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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Siphersh" data-source="post: 7673728" data-attributes="member: 6777209">In the real world it looks like magic and psionics are similar, in that they are both supernatural. But that's just because they don't actually work. If they did work, we would call them natural phenomena or technologies. But in D&D they do work, and so that category is not applicable.3rd edition and later made psionics very similar to magic, but when reading the earlier rules, it seems to me that the fundamental difference is that psionics is something you do, while magic is something you "wield", regardless of the source of the magic. So, in D&D psionics is more similar to abilities or skills than to magic.And the rules used to reflect exactly that difference. There's the concept of psionic mastery, which means that the psionic ability is not a self-contained mechanism that you use as-is, but something that you can get better at doing. Like a skill. And that same concept is represented in the 2nd edition rules, when you roll sort of an ability check for doing psionics. And of course the third difference in the mechanics: the point system also represents the same concept: psionics is something that you do, and so you're not using up some abstract arcane containers, but you just get exhausted.I think that's a clear and fundamental narrative difference between magic and psionics, and those rules clearly represent that difference.</blockquote>