D&D General What’s The Big Deal About Psionics?


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Trade, specifically. How many campaigns have trade with the geographical regions where coffee first came from (or trade with cultures who have adopted it)? Dragonlance certainly doesn't. Nor would likely Athas. Nentir Vale is highly unlikely.

The Forgotten Realms does, however, as would likely Mystara, and possibly Greyhawk. Most of the home games I've been in, however, never seem to display the kind of widespread trade that would lead to coffee becoming popular in their "vaguely European medieval fantasy" worlds. Or we're in some remote area where you couldn't get it even if it existed.

Now that having been said, if a DM says there's coffee, there's coffee. But coffee has an interesting history in our world, and has even been banned at points in the past. It's just one of those things that I don't think most campaign designers think about.
 

Trade, specifically. How many campaigns have trade with the geographical regions where coffee first came from (or trade with cultures who have adopted it)? Dragonlance certainly doesn't. Nor would likely Athas. Nentir Vale is highly unlikely.

The Forgotten Realms does, however, as would likely Mystara, and possibly Greyhawk. Most of the home games I've been in, however, never seem to display the kind of widespread trade that would lead to coffee becoming popular in their "vaguely European medieval fantasy" worlds. Or we're in some remote area where you couldn't get it even if it existed.

Now that having been said, if a DM says there's coffee, there's coffee. But coffee has an interesting history in our world, and has even been banned at points in the past. It's just one of those things that I don't think most campaign designers think about.
To be precise, "trade" is not the issue. Geography is. Coffee is grown at moderately high altitudes (1000 m and above) and is sensitive to frost, which means it needs a warm climate (tropical, here on Earth).

I see no reason why it could not be grown on the western side of the Ringing Mountains on Athas, but that would make it a rarity in the Tablelands (people don't trade much with man-eating halflings). On Eberron, you should be able to grow it in southern Khorvaire, e.g. the Graywall Mountains between Breland and Droaam. I know too little about the geography of Dragonlance to speak with any certainty, but doesn't that setting cover at least two continents (Ansalon and Taladas)? As for Nentir Vale, it canonically has enough trade that you can mail order things costing tens of thousands of gp via "travelling merchants", and 4e had the whole thing about ritual teleportation circles that should make distant trade easy.
 

Yeah after the War of the Lance, you're right, perhaps that would occur. Nentir Vale is strange, since the whole concept of "Points of Light" is that most communities are isolated from one another by dangerous monsters, but apparently trade is perfectly fine?

Again, if the DM says it exists, it exists, but on Earth, coffee was originally found in one location on the planet, and it took trade to cause it to spread to the degree that it has. A lot of D&D campaigns have trade routes constantly being disrupted by dangerous monsters, which is what you need adventurers for.

Take something like the Silk Road on our planet, or the Triangle Trades, and now add all the monsters in the Monster Manual you could encounter. Seems suspect to me.

I mean sea travel especially, when you have things like Dragon Turtles, ocean going Dragons, Krakens, Kuo-Toa, Sahuagin, and Umberlee knows what else that can attack and sink ships with relative impunity.

The ocean is terrifying on our planet, now add all these intelligent sea monsters to the mix, and the fact that in most campaign settings, ships are built the same way they were in Earth's past, with no real defense against a big sea going critter that wants to destroy it, and intercontinental trade becomes nearly impossible.
 

And then there was an attempt to make warriors' abilities to work like magic too. Which became infamous under the nickname of "weaboo fightan magic".
On the one hand, WotC did inexplicably title the chapter of manoeuvre descriptions "Blade Magic". OTOH, I do not believe the people who came up with that nickname had ever so much as cracked the book open, so I doubt the two are actually connected.

Anyway, the system in the Bo9S was not particularly like D&D spellcasting. I cannot speak for everyone, but as a member of the "psionics should be different" crowd, I personally would be fine with something as different as Bo9S is.

_
glass.
 

The problem with the Book of Nine Swords is really twofold. The Warblade, Swordsage, and Crusader were far better designed than the Fighter, Monk/Rogue, and the Paladin. They could compete with the more powerful classes while obsoleting other classes.

Then add on top of that, those players who adamantly reject non-caster fighting classes (often referred to as "martials") as having any abilities that cannot be replicated in real life. They don't want people able to ignore DR or teleport without explicit magic.

Add the fantastic naming scheme for the various Manifester powers, which is highly reminiscent of Exalted, or the special attacks of anime characters, and the myths about the Book of Nine Swords being overpowered garbage that has no business in D&D appeared. It was a paradigm shift that many could not accept- having renewable, encounter-based resources and abilities that allowed someone to knock on the door of what spellcasters have been doing for decades.

These people clutched their Fighters and Rogues like pearls, completely ignoring that said pearls had long since lost their luster. Then WotC trotted out an entire edition based on the principles developed on Tome of Battle, Tome of Magic, and even the Warlock class, and the base finally broke in half.

