It struck me how strange this is in another thread. Was there even an explanation?
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Paizo do not like the power point system and feel D&D style psionics does not fit their world. They created psychic magic as their version of that trope.
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As mentioned they weren't especially interested in it, but they also thought Dreamscarred Press did a pretty good job of it and didn't really see a need to try when it was already out there.
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Their 3.5 campaign setting had a whole section on psionics, tho. And Into the Darklands mentions psionic creatures.
So, for PF1 if you you wanted to keep that going or still liked the flavor, you could either use Dreamscarred Press's excellent psionics remake, or use Paizo's new psychic magic system.
Curious as to what will happen for PF2. Whether Dreamscarred will revitalize it for this edition. And if the psychic magic will be making an appearance.
I love, love, love psionics.
Mostly for the flavor of it. A good part is from nostalgia, I suppose. Dark Sun and Eberron.
But I like the "weirdly scientific" bit. Like the girl from Firestarter. She blows stuff up with her mind. How cool is that?
I'm fine with not using power points. I am not necessarily attached to the mechanics one way or the other. Just the coolness of it.
So a psychic magic or something similar works for me. I just want a character that throws stuff around with his mind, but it's not magic. It's just him doing it mentally.
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Curious as to what will happen for PF2. Whether Dreamscarred will revitalize it for this edition. And if the psychic magic will be making an appearance.
Unlikely, at least until personal issues at Dreamscarred shake loose. They are currently pretty far behind with the Kickstarter sponsored Psionics for Starfinder due to these issues.
So a psychic magic or something similar works for me. I just want a character that throws stuff around with his mind, but it's not magic. It's just him doing it mentally.
Psychic magic is not magic?
Seems to me any magic is "doing it mentally". Bonewits proposed that the basis of all magic is psychic abilities such as ESP, various kinds of psychokinesis, heat control, cold control, and so on. A mage would devise a spell based on "laws of magic", his psychic abilities (he wouldn't have all of them), and probabilities of success with those abilities. Spells would have a "mana point" cost based on an equivalence of 1 mana point to 1 gram-calorie. For example to throw a lightning bolt using electric control, the cost would be 25xVxCxt, where V is voltage in kilovolts, C is current in amperes, and t is time in tenths of a second. There are various techniques for generating mana, and a given mage would have some limit on how much mana he can handle. Also "a spell is a process, not a thing" -- it's the process of generating mana, and putting oneself in a state in which one can access one's psychic abilities. It's a pretty cool system, actually.
Bonewits deplored the word "psionics", considering it a construct of believers in scientism who could not abide the concept of abilities outside the range of known science. Scientists not in the sense of "people who do science" but in the sense of "religious worshippers of science".
Psychic magic is not magic?
I didn't mean it like that. I guess I just meant that- if someone is using the psychic "magic" system as a replacement for psionics (just like in PF1, we used mythic and not epic, because that's the system that was presented)- that it could be treated the same from a flavor standpoint. The idea being that it comes from mental acuity, rather than mysticism.
I love psionics, I actually think bending/breaking the focus point system could work really well as a new way to do psionics. This issue would be the interplay with non-psionic focus abilities and classes.
But I could see a class that quickly gets 3 focus points and the ability to refocus all 3 early. They would also then likely have a feat similar to the gnome racial where they can immediately return extra focus points or even an ability to cannibalise health for focus points.
Lastly I can see something like 3.5's psionic focus ability working as an action for super jumps and things that were 3.5 psionic feats.
Psionic warrior vs psion could easily be doctrines similar to cloistered cleric and warpriest.
Monk is halfway there. It would just be a class that uses focus points for psionic abilities with easy ways to get them back. Getting zero level cantrip like abilities with the new system is simple. It wouldn't be very hard to create a class like this at all.
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I had a GM who reasoned exactly like this, and psionics became the most OP characters in his setting due to being as dangerous as wizards but with none of the usual weaknesses of magic users: dispelling had no effect on their powers, spell resistance didn't work, detect magic detected nothing, and even a place covered with dimensional locks and a giant antimagic field didn't prevent them from teleporting all over the place and wrecking havoc.
If a monk's ki powers must be treated as spells and even be renamed as such, I don't know why psychic abilities that behave like spells in many ways shouldn't.
Yeah, that way lies madness. There's a sidebar in the Dreamscarred psionics books along the lines of "variant: psionics is different... this is horrible, please don't do it, but if you absolutely have to, here's how to run a completely broken and unenjoyable game."
