Magic-Psionics Transparency


Gamer Life General Discussion

51 to 100 of 107 << first < prev | 1 | 2 | 3 | next > last >>

TriOmegaZero wrote:
I'm pretty sure that is the general 'you', since I never have to do any of that. :P

More accurately, take that "you" to mean "me." ;P


Kirth Gersen wrote:
wraithstrike wrote:
One question however is what will you do with knowledge(psionics)?
I hadn't thought about it yet -- that's one thing I was hoping to gather a bunch of anecdotes about, so I'd have some context to work with.

It was only an extra skill to add to the game, and it makes them more different without breaking anything. I would add it as its own skill. I would also do the same with psicraft, but just let the players know psionics exist in your world. :)


1 person marked this as a favorite.
Kirth Gersen wrote:
TriOmegaZero wrote:
If I ever get to play with 8th level spells, I'll let you know.
Even before that point, you're hiding stuff from locate object by using spells, and then the party goes in and uses detect magic specifically to find the spells that are hiding the object, so they can find the object, so then you use magic aura to hide the spell that's hiding the object... part of me thinks it would be nice to have another avenue of approach, is all.

If you mean nondetection/etc I think those are intended to not be seen by detect magic/etc. I don't think RAW states that however.

Scarab Sages

1 person marked this as a favorite.

My Drive-By Two-Bitting:

I'm pretty keen on magic and psionics being different, personally. My answer to this whole issue is to classify psionic powers as supernatural abilities (the same way Channeling Energy and 3.5 Pact Magic are, and has demonstrated not to be game-breaking), or perhaps even to create a new category of "paranormal abilities" that's one step "above" extraordinary abilities and "beneath" supernatural, though that's precious little more than hypothetical right now, AND to redesign the psionics system so that it doesn't echo the spellcasting "levels 1-9" system, but rather would be more like the 2nd Edition schema, with Sciences (generally speaking, powers more overarching in scope, like remote viewing, body sculpting, telekinesis, and reality warping) and Devotions (generally speaking, subapplications of Sciences that are narrower in scope but often have more spectacular effects within that scope, like mind domination, psychic venom, time-hopping, death fields, and psionic maelstroms), Psionic Attack and Defense Modes (staple combat powers designed along the lines of how 2nd Edition DARK SUN revised 2nd Edition psionics) and a network of prerequisites running around the whole thing as one of the mechanisms for limiting how soon you can unlock the more impressive powers.


1 person marked this as a favorite.

One thing I haven't seen mentioned are monsters. In the 3.5 SRD, a number of monsters are defined to have psionics, though those are treated as spell-like abilities (and defined by the spells of the same name). For example, the Aboleth has a number of at will spell-like abilities; in the 3.5 SRD, those are psionics, so you would have to decide how to handle that. It might throw some of the traditional spell counters off (for example, using Protection from Evil versus Psionic Dominate? I'm not sure by the wording if that would be an issue or not - and this was already mentioned by others).

A lot of 3.5 creatures were not designed with the Power Resistance vs Spell Resistance paradigm in mind, so you might want to tweak that by assigning Power Resistance to some monsters that do not have it by default (or changing Spell Resistance to Power Resistance).

The biggest change I think would be that most psionics (outside of 3PP - I'm not sure what material you are using) are fixed in their powers known (outside of certain situations such as Psychic Reformation IIRC), so it might be harder for psionics to focus on spells to defend against both psionics and magic, or to clear both psionic and magic conditions.

Just some thoughts - I haven't looked through spells vs powers for any specific condition-clearing issues or defenses.


1 person marked this as a favorite.
Wyntr wrote:
The biggest change I think would be that most psionics are fixed in their powers known , so it might be harder for psionics to focus on spells to defend against both psionics and magic, or to clear both psionic and magic conditions.

I'd thought of that and decided it was a net "plus." If psionics are less common (and they would be), then they gain an advantage in that fewer people are prepped to shut them down. This would be a balancing factor, in many cases forcing them to choose between countering their own kind or countering magic.


1 person marked this as a favorite.

I ran in 3rd without transparency. I preferred to see Psionics as different, and have that reflected in the mechanics. The setting was the Realms, so someone not using magic would be pretty unnatural. I was also going with the Psionics are rare approach. For me, the idea that a type of being existed that could ignore a great many magical things, and function in a dead magic area, but was similarly unable to affect magic directly made for an interesting balance of it's own.

