Talk:Simple Psychic (5e Variant Rule)

DMG p. 10 tells us that "Psionics" is a tag that can be added to spellcasting or innate spellcasting; thus psychic powers can be innate spells with the psionics tag.

The Simple Psychic variant could (simply) be:

Psychic powers are innate spells with the psionics tag. Psychic powers are always cast at their lowers possible level and can't be cast at a higher level. A psychic power of 1st level or higher can cast once, then you must finish a long rest before you can cast it again.

1. Telekinesis. You know the mage hand cantrip. When you reach 9th level, you can cast the telekinesis spell.

2. Pyrokinesis. You know the produce flame cantrip. When you reach 7th level, you can cast the wall of fire spell.

3. Cryokinesis. You know the chill touch cantrip. When you reach 9th level, you can cast the cone of cold spell.

4. Telepathy. You know the message cantrip. When you reach 15th level, you can cast the telepathy spell.

5. Clairvoyance. When you reach 5th level, you can cast the clairvoyance spell.

etc. Marasmusine (talk) 08:33, 11 August 2016 (MDT)

There are many differences here. Like, for example, the rules I wrote for simple psychic could allow a PC to hold 5 weapons at once. It could even allow the PC to hold 5 kobolds as weapons at the same time. This was intentional, as I said, "Should psionics later be released as something disappointing, like just another school of magic accessible to specific classes, then this rule can completely replace it as actual psychic powers. The psychic powers, as described here, are based more on modern fantasy than high fantasy magic, and are not intended to be magical in nature." I should also probably note that they are not balanced AT ALL, and are intended for a very different type of game than the typical dungeon crawling of D&D.

That's fine, I'm just presenting an alternative.

I have a secret. When I first played D&D, we had the D&D Red Box and the 1e AD&D PHB (somehow mashed together, I didn't realize they were different systems.). There were rules for making psionic characters in the PHB (You had some really low percentage of being psionic but of course we fudged the dice), but I never actually had the AD&D DMG that explained the psionic mechanics. My psionic cleric had these exotic-sounding powers like "ego whip" and then I guess we just made up what happened. Marasmusine (talk) 12:46, 11 August 2016 (MDT)