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."

 

[Corpsetaker]

After some indepth reading, I have to say that Mind Flayers and the Far Realm connection was a bit of a shoe horn. It says in the Illithiad that Mind Flayers came from a "far realm" but that they could have used the "Far Realm" as a connecting point. I think they are essentially based around the Cthulhu Mythos and that they came from the stars.

Let's look at them for a moment.

They are humanoids, who eat humanoid brains, and require humanoids for reproduction (Ceremorphesis). They are all essentially lawful and they worship a deity. While they are alien and strange, they don't have the "Far Realm" feel. I hold that for monsters like Chaos Beasts, Gibbering Mouthers, and the like.

I would say they could be from an alternate Prime Material Plane.

 

[Hussar]

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?

If the classes were generic, wouldn't it be fairly easy to slot them into a specific setting? I mean, Dragonlance isn't that far from baseline D&D.

But, as Mercule said, the changes are because the classes, like the bard, radically changed from edition to edition. Bards were emphatically divine in 1e - they were full on druids. 1e didn't have all bunch of half caster classes which would make things like the Towers of High Sorcery problematic.

Now, that being said, it's certainly not impossible to convert Dragonlance to 5e. Obviously that's not impossible since we're actually playing it right now. The point I'm making is that the classes in 5e are not generic at all. Every class except maybe the fighter and rogue, come pre-loaded with significant setting material. They always have. I was responding to the earlier point that psionics had to be stripped of all setting material in order to be usable. I forget the poster's name, and I'm too lazy to go back and look, but, the point was made that he thought that clerics were useless because 5e forced you to have gods. I made the point that all the classes come with at least as many setting elements baked in as clerics and probably always have (again, barring fighter and rogue).

Do you disagree with that? Do you think that the classes don't have setting elements baked in?

 

[tomBitonti]

After some indepth reading, I have to say that Mind Flayers and the Far Realm connection was a bit of a shoe horn. It says in the Illithiad that Mind Flayers came from a "far realm" but that they could have used the "Far Realm" as a connecting point. I think they are essentially based around the Cthulhu Mythos and that they came from the stars.

Let's look at them for a moment.

They are humanoids, who eat humanoid brains, and require humanoids for reproduction (Ceremorphesis). They are all essentially lawful and they worship a deity. While they are alien and strange, they don't have the "Far Realm" feel. I hold that for monsters like Chaos Beasts, Gibbering Mouthers, and the like.

I would say they could be from an alternate Prime Material Plane.

Illithids definitely have changes between editions.

Expedition to the Barrier Peaks, 1E, the sci-fi crashed space ship module, had one trapped between decks because of an interaction with the ships fields during probability travel. (Or something like that.) They had a very alien feel, and somewhat sci-fi, but no really a link to to far realms. But, they set the basic feel for psionics as being alien and sci-fi-ish. The module also had an intellect devourer.

2E seemed to place Illithids firmly in the material verse, with Penumbra, and a long vanquished plane spanning empire. The Illithid origin and home planet are not described.

I don't think the "back from the future" story arose until 3E re-interpreted the Illithid back story, I thought in "Lords of Madness". I didn't care much for the re-interpretation. Did it get much traction as canon?

3E Eberron did place Illithids in Xoriat, the plane of chaos, which could be taken as an Eberron Far Realm equivelent.

I never found there to be much of a immediate link of Psionics with the Far Realms. But, there is a useful functional link: Psionics is presented as being "different" or "alien", so it works as a tool for far reams creatures.

To say: D&D did have science fiction elements in the core game. This goes back Arneson's "Blackmoor" campaign setting, which included a crashed space ship. However, that branch of the game seems to have largely withered. See "Blackmoor" and the DA series of modules, especially, "The City of the Gods".

Thx!

TomB

 

[Sword of Spirit]

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

What I remember is that TSR's official stance was that Athas was in a closed crystal sphere. That would affect its Spelljammer connections, but had no affect on its planar connections (as far as I know).

That was 3.5e's Lords of Madness. ...

