Deadguy said:
In other words, to some the (broadly) non-game affecting 'window dressing' of magic is important as a descriptor of the spellcaster, whilst to others it is just flavour. Saeviomagy might well say that letting a Sorcerer use a spell point mechanic would produce a Psion, whilst you, Psion and Piratecat would still see something worlds apart.
As I see it, there are two angles to consider:
How the character appears and behaves to other people.
How it appears and behaves to the person playing it.
A common complaint that I hear is that psionics is just another form of magic. My response to this is "so what?" It is just another form of magic. A third branch of magic, if you will. So I am not especially concerned that people see a lot of similarities to spellcasting in psioincs. It's enough for most people that divine and arcane are allowed to stand side by side. I think psionics is just as fair.*
Now sure, you can dress up other sorts of spellcasters to look like psions from a third party perspective. Wizard (or a core divine spellcaster) will be a little tough, since they are required to prepare their spells.
You can dress up the sorcerer to look by a psion by taking eschew materials and taking the right spells, and (IMO, cornily) making his verbal component "ommm" (which, btw, I find to be rather tangential quality if used at all. I've never had a psionic PC or NPC put his fingers to his temples. BID.)
But this only works so far. What happens to a sorcerer when shackled? Can't cast spells with material components. This is unlike a psions, whose powers are supposed to stem from the mind. Similar situation regarding being gagged and verbal components. That same psion-wannabe sorcerer can't concentrate to heal his body, because that is something in the game that arcane magic is not supposed to do.
Now sure, you could add a lot of feats, expand the spell list, knock many enchantments down a level, or whatever it takes. But that begins to be a lot of work for a task that has already been done for you, because the psionics hb has already been written to approximate the feel of psionics or mental magic, vice that of the classical wizard that uses incantations.
The major 3e campaign I ended last winter featured an empire that used psionic characters as their supernatural workhorses, as it were. My players certainly perceived the difference in how they operated from the cabal of wizards that they opposed. Sure, I could have dressed up sorcerers to try to do the same thing. But it would have been less the feel I was looking for with more work.
I know. Because that's exactly what I did while I was waiting for the Psionics Handbook to come out.
Now onto the second issue of playing the psionic character. For the person playing the character, the difference in feel is even more pronounced. When I am playing a wizard, I have the freedom to pick spells and expand my list by research, and so forth.
As a psion, I have a list of things I can do, because I have the potential to do them. But I can do any of them, so long as I have the mental endurance remaining to do it. It's a matter of willpower.
The sorcerer, it's a harder case to make that there is a marked difference beyond the scope of the powers that each is allowed (and the behaviors noted above.) However, in the XPH, the feel gets even more solidly moved away from the sorcerer. No longer is the difference limited that the sorcerer has slots and I don't. Now the potency of my powers can depend on how much mental effort I put into them.
To me, that is a telling difference.
* - Side discussion of psionics as a third branch of magic. When I was experimenting with my own shaman rules, I found the arcane/divine division maddening, as shamanism could be seen as either depending on your own personal thoughts of what arcane magic is. Yet, most people who play 3e don't seem to have much of a problem with that distinction.
I think the reason is that as longtime players of D&D, we accept that dichotomy as a normal aspect of the metasetting. The only thing that highlighted the artificiality of it to me above was that I was trying to fit something into it that was not already part of the metasetting.
With me? Okay now, consider this. Some of you are chiming with the notion that it doesn't belong, and feel pretty strongly that way. If that's what the game is to you, then fine. However, note that for many of us, psionics has been part of the game for us since 1e. Our conception of what belongs is different than yours.
Nobody is
wrong on this point (well, unless you try to make a case that your standpoint is objectively true); we just have different perceptions and different things we are accustomed to.
and (2) We seem to play Shawn's game as more of a "Beer and Pretzels" style game, and everyone seems to play what they want, as opposed to fitting smoothly into the setting (otherwise, we wouldn't have angelic halflings flitting around. 
)
