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For me the psionic character is characterised by their strict discipline and focus. They manipulate the word by directly exerting their own force of will on their surroundings.

Where a cleric follows a way of life that allows the powers they choose to follow to use them as a conduit and the mage disects the fabric of being to understand and manipulate it, the psionic hones their own power and makes things happen through desire.

The cleric asks for it and it is so; the mage understands it and it is so; the psionic wills it and it is so.

That's why psionic powers do not have verbal, somatic or material components; the process is an act of will and wholly internal in nature. It does not stem from any understanding or way of life (though one could argue that some ways of life lend themselves to different aspects of psionics).

The thing that muddied the waters in 3e a bit was the sorcerer was all ready described as a mage that worked off their own force of will. They alluded to some kind of heritage and the understanding of that heritage was what made them arcane, and later they expanded on that idea but they never really sold it as a reason for sorcery to work. 4e's sorcerer did a good job of making sorcery a clearly arcane pursuit that stemmed from a specific power source and 5e's sorcerer, for all its faults, does create that link between understanding one's heritage and gaining power from it.

What I like about this power list is it does allude to that inner force of will. The class is fine, too, and the augments listed are good ideas as well, but the powers are really the key to this.

Given what we're hearing about modularity and all that fun stuff, my guess is the psionic power list will be the only thing to differentiate psionics from the rest.

Oct 6, 2012 -- 2:46AM, Haldrik wrote:

Oct 6, 2012 -- 12:12AM, aFrozenSoul wrote:

Int would be used for psions who use telekinesis or metacreativy/shaper, Wis for psychometabolism, clairsentience and forsight and Cha for telepathy. You would want to focus on one or two of these stats than have the rest in con or dex.

I'm thinking that discipline's would give you bonuses to powers of that type. For example a telekinetic psion could have at later levels all of his telekinesis powers gain fire effects and bonuses making a pyrokinetic.

I dont see the how Int has a role in psionic. How does the amount “knowledge” help psionic effects?



General consensus:

Cha = enchantment (telepathy) and subjective illusion (phantasm, hallucenation)
Wis = divination (esp, remote sensing, clairsentience, prescience)



Probably:

Wis = shapeshifting (psyhometabolism, mind-over-body, regenerative healing by aura)

 
  
Debatable:

Fifth Element (spirit, force, light, telekinesis) and objective illusion (conjuration, force construct)
= Wis (to track surroundings)?
= Cha (personal force of will)?

Four Elements (bending, air including electricity and sound, water, pyrokinetic fire, earth) and creation (shaping, fabricating, also instanteous creations of enduring objects)
= Wis?
= Cha?

Teleportation (a blend of telepathy and telekinesis to project the mind elsewhere and then warp the dimensional separation to send the body thru to there)
= Wis?
= Cha?

Summoning (spiritism, a blend of telepathy and telekinesis - but not actual teleportation - engages distant mind then summons temporarily their fifth-elemental avatar, including Fae spirits, Elemental spirits, divine angelic and saintly spirits, and necromantic undead spirits)
= Cha?

Acquiring knowledge requires abstraction. We are in the ability D&D ability scores nonsense. By definition, Wisdom and Intelligence with different connotations. So it's normal that drawing a line between these two abilities feels impossible.

The classic view of D&D Intelligence has negative connotations with extreme examples of cold or abstract logic or lack of social understanding (social knowledge, there's a paradox). Intelligence is considered as bad, there's no emotion in it. The examples are never presented as being differents, but clearly disfunctional.

The classic view of D&D Wisdom is all positive. it's a vague super ability that allows people to be super intelligent, super perceptive and in super self control (and I think I forget some super other aspects), without doing anything or even knowing anything beyond basic knowledge (how to hunt, not putting our fingers in the nose when they are dirty&hellip. Most animals in D&D are wiser than people. Wisdom brings an idea of purity, respect, and knowing the ultimate truth of life, even with a 1 Int score.
Wisdom is common sense, whatever it means. If it's common to consider constructive to burn witches, then common sense takes in consideration what ? what is considered wise by non wise people ? Who decides that someone is wise or not ? Someone with 2 Int or someone considering himself wise enough to decide what is wise ?
Intelligence becomes Wisdom by social prism. So Charismatic people have more chances to be considered wise…

About Perception, children with a non corrected bad seeing learn less than others, for example. D&D Constitution has an impact on perception, knowledge and social devepment. Good use of strength requires balance and good perception of what you can do before harming you, but there's no need to be particularily "D&D intelligent or wise" to do it, as any animated living being do it. Dexterity requires all senses except Smell/taste to function. And we can even consider that smell/taste concern dexterity regarding some defensive reflexes. And being at top dexterity doesn't require any intelligence or wisdom. and I won't go into social perception or Analysis of perceived informations and rational exploitation of them.

Just to say I'm not convinced that there's a general consensus on anything concerning D&D mental ability scores.

 

More helpful if as follows,

The abilities function via skill checks and now, especially in 5e, via the ability checks themselves to resolve specific challenges. Therefore the abilities must have clear, nonambiguous, mutually exclusive meanings, so there is no confusion about to which checks each ability applies.

Wisdom resolves challenges versus perception: find hidden, notice camouflage, detect invisibility, navigate darkness, discern illusion, recognize flaws in disguises, identify forgeries, expose vulnerabilities, and so on, and conversely, use this understanding of deceiving the senses to hide, camouflage, go invisible, obscure vision, create illusion, disguise, forge, mask vulnerabilities, and so on.

Intelligence is used almost exclusively for lore, representing the amount of knowledge that one can access, and by extension, competence in skills that require extensive education and technological mastery, including arcane and its protoscientific approach to applying the cosmic laws of magic. When a challenge requires memory, knowledgeability, comprehension, applying information, analysis, then Intelligence makes the ability checks and skill checks.

Charisma essentially handles all of the social skills representing personal presence, sense of self, force of personality, will power, pursuasiveness, inspiration, sense of community, sense of identity, meaningfulness, ideals, goals, morale, rapport with others, including empathy and insight.

Each mental ability has clear areas of competence. These are the meanings that arise from the challenges that adventurers must actually engage during gameplay. These are the meanings that are clear and useful.

For what it's worth, I think there's a case for some psionic sciences using int, but on the whole I see wisdom as the psionic stat and I see room for charisma.

Based on what I think the psionicist is (be it psion, psywar or whatever), the most important characteristic for psionics is strength of will and mental discipline. The way D&D traditionally defines wisdom makes it the de facto attribute for controlling psionics. However, there is the argument that charisma being a measure of someone's "force of personality" sort of puts it in there as a possible psionic stat.

Intelligence, of course, could mean mental discipline. I totally grok it, but the way D&D generally interprets what the int stat does (lore skills, languages, wizardry) makes it a poor choice for the psionic character.

So if psionics are a product of someone's ability to exert their will over their surroundings without anything but their own inner reserve, wisdom's really it because it's the attribute that controls willpower.

Cha -> Telepatic powers with mindaffecting effects

Con -> Psicometabolism & (if effectint himself)

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I would like a special game mechanic for wilder, when he would lose the "bet" he doesn´t lose psionic power points but "enemy" get PPPs to do hostile actions like summon astral construct, something like paradox from Mage: Ascesion or the Backlash from Dark Age: Mage.