The Den's version of psionics

[Prak]

So, having asked about Psionics in the other thread, it now has me thinking about what might be a better way to do psions. Perhaps a warlock style class, with "spell like" abilities, eventually usable at will, and all that, and a different flavour.

Then there's the question of what kind of flavour psionics in fantasy should have. I know the mind magic has a lot of traction here, but crystals, mental energy attacks and ectoplasm also all have a lot of traction, if not necessarily here.

[Lago PARANOIA]

I'm not going to answer the first question, because everyone knows what kind of resource management system I favor and it'd just derail the thread.

As for the second question, that's the kind of flavor that psionics should have. Psionics should not be 'woman at the carnival in black robes decorated with pictures of eyeballs telling you the future' but 'shaved and scarred skinny guy with bulging eyes and a vibrating field around him shooting people who displease him with crystallized brain lasers'.

Think of the ultimate fusion of New Age and H. R. Giger. Have you ever played Dark Seed and Dark Seed 2? Psionics should strive to have a feeling like that.

[Prak]

What's the thought on the 3.0 psionics important ability model, where each discipline of psionics relied on a different ability score?

[Josh_Kablack]

Psionics

Telepathy, mental combat and psychic powers—psionics is a catchall word that describes special mental abilities possessed by various creatures. These are spell-like abilities that a creature generates from the power of its mind alone—no other outside magical force or ritual is needed. Each psionic creature’s description contains details on its psionic abilities.

Psionic attacks almost always allow Will saving throws to resist them. However, not all psionic attacks are mental attacks. Some psionic abilities allow the psionic creature to reshape its own body, heal its wounds, or teleport great distances. Some psionic creatures can see into the future, the past, and the present (in far-off locales) as well as read the minds of others. Psionic abilities are usually usable at will.

That part seemed pretty decent to me I think they shoulda stuck with it for playable psionic classes

For playability, and integration with the rest of the 3e system either put the classes on something like the fire mage / snowscaper / green mage chassis (but with a bit more non-combat detect and mind reading abilities) or set up psionic-type Spheres.

But for god's sake, before you hand out more Mind Blasts, let something lower level than Restoration cure Stun rounds.

[CatharzGodfoot]

There's more than one way to do it. The Den does magic with the wizard, the druid, the fire mage, the elementalist, and the Conduit of the Lower Planes.

My preference is to have at least one class for every major specialization, and design them to multiclass well. The telekinesis guy should have the option of additionally being a telepath or being a monk or learning some kind of magic.

There is, however, still room for generalist classes which manifest some grab-bag of psionically flavored powers and can't generally multiclass for shit.

[Nebuchadnezzar]

Having MAD for different disciplines seems like a decent way to emulate the notion of getting superpowers from pushups. Psionics strikes me as being well handled via a bunch of perhaps 5 level classes with an accelerated sphere acquisition layout with limited selection. X-Men style superheroes in general would work similarly.

[CatharzGodfoot]

Spheres are not a panacea.

[Swordslinger]

I never saw the point of psionics. In D&D it's effectively the same as wizardry, but often times weaker. About the only semi-interesting psionic class was the soulknife, and only because thus far D&D lacked a sword summoner. The rest of psionics was basically a weaker version of a wizard who could maybe cheese the system by launching stealth telepathic attacks in social situations because psionics was so difficult to detect (though typically most DMs just made it as easy to detect as magic for sanity purposes)

Besides that, psionics were just another weaker version of a wizard.

[Maj]

For whatever reason, my brain always handled the psionic system (3.0) way better than the spell slot system. When playing a spellcaster, I preferred psions because they were just more intuitively obvious to me.

We did a lot of tweaking to the system - rewrote the base class, the soulknife, eliminated mental combat, changed the way powers worked, blah blah blah - but not enough to be a major fix, and with no updates for anything after 3.0.

I liked the idea of each discipline being dependent on an ability score because it gave more flavor to the abilities, and thus actually improved the players' roleplaying because it gave them a better idea of how to play their numbers.

And philosophically, it was fun to run in some of our games because we experimented with magical "alignment." Psionics, arcane, divine, and technology were the four points, with psionics and technology representing power that comes from internal sources and arcane and divine coming from external sources. Arcane and tech opposed each other and divine and psionic opposed each other.

