And when you think about it, it’s actually really weird that the world distinguishes between psionics and magic anyway. I mean, everyone in the world of D&D calls everything that wizards and priests and druids and warlocks and sorcerers do, they call it all magic. Arcane magic. Divine magic. Bardic magic. Wizard magic. Whatever. It’s all magic. But then you have this one weird thing that isn’t magic and somehow, everyone knows not to even call it magic. It’s not psychic magic or mind magic. It’s just psionics. Why? How did anyone arrive at the conclusion that THAT is the thing that is so different from every other form of magic that it isn’t even magic.
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As different as clerics and wizards and bards and warlocks all are, the mechanics they all use are very very similar. Spells, slots, spell levels, and so on. And in most editions, their spells even break down into the same schools of magic. A cleric’s “hold person” is an enchantment spell just a wizard’s “charm person.” Even though one comes from the gods and one comes from mystical formulae, they are part of the same system.
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But when you look at what psionics actually accomplishes in the game, it really doesn’t do anything much different from all the things magic already has covered. Basically, every psionic power already has some sort of analogous spell that SOMEONE can cast already using the preexisting rules. To the point where you start to wonder what the actual difference is between telekinesis and mage hand. From a practical perspective, psionics is just another system of magic that does pretty much exactly the same thing as all the other systems of magic. Psionics doesn’t add anything really new and different to the game.
But it does add a new rules system. And a whole long list of “things that are not spells” that duplicate the whole long list of “things that are spells.”
