Reconsidering AD&D psionics: An honest look at the pros and cons

It's no secret that AD&D psionics have never exactly been popular. And I mean never. A vocal majority (?) of gamers have been deriding, ignoring, and generally neglecting them since day one. Before that, technically, since a version of them first appeared way back in Eldritch Wizardry. But I guess I'm feeling open-minded and generous lately, so I wanted to revisit them and give them the fairest shake I possibly can. Note that I won't be addressing the old saw about how "Science fiction stuff doesn't belong in a fantasy game!" On that score, I'll just refer you to old Appendix N. Anyway, here are my thoughts:

Pros:

1. Functionality. Yes, really! Much to my surprise, the psionics rules given in the PHB and DMG are fairly straightforward and functional. They are, for all intents and purposes, a standard spell point magic system, albeit with more up-front random factors than are usually seen in the skill-based RPGs that tend to implement their magic type abilities this way. You have your various powers, a pool of points that fuel them, some guidelines for how fast spent points regenerate, and so forth. Psionic combat is oddly light on dice rolling for AD&D, and consists primarily of cross referencing various attack and defense types on a chart and applying the results. I'm genuinely surprised how workable the mechanical implementation actually is for those so inclined.

2. Feel. The details of AD&D psionics may not be too crazy in a wider RPG context, but they're weird as hell for AD&D. Whatever else the psionics practitioner might be, they're not just another core class using a cosmetically reskinned version of the base magic rules. They're...Something Else...Something Strange. That's honestly quite cool if you ask me. Beyond that, they're just such a full-flavor AD&Dism, tied to iconic monsters like the Mind Flayer and Githyanki/Githzerai. There's a mindset that says, "If you're gonna do something, do it with no all gusto and no apologies." That's AD&D with psionics, alright.

Cons:

1. Situationality. By the book, psionics are rare. Really rare. A complete beast of a hypothetical PC with 18s in intelligence, wisdom, and charisma maxes out at a one-time 10% chance to possess psionics at character creation. 3% - 5% is far more realistic. As a DM, the prospect of learning an entire elaborate sub-system that might (might!) be available to 5% of characters can obviously smack of wasted effort.

2. Character balancing. Equally common and obvious are concerns about psionic characters potentially unbalancing the game. Thankfully, I do think they're overstated. Yes, psionics are "free" for the characters lucky enough to qualify for them. As anyone who's seen the film Scanners knows, however, mental combat between psionics is horrifically deadly. Furthermore, the DMG specifies an increased chance for random psionic monster encounters whenever psionic powers are employed by the party. A true risk/reward dynamic is thus present. Psionics make their wielders stronger than their mundane counterparts in some respects and more vulnerable in others, and players who know the odds may well prefer to go without.

3. The Decker Problem. Psionic combat really is its own thing. When two psychic figures are going mind-to-mind, they each take their actions on a per segment basis. In other words, ten individual exchanges per round! The remainder of the game basically pauses while they hash it out, and the rest of the table...well, they can cheer their buddy on, maybe?

Conclusion:

The decision of whether or not to include old school psionics ultimately comes down to whether the individual DM feels that the sheer weird, wild tone of PCs lashing their Ego Whips against an intellect devourer's Thought Shield is worth learning an entire new "magic" system that probably won't see use often, but has the very real potential to hog the spotlight whenever it does come to the fore in combat. Personally, I'm leaning toward doing it in my next game, just for the freaky flavor of it and to actually get some solid use out of all those wacky monsters for a change.

Defending psionics.

AD&D psionics. Everybody either hates the hell of them or never used them (or, paradoxically, both). But not me. I think AD&D's is a very solid, very usable psionics system and I'm here today to tell you why.

Could it be that I was a counsel for the defense at Nuremberg in a former life?

Anyway, psionics in Dungeons & Dragons certainly pre-date their most well-known appearance in the first appendix of 1978's AD&D Player's Handbook. I, however, do not. Therefore, I'll be focusing on AD&D in this post. That being said, if somebody out there has additional relevant insight into how these systems differed in TSR publications that predate the PHB, that's fine with me. Comments sections are there for a reason, after all.

Let's jump right into it, shall we?

1. Psionics "don't work."

I hear this one a lot. The psionics rules were somehow either incomprehensibly convoluted or completely illogical and simply didn't function if you attempted to run them as written.

Wrong. AD&D psionics are actually quite simple. Everything from calculating a character's chance to be psionic, to determining a psionic character's overall strength, to allocating psionic powers is as straightforward as any other aspect of character creation.

The effects of the various powers are as clearly explained as those of magic spells. No more so, but certainly no less.

Psionic combat is a simple matter of cross-referencing two values on a chart and applying the indicated results, the same as regular physical combat.

2. Psionics are "unbalanced."

This misunderstanding is a lot more understandable. The psionic character gets all these special powers for nothing, right?

So you might believe until I point you to a little thing called the psionic encounters section of Appendix C of the Dungeon Master's Guide. It turns out that each time a psionic power is used within one turn of a wandering monster check, that wandering monster has the potential to be a psionic one.

And psionic monsters? As per the Monster Manual, they're really, really damn nasty. And prone to target psionic PCs. As written, it's only a matter of time (the chance is a full 25% upon a positive wandering monster check) before some brain-eating nasty rolls up and pulls a Scanners on your psionic wunderkind PC, and quite possibly the rest of his party, too, considering that psionic encounters are rolled on a chart that includes arch-devils and demon princes and doesn't discriminate by PC or dungeon level.

Not so unbalanced now, it is? In fact, the check that the DMG encounters appendix places on psionic PCs is such an outright gruesome death lottery that I don't think I'd opt to run a psionic PC in AD&D even if I could.

3. Psionics "don't fit in a fantasy game."

Oy.

Seriously, this one has to piss me off the most. Go back and actually read the fiction that inspired D&D. Many of you reading this already have, but it bears emphasizing how the artificial and stifling separation of fantastic fiction into rigid genres is a Crappy Thing, as are its effects on RPG gaming (as exemplified in this sad stab at a criticism).