rounser said:
For instance, for me, psionics in D&D's swords & sorcery fantasy setting is somewhat redundant next to magic, and next to it it comes across as weird and alien, with fish-out-of-water sci-fi overtones.
My complaints with D&d3E psionics can roughly be summed up as failing to be weird, alien, and fish-out-of-water. It's too much like magic (specifically, sorcerers) in both means and results. If it's pretty much just another spelllist (and not all that different, really), then publish it as such. For psionics, iwant something that is different from magic, both in feel and results. I want something that can't do stuff magic can, but can do stuff magic can't (or, at least, do it more easily).
For me, it's only really welcome as a true rarity amongst things which are supposed to be weird and alien, like mind flayers and githyanki, or in a setting specifically designed to be weird and alien, like Dark Sun. On PCs, in a place like FR or Greyhawk? Yuck...
That's how i've roughly used it, with the exception that both my homebrew setting and favorite published setting (SpellJammer) have room for psionics in the setting, at least as a peripheral element.
I'm convinced that in AD&D, it's been historically used by powergamers as a sort of back door to break the game by. In 1E AD&D they were a powerful freebie that you just tacked on to your PC from a random roll. In 2E a psionicist had a grab bag of game balance hobbling tricks which allowed him to dominate pretty much any other character of the same level, and min/max to do things that would take a mage of far higher level to do the same. No wonder psionics got it's fans.
Well, i'm a huge fan of The Complete Psionics Handbook, and, as i mentioned above, i've almost always had psionics in my D&D games. Now, 1st ed was *way* broken--i still remember the PC with a couple of lucky rolls: she had roughly the capabilities of a 10th level wizard on top of everything else--and starting pretty much right at 1st level. However' 2nd ed worked fine for me. I constantly wonder whether i did something wrong, or something very right (in how i ran the game), because i never ran into these balance problems that it seems everyone else talks of. In fact, the psionicists were, if anything, a little bit underpowered. Could you get disintegrate at a very low level? Sure. But when a wizard used disintegrate, they didn't have a 1-in-20 chance of ceasing to exist, permanently. Most psionicists never even learned dangerous powers like that, and the ones that did only used it under great duress. IME, the balancing effects in 2e psionics (particularly the natural-20 result) were actually well-done, providing true tradeoffs that made the characters balanced in actual play.
Oh, and, strictly speaking, it couldn't have been *just* me. I also played a psionicist in a game that had a novice GM and 5 first-time players (and myself, at that point quite experienced). To my shame, i worked the system for all it was worth, making the most effective character i could. I was merely on par with the others, and slightly underpowered in a toe-to-toe fight.
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in which case you were less useful than a bard or 2e "thief".
