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<blockquote data-quote="AmerginLiath" data-source="post: 8279452" data-attributes="member: 777">It strikes me as sort of funny the logic that “psionics should be it’s own class because it was in previous editions,” when players from 1976-1991 were introduced to and used psionics as a system outside of its own class (in its Eldritch Wizardry/1st edition AD&amp;D appendix form before the 2nd edition Complete Psionics Handbook). All the psionic characters I’ve played have been non-psionic classes; as described in that Your First Character thread, my first D&amp;D character was a cleric who rolled well on Gary’s old psionics table!Initially, the game differentiated Fighting Man and Magic User, but it quickly stopped siloing spellcasters into one single class (whether Spellcasting has permeated into too many classes is a whole ‘nother debate). Keeping psionic abilities corralled into one class — contrary to various literary depictions of the breadth of mental powers within other heroic skillsets — is one choice, but not necessarily the only or correct choice in the game’s history (indeed one which proves contrary to other decisions for similar issues in design over the past few decades).The idea of spreading out psionics across classes but having a unified (simple to use) game mechanic to describe that system strikes me as elegant, similar to how different classes interact with a common Spellcasting system. The challenge is to not make it too complicated (where previous iterations of 5e psionics in UA have crashed and burned, as attempts to throw in extra math eliminated its elegance).</blockquote>

[QUOTE="AmerginLiath, post: 8279452, member: 777"] It strikes me as sort of funny the logic that “psionics should be it’s own class because it was in previous editions,” when players from 1976-1991 were introduced to and used psionics as a system outside of its own class (in its Eldritch Wizardry/1st edition AD&D appendix form before the 2nd edition Complete Psionics Handbook). All the psionic characters I’ve played have been non-psionic classes; as described in that Your First Character thread, my first D&D character was a cleric who rolled well on Gary’s old psionics table! Initially, the game differentiated Fighting Man and Magic User, but it quickly stopped siloing spellcasters into one single class (whether Spellcasting has permeated into too many classes is a whole ‘nother debate). Keeping psionic abilities corralled into one class — contrary to various literary depictions of the breadth of mental powers within other heroic skillsets — is one choice, but not necessarily the only or correct choice in the game’s history (indeed one which proves contrary to other decisions for similar issues in design over the past few decades). The idea of spreading out psionics across classes but having a unified (simple to use) game mechanic to describe that system strikes me as elegant, similar to how different classes interact with a common Spellcasting system. The challenge is to not make it too complicated (where previous iterations of 5e psionics in UA have crashed and burned, as attempts to throw in extra math eliminated its elegance). [/QUOTE]

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