References to my campaign:
http://www.thecbg.org/e107_plugins/forum/forum_viewtopic.php?8971 (//hyperlinkurl)
http://www.thecbg.org/e107_plugins/forum/forum_viewtopic.php?9249 (//hyperlinkurl)
I'm actually asking for advice here; basically when one of my players asked if he could play one as he'd never played that type before I hesitated then said "sure" thinking that I would like to respond to the challenge. What we've done with the character concept is that he's somewhat unique in his community and unusual; there is a mage NPC who tried to take him as a pupil but found he had no head for memorizing spells, and that he had limited abilities that seemed inherent. The character is basically encouraged (and agrees) to go into the military where he can serve along with a unit of scouts, his abilities being clairsentience (basically psychometry, danger sense, spirit sense, know direction). Psionics are virtually unknown in the little country the characters come from; if anything they are known to peasant superstition which calls it witchcraft.
While he has had some training from the mage he met, he will need at some point to learn more from other psionicists. We agreed that that should be the rule of it just to make the game interesting; that he will somehow have to find others like himself.
What I've been dabbling with is the idea that while they are involved in the war they are sent to that the character gradually finds evidence of others like himself. While the land they journey to is also supersitious about psionics, he meets someone who can teach him just a little (enough to cover the next science perhaps) but also shares with him rumors of a place where their kind are accepted and where they might learn to develop their powers fully.
I'm also open to other ideas about this. I haven't really had psionics in my campaign apart from as a wild talent or in the hands of monsters.
I don't really use psionics in my campaigns either but I have wante dto try it out for ages. The main issue i have had is with all the psionic buffers and savesd you have to check for just to cast a power. How does psionics conflict (if at all) with magic in your world?
In my campaign world the difference is that wizards are seen to have acquired a discipline, learned a skill, in a way that is measurable. Their ability is a sign of intelligence and talent. While that of clerics is a sign of devotion.
Psionicists get their powers from some invisibl somewhere. Who knows where? They do not visibly DO anything to do their 'magic' so what is it? It is inherently suspicious, disturbing. It implies secret pacts with demons.
oooh sounds mysterious! i like it
Are you making a new class? Or are you using "psionicist" interchangeably with "psion"?
I think that the wilder class would fit in nicely with how he describes the superstitions and such. Maybe not though. I don't know much.
Do you have your campaign posted somewhere?
EDIT: Nevermind.
With this particular character it is like the wilder class.
I was kind of thinking of the psionicist ideas as being a 'lost' class, which has to be rediscovered in my game. I'm still ironing things out but I had thought that perhaps they began to dwindle as a class after some great war, when as some societies at times think that the class was no longer of use or perhaps was even disliked for whatever reason.