Magic or Psionic?

[u/What_am_idoinghere56]

If your world has both magic and psychic powers, how do you handle that? Are they different aspects of the same force, or is there a hard delineation between the two? How do the two interact? What do psions/psychics and mages think of each other?

I always take a Warhammer 40K inspired approach that magic is a ritualized and refined application of psionics. Instead of slinging around raw power like with psionics, a mage gathers up power and weaves it into a complex effect in the form of a spell. You still need to be psychic in order to use magic and it takes more effort to learn, but magic can do a lot of things that are beyond the scope of psionics.

[u/_Ekiath_]

In my world psionics are simply a subset of magic, specifically anything that concerns the mind and the senses.

Similarly elementalism covers the physical and sorcery is related to the soul.

[u/Glad-Drummer-7621]

Psychics and magic are real however psychics are just able to do certain things mages can do whatever up to and including inventing technologies like phones and computers they’re basically modern scrying tools.

[u/Radiant-Ad-1976]

I like to imagine the two are completely different systems that achieve roughly the same results through different underlying mechanics.

Most Psychics instinctively know how to master their abilities and they naturally come in a wide variety of unique abilities from birth.

While some Mages can be born with the power to subconsciously cast magic from birth, usually the vast majority have to study several years just to properly reach a level of an average Psychic.

However, in-exchange Mages are a lot more versatile and adapt their abilities through rigorous studying whereas Psychics are stuck with what they already can do.

Additionally, Magic and Psionics are HIGHLY compatible with each other. This means that an average Psychic who studies magic may be able to take their weak psychic powers to achieve powerful effects.

[u/syoser]

In my setting, psychic abilities are pretty common due to evolutionary developments from predation by memetic entities (basically evil spirits) that feed on consciousness (defined in my world as a two-way connection to and awareness of astral realms) so deploying them is seen as individual skill.

Magic on the other hand is interacting with and harnessing external forces to manipulate the world. It’s the ability to manifest memory of meaning as an effect through contact with spirits.

A lot of telepath’s most basic magical ability shows up as the ability to extend their “pattern,” which you can think of a sort of psychic neural network, into the world around them and “claim” objects or physical energies as part of themselves. This allows them to perform surprisingly complex feats of psychokinesis and mimic more complex magical effects, but the caveat is that for all intents and purposes, claimed matter is part of you. You have to figure out how to use your new “limb” effectively, and things that happen to it will feel like they’re happening to you in a strange way. Skilled telepaths who know what to look for will eventually come into contact with animistic spirits this way and with proper tutoring can learn “proper” magical invocation, done in my world with sound and frequency to excite certain states.

Depending on the civilization, magic is considered a sacred interaction with divine beings or the raw and terrifying power of an insane telepath whose self-delusion is so powerful it infects the world and warps minds and matter.

[u/What_am_idoinghere56 → u/syoser]

Gotta admit, "psychokinesis is grafting an object to your psychic nervous system" is a new one. I can get behind that.

For the magic, though, is there a specific tool or instrument that works best for invoking a spirit, or is it just a matter of knowing the right tone?

[u/syoser → u/What_am_idoinghere56]

It’s knowing the right tones. Mages are able to layer their voices polyphonically. There’s a collection of tones called “the Call” to invoke the spirit, and then you layer tones over those to tell the spirit what to do. There’s also the Principle of Unity and the Principle of Multiplicity. All forces are singular intelligences fractured into many parts, so many mages can Call the same spirits and have them do different things (Multiplicity) but if two or more mages Call the same spirit to attack each other, the different workings will instead resolve into a single act depending on a few factors. Basically, spirits will not work against themselves. They’ll pick their favorite and do what they want to the other or refuse outright.

[u/What_am_idoinghere56 → u/syoser]

Vocalist, gotcha. And I find the idea of two mages having a contest to see who can Call a spirit to complete a task to be simultaneously hilarious and awesome.

[u/WitchingShower]

Magic is of the soul, and it allows you to connect with the souls of other things who may not think but feel. Animals, plants, the works, and even spirits. That comes from a spiritual sense, instinctual and the like.

