psi-culture vs. magic culture (would it work?)

[Greybar]

Haraiva / Two Songs / Ballar players: GO AWAY!

Summary:
What kind of side effects should I see if, given two cultures in conflict, one has psionics and the other has "normal" magic?

Background concept:
An ancient culture/race rebelled against the divine and temporal powers of their day. In part they saw themselves as transcendant due to their growing master of internal (psionic) power. They were condemned, hunted, and cast out. Their bloodline still exists in trickles to this day, and this bloodline has the potential to develop their otherworldly and unorthodox powers.

The "bad guy" culture, to use a very broad and inaccurate brush, is the one with the psionic base. There are members of this culture that have studied arcane or divine power, but this is more rare. I'd like to turn the psionic side to being creepy, which shouldn't be too hard given the base book descriptions of many of the powers. The psionic equivalent of the Alienist PrC is something digging around in my mind.

The "good guy" culture is dominated by divine hierarchy, with wizardry practiced within the control of the Goddess of Secrets/Magic and the Goddess of Creation/Forge/Wealth. Arcane power outside of the divine boundaries is taboo, in large part because that means it is out of the hands of those in temporal power as well.


So, what problems might I run into here? Things that the psionic side just cannot do that would cripple them in war with the more orthodox side? I am planning on staying with the default psionics=magic rule (i.e. detect magic also detects psionics, etc.)

Other neat things I could do?

Thanks for your thoughts!

john

 

[BiggusGeekus]

I think it is an excellent idea for a campaign.

You might want to assign templates. The magic culture guys have -2 power (or whatever the psi points are called) and a +1 will save vs magic. The psi culture guys get +2 power and a -1 will save vs magic. Just to help people know what side they're on. This gives a bit of a bonus to the players -- who will likely not be playing psi guys -- but that's fine.

In one of my few attempts to run a game with psi I had detect psionics and detect magic as two seperate spells. That turned out to be incredibly stupid and I agree that making them do the same thing is the only way to run things.

IMHO.

 

[LGodamus]

Sounds like fun...are you gonna be using the expanded psi handbook?

If so I cannot really comment cause Amazon says I will get mine sometime in MAY!!!

 

[Greybar]

BG: hmm. I'm torn on the save-modifier idea, but I expect that some sort of template will be worth it. I'll probably only apply such a template to the NPC side for simplicity.

LGodamus: Certainly I'm hoping that the 3.5 psi-book (aka "Expanded") will make a lot of this move more smoothly. Right now the game is on hiatus, largely due to the recent arrival of my first child. So I've got time to wait for the new book.

Reworking large amounts of monsters/NPCs is certainly one of the downsides.

Hmm... thinking of this from the other side. If you were a PC on the psionic side, what would you think would be unfair or unbalanced about the scenario? Kinda along the "Arg, we keep getting our a** kicked since there is no equivalent to their prayer spell" or somesuch?

john

 

[Calico_Jack73]

I submitted a campaign setting to WotC for their contest which involved Psionics and Magic. The setting would be a Magocracy in which the Wizard guilds would more or less run almost everything and brooked no challenge to their power. They'd hunt down Sorcerers but didn't really care too much about them because Sorcerery is innate, not taught. Psionics on the other hand COULD be taught and presented a greater threat to their rule (the plan was to use "Psionics are different"). Psionic items would be traded in back alleys over the Black Market which is where you'd also look for someone to train you. The guilds would be separated by school of magic, each convinced of their own superiority and generalist wizards would not be allowed in the setting as the guilds controlled who would be taught the secrets of magic. The guilds would war on each other much like the different temples of martial artists did in the Sunday Kung Fu theater flicks.

Obviously... WotC didn't think too much of it.

 

[Greybar]

Hmm... looking at the psi stuff from WotC there is a lot of psi-vs-psi stuff that the bad guys would probably have (to defend vs other bad guys) that magic using PCs would be able to bypass.

So either I could mod that as giving some small benefit vs magic too, or just consider it a disadvantage of being evil - under the maxim "good is stupid, but evil bites itself on the a**".

john

 

[tarchon]

I always have had a hard time seing any difference between psionics and magic, aside from the terminology. Establishing that clearly might be a good place to start.