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

[Yaarel]

The 5e Sorcerer and the 5e Monk demonstrate why "points" design is horrible, horrible, horrible crap.

 

[Yaarel]

To be clear, the Psion Shapechanger can also change the shapes of other targets (whether helpfully or harmfull) and heal and buff other targets. Regeneration and a regeneration aura can also be a thing.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Yes, of course it is semantics. Semantics is the study of the meaning of words, and different words meaning different things is kinda the point.

Right. But there is also thesaurus, and sometimes words don't actually mean different things, and that's the case with psionics. If you levitate things with your mind, you're using magic. And it also is utterly ludicrous to think that people in the setting wouldn't see it that way too.

A wizard conjures a rock to fly. People in magical fantasy land: "Yeah, that's magic."
A cleric prays a rock to fly. People: "That's magic too."
A bard sings a rock to fly. People: "Definitely magic."
A psion meditates a rock to fly. People: "No magic at all going on here."



I'm willing to accept that psionics can sensibly defined as certain type of mental magic. But it cannot be sensibly defined as non-magic.

 

[Cadence]

Right. But there is also thesaurus, and sometimes words don't actually mean different things, and that's the case with psionics. If you levitate things with your mind, you're using magic. And it also is utterly ludicrous to think that people in the setting wouldn't see it that way too.

A wizard conjures a rock to fly. People in magical fantasy land: "Yeah, that's magic."
A cleric prays a rock to fly. People: "That's magic too."
A bard sings a rock to fly. People: "Definitely magic."
A psion meditates a rock to fly. People: "No magic at all going on here."



I'm willing to accept that psionics can sensibly defined as certain type of mental magic. But it cannot be sensibly defined as non-magic.

The wizard, bard, and cleric all cast dispel magic... and the psion's rock keeps flying!?!?!? <- Would that do it?

 

[Crimson Longinus]

The wizard, bard, and cleric all cast dispel magic... and the psion's rock keeps flying!?!?!? <- Would that do it?

I don't think so. It's just that for some reason one class has been given undispellable magic. Also, I don't think this is a good idea as it is easily annoying and unbalanced.

 

[Minigiant]

The 5e Sorcerer and the 5e Monk demonstrate why "points" design is horrible, horrible, horrible crap.

No.

The points are fine.

The problem is that WOTC could not commit to a direction for either class so the value of what you get out of the points is bad. Mostly because of the community. The community could not make up it's mind if Monks are Rogue types or Fighter types or if Sorcerers are blasters or bloodline based. So they became half of each and bad at both


The Psion discussion has the SAME issues.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

But the Sorcerer mechanics suck. I dont want those mechanics. Heh fiddly subpar Sorcerer points can die in a fire.

The Psion needs to built from scratch, from the ground up, around the things that telepaths, telekineticists, creators, shapeshifters, psychic healers, and spacetime controllers and sensors can do.

Well, I'm not particularly invested to using Sorcerer as a base, but I think there was desire for the Psion to have malleable and flexible powers so something like metamagics metapsionics could help with that. But I definitely agree that the mix of points and slots is a terrible design, and the class should be built to fully use one or other.

 

[glass]

I'm willing to accept that psionics can sensibly defined as certain type of mental magic. But it cannot be sensibly defined as non-magic.

Luckily, the rest of us are not constrained about what you personally are willing to accept.

Psionicists and wizards can both do things that, in real life, are impossible. And if such abilities were discovered tomorrow, whether they were called "magic", "psionics", both, or something else entirely, would be up in the air. But we are not talking about real life, we are talking about a game. And in a game, we can make them separate things simply by defining them as such.

Also, it is not a classy move to call several people in this thread (not to mention the designers of 1e and 2e) not sensible.

_
glass.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Luckily, the rest of us are not constrained about what you personally are willing to accept.

Psionicists and wizards can both do things that, in real life, are impossible. And if such abilities were discovered tomorrow, whether they were called "magic", "psionics", both, or something else entirely, would be up in the air. But we are not talking about real life, we are talking about a game. And in a game, we can make them separate things simply by defining them as such.

Also, it is not a classy move to call several people in this thread (not to mention the designers of 1e and 2e) not sensible.

_
glass.

Do you have actually any coherent argument beyond: "it's different because I say it's different"?

 

[Maxperson]

Like I said, unless you are a blaster, none of that matters.

I disagree with you on that. It matter to every caster, since every multiclassed caster, blaster or not, is at a power disadvantage due to lack of actual 5th level spells when compared to a full caster. The versatility increase doesn't compensate completely for the lack of the actual spells of the highest level for which you have slots.