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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Brian Gibbons" data-source="post: 2968826" data-attributes="member: 7369">Flavor.  Crystal-based pseudo-science which requires me to use words like psychometabolism meshes badly with the traditional fantasy world that D&D generally assumes.Indeed, psionics meshes badly with itself.  I have to laugh as I look over the psionic power list and see fantasy-ish names (like Breath of the Black Dragon or Elfsight) next to psuedo-scientific names (like Biofeedback or Id Insinuation).I'm not inherently against psionics.  Indeed, years back, I once designed the psionic class for a homebrew system.  The difference was that the psionic class fit the fantasy flavor, being merely a different, more mental-based magic than wizardry.  Lose the goofy pseudoscientific names, and half the objections against psionics go away.Mechanics.  I don't think that psionics is intrinsically more broken than core D&D.  The problem, however, is that I already know the overpowered magical combos to disallow; I already know how specific spells work (and more importantly, how they don't work when someone is trying to slip an overpowered interpretation by me).  I also know how many overpowered spells have been modified (either in 3.5, revised supplements or house rules) because of the vast numbers of players who found problems that needed to be fixed.Using psionics means that I have to learn a new system, with roughly as much information, interpretations and quirky interrelations as the magic system.  However, while the majority of the players at my table are going to be using the magic system in some shape or form, odds are all that effort learnng psionics is going into allowing only one character to use the system.  I can think of far better uses for my time.Add to all that the fact that the less-used psionic system is unlikely to have been tested as much or as thoroughly as the magical system, which means that I'm going to be running into more rough edges or ill-thought out combinations.Take, as a contrasting example, the Binder.  It's an unusual flavor, but one that could fit into most fantasy worlds in some shape or form.  It has some odd mechanics, but at heart, it's simply referring back to core magical systems and spells.Psionics doesn't try to make it easy to add to your campaign--it's a starkly dissimilar flavor with a brand new set of mechanics and powers, all of which apply to psionics and only psionics.  Since little effort is made to mesh with standard D&D, it takes little effort for me to exclude it and I have little desire to put in the effort necessary to include it.</blockquote>

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