Even now, 5e struggles with the same disparity between casters and non-casters, but the only way WotC can keep the players more or less unified is by catering to the dynamic that casters are just better.

You can totally create a party consisting of entirely spellcasters, and completely ignore the existence of the Fighter and Barbarian. Even the Rogue's niche isn't totally protected, as really, the game doesn't need a super skills expert anymore.

It's not that these classes are worthless, but they are confined to a narrower design space, and have less ability to solve problems and interact with the game world than is afforded to spells. Add to that WotC giving us very little guidance on how to add magic items to their games (the traditional mechanic for allowing non-casters to keep up with casters), and you have the current state of the game.
 

They are monsters, but also powerful creatures could be paid or hire to protect those traders. In the real life the ships went togethers in convoys to avoid the attacks by pirates.

In some places an esper can be really dangerous, at least to cause serious troubles for the DM.
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"Tome of Battle: Book of the nine Swords" had got some really interesting ideas, but the gameplay about the "reload" of the martial maneuvers was too complex for a fast fight, and that discouraged the use by nPCs, for example the leader of a hobgoblin squad. Of course the influence of manganime was hard, but we should accept this, because it is not wrong. Some times when I see in youtube Alan Walker music with Chinese animation of wuxia genre I miss a xuanhuan+tokusatsu version of D&D.


"Ultimate psionic" by Dreamscarred Press had got good ideas, and they should be hired as outsiders by WotC, and Paizo also did a decent work with "Occult Adventures", their version of psicraft.

* The plan B could be a "licenced crossover" D&D psionic + X-Men (and other characters by Marvel, for example Mantis) comics, something like a "limited edition" for collectors.
 

The problem with the Book of Nine Swords is really twofold. The Warblade, Swordsage, and Crusader were far better designed than the Fighter, Monk/Rogue, and the Paladin. They could compete with the more powerful classes while obsoleting other classes.
I would argue that those classes were already largely obsolete.
Then add on top of that, those players who adamantly reject non-caster fighting classes (often referred to as "martials") as having any abilities that cannot be replicated in real life. They don't want people able to ignore DR or teleport without explicit magic.
Nobody using Bo9S could "teleport without explicit magic". The only teleport powers are explicitly Supernatural (ie, magical). All the supernatural powers were the province of the explicitly magical classes, not the Fighter-equivalent Warblade.
Add the fantastic naming scheme for the various Manifester powers, which is highly reminiscent of Exalted, or the special attacks of anime characters, and the myths about the Book of Nine Swords being overpowered garbage that has no business in D&D appeared. It was a paradigm shift that many could not accept- having renewable, encounter-based resources and abilities that allowed someone to knock on the door of what spellcasters have been doing for decades.
The manouevre names I will kinda give you, except see my comment about about most critics of the Bo9S not actually having read it.
Then WotC trotted out an entire edition based on the principles developed on Tome of Battle, Tome of Magic, and even the Warlock class, and the base finally broke in half.
You probably already know this, but for the record: The Bo9S was based on an early draft of 4e, which was already in development at the time, rather than the other way around. And the base did not "finally break in half", it lost a bunch of people and gained a bunch of people, just like every edition.

_
glass.
 

I would argue that those classes were already largely obsolete.

Nobody using Bo9S could "teleport without explicit magic". The only teleport powers are explicitly Supernatural (ie, magical). All the supernatural powers were the province of the explicitly magical classes, not the Fighter-equivalent Warblade.

The manouevre names I will kinda give you, except see my comment about about most critics of the Bo9S not actually having read it.

You probably already know this, but for the record: The Bo9S was based on an early draft of 4e, which was already in development at the time, rather than the other way around. And the base did not "finally break in half", it lost a bunch of people and gained a bunch of people, just like every edition.

_
glass.
And yet, WotC went to a lot of lengths to get back the lost players who went to Pathfinder 1e or back to more familiar ground like OSR games.

As for the rest, you're preaching to the choir, I'm well aware that the Warblade was not magical, but there were and still are naysayers who feel that Elder Mountain Hammer and Iron Heart Surge push boundaries that (in their opinion) D&D was not meant to cross.
 

On the one hand, the game needs to actualize as many important narrative concepts as possible.
On the other hand, one must reduce the complexity of the gaming system as much as possible.

Additional text omitted.

I'm thinking neither of these is accurate.

Psionics isn't so much a narrative concept as it is a theme which has a preferred description and implementation within the game (pseudo-scientific, mind based, technology or alternative based). When I think of "narrative concept" I think about the shape and flow of narrative conflicts, not so much the theme which is in use.

If the first statement is modified to "as many themes as possible", that doesn't work, either, since many groups don't want psionics in their RPG, just as many don't want firearms, either.

In regards to the second statement, complexity can mean a lot of things. One prefers to reduce the complexity of the rules set and resolution steps. On the other hand, the space of possible games and game results ought to be wide and rich. (But, should have reasonable predictability.) There are lots of games with very simple rules which have a lot of complexity in the possible game outcomes.

TomB
 

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