Premonition
Chapter: Season Three
Characters: Brett Kringle, Sam
I have a love/hate relationship with psionics in D&D. I’ve tried every variation and for some reason it just never clicked for me. I have no doubt that if/when psionics appear again, I will once again give it a try.
See you on Friday!
(I’ve also added a Reply feature to the comments section)
That is one of the only D&D2e books I still own. True facts.
The cheese-filled horror stories about this book make me glad that I started RPing with 3.5.
Oh, I’ve seen it in use. It was truely horrifying. I for one have never liked psionics in D&D. It just doesn’t fit. It’s like getting chocolate in my peanut butter but not with the yummy side effects.
Am I the only one who has played a psionicist in 2e and *liked* it? 😉
I’ve loved the idea of psionics ever since Appendix I in 1e, but my favorite implementation was 3.5’s.
That’s one of the few “Complete” books of 2E I didn’t reacquire. Only if I were to run a 2E Dark Sun campaign would I even consider it, but frankly, I might just use 4E Dark Sun.
The only time I used psionics in any of my RPs was when I gave some characters low psionic abilities as perks.
I’ve never used the full blown psionic powers that they keep trying to convince us are “good” for the game.
I never actually got to play a Psionicist in 2e, but I made oh so many characters from that book hoping to someday get a game. By the time I actually got back into a D&D game, it was already 3.5…and I played a telepathic psion. 🙂
I had a player who loved playing a psionic in 2e. I wanted to murder him with a spork.
I believe Psionics have a place in D&D. I truly do. Setting like Dark Sun, Spelljammer, and even Planescape seem like a perfect fit. My frustration comes from the need to create an entire subset of rule to handle psionic powers.
If I was handed a psionic character with different powers but the same mechanic as other casters in the game, I would be a happy man.
Keep it simple. Keep it consistent, I say.
I would have to disagree completely if its the same mechanic why not just develop new abilities for the caster you prefer. I still allow 2e psionics in my games because anything else and they are basically wizards with shaved heads.
Dreamscarred Press actually did a decent psionic book for Pathfinder. If you like psionics, I recommend it-
Psionics Unleashed was actually the book that convinced me that I should allow psionics for my games.
I haven’t seem it but I’ll give it a look. Thanks for the heads-up.
I enjoyed playing a 2e Psionicist but that’s because regular monsters were almost completely defenseless against psi powers and I was an 11 year old powergamer at the time.
@sandchigger: Remind me to tell you about the time my fighter acquired a +400 Mjolnir. I too was once a 10-year old powergamer.
@ Brian – when I discovered Basic D&D in 1979 (I was 13) my cousin (he was 11) and I made it from Level 1 to Level 200+ in one evening of playing X1 – Isle of Dread. . . just the two of us. So what that Isle of Dread was for the Expert Set! So what that it was for level 3-7! Whatever! We did it OUR way!
So you were the other guy playing Spelljammer???
I liked the psionic stuff in real ADnD (you know the original one). It was a little complex for the MacD’s playland crowd. However I’ve worked with real world psychic and psionic experiments and was amazed at how well they captured much of the technique and effects. Pimplefaced attempts to turn it into some alien uberbrained sci-fi system really undermined it, as have repeated attempts to repackage it (why do it, if you’re not going to do it properly? oh yeah, money, (and more illusionary mystic powers for wannabe’s with no personal power….)
Psionics. The 2e stuff on psionics really tried to make a minigame out of every attempt to play psionics in a campaign. I thought it was great to take the powers from the 2e handbook and translate them into 3e spells and to treat psionicists much like specialized sorcerers but without the friggin psychic lightsabers. The new “spells” gave the campaign a flavor that added more dimension to the campaign world I created. The players had fun with it. It also made the player characters taste better to mind flayers.
I played a psionics character when the book first came out. He had his moments but the GM really couldn’t figure out what to do with him so when he died and the GM allowed me an opportunity to bring him back in vai story, I skipped it.
That s just a little tooooo creepy, lol. May be why i like it.
We enjoyed having psionic characters except for one problem (which was also experienced by every non-decker in Shadowrun):
The rest of the party stands about for 2 hours (real time) while 2 psionics stare at each other and twitch eyebrows or something. Since, as with deckers in the Matrix, the action is happening at lightning-fast speed… but the play is still normal.
Er…did that make sense? Guys? Guys?
The first character I had that I actually liked was a Psychic Warrior, using 3.5 rules. It was my second character ever, but I loved the class. It was exactly what I was looking for (a caster-type/fighter-type evenly mixed) and the abilities were extremely versatile. I had one ability that let me shapeshift into anything with less hit die than me, and another that could enlarge me by two sizes. In one session, the DM basically let us go nuts causing all kinds of chaos in a town, so I turned into a blue dragon and then enlarged…. I became Godzilla and destroyed the town we were in. I only did it the one time because I didn’t feel it was necessary to push my luck any further, and I think the DM only let the two things stack because it was hilarious at the time.
I don’t remember why we decided to destroy the town, though.
Papercuts on your tong are the worst.