Mike Mearls on D&D Psionics: Should Psionic Flavor Be Altered?

WotC's Mike Mearls has been asking for opinions on how psionics should be treated in D&D 5th Edition. I mentioned a couple of weeks ago that he'd hinted that he might be working on something, and this pretty much seals the deal. He asked yesterday "Agree/Disagree: The flavor around psionics needs to be altered to allow it to blend more smoothly into a traditional fantasy setting", and then followed up with some more comments today.

"Thanks for all the replies! Theoretically, were I working on psionics, I'd try to set some high bars for the execution. Such as - no psionic power duplicates a spell, and vice versa. Psionics uses a distinct mechanic, so no spell slots. One thing that might be controversial - I really don't like the scientific terminology, like psychokinesis, etc. But I think a psionicist should be exotic and weird, and drawing on/tied to something unsettling on a cosmic scale.... [but]... I think the source of psi would be pretty far from the realm of making pacts. IMO, old one = vestige from 3e's Tome of Magic.

One final note - Dark Sun is, IMO, a pretty good example of what happens to a D&D setting when psionic energy reaches its peak. Not that the rules would require it, but I think it's an interesting idea to illustrate psi's relationship to magic on a cosmic level."

 

[Fralex]

According to the 3e book, you don't. The magic of bards is based in the (arcane) primal sorcery, and they function as normal, except they lose access to Conjuration (healing) spells.

Well, now that the distinction between divine magic and arcane magic has no mechanical impact, you could just say that since bards are keepers of stories, some of those stories are about religious heroes and such. The gods appreciate the bards for helping to keep their stories alive and thus spread their word, and reward them with a couple healing spells in addition to the arcane ones.

 

[Hussar]

As I've said, multiple times, it's a balancing act. Bardic colleges are easy enough to reskin as loose, informal traditions. The way Clerics are built, it's trivial to swap out gods, even to the point of going monotheistic or philosophic. The Wizard schools are a game conceit, but one that doesn't actually require setting elements beyond "some folks are better at some things".

The concern with psionics and the Far Realm is that some people see them as tied at the hip, while others like one and hate the other (implying little to no relation). It's possible that, even if WotC decides that psionics and the Far Realm are linked, flavor-wise, they'll have it very modular. Awesome. I'll scrape it off and move one. It's also possible that they could tie the two close enough that trying to untangle the Far Realms from psionics either guts the sub-system or requires DMs to write their own mods to hold it together. That would be unfortunate for all the folks who want to use psionics w/o the Far Realms (which appears to be a plurality, if not majority, of folks in this thread).

My desire is to see a psionics book without any reference to the Far Realms. I think the entire Far Realms concept deserves a sidebar in the DMG. Due to 3E tradition, I could see one in the Psionics Handbook, but only in context of a section on how psionics can be added to a setting, how they can be played differently than magic, etc.; and even then, it should be alongside other options like magic mutations, bloodlines, and the like. The mechanics don't need to reference any origin, at all.

Really, if there's any relationship between psionics and the Far Realm, it should be effect, not cause. People don't get psionics because they've been touched by the Far Realms. Nor are psionics a response to the Far Realms (that doesn't even make sense, to me). People who use psionics a lot expand their mind to that line between genius and insanity, often crossing over it; this results in them getting the attention of entities that feed off madness (or might want to give that extra shove over the line). I still prefer psionics as the hidden potential within the self, whether by mutation or a natural spark of self-divinity.

There are so many flavorful ways to use psionics and separate them from both arcane and divine traditions that it would be a shame to hang any fluff on it too tightly. Go ahead and add special FX, but not origin.

I agree with all of this.

 

[Hussar]

Well, now that the distinction between divine magic and arcane magic has no mechanical impact, you could just say that since bards are keepers of stories, some of those stories are about religious heroes and such. The gods appreciate the bards for helping to keep their stories alive and thus spread their word, and reward them with a couple healing spells in addition to the arcane ones.

Bit tricky in War of the Lance era DL where the gods have withdrawn from the land, and no one casts anything remotely divine. And haven't for almost 300 years.

That and arcane casters are largely hunted as witches and often killed on sight makes being a spell casting bard a bit problematic.

 

[Fralex]

Bit tricky in War of the Lance era DL where the gods have withdrawn from the land, and no one casts anything remotely divine. And haven't for almost 300 years.

That and arcane casters are largely hunted as witches and often killed on sight makes being a spell casting bard a bit problematic.

Oh, OK. Sorry, I don't know much about Dragonlance. How do divine spellcasters work there? Or are there none?

 

[Hussar]

Oh, OK. Sorry, I don't know much about Dragonlance. How do divine spellcasters work there? Or are there none?