Yeah, that way lies madness. There's a sidebar in the Dreamscarred psionics books along the lines of "variant: psionics is different... this is horrible, please don't do it, but if you absolutely have to, here's how to run a completely broken and unenjoyable game."I had a GM who reasoned exactly like this, and psionics became the most OP characters in his setting due to being as dangerous as wizards but with none of the usual weaknesses of magic users: dispelling had no effect on their powers, spell resistance didn't work, detect magic detected nothing, and even a place covered with dimensional locks and a giant antimagic field didn't prevent them from teleporting all over the place and wrecking havoc.
If a monk's ki powers must be treated as spells and even be renamed as such, I don't know why psychic abilities that behave like spells in many ways shouldn't.
Yea. In AD&D 2nd edition, that's how psionics worked as default. I remember even one of the official Forgotten Realms novels with Drizzt. There was one of the drow houses that used psionics and not magic, and they were chumping all the magic users.
In 3.5 (and PF1 3rd party Dreamscarred), they wised up and made that the ill-advised alternate rule.
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Yeah, that way lies madness. There's a sidebar in the Dreamscarred psionics books along the lines of "variant: psionics is different... this is horrible, please don't do it, but if you absolutely have to, here's how to run a completely broken and unenjoyable game."I had a GM who reasoned exactly like this, and psionics became the most OP characters in his setting due to being as dangerous as wizards but with none of the usual weaknesses of magic users: dispelling had no effect on their powers, spell resistance didn't work, detect magic detected nothing, and even a place covered with dimensional locks and a giant antimagic field didn't prevent them from teleporting all over the place and wrecking havoc.
If a monk's ki powers must be treated as spells and even be renamed as such, I don't know why psychic abilities that behave like spells in many ways shouldn't.
It can sort of work if the party has both a psion and a wizard, but yeah, some amount of transparency is preferable and full transparency is the easiest to deal with so I usually go with that.
Flavor of psionic was also always weirdly scientific :pI wouldn't say so, and certainly not in comparison to Vancian if you've ever read a little bit about Jack Vance's books, which were extremely sci fi despite all the magic.
I meant the terminology. Its not like psychometabolism sounds like very fantasy or magic term
I think the fact that they leaned in to occult as the magic of the mind and mystery means that you'll never get "psionics" from Paizo directly.
Which I'm fine with. It does mean some work will be required when it comes to a psychic class in 2nd edition, it will need a niche beyond spontaneous Int-based occult spell-caster. And maybe cool focus powers, and feats to remove spell components are a start.
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fun fact in AD&D psionics were called sciences. Additionally their was psionic combat which was the worst.
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I always kind of ignored psionics in my games as I didn't like the idea of another thing that is like magic but isn't magic running in parallel to actual magic - it's a bit messy and can kind of confuse the tone of a fantasy genre game.
I much prefer what they have done in pathfinder where occult magic takes the place of psionics - instead of being a separate non-magical thing, it's a bit more harmonious to have the weird psychic powers be a type of magic that acts as a counterpart to the other 3 types of magic.
Well, if you like some of the flavor of the psionics of first edition, I see options in second edition that could be implemented relatively simply.
The old style wild talents could be made a Multi-class style archetype granting either focus style spells and/or cantrips. Mental damage exists now, so mind blasts could easily fall in line there.
As Psionics are pretty much supposed to be mental exclusively, one could potentially create an automatic spell list, defined by those spells which exist on both Arcane and Occult both. Here you have a new spell list, but it would change and adjust automatically as new spells are created. There could also be room for focus spells, or bonus spells, that could be psionic specific.
Honestly, I kind of liked some of the wild talents portion of psionics when I was young, but never particularly like the full on Psionic classes that came later on. With that in mind there might be others that might like the idea of an archetype to unlock similar abilities for someone.
But even though I might be less inclined to leverage it in a world/universe or character that I might create, I'd think one could also create a full class that could somehow be based on this as well. Likely having access to spells from the list I mentioned could be created, although since I am less passionate or interested in the concept, I don't know if it would be best to have it be slot based, prepared or spontaneous, or focus based, or cantrip-like.
But as mentioned above, I think Paizo didn't care for the point type system used in Psionics, so they never tried to port it more directly over, especially early on. Add to that, with Dreamscarred seeming to have an early, and strong adoption for those interested in psionics, Paizo probably decided they didn't care to really try to directly compete with them as a successful third-party, that was supporting their product. The occult classes are the closest they came, and they didn't really attempt to directly compete, and I think it was somewhat intentional.
