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Psionic is one of those things that have never worked for me in D&D to the point I have banned them from my campaign. It always feels like the psionic rules sets are put into the game as an afterthought and they tend to feel like the old champions RPG rules set. I think that psionic in 5e could really use a lot of attention. It would be great if the rules for psionic “psychic’s” included rules for your telepathic link to your familiar. I would like to see at least some consistency between Magic psychic’s and psionic psychics.

May 2, 2012 -- 11:15AM, ToeSama wrote:

May 2, 2012 -- 9:23AM, Monsieur_Moustache wrote:

Because you don't want to consider that there are many DMs that are not so flexible with classes flavor

 

Actually, I understand that fact very well. I have been a victim. I simply ignore it out of benefit of the doubt than any ignorance of it. Any DM who won't let you play a character the way you want, and work with you to make it fit the game, is a bad DM. Plain and simple. Just because I've met enough of them to last a life time, I don't want to automatically assume people will be bad DMs.

May 2, 2012 -- 9:23AM, Monsieur_Moustache wrote:

I played a refluffed class to play a psychic powers user in 4th ed. and I didn't take a psionic class, I took an enchanter, because I'm not agree with the telepath as a debuff spammer unable to manifest telepathy without taking the right race or feat. Refluff is not a concept beyond my imagination.

 

No psychic class in 4e can "telepathy" without the right race or feat, be it psionic or arcane or whatever else have you. I see little cause for concern on a mechanical limitation that everyone has if it isn't breaking the games mold.

May 2, 2012 -- 9:23AM, Monsieur_Moustache wrote:

What you consider obvious is not obvious at all, or there wouldn't be so much rejection about psionics. I remember some 2nd edition people who were upset to see names like "Telekinesis", "ESP" or "Astral Projection" in the wizard spell list, and it was just a spell name to change in their characters' spell books.

The more you work to refluff a class, the less you easily immerse you in your character, just because each time you open a D&D rule book about your totally refluffed character, you see pictures and read text that are formated for the base class. Some people don't care, some others have problems with this. I do not say that removing the Sci-fi fluff is easy once the psionic concept is printed, it's something that must be done before.

We all have different ways to apprehend things, such as through logic or through aestheticism. It doesn't make no sense, it's just opinions. And it seems that psionics are not liked as they are by a majority of D&D players and DMs. And this bars players like me, who like to play pure psychic powers wielders, to have well supported classes.

 

The removal of Psionic options from a DMs table without ever giving a player who wants to play it the chance has nothing to do with its legitimacy as a class or a concept, nor has anything to do with the flavor it takes. It has to do with people forcing their concept of badwrongfun on others. I don't like the primal power source from 4e. It makes no sense to me, and it largely seems to force its way into the fluff of both the original print, and anything I come up with as a homebrew. One of my players loves to play those primal classes though, and loves their fluff. Just because I'm the DM doesn't mean I can tell them they can't play that class without even trying to explore ways to work it in. I might as well tell them they can't play with me. That's bad DMing.

People can get over it. They choose not to. The problem is with the people, not the class/power source/flavor/etc.

May 2, 2012 -- 9:23AM, Monsieur_Moustache wrote:

So I make this thread to see if there's any hope to see some compromise in the next edition. And no, I don't consider "People just have to refluff all their characters from up to bottom" as a good answer to the problem, because it won't get "instinctive" psychic powers from the ghetto they are in.

 

I can get behind that desire, though I have jaded views about what such a goal can ultimately accomplish. For some Psionic fans, the sci-fi feel is what makes them interesting, because it is far and away the most defining thing that makes them different from the rest of the magic users. Changing that will alienate them if refluff is not an optional course of action, even if the mechanics are the same as what they know and love. I don't see it as anything but a lose-lose.

May 2, 2012 -- 9:23AM, Monsieur_Moustache wrote:

I think that psionics is a concept that works less and less edition after edition. Their place in D&D have to be designed from the start, and my opinion is that the sci-fi approach didn't work well in 1st and following editions, do not work at all now, and so will never work later.

I won't lose sleep if psionics are back as they are in the next edition, but I don't see what anybody gain with a sci-fi concept that falls flat again and again when there are already traditional psychic powers users that would benefit from this specialization instead of being crappy or bizarre classes.

 

Working psionics as part of core won't change the view people have of it, nor do I believe it will even do anything to make it mechanically better. D&D is a growing game, where the mythology becomes richer and deeper with time and the introduction of new concepts. A late start in psionic support is no more helpful or damaging to the game than adding it in to begin with. Sure, it might get more support since its been around from the get go, but people will still either love it or hate it no matter what.

It seems that we agree on a lot of points, beside the fact I really that traditional psychic powers based classes, with easy recognizable names, free all the sci-fi terminology would work in D&D.

My refluffed character was an example of psionic classes in 4th edition bringing nothing, as my character has just taken the Elan heritage feat. I then played a character with able to force people to move or attack against their will with one wizard at-will power, something that a psion can not do. And the psion does not even bring something similar to telepathy 5.

