Would Psychic Magic require The Weave or no?

[Barachiel Shina]

I run a 3.5/PF hybrid game and I port many of PF's material into the Forgotten Realms setting.

My question is, Psychic Magic is an alternative way of accessing power and emulating magic similar to what Arcane and Divine casters have access to (as well as biting off of Psionics) and is not considered to be either one. The methods are different even though, sometimes, the end result is the same.

So would The Weave affect/be affected by those using Psychic Magic?

My leaning is toward a no. In my games, I've had the magical scholars speak of it as "Mind Magic" and "Occult Magic." It's a taboo territory of utilizing magic. One of the big reasons being it's a way to access magic without requiring The Weave. It makes sense for something considered to be "Occult" magic. It's meant to be misunderstood, dangerous, alien, and too esoteric even for Wizards.

I'm wondering if this is a wise choice. I mean, it makes sense, and Ed Greenwood has stated many times that the Realms has all sorts of magic beyond the typical ones we're used to, and that there are methods of using magic without using The Weave, and I'm thinking having it where Psychic Magic is one such method makes it all the more interesting.

What are your thoughts?

[Ventnor]

Just throwing this idea out there, but what if the only way to access Psychic magic in Fearun is via the Shadow Weave?

[Ryan Freire]

At the time the realms was written psychic abilities were wildly different from magic.

That said it was also handled WILDLY differently than pathfinder 3.5 handles it and i think some actual and a lot of perceived balance issues will arise if you choose to treat it differently from arcane and divine magic.

[ErichAD]

Is the distinction important for your game? Faerun has gone through periods where psionics were different from weave magic and periods where it was essentially the same thing.

My general thought on the topic is that making it different means more work on your end. Even if you're just making it harder to understand or research, you're still adjusting the various abilities that normally let you know about such things.

[KahnyaGnorc]

Depends on whether Psychic Magic is more like psionics (which doesn't require the Weave, Psionic characters didn't have issues during the Time of Troubles like spellcasters) or every other kind of magic. I'd say the latter.

[Claxon]

Pathfinder deliberately didn't introduce psionics, and psychich spell casting classes face many of the same restrictions on how their magic worked. But instead of material, verbal, and somatic components, they have emotion and thought components.

But largely the remain the same.

Pathfinder doesn't have the Weave, and doesn't distinguish in how magic functions between arcane and divine, except to state that divine magic is granted by deity.

Personally, I prefer to look at psychic and arcane magic as simply different means of accessing the same exact thing.

If anything, divine magic should be the one that's different in my opinion.

[Bjørn Røyrvik]

KahnyaGnorc wrote:

Psionic characters didn't have issues during the Time of Troubles like spellcasters) or every other kind of magic.

But to make things less clear, as soon as the ToT was over their powers got messed up. Could be written off as mass psychic backlash from new gods coming in and magic suddenly being accessible again, I suppose.

[ShadowcatX]

You're asking if something from one game needs something from a totally different game. There is no answer for that besides "if you want it to it does."

[Set]

Barachiel Shina wrote:

I'm wondering if this is a wise choice. I mean, it makes sense, and Ed Greenwood has stated many times that the Realms has all sorts of magic beyond the typical ones we're used to, and that there are methods of using magic without using The Weave, and I'm thinking having it where Psychic Magic is one such method makes it all the more interesting.

What are your thoughts?

As I understood it, arcane and divine magic were traditionally seen as tapping power from external sources, such as the gods, or the planes (elemental or otherwise), while psionics was seen as purely internal / personal power, from the self.

I would be fine with going with that sort of distinction with psychic magic as well, and even perhaps ruling that it developed in response / reaction to the various interruptions and 'outages' in traditional magic over the ages, as a result of persnickety goddesses of magic or whatever. By developing independently of the Weave, the psychic user could function regardless of her current mood.

Similarly, it fits that aboleth and illithids and other traditionally psionic monsters, who generally loathe the gods and all the stand for, would very much prefer that the source of *their* power not be the Weave. Humans (and other PC races) might have developed psychic access as a result of experimentation by those races, or in reaction to exposure to them (perhaps by some aboleth tinkering with proto-races in an attempt to make them more susceptible to their own mental domination, attempting to awaken the psychic equivalent of pheremone receptors in them to make them better servants, able to 'hear' their masters voices, but a mutation in the process gave a small percentage of them the ability to 'speak' psychically as well as 'listen...').

"Idiot! I said give them ears to hear us! Not a voice to talk back to us!"