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

[Maxperson]

If it's innate, it's a sorcerer?
I know you don't like the Aberrant Mind as an option, and that you don't seem to like the sorcerer at all. But the sorcerer chassis is the best we can expect, precisely because it isn't as good.

It's not the best we can expect.

The designers were too afraid of experimental mechanics to not cripple the sorcerer and to even admit the result was underpowered. If forced to experiment once again, to create from scratch, the result would be unplayable.

They've already produced two playable mechanics in the Mystic and the psionic die. Why would any further attempts be unplayable?

This isn't the edition to make everybody happy, but rather to come close enough to be everybody's second choice so everybody could play together. We all need to compromise, and some end up compromising more than others.

Using the sorcerer as the chassis would very likely in my opinion make more people upset than the Mystic did.

 

[Yaarel]

Stop trying to ruin the Psion class.

Go ruin the Mystic class with broken experimental fiddly mechanics.

 

[Yaarel]

you don't seem to like the sorcerer at all.

The flavor of the Sorcerer is fine, tho the Warlock should have it. The mechanics of the Sorcerer is horrible.



Based on what the word "sorcerer" means (at least academically), a sorcerer is the opposite of innate magic. A Sorcerer class should be all about summoning spirits and pets to do the magical effects for it. Need to harm someone, get a devil to do it. Need to find out info, get a ghost to tell you. Need to fly, get an air elemental to carry you around. A player can flavor spells this way. Better yet, the Sorcerer is the missing summoner class, and to actually summon these creatures has many mechanical implications.

 

[Minigiant]

The Psion doesn't need fiddly mechanics.

The Spell using Psion needs about 40 new spells with at least 3/4 of them being exclusive to the psionic classes to not be a waste of paper or a source of major argument.

That's the choice: New Mechanics or Two to three dozen new exclusive spells.

That's the choice. "But but but" That's the choice if you want a Psion that isn't a disappointment.

 

[Cadence]

Based on what the word "sorcerer" means (at least academically), a sorcerer is the opposite of innate magic. A Sorcerer class should be all about summoning spirits and pets to do the magical effects for it. Need to harm someone, get a devil to do it. Need to find out info, get ghost to tell you. Need to fly, get an air elemental to carry you around. A player can flavor spells this way. Better yet, the Sorcerer is the missing summoner class, and to actually summon these creatures has many mechanical implications.

Which academic uses?

Aren't the standard (OED) definitions of all of the magic using classes about the same?

Wizard:

Wizardry:

Sorcerer:

Sorcery:

Warlock:

Witch:

Witchcraft:

 

[Yaarel]

Which academic uses?

Aren't the standard (OED) definitions of all of the magic using classes about the same?

I know the term "sorcery" from anthropology where it is a technical term for controlling or bargaining with spirits.

For example,

American Heritage Dictionary:
sorcery. Use of supernatural power over others through the assistance of spirits.

Random House:
sorcery. the practices of a person who is thought to have supernatural powers granted by evil spirits.



And so on. In the academic context, these spirits are can be evil, but might not be. They can be elementals, ghosts, and so on. But in all cases, it is actually these external powers that are performing whatever supernatural effect.

For example some reallife sorcery traditions reused Christian exorcism rituals, but instead of expelling the demon enslaved the demon to do various jobs.

In any case, a Sorcerer class for D&D could summon anything, whether fiend, celestial, undead, fey, elemental. We know from earlier editions from D&D, that going thru the Monster Manual and picking any creature is irredeemably broken. But it is easy to balance a spell called "Summon Fey Unicorn". The spell lists exactly what its statblock is, but also mentions the best ways to get it to do what you want (heh, including advantage to any checks if you are a virgin!). Also, the spell mentions likely ways to help, such as being a steed or healing someone. This kind of "sorcery" can be super flavorful if both the DM and player get into developing a relationship with each creature that the Sorcerer summons frequently, including getting to know its Personality quirks.

 

[Cadence]

I know the term "sorcery" from anthropology where it is a technical term for controlling or bargaining with spirits.

For example,

American Heritage Dictionary:
sorcery. Use of supernatural power over others through the assistance of spirits.

Random House:
sorcery. the practices of a person who is thought to have supernatural powers granted by evil spirits.