Made for an interesting few games, setting-wise.

[Count Arioch the 28th]

In my attempt at a tome game, the psion followed the same model for all the spellcasting classes: You got a list of powers that you basically know all of (like a warmage/beguiler/Dread Necro), and got a few bonus abilities as you leveled up that fit with the theme. For example, they got Detect Thoughts early on, which leveled into telepathy, they got skill bonuses a'la Mindbender, and so forth. In this case, the Psion was the best at telekinetic stuff (telekinesis, far hand, the force damage effects, astral construct, etc). That's how I saw a mind mage, lots of spoon bending, head a'sploding, and creation of objects.

Although none of my classes were tested well (although my version of the Wilder turned out well and receive good reviews from the players), I might share it here. They're unfinished and unpolished for the most part, but maybe someone else might pick them up and go with them.

[Psychic Robot]

psionics should be less about emulating magic and more about doing their own thing

[Maxus]

In my attempt at a tome game, the psion followed the same model for all the spellcasting classes: You got a list of powers that you basically know all of (like a warmage/beguiler/Dread Necro), and got a few bonus abilities as you leveled up that fit with the theme. For example, they got Detect Thoughts early on, which leveled into telepathy, they got skill bonuses a'la Mindbender, and so forth. In this case, the Psion was the best at telekinetic stuff (telekinesis, far hand, the force damage effects, astral construct, etc). That's how I saw a mind mage, lots of spoon bending, head a'sploding, and creation of objects.

Although none of my classes were tested well (although my version of the Wilder turned out well and receive good reviews from the players), I might share it here. They're unfinished and unpolished for the most part, but maybe someone else might pick them up and go with them.

Sounds interesting, Count. I'd like to see it.

I just like a few of the abilities--I always thought Eschew Earth was pretty damn nifty for what it was. But that goes back into 'weird at-will abilities' and how I like them on characters.

[sake]

psionics should be less about emulating magic and more about doing their own thing

'Course that would require magic didn't do everything to begin with . It wasn't just laziness that lead to the creation of so many "Psionic *Insert Name of Arcane Spell Here" powers.

I recall an old homebrew system a buddy of mine was working on that handled the difference as: both magic and psionics can do crazy psychic stuff but psionics simply does it a hundred times better since they're directly doing the stuff, instead of magic using spells as a sort of a go-between. If I recall correctly, his psionics (and divine casters) also could actually use healing and body mod effects on themselves while magic users couldn't since trying to cast complex spells on your own body would be like trying to do invasive surgery on yourself. Though magic's big plus was that it could ignore basic laws of physics and psionics couldn't.

[Prak]

I'm not going to answer the first question, because everyone knows what kind of resource management system I favor and it'd just derail the thread.

I actually don't know. And I don't know about anyone else, but I rather like power points. But I don't mind the little extra bit of book keeping if it allows a bit more flexibility.

On another note: I do like the augmenting capability, but what if instead of spell chains, or augmenting nonsense, your powers that have higher level versions were always level appropriate, by default, and actually have to choose to sandbag it, rather than having to always buy a new version of Summon Monster, or having to choose to make Astral Construct level appropriate.
So instead of

This power creates one 1st-level astral construct of solidified ectoplasm that attacks your enemies.

Astral Construct would read

This power creates an astral construct of solidified ectoplasm that attacks your enemies. Unless he chooses otherwise, a manifester creates a construct of a level equal to one half his own, rounded up. At his discretion, he may create multiple weaker constructs, following the below chart: [insert chart which amounts to -1 level: 1d4, -2 levels: 1d6, etc.]

[Lago PARANOIA]

Power points are one of the worst ideas ever and always end up being unbalanced, even in 4th Edition D&D where you get much fewer of them. They're never going to be implemented in a satisfying way, because invariably they combine everything I hate about contemporary ability systems (micromanaged buff combos, ability spam, in-game bookkeeping, extra double-digit addition/subtraction, five moves of doom, etc.) into one shit-sucking package.

Needless to say psionics will never get on my good side unless they ditch that idea once and for all. Fuck Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy for setting back tabletop RPGs a decade.

[Kaelik]

I'm not going to answer the first question, because everyone knows what kind of resource management system I favor and it'd just derail the thread.

