So, Psionics, What Do You Think?

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Silverlion said:
The '70s was recent! Yay! I'm a spring chicken! As noted above: The Deryni novels began before D&D and as mentioned above had psionics and magic and Marion Zimmer Bradley's (gag) Darkover had psi, but not magic it was from the early '70s as well. I don't recall Pern's Dragonriders abilities, but I think they were Psi, although admittedly Darkover and Pern have sort of "humans on a new planet, find psychic powers" after being stranded. So eh? Maybe SF, but the first book I read of MZB's was not one I'd have called SF. I wish I'd stopped there but I was a kid at the time. I'm trying to remember if Witchworld has psi, I don't believe so, but my memory of those is dimmer.
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FWIW, you can push this back earlier than the 1970s; it seems to have been a fairly common trend among some writers decades before that. For instance, Poul Anderson's "Witch of the Demon Seas," (1951) is a sword-and-sorcery tale that reads a bit like Conan, but 'magic' in the story turns out to be mental powers (illusion and mind control). In Henry Kuttner's Mask of Circe (1948) magic is super-science and mental powers, and the Greek gods themselves are very powerful mutant humans (or, in one case, an A.I.). In Kuttner's Land of the Earthquake (1947), magicians do various mental tricks (mind control, telepathy, clairvoyance, etc.) but also create more obviously magical effects, like a cage of fire used to imprison someone, producing food and water magically, and physically splitting someone into a good and evil set of twins (rather like the Star Trek episode).

This isn't what you are talking about, I know, but my guess is that it would not be hard to find both psionic-like mental powers and magic in pulp adventure stories with a (then) contemporary setting, like Doc Savage. That's another genre of game where I wouldn't mind having both magic and psionics.
 
I'm in the Warhammer/40K line of thinking that its all the same thing. It is sufficiently advanced tech (to a few beings) but no matter how you skin it, it's still all channeling energy to get a desired result (the warp in this case). I like that Psykers, Shamans, and Wizards are all getting the same result despite using different ways of getting there. I also like that some of it is tech in the settings. Looks like lots of different techniques to do the same thing and different groups certainly do it in unique ways but it still interacts with each other. A Shaman's totem and a Librarian Hood both protect from attacks. But at the same time a Librarian isn't going to get power from the Waaagh and a wizard probably can't use a psychic hood but their effects still interact.

That said, it's a setting choice to me. Want them separated make them separated.
 
VisionStorm said:
I don't like them because they're artificially distinct and force me as DM to keep track of multiple spell lists and significantly different ways to use magic, when conceptually a warlock is just a wizard who made a pact with an extradimensional being. At least with Psionics there's a sufficiently distinct flavor and set of genre expectations conceptually speaking for how to handle their powers, even if I think that at the end of the day psionics is just mind magic. But when it comes to warlocks, that's literally just a word for male witch, which is just another word for female wizard, which is just another word for sorcerer or mage.

They literally used to be just a "kit" for mages back in the 2e era and have been treated as just a type of wizard with a wonky background in fiction for ages. But suddenly I have to use a different spell system to deal with them because WotC decided to make further artificial distinctions between words that are literally synonymous with "wizard", like the wizard/sorcerer distinction wasn't already jarring enough. At least psychic/psionicist or priest/cleric aren't literal synonyms for "mage".
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Mileage varies. I have one player in particular who loves them and the flavour they bring.
 
SavAce said:
I like RPGs where the powers are interestingly evocative due to the mechanics. I think other RPGs have some decent universal mechanics you could use to portray a wide range of powers with the same universal rules, just skinned differently (Hero System, BESM). Other RPGs have rules that do a thing, don't feel particularly good at being universal, that you could cram everything into as well (how I feel about D&D powers). Systems that differentiate powers in a way that I find a little interesting include:
  • Stormbringer 3e: Demon summoning & binding feels nice. It also has rules for petitioning higher powers which is a whole other thing. Other editions also have straight up magic spells.
  • Sorcerer: Magic is similarly all about summoning and is pretty evocative.
  • Marvel Super Heroes: The accessing of Personal, Universal & Dimensional Energies happens using different rules for each.
  • Rolemaster: Mentalism, Essence & Channeling feel like distinctions that are interesting enough, seem analogous to the Marvel distinction, though I'm not thrilled with the mechanics which do not treat how they operate all that differently.
  • Mythras: Mysticism, Sorcery, Animism & Theism are also roughly analogous to the Marvel & Rolemaster divisions, but Mythras ups the game over Rolemaster by flavoring the abilities with mechanics that are quite distinct from each other.
  • Ars Magica 3rd Edition: Magic operates within pretty well defined limits. 3rd edition really developed some "Realms of Power" that gave strong flavor and mechanical distinction to other powers, however: The Infernal, The Divine, The Fey.
  • Talislanta 4th Edition: Here, magics operate pretty similarly, but each school or philosophy has different strengths and weaknesses, some require the use of different implements, and it makes each kind of magic feel interestingly distinct. In a silly way it reminds me of how Styles work in Street Fighter.
  • Castle Falkenstein: This game has a magic system where you slowly accumulate the energies to power your spell over time by drawing from a deck of cards. Cards from the proper suit associated with the effect of your magic add directly to the pool you need. Cards of the wrong suit add 1 to the pool, or can be rejected. Adding cards of the wrong suite also adds "harmonics" to the spell, changing its effect in a way associated with the suit of the largest "harmonic". So, do you accept the risk of the harmonics because time is of the essence, or do you reject them and more slowly draw in the power for you spell. Magics are basically secret societies that know a few things based off some old texts. Super flavorful.
  • Palladium Fantasy: Palladium is a mess in its way, but boy are many (but not all) of those magic classes pretty distinct in a fun way!
Why do I mention all of these games? Well, I feel like Psionics falls into a place that is not too unlike certain martial arts Ki/Chi type powers, or fits in the Rolemaster Mentalism, Mythras Mysticism, MSH Personal Energies kind of area. While the systems are I mentioned are primarily about "magic", they illustrate how mechanics give a different feel to the use of each. I feel that it's totally cool to use Psionics in any setting if you want, and while I personally prefer each broad kind of power be mechanically distinct in a way that evokes the fictional nature of it, using universal system is fine too. What I don't like is using the very particular rules of D&D magic for all of it. Bleh...
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You didn’t mention that Conspiracy X had a psionic system based on drawing Zener cards.
 