Honestly, I suspect they would be more likely to make their psychic abilities in second edition more in like with what they did in first edition, that hey would make it like Dreamscarred's implementation for first edition, but I could be wrong. What we see them potentially do with it in second edition may well tell us if they might have preferred going the Dreamscarred route if they hadn't published their rules first before Paizo got to it.
In Harnmaster, psionic talents are optional, and secret. A character might never know he had any such. OTOH, he might suffer "psionic episodes" where something weird happens. This might or might not indicate that a particular character has psionic talents, because similar episodes can happen to people with no psionic talent at all. Talents usually start as "dormant", and may remain so. Or they may be moved out of the dormant stage by certain events.
It's a lot of work for the GM. OTOH, it can provide some interesting scenes in a story.
From what I understand, the biggest thing is that Paizo has no desire to implement a power point based "magic" system because it's very hard to balance against the traditional slot based casting system.
Role playing "magic" that isn't psychic or having psionics not be affected by things that normally affect magic don't even begin to figure into the equation in my opinion.
It all boils down to the mechanics not playing well with the rest of the mechanics.
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From what I understand, the biggest thing is that Paizo has no desire to implement a power point based "magic" system because it's very hard to balance against the traditional slot based casting system.
Which is kind of a shame because it's a much better system than spell slots.
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I was under the impression they didn't want to step on the Dreamscarred press crew's toes.
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From what I understand, the biggest thing is that Paizo has no desire to implement a power point based "magic" system because it's very hard to balance against the traditional slot based casting system.Which is kind of a shame because it's a much better system than spell slots.
I couldn't disagree more. Bear in mind I respect your opinion but I want to offer my own counterpoint to it.
Mana/Power Points/Magic Pool systems have ALWAYS been incredibly unbalanced and susceptible to characters doing one of two things:
1) Investing in improving a VERY low/near free cost magic effect and having infinite resources to blast all day long.
2) The ability to Nova and pose a threat far exceeding their Character Level while proceeding to make the character near useless for the rest of the day.
Beyond that, it's just Meta as all get out. Don't get me wrong, Spell Slot systems aren't perfect, but they are very much like Democracy in that they're the best thing anyone has come up with to-date.
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Isn't the Alchemist infused reagent mechanic very much like power points? An increasing pool from which the user not only provides their class effects, but relies upon it for the majority of said utility?
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1) Investing in improving a VERY low/near free cost magic effect and having infinite resources to blast all day long.
Somehow that worked for a Kineticist.
2) The ability to Nova and pose a threat far exceeding their Character Level while proceeding to make the character near useless for the rest of the day.
So like a Kineticist blowing through all the burn they could take?
Beyond that, it's just Meta as all get out.
More than slots? having one single pool of power seems MUCH less meta than 9 separate pools of power for each level of spells that you might be able to pull whatever spell you know of that level out of... So I can't say I agree. When you can exhaust some pools and not other because reasons to me doesn't seem less meta.
For myself, I think I'd like just about any system better than Vancian spells: I'm not in love with a point system but it's workable.
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Mana/Power Points/Magic Pool systems have ALWAYS been incredibly unbalanced and susceptible to characters doing one of two things:
I'm not sure either of those are necessarily bad things. Spellcasters who can go all day long and characters pushing far beyond their limits for some powerful spectacle before being drained are both much more representative of fantasy fiction at large than spell slots.
Also just generally speaking in actual practice, DSP psions and even 3.5 psions (barring some weird variants) were a lot more tame than Wizards in PF1/3.5. So I feel like if we're looking for fundamentally busted magic systems we really can't beat vancian magic's pedigree here.
Beyond that, it's just Meta as all get out.
I mean, more meta than having discrete units of spell that get locked into specific activities? I know Vance and D&D have both tried really hard to justify that kind of magic but it's always been pretty jank in that regard.
Being physically, mentally or spiritually drained through exertion is a lot more intuitive than that.
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From what I understand, the biggest thing is that Paizo has no desire to implement a power point based "magic" system because it's very hard to balance against the traditional slot based casting system.Which is kind of a shame because it's a much better system than spell slots.I couldn't disagree more. Bear in mind I respect your opinion but I want to offer my own counterpoint to it.
Mana/Power Points/Magic Pool systems have ALWAYS been incredibly unbalanced and susceptible to characters doing one of two things:
1) Investing in improving a VERY low/near free cost magic effect and having infinite resources to blast all day long.
