D&D 5E Unhappy with Psionics requiring Far Realms flavor

[Jester David]

M

I don't necessarily agree with that, though it may have been true in certain editions. To me psionics brings to mind the pulp sci fi and fantasy conventions of the 20s-40s, of authors like Edward Rice Burroughs and L Ron Hubbard (pre cult). I think this has been lost as the game has aged of course. I think it's high time that they cleaved back to those old influences and, well, let the freak flag fly on psionics and the sword and planet gonzo sci-fi it hails from. I think they can do it without being cheesey of course. I mean, Dark Sun is to me the quintessential psionic campaign. It's a sword and planet world for certain.

I should have said "backstory" and not "flavour".
Looking back, 3e psionics had a LOT of flavour. There as the focus on crystals with dojouns and psi-crystals and crystalline familiars. And there were the tattoos and ectoplasmic monsters and other things. Psychic Warriors with crystal swords and the like.
Which gave it a very different feel than magic but made it much, much, much harder to reflavour and work into your world. Since you had to rename spells, feats, powers, and the like.

This approach is much lighter on fluff with mechanical weight, and is thus much easier to reflavour and alter to fit your world.

 

[Jester David]

I don't necessarily agree with that, though it may have been true in certain editions. To me psionics brings to mind the pulp sci fi and fantasy conventions of the 20s-40s, of authors like Edward Rice Burroughs and L Ron Hubbard (pre cult). I think this has been lost as the game has aged of course. I think it's high time that they cleaved back to those old influences and, well, let the freak flag fly on psionics and the sword and planet gonzo sci-fi it hails from. I think they can do it without being cheesey of course. I mean, Dark Sun is to me the quintessential psionic campaign. It's a sword and planet world for certain.

Kinda...
The powers definitely had some flavour, if only in their names. But the class and the idea of psionics itself did not have much flavour or backstory beyond a dash of new age mysticism and occultism in 2e and the crystal-punk aesthetic of 3e.

 

[Fralex]

Yeah, are there any other detailed origin stories for psionics besides the Far Realm thing? All the other origins I've seen before now just say it's power from the mind, without going into much detail about how you get that power. I think the article probably should've lead with the general origin (psions have been awakened to a higher form of perception and can alter reality just by thinking) and then gone into specifics (awakening can be caused by the a large warp in reality, such as an intrusion of the Far Realm, some people are able to awaken on their own, etc.).

But seriously, all you need to do is ignore the first paragraph and a half of Otherworldly Power and start reading at "Awakened creatures look..." It's not at all intrusive or difficult to adapt; the Far Realm backstory is just one of the more complicated psionic origins, so it took more space to describe. I'm probably not going to use the Far Realm for psionics, and I don't foresee any problems with the lore provided.

 

[AmerginLiath]

Psioncs has very little inherent flavour. In past editions (1-3e) it's just been presented as a new rule set. "Here's psionics. You have to figure out how to work it into your world. Go!" 4e introduced the idea of the Far Realm influencing things. Which doesn't fit all worlds, but works in a generic sense.

Honestly, 1st edition Psionics WAS intensely flavorful, generally being the "Age of Aquarius"-style 1970s pseudoscientific take on ectoplasmic "reality" that permeated prog rock and Marvel comics through the decade. When I'm rereading old comics from that era, I get screwy flashbacks to trying to coordinate the mind defenses of the one psionic AD&D character who I ever managed to randomly roll up. I always sort of wondered, in the "Satanic Panic" era, why there was never a question of the game allowing one to roll up what so many actually did believe represented depictions of real mental powers...

 

[Mephista]

Psioncs has very little inherent flavour. In past editions (1-3e) it's just been presented as a new rule set. "Here's psionics. You have to figure out how to work it into your world. Go!" 4e introduced the idea of the Far Realm influencing things. Which doesn't fit all worlds, but works in a generic sense.

Actually, the tie between psionics and the far realm went back to 2e magazine articles.

Despite its rep, 4e actually didn't introduce a lot of new things - it merely took older things and shined a huge light on them.

 

[Jester David]

Actually, the tie between psionics and the far realm went back to 2e magazine articles.

Despite its rep, 4e actually didn't introduce a lot of new things - it merely took older things and shined a huge light on them.

I imagine that's actually an example of parallel design rather than the 4e team doing their homework...

 

[SkidAce]

I imagine that's actually an example of parallel design rather than the 4e team doing their homework...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gates_of_Firestorm_Peak

 

[Jester David]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gates_of_Firestorm_Peak

Yup. That was the module the "created" the Far Realm, published well after the book on psionics. I don't recal it mentioning psionics though.
Curiously, it was written by Bruce Cordell who was also Mr. Psionics in 3e, and I don't recal that book mentioning the Far Realm.

Psionics being tied to the Far Realm was first mentioned by the PHB3 in 4e as far as I know, but Cordell isn't given cover credit on that book.
-edit-
A quick skim of the Expanded Psionic Handbook revealed nothing on the Far Realm, even in the "campaign" section that talked about adding psionics to your game. Not sure where this "Far Realms and Psiomics were connected in 2e" statement comes from.

 

[Hussar]

Not really. All the "psionic monsters" have always been pretty Lovecraftian. Mind Flayers? Aboleth? Those tentacled brain eating charm fish people in Isle of Dread - Kopru. Pretty much most of the stuff we call Aberations now. Even way back before Far Realms, psionics was tied to extra planar beings. Demons, Devils and Githyanki.

So psionics being tied to extra planar stuff has always been around. And there is a pretty clear evolution towards psionics being tied to the Far Realms.

It would be a little odd to have a Monster Manual full of psionic aberrations with ties to the Far Realms and then a PC psionic class which ignores all those ties they've already built up.

 

[epithet]

I support the link between psionics and the Far Realm, at least to the extent described in the UA article. It's a good narrative backstory, and it's unobtrusive enough that if you really get your knickers twisted over it, you can very easily re-flavor it to some kind of new-age mumbo-jumbo.

The Far Realm is an awesome thing in D&D for those of us who've been playing for ever. We've been to the demonweb pits, we've kicked the snot out of Orcus a couple of times, but no one messes with Cthulhu.