I actually don't know. And I don't know about anyone else, but I rather like power points. But I don't mind the little extra bit of book keeping if it allows a bit more flexibility.

On another note: I do like the augmenting capability, but what if instead of spell chains, or augmenting nonsense, your powers that have higher level versions were always level appropriate, by default, and actually have to choose to sandbag it, rather than having to always buy a new version of Summon Monster, or having to choose to make Astral Construct level appropriate.
So instead of

This power creates one 1st-level astral construct of solidified ectoplasm that attacks your enemies.

Astral Construct would read

This power creates an astral construct of solidified ectoplasm that attacks your enemies. Unless he chooses otherwise, a manifester creates a construct of a level equal to one half his own, rounded up. At his discretion, he may create multiple weaker constructs, following the below chart: [insert chart which amounts to -1 level: 1d4, -2 levels: 1d6, etc.]

They have that, it's called Psi like abilities.

They are always augmented to the maximum, which is a good idea, because that's better than for example, Dominate Person becoming Dominate Monster, because instead, you can take Dominate Person with a Concentration duration, and then, five levels later, you can either Dominate a Dragon with concentration, or you can Dominate a Person with a duration of days per level, or whatever.

[Gx1080]

Of course that Wizards need a beating with the nerf stick on 3.5 ed. That's obvious. And has little to do with the discussion.

My idea of Psionics are basically this:

*Telekinesis, moving objects with your mind/Mind Blasts.
*Telepathy, mind reading/control powers.
*Kinetic Martial Arts, which is both body enchancement abilities and Psy-Weapons.
*Tele-empathy, which is healing powers and psychic pets.

From those 4 basic power pools, you can create different classes. Monks/Soulknives bring Kinetic Martial Arts and Telekinesis/Telepathy respectively, Psions have mainly Telekinesis and Telepathy, etc. The idea is to give each class a primary and secondary pool.

[...You Lost Me]

I think an integral fix would include taking out the psionic-ish spells from casters and give those to psionics.

[Lago PARANOIA]

Spellcasters, at least the classic trio in D&D (Wizard, Cleric, Druid) frankly have too many fucking spells to begin with. Irrespective of psionics, the game of D&D would strongly benefit from having more differentiated spellcasting archetypes/classes than there are right now.

Now with that said, Psionics are a useful power source for this purpose. Psionics already gives us three really good archetypes with memetic power outside of D&D--the Jedi, the martial arts monk, and the telepath/psychokinetic. Now as far as 'different spellcasting archetypes' go there are a couple of classes that would occupy a higher priority such as Engineer and Necromancer, but they're definitely on the A-list of fantasy supernatural characters. That is alone to give them enough of a reason to be included.

[Josh_Kablack]

I'm with Lago here

If you break the Wizard/Sorcerer up into a bunch of theme casters along the lines of Firemage, Ice Mage, Siege Mage, Necromancer, Stormlord, Geomancer, Star Mage, Summoner etc, then psi-flavored stuff like Hypnotist, Telepath, Precog, Telekinetic and Mindblades fits right into that list.

You also end up with classes that are more thematic and easier to play than classic Wizards

[Lago PARANOIA]

I don't support the game salami slicing the casters that much (you end up with either a short or inflexible game that way) but if you set the bar to, say, Artificer then psionics fits in nicely. It gives you enough powers to construct three reasonably versatile classes and also has its own thematic constructs that make it distinct from the other classes. Jedi and Monk feel more distinct from Paladin and Rogue than Swordmage and Bard do--which should definitely be enough for an autoinclude.

[Prak]

I had another thought as I sat down to list psionic power archetypes.

There's going to be a lot of overlap between Psionics and Magic, regardless of how we do things (Clairvoyance/Scrying, Mind Control/Enchantment, Animate things with ectoplasm or crystals/animate things with negative energy and black stones, Pyrokinetics/Fire magic).

So what about making niche classes that explicitly say something along the lines of

The flamethrower is a class which specializes in setting those people over there on fire, from over here. This can be through magic, psychic ability, or technology, depending on character and setting.

....