2) The ability to Nova and pose a threat far exceeding their Character Level while proceeding to make the character near useless for the rest of the day.Beyond that, it's just Meta as all get out. Don't get me wrong, Spell Slot systems aren't perfect, but they are very much like Democracy in that they're the best thing anyone has come up with to-date.
A psion dedicating all his power points to blasting one cheap effect would be akin to a sorcerer dedicating all slots to Magic Missile. Worse, in fact, by 3.P implementations, because psions have to spend extra power points to scale damage dice.
Likewise, they had specific rules against Nova, as there's a hard level-based cap to how many PP they can spend on a single effect, including both the basic cost and further augmentations. Combined with the fact that they're drawing from a single fungible pool of 'slots', I think they're rather *less* nova-prone than Vancian casters.
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Like I said, opinions lie within.
Burnout is something the system as a whole intentionally worked to move away from in the form of more throughput in a given day with spells Heightening as well as giving spellcasters useful things to do beyond using their consumable Spell Slots. Allowing a PC to blow through all of their expendable resources in a single combat is, simply put, against one of the core guiding principals of the encounter/rest/prepare system for PF2.
Also: Kinetecist Burn WAS a problem in 1E unless the player took great pains to reserve their Burn carefully ... which to be honest, the Class itself more or less discouraged since all the cool stuff you can do required Burn or in the very least investiture of Class Abilities, Feats, and Magic Items to reduce Burn. This led directly to the problem I brought up of having infinite resources for the use of low cost/free all-day blasting. Truth be told, much of Occult Adventures, in general, was problematic in this way, it spent well over half the book creating brand new rule systems that were entirely segregated by Class and I absolutely do not want to see that repeated again for PF2. Separate but equal sounds cool and all as it lets folks feel unique but it's incredibly difficult to balance and more often just adds more problems than those it solves.
That said, best of luck to Dreamscarred Press, I know they've had trouble of late but I really do look forward to seeing how their solution to trying to balance a Mana/PP/Magic Point system against the existing Spell Slot/Focus Point system.
Hmm, how about just using focus points but giving them their 3 point recharge super early, you can shove it in the base class chassis to keep it away from multiclass poaching.
Hmm, how about just using focus points but giving them their 3 point recharge super early, you can shove it in the base class chassis to keep it away from multiclass poaching.
Not a fan myself after seeing what messing around with the focus system did in the oracle playtest.
Mana/Power Points/Magic Pool systems have ALWAYS been incredibly unbalanced and susceptible to characters doing one of two things:
1) Investing in improving a VERY low/near free cost magic effect and having infinite resources to blast all day long.
2) The ability to Nova and pose a threat far exceeding their Character Level while proceeding to make the character near useless for the rest of the day.Beyond that, it's just Meta as all get out. Don't get me wrong, Spell Slot systems aren't perfect, but they are very much like Democracy in that they're the best thing anyone has come up with to-date.
Since I have no idea what "Meta" means, I'll just ignore that bit. :-)
Regarding your first of two things, that sounds kind of like cantrips in PF2E, except cantrips don't require any investment, they automatically improve.
Regarding your second point, that's a traditional ability of mages, so wtp? :-)
That first sentence up there is what bridge players call an overbid. There are systems for which that is not the case.
Power point systems can be balanced, they just don't work in tandem with slotted systems.
Because they made occult instead. It's like why didn't they do epic? Because they did mythic instead.
Hmm, how about just using focus points but giving them their 3 point recharge super early, you can shove it in the base class chassis to keep it away from multiclass poaching.Not a fan myself after seeing what messing around with the focus system did in the oracle playtest.
I mean, that system isn't especially related in any way shape or form to this suggestion, since it doesn't alter the power/benefit curve of focus spells themselves, just lets the class use them more frequently in place of spell slots.
Nevermind that i think the Oracle was fine and just needs some tuning XD
Hmm, how about just using focus points but giving them their 3 point recharge super early, you can shove it in the base class chassis to keep it away from multiclass poaching.Not a fan myself after seeing what messing around with the focus system did in the oracle playtest.
I actually quite liked how the Oracle interacted with the focus system, it was just that the power levels of the curses and what you got out of it didn't line up.
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Several people have mentioned some troubles at Dreamscarred. Can anyone elaborate?
