Psionics considered harmful

There are eight versions of rules sets for D&D psionics that I know of.

The first one was Gary Gygax’s cut in Advanced Dungeons and Dragons’s Dungeon Masters Guide (original 1979 book, pages 76-79) – the base one with five attack modes and five defence modes, the psychic crush being a death effect. It was removed from AD&D2 and was given a chance again in Complete Psionics Handbook by Steve Winter – the same five attacks and five defence modes, but psychic crush is made consistent with the rest; PSP and MThAC0 appear. Dark Sun psionics came third (with Will and the Way, and some additions by Dragon Kings and Psionic Artifacts of Athas), enhancing the psionic combat system with Harbingers and Constructs. Bill Slavicsek and Dale A. Donovan revisited it in Player’s Option: Skills and Powers book by streamlining the design and complementing MThAC0 with MAC.

In 2001, Bruce Cordell produced the worst book of his life: Psionics Handbook. I mean, Vancian psioncs? Come on! It sucked harder than any vacuum cleaner for a simple reason: this psionics system was not a variation of any previously released rules set – instead, it was a variation of current magic rules of D&D 3.0. Nothing about it felt non-magical, if was just another school, like Divination or Conjuration. Some of his adventures like If Thoughts Could Kill used this system minor modifications and Mike Mearls tried to fix it with Psionics Toolkit that wasn’t very popular and not only due the fugly cover picture. What was more popular was Mindscapes, a series of books by the same Bruce Cordell that brought back some interesting colour concepts with a distinct psionic feel: psionic combat modes and psionic landscapes. In the meantime Steve Kenson published his The Psychic’s Handbook for d20 suitable for D&D and quite nice yet a bit weird since it was based on skills and feats. Sam Witt’s Quintessential Psion made another decent attempt with a handful of new concepts (altered states, echoes, symbiotes, psionic accords, psilchemy, etc), a distinct psionic feel and adequate interior art.

Expanded Psionics Handbook provided an actually useful implementation of several psionic classes and races. The cool but overcomplicated combat landscape thing was tweaked down and published as Hyperconscious: Explorations in Psionics. Complete Psionic supported it and introduced very few modifications for the rules – it was nice of Bruce, but not really necessary.

So.

There are a lot of D&D fans that despise psionics for this reason or the other – on the other hand, everyone loves magic, but there are not nearly as many alternative magic rules out there (Ok, let’s count: the standard Vancian one, the spellpoint/mana one, ubiquitous incantations and a skill-based one).

So.

Why is that?

Because no-one bloody understands what psionic is – hence, no-one can definitely state that this is a good psionic power and that is bad one. I think that I understand it and I like it a lot, but if you ask me for a reason I think enlarge is a good psi-power and fireball isn’t, I don’t really have an answer. That’s why the game designers are swinging back and forth with making psionics official, unofficial, semi-official, putting more complicated funky details because people keep asking for funky and throwing them out in the next version because people complain about them being complicated.

There’s a lack of understanding for psionics and the lack of decent fluff on the topic. While I’m in no position to try to correct Cordell and Gygax, I can try to express my view. That will be a new post, let this one stay a pure ranting.