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Message: <blockquote data-quote="I'm A Banana" data-source="post: 7693639" data-attributes="member: 2067">There are a lot of psionic aberrations, but in D&D as a whole, aberration-style psionics is only one subset of psionics. <ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul"> Dark Sun has psionic beasts and plants and humanoids aplenty, born out of evolution and life-warping magic, not tentacled horrors. A psion on Athas is more like a mutant in a world where mutants are common, a creature more evolved than its kin. </li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul"> Eberron's psionics is linked to the Dream World and the dark subconscious. A psion in the Five Nations is most famously fused with the soul of a dream-creature, but any creature of impulse and imagination might fit the theme very well.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul"> Gem dragons are associated with psionics. A psion following in their tradition might seek balance and isolation, using crystals to attune their minds.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul"> Celestials like hollyphants, shedu, coatl, ki-rin, baku, opicinus, titans/empyreans, agathion, planetars, solars, and various demons and devils and slaadi and daemons in Old-School D&D can point to a planar narrative, where the origins of psionic power are astral or philosophical in nature, rather than something fundamentally alien. </li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul"> Yuan-ti are psionics, linked narratively to their great intellect and genre-wise to their "pulpy" vibe. They'd fit in nice among the mutants of Dark Sun (body alteration is a thing with them already) - a psion in this tradition might arise from having their mind enhanced with toxins and venoms, not tentacled things from beyond. </li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul"> Exotics like ustilagors, quaggoths and su-monsters and brain moles and gray oozes and thought eaters and cerebral parasites and yellow molds and crysmals and old-school duergar are just a little WTF. Some could be lumped into "psionic nature," others into the aberration camp, and others into other camps. </li> </ul>...all of which just means that "psionics are from the Astral Plane" or "Psionics is from evolution" is about as valid a narrative in D&D historically as "psionics is from the Far Realm." I wouldn't expect to have to stick tentacles into Athas or to conflate Xoriat with Dal Quor in order to explain psionics in Dark Sun or Eberron. The time to complain about it is when they're collecting feedback, which, LO, they are doing. No one needs to run their complaints by you first to make sure it's okay.</blockquote>

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