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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Eldritch_Lord" data-source="post: 5429204" data-attributes="member: 52073">I wasn't addressing that specifically to you; I was addressing it to people who say things like "It just feels Sci-Fi to me" (like Sorrowdusk just did) without going into the why or the how and without considering that maybe psionics is the more fantasy system and Vancian magic the more sci-fi one.Glad to help.  Again, I wasn't addressing the mechanical disparity, just the flavor one.  Though I don't think the sorcerer is different enough in feel from the other Vancian casters to represent any sort of different system, psionics or otherwise.Aside from the whole crystal fetish aspect of 3e psionics, I'm not seeing how the flavor has anything at all to do with parapsychology.  1e psionics had a much stronger parapsychology flavor to it, but 3e psionics has done away with that for the most part.  It's basically "traditional fantasy magic" with a fancier naming scheme, since Vancian magic (even the sorcerer) doesn't have the right feel for what people generally consider "fantasy magic" nowadays (small signature repertoire of powers, limited scope, ability to vary the effort put into a spell, etc.).From a flavor perspective, as I believe someone mentioned earlier, the difference is that an arcanist draws upon an external energy to work magic while a psionicist draws upon an internal energy to work magic.  Originally, psionics had a fairly different flavor in that having it or not was based on a random "mutation" chance, it focused on mental combat and telekinesis, and otherwise had all the trappings of sci-fi that you said you detest.If you don't like the flavor, from a mechanical perspective it's useful for providing a mechanical basis for someone to create a traditional fantasy caster type, just like the ToM and ToB systems provide mechanical bases for many more sorts of magic than their default flavor (for instance, incarnum does a very nice take on the anime martial artist in place of the monk/ninja/swordsage, and the binder can represent a primitive shaman who calls on the spirits fairly well).</blockquote>

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