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<blockquote data-quote="Aldarc" data-source="post: 7411923" data-attributes="member: 5142">Here are a few of my scattered thoughts on psionics and such. Like many others, I also appreciate their presence in Eberron and Dark Sun. I enjoy the aesthetic and niche of psionic powers. They provide a different sort of &quot;aesthetic&quot; from standard D&amp;D magic that I find useful for a variety of homebrew campaigns that I have devised and used. I can also point to psionic rules that IMHO have done a good job of presenting the wide range of psychic, mystic, medium, paranormal, spiritualist, etc. abilities. A lot of this admittedly comes out of the 3.X era, which was my introduction to tabletop psionics. 1) Blue Rose (True20 and AGE): Blue Rose draws heavily on romantic fantasy, but it's use of psychic mysticism does a tremendous service of presenting how this magical &quot;tradition&quot; often appears throughout fantasy as a whole. (Weirdly enough, IMHO, BRAGE is probably one of the best systems for me to potentially use for a Sword &amp; Sorcery campaign.) Blue Rose True20 and AGE treat powers almost as a skill system with checks against fatigue. 2) D&amp;D 3.X and Dreamscarred Press: D&amp;D 3.5's Expanded Psionics laid the groundwork for a balanced psionic magic system, as well as one that could potentially either supplement or replace arcane and divine magic systems in your setting. Dreamscarred Press took it and ran with it in beautiful ways in Pathfinder, actually providing even more solid balance on Expanded Psionics. But worth noting is that Dreamscarred Press initially used the True20 system for its own psionic campaign setting, The Third Dawn, before switching to Pathfinder, particularly after Green Ronin's support ended for True20.&nbsp; 3) Paizo's Occult Adventures: Paizo basically remodeled psionics into more &quot;occult&quot; mysticism, psychics, mesmerism, spirit mediums, and the like. I don't think that Paizo is big on psionic magic, and Dreamscarred Press had already become the leaders of the field for psionics in Pathfinder rules. So this rebranding gave paizo an opportunity to move away from &quot;tradition.&quot; From my own limited understanding, it has been a fairly popular book within Pathfinder circles. 4) Starfinder: The beauty of Starfinder's &quot;psion&quot; is that it essentially exists as a subclass within the Mystic class, which also essentially includes &quot;space clerics&quot; and &quot;space druids&quot; as subclasses, along with akashics and star shamans. Many fans of psionics have advocated for moving psionic magic to wisdom (as intuition, ESPerception, and mysticism), and so this was regarded as a nice move. But it also highlights how psychics, druids, and priests often held similar niches as cultural &quot;mystics&quot;.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Aldarc, post: 7411923, member: 5142"] Here are a few of my scattered thoughts on psionics and such. Like many others, I also appreciate their presence in Eberron and Dark Sun. I enjoy the aesthetic and niche of psionic powers. They provide a different sort of "aesthetic" from standard D&D magic that I find useful for a variety of homebrew campaigns that I have devised and used. I can also point to psionic rules that IMHO have done a good job of presenting the wide range of psychic, mystic, medium, paranormal, spiritualist, etc. abilities. A lot of this admittedly comes out of the 3.X era, which was my introduction to tabletop psionics. 1) [B]Blue Rose[/B] (True20 and AGE): Blue Rose draws heavily on romantic fantasy, but it's use of psychic mysticism does a tremendous service of presenting how this magical "tradition" often appears throughout fantasy as a whole. (Weirdly enough, IMHO, BRAGE is probably one of the best systems for me to potentially use for a Sword & Sorcery campaign.) Blue Rose True20 and AGE treat powers almost as a skill system with checks against fatigue. 2) [B]D&D 3.X and Dreamscarred Press:[/B] D&D 3.5's Expanded Psionics laid the groundwork for a balanced psionic [I]magic[/I] system, as well as one that could potentially either supplement or replace arcane and divine magic systems in your setting. Dreamscarred Press took it and ran with it in beautiful ways in Pathfinder, actually providing even more solid balance on Expanded Psionics. But worth noting is that Dreamscarred Press initially used the True20 system for its own psionic campaign setting, The Third Dawn, before switching to Pathfinder, particularly after Green Ronin's support ended for True20. 3) [B]Paizo's Occult Adventures:[/B] Paizo basically remodeled psionics into more "occult" mysticism, psychics, mesmerism, spirit mediums, and the like. I don't think that Paizo is big on psionic magic, and Dreamscarred Press had already become the leaders of the field for psionics in Pathfinder rules. So this rebranding gave paizo an opportunity to move away from "tradition." From my own limited understanding, it has been a fairly popular book within Pathfinder circles. 4) [B]Starfinder:[/B] The beauty of Starfinder's "psion" is that it essentially exists as a subclass within the Mystic class, which also essentially includes "space clerics" and "space druids" as subclasses, along with akashics and star shamans. Many fans of psionics have advocated for moving psionic magic to wisdom (as intuition, ESP[I]erception[/I], and mysticism), and so this was regarded as a nice move. But it also highlights how psychics, druids, and priests often held similar niches as cultural "mystics". [/QUOTE]

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