's actually a really cool middleground. I might just adopt that whenever psionics come out for 4e.

 

[Wik]

Henh. I voted for transparency, but that's because I'm playing a spellthief in this campaign, and I wanted more power. So my opinion probably shouldn't be considered, here.