Thanks for the history lesson! Most of that corresponds to the general impressions I've had, but I definitely wasn't aware of all the details. So sounds like it's pretty much as I expected--the Far Realm connection is hinted at as one possibility in late 2e, and then designated as the reality in late 3e, and about the same is true about aberrations in general, it just happened later on.

I would say they could be from an alternate Prime Material Plane.

The time travel story I recall (which isn't the same one that I found when I went looking online, so I'm not sure where I got it from) is that *SPOILERS* the illithid were actually evolved humans from the future.

 

[Twiggly the Gnome]

3E Eberron did place Illithids in Xoriat, the plane of chaos, which could be taken as an Eberron Far Realm equivelent.

Keith Baker's take on the matter from Eberron Expanded: Lords of Madness

Mind Flayers

The mind flayers are the chief servants of the daelkyr. The elder brains may be daelkyr creations, or they may actually be spiritual and physical extensions of the daelkyr. In either case, the elder brains form the backbone of the telepathic network that links the daelkyr together and allows them to monitor their servants.

Eberron is not the first world that the daelkyr have attacked. It is possible that the mind flayers were created when the daelkyr destroyed the native world of the gith races. If so, the githzerai and githyanki are descendants of those few survivors who fled to Kythri and the Astral Plane, while the mind flayers are descended from survivors of the progenitor race who were twisted in the same manner as the dolgaunts and dolgrims.

 

[Sword of Spirit]

I much prefer the older origin stories of the gith--where they are mutated humans.

 

[Hussar]

I much prefer the older origin stories of the gith--where they are mutated humans.

But, mutated humans hardly rules out a link to the Far Realms. I'd almost say that the idea of mutated humans rather dovetails nicely with mutated races. Cthulhu mythos are rife with mutated humans and other critters out doing whatever it is that they want to do.

The more I look at this, the easier I think it is to tie Far Realms to Psionics. Psionics, mental powers that man wot not of (or something like that) as a manifestation of the secrets of the Far Realms. Cool idea. Even 1e had something of this idea, sort of. When you used psionics in 1e, you had a chance of summoning extra planar stuff (typically demons and whatnot) that would be attracted by your use of psionics and try to eat you. Not a really far stretch to shift that from demons and devils to various Far Realms stuff that might want to snack on your tasty mutant brain.

 

[Mercule]

Every class except maybe the fighter and rogue, come pre-loaded with significant setting material. They always have. I was responding to the earlier point that psionics had to be stripped of all setting material in order to be usable. I forget the poster's name, and I'm too lazy to go back and look, but, the point was made that he thought that clerics were useless because 5e forced you to have gods. I made the point that all the classes come with at least as many setting elements baked in as clerics and probably always have (again, barring fighter and rogue).

Do you disagree with that? Do you think that the classes don't have setting elements baked in?

A bit of both. Sure, there are some spells with proper names, but that's not hard to ignore. The classes, for the most part, have little more baked-in flavor than is necessary to make the mechanics work. Pseudo-Vancian magic came about because, well, you needed some system, and the slots worked really, really well for the wargaming roots of the game.

The schools of magic started out as a cute way to give players casting detect magic some vague clue about what they were looking at. There was a desire for specialists, so the schools took on some life. Druids, Monks, and Assassins all had to defeat their betters to rise in level, but that was generally ignored, IME. Most races and monsters were borrowed from some hodge-podge of fiction and myth to create interesting foes, with some created out of whole cloth.

A lot of things took on a life of their own. Who knew that the dark-skinned, subterranean drow would grow so ubiquitous, while the tall, stately valley elves would be almost forgotten even though they were introduced about the same time? D&D has lived long enough to become its own mirror. At its core, though, the mechanics remain fairly generic.

But, mutated humans hardly rules out a link to the Far Realms. I'd almost say that the idea of mutated humans rather dovetails nicely with mutated races. Cthulhu mythos are rife with mutated humans and other critters out doing whatever it is that they want to do.

