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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Amrynn Moonshadow" data-source="post: 645731" data-attributes="member: 382">this may be a tad long...lot of points on this thread, and everyone has an opinion. startling is that it's pretty much split down the middle. didn't know there were so many closed minded people who wanted to limit what was in their fictional imagination based game . . . but jokes aside, i'm glad i checked the boards for this.i am a psi fan (and not a sci fi fan at all), and i want to write alot on this subject, but am pressed for time right now, regardless of what i think, it's just not happening. psions and psiwar will not be in the next (3.5) edition, nor the 4th edition, maybe the 5th edition.it's mainly for an economic reason, and it has reprocussions down the line for everything. i think psychics need some sort of legitimacy in the cannon D&D world, and the fact that it can be seen as a point based / mana type of alternative casting system should be a help. but thus far it hasn't. personally i think the sorceror (while having roots in western myth and fable) is a cop-out on this. it's really a mix of a wizard and a psion. a psychic for all the supposidly highly charismatic / force of personality descriptive text, a psion for the apparently alternative casting form (more spontanious and less rigid) and a wizard in regards to which spells and so on. in my point of view i've seen socerors be little less than missile launchers, and that hardly shows any particularly high force of personality in my opinion. when i think of them all i think about is buckles galore.before the psi can be put into the core rules, it needs to be a few things.a) balanced: it needs to be played with as long as the rest of the classes, not just as an add-on. it has to be there from the start in order to be balanced. and because of that, it's not going to happen unless there is an overhaul to the mechanics of the game. i thought that 3rd edition would be it, but it wasn'tb) standardized: again, this comes only with time. everyone has accepted alot of sacred cows in D&D for a while now, like for instance the fact that there is REALLY no difference between an illusionist's main abilities and a plane jane wizard's main abilities. heck, shouldn't an illusionist get some special abilities, like at 5th level be able to create minor illusions 3 times/day with just the wave of his hand? or a transmuter be able to get some transmutation powers along the way, like the ability to change the physical properties of something w/o having to allocate a spell for it? or dare say have a necromancer be MORE than just a regular wizard who can cast one extra "fear" spell a day than a wizard of his same level? these are things we don't really question much, they are scared cows. the psion isn't at that stage yet where people just accept who he is. he is used differently in many campaigns, and rule zero'd so much that a psion from my campaign (not just backstory, but abilities) is not going to look much like one from anothers' game. while no two fighters are really the same, there is still a general way they are handled. they are standards in peoples games, psions aren't.c) accepted: i never knew so many people thought psychic stuff was sci fi in flavour. psychic events (and all that paranormal stuff in general) has been here on this earth before people knew how to write. mind powers are detailed in almost all major faiths and civilizational histories on this planet. it's more of an eastern thing (i know for one my holy books even mention esp and astral projections), for sure, but i don't remember seeing any people in my story books about knights and ogres and orcs going around tumbling and using flury of blows either. i think part of the lack of respect it gets is because of how previous versions of psionics were handled in pervious versions of the game, and partly by the new age influence psionics have over this current version of the PsiHB. maybe if they took out the new age names (biofeedback, etc) and gave more colourful names things would be better. instead of remote viewing or some of the other names people have problems with, maybe they can have abilities / power named "travel without moving" (send a part of your being to some other part or plane for a limited time), or "expanded consciousness" (+1 temporal understanding to AC ?). if everyone hated rogues they wouldn't be in the PHB either . . . people have to be convinced that it belongs in the game.it's not going to be balanced unless it is accepted. it's not going to be accepted unless it is standardized. it's not going to be standardized unless it is balanced.and that's why it will forever remain only done "right" in our own homebrews, as whatever is put out is unacceptable to all of us for whatever reasons.currently including it in a PHB would really water down psi so much, that it will not be enjoyed. while splat books go some distance to flesh out the classes (i know my fighter wasn't complete until i knew how much a halfling war waggon costed), having to rely on them isnt going to cut it. also i think psychic stuff and magic don't cross over, in my world they are very different things. (of course there are many who find no problem with using dispell magic on an enemy psion, so again, this class isn't standardized *or* balanced yet) if it's not going to be done right, it shouldn't be put in the book.I do have some sort of suggestion though. a 4th core rules book, or a 1st option book. included in it are things which were developed along with the core rules, but merely add more choices. in it would be things on firearms, mass combat, psionics, alternative magic systems, (possibly some guidelines for creating your own class, and give a psion as an example?), eastern stuff, arabic stuff, indian stuff, meso-american stuff, african stuff and so forth. obviously not going to happen either.esp when there is the oa book already out, and the psihb and so forth. but as long as these things are kept out, they will never fully be let in. (psions, samuri, etc....) and if i wanted to be snippy monks shouldn't be in if psions can't be in, as they are both redundant if you try hard enough to argue against them.monk? why not just multiclass a rogue and a fighter who fights unarmed?psion? why not just use another of the available casting classes, and only take spells like ESP and skills like Scry?</blockquote>

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