I would prefer the way psionics were handled in AD&D - they were not a form of magic but were instead based on the mental abilities and discipline of the character. Psionic abilities were not magic and were unaffected by magic.

Having psionics be magic based makes the psi class just another magic user and I think we have enough of those already.

The sorcerer could have been the psionic character everyone was looking for.

Inborn abilities and all could have been psionic abilities instead of spells.

Quote from TheGnome5786 >>

The sorcerer could have been the psionic character everyone was looking for.

Inborn abilities and all could have been psionic abilities instead of spells.

 That's basically what they did. The best dedicated psychic-flavored spellcaster is the Aberrant Mind Sorcerer. Although for whatever reason it's flavored less as "born with psychic powers' and more, "Under the influence of Great Old Ones"... which feels kind of redundant since the Great Old One Warlock is a much better version of that concept.

I would go for a psionic class if spells could effect psionic effects and visa versa.

To keep things even they could use a slot system like spells.
Or a point system based on 2 stats added together and multiplied by 1 third of your character level. Each effect could cost 10 points per level cast. A short rest can bring back 25% of your points.

And only have a few effects that scale with each level. Become more powerful the higher they are cast.

And a character gains a new ability every three levels.

8 to 10 total different abilities are all that is really needed. That would equal about 90 different effects at their highest casting.

As s start I could accept this.

Quote from GIJoeBob >>

I would prefer the way psionics were handled in AD&D - they were not a form of magic but were instead based on the mental abilities and discipline of the character. Psionic abilities were not magic and were unaffected by magic.

Having psionics be magic based makes the psi class just another magic user and I think we have enough of those already.

 
I don’t mind if psionics are considered “magic” for game balance purposes, as long as they don’t use spells or spellcasting mechanics to use their psionic abilities that’s okay by me. It’s WotC use of spells and spellcasting for psionics that I hate.

Unfortunately, designing a whole separate system of abilities just for one class while still balancing it against the magic system is a bit of a tall order. I suppose you could try for something like a Battlemaster's kit, but even then you'd still likely run up against the issue that the psionic abilities would either be so much better or worse than comparable spells that one would seriously overshadow the other in play.

It would be possible to balance them. And it wouldn’t have to be just for 1 class either, there could be Psionic subclasses for martial classes in addition to the full Psionicists class.

There's already psionic subclasses- Psi Warrior, Aberrant Mind, Soulblade; those are less of an issue since you're not building and balancing core class features. I'm not saying it's absolutely impossible to create a balanced system, but what I described often how it goes when a new system gets tacked onto a game, and as the production of these materials is a business, they do need to weigh how much dev time it would take to get that one product out the door vs what else they could do with that time. A non-spell using iteration seems like a lot of extra work when there's already spells that do most of the things one associates with psionic powers.

Quote from The_Ace_of_Rogues >>

There's already psionic subclasses- Psi Warrior, Aberrant Mind, Soulblade; those are less of an issue since you're not building and balancing core class features. I'm not saying it's absolutely impossible to create a balanced system, but what I described often how it goes when a new system gets tacked onto a game, and as the production of these materials is a business, they do need to weigh how much dev time it would take to get that one product out the door vs what else they could do with that time. A non-spell using iteration seems like a lot of extra work when there's already spells that do most of the things one associates with psionic powers.

 
And it’s that exact mentality that has left so, so many of us unhappy with the state of psionics in this edition.

Let's enter a timeline where psionics have been introduced, and they're not magic, and they're not spells, they're their own unique thing.

Poof!

I sure am annoyed that they haven't made any rules for *my* favorite concept, the spiritualist! Since spiritualists use spirits, it shouldn't be magic or psionics, but Wizards just keeps making psionic-based spiritualists. How annoying. I'm gonna hop into a timeline where this is fixed.

Poof!

Dang, how come we can't get a proper version of soulbinding? It's different from spiritualism, OBVIOUSLY, and it isn't magic either, nor is it psionics. What about a timeline where we got soulbinding...

Poof!

I'm so tired of waiting for them to tackle elementalism. It's insulting how they keep trying to force it into the box of magic, or psionics, or spiritualism, or soulbinding, when it really needs its own system. Let's just...

Poof!

Ugh, how many more times is Wizards gonna fail to deliver on truenaming? How about I...

Poof!

Sympathy --

Poof!

-- allomancy --

Poof!

The Force -- Poof! -- Christian faith -- Poof! -- Hamon -- Poof! -- hacking the Matrix -- Poof! -- 

Ah, finally, the perfect D&D ruleset.

Quote from TheGnome5786 >>

I would go for a psionic class if spells could effect psionic effects and visa versa.

To keep things even they could use a slot system like spells.
Or a point system based on 2 stats added together and multiplied by 1 third % of your character level. Each effect could cost 10 points per level cast. A short rest can bring back 25% of your points.

And only have a few effects that scale with each level. Become more powerful the higher they are cast.

 

 Making it another form of magic is rubbish. They already have many spell casters and extensive spell lists for all of them. We don't need another load of spells that work just like every other spell caster with slots. That is not engaging at all.

I have said before I'd like them to be available to every class. Again because we have lots of class ready =)

As a resource, I would be tempted to use HP with abilities based on level, INT, and ASI spent on powers.

Psi and Magic should not affect each other in the way of Counterspell or some such.

Would it make the game more complex? Maybe.

What can counter Psionic effects then?

What would stop you from teleporting into someplace that is magically protected?

Will a caster with telekinetic spell be able to "grab" the same object as a psionic telekinetic and fight over it?