Ah, well, at the beginning of the War of the Lance, there hasn't been a divine caster seen in centuries. Arcane casters all belong to the Tower of High Sorcery and are highly controlled, to the point where if you try to hide the fact that you're a wizard, other wizards will hunt you down and kill you.

Which means that the 5e classes are VERY problematic if you try to run canon Dragonlance. Or, to put it another way, the classes are by no means generic.

 

[Imaro]

Ah, well, at the beginning of the War of the Lance, there hasn't been a divine caster seen in centuries. Arcane casters all belong to the Tower of High Sorcery and are highly controlled, to the point where if you try to hide the fact that you're a wizard, other wizards will hunt you down and kill you.

Which means that the 5e classes are VERY problematic if you try to run canon Dragonlance. Or, to put it another way, the classes are by no means generic.

This seems backwards... is it that the classes aren't generic or that Dragonlance is specific enough that many generic classes don't work well for it?

 

[Staffan]

Except Athas is "disconnected" from the rest of the multiverse, well that's what they said and then eventually there was a Githyanki invasion, but it wouldn't be that hard to justify a different feel for psionics in a Dark Sun setting.

The disconnection was a later addition that showed up in one of the last products for the setting, Defilers & Preservers. Before that, the Dragon Kings book (which mostly focused on level 20+ characters with some stuff for lower levels) expected high-level clerics to routinely travel to the Elemental planes to fix problems, the adventure Black Spine was focused around a Githyanki invasion and had lots of other planar stuff going on, and one of the dragon-lich-king Dregoth's main assets is a psionic artifact that lets him travel to other planes and/or bring planar creatures and things to Athas. You also had demons and such showing up in some adventures, even if they were a relative rarity.

I also think some Planescape things referred to Dark Sun here and there, though not very much.

 

[Staffan]

But when did Mind Flayers become associated with the Far Realm? As someone mentioned earlier on this thread, in 2e they were time travelers from the future.

That was 3.5e's Lords of Madness. The 2e book The Illithiad didn't say anything specific (because it was mostly written from the point of view of in-universe knowledge), but hinted that they came from "Outside" (which sounds a lot like the Far Realm from descriptions) by way of space.

There's an alternate 2e explanation from the Astromundi Cluster boxed set, that has them as survivors of a destroyed planet.

And on that point, when did the Far Realms first appear in D&D at all?

Gates of Firestorm Peak, 1996. Just like the Illithiad, written by Bruce Cordell.

Before 4e, I don't even recall if (all) aberrations were explicitly connected to the Far Realm.

3e was the first to explicitly call some creatures out as Aberrations, and not all of those were connected to the Far Realm.

I'm not sure how much of this Far Realms-Psionics connection has any real traction in pre-4e history, and how much of it is back-reading it into it after it was made explicit in 4e.

Can anyone provide any references?

2e psionics had little to nothing to do with the Far Realm, since the Complete Psionics Handbook preceded it by a few years, and was way more "new age"-y. It's more of a retro-fitting thing - many creatures who use psionics are, and have always been, really frickin' weird - mind flayers, aboleths, intellect devourers, thought eaters, brain moles, and so on. And "really frickin' weird" is what the Far Realm is mostly about. On the other hand, it's also what the Underdark is sometimes about, so that works as an explanation too. And it's not like D&D has any shortage of really frickin' weird creatures without psionics either.

 

[Mercule]

At what point in 3e did the Far Realms and Psionics become connected? I certainly don't remember any mention of the Far Realms in the 3.0 Psionics Handbook, nor in the 3.5

Not sure. I'm going by memory and assumption on when it happened. I know it wasn't there in any tangible form before I switched to WoD in the early/mid 1990s. I know it was at least a strong implication before 4E came out. So, it had to have "evolved" sometime in late 2E or during the 3E run.

 

[Mercule]

This seems backwards... is it that the classes aren't generic or that Dragonlance is specific enough that many generic classes don't work well for it?

Most things work just fine. IIRC, the 1E setting book removed the Paladin, Cleric, and Druid. In the place of the paladin, they added the Knight of Solamnia classes (three of them) that were sort of proto-prestige classes for Fighter. For Magic Users/Wizards, they added in a chart for the three moons that affected good, neutral, and evil arcane magic. It was a lot like tides, where a caster would have a +1 caster level (5E would probably be spell DC) when their moon was nearly full and a -1 caster level when their moon was mostly new.

Bards wouldn't have been possible, because it wasn't a stand-alone class in 1E. It was an appendix, like psionics. A lot of tables didn't even use it. You started as a Fighter and did 5-8 levels before switching to Thief. After 6-9 levels as a Thief, you could switch to Bard, but you were under Druidic tutelage. Without Druids to teach you spells, you couldn't have become a Bard.

So, 1E DL wasn't so odd because it changed a bunch of classes. The actual mechanic changes would probably fit into an Unearthed Arcana article. The real difference is in how 1E worked.