But that's wizardry in the dictionaries too, isn't it?

In the American Heritage Dictionary:
wizardry - 1. The art, skill, or practice of a wizard; sorcery.
----

The entry in Oxford Bibliographies (Anthropology Area) has the following on Witchcraft (and mentions sorcery):

Definitions​

Ethnographic studies across the globe have shown that, far from being confined to the distant past of Europe and New England, the belief in witchcraft is widely distributed in time and place—in Africa, Melanesia, the Pacific, Asia, and the Americas. These studies have raised the problem of definition. Is it possible to define witchcraft in a way that makes sense cross-culturally, while at the same time respecting the particularities of specific social settings? Is it sensible to use the term originally used to denote consorts of Satan in 16th-century England to describe contemporary causers of misfortune in a post-Socialist Tanzanian village? Do terms illuminate or distort complex realities on the ground? Are they ethnocentric? Crick 1979 opposes the cross-cultural use of the term witchcraft, whereas Meyer 1999 defends it. The most commonly accepted definition was provided in Evans-Pritchard 1937, a detailed, empathetic study of the Azande, of colonial Sudan, in which the author distinguishes between witchcraft and sorcery by their technique. Evans-Pritchard defines the former as the innate, inherited ability to cause misfortune or death. For the Azande, witchcraft involves unconscious psychic powers emanating from a black swelling, located near the liver. By contrast, the Azande refer to sorcery as the performance of rituals, the uttering of spells, and the manipulation of organic substances, such as herbs, with the conscious intent of causing harm. This distinction is widespread throughout East Africa. Stephen 1987 suggests that Melanesian societies construct an alternative contrast. The author describes sorcerers as dominant persons who deliberately use rituals to impose their will and mediate cosmic power both for constructive and destructive purposes. Political leaders often possess a monopoly of sorcery skills. By contrast, Stephen characterizes witches as socially unimportant persons who harbor totally destructive powers and carry blame for misfortune and death. Their powers cannot be controlled. They are accused, denounced, and punished. But, as with so many typologies, these distinctions do not hold true of all Melanesian societies (see Patterson 1974); many authors therefore use the terms witch and witchcraft more broadly, to denote both types of persons and modes of action. In this review, the word sorcery is retained only when used by authors in the original texts.

The International Encyclopedia of Anthropology entry on "Witchcraft, Sorcery, and Magic" has:

As used by anthropologists, the term “witch” identifies someone alleged to practice socially prohibited forms of magic, while “sorcerer” refers to someone who intentionally takes on the role of magical practitioner, often with the intent to harm.

Witchcraft and sorcery are terms that describe how humans engage with magic. Witches and sorcerers appear with remarkable consistency among worldviews that posit the existence of magic. While in the popular imagination the two roles may blur, usage is quite conventionalized in anthropology, owing to the impact of E. E. Evans-Pritchard's influential study of the Azande, first published in 1937.

Following Evans-Pritchard's lead, anthropologists nearly always use the term “witch” to identify people suspected of practicing, either deliberately or unconsciously, socially prohibited forms of magic, among other characteristics, and who are thus often scapegoats, members of persecuted groups, and reflective of social tensions, for example within close-knit communities or kin groups. In some cases, the witch is not a person but a substance or supernumerary organ inside a person's body. Witchcraft allegations tend to erupt in waves—“crazes”—in response to or along the lines of social tensions. Such tension may be inherent in social organization or, as the most recent research documents, perceived as an adjustment to modernity and social change. In contrast, “sorcerers” intentionally take on the role of magical practitioner, engaging in activity often labeled by others as magic with ill or evil intent. While some writers define sorcery simply as the use of magic, in a morally neutral sense, more typically the anthropological use of the term highlights efforts to manipulate supernatural forces for malicious or deviant purposes.

Sorcery​

While witchcraft exists as a form of scapegoating and accusations—a method of explaining causation and healing, or avoiding, social rifts—other practitioners around the world actively seek to harness supernatural power in order to affect others or control the conditions around them.