Another question I ask myself is why psion as a wizard or controller alternative ? I feel that psion as cleric or rogue alternative would have made more sense. In 2nd edition, psionicists were able to be (not really good) healers and had a lot of utility powers, but the 3rd edition started to orient the psion as wizard alternative. Wizard occupy very well the big offensive flashy effects place, and alternative classes to them does not work as wizard is a flexible concept that only impose dedication to study in their profiles, and includes a lot of specializations that can feel as their own classes.

May 2, 2012 -- 10:12PM, DarkSphinx wrote:

I agree with the OP concerning odd terminology for "psychic" concepts (such as "psionics" itself) in a fantasy milieu.  Terms like "Ego Whip", "Id Insinuation", and the like (from the original D&D psionics as presented in Eldritch Wizardry back in 1976) are somewhat anachronistic for a medieval-flavored campaign ("ego" and "id" being latinizations of Freud's "das Ich und das Es," actually "the Self and the It" with "das Über-Ich" for "super-ego" meaning the "Over-Self").
On perusing 4th Edition D&D's Psionic Power (which was conveniently at hand) I do not see anything particularly egregious about the flavoring of names and powers for a medieval setting.  The connection to the "Far Realm" is one that is easily removed if desired.
For my own personal campaigns, I prefer Psionics to be separate from Magic, both mechanically and in flavor.  I agree with Salla concerning Psionics being based on an internal source (much like Martial, actually), rather than an external source (like Arcane and Divine and Primal).  The Witch subclass from Heroes of the Feywild missed an opportunity, I think, to be a blending of all those external sources (Arcane/Divine/Primal), but, such is life!  The OP's concept of a "psychic witch" reminds me (for some reason) of the Bene Gesserit of the Dune novels by Frank Herbert, which are both Sci-Fi and definitely psionic-flavored, while simultaneously evoking an archaic, medieval nature.  Katherine Kurtz's Deryni novels (starting 1970) present characters who wield "psychic" and "magic" powers simultaneously and I note that neither she nor these novels are mentioned in Gygax's "Inspirational Reading" section in the AD&D DMG (1979, p224).

-DS

I have read a lot of these Katherine Kurtz's novels. I don't like wizard or psychics as separate races, but good novels are good novels...
I think the concept of psychic witch is natural if you include a psychic plane of existence where adventurous or desperate psychics can trade with pure spirits or spirits of dead creatures more easy to understand. And D&D really needs a cosmology lifting, at least just to put their spirits somewhere 
The Bene Gesserit and the Dune novels are monuments in the imagination of people who know them, making me remember anything about these novels is like casting a "power word : Stun" spell on me !

May 5, 2012 -- 9:20AM, Salla wrote:

Thinking about it ... what difference does it make what the names of psionic powers are?  The character would most likely be completely unaware of them.  I can see spells having names, given the way they are traditionally used; taught as rote, each one having specific, identifiable and consistent components (every wizard casts Fireball the exact same way in pre-4e, for example).  It makes sense that one could 'learn Magic Missile' or 'learn Meteor Swarm', as those exist as discrete entities.

Psionic powers are entirely internal, though.  The psionic doesn't know he's 'manifesting Empathic Projection'; he just knows he can force someone else to feel a different emotion.  He doesn't know he's 'manifesting Probability Travel'; he just knows he's teleporting.

It is exactly where I think the problem of the "psionics terminology" is.

For example, the non educated man is not stupid, and when he look at something, he can deduce by looking to another human being, that the eyes are what he is using to see. The eyes of the other human are moving in the direction of an object, the man look in the same direction, and the reaction of the other human prove that he is seeing the same thing. Then the eyes as the organs used to see are an evidence. But the non educated man will not start to deduce that seeing things involves little particles and strange little things inside the eyes that react to this particles, and then deduce that there is a common nervous system and that only a part of it handles the vision. And this man won't start naming all this elements and processes with precise and standardized terms, just because he's seeing things and that he knows that he uses his eyes for this.

Terms like psionics, (tele)kinetic, Id insinuation, psychofeedback, precognitive, dimensional, telepath(ic), ectoplasmic, ego whip, or psychosis are part of our specific organized system of knowledge, they are not in any way terms that would come to mind to a D&D character. "Id" and "ego" even refer to something that a lot of specialized people consider dubious at best. Psionic is only standard in a specific kind of fiction, and not even the most popular...

If we are creating a D&D character with psychic powers, why naming elements related to this medieval character after references that make no sense in a D&D setting ?
In our world, some countries still refuse to adopt the metric system, even when their scientists use them. The standardized system is just better, but cultural aspects block its adoption. And our civilizations share informations across the world like never before. How would a "psionics" kind of standardized terminology be established and then shared by all the psychics in all the strange and more than often antagonistic D&D scattered civilizations ?

For me, these questions are the reason why the psionics concept will never feel natural in the D&D settings.