One of the important parts of decoupling transparency is to determine which spells/powers prevent things themselves, and which enhance the target. An "of Resistance" item, for example, would not be altered by removing transparency, because it is enhancing it's wearer, not directly interacting with Powers. Mindblank, however, would be rendered useless against Powers because it is the spell itself that is blocking them. Also, energy resistance effects are best left as is, because they are designed to block/absorb energy types regardless of source (most such effects already don't differentiate between magically created energy or naturally created energy, energy is energy to them).


1 person marked this as a favorite.

from a purely campaign setting perspective, I think that in a world where arcane/divine magics are perfectly opaque with each other and with all spell-like abilities and most (all?) supernatural abilities across all known planes of existence, psionics ought to be opaque as well.

I think that if the game was less reliant on constant use of magic; it would work. Otherwise, a setting's believability relies so much on its inhabitant's ability to shield themselves from magic, protect their home with magic and dispel magic with magic that the prospect of having powerful psions wrecking havoc in the antimagic zones and whatnot frightens me. I guess i could make an interesting settings where psions double-up the mages and priests for protection against rogue psions, or where psions "traps" are set here and there create a climate of paranoia from the population etc. It would have to be a central theme to the game, but the ramifications of such a setting are daunting...


lack of transparency is a drastic benefit to the Psionic player in a campaign where magic is the default system of arcane powers. especially when it happens to be rare, because spell resistance actually is a legitimate problem as are circumstantial save bonuses. at least book of 9 swords targeted armor class and was hindered by damage reduction, which worked to balance out the lack of defenses because touch AC or an unaugmented saving throw are not viable defenses.

and metagame reasons, when detect magic fails, it becomes consult the psion. and we really don't need a class that not only gets will based save or dies but can use them on a dwarf or barbarian while ignoring a defining racial ability or class feature that should be useable.

Grand Lodge

Pathfinder PF Special Edition, Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber
Laurefindel wrote:

from a purely campaign setting perspective, I think that in a world where arcane/divine magics are perfectly opaque with each other and with all spell-like abilities and most (all?) supernatural abilities across all known planes of existence, psionics ought to be opaque as well.

Under the default ruleset, arcane and divine could not be more transparent to each other if they tried. Protection, detection, and dispel mechanics work equally well from both sides. What do you see that's opaque? Differing spell lists alone do not define opacity.


LazarX wrote:
Laurefindel wrote:

from a purely campaign setting perspective, I think that in a world where arcane/divine magics are perfectly opaque with each other and with all spell-like abilities and most (all?) supernatural abilities across all known planes of existence, psionics ought to be opaque as well.

Under the default ruleset, arcane and divine could not be more transparent to each other if they tried. Protection, detection, and dispel mechanics work equally well from both sides. What do you see that's opaque? Differing spell lists alone do not define opacity.

Sorry, got confused with wording. Let me correct it:

From a purely campaign setting perspective, I think that in a world where arcane/divine magics are perfectly transparent with each other and with all spell-like abilities and most (all?) supernatural abilities across all known planes of existence, psionics ought to be transparent as well.


3 people marked this as a favorite.

Alright, anecdote time.

I've run four games without transparency, and played two games with.

With transparency, Magic has been notably stronger every time.

Without transparency, dwarves got a little more vulnerable, spell-resistance builds weren't the only viable builds that arose, and I noticed no particular increase in bookkeeping.

Now: all the non-transparency was in 3.5, thus things like rage powers, certain feat wordings, and other specialized abilities that are more common in PF than 3.5 would begin cropping up (they certainly existed in 3.5, but were more oft relegated to specific prestige classes or very exclusive items than base/core classes and races save for the dwarf bonus). That's something to be aware of.

One thing that can easily handle things even with the 'Different option, is to take anything that says "X effects, including magical effects" as inclusive language instead of exclusive language: "including" magic effects does not preclude psionic ones.

Those things that specify magic or psionic are the exlusive effects. If I had more time, I'd write more, but now, I'm out.


