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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Tony Vargas" data-source="post: 7673595" data-attributes="member: 996">Y'know what's funny about this?  The Weave is a network delivering energy to whomever plugs into it using the right adapter/device/algorithm (components).  What you can do with it is consistent, predictable, repeatable - and, with enough training (a wizard level, feat, or even background) anyone can do it.  Psionics, OTOH, are mysterious powers some claim to have that others can't reproduce or explain - or, under the 'psionics are different' theory, detect, or affect.So spellcasting, in the Realms, is not magic at all:  it's just one of those  'sufficiently advanced technologies.' Psionics, OTOH, actually does have some of the science-defying qualities of magic. I'm not crazy about the high-magic Realms with the Weave and Mystra and her favorite, Elmonster, and, just general uber-NPCs under every rock approach.  But, for whatever reason, they chose it as the default setting, so you have to expect to see it's schticks here and there.  Like everything else, though, we're free to toss 'em.  As long as Weave-ishness doesn't get hard-coded into how magic works in a what that's too difficult to tease out, though, it's really not an issue. Or the material components of your spell and the air you exhale while speaking it being exchanged for the pure energy of the positive material plane to power you spells (1e DMG, if anyone's wondering).Sounds reasonable - and flexible.   The biggest factor I see is one that fans of psionics are quick to deny:  that psionics is a science-fiction 'bit,' a throwaway detail used to insert magical elements into a genre that otherwise tries to be modern and scientific.  Because of that association, the idea that it's "not magic" is actually pretty intuitive, and a little shaky.  Psionics in sci-fi is not magic in the sense that it's had traditional trappings of magic removed - the serial numbers filed off - but it is magic in the sense that it does what magic does, both literally, in the sense of the same sorts of effects, and in the literary sense of filling the same function within the story.So the argument that psionics are 'not magic,' and the argument that they're redundant, and the argument that they have no place in D&D at all, are all really based on the same thing - if one is right, they all are.</blockquote>

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