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What’s The Big Deal About Psionics?
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<blockquote data-quote="Oofta" data-source="post: 8819654" data-attributes="member: 6801845"><p>TLDR: spells tap into magic that suffuses the world (e.g. the weave in FR), psionics does an end run around reality. So?</p><p></p><p>Depends on how you define the source. For example Paladins draw upon the power of their oath and conviction. They <em>may</em> be dedicated to a deity, they do not have to be. Let's take a look at the description of magic in the PHB spellcasting chapter: "<em>In casting a spell, a character carefully plucks at the invisible strands of raw magic suffusing the world, pins them in place in a particular pattern, sets them vibrating in a specific way, and then releases them to unleash the desired effect — in most cases, all in the span of seconds.</em>"</p><p></p><p>So you say that psionics doesn't do that. Okay, cool. What power source do they draw on? Because "the mind" does not seem like enough. We don't have psionics in the real world (as far as we know) because of conservation of energy, you can't have events and state changes that spontaneously happen without some source of energy. That energy has to come from somewhere. </p><p></p><p>But what if we ignore basic Newtonian physics. If someone is (using comic book powers here) picking up a car with their mind and they are not tapping into some external power source then they must somehow altering reality. They've found a loophole, a cheat code to physics. We can add a paragraph somewhere that says psionics breaks the laws of reality so that minimal energy (i.e. the power of the mind) is used for the effects, but that's just a fluff change. The end results always end up looking the same.</p><p></p><p>Psionics is an interesting concept, being able to break Newtonian physics is something that even spells as defined by D&D doesn't do, spells require tapping into the magic that suffuses the world in order to change things. But the question remains, how do you make it different from spellcasting? Because saying that you reject reality and substitute your own may work for an alien mindset, I just don't see how you differentiate it in practical terms.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Oofta, post: 8819654, member: 6801845"] TLDR: spells tap into magic that suffuses the world (e.g. the weave in FR), psionics does an end run around reality. So? Depends on how you define the source. For example Paladins draw upon the power of their oath and conviction. They [I]may[/I] be dedicated to a deity, they do not have to be. Let's take a look at the description of magic in the PHB spellcasting chapter: "[I]In casting a spell, a character carefully plucks at the invisible strands of raw magic suffusing the world, pins them in place in a particular pattern, sets them vibrating in a specific way, and then releases them to unleash the desired effect — in most cases, all in the span of seconds.[/I]" So you say that psionics doesn't do that. Okay, cool. What power source do they draw on? Because "the mind" does not seem like enough. We don't have psionics in the real world (as far as we know) because of conservation of energy, you can't have events and state changes that spontaneously happen without some source of energy. That energy has to come from somewhere. But what if we ignore basic Newtonian physics. If someone is (using comic book powers here) picking up a car with their mind and they are not tapping into some external power source then they must somehow altering reality. They've found a loophole, a cheat code to physics. We can add a paragraph somewhere that says psionics breaks the laws of reality so that minimal energy (i.e. the power of the mind) is used for the effects, but that's just a fluff change. The end results always end up looking the same. Psionics is an interesting concept, being able to break Newtonian physics is something that even spells as defined by D&D doesn't do, spells require tapping into the magic that suffuses the world in order to change things. But the question remains, how do you make it different from spellcasting? Because saying that you reject reality and substitute your own may work for an alien mindset, I just don't see how you differentiate it in practical terms. [/QUOTE]
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