The Campaign Builder's Guild

Okay, I've come to the point that I need to decide whether or not to put psionics in my homebrew world.

It wont be some half-assed attempt to add the system, it will be at least a small part of the world.

Er... Idon't think the poll is accepting my vote.

Psionicists (or power point mages) are versatile in their abiliy to use their magical abilities. The flavor (and artwork) as presented in the XPH give the whole thing a sci-fi-ish feel to it, but that can be fixed. I've made some anime style ninjas using psionics, and build for Aya Brea.
GO! renaming stuff so that you can use the crunch! GO!

On the WotC psionics boards: Truenaming Psionics (http://boards1.wizards.com/showthread.php?t=470229). Should help you get some work out of the way.

My opinion isn't neatly summed up by any of those poll options.

I don't like psionics, but my opinion has nothing to do with whether or not they're balanced. I simply find them redundant: I don't see the need for two seperate-but-equal crunch-systems for describing the supernatural. From a purely fluff-based point of vantage, there's no need for a whole new system to represent the archetype "I have mental powers" because we can already represent that archetype with magic. Take a spontaneous casting class, invest heavily in divination/enchantment/illusion or whatever screams "psionics!" the most loudly in your ear, and voila!-- ghetto-psion.

This is the part where a lot of people say, "Whoa, wait! I don't like the magic system in the PHB, and it doesn't fit what I want to represent with it!"

That's fine, and I agree. I don't like it either, and that's why I rewrote it. (Because frankly, I don't like WotC's psionics system any better.) But I certainly see no reason to preserve the distinction between one group of people who have supernatural, mental-based powers and another group of people who have supernatural, mental-based powers.

That, and the whole "I'm obsessed with crystals!" vibe they give me has never really appealed to me.

Psionics are fantabulous.  And well done in 3.5.  And they work quite nicely side-by-side with a non-Vancian magic sytem.  
The trick to adding them is to make them integral from the get go.

Check out Altvogge (linked below) for the psionic ninja.

Quote from: Luminous CrayonI don't see the need for two seperate-but-equal crunch-systems for describing the supernatural. From a purely fluff-based point of vantage, there's no need for a whole new system to represent the archetype "I have mental powers" because we can already represent that archetype with magic. Take a spontaneous casting class, invest heavily in divination/enchantment/illusion or whatever screams "psionics!" the most loudly in your ear, and voila!-- ghetto-psion.

I agree whole-heartedly. From a game-design standpoint, its silly that there isn't just one system for spells and psionics (and spell-like abilities, and ki abilities, etc.).

From a DMing standpoint, there's really no reason to disallow psionics if one of your players absolutely insists on playing a psionic character (or if you want to play a crystal-obsessed guy who can burn himself out in a few rounds if necessary). The system is fairly balanced, and any specific points that bother you can be house-ruled out fairly easily since the rules are quite straightforward.

I'm dubious about psionics. I'm trying them out in my campaign I've just started because one of my players begged to try one.

I know that a lot of fantasy depictions of psionic type stuff kind of bites. It was hard for me to find anything as inspirational material to use that didn't make me want to gag or groan with boredom. I frankly prefer the magic system, which requires the player to do more to earn what they are capable of in my opinion.

Having both at once...complicates things. Then again though, there are for instance clerical spells. So it doesn't complicate things too much; in my opinion it's workable.

With Urbis (http://juergen.the-huberts.net/dnd/urbis/), I had to think long and hard whether to include psionics. Most traditional D&D settings aren't built around them, but nevertheless psionic sometimes exists on the fringes. Nevertheless, psionics is an established part of the SRD, and I wanted to use everything in the SRD for Urbis. But since the general attitude of humans in the world is: "If it exists and represents a path to power, we will use it", I also needed to come up with some justifcation why psionics remains uncommon and isn't integrated in society at large.

What I came up with is this: No beings truly native to this world have any ability to use psionics whatsoever. None. However, psionic-using creatures do exist - but those are the result of outside meddling, often extraterrestrial in origin (such as in the case of the derro), since beings from other planets have no such restrictions (call it a quirk of evolution).

The sole exception to this (and even that might be arguable) are the Surathi (http://juergen.the-huberts.net/dnd/urbis/new_monsters.html), my replacement for the yuan-ti in this setting (since those aren't in the SRD). They are a psionic race that can theoretically interbreed with any terrestrial creature - including humans.

So player characters of any race can have any psionic character class - but they should be aware that (a) these classes are very uncommon and (b) there was some non-human interference in their background. Either they or one of their ancestors was experimented upon by alien creatures for unfathomable reasons, or they are the distant descendants of a fairly loathsome species. Finding out the truth about their origin and their powers might not be a pleasant experience - but I'm sure that the DM can get an adventure or two out of it...   ;)

I have to say, I liked psionics... but I prefer to just adapt a couple of the powers for my own magic systems and leave it at that.

My opinion is that it depends a lot on what you want in your setting.  Psionics often have a sci-fi feel, but for many settings that's okay because they have pseudo-scientific explanations for magic, alien races (such as aberrations), time travel, the far realm, or whatever.  They can also feel closer to eastern-type mythos, too.

On the other hand, if you want something that feels just like medieval Europe, psionics don't fit as well as magic (and probably some kind of dark magic at that).

In my setting psionics aren't well integrated because they are just starting to appear (in non-aberration races).  In my last campaign, the PCs were among the first psionic humans in the world.