The fact that they never effected each other was exactly why psionics was dropped in the first place. It was WAY too powerful and required another psionic to be able to defend against the power.

Also in the ADD version you needed a very high multi stat requirement to be capable of even getting that power. Even if you met the requirements it required a die roll to gain the power.

In 5E even fighters can find ways to defend against and or attack and stop a caster. How would they defend against a psion?

That’s why I’m okay with psionics being an alternative form of magic that’s still susceptible to stuff like antimagic effects for game balance purposes.

At which point it's basically magic, and so it's infinitely easier to balance if you just use the very large preexisting set of magical effects rather than try and reinvent the wheel. If they put the time and effort in to make a fully fleshed out and distinct psionics system that'd be cool, but it seems like a lot of extra work for something that already 90% exists with the existing magic system, so I can understand why they wouldn't want to invest all the extra time making "I Can't Believe it's Not Magic" that has little functional difference from vanilla casting.

And again, it’s that exact mentality that has left so, so many of us unhappy with the state of psionics in this edition.

You mean the mentality of "realistic expectations", as in not expecting a for profit company to focus on making a class that somehow centers on spell-like abilities while not being a spellcaster to appease one segment of the player base when they can direct those resources to larger scale projects that already fit into the existing system instead?

Precisely. 😝

The AD&D version of psionics was actually DM’s choice - you could make it completely separate or interacting (to whatever extent you wanted). In general the games I DMed and the DMs I played with had it semi separate- spells like anti magic, dispell magic (and 5es counterspell) wouldn’t work on psionic effects but there were (added homebrew) spells that directly targeted psionics. There were (DM created) null psionic zones, etc  as well so there were a lot of parallels. What made psionics different were the rules - point based casting, known abilities, points based off stats etc. yes they were hard to create - because they were powerful, so even as PCs they were rare.  I run a homebrew version in my 5e world that works much the same way. Some basic abilities that scale with level based on the discipline(s) chosen, points based on the mental stats and level, additional leveled abilities that can be picked up as you progress.took me about 3 days to design and refine - not a huge expenditure of time, basically the sort of thing done during an extended brainstorming run like we are seeing with the UAs. I use it for several NPCs and when we start back up (playing some Shadowrun right now) one of the PCs should be multiclassing onto it for a playtest. Psionics is what the sorceror should have been from the get go but they took the easy way out and just made it a nerfed caster.

I think what helped Psionics make sense in AD&D is that it was introduced in the Dark Sun setting. 

Dark Sun is a desolate wasteland, where the use of arcane magic destroyed the world. Every campaign setting has a source of power for arcane magic and in Dark Sun (in the world of Athas), the source of arcane magical power was the natural world: plants, trees, living things. When a wizard cast a spell, a flower died, a tree died… a PERSON could die. After enough magic was used and the world became a massive desert wasteland, magic was (mostly) outlawed. 

In comes the need for a new and useful magic: enter Psionics. Psionics was all about the use of a power that came from the will of the individual. In an apocalyptic setting, it makes sense for a power like this to develop, since the people who are going to survive in this harsh reality are the people who have the strongest will. When the world is deprived of something, people adapt, they think outside the box, they come up with something new to keep going. In the fantasy world, magic is sort of an assumed necessity (to varying degrees of course). 

Psionics (in my opinion) is simply another type of magic. If it is tacked on to a fantasy world that already has another type of magic (i.e. the traditional Arcane magic found in most settings) , a lot of the beauty that it can hold in helping us create amazing stories gets lost. In most D&D settings I think it is more challenging to bring Psionics in because it is competing with magic systems that are already saturating the system and story. Psionics then suffers because it lacks its own true identity in that situation. The resulting Psionic powers end up being too similar to the spells other classes cast (i.e. disentigrate) and it becomes too difficult to differentiate. 

I will also say that the AD&D system of using Psionics wasn’t the best. However I did appreciate that they came up with another method to use Psionic magic that was different than the Vancian spell casting system we associated with Wizards. I believe that creating a unique system for a new form of magic helps make it feel different when you are using it in the game. It helps give it a new feel and identity. As the 5e devs have said many times, they want the rules to complement the story telling. So I think having a unique rules system for a new form of magic (Psionics in this case) helps make it feel different too while you play. Obviously the problem is that no one wants another set of rules to complicate spell casting. Still, I think it could be important to think about. 

While I assume it possible to add Psionics to the D&D game with another establish system of magic involved, I believe this is why it has been such a challenge. Psionics lacks a true identity when other systems of magic are present. 

It’s possible. To have a different feel psionics needs to look and work a little differently but a fair portion needs to be similar.
Similar:
1) 10 levels of power for the effects (= to cantrips and L1-9 spells.)
2) always available abilities scale and top out at @4D8 damage ( like cantrips and single hit weapon strikes) 
3) at L20 @ 25 total uses of limited use abilities ( so it matches with other full (spell) casters)
these keep the psion on roughly the same power level as full casters as they are the general power structure of all “supernatural” activities.
Different:
1) doesn’t use spell slots (this is the hardest one t work with) 
2) uses some sort of points system with a recharge mechanic - or limited use (proficiency bonus?) and recharge (hit dice?) system
3) no material components - verbal and maybe some somatic components - these abilities are all mental at most they should call for the will, an activating word and maybe a gesture along with the word. 
psionics has to feel and look somewhat different both “in world” and to the player if it’s going to be relevant, enjoyable and feel like it’s more than a “tack on”