Tell me your thoughts on Psionics!  Did you use them?  What was your favorite system to use them if you did?
For me, I loved Dark Sun, and I used the 2nd Edition D&D splat book for powers.   I always felt the rules could be done better, however- I seem to remember (maybe incorrectly) that you wanted to roll low to get a good result with your powers, and rolling low in 2nd edition just seemed wrong to me.
If I were to do anything related with psychic powers now, I would probably hack something from BRP or Runequest.

Used them in AD&D.
Didnt exist in BX D&D.
Everything and its brother had it in Dark Sun. And wanted to kill you with it.
Was a bit overblown in 2e and didnt use.

In AD&D psi was fairly rare, and optional. There were some pretty neet psi-themed monsters so if you wanted to include it, there it was. It worked fairly well too. One of my longest lived AD&D fighters had psi. Also about the only one to ever gain it. And just short of the only one I've seen as a player or DM in AD&D. It harkens back to the Deryni novels according to Dragon.

2e though ramped that up massively, building off the old Dragon article introducing the psionic class. To me it seemed excessive compared to AD&Ds more restrained array. But overall it worked. But psi in 2e was so clunky that no one wanted to mess with it. Which made proposing Dark Sun sessions even harder.

I haven't gotten to use psionics in AD&D, though I did get to use psionics a little bit when playing the Carcosa setting usings BECMI.
I have used psionics in 3.5 and 4E.
3.5 is a guilty pleasure of mine, though I would like it better if it were a little more reigned in and more oldschool compatible.

Outside of Dark Sun, I can't recall ever using them in play as a player or DM.

Mongoose Traveller treats them as skills. Easy to use because they're not treated as a separate bolted-on rule set.

I've been surveying various rules for classic mediums and psychics. I want visions and prophecies and psychometry... clairvoyance... speaking with the dead, seeing spirts... but NOT the Scanners stuff with exploding heads and whatnot, not telekinetics. 'Psionics' doesn't seem the proper term for it... and I'd like it to be subtle and less than reliable.

Never really understood their use in fantasy worlds, given the abundance of magic traditions to draw from. In Darksun they make some kind of sense, in most other setting they seem superfluous.

Quote from: Simlasa;849245I've been surveying various rules for classic mediums and psychics. I want visions and prophecies and psychometry... clairvoyance... speaking with the dead, seeing spirts... but NOT the Scanners stuff with exploding heads and whatnot, not telekinetics. 'Psionics' doesn't seem the proper term for it... and I'd like it to be subtle and less than reliable.

Yeah.  The most aggressive thing I want to see is some mesmerism.

Psi was cool in Dark Sun.

Largely ignored otherwise.

HATED psionics in AD&D.  Never allowed them in my campaigns as DM.  If I wanted to use a psionic monster, like a mind flayer, I'd sub in spells approximating the psi powers where I could.  But I really liked the psychic system in Rifts, with psi being present just as a matter of course in 25% of humans, and all the psionic RCC's.  It was also cool how powerful beings like dragons and demons  used both magic and psi.  I guess I didn't see the point of having them in a fantasy setting, but in an everything but the kitchen sink sci fi setting, they made a lot more sense.  And got a more in depth treatment, IMO.

Quote from: Battle Mad Ronin;849249Never really understood their use in fantasy worlds, given the abundance of magic traditions to draw from.

For the low-powered sort I was imagining I was thinking psychics would be untrained, apart from any tradition... except maybe some hereditary/familial one. Like raw magical talent without knowledge or spells... maybe they sense the arcane but have no real system for understanding it or manipulating it. The old soothsayer in the woods or the youngster who seems to have an uncanny sense of things... talks to ghosts without knowing they're ghosts.

Quote from: Battle Mad Ronin;849249Never really understood their use in fantasy worlds, given the abundance of magic traditions to draw from.

Yep.

I've always wanted to like psionics, but whenever I put even cursory thought into the subject I felt all of its best ideas should really just be merged into magic.

Put it this way: I'm running my current 5e campaigns in the psionic-heavy portion of Eberron. The absence of psionic rules for 5e hasn't mattered one bit. I just give the 'psionic' NPCs a bunch of no-component spell-like abilities based on charms, telepathy, confusion or whatever and they're good to go, no weird extra mechanics necessary.

I liked the balancing factors in the original(Eldritch Wizardry) presentation. Other presentations, such as Metamorphosis Alpha mutants and the Arduin Grimoire's psychic class, came into play.

The 2e AD&D Psionics Handbook looked fairly well thought out, but seemed too much for the rarity of such powers in the games in which I played.

In my experience, the usual case is that psionic gifts are quite extraordinary. The second most common is that they basically are the magic in the milieu , like Kurtz's Deryni, Bradley's Darkover, or (slipping more into frontier) Norton's Witch World.

One might distinguish some effects as being more 'magical' in flavor, and certainly some modes of operation, but I think the main thing is the innate-ability/personal-power aspect of psionics.

I played a psionic character in Rifts (I had quite a lot of fun with that character), and in Morrow Project (where it feels very tacked on, and like the rules were hastily put together compared to the rest of their material).
When I GMed Pathfinder I allowed psionics and they were pretty popular. There are lots of things about psionics, and magic in general that bug me in 3e/PF though, but that's best left for a whole other discussion I think.  
Dark Sun, thematically speaking, I think is the only setting in D&D that really has done enough to distinguish psionics from other forms of magic.  In all the other settings it just feels like magic by another name, which is fine if less interesting I suppose.

well my group ran a set of games a little on some days where are normal dm didn't show up .
it had a lot of psionics stuffed in it and the lack of magic using party members save my paladin lead to this odd case where the game was very balanced with the way we where playing.

as to flavored ill be honest i like all me gonzo psionic powers partly because my view of psionics is heavily colored be E's otherwise.

if you have never seen E's heres a few youtube vids that will give you the idea.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s05A5tPhqCo

watch this one for about a minute and 1/2 so you see the opening it will give you a good idea of what they can do.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ncaus1yUJ4s