As typically used in the anthropological literature, sorcery is a pragmatic, conscious practice, involving acts of magic and leading to personal power for the practitioner. Sorcerers typically must learn the texts, practices, rituals, or other components of magic as understood in their culture; such knowledge is esoteric and not normally available to everyone. Like other specialists documented in anthropology, such as shamans and diviners, the sorcerer may work on behalf of clients. Depending on the context, sorcery may be viewed as suspicious, fearful, or prohibited behavior, or a powerful means to right social wrongs and resolve conflicts. To contemporary anthropologists, the practices of sorcery offer opportunities to study how consciousness is formed and how humans constitute, and operate within, reality. An example in this area is Bruce Kapferer's The Feast of the Sorcerer: Practices of Consciousness and Power (1997), based on research among Sinhalese Buddhists in Sri Lanka. Kapferer carried out a detailed study of a ritual of exorcism, showing how sorcery and other aspects of social life are intertwined.

Neither source seems to focus on spirits.

 

[MoonSong]

I know the term "sorcery" from anthropology where it is a technical term for controlling or bargaining with spirits.

For example,

American Heritage Dictionary:
sorcery. Use of supernatural power over others through the assistance of spirits.

Random House:
sorcery. the practices of a person who is thought to have supernatural powers granted by evil spirits.



And so on. In the academic context, these spirits are can be evil, but might not be. They can be elementals, ghosts, and so on. But in all cases, it is actually these external powers that are performing whatever supernatural effect.

For example some reallife sorcery traditions reused Christian exorcism rituals, but instead of expelling the demon enslaved the demon to do various jobs.

We all can play the linguistics/etymologies game to make words mean anything we want between similar meanings. In common usage, sorcerer (but specially sorceress) translates to hechicero/hechicera which isn't about using spirits to do magic, and both terms in both languages are used to translate the idea of "Poisoner" in the Bible which correlates with the witch/wisewoman figure. In the end it doesn't matter what meanings are possible by etymology, but which meanings are actually being used in D&D in a D&D context. And in the D&D context, sorcerer means "magic user for whom magic is an inherent gift, most likely by being descended from a magical or supernatural creature"

In any case, a Sorcerer class for D&D could summon anything, whether fiend, celestial, indead, fey, elemental. We know from earlier editions from D&D, that going thru the Monster Manual and picking any crearure is irredeemably broken. But it is easy to balance a spell called "Summon Fey Unicorn". The spell lists exactly what its statblock is, but also mention the best ways to get it to do what you want (heh, including advantage to any checks if you are a virgin!). Also, the spell mentions likely ways to help, such as being a steed or healing someone. This kind of "sorcery" can be super flavorful if both the DM and player get into developing a relationship with each creature that the Sorcerer summons frequently, including getting to know its Personality quirks.

That idea looks cool, we could use a summoner class, but the name is already taken and in use. Not a summoner who relies on spirits, but a dragonling, or a demigod, or a walking magical nexus, or somebody who escaped death. The sorcerer has been out for 22 out of the 48 years of D&D existence (2028 will be the year when there will more years with a D&D sorcerer than without). Four out of the five main AD&D line editions have a playable sorcerer, and the distinction is starting to permeate non D&D fantasy. At this point what it means to be a sorcerer in fantasy RPG is already fixed.

 

[Yaarel]

But that's wizardry in the dictionaries too, isn't it?

In the American Heritage Dictionary:
wizardry - 1. The art, skill, or practice of a wizard; sorcery.
----

The entry in Oxford Bibliographies (Anthropology Area) has the following on Witchcraft (and mentions sorcery):



The International Encyclopedia of Anthropology entry on "Witchcraft, Sorcery, and Magic" has:






Neither source seems to focus on spirits.

Heh, I blame Harry Potter.

Academically, this is the main source for the confusion of terms: "Is it possible to define witchcraft in a way that makes sense cross-culturally, while at the same time respecting the particularities of specific social settings?"

In other words, in Christian cultures, the "sorcery" trafficked in evil spirits, or in ghosts for necromantic divination which was taboo. So when anthropologists use the term neutrally, it may nevertheless be both offensive and misrepresentitive.

So, either the term gets redefined maximally, or alternatively, or perhaps abandoned for other more neutral terms (like wizard) instead.

Nevertheless note, the most commonly accepted definition in anthropology:

witch = innate magic
sorcerer = external spirits

 

[Yaarel]

In this context, a Psion is a kind of "witch", weilding innate magic.