So I'm introducing psionics into my game soon, and I've been thinking about something. I'm not having psionics be an "it's always been there, but now you can use it" thing. I've got a way to introduce it, but I've got a problem. How do I make psionics feel totally new, like it is in my world? How can I let them know that this is not simple, ordinary magic (arcane or divine)? (Granted, in my world, psionics were developed as a magic substitute, but I still want it to feel different.)
Perhaps it developed in like, political opposition to magic. The first Pisonics felt (and this doesn't have to be true) that wizards have all the power, are corrupt, evil, misleading the world, or that arcane and divine magic is evil or draws from some sort of inappropriate source. Instead the Psionics choose to cultivate their inner strength.
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Make it leaky... it has the desired effect but it also does strange things like:
undoing buttons
taking away your sense of smell
making your eyes glow
killing all of the fish in a pond
making the birds sing
etc.
That way your players can learn to tame it as they mature, as can other psionic casters. Also, it can have that old-timer-don'-trust-it vibe.
Hopefully by the end of your campaign psionics will be more normal and your players will be able to see the development of the setting.
Arcane school is hunting down psionic creatures and people for encroaching on their turf.
God of magic refuses to let her clergy heal psionic PC's.
People in a given city that are ok with magic 'freak out' when the learn that someone is psionic.
If you are using a Golarion-based world with the panoply of deities available, I would suggest Nethys.
He's insane. He has the knowledge and magic domains. I could easily see him deciding that he would bless some random shlubs with psionic abilities. As Frerezar points out, psionicists manifest their abilities with distinctive flourishes that differ from person to person. Moreover, much like casters can no doubt distinguish between divine and arcane magic, psionics (assuming a psionic/magic equivalency so that dispels and detections interoperate) would also have a different feel. And in most societies different is bad.
Which feeds into one of Nethys' other domains: destruction. Some gods just want to watch the world burn. The possibilities for conflicts between arcane and divine casters vs the new upstart psionicists would be enticing for someone looking for a bit of damage on a planetary level.
Anyway, just my $0.02
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Well, the thing is to make psionics different from arcane and divine magic. I realize this advice may have come too late, though.
A psionic character quickly becomes just another spellcaster when he has exactly the same powers as the wizard and/or the cleric. So a psionic character has to do something the others can't.
For example, A 9th level cleric could use Greater Command while a 9th level wizard would use Dominate Person. A 9th level Telepath (Psion) could use an augmented Mind Control. All are spells/powers that take control of someone else. In this case these classes are stepping on each other's shoes. (Though they have plenty of options to not step on each other's shoes)
@the David: The specific example you provide has more to do with available spell effects. That is to say, is there a spell available that can accomplish X? That seems like a bit of a red herring to focus on. Consider that a wizard could start researching his own spells, developing entirely different spells for spell levels 1 through 9, which display abilities that differ from all current CRB spells. Then they die and bequeath this to one of their acolytes, who was never taught any standard CRB spells, only those their master actually researched. When they go out into the world and start spell casting, per your example, they would seem "different". Yet it is just arcane magic.
There are really only two ways to make psionics and arcane/divine magic distinct from each other. One is fluff, the other is mechanics. My suggestion was more fluff oriented. Provide a reason why psionics is just now introduced and then, through description (e.g. "You see a light much like your Continual Flame spell, but the energies that you sense surrounding it are like nothing you have ever sensed before. They seem to emanate from within the wielder, not anchored to the arcane or to a deity as you sense with yourself and your fellow casters.") as well as through world events (e.g. the increasing hostility and misunderstanding between traditional casters and psionic casters), you impress upon the players just how different it seems.
If, however, you try to make them mechanically different, which I was purposefully avoiding, you run into the problem of how to handle meta-abilities. Should detect magic also detect psionic effects and vice versa? What about dispels? Anti-magic/psionic effects? Spell Resistance? Do you also need Psionic Resistance? What about monsters? Would everything with SR automatically get PR? If not, psionicists would seem incredibly over powered since they could plow through magical defenses trivially.
