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<blockquote data-quote="Deset Gled" data-source="post: 9673035" data-attributes="member: 7808">I agree with all this quite a bit, and I particularly enjoy the way you voiced these ideas without falling into the trap of jargon that so often drags these discussions down.Building on your post, I would add to and/or summarize part of what you say as the idea of different power sources.&nbsp; One of the critical things that leads to the narrative differences between wizards, sorcerers, clerics, druids, psions, etc, is that their abilities come from different sources of power.&nbsp; Wizards use procedures and intelligence to wield magic as if it were similar to science.&nbsp; The cleric doesn't really control magic themselves, they recieve their magical access from the god they worship.&nbsp; Druids get their magical power from nature, Warlocks have pacts, etc.&nbsp; Because the power of magic is accessed differently, it follows that there could be different mechanics to describe how the magic is used.&nbsp; Psions, IMNSHO, bring to the table a completely new power source, and thus I would prefer that they have different mechanics that help show - not tell - what makes them different.It's also very notable that D&amp;D 5e completely (and, probably intentionally) fails to deal with power sources.&nbsp; Unfortunately, almost all magic in this edition is virtually indistinguishable.&nbsp; 3e separated out Arcane magic from Divine, and Supernatural abilites from Spell-like, and generally did a lot of <a href="https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MagicAIsMagicA" target="_blank">Magic A is Magic A</a> type stuff. 5e, OTOH, just says &quot;magic&quot;, then does jazz hands and exits stage left. This makes it harder for a psion to feel different from a wizard, because there's already less to make a wizard different from a sorcerer (etc.). Without a more developed magic system related to describing &quot;hard&quot; magic rules, it's actually kind of hard to justify why psions needs to be a new class instead of just being a subclass of other casters (IMNSO, a subclass of warlock would make the most sense, but that's another rabbit hole). It's an issue with the underlying system that is hard to patch/modify with new classes.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Deset Gled, post: 9673035, member: 7808"] I agree with all this quite a bit, and I particularly enjoy the way you voiced these ideas without falling into the trap of jargon that so often drags these discussions down. Building on your post, I would add to and/or summarize part of what you say as the idea of different power sources. One of the critical things that leads to the narrative differences between wizards, sorcerers, clerics, druids, psions, etc, is that their abilities come from different sources of power. Wizards use procedures and intelligence to wield magic as if it were similar to science. The cleric doesn't really control magic themselves, they recieve their magical access from the god they worship. Druids get their magical power from nature, Warlocks have pacts, etc. Because the power of magic is accessed differently, it follows that there could be different mechanics to describe how the magic is used. Psions, IMNSHO, bring to the table a completely new power source, and thus I would prefer that they have different mechanics that help show - not tell - what makes them different. It's also very notable that D&D 5e completely (and, probably intentionally) fails to deal with power sources. Unfortunately, almost all magic in this edition is virtually indistinguishable. 3e separated out Arcane magic from Divine, and Supernatural abilites from Spell-like, and generally did a lot of [URL='https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MagicAIsMagicA']Magic A is Magic A[/URL] type stuff. 5e, OTOH, just says "magic", then does jazz hands and exits stage left. This makes it harder for a psion to feel different from a wizard, because there's already less to make a wizard different from a sorcerer (etc.). Without a more developed magic system related to describing "hard" magic rules, it's actually kind of hard to justify why psions needs to be a new class instead of just being a subclass of other casters (IMNSO, a subclass of warlock would make the most sense, but that's another rabbit hole). It's an issue with the underlying system that is hard to patch/modify with new classes. [/QUOTE]

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