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Rpgs with good psionics.

Cryomancer

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After playing thousands of hours as an wiz in kingmaker, elden ring, bg1/2, g1/2/3 and etc, I want some variation. I want to play as a psion.

Among all dnd games, I think that only Dark Sun Shattered lands and Wake of the ravager allows you to be a pure psionicist. This is obviously not counting mods. But in bg3, the psion mod didn't worked for me. In D&D-inspired games, KOTC2 has psionics and quite strong psionics.

Wizardry 6/7/8 has but I honestly never played. Underrail also has and is cool. Force field, mind control enemies, electrical blasts, cryokinesis, the psion has lots of cool stuff. In pilows of eternity, I honestly didn't liked much wizards. Too 4eish. But I liked a bit Cipher and Psions there. Could be better but enslaving others mind and reducing them to ashes was amazing.

Any more recommendations?

About kotc2 psion, it is very strong because it is based on 3.5e Psions, which are much more powerful than 2e. I 2ould say that they are stronger than wizards, mainly at high level. As they can spam their high level powers much more than wizards and resistance vs psionics is much rarer than vs spells. They can also augment their low-level psionics to an insane degree. Among retro clones, Machinations of the space princess has it and is very cool. Mind bolt at lv 1 is equivalent to a small cartridge pistol in damage. At lv3, becomes equivalent to a heavy machine gun. 3d4 vs d12 damage. In mmos, I only know wildstar Esper as a Psion.

More suggestions pls.
 

Kabas

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I mention this game every time this type of thread comes up but Erannorth Chronicles has a psionic class with multiple sub-classes like telekinetist or telepath.
You can specialise your character into mind controlling enemies and using them as pets.

Tales of Maj'eyal has Mindslayer who wields an extra weapon in a telekinetic slot, Solipsist who can put enemies to sleep and summon their inner demons or "thought forms", Possessor who can steal enemy bodies and Psyshot who wields gun in one hand and psychic powers in the other.
 

Cryomancer

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It's more of a sandbox RPG that mascuerades as a card game, really.

Yes, but I really hate card based mechanics.

Talking more about psionics, in Athas - Dark Sun, psionics is manipulation of "inner" forces. Magic of "outer" forces. GURPS has a similar approach. The effects in general are more focused on "mind" and "telekinesis" instead of the elementalism typically associated with arcane magic. But sure, some "powers" are quite similar to spells. For example, in MotSP, Mindbolt is very similar to LotFP magic missile. AD&D disintegrate as a spell, and psionic are very similar.

In ADOM, if a Mindcrafter tries to use its mind powers in undead, it suffers a "backlash" from the negative energy of the undead as both minds are linked. The same wouldn't happen with normal spells, but since you target enemy direct mind, you can attack them behind walls, for example.
 

NecroLord

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Sep 6, 2022
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After playing thousands of hours as an wiz in kingmaker, elden ring, bg1/2, g1/2/3 and etc, I want some variation. I want to play as a psion.

Among all dnd games, I think that only Dark Sun Shattered lands and Wake of the ravager allows you to be a pure psionicist. This is obviously not counting mods. But in bg3, the psion mod didn't worked for me. In D&D-inspired games, KOTC2 has psionics and quite strong psionics.

Wizardry 6/7/8 has but I honestly never played. Underrail also has and is cool. Force field, mind control enemies, electrical blasts, cryokinesis, the psion has lots of cool stuff. In pilows of eternity, I honestly didn't liked much wizards. Too 4eish. But I liked a bit Cipher and Psions there. Could be better but enslaving others mind and reducing them to ashes was amazing.

Any more recommendations?

About kotc2 psion, it is very strong because it is based on 3.5e Psions, which are much more powerful than 2e. I 2ould say that they are stronger than wizards, mainly at high level. As they can spam their high level powers much more than wizards and resistance vs psionics is much rarer than vs spells. They can also augment their low-level psionics to an insane degree. Among retro clones, Machinations of the space princess has it and is very cool. Mind bolt at lv 1 is equivalent to a small cartridge pistol in damage. At lv3, becomes equivalent to a heavy machine gun. 3d4 vs d12 damage. In mmos, I only know wildstar Esper as a Psion.

More suggestions pls.
System Shock 2 obviously.
 

DemonKing

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Dec 5, 2003
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6,573
The Dark Sun games have psionics built into them as it's an intrinsic part of the world (every character has a wild psionic power at a minimum and the strongest NPCs - the Dragon Kings - are dual classed wizard/psionicists).
 

Zed Duke of Banville

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After playing thousands of hours as an wiz in kingmaker, elden ring, bg1/2, g1/2/3 and etc, I want some variation. I want to play as a psion.
You seem to be somehow mentally challenged, but playing a pure pyromancy build in Dark Souls II is what you're looking for.
About to post that pyromancy in the Dark Souls series is not equivalent to psionics, but then I remembered that Dark Souls II doesn't even have a pyromancer class, unlike its predecessor and successor, so it isn't even possible to play a "pure pyromancy build". :M
 

Cheesedragon117

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There's only one, one single spell in Dark Souls that allows you to control enemies, and even then, it only works on Undead. That's hardly enough to classify a whole class of magic as "psionics".
 

Cheesedragon117

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More to your question, Zed Duke of Banville , what are you in the market for? Flavor? Or mechanics? If you're after the former, there's plenty of RPGs out there that will happily call what you're doing "psionics" even if you're merely blasting enemies with a different flavor of non-elemental energy, no different from a wizard. The latter it much trickier to find, as my personal mechanical requirements would be at least one telekinesis ability, and 2 or more spells that directly affect the target's mind. Naturally this opens the door to a ton of C&C and alternate ways to achieve your objectives, which most devs are reluctant to engage with due to the cost of adding all that extra interactivity.

