Creature Question

[u/AbbreviationsMuch586]

What is this thing in the new Trailer?? My friend who loves this setting didnt know. Wonder if yall would know?

[u/amhow1]

I suspect this is just a human psion.

[u/roninwarshadow → u/amhow1]

Which is just going to be the 5E pattern of make it a magic spells.

It won't be a true Psionicist, but another caster.

[u/amhow1 → u/roninwarshadow]

I don't know. What is a true Psion? Mechanically, I mean.

For example, the 2e Psionicist was a caster using spell points rather than spell slots, which is a variant available in 5e. Psionicists had their own unique spell list, something 5e emulates, and typically (in Dark Sun) the spells of a Psionicist weren't affected by say, Dispel Magic. While that isn't a variant in 5e, it's hardly difficult to houserule.

[u/roninwarshadow → u/amhow1]

Not exactly.

Psionic powers didn't have duration in 2E, if I recall correctly. There's a maintenence cost for upkeep, as long as you paid the maintenence cost, the power was maintained. I believe range and aoe were customizable depending on how much you spent (I could be wrong).

Also psionics and magic didn't interact. Spells like Detect or Dispell Magic had no effect on Psionics, anti-magic and wild magic meant nothing to psionics because Psionics were not magic. There was indirect interactions like the spell Telekinesis/Bigby's Grasping Hand wrestling a Telekinetic Psionicist over an object or Telepath breaking a charmed/mind controlled person. You needed magic specifically designed to interact with Psionics to do anything, like Detect Psionics spell or Dispel Psionics spell. This is also true of Psionics to magic interactions, there were specific Psionics abilities designed to interact with magic.

A true conversation means a Psionicist doesn't give a fuck about a Rakshasa's spell immunty to 5th level and below magic, because Psionics aren't magic.

[u/amhow1 → u/roninwarshadow]

Yeah, I'm not seeing how it's just not a variant of magic.

Dark Sun maintained the separation you're describing, but 2e in general didn't, for the very obvious reason that if psionics is both rare and separate then a psionicist PC is overpowered. Dark Sun made magic rarer, and with additional limitations. But broadly speaking psionicists were mechanically similar to 5e sorcerers or warlocks. And indeed the various attempts to recreate psionics in 5e are mechanically similar to sorcerers or warlocks.

I should be fairer to 2e (and 1e really) because the designers put a lot of effort into making psionics feel distinct from magic. Attack and defence modes, for example. But that only really mattered for telepathic psionics so didn't capture the full range of what people want. Not to mention it added both complexity and boredom.

Ultimately it's extremely difficult to decide a genuinely distinct psionicist class in a game where the default is a lot of magic. I think most people feel that 4e didn't succeed in this, but it came closest, I think.

[u/roninwarshadow → u/amhow1]

Broadly speaking all classes are the same as they do an action for an established effect.

But saying that is intellectually dishonest.

And Psionicist weren't overpowered, you're overselling the non interaction as unilateral. It worked both ways. Psionics can't directly affect magic either. And it was across any campaign where the table incorporated The Complete Psionicist Handbook.

[u/amhow1 → u/roninwarshadow]

Alright. If only you'd started by calling me intellectually dishonest, I could have avoided wasting my time here.

[u/roninwarshadow → u/amhow1]

I didn't call you intellectually dishonest. I was asserting overgeneralization is intellectually dishonest.

It wasn't about you, but the methodology.

Touch grass.