That is why it is more typical to have psionics and magic affect one another as if they were just two sides of the same coin. That isn't to say it is impossible to split them up, but it does have a lot of ramifications.
And to bring it back around to the idea of having psionicists do "different" things, well... between the cleric and wizard spell lists, there is a LOT that is covered. If you want psionicists to not have spells that overlap with clerics and wizards, there aren't many gaps that would be left for them.
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Speaking strictly about mechanics: My favored solution is to revise the whole system, and I've been working off and on on just such a thing. 3rd Edition psionics is much too much like spellcasting. I'd rather bring in a little more of the 2nd Edition schema (without the pitfalls).
Regarding the ever-vexing issue of how psionics should interact with magic and other things that relate to magic, my idea was: Classify psionics as "Supernatural Abilities", just like the powers offered by 3.5 Pact Magic. I've even thought about making up a new category, "Paranormal Abilities", which would fit conceptually between "Extraordinary" and "Supernatural" - though that would require making up even more new rules, of course, and the question of balance would be in completely undiscovered country. Understand, 3.5 Pact Magic proved balanced (at least that's the majority consensus as I'm aware of it, and I do love it), and that was because its advancement scheme and limitations were radically different from spellcasting - think also of Incarnum, another cr-aaazy late 3rd Edition-era idea that turned out to work.
Point is, I would NOT make it the same as magic, nor would I make it advance in that same "levels 1-9" manner. I'd make it radically differently-abled, with Combat Modes (following more in the tradition of 2nd Edition DARK SUN, but simplified), Sciences (large-scope primary powers), Devotions (specialized subapplications), and Talents (basics, sort of like 0-level spells), and there would be a lot of "prerequisite-trees" so that you couldn't get the greatest powers until appropriately-high levels. Something else to consider: I've never actually seen a 2nd Edition Psionicist played, but someone I know who had played one said their forte in combat was harassment. One could say that their Combat Modes (again, modeled mainly after 2nd Edition DARK SUN's revision of previous 2nd Edition psionics rules) would be their primary offensive and defensive potential as normally understood, and most of their powers would be more abstract, subtle, or surreal in nature.
Another source of inspiration is Green Ronin's 3.0 "Psychic", whose powers work like skills for the most part - I think it's underpowered as written, even for 3.0, but that's easily-enough fixed. Point is, it's a good resource, I wouldn't favor using it as written.
Anybody using psionics has to do so with a bad French accent a baguette will materialise near the PC or NPC who is using psionics.
Several goods ideas here. Thanks everyone! I've never played with 2nd edition psionics, nor any of 2nd edition, so I can't really comment on that. In my world, psionics were developed as a way to give magical talent to the masses, so it will definitely be similar to magic, maybe even a third "branch" after arcane and divine.
As for making it different, I was looking for more of a fluff answer. I like the idea of glowing eyes or something subtle like that. I also like Quint's quote about how it seems anchored to the caster. Now that I think about it, any arcane caster will be able to notice psionics are not arcane, and divine casters will notice it's not divine.
Thanks for your help, everyone! I hope my post isn't too unreadable. I haven't found a browser for my phone than doesn't hate this site.
I don't know what Dreamscarred did with it, but as I recall there were alternate rules available for magic-psionic transparency in 3.5.. Basically it was invisible to detect magics, magic resistances didn't affect it, psionic defenses didn't protect against magic, Psionic Resistance was 10 points lower than a creature's Spell Resistance or vice versa for creatures with PR but no SR.. Always seemed like a disaster waiting to happen to me though..
Also, as said earlier, instead of V/S/M components, every power has a manifestation to signify it's happening, whether they're glowing lights, ectoplasmic tentacles, strange scents, psychic screaming, etc.. Play up the stranger ones of those and that would probably make it different enough, eh?