Dammit Viktor said:
It is my favorite non-casting class in all of 3.X, especially in the DSP Pathfinder version. I prefer playing casters-- in the Bard/Druid range-- but I always sneak in as many levels of Soulknife and Soulbow/Soul Archer as I can.
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I'm not disagreeing, because no-one will play one, so I don't know.

I even renamed the class (I can't remember what to, this was over a decade ago) but it got no love. All my players just dig Psions.
 
I think Psylocke is a Soulknife/Bard hybrid, (she's slept with many Marvel Universe inhabitants at this point that is IIRC the Kwannon version) According to many players I've run into feel that is a bard's main motivation.

I'm not judging her choices, just noting she is apparently multi-classed.
 
VisionStorm said:
This is an issue for me with most 4e and 5e classes in general. They tend to be loaded with minor fiddly video gamey features that seem to operate at almost a meta level that looks at an RPG as a grid-based board or card game. You're not so much engaging on daring actions within a simulated world as much as playing a wild card hidden up your sleeve, that only applies under certain circumstances and doesn't give you much to begin with....
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I feel the same, and find it tends to limit peoples thinking to what card can I play now instead of really engaging and thinking what can I do now? Even folks who want something different the mechanics funnel them to this thinking. It has other follow on effects in my view as well. But I digress too much from the topic at hand.
 
VisionStorm said:
...The distinctions are more stylistic and in terms of focus, rather than something that needs to be handled under fundamentally different systems for game purposes.
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Nothing needs to be handled anyway for game purposes, but one can handle them differently and effectively is all I am saying. Whether one want to or not is another story. I used to be very much no psionics in my fantasy person, but found a way to make it work for me. I believe if one's touch stone is D&D (of any edition) on any of this (magic or psionics) it will be impossible.

Perhaps is more for another thread about how it can be done, for those who want to do it, and what have tried that has worked or not. I find just because a game tries a certain approach and it fails doesn't mean the concept itself is unworkable. Spell points and classless systems being two prime examples from yore.
 
VisionStorm said:
I don't like them because they're artificially distinct and force me as DM to keep track of multiple spell lists and significantly different ways to use magic, when conceptually a warlock is just a wizard who made a pact with an extradimensional being. At least with Psionics there's a sufficiently distinct flavor and set of genre expectations conceptually speaking for how to handle their powers, even if I think that at the end of the day psionics is just mind magic. But when it comes to warlocks, that's literally just a word for male witch, which is just another word for female wizard, which is just another word for sorcerer or mage.

They literally used to be just a "kit" for mages back in the 2e era and have been treated as just a type of wizard with a wonky background in fiction for ages. But suddenly I have to use a different spell system to deal with them because WotC decided to make further artificial distinctions between words that are literally synonymous with "wizard", like the wizard/sorcerer distinction wasn't already jarring enough. At least psychic/psionicist or priest/cleric aren't literal synonyms for "mage".
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You make the same argument for Sorcerers. Not making any claims that you're wrong, in fact, I agree with you. I just think that Sorcerers fit the same bucket. They're not different enough from Wizards to be it's own class.
 
Chris Brady said:
You make the same argument for Sorcerers. Not making any claims that you're wrong, in fact, I agree with you. I just think that Sorcerers fit the same bucket. They're not different enough from Wizards to be it's own class.
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Pretty much. Don't get me wrong, I prefer "Sorcerers" over "Wizards" mechanically, because I HATE Vancian spell casting, and don't even bother with spell memorization in my own games (I've always allowed spell casters to just cast spontaneously, cuz I refuse to keep track of memorized spells and won't inflict that on players either). And I might even be tempted to take some concepts from the Warlock class (invocations, maybe some element of limited spell slots recovered on a short rest) and fold them into a universal magic using class (take the best of each class and fuse them into what I'd ideally use as a "magic-user" class in D&D). But conceptually and lexically(?) speaking "Sorcerer" is just another word for "Wizard". And from a mechanical and game play point of view treating them as separate only complicates the system and adds to the DM's workload when running the game.

I would rather use a single universal "Mystic/Magic-User" class complemented by some type of specialties and/or a la carte spell pool selection to handle individual differences. Rather than treat every variation of the word "wizard" (sorcerer, witch, warlock, etc.) or magic specialty (necromancy, illusion, healers, etc.) as a separate class with completely different ways of using magic.
 
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