| Jake Hagoodd |
I'm dead set against psionics in fantasy games. While much of this is based on the terrible imbalances of psionics in earlier editions of D&D/AD&D, the main bone of contention I have is that it doesn't suit my vision of fantasy adventure.
I have heard all the arguments for psionics in D&D, particularly since the revised Psionics book for 3.5 came out; and while I will agree with the Pro-Psionics crowd that the new rules are much more balanced now and work very similarly to magical effects, I'll still point out the elephant in the room. Psionics don't need different rules, if all you want is concept.
Explain away any of your normally-magical effects and spells as psionics if you really want them that badly. The *ONLY* reason for players to demand a separate set of psionics rules is to get around the existing rules sets, tactics, defenses, and knowledge of "how the world should work", and thereby exploit an advantage, no matter how slim, over the rest of the world and the NPC's/monsters that reside in it.
From a visionary point of view, psionics has no place in sword & sorcery, high fantasy, or historical-based venues. For me it conjures up bastard visions of Mister Spock crossing fingers mind-melding with Gandalf; or even worse, nightmares of spiky-haired Akira clones imploding knights on horseback. It just doesn't work for me.
But even in game settings that do have such weird and strange mysteries as the powers of the mind, making them separate and alien to magical systems and casters is creating a problem where there doesn't need to be one. If the mechanics are simply variants of spells, why not simply use the spells themselves for mechanics and create whatever fluff you want to cover up the crunch? Why *must* there be a totally different set of rules? Why should a psion be any more flexible or enduring than a sorcerer? In my many long years of dealing with players clamoring for psionics, it's been my experience that they really all want the same thing: to be able to pull stuff on other...
Well stated.
In my opinion, the existing rules for spellcasting are fully sufficient. Make a sorceror, choose spells of the desired flavor, and say 'he does it with his mind'. Voila, you have a psionicist.
The only time I would consider a separate set of rules for psionics appropriate would be in a more 'realistic' setting where magic does not exist, but some element of the fantastic or supernatural is desired, for example in modern or sci-fi campaigns (Now a reworking of the modern/future d20 rulebooks, with or without psionics...THAT I would buy).