1 person marked this as a favorite.
LazarX wrote:
Laurefindel wrote:

from a purely campaign setting perspective, I think that in a world where arcane/divine magics are perfectly opaque with each other and with all spell-like abilities and most (all?) supernatural abilities across all known planes of existence, psionics ought to be opaque as well.

Under the default ruleset, arcane and divine could not be more transparent to each other if they tried. Protection, detection, and dispel mechanics work equally well from both sides. What do you see that's opaque? Differing spell lists alone do not define opacity.

+1

The biggest divide between arcane and divine I can think of is prestige classes which advance arcane casting but not divine and vice versa. That also applies to psionics even under the default transparency (prestige classes which advance manifesting don't advance casting, and vice versa).
In fact, even under the default magic-psionic transparency, psionics is still more opaque with magic than arcane and divine magic are with each other, since psionic powers count as spell-like abilities. An arcane caster can counterspell a divine caster, but not a manifester.


1 person marked this as a favorite.

Pathfinder has a mountain of defensive boons that become useless the moment a psionic attacker interacts with that character. it isn't just spell resistance, but really popular and common situational save boosters, abilities that counter specific schools of magic, and the like. usually the settings generally favor magic as the default, so the Psion will ignore the majority of enemy defenses.


2 people marked this as a favorite.

If the players want a reason for the transparency you can explain it as a fundamental law of the universe "Energy is energy whether it is generated by psionics or sorcery."

Bonus points if you can guess where i'm cribbing that from :)


Auren "Rin" Cloudstrider wrote:
Pathfinder has a mountain of defensive boons that become useless the moment a psionic attacker interacts with that character. it isn't just spell resistance, but really popular and common situational save boosters, abilities that counter specific schools of magic, and the like. usually the settings generally favor magic as the default, so the Psion will ignore the majority of enemy defenses.

... and will entirely lack those self-same defenses.

Which is something that we did run into. There was the psion-mage Cerebric Theurge (he ended up exclusively using his far-more-powerful magic side far more often, with his psionics just kind of as a 'oh, yeah, that's cool') and, when facing various divine casters, all the non-psionic prestiged folk were all like, "BOO-YA! Suck on my +5 saves v. that thing!" while he was like, "CRAP! My saves and hit points are strictly worse than a single-classed character! TO MY ARCANE SPELLS!" at which point he'd arcane-buff himself to the nines, and then pew-pew with some psionic blasty things. Either the battle would be a boss fight, close to being completed, or he'd get hammered down with magical effects that the others could simply shrug off or ignore.

The other psionic user that regularly ran into this problem (she was the only caster in the group) really had no recourse, and was just as festooned with typical magic items (and few psionic ones) as a normal adventurer.

The other two times, it was mostly the casters buffing against casters and the psionicists buffing against psionicists.

Time. I know I have it sometimes.

Oh, yeah, one more thing: if you go with the 'Different option, be aware that boosting a manifester's caster level does nothing. At all.

That took us a bit by surprise the first time.

EDIT: To be clear, this isn't because we thought caster level and manifester level were the same, but the little tricks that developed that could increase caster level simply didn't work - whether circle magic, ioun stones, or similar. It was obvious, but only after we started playing did we realize exactly how many options the casters had that the psionicists didn't. I can't comment on how easy that is in PF, but it's something to be aware of.

(Also, I didn't mention, and will continue to abstain from describing in detail, our experience with the original 3.0 psionic system. It... it was painful. Imagine poison used in ever combat - every combat - that you had rock/papers/scissors chance... only much larger... of nearly auto-failing your save against. Or the other guy was stunned. Worst. Combats. Ever.)

Worst. Combats. Ever.:

*after combat*

- "Whew, well we took down that CR 3 monster like a boss! I love being fifth level! How is everyone?"

- "Well you guys were all stunned for the first three rounds, so Yamma and I did all the work, but now we've got some pretty bad STR-damage, and STR, as you know, is my dumpstat and Yamma's casting stat, so we're about half a combat away from being unconscious or no casting power and thus generating a TPK in the first three rounds... again... from when you're stunned. To the sleep-mobile (aka the 'town inn') and hope that we don't have any more random encounters along the way!"

- "Man, being fifth level sucks. Okay, guys, maybe we can get all the way to the dungeon tomorrow. We'll have to be extra-sure not to get into random encounters tomorrow (or at least not a random encounter with <insert word here> psionic beasty)!"

