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Message: <blockquote data-quote="fuindordm" data-source="post: 7672296" data-attributes="member: 5435">I agree with Mike. Psionics should absolutely have different mechanics, limitations, and consequences than arcane or divine magic.  Playing a psion needs to feel very different from playing a wizard, cleric, or warlock, and there are lots of ways to accomplish this: tie powers to a skill/activation roll, involve the exhaustion mechanic or make HP a fungible resource for power use, give psions fewer but broader powers compared to traditional spellcasters, and so forth.The power list of a psion should be distinct from that of a cleric or a wizard, and at least as different from both as the cleric and wizard lists are from each other. However, I don't mind if some powers work exactly like similar spells--Dominate and Detect Thoughts, for example.  But I would like psionic invisibility to work differently from magical invisibility.  Psionics should have a lot of unique stuff too: I'm personally fond of metacreativity powers with weird effects (like summoning a pseudo-monster or an ectoplasmic shroud), and completely uninterested in psionic fireball, psionic shard ranged attack, etc.As for the source of psionic power, that is less important to me than the rule support that will make the psion a unique experience as a player. There are several possible sources: other planes of existence, harnessing one's internal power, or simply reaching a state of enlightenment that lets you manipulate reality. The choice of power source has some consequences on campaign setting and fluff, but as far as I'm concerned all sources can have identical rules.The pseudoscience names have some charm, but don't really fit in a fantasy setting. But again, that's not a big concern.Finally, some might argue that we have too many sources of "magic" in the game already. I tend to agree and disallowed sorcerers from my campaign for this reason.  But I still would love to see a psionics book (or at least a big chapter of some other book) come out that gives the subject a treatment as complete as arcane magic or divine magic in the PH.  Then I could run a modern horror campaign that only allows arcane or psionic, or a sci-fi campaign that only allows psionic and warlock, and so on.  The more choices the better--they don't all need to go in the same game!</blockquote>

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