I am one of those who thinks the psionic subsystem is one of the most elegantly designed things in D&D 3.5. In many ways, I think it's how spellcasting should have been done in 3.5. And I'd like to use it for more things.
But when I try to replace the core vancian casting with psionics, I run into a couple of problems.
- Options are missing. There are things the core classes can do that simply can't be faithfully replicated with psionics. The psionic system is powerful enough, no doubt about that. It can pretty much always get the job done. But if I wanted to, say, play a necromancer, I'd probably have to reflavor Astral Constructs as my zombies and some Stygian powers as my negative energy effects. Which works, but wasn't really what I was looking for in the first place. Which brings me to the second problem:
- The flavor doesn't always fit. Now, I think it's cool - if viewed on its own terms. The crystals and tattoo theme the books have going on is a perfectly good way to look at magic, but in my experience, it doesn't always live up to people's ideas about what D&D magic "should" look like. DMs still ban psionics for "flavor reasons", or because it doesn't "fit their setting". Which, I must say, I understand perfectly.
So what can I do? Well, I devised a twofold solution to the twofold problem.
- I translated the core spells and classes over to psionic mechanics.
- As for the system itself (as well as some doodads like the basic magic items), I changed every reference to "power", "manifester", "crystals" and "psionic", and so on to... well, their arcane counterparts. In other words, when people say "just reflavor psionics to fit your setting/concept" - I'd like to think I did precisely that.
And here is the result. (.pdf, 2.7 MB) I suggest linking to this thread rather than hotlinking, I expect this thread to be rather more permanent.
It includes a complete conversion of the psionic base system, feats and fundamental items over to magical terminology, as well as, more importantly, translated classes to utilize the mechanics, and a relatively thorough conversion of the Sorcerer/Wizard, Cleric, Bard, Paladin, Assassin and Blackguard lists over to what 3.5 fans know as psionic mechanics. For the classes presented so far, it should be playable from 1-20.
Now, like all homebrewers, I hope that this is actually useful, and that I can get some feedback. But I don't expect anyone to just accept that the stuff I churned out is awesome enough to read the over 400 pages of it. Instead, I suggest that the potentially interested do the following:
- Download the document.
- If you know how psionics in 3.5 work, proceed to step 3. All you will find in the first few chapters is that this is a reprinting of the psionic mechanics, and that the Wizard works just like the Psion. If you don't, well, please read the Wizard class, and tell me whether it makes any sense to you! :smalltongue:
- Navigate to the "Spells" section (the pdf is thoroughly bookmarked). Find your favourite spell or two.
- Tell me what you think! You don't need to be a grandmaster of homebrewing to tell if I royally screwed something up, so please tell me if you find something odd, no matter how trivial or "just your opinion" you think it is.
For those that are still reading, I have a FAQ for you:
Thanks for reading this far, please tell me what you think!