It was Id Insinuation, by the way (by a temporal filcher).It was always Id Insinuation.

Shadow Lodge

1 person marked this as a favorite.
The NPC wrote:

If the players want a reason for the transparency you can explain it as a fundamental law of the universe "Energy is energy whether it is generated by psionics or sorcery."

Bonus points if you can guess where i'm cribbing that from :)

That's my line!


Thematically I see psionics and magic have the same effect just different ways to get there. Psions use mental power from themselves to imposed their minds eye reality on the real space while wizards use the fundamental rules upon which reality is built to bend it to their will.

I think that is why a wizards 3rd level spell fireball does 10d6 at level 10, and a psions third level spell at ten still only does 5d6. The strength of the wizards spell is from knowledge, they can do more with less, while a psion requires the same amount of energy to impose their vision, they just get vastly more energy as they progress in levels.

That is how I justify transparency. Both psionics and magic augment the real-space and thus can interfere with each other easily.


2 people marked this as a favorite.
137ben wrote:
LazarX wrote:
Laurefindel wrote:

from a purely campaign setting perspective, I think that in a world where arcane/divine magics are perfectly opaque with each other and with all spell-like abilities and most (all?) supernatural abilities across all known planes of existence, psionics ought to be opaque as well.

Under the default ruleset, arcane and divine could not be more transparent to each other if they tried. Protection, detection, and dispel mechanics work equally well from both sides. What do you see that's opaque? Differing spell lists alone do not define opacity.

+1

The biggest divide between arcane and divine I can think of is prestige classes which advance arcane casting but not divine and vice versa. That also applies to psionics even under the default transparency (prestige classes which advance manifesting don't advance casting, and vice versa).
In fact, even under the default magic-psionic transparency, psionics is still more opaque with magic than arcane and divine magic are with each other, since psionic powers count as spell-like abilities. An arcane caster can counterspell a divine caster, but not a manifester.

yes, I meant transparent, my mistake, which is why I said psionics ought to be transparent as well.


I would think Psionics and non-transparency would work best when one magic type is more rare compared to the other.

So if Psionics is rare, and your party has no psionic characters

OR

If Arcane magic is rare, and your party has no spellcasters

Otherwise I think it's too likely that either party members will feel hosed at times, and the GM will have a lot more work to ensure that user of magic doesn't have too much a boost over another.


1 person marked this as a favorite.
Robyn Goodfellow wrote:
The NPC wrote:

If the players want a reason for the transparency you can explain it as a fundamental law of the universe "Energy is energy whether it is generated by psionics or sorcery."

Bonus points if you can guess where i'm cribbing that from :)

That's my line!

Its not who did it first, its who did it best. ;)


1 person marked this as a favorite.
thejeff wrote:
Kirth Gersen wrote:

Obviously, from a story standpoint, it's cool to be able to include stuff like "You're not sure how Bob is being controlled. Your detect magic isn't pinging, but your Sense Motive check tells you for sure his mind has been clouded." That's a way to re-introduce mysteries into a game that usually doesn't allow them past a certain point.

Getting Bob loose of his psionic fog might be interesting, too, if they can't just chuck a dispel magic on they guy. Maybe they need to put him in protective custody in a jail cell until he eventually makes the save? Or maybe they need to find another psion to remove the effect?

Depends. If the game is revolving around new mysterious psionic powers that no one knows anything about, then this is a good way to go.

If it's old hat in the setting, even if rare, then the response to "You're not sure how Bob is being controlled. Your detect magic isn't pinging, but your Sense Motive check tells you for sure his mind has been clouded." is just: "Well we'd better go check with a psion."

Probably means you need one in the party. Or the world needs to have developed spells specifically to interact with psionics. Which means you'll need to have them ready to use.

Non transparency might also make dual progression psionic/arcane attractive. Aasimar/Tiefling/Elf (with spell-like) psion 3/wizard 1/cerebremancer 10/psion 6, gives the psions 11 levels of arcane/6th level spells to work with, where the opposite is harder as I do not think there are early entry tricks for manifesters... Thou shall not lose caster levels.

Then again, that probably won't be a balance issue, so much as one side being able to utilize some of the other team's toys.

