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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Scurvy_Platypus" data-source="post: 5514893" data-attributes="member: 43283">So, as part of ongoing stuff, I find myself looking at psionics. And I'm wondering, what's the system I should go with and/or the approach I should take? On rather large consideration is the OGC aspect.Part of my problem is that I've never been in a game in the past 10 years that allowed psionics. And the games I've run, I've never had anyone interested in playing one so I haven't been able to get a feel for the rules from either side of the screen.Of course, online scuttlebutt is the usual range of "psionics suck", "psionics are overpowered", and "psionics are a great alternative system that can just replace the vancian system". Which basically means, the value of them varies depending on whom you're talking to. *sigh*Rather than trying to deal with the question of "should I allow" psionics, I figure a more useful approach is "which one should I use?" Then I'll decide what to do from there. And like I said, OGC use is important to me; I want to be able to post this online using the OGL and know that I'm 100% legal.1. I've got the Green Ronin "The Psychic's Handbook". It's 3.0 and skill based. Has some charm to it and I like a number of things about it overall. OGC also doesn't seem to be an issue.2. There's the WotC psionics as posted on the d20 Hypertext SRD. OGC is obviously taken care of, the main thing I'm concerned about is that WotC really doesn't seem to be as up on the whole "balance" thing as the rest of the d20 community; in other words, WotC might be able to make a system and have it be a functional one, but I don't trust them to have balanced it correctly. The CR system (and Upper_Krust's fix/approach) springs to mind.3. There's Dreamscarred Press. Lots of positive press about them, but no experience on my part. This is complicated by the 45 different products they seem to have, as well as the fact that there's now a whole new redo of their psionics for Pathfinder.3a. So going with DSP, I first need to figure out whether to go with the Pathfinder redo or not. Here the OGC becomes a particular concern because a lot of Pathfinder stuff is relying on the Pathfinder license; which to me is basically like d20-branded stuff back in the day that released some stuff under the OGL. It's murkier trying to use stuff like this, expecially since I've found a lot of the OGC declarations to be vague to begin with.3b. Other than messing with changing stuff from 3.x to Pathfinder, what is the DSP reboot of their psionics bringing to the table? Are they addressing actual problems with their earlier material?3c. If I choose to go with the earlier 3.x version of DSP, what should I actually be going with? If there were problems with it that they fixed when doing the Pathfinder reboot, have they backported those changes? Are is everyone basically left with the choice of either having to figure it out themselves or jump to a new rulesystem?4. Alternative approach. I can grab something like the Anime SRD and simply build discrete/stand-alone powers. If you're unfamiliar with it, it's similar to M&M although there are differences ; as an aside, Steve Kenson did _not_ design the Anime SRD/SAS d20 rules, despite what some folks might think. He wrote some background on comic history/time periods.5. Something else I've missed?The rule base I'm going to be using is 3.x, so compatibility isn't an especially huge factor. I'll be modifying it to an extent anyway.</blockquote>

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