Because historically a new magic user with their own user system was less likely to be broken than major addition to the current base casting system.
It’s not that we don’t trust them to build them right, we just don’t trust them to not give the wizards and the clerics even more toys than they already have and need, inflating their capabilities even further than they currently are, and it’s infinitely easier to not let them mix psionics with spellcasting when they’re part of an entirely different toybox.
Although what that group wants is functionally indistinguishable from not having psionics at all, except for the embrace-and-destroy element I mentioned upthread.
But then people might have wrongbadfun, and that cannot be permitted! [/sarcasm]
To be fair, I and others want the 3e Psion. This D&D psionics is magic spells.
I am not antagonising you. You say what you want to see in the game, I say what I want to see in the game. We disagree.
So you're saying, "I don't like your ideas, and I don't understand why more people aren't talking more about how to implement my ideas"?
No. But there are many ways to go about this, so trying to dismiss those who would do it within the current framework doesn’t seem particularly fair.
It sure as hell is not spell slots, which is what the embrace-&-destroyers are arguing for.
Tell people their preferred D&D is "not D&D". That always goes over well. I can assure you that points-based, non-magical psionics have existed in D&D before. In three editions in fact (not counting the fact that 3.0 and 3.5 had it as an easily selectable optional varient).
The 3e Psion uses spell slots to determine spell slot level, and spends spell points to cast a spell slot.
Technically, new mechanics that have never existed are not part of the D&D tradition. It is ok to want something that doesnt exist yet.