The NPC wrote:
Its not who did it first, its who did it best. ;)

If you change that to "Its not who did it first, its who becomes famous for it." Sir Arthur Conan Doyle agrees.

The Exchange

1 person marked this as a favorite.

having psionics and magic different seems like it would only work well if both were more or less equally common. that way you have people making a choice to protect from one or the other (or try for both) not expecting only one to get sucker punched by the other.


The NPC wrote:
Robyn Goodfellow wrote:
The NPC wrote:

If the players want a reason for the transparency you can explain it as a fundamental law of the universe "Energy is energy whether it is generated by psionics or sorcery."

Bonus points if you can guess where i'm cribbing that from :)

That's my line!
Its not who did it first, its who did it best. ;)

I wouldn't be surprised if someone said it before Owen Burnett, but I haven't heard that particular line anywhere else.


1 person marked this as a favorite.

I'm currently in a game where all the players are psionic, and magic is opaque, not transparent...kind of. It's a homebrew Pathfinder/DSP. The GM offered a psionics-heavy, magic-light campaign by making "wild magic storms" literally explode any magic items in the vicinity. Detect Psionics will not detect magic items, until you concentrate past the third round and then all you get is a "yes/no" headache effect for the player. Said players are now off the floating islands where magic explodes and on the Surface, doing missions.

Roleplaying a character who has been taught from birth that all magic is to be treated somewhere between a live fragmentation hand grenade with the pin taken out and a bottle of nitroglycerine has been interesting. Most, if not all, magic items in the dungeon crawl have been shunned as a result, because even if we can use them now we can't take the items home. The GM has also had magic affect psionics occasionally, but only when a 9th-level magic trap was triggered. So the transparency is "high level magic affects all, even psionics, but not middle and low magic". We can't even walk into a local city and spend our WBL because everything beneficial that was magical would be confiscated by Customs on the way back. So my character is going to go the crafting route to get the "Big Six" items that he, and the rest of the party, need. Psionic variations of everything from extradimensional storage to weapons.


the David wrote:
Haladir wrote:
The last time I was in a game that included psionics was in a 3.5 game about fifteen years ago. The GM decided that magic and psionics were not transparent to each other, and were different things.
You've played D&D 3.5 in 1999?

That was my first thought too.

Then I realized... it was a psionics time travel campaign.


BTW - I've never seen Psionics work well in a D&D game.

With transparency they become just another type of Sorcerer/spont-caster.

Without transparency they become godlings.


5 people marked this as a favorite.

Quark: I've no idea how on earth you came to that conclusion. I've... never run into that issue. Ever. Psionics users are either underpowered or near-par with other casters. That's been the sum of my experience (outside of the old 3.0 stuff, as noted before, which was awful for everyone).

Did you run it with 3.5 or PF? And what setting/materials were you making use of in those? Did you watch the metapsionic cap carefully?

I mean, seriously man, psionics is nowhere near the power that spellcasting is.

(Of course, perhaps you, like I did in one game, ignored the 'Different advice to grant power resistance equal to spell resistance - as I thought it was needless. It still didn't unbalance things for me at all, considering all my casters constantly made their caster-level checks anyway, but I could see that skewing your results, maybe.)


@Tacticslion
Hmm... Could'a been House Rules for the one I participated in.

But that was an Eberron campaign and I won't go tangent on this thread re Eberron's many quirks.

[rolls d20... yes! makes will save]

Mostly its been general abhorrence by others, especially GMs. Apparently there's something kinda inherently rules-bendy about Psionics or they simply function as a spont-caster and the game already has Sorcerers.


4 people marked this as a favorite.

... I... won't be going into the many and varied fallacies that people hold regarding psionics due to a misunderstanding of the rules or house rules applied without fully understanding the base rules first. Psionics is balanced. As a system, it's more balanced than any set of core rules: divine, martial, arcane. The power point cap is a rule that many miss for some reason, and it's kind of like allowing a caster to ignore their highest level spell known, and just freely combine spell levels to get a higher caster level.

It's a big deal, and people often miss it. Then they see one person do something silly. Then forever after they and everyone else they know tells everyone that it's broken and unbalanced. It's a vicious cycle. It's also false, but it's something that bears fighting a bit.

However, that's a thread all on it's own.

