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Message: <blockquote data-quote="I'm A Banana" data-source="post: 7673747" data-attributes="member: 2067">In D&D, "seems like magic" and "is magic" are pretty much the same thing, at least whenever you want them to be. Again, I think you're kind of conflating "magic" and "spellcasting." An ageless monk steps into an antimagic field and doesn't suddenly age. A 20-ft long flying lizard flies through one and doesn't suddenly plummet to the ground. These things are obviously magical because it is not possible for people to stop aging or for 20-ft long lizards to have wings and fly, but they aren't affected by "antimagic" because they don't quite work like spells or ongoing magical effects or magical items. Not all D&D magic is casting spells - some of it is just the fact that dragons fly. Psionics may be closer to dragon flight than to wizard spellcasting, but that doesn't mean it's not magic, it just means we need to define how this supernatural stuff happens, and then we'll see if effects like these might apply to it. This isn't functionally the case in 5e, as far as I can tell. Despite what that sidebar says about "all magic," monks literally cast spells and aren't included in that sidebar's explanation of how the "weave" is accessed. A tiefling casts spells and is likewise not indicated there. A dragon flies - not something that is physically possible, so it must be magical in some way - and there's nothing there about the weave. There's also no explanation of barbarian abilities there, or how a ranger can sense life-forms, or how a character channels divinity or warlock invocations (the sidebar specifically references "spells"). There seems to be puh-lenty of magical effects that are not "on the grid" in 5e that are obviously magic in many ways, but that aren't "the spellcasting class feature" and so aren't defined as either arcane or divine or weave-related. I think, broadly speaking, I could get on board with your idea of psionics as a separate class.Now to loop it back into the flavor considerations: this implies a bit more of a "skill system" than a list of effects (a certain ability that grows in power as you pump energy into it) - you have psionicists proficient at different things and at different levels. So you could benefit from a trainer, or you could just discover this within yourself. It's more like learning a tool or a language. Its inner, organic nature implies that it is natural, part of the natural world, part of nature as a vibrant and productive force - part of the wilderness. The big challenge there is going to be to differentiate that flavor from the flavor of the sorcerer, who doesn't use the same system, but has fluff that is nearly indistinguishable from that. In terms of how they look and act in the world, what's the major differences between the organic, internal, instinctive, skillful sorcerer and the organic, internal, instinctive, skillful psionicist?</blockquote>

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