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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Andor" data-source="post: 6182135" data-attributes="member: 1879">For me the stumbling point with Psionics not being magic is the anti-magic field.The anti-magic field always has seemed to me to represent an area where "real world" physics apply. In the real world I cannot lift a mug without touching it. Therefore if the mages levitation spell doesn't work but the Psions levitation power does it is distinctly disjarring to have this impossible action taking place in what is otherwise an impossibility free zone.Or if the Psion really is using his internal energy to levitate that mug then I expect hiim to burn just as many calories as he would holding it in his hand. Similarly if he starts flinging boulders at high speed he's better have large fat reserves or a henchmen with an energy drink on standby. If not then you are violating the law of conservation of energy without the use of magic and your game world becomes a lot less accessable to my intuitive grasp. As a literary example of this in Lawrence Watt-Evans "Ethshar" series one magical tradition called witchcraft has access to a traditional variety of tricks including levitation but they really are powered by your own energy, I think they call it vital essence. So you can levitate if you want to but you are doing as much work as if you were holding yourself over your own head. The trick was they didn't have good feedback on how much energy they had left. An overly ambitious witch could easily kill themselves by exhaustion. Another group called warlocks seems to employ the same bag of tricks but they call upon an outside energy source, which happily grants them essentially unlimited power. The trouble is that the energy source wants something from them and the more power they draw from it the harder it becomes to resist its call. Eventually they disappear, drawn off by the alien being calling in the debt of it's loaned power.That world also contains other mystical traditions including Deism, Demonology, Necromancy, Sorcery,  and most prominantly Wizardry which uses arcane rituals to achieve... almost anything really. But it's tricky and dangerous and you can screw up in bizzare ways. Wizardry can produce an anti-magic field in which wizardry simply ceases to operate. But it doesn't effect other forms of magic in the least because they draw upon different powers using different principles.So the question really becomes, why does a single effect turn off both arcane AND divine magic but not psionics? If arcane and divine magic are far enough apart to warrant the split why don't they have seperate anti-blah zones? 3.5 dabbles with the concept of splitting out the anti-psionic zones from the anti-magic zone and I personally think that's a more cosmologically interesting way to go. However if you don't split out the zones by power or principle then it remains jarring to me conceptually to have a hunk of land with the special property of "Physics Only. 186,000 mps isn't just a good idea, it's the law." and then allow impossibilities to stroll on in if they only change the nametag and wear their hat on backwards.</blockquote>

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