EDIT: to be clear, if psionics is abused, it's rules ignored, of course it'll be powerful. But if you ignore a caster's caster level, it'll be even more powerful. Any trick you can come up with via psionics you can come up with as a caster, with very few exceptions. The few unique tricks for psionics are all less powerful than the far greater number of tricks magic has at its disposal.

EDIT 2: and once will save. :)


1 person marked this as a favorite.
Tacticslion wrote:
... I... won't be going into the many and varied fallacies that people hold regarding psionics due to a misunderstanding of the rules or house rules applied without fully understanding the base rules first. Psionics is balanced. As a system, it's more balanced than any set of core rules: divine, martial, arcane...However, that's a thread all on it's own.

I will give it a second look based solely on your testimony.

And when I do I'll post my comments to that other thread ;)


I hope you shan't be disappointed!

Please bear in mind, however, the majority of my experience is 3.5 - I can't comment on Dreamscarred's stuff other than, after looking over it, it sure does look amazing, and everyone I've spoken with that's actually used it (instead of prejudging it or immediately house-ruling it) has been very, very happy.

EDIT: To be clear, I've had exactly one player request psionics in PF; for my current PbP. He went Aegis. ... he's never posted in Gameplay. :/

(I hope he's doing well.)


1 person marked this as a favorite.

Had a thought here! (I know, right? Self-thread necro.)
What if transparency were the default, but there existed metamagic/meta-psionic feats that made the modified spell/power non-transparent? For example, your sorcerer uses nondetection on himself, and neither the BBEG wizard nor the BBEG psion can scry on him. But the BBEG psion using a Non-Transparent remote viewing isn't blocked, and can still scry on you unless you somehow also find a psionic nondetection effect.


1 person marked this as a favorite.
Pathfinder Rulebook Subscriber

What if instead it gave you a manifester check to defeat it, similar to dispel magic checks, (even if it's not normally allowed) instead of "always works". That way you're pitting the manifester's skill against the arcanist's skill, and that's a big bang for a feat, imho, not to mention how much it would suck as a wizard to have to have a spell memorized with that specific meta magic feat.

Of two worlds
Preqs: Knowledge Psionics and Knowledge Arcana 5(?) ranks.
You can exploit the loopholes in the very fabric of the powers that are being used, either psionic or magical. You can counter/affect a psionic power with an appropriate spell or vice versa.
(insert mechanics crunch with the checks here;)
Normal: Without psionic/magic transparency, you can not counter/affect a psionic power with a spell, or vice versa.

I guess the only problem with this is spell level vs power points.

Using a 1st level light spell against 1st level psionic darkness may not work, if the psion has augmented it to a 6th level effect...or maybe the check surpasses that...hmm

<ponder>


I find it ironic that certain posters were advocating that the Mind Blank spell not work against psionic divination. Mind Blank is one of the original five psionic defences, from all the way back to 1e. (There were five defences and five attack forms, and a matrix to show how they interacted differently with each other.)


Also: does anyone have any comments on Occult Adventures, psychic magic, and the Psychic class in this context? (Or the other classes from OccA, although the Psychic seems to be the closest equivalent to the Psion.)


1 person marked this as a favorite.
Pathfinder Rulebook Subscriber

Psychic would fall under "magic", not psionics, in my humble opinion.
They are spells, and are slotted like arcane/divine magics.

So you'd have arcane/divine/psychic | psionics.


3 people marked this as a favorite.
Bellona wrote:
I find it ironic that certain posters were advocating that the Mind Blank spell not work against psionic divination. Mind Blank is one of the original five psionic defences, from all the way back to 1e. (There were five defences and five attack forms, and a matrix to show how they interacted differently with each other.)

I find it ironic that someone dialing the snark to 11 on a pedantic point of Grognard lore actually failed his lore check. Mind Blank (AD&D PH, p. 90) was an 8th level magic-user spell that did more or less what it did in 3.X. The name "mind blank" unfortunately got recycled into the psionics appendix as an oversight.


Pathfinder Rulebook Subscriber

Ouch.


Pathfinder Rulebook Subscriber

Kirth, any thoughts to the ideas thus far? I'm kinda curious what your conclusion was in general to transparency as a whole as well.