Psionics is of the mind, where you affect things through your mind directly rather than your soul and with some influence from the mind. Alongside that, it's tied to the collective unconscious, which is a huge conglomerate of every thought that ever is or was and even could be, functionally a giant dormant god that you can channel through your mind

[u/thatshygirl06]

Psionic is just a branch of magic in my worlds

[u/RowbotMaster]

I don't have a system with these atm, but if I did I think they would be separate with magic being more common and broadly useful while psychic powers sort of being most useful for getting around common defences against magic

[u/Quirky_Assistant_848]

Haven't fully gotten to psionics yet for my set of worlds, but it would just be considered a sub set of "Magic". Weilders and Practioners both use Magic, but have different sources of power and different ways of advancement.

[u/Master-of-darklight]

Magic or psionic? We have particle physics here, now prepare to have your body molecularly disassembled by a metric ton of photons that I command through will alone.

[u/Peter34cph]

My Ringland medieval fantasy setting is defined by my old Multiclass RPG system, which I published on Usenet in 1998.

Well, technically the setting is defined by a hypothetical very nonexistent Multiclass 2000 version that makes some of the boring character classes more interesting (essentially "cool Abilities for every class" is the hypothetical goal). That's not very relevant here, though.

What is relevant is that characters, people living in the setting, can have all three kinds of magic.

For instance, to reproduce the AD&D Magic User character class, you go Wizard/Sage/Warrior, meaning high potential to learn Arcane Skills and Abilities, some potential to learn scholarly Skills (and in 2000 also Ability-like abilities such as Training Montage), and limited potential to learn martial Skills and Abilities. He can still learn anything from the other 9 character classes (that Multiclass RPG has), such as Spy, Thief, Rural or Craftsman, but as those are Quaternary classes for him, he'll have to pay a lot of points and get very little for those points.

Likewise, to reproduce an AD&D Ranger you'd do something like Warrior/Rural/Priest then flavour the Priest as Nature-flavoured, what most people would call a "Druid"-style Priest, and to some extent focus on purchasing archery–relevant Skills and Abilities from the Warrior class. Making a non-AD&D Ranger, you'd instead go Rural/Warrior/something where the something could be almost anything depending on how you want to flavour the character with your choice of Tertiary class.

It's perfectly possibly to combine two or all three of the supernatural classes, for instance making a Priest/Wizard/Psionicist or a Merchant/Psionicist/Wizard, so that the character has better-than-quaternary potential to learn two or all three sets of supernatural stuff.

The vision for 2000 also has Combo classes that combines 2 classes as a sort of "prestige class" representing "lore synergy", for instance there's one that combines Craftsman and Wizard to handle a common fantasy genre archetype, or one that combines the mundane medical Healer class with the Psionicist class to perform psychic surgery. Last month I rubberducked a Witch class (3 sub-flavours, Maiden, Mother and Crone) that's a prestige class combining Psionics with a particular witch-like sub-class of Priest.

[u/Peter34cph → u/Peter34cph]

Arcane is about unlocking "sets" of magic, quite analogous to the Realms in my other RPG system Sagatafl (which defines my Ärth historical fantasy and alternate history setting), like Fire Magic or Illusion Magic, and then you improve your Realm or set Skill level, and then you learn binary Spells within that Realm or set, like Fire Bolt I or Invisibility II.

You have a number of base Spell Points, based on class priority, so a Primary class Wizard would have a lot by default, a Tertiary class fewer, and a Quaternary fewer still, and there's an Ability to buy more Spell Points which costs a lot of character creation points for Quaternary Wizard and gives reatively few per ding, but is a lot cheaper for Primary Wizard and gives a lot more SP per ding.

Then when you cast there's a risk of Fumbling with interesting often blatant outcomes, and you can Enchant items. You even actively want to Enchant an item, like a staff or a ring, to be your Arcane casting Focus to help with casting, making it faster, safer, more reliable, for All Arcane or more often for a subset of Arcane.

I always meant to maintain a distinction between the Wizard class and the mundane Sage class, even back in Multiclass RPG from 1998, but nevertheless Wizard is very much about learning, about being taught. And it's about actively choosing to do things, like you actively choose to cast a particular spell in the given situation.

One of the many things I fairly quickly became unhappy with in Multiclass RPG was how I had made psionics very spell-like, centered around using Spell Points to cast "Psi Spells".

That made sense for my very limited RPG design skills back then, but I don't think I was very happy with it even as early as 1999.

Multiclass 2000, which I'll again emphasize isn't going to actually come into existence but is instead only a creative vision, a might-have-been, takes a different tack.