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I think the reason why Psionics have been shunned by 1E is because most players/DM's don't understand how Psionics even work, so when a Psionics player gets the go-ahead from a DM and starts doing their "psionic-y" things in a game, it appears grossly overpowered.
I dunno about most people, but I've been playing Psionics for years, like I bought my first Psionics book back in.... 1999 to 2002-ish I wanna say. I think Dreamscarred Press did an amazing job in making it balanced but having a distinctly different ambiance than magic for PF 1E. I've found that Psionics, while extremely powerful, is not overpowered. I wouldn't say that Magic is better than Psionics, but I wouldn't say Psionics is better than Magic either. They both have their day in the sun.
I would seriously love it if PF 2E or D&D 5E would take Psionics seriously.
Like the girl from Firestarter. She blows stuff up with her mind. How cool is that?
Yoon, the Iconic Kineticist, would like to say hello.
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Not gonna wade into the weeds here, but my two cp:
Nothing I've seen from Dreamscarred has been remotely balanced mechanically, and while it can be a lot of fun to play with, their material quickly exacerbates the fundamental flaws of the PF1e system. And that's before the inevitable optimizing where things just get silly.
It doesn't make it bad, just a different playstyle that everyone needs to be on board for.
Also the flavor of Tome of Battle 2: Anime Bugaloo Path of War and That Guy Catnip Psionics Unleashed is pretty uninspired and incongruous with the Golarion setting, though it's pretty great for homebrew settings. So mixed feelings.
I vastly prefer Occult adventures because it's a) not insanely imbalanced for the most part b) adds something new to the world without departing into a new genre entirely.
This is all in my humble, completely unbiased and absolutely accurate opinion, obviously.
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You know, just because you call it something else doesn't make it not magic. There are plenty of magic things in the setting that all function fairly differently, from Champion abilities, ki powers, to witch hexes. Why should something that is functionally magic be considered something else?
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Not gonna wade into the weeds here, but my two cp:
Nothing I've seen from Dreamscarred has been remotely balanced mechanically, and while it can be a lot of fun to play with, their material quickly exacerbates the fundamental flaws of the PF1e system. And that's before the inevitable optimizing where things just get silly.
It doesn't make it bad, just a different playstyle that everyone needs to be on board for.
Also the flavor of
Tome of Battle 2: Anime BugalooPath of War andThat Guy CatnipPsionics Unleashed is pretty uninspired and incongruous with the Golarion setting, though it's pretty great for homebrew settings. So mixed feelings.I vastly prefer Occult adventures because it's a) not insanely imbalanced for the most part b) adds something new to the world without departing into a new genre entirely.
This is all in my humble, completely unbiased and absolutely accurate opinion, obviously.
I can't agree with pretty much anything you've stated above, especially the bolded portion. If the players and GM know and understand the Psionics Unleashed/Ultimate Psionics rules, they are tight and very well-balanced. You might not care for the mechanics, or the flavor, or needing to learn a non-Vancian system... that's fine, I can understand that. But broken mechanics? No, that's objectively, mathematically-provably wrong.
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I can't agree with pretty much anything you've stated above, especially the bolded portion. If the players and GM know and understand the Psionics Unleashed/Ultimate Psionics rules, they are tight and very well-balanced. You might not care for the mechanics, or the flavor, or needing to learn a non-Vancian system... that's fine, I can understand that. But broken mechanics? No, that's objectively, mathematically-provably wrong.Not gonna wade into the weeds here, but my two cp:
Nothing I've seen from Dreamscarred has been remotely balanced mechanically, and while it can be a lot of fun to play with, their material quickly exacerbates the fundamental flaws of the PF1e system. And that's before the inevitable optimizing where things just get silly.
It doesn't make it bad, just a different playstyle that everyone needs to be on board for.
Also the flavor of
Tome of Battle 2: Anime BugalooPath of War andThat Guy CatnipPsionics Unleashed is pretty uninspired and incongruous with the Golarion setting, though it's pretty great for homebrew settings. So mixed feelings.I vastly prefer Occult adventures because it's a) not insanely imbalanced for the most part b) adds something new to the world without departing into a new genre entirely.
This is all in my humble, completely unbiased and absolutely accurate opinion, obviously.
Agreed. Psionics only appear broken or overpowered to the uninformed or inexperienced.
If you honestly think that they’re broken, I’d be curious as to what your experience level is with Psionics as both a player and a DM, and why you feel that way.
Especially people uninformed or inexperienced enough to allow the Vitalist into their games.