Prey (2017), I believe, offers a good mix of both. The game calls what you're doing "psionics", though admittedly, much of it is blasting aliens with gouts of flame and orbs of golden darkness (or skip the foreplay and empty out their HP bar with a zap directly to the mind). There's only one mind control spell, and unless you're doing an evil playthrough, most of your use of it will come from freeing innocents from the evil alien's mind control. There is, however, some fun to be had with Remote Manipulation, which unlike with most game's telekinesis, allows you to pick up objects and interact with levers, screens, interfaces, and so on. Very fun when combined with hacking! There's also spawning phantom doubles of yourself to distract enemies, or turning yourself into physics objects to hide or roll around.
 

Damned Registrations

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Tales of Maj'eyal has Mindslayer who wields an extra weapon in a telekinetic slot, Solipsist who can put enemies to sleep and summon their inner demons or "thought forms", Possessor who can steal enemy bodies and Psyshot who wields gun in one hand and psychic powers in the other.
I'm not a fan of ToM'e in general, but it's got a lot of real cool concepts and mechanics for it's classes, and the Solipsist is one of my favourites. It has a skill to sacrifice the vast majority of your max HP in exchange for the equivalent of a mana shield, and it's got another awesome skill I like where you pull the enemy into your dream world and murder them there in a one sided duel, complete with it's own time-space continuum. I don't even like psionics generally, but this iteration is awesome both mechanically and flavour wise- you're basically a dude who treats the world like the Matrix and can therefore fuck with it.
 

Cryomancer

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- the Dragon Kings - are dual classed wizard/psionicists).

Borys is a 30th level Defiler/Preserver and Dragon at the same time. And Rajaat is even stronger.

Wizardry 8 Psionics are fuckin beasts

I talked about Wiz6/7/8 in the Original Post.

I'm not a fan of ToM'e in general, but it's got a lot of real cool concepts and mechanics for it's classes, and the Solipsist is one of my favourites. It has a skill to sacrifice the vast majority of your max HP in exchange for the equivalent of a mana shield, and it's got another awesome skill I like where you pull the enemy into your dream world and murder them there in a one sided duel, complete with it's own time-space continuum. I don't even like psionics generally, but this iteration is awesome both mechanically and flavour wise- you're basically a dude who treats the world like the Matrix and can therefore fuck with it.

I'm also not a big ToM'e fan. But imo, among Roguelikes, Mindcrafter from ADOM has the best Psi Powers.

_________________________________

I also miss non-combat abilities in CRPGs.

When I talked about Machinations of the Space Princess, most of the Psi abilities are useful out of combat. For example, among the tier 1 Psi powers, bearing, beguile, knock, purify, mind message, etc. are only useful out of combat. Only Sleep, Telekinetic Shield, and Mindbolt are combat Psi powers. Zero offensive PSI powers at Tier 2. At tier 3, has a lot of powerful abilities that can be used in and out of combat, like flight, suggestion, and speed. But most abilities are only good out of combat. Same thing for Tier 4. In tier 5, some abilities are ridiculously broken for non-combat investigation scenarios like "Perfect Memory." In tier 5/6, Psions can do ridiculous broken stuff like disintegrate not only enemies in combat but also 5 m of matter, teleport light years away and "possess" an enemy body forever, heal radiation, heal amputees, and so on. At Tier 8, they can create a lifeform slave for them with "Tulpa" and mind slave an large crowd of people. At tier 9, Stasis and Time Stop are ridiculous broken.

So much cool stuff that you can do out of combat. If you look into KoTC2, almost all of Psion powers are combat only > https://www.heroicfantasygames.com/FWE/Pages/FWE_Psionicist.htm

Sure, KoTC2 is a combat focused game, MotSP is a more social focused game. I know that is hard to implement stuff like even a basic Charm in a CRPG.

Now that AI is being developed, Imagine an RPG where you could talk to AI controlled NPCs and use psi powers like Suggestion to give orders to them. That would be really cool.
 
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psionics don't work well in videogames, they're supposed to alter minds which would be either too strong or too difficult to simulate in an automated way. or both, probably. they're my favourite class, in theory. we're out of luck.
 

Sweeper

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Jul 28, 2018
Messages
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Underrail also has and is cool. Force field
Yeah, not anymore.
A lot of people still bitch and complain about the PSI nerf, even though it's just as powerful as it's ever been, and with the addition of that cyclops helmet and various other things, it might even be more powerful than ever, just slightly more tedious to use at the same time. Force Field got absolutely gutted however. It's one of the harshest balancing overcorrections I've seen.
Thanks Styg.
 

Cryomancer

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psionics don't work well in videogames, they're supposed to alter minds which would be either too strong or too difficult to simulate in an automated way. or both, probably. they're my favourite class, in theory. we're out of luck.

For now.

With AI advancements, imagine being able to take control of NPCs and TYPE instructions to NPCs or talk in a mic and they obey you with voice recognition. But the same could be said about most Enchantment spells and most divination spells. Yet they are implemented in a limited way in many games.
 

Cryomancer

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dude, i'm an old man, i've heard since the '80s that the future was now and we were on the verge of everyting and stuff. and things only went from bad to worse.

I know. My point is that things CAN improve, not that will improve. AI controlled NPCs would be great, but sadly we are getting Failguard tier dialog and dialog wheels instead...
 

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