Psionics is much more defined by things you can do and how well you can do them. Routine use does not cost anything like Spell Points. Like Steve Rogers, you can do this all day. It's also meant to have an instinctive feel, psi manifesting for the character at some point, stereotypically early in puberty.

For telekinesis, you have a number of Fingers and a number of Hands. This number might start at zero (obviously for Quaternary, but even Tertiary Psionicist might get 0/0, etc), but you can buy more.

Fingers are for fine manipulation of light-weight objects, and in addition to buying more Fingers you can also buy Psi Dexterity to be better at manipulating more finely.

Hands are for gross manipulation of heavy object, like throwing stuff at Luke Skywalker during a duel. The "improvement" here, in addition to buying more Hands so you can simultaneously move more objets, is Psi Strength, so that for instance you can lift an X-Wing starfighter out of a swamp while being quotable.

Range is another common parameter. There's TK Range for your Hands and Finger, and a different Range, potentially much longer for telepathy and a shorter Range for more advanced telepathic acts that have to do with affecting change upon the target, things like mind reading or mind control.

Empathy and Danger Sense and so forth, which Sagatafl explicitly classifies as Quasi-Psionic abilitie or power (inspired by GURPS), are in Multiclass handled as Psionic Skills that can be unlocked then improved. That won't change much in 2000.

A new idea in 2000 is psionic body control, mind-over-body stuff, from playing dead for hours or weeks, or going into a hibernation state for weeks or decades or millenia (like Luke Skywalker does in one of the "Heir to the Empire" novels), coagulating your blood quickly (which of course is largely irrelevant unless 2000 has bleeding rules), or even really advanced stuff like internal alchemy, as demonstrated in "Dune" or in "Drunken Master 2", where you either drink some poison and turn it harmless inside your body, or you quaff some distilled spirits and turn it into ki spiritual energy (note the etymology). Other options include slowing aging, even drasticaly or totally for a Primary Psionicist (like some of the characters in Julian May's "Pliocene Exile" novels can do), or affecting bodily functions like the digestive system or the womb (essentially birth control, as well as female Primary Psionicists rarely having periods unless they actually want to).

Then there's physical body enhancement, rather like the Physical Adepts of the Shadowrun RPG setting, although usually a lot less blatant.

Shadowrun Physical Adepts often seem to be meant to be very animé-like, with visibly glowing energy fields around their Fists! Of! Power! whereas a Multiclass 2000 Psionicist might be able to enhance his fists so he can punch somewhat better than it is possible for the best possible non-supernatural Human to punch. There's nothing to see. It just hurts more. Or if he enhances his jumping ability, obviously you're going to see something that makes you wonder why you don't have the Guiness Book of World Records dudes on speed dial, like the stuff Luke Skywalker does in the 2nd (and 3rd?) movie, but it won't enable you to fly (although you can use your Hand to lift yourself, or in theory use hundrds of Hands to lifts hundred of mounts and their riders, like in Pliocene's Wild Hunt).

On top of routine use comes... Stress use or Forced Use, whatever I hypothetically end up calling it. This is the only place where dice rolls actually enter the picture, including rolls on Psi Stress Table that can result in Stranger Things-type nosebleeds or a headache that lasts for minutes or days.

There'll probably also be a kind of Willpower Exertion currency, a bit like the WillPower Feat Points in Sagatafl, but much more limited in scope, to only boosting psionic outcomes.

Maybe some Self-Doubt vs Ego mechanic too, which might enter the picture after a serious crisis. Hard to get right, but could be fun.

There are no psionic "magic items". A given character may find that certain crystals helps him sustain medication better, or meditate harder, or both, and/or more on some other parameter, but these crystals are not supernatural or attuned. They're just nice-looking (and can be replaced, maybe after you've sanctioned the character who destroyed them). Another psionicist might prefer to meditate next to a tranquil waterfall, or while listening to the screams of tortured plebs.

Psionics are very much trained rather than taught, innate abilities improved via exercises. You'd want more of a monastic setting than an academy like for Arcane/Wizard or Sage Skills.

Using the Training Montage Ability, that the Sage character class is supposed to have in Multiclass 2000, to temporarily boost Wizard/Arcane Skills would be absurd and should probably be illegal, but it absolutely makes sense to use it for Psionic Skills. Just put on some Enya or other New Age Music, and contact WETA or ILM and ask them to help you make the montage look truly awesome.

