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

[Fifth Element]

WotC could do the same thing if they wanted to, bu creating a new setting without spell magic and designing psionics for it, putting the burden of using both systems on the players. But they won't.

That would not be a good reason to design a whole new setting. Very much "our elves are different" in nature. If there's no spell magic, then psionics are the standard magic of that setting. Writing a new setting just to have a different implementation of magic mechanics would be a strange choice.

 

[Raduin711]

That would not be a good reason to design a whole new setting. Very much "our elves are different" in nature. If there's no spell magic, then psionics are the standard magic of that setting. Writing a new setting just to have a different implementation of magic mechanics would be a strange choice.

I don't think it's a strange choice, but I do think the days of designing campaign settings like that are over. Everything adds. Nothing subtracts.

 

[cbwjm]

No idea what I've already said in this thread, but I did think that the mystic powers were pretty good for capturing the feel of psionics. Stars without number (or worlds without number, whatever the SF version is) had what I felt was a cool psionics system that I feel could fairly easily be ported to 5e. Maybe not by the 5e designers due to the whole plagiarism aspect, but as a homebrew? No worries.

 

[Micah Sweet]

That would not be a good reason to design a whole new setting. Very much "our elves are different" in nature. If there's no spell magic, then psionics are the standard magic of that setting. Writing a new setting just to have a different implementation of magic mechanics would be a strange choice.

I would suggest a sci-fi or science fantasy setting. That's a good reason.

 

[SakanaSensei]

No idea what I've already said in this thread, but I did think that the mystic powers were pretty good for capturing the feel of psionics. Stars without number (or worlds without number, whatever the SF version is) had what I felt was a cool psionics system that I feel could fairly easily be ported to 5e. Maybe not by the 5e designers due to the whole plagiarism aspect, but as a homebrew? No worries.

That'd be Stars Without Number. His fantasy game actually makes a lot of use of the Effort pool as well, with some powers committing Effort for a scene and others for the day. It'd be a neat way to handle all kinds of stuff: I've personally thought of using a paradigm like that as a way to give martials some 4E style oomph in a slightly more diegetic way than the AEDU setup.

 

[cbwjm]

That'd be Stars Without Number. His fantasy game actually makes a lot of use of the Effort pool as well, with some powers committing Effort for a scene and others for the day. It'd be a neat way to handle all kinds of stuff: I've personally thought of using a paradigm like that as a way to give martials some 4E style oomph in a slightly more diegetic way than the AEDU setup.

I think that would work well, you could probably use the same resource for both martial powers and psionics.

 

[Aldarc]

"You guys hate our OP complicated do everything mystic. OMG. You all can't agree on anything."

It felt like WotC skipped some fairly basic design iterations for the Psion/Mystic. It was basically the Mystic, crappy Psionic dice, or psionic subclasses to existing classes, but nothing in-between, like a spellcasting Psion/Mystic or even a less complicated Mystic.

 

[Minigiant]

It felt like WotC skipped some fairly basic design iterations for the Psion/Mystic. It was basically the Mystic, crappy Psionic dice, or psionic subclasses to existing classes, but nothing in-between, like a spellcasting Psion/Mystic or even a less complicated Mystic.

That's literally what happened.

WOTC threw everything in the Mystic and hoped you just remove the parts that were unsatisfactory. But the problem was that everything was put together so everything got Us. So they went oh "you cant agree." Whereas the point was that the fandom agrees that Psionic classes should not have access to all psionics and focused Psionic classes would be better.

Their survey method they used isn't good for ideas that don't have solid concepts. That's why it took months of surveys to create the fighter.

 

[jgsugden]

On this whole, "They can't agree" angle - they should implement something and then give it time to take seed. It will increase in acceptance over time, although nothing will be universal. However, once you establish it, and stick with it as a core design philosophy going forwrd, it will find the place it needs to have.

 

[Incenjucar]

On this whole, "They can't agree" angle - they should implement something and then give it time to take seed. It will increase in acceptance over time, although nothing will be universal. However, once you establish it, and stick with it as a core design philosophy going forwrd, it will find the place it needs to have.

Agreed. And, if there are multiple designs they desperately wish to pursue, apply them to different concepts.