Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Mercule" data-source="post: 7673146" data-attributes="member: 5100">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.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.</blockquote>

Verification