What would get you to use psionics?

[Mouseferatu]

I actually just started a game using Of Sound Mind where the events of the adventure reintroduce psionics to the world, spawning some insipant evil and creating some good quandries. Example: at some point The evil mage cult tries to hire the PCs to take out the psionic villain because he is more of a threat to them than anything "good".

*blink*

*blink, blink*

Congratulations. I haven't swiped a campaign concept wholesale in quite some time.

*steals idea and runs*

 

[Grim]

Congratulations. I haven't swiped a campaign concept wholesale in quite some time.

If you are going to go hardcore about it, I would really recomend picking up Bruce R. Cordell's Mindscapes. Even if you don't use his alternate psionic combat system, the items, feats, templates and monsters alone are worth the price of admission. And the PrCs are just awsome. A guy who replaces parts of himself with crystal, a warrior who uses sound to his best advantage, a psion with domains (called nodes), its just cool.

If you want to steal more stuff, just email me... hobinkobad@yahoo.com

 

[Camarath]

I have used 3.0 psionics for a wile and have not had problems with it. I do not use "Psionics are Different" option and if do not use the psionic combat system. As long as you do not use either of those systems then IMO psionics mesh well with the base magic system. I do not like the psionic combat system and have had trouble with it in a normal campaign. I have run a full psionic campaign where I used the psionic combat system and it worled well in that case. But that was mainly because every character was to some extent psionic and so it was a shared concern for the whole party. In a normal campaign I have found that psionic combat tends to be either not very useful for the psion vs non-psionic foes or very dangerous against psionic monsters (often well beyond what I expected).

I also do not require player to adhere to the flavor (crystals and such) of 3.0 psionics. In place of psycrystals I use mental focus objects of any type the player wants. IMC psions are basicly sorcerers who's power comes from inside themselves. As opposed to sorcerers, who IMC channel outside energies via their natural talent.

In my experience Psions tend to be rather focused characters with a relatively small set of [hopefully] useful abilities. To be honest I have had more problems with wizards than psions. Psychic Warriors have not be a problem for me and I often run them with custom power lists to fit the player's concept of their character.

In summery, I like the Psion and Psychic Warrior classes, the psionic feats and skills, and many of the psionic powers. I do not recommend the psionic combat system. I would not use the "Psionics are Different" option unless you want to put in a lot of work integrating psionics into your whole campaign world. I hope that is of some help.

 

[Nightfall]

Honestly not sure what the release date is, but I do know that final proofs have been approved, so my guess would be not terribly long.

Believe you me, I'm as anxious as you are.

Sweet! I can't wait. It should be good if it can live up to its predecessor. Or even do more than that, excell it!

 

[Celtavian]

re

Psionics is redundant in a Fantasy world. I have always been of the opinion that Psionics is scifi's version of magic. It's not so much that it doesn't belong in a fantasy game, it just doesn't belong in a fantasy game with magic.

Think about it. A native citizen sees a Psionic use his power and a wizard, what the heck is he going to call what they do? Magic, in a fantasy world and psionics in a scifi world.

There different ways of doing the exact same thing. I see no reason why the two should necessarily exist in the same world. The only way I would include Psionics in my fantasy world is if they made it another magical tradition.

I am not one of those folks that think its clever when people combine scifi and fantasy unless it is done extremely well like in Shadowrun's case. They had a great premiss and created a very believable multigenre world.

 

[Elder-Basilisk]

A Babylon-5 style game setting would get me to allow psionics in a home game I was creating. But that's about it. Well, I guess if I decided to run an Arcanis game I'd be stuck allowing it as well. But I have the RPGA's Living Games for my Arcanis fix.

I don't think psionics generally interact well with fantasy settings.

 

[Brennin Magalus]

I certainly would never allow psionics in the fantasy world I have created. Moreover, even if I were to run a game in the Scarred Lands setting (one of the best published worlds, IMO), I doubt I would use Slacerian psionics (although I admit that I've never gotten around to reading the relevant material). I just cannot reconcile psionics with "traditional" D&D.

 

[tburdett]

So, in your particular case, what would convince you to let a player play a psionic character if you normally don't allow it?

When they incorporate the psionics rules into the core rule set I will consider allowing them into the game that I run.

 

[dave_o]

I think it should be one or the other - Psionics or Arcane/Divine Magic. Though, I guess you could keep Divine magic around in a Psionic world.

I just think having both is toooooo much.

 

[Teflon Billy]

I would probably allow them in a sci-fi setting.

Never in a swords and sorcery setting, not only do I feel they "don't fit" (spare me your cries of "Dernyi!") but my experiences with Psionics in D&D up to this point have been uniformly bad.

That said, Of Sound Mind was an awesome adventure (one of the few published adventures I have run), we just used the "Arcane Magic" option.