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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Mercule" data-source="post: 6911152" data-attributes="member: 5100">I'd have to look deeper, but I've mostly chalked it up to psionics being mental, therefore it tends to occur in heightened minds. Those same minds tend to have a higher ratio of alien thoughts. Basically, it's common cause and tying them too closely is post hoc ergo propter hoc.That's probably a good list. I tend towards the first option, with a smattering of the second -- not a big fan of overt crystal waving. The last one isn't too bad, but it's important to note that either form of Far Realm is only one/two origins for psionics. In a lot of cases, option #3 is really just one of the first two bastardized to a point where it's almost unrecognizable.I'm sure. Though, I'm actually coming to place where I think I favor the Mystic concept. Throw the Monk into the psionics bucket (implicitly, of course -- don't rewrite it) and gather everything around ki, chakras, biofeedback, whatever. If the effects are magical, let them be magic. If they're at the same level as the Monk, then handle them accordingly. Just avoid situations where you have psionic beings tossing something that looks like a fire bolt in an antimagic field.Most of the use psionics has seen, in my games, has been for wild talents that tended to look an awful lot like spell-like abilities on races that didn't normally have spell-like abilities. We had plenty of actual Psion characters, but they pretty much filled the Sorcerer thematic niche (blood in my veins, let's figure out how to use it well), which is one of the reasons why we played the 3E Sorcerer as a Wizard who learned deep, instead of wide (engineer v. scientist?).The 5E Sorcerer is now pretty hardwired to the "natural mage" niche. Taking the Magic Initiate feat for Sorcerer spells does a good job of representing a psionic wild talent. Fix the whole thing for folks like me by putting out a variant Wilder (sans random magic) that explicitly says they use natural language and gestures, rather than the mystical V and S. Maybe give them a virtual spell component pouch, too. Use the existing metamagic abilities to represent true mental-only "casting". After that, I'm all on board with going full bore for the Mystic sort of psion. That's doubly true because I don't actually see how you reconcile pulp mysticism (for lack of a better term) with Lovecraftian horrors. I mean, I can see it in some cases, just not welded together.As a note, I have a friend who has always been a big fan of psionics. When they did the Mystic, we got to talking. He hadn't ever consciously pondered it, but it turns out he just wanted to play D&D and play a caster, but didn't always want to mess with the pseudo-Vancian slot system. Looking at the 5E improvements to spell prep, he didn't think he actually cared what they did with psionics. There are probably more than a few people who are in the same boat, whether consciously or not. They might actually be the hardest to convert because psionics that isn't mechanically just an alternate magic system will never meet their criteria.</blockquote>

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