The more I look at this, the easier I think it is to tie Far Realms to Psionics. Psionics, mental powers that man wot not of (or something like that) as a manifestation of the secrets of the Far Realms. Cool idea. Even 1e had something of this idea, sort of. When you used psionics in 1e, you had a chance of summoning extra planar stuff (typically demons and whatnot) that would be attracted by your use of psionics and try to eat you. Not a really far stretch to shift that from demons and devils to various Far Realms stuff that might want to snack on your tasty mutant brain.

I can see where one could tie the Far Realms to psionics, especially in a "playing with your brain might go too far into madness" angle. I do not like any variation on the Far Realms causing psionics, though.

To me, psionics is interesting because it stands in contrast to the other magics that are external. Psionics are inherently personal and internal, even when they manifest outside of the "caster". Doing anything mechanical to minimize that reduces the actual utility of having psionics in my game. Granted, the Sorcerer class kind of takes the "naturally magical" shtick from the Psion, but I think they do it very poorly (partly because I don't like the way the "my grand-pappy was a dragon" intrudes into the mechanics).

Any rules for psionics are going to have to have some level of flavor, even if it's just in making things work. I'd prefer the flavor to be kept as minimal as Wizard, though. Any setting material should be kept at least arms length away, if not packaged in another source entirely. I can't draw you an exact line, Wizard, Cleric, and Bard are on the "good" side; Sorcerer is slightly on the "bad" side; and Warlock walked right up to it and peed on the other side, but gets away with it.

 

[Tony Vargas]

I can see where one could tie the Far Realms to psionics, especially in a "playing with your brain might go too far into madness" angle. I do not like any variation on the Far Realms causing psionics, though.

The idea isn't so much pionics coming from the Far Realms as a reaction to incursions by the Far Realms. Psionics thus remains inherently 'internal,' even under that concept. Though, in principle, I agree that it's the sort of thing that should be allowed to vary from setting to setting or campaign to campaign.

To me, psionics is interesting because it stands in contrast to the other magics that are external. Psionics are inherently personal and internal, even when they manifest outside of the "caster". Doing anything mechanical to minimize that reduces the actual utility of having psionics in my game. Granted, the Sorcerer class kind of takes the "naturally magical" shtick from the Psion

Unless a Sorcerer sub-class is used for psionics, a possibility that has been raised before. I suppose you could have several psionic sub-classes. For instance, even though the Fighter & Rogue aren't arcane, at all, they each have an arcane-caster sub-class. So you could have a Psion as a sub-class of Sorcerer, a PsiWarrior/Battlemind as a Fighter sub-class, and maybe even a SoulKnife or something as a Rogue sub-class.

Any rules for psionics are going to have to have some level of flavor, even if it's just in making things work. I'd prefer the flavor to be kept as minimal as Wizard, though. Any setting material should be kept at least arms length away, if not packaged in another source entirely. I can't draw you an exact line...

Nod. For instance, in FR, Wizards use the power of 'The Weave,' while in Dark Sun they destroy the environment. By the same token, you might have variations in the explanation or history of psionics in a given setting, without changing any of the actual mechanics.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Re: Classes

I believe I stated it before, but not trusting my memory and being too lazy to look: I personally liked Bruce Cordell's idea of fusing the 3.5Ed PsyWar & Soulknife as a PrCl in the 3rd party supplement, Hyperconscious. Apparently, this fusion was closer to his original concept. I also liked the expansion of the Soulknife's powers in the feats presented in CompPsi and ESPECIALLY Dragon- forming knives, polearms and even shields is just aces for that concept, IMHO, and considering the Soulbow, not broken. Fused into a single base class, a PsyWar/Soulknife with a limited number of powers- probably siloed into specialities- and the ability to improve his manifested weapon sounds pretty good to me.

The 3.5Ed Kineticist PrCl as expanded in The Mind's Eye article on WotC's website was also good, conceptually. I don't know if it should be a base class or available as a flavor variant of another extant class. Manifesting the weapon made it a natural expansion of the Soulknife, while its energy projection powers

The Lurk probably should be combined with the Elocator.

Lest you think I didn't like any 4Ed Psi...I'd LOVE to see an updated version of the Dreamwalker.