Psionics In Ravenloft

[DocBeard]

Do you use em?

Personally? After reading the book and getting past my inital 'what', it seemed to fit pretty well, both in the Rennisance Domains and just the Gothic feel in general: someone seeking to perfect their mental powers seems to fit right in with vampire hunters and lore-starved scholars.

As far as classes go, I use psion and wilder, which are the wizard and sorcorer of psionics, and leave psychic warrior and soulknife, both of which seem more approprate as prestiege classes for a monk, psion, or wilder. How about y'all?

[Nathan of the FoS]

I do use them. Especially for doppelgangers; as MattiasStormcrow once said, doppelgangers and psionics go together like peanut butter and jelly.

Evil, shapeshifting peanut butter and jelly, of course.

[alhoon]

I use them. Psion, wilder and psychic warrior.

They fit well with... mind flayers. Sentient creatures in the service of the mind flayers may be wilders. Mind flayers themselves: Creation Creed, Darkeners, Nourishers and those keeping the finances psions.
Abysmal Creed and tamers Psychic warriors.

I vastly prefer the expanded psionics handbook version for mind flayers BTW. Instead of just at will powers, they get 9 levels of psion which allows them versatility.
I just found it odd that duergar get bonus psionic points and mind flayers don't, so I decided that yes, mind flayers are a psionic race and get a bonus power point per HD.

[DocBeard]

I guess my problem with psychic warrior is that it sort of...does the monk's job for it, but using psi-powers instead of the monk's ki techniques. That's why it feels so much more like a prestiege class to me, y'know?

[JinnTolser]

I don't use psionics of any kind. But that has more to do with my personal bias against them than it does their relation or suitability to Ravenloft.

[alhoon]

I don't think the psychic warrior has much in common with the monk.

Could you please provide the similarities?

[DocBeard]

I don't think the psychic warrior has much in common with the monk.

Well, it's a matter of archtype. Both classes try and find power/enlightenment/the ability to drop kick things through martial discipline and cultivation of internal power. I mean, yeah, what they actually /do/ with that power is fairly different, depending on what powers the psychic warrior gets, but /how/ they get there, to me, seems to be similar enough that psychic warrior doesn't need to be its own core class to represent a heroic archtype.

Just a personal preference, mind. To put it another way: The psion and wilder classes seemed broad enough to me to be base classes, while the psychic warrior and soulknife classes seemed specialized enough to have been prestige classes instead. Just an opinion.

[alhoon]

No problem man. I was just curious and you answered my question. It was not a tricky question, there was no "right" answer.

IMC I rarely if ever use monks since I think they are more suited to oriental campaigns.

[Undead Cabbage]

I just found it odd that duergar get bonus psionic points and mind flayers don't, so I decided that yes, mind flayers are a psionic race and get a bonus power point per HD.

You know, that's a good point. Why were only duergar getting bonus psionic points?

do use them. Especially for doppelgangers; as MattiasStormcrow once said, doppelgangers and psionics go together like peanut butter and jelly.

Evil, shapeshifting peanut butter and jelly, of course.

Well said, Nathan. This makes me wonder how much cooler Sodo would be if he had a few levels in Nomad.

"Try and catch me now, suckers!"

[DocBeard]

IMC I rarely if ever use monks since I think they are more suited to oriental campaigns.

Cool: Agreeing to disagree and all that. I think there's always a place for fisticuff-fighters. Sure, there's the Asian models, but Herculese, Jacob, and Sampson are three examples of very western characters I'd give levels of Monk. They largely use hand to hand combat and their supernatural abilities come from internal discipline or some trained internal divinity(Faith in God, blood of a diety, good old fashioned grit...),

Plus there's no reason why you can't mix the western monastic tradition with yon kung fu: You had plenty of monestaries that really did use some sort of excercise regimen to promote health, internal wellness, self discipline and teach self defense in case of some unpleasent knights deciding that monks could be taxed after all...not universial, to be sure, nor as ingraned in the imagination as the Asian model, but nowhere near as clunky a fit as some folks believe.

The idea of the trained priest/monk/astetic being forced into dealing with worldly concerns thanks to the sinister influence of the supernatural is a classic horror story, wether the monk be a Vatican investigator or a kung-fu excorcist. So that's the prime reason why I try to make sure there's always room for the Monk class in my Ravenloft, usually sponsored by lawful faiths like the Lawgiver, Ezra, Zhakita, and the Overseer.

[Steve Miller]

I never used to, although I found that the "Mind Over Matter" psionics rules (written by yours truly a few years back) worked nicely in RL.

[Joël of the FoS]

I never used to, although I found that the "Mind Over Matter" psionics rules (written by yours truly a few years back) worked nicely in RL.

Yup. If you want a light feel of psionics without the rule mess, try MoM!

Joël

[DocBeard]

Where would a fella find those rules?

[Steve Miller]

Where would a fella find those rules?

The main book ("Mind Over Matter") is here:

http://www.rpgnow.com/product_info.php? ... 25445&it=1

There's a supplement ("Mind Expansion") here:

http://www.rpgnow.com/product_info.php? ... 25439&it=1

And another one ("Spookmaster") here:

http://www.rpgnow.com/product_info.php? ... =2376&it=1

The stuff is geared primarily for d20 Modern, but it's easily adaptable.

[Jonathan Winters]

I concur!

Mind over Matter is very good (and simple). Just needs a couple of small tweaks here and there for RL.

Patrick