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<blockquote data-quote="rounser" data-source="post: 356081" data-attributes="member: 1106">From that perspective, that makes them just about as &quot;out of place&quot; in swords &amp; sorcery fantasy as D&amp;D's martial artist monks are.&nbsp; Oriental monks don't belong by default in swords &amp; sorcery fantasy, and carry some flavour baggage from their true origins...but it's easy enough to handwave away, partially because people think martial arts are cool enough to want them in our game.&nbsp; For me, psionics out of the hands of mind flayers and the like (which are supposed to be alien) has flavour implications which outweigh the gains in &quot;cool factor&quot;.&nbsp; This is not the case for many other folks.In your above examples, I would attribute abilities derived from spiritual transcendence or personal enlightenment to ideas such as 'chi' or divine powers of the spirit rather than parapsychological powers of the mind.&nbsp; It may seem to be splitting hairs, but I think that pseudo-science and mysticism are almost directly at odds.&nbsp; From what I gather, the implications of the term psionics are that they are powers which can be justified by pseudo-scientific reasoning...and enlightenment or transcendence are not so easily deconstructed or analysed.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="rounser, post: 356081, member: 1106"] From that perspective, that makes them just about as "out of place" in swords & sorcery fantasy as D&D's martial artist monks are. Oriental monks don't belong by default in swords & sorcery fantasy, and carry some flavour baggage from their true origins...but it's easy enough to handwave away, partially because people think martial arts are cool enough to want them in our game. For me, psionics out of the hands of mind flayers and the like (which are supposed to be alien) has flavour implications which outweigh the gains in "cool factor". This is not the case for many other folks. In your above examples, I would attribute abilities derived from spiritual transcendence or personal enlightenment to ideas such as 'chi' or divine powers of the spirit rather than parapsychological powers of the mind. It may seem to be splitting hairs, but I think that pseudo-science and mysticism are almost directly at odds. From what I gather, the implications of the term psionics are that they are powers which can be justified by pseudo-scientific reasoning...and enlightenment or transcendence are not so easily deconstructed or analysed. [/QUOTE]

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