D&D General So… psionic powers are no longer purely mental?

[Corinnguard]

You left out science is magic. Sufficiently advanced tech and all that.

And magic can be seen by some (artificers and wizards) as a science. A lot of trial and error went into finding the right kind of guano for Fireball.

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

If psionic powers don't need (V,S or M) components then the "displays" (mental, smell, noise, lights..) should be necessary to avoid crimes by psionic assasins in the middle of the crowd.

I can understand the 5.5 psionic powers to be a template like standars spells because like this the sourcebooks with new psionic powers/spirity magic can be sold better to no-psionic-friendly players.

Personally I would rather psionic with its own mark of identity to feel my psionic PCs are different and different, like a exclusive urban tribe or a inimitable fashion style.

I am too used to pools of power points. I would rather the option of spell slots to be spent to be recycled into power points. There wouldn't power abuse because the power points couldn't be saved for the highest-level powers.

 

[Kobold Avenger]

And magic can be seen by some (artificers and wizards) as a science. A lot of trial and error went into finding the right kind of guano for Fireball.

If anything needs a different magic systems it's what Artificers do, it's science/technomancy there's devices and crafting involved. A heat ray from a prototype gun shouldn't be a spell like Fire Bolt and neither should an Etheric Disruption Grenade be something like Dispel Magic.

But they are, because most people don't want to learn a new system that heavily relies on crafting and skill checks to actually simulate an Artificer

 

[Azzy]

I really had problems, the DM basically decide to ban it after the massive slowdown that psionic combat caused, it was too many things to keep track of with tangents which they were completely unfamiliar with

I wanted to like psionics in 2e, but it was such a badly tacked-on system, that didn't work like anything else, and could easily become wildly unbalanced. I much preferred 3.5e's psionics.

 

[Incenjucar]

I will always prefer psionics to be a counter to magic the way magic is a counter to martial (and to be thus countered by martial), However, this requires deliberate design from the outset and has a major impact on world building.

 

[Staffan]

I will always prefer psionics to be a counter to magic the way magic is a counter to martial (and to be thus countered by martial), However, this requires deliberate design from the outset and has a major impact on world building.

3.5e psionics made me realize that the Wizard is antithetical to having a game with multiple different interesting magic-users. Why? Because they do (almost) everything, eating up all the design space.

Ideally, psionics should be much better than magic at messing with people's minds, and worse at direct elemental manifestations. But Wizards are designed to be the only primary casters in the game – sure, you also have clerics and druids but their spell lists are much more limited in scope, and sorcerers are just wizards without hats – so almost every potential magic effect can be done by wizards, and put at the lowest possible level for wizards. So you can't give the psion a better version of charm or suggestion or read thoughts, because the wizard already has the best possible version of those effects.

And that applies to other aspects as well, to the point where the answer to many "How do you do a _________?" questions becomes "Play a wizard and pick spells that do _______." 5e made the problem worse by making spell level inherent to a spell, rather than making it a function of both the spell and the caster type (e.g. in 3e flame strike was a 5th level spell for clerics and a 4th level spell for druids). That might have been necessary to divorce spell effects from caster level (e.g. 1d6/level damage), but it removes the ability to show that a particular type of caster is better or worse at a particular type of magic without building bespoke spells.

So in my ideal world, the wizard would have a much-reduced scope to their magic, leaving design space for other casters doing different things. But that sort of thing has to be built into the game from the start, and it never has been.

 

[CreamCloud0]

3.5e psionics made me realize that the Wizard is antithetical to having a game with multiple different interesting magic-users. Why? Because they do (almost) everything, eating up all the design space.

Ideally, psionics should be much better than magic at messing with people's minds, and worse at direct elemental manifestations. But Wizards are designed to be the only primary casters in the game – sure, you also have clerics and druids but their spell lists are much more limited in scope, and sorcerers are just wizards without hats – so almost every potential magic effect can be done by wizards, and put at the lowest possible level for wizards. So you can't give the psion a better version of charm or suggestion or read thoughts, because the wizard already has the best possible version of those effects.

And that applies to other aspects as well, to the point where the answer to many "How do you do a _________?" questions becomes "Play a wizard and pick spells that do _______." 5e made the problem worse by making spell level inherent to a spell, rather than making it a function of both the spell and the caster type (e.g. in 3e flame strike was a 5th level spell for clerics and a 4th level spell for druids). That might have been necessary to divorce spell effects from caster level (e.g. 1d6/level damage), but it removes the ability to show that a particular type of caster is better or worse at a particular type of magic without building bespoke spells.

So in my ideal world, the wizard would have a much-reduced scope to their magic, leaving design space for other casters doing different things. But that sort of thing has to be built into the game from the start, and it never has been.

it's such a shame they didn't implement class based spell tiering, like of course it makes sense for the bard to get mass suggestion at a lower level than the wizard and the druid is learning control weather far sooner than the cleric, that's their whole deal! it's one of the simplest ways you could've added more individual flavour to the 5e casters

 

[Minigiant]

it's such a shame they didn't implement class based spell tiering, like of course it makes sense for the bard to get mass suggestion at a lower level than the wizard and the druid is learning control weather far sooner than the cleric, that's their whole deal! it's one of the simplest ways you could've added more individual flavour to the 5e casters

We all know why.

Fans would mess it up and note the wrong level. Happened all the time in my time in 3rd. And with AI, people would look it up and see hallucinations as it would refer to the same spells at different levels.

What we should do is have lower level copies of a spell with a different name exclusive to certain classes

Tasha's Mind Whip at 2nd level for wizards and sorcerers.
Psi Lash at 1st Level for psions
Song Scorge at 3rd level for bards.

 

[CreamCloud0]

We all know why.

Fans would mess it up and note the wrong level. Happened all the time in my time in 3rd. And with AI, people would look it up and see hallucinations as it would refer to the same spells at different levels.

What we should do is have lower level copies of a spell with a different name exclusive to certain classes

Tasha's Mind Whip at 2nd level for wizards and sorcerers.
Psi Lash at 1st Level for psions
Song Scorge at 3rd level for bards.

as much as i fear that would be true i don't think games should be designed around compensating for the incompetence of the low percentile and making X different variations on most spells is going to result in page bloat something fierce.

also i was taking about original 5e, the AI summary idiocy hadn't even begun to start at that point.

 

[Minigiant]

as much as i fear that would be true i don't think games should be designed around compensating for the incompetence of the low percentile and making X different variations on most spells is going to result in page bloat something fierce.

also i was taking about original 5e, the AI summary idiocy hadn't even begun to start at that point.

My Brother in Mielikki.

The vast majority of D&D fans would screw it up.
Its not a small percentage.

People cant even record their expended resources between sessions to extend an adventure day over 3 sessions.