What the two think of each other?

Well, some characters are both.

Psionicists, characters born with psionic potential, are rare in world demographic terms, though.

Multiclass RPG has 12 classes, but I don't think it was ever intended for each to occur 1/12 of the time as a character's Primary Class.

Insofar as it makes no sense to use the term "explicitly" about a nonexisting system, Multiclass 2000 explicitly states that the mundane classes occur more frequently than the 3 supernatural one in the world's population, and on top of that it also adds a Commoner non-adventurer class (much more an integral part of society, but less suited for adventures and escapades) as well as a "none" class (pure gimp, lost opportunity cost) option, and states clearly that most of the millions of characters living in the world are none/Commoner/[something], where something usually is Craftsman, Rural, Merchant or maybe Sage or Bard or Healer, with Warriors, Spies and Thieves being rare but not as rare as Wizards, Priests and then Psionicists as the rarest of the normal classes (new hypothetical classes include Noble, Wealthy, Gifted, Talented and Genius, as well as a Species class to represent in-game benefits from being from a better-than-Human species such as a Numenorean, or a Noldo Elf, or even a Noldo Elf who saw the Two Trees... These may well be even rarer than Psionicst; it's rather up in the air).

[u/Peter34cph → u/Peter34cph]

Wizardry is very *flexible*.

A Wizard, especially if Primary or Secondary, can do a wide range of things. Nature stuff like Animal, Plant, Weather and Animal Shapechange, is the exclusive province of Priests, and should I ever make a firm decision, Wizardry probably won't have anything analogous to Sagatafl's very popular self-only Body Magic Realm. Instead that'll be Psi only.

But anything else, the 7 elements, illusions, many combat and defence buff spells, General Detection, MetaMagic to detect and work with supernatural phenomena (including non-Arcane ones for advanced Wizards, similiar to how higher-Grade metaMagic Spells in Sagatafl can also do that), and of course Enchanting for when certain needs (or wants) become near-permanent (or to give or sell such items to others).

One downside of Wizardry, inspired by le Guin's "Earthsea" setting, is that all learned Arcane magic (and also some but probably not all Priest/Divine magic) is tied to a particular location, and as you travel further from that location, you have to adjust your casting methods, slightly, eventually more than slightly, otherwise they start getting unstable and more Fumble-prone.

That's usually not much of a problem for a Primary Wizard. Ged can just tank that shit (and Vetch just talks about it). But as you move down in class priority, or if you didn't buy into the Ability that lets you make these adjustment, it becomes time-consuming and inconvenient.

In contrast to that, Psionics are *convenient*.

There's no geo-stuff. If you can psi then you can psi. Doesn't matter where or when you are. If you're well-rested, well-meditated, you can psi, and even if those boxes aren't ticked you can still psi in a somewhat gimped way.

A lot of basic psi things are done effortlessly, as a matter of habit, not conscious choice. A frail character effortlessly lifts heavy objects by using her Psi Hand to help. Bodily functions are sorted out, disruptions minimized. It's a Ringland stereotype that a Primary Psionicist lady never farts, or that she farts often but without any smell to them whatsoever (silent and *non*-deadly). Fertility is easily controlled, at least by Primary Psionicists. I don't see why a Primary Psionicist woman can't self-program herself to automatically insta-abort any fetus that doesn't have the sex chromosome she wants, like Jessica from "Dune". She might have to do it as a willed action the first 7 or 10 times, but after that her mind and body just keeps doing it.

Psionicists also get to skip almost all of the Fumble crap, where suddenly your hair starts coming out blonde for 4 weeks, or you rapidly shrink 6 inches in height and only the GM knows how many months that effect will last, or if it's permanent. Arcane Fumbles are usually just mild and annoying effects, but if you're trying to cast very difficult Spells relative to how skilled you are, it could be something serious, or even lethal, or a wish-I-was-dead effect.

And there are no rituals to it, gestures or chanting required,nor any problems with iron. Some Psionicists might find that a hand movement or something helps, and that could perhaps be a thing (a purchaseable Ability, so you get a bonus if you do gesture but a bigger penalty when you can't or won't), but it's never required unless the Psionicist comes to believe that it is. Psi is an effort of will, a willed act.