I think you're coming at it from an opposite direction, one that I'm still trying to digest. Didn't want to comment on that until I'd grokked it.


Pathfinder Rulebook Subscriber

Grokk away.


2 people marked this as a favorite.
Kirth Gersen wrote:
TriOmegaZero wrote:
Meh. Detect/dispel magic can't solve everything.
It might help to mention that I'm an oddball, because I'm coming out of a game background in which we eventually were researching protection against discern location spells and overcoming them with penetrate protection from discern location spells (I'm not making this up).

Makes me wonder if

"I brought my attack dog, with a built-in force field!"

"Well, I brought my dinosaur that eats force-field dogs!"

ever came up.

The NPC wrote:

If the players want a reason for the transparency you can explain it as a fundamental law of the universe "Energy is energy whether it is generated by psionics or sorcery."

Bonus points if you can guess where i'm cribbing that from :)

"A person is a person, no matter how small."


1 person marked this as a favorite.
Pathfinder Rulebook Subscriber

"I'm a person and my name is Anakin!"


1 person marked this as a favorite.

"I'm not an animal! I am a human being!"


2 people marked this as a favorite.

So, let's look at a scenario in which a psion is trying to scry ("remote view") a sorcerer who had cast nondetection on himself. I need to be careful here to remind myself that, counterintuitively, "transparent" doesn't mean the defense lets through the offense, but rather the opposite.

1.(A) Default transparency, no additional feats: Scryer must beat DC 11 + CL on a manifester level check. If successful, the sorcerer can attempt to dispel the remote viewing.

1.(B) Default transparency, with "Opaque" feats: Scryer attempts manifester level check. If it fails, he then uses an Opaque remote viewing that ignores magical defenses, and succeeds automatically. The sorcerer in turn cannot dispel the opaque remote viewing.

2.(A) Default opacity, no additional feats: The psion automatically succeeds in scrying. The sorcerer cannot dispel the remote viewing using dispel magic.

2.(B) Default opacity, with a "Transparent" feats: The psion automatically succeeds, unless the sorcerer is using a Transparent nondetection, in which case the psion makes a manifester level check. If the remote viewing succeeds, the sorcerer cannot dispel it unless he uses a Transparent dispel magic.


Overall, it looks as if default transparency slightly favors the defender, whereas default opacity favors the aggressor.

Grand Lodge

1 person marked this as a favorite.
Kirth Gersen wrote:
a sorcerer who had cast nondetection on himself.

I know the conversation is about psionics in 3.x/PF/Kirthfinder, but in 2nd edition AD&D, the default assumption was that magic and psionics were different and did not mix. However, if it is of any use to you, specific to psionics vs. nondetection, "The Complete Psionics Handbook" stated: "Nondetection: This spell is fully effective against psionic sensing."


1 person marked this as a favorite.

That actually is helpful -- I'm from a 1e background, and it sort of colors my view sometimes. It's good to see how things have evolved since then. It's interesting that 2e explicitly took the "not transparent, except all the things we want to be transparent" stance I was talking about up-thread -- I hadn't realized that. Thanks!


1 person marked this as a favorite.
Adventure Path Charter Subscriber; Pathfinder Starfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

There were several instances of that, where there was a general rule that magic and psionics did not interact, but there were multiple instances of specific spells/powers that broke that rule. It was pretty interesting (I think they were all in the CPH, if I recall correctly).

By the by, does anybody remember Paradigm Concepts' Arcanis setting for 3.X? I bring it up because their Psionics Unbound book was the only instance I've ever seen of a 3.X/Pathfinder campaign having psionic-magic transparency and psionic-magic non-transparency going on at the same time!

The way they did that was (I haven't read the book in several years, so my memory is fuzzy) there was another "type" of psionics (much like the Shadow Weave in 3.X Forgotten Realms), which was the kind used by the Voiceless Ones (e.g. the stand-in for the illithids), and if you tapped into it, you went from using the default transparency rules to using the non-transparency rules.

EDIT: And lest we forget, WotC had its own direct translation of the Shadow Weave for psionics as well: subpsionics.

51 to 100 of 107 << first < prev | 1 | 2 | 3 | next > last >>
Community / Forums / Gamer Life / General Discussion / Magic-Psionics Transparency All Messageboards

Want to post a reply? Sign in.