Psionic Flamethrowers
Psionic Flamethrowers are called Pyrokinetics. They use their mental energy to (excite materials at a molecular level)/(draw forth the choleric humours) and engulf their target in flames.
[insert some minor ability differences for customizing a character as a Psionic Flamethrower]

Magic Flamethrowers
Magic Flamethrowers are called Fire Mages. They use the magical radiation of their world to cast blistering balls of flame, or draw forth fire from the thin air around their targets.
[insert some minor ability differences for customizing a character as a Magic Flamethrower]

Technology Flamethrowers
Technology Flamethrowers are called Arsons or Firebugs. They use devices and flammable materials to set things on fire.
[insert some minor ability differences for customizing a character as a Technology Flamethrower]

Flamethrowers in Eberron
(stuff about where they fit into the setting, Quori-bred Pyrokineticists, Artificer Taught Firebugs, etc.)

Flamethrowers in Fearun
(stuff about where they fit in. Red Wizard Fire Mages, most likely)

Flamethrowers in Oerth

And so on.

[CatharzGodfoot]

I had another thought as I sat down to list psionic power archetypes.

There's going to be a lot of overlap between Psionics and Magic, regardless of how we do things (Clairvoyance/Scrying, Mind Control/Enchantment, Animate things with ectoplasm or crystals/animate things with negative energy and black stones, Pyrokinetics/Fire magic).

So what about making niche classes that explicitly say something along the lines of

The flamethrower is a class which specializes in setting those people over there on fire, from over here. This can be through magic, psychic ability, or technology, depending on character and setting.

....

Psionic Flamethrowers
Psionic Flamethrowers are called Pyrokinetics. They use their mental energy to (excite materials at a molecular level)/(draw forth the choleric humours) and engulf their target in flames.
[insert some minor ability differences for customizing a character as a Psionic Flamethrower]

Magic Flamethrowers
Magic Flamethrowers are called Fire Mages. They use the magical radiation of their world to cast blistering balls of flame, or draw forth fire from the thin air around their targets.
[insert some minor ability differences for customizing a character as a Magic Flamethrower]

Technology Flamethrowers
Technology Flamethrowers are called Arsons or Firebugs. They use devices and flammable materials to set things on fire.
[insert some minor ability differences for customizing a character as a Technology Flamethrower]

Flamethrowers in Eberron
(stuff about where they fit into the setting, Quori-bred Pyrokineticists, Artificer Taught Firebugs, etc.)

Flamethrowers in Fearun
(stuff about where they fit in. Red Wizard Fire Mages, most likely)

Flamethrowers in Oerth

And so on.

This is a joke, right?

It's so trivially easy to make a new class that there's never reason to stretch the flavor from magic to tech unless you're working with some kind of 'official books only' restriction.

'Mages that use fire' and 'psionicists that use fire' are different, but there is literally no difference between the Fire Mage class and the pyrokineticist concept.

[Prak]

No, it's not a joke. A class can be flavoured multiple ways, as proven by people's bits on "Making a fighter by writing 'sorcerer' on your character sheet" and "yeah, I played a soulknife. I used the ranger class."

It's borrowing an idea from Mutants and Masterminds because the mechanical difference between a Fire Mage and a Pyrokineticist and Firebug from The Batman is so small as to be not worth making different classes instead of just saying "you can pick your power source."

[CatharzGodfoot]

In a specific setting, it's generally better to just say 'pyrokineticists are magic' or 'pyrokineticists are psionic (= magic)' or 'pyrokineticists are technological' or 'pyrokineticists are draconic' or 'pyrokineticists are infernal' or whatever and be done with it. Identical draconic and technological pyromaniacs create cognitive dissonance, and they should have differing abilities anyway.

For example, the firebug should get the following abilities at first level:
[*]Asbestos suit: Fire resistance = level*2.
[*]Molotov Cocktail: 5' radius burst short range, deals level*1d6/2 damage and sets on fire, Int-based reflex save for half damage.
[*]Plasma Rifle: Attack action fire bolts.
[*]Pyrotechnics Expert: Add min of Int and level to fire damage.
[*]Pyrotechnics Research: Has all fire spells on 'spell list' for activating and crafting items.

The fire lizard gets these:
[*]Dragonskin: Fire resistance = level*2, natural armor = level.
[*]Fire Breath: 5' per level cone deals level*1d6/2 & sets on fire, Cha-based save for half damage.
[*]Intimidate Flame: Add min of Cha and level to fire damage.
[*]Dragon Magic: Has all fire spells on 'spell list' for activating and crafting items.