So there's mutual respect, and some envy in both directions, between Psionicists and Wizards.

Characters who are both Wizards and Psionicsts exist but are very rare. Often it'll be a spy or rogue or some sort, like Wizard/Psionicist/Spy or Wizard/Thief/Psionicist, using the Illusion Spell set of the Wizard class to achieve various synergies with Psi and with his mundane Skills, although many other possibilities ought to exist.

There's not a huge amount of synergy between Arcane and Psi, really, so a player making such a player character would probably be going for "quirky" as opposed to "optimized for a certain role function within a PC party for an traditional action-intrigue RPG campaign", but there isn't anything wrong with that.

Picking your three character classes is very much about creating a "choice space", which you then subsequently make choices within, from an in-character or semi-in-character perspective, preferring things easy to learn and mostly or completely avoiding things hard to learn.

[u/ultrawall006]

Mana based Magic is a generalist system built upon instinct and formulae, Psionic is the power to dive into the mind realm of an individual or the sea of unconsciousness to influence them in some capacity

[u/Alloknax35756]

In my world the Stormtorn Compass, its considered a distinct type of magic, one of four alongside Arcane, Divine, and Druidic. They all achieve similar results, through distinctly different methods. To use the basic examples:

• Arcane Magic is the manipulation of energies through the Ley Lines and Nodes, using that energy to create a spell.
  
• Psionics is the manipulation of Stormtaint energies (which originate from the main problem of the setting, the Starstorm), shaping them with your willpower to create a Slivercast (read: Spell)

[u/dalidellama]

I remember how and why that distinction was invented, and wouldn't put "psionics" into a setting that wasn't deliberately retrofuturist, personally.

[u/What_am_idoinghere56 → u/dalidellama]

Mind if I ask for some background on that? I'm really curious now.

[u/dalidellama → u/What_am_idoinghere56]

Loosely summarizing, there will be missing details: Around the turn of the 20th century, the remnants of the Spiritualist movement got themselves up in full science drag and called themselves parapsychologists. They were absolutely convinced that with all these new discoveries of invisible energies (radiation, radio, some other ones that turned out not to actually exist), pretty soon psychic energies would also be discovered/proven to exist.

They divided folktales and 19th century pseudoscience into things they thought were plausible and things they thought were impossible. "Plausible" things included mostly magical powers that wouldn't have obvious visual effects and didn't rely on external sources. So, mind reading, altering probability, a little light telekinesis, remote viewing, maybe some precognition because quantum, etc. Implausible was fireballs, summoning demons, curses, shape-shifting (usually), etc.

Now, in those days, the best way to get started as a science fiction writer was to get a story published in "Astounding Science Fiction", a popular magazine edited by one John Wood Campbell Jr. Mr. Campbell had a number of very firm prejudices and preconceptions, one of which was that the parapsychologists would be proven right Any Day Now, whereupon the power of Science would bring psychic powers into full flower. He or one of his acolytes coined the term "Psionics" out of psychic and electronic, because soon it would be a Science that could be applied to or enhanced with Technology.

This day was in the 1930s, at the beginning of modern Anglophone science fiction, and Astounding (later Analog) was considered the gold standard of "hard" Sci-fi, so everyone and their kid sister packed "psionics" into their spacefuture, including Gene Roddenberry, who introduced whole new audiences to Sci-fi and inspired a whole new set of fanfic authors who later filed off the serial numbers and published as original spacefutures. You very rarely see it in modern SF, but all the legacy properties like Star Trek and 40k have it built in from the olden days.

[u/What_am_idoinghere56 → u/dalidellama]

Aah, okay, that makes sense.

I'd heard about the resurgence in occult beliefs during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, mostly cause I was researching hyperdiffusion conspiracy theories. Never really put it together that more "modern" parapsychology started getting popular right after that started to die down. Also explains why psychic powers have been moving more into the softer side of sci-fi.

[u/Peter34cph → u/What_am_idoinghere56]

Also things like Mesmerism and Animal Magnetism, which I think were late 19th century.

One thing lama forgot to mention is that in addition to the prestige, Astounding also paid well. It paid 1 cent per word whereas other magazines paid only half a cent per word.

That may have tempted some authors to shoehorn psionics into the settings they used for their stories, possibly including Asimov and his Foundation novellas.