Troubled Psychic Kids.
I love the AD&D psionic system. Yes, I really do. But it is not without its problems. Ok. It has a lot of problems. I want a system that would allow me to do "Carrie" or "The Fury" or even "Scanners." Well. I don't have that yet. But I have started pencilling down ideas. Here is where I am at right now.
The Six Disciplines of the Mind
"The vulgar eye perceives magic where there is none. The vulgar mind dismisses the psychic because it is not magic. Yet to the trained investigator, these disciplines are neither miracle nor madness. They are the natural sciences of the unseen, awaiting only the patience to be catalogued."
- Research Notes, Book I, Prof. Scott Elders
When I started sketching my ideas for Occult D&D, I wanted to treat psychic powers the same way I approached witches: something that feels like it could have sat on a hobby store shelf in 1986. These aren’t just mechanics; they’re the “folk science” of the strange, drawing from parapsychology, pulp fiction, and the endless debates of game tables where psionics were talked about but rarely used.
After sorting through decades of parapsychology claims, RPG precedents, and a few eldritch debates between Larina and Prof. Elders (yeah, characters argue in my head. It is worse than the tinnitus I have), I’ve settled on six core disciplines of the psychic arts… with a seventh, optional frontier discipline for those who dare.
Telepathy
The ability to communicate mind-to-mind, read surface thoughts, and in its higher expressions, dominate another’s will. Telepaths are the most feared of psychics, for no secret is safe.
Sub-powers: Empathy, Mind Link, Mental Domination.
Clairvoyance
The “second sight” of lore: perceiving hidden things, distant places, or future events. Often confused with prophecy, but rooted in the psychic’s own perception rather than divine revelation.
Sub-powers: ESP, Remote Viewing, Precognition.
Psychokinesis
The raw power of the mind over matter. From small acts of levitation to hurling objects across a battlefield, this is the most spectacular and physically demanding of disciplines.
Sub-powers: Telekinesis, Pyrokinesis, Kinetic Barriers.
Biopsionics
The mysterious link between mind and body. Practitioners can heal, alter their own form, or endure conditions no mortal should. It is whispered some can change shape entirely by thought alone.
Sub-powers: Psychic Healing, Trance, Body Control, Shape Alteration.
Mediumship
The spirit-bridge: channeling entities, communing with the dead, or casting one’s soul into the astral plane. In AD&D terms, this is where the occult and the psychic most clearly overlap.
Sub-powers: Astral Projection, Spirit Communication, Possession.
Precognition
Visions of things yet to come, sometimes crystal clear, more often symbolic and frustrating. True precogs are rare, and their gift is as much curse as blessing.
Sub-powers: Danger Sense, Probability Manipulation, Visionary Trance.
The Optional Seventh: Metapsionics
Where the others act upon mind, matter, or spirit, metapsionics acts upon psionics themselves. These rare gifts allow a psychic to alter the use of powers, dampen another’s talents, or amplify their own. Some say it is a discipline that shouldn’t exist at all, it is a loophole in reality’s design.
Sub-powers: Psionic Dampening, Psychic Harmonization, Probability Twisting.
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None of this is written in stone, just in the pixels you see before you.
I also still need to figure out how psychic powers co-exist with witchcraft.
