Assuming there's a distinction in your current setting, what's the difference between psychic powers and magic?
natural vs learned power
>>44584547
One is internally fueled, the other is externally fueled.
Psychic powers don't exist.
Magic doesn't exist.
>>44584547
Magic comes from without, psychic powers come from within.
Sort of like the difference between being super strong, and knowing some super strong people who beat people up for you.
I use the same distinction as in Dark Heresy and Rogue Trader: both sorcery and psychic powers use the same kind of energy, but magic (sorcery) is based on knowing how to do the precise rituals while psychic powers is based on controlling inner, inherent power.
neither exist but many take advantage of other's superstition and pretend to be able to use them. from creepy old ladies in the back alley pretending to be fortune tellers and mind readers, to a cult based merc company lead by a man claiming to be blessed by a dragon god who allows him to breath fire and fly.
>>44584547
Psions can detect surface thoughts, enter (or grant a companion entry into) the dreamlands while sleeping, practice a range of divination-style abilities and sense emotions, thoughts or other mental practices. Their power originates from the dreamlands, an ancient place surrounding and overlapping the world in another plane.
Mages are more physical things, using rituals and spells to manipulate gravity, thermodynamics and electromagnetism, using physical devices which can channel eldritch forces bound to these. Their powers stem from the teachings of the oldest gods who oversaw the creation of the material world.
>>44584547
Well psychic powers are just spontaneous manifestations of genetic or developmental anomalies that effect a supernatural or augmented natural ability in an individual or group thereof.
But what kind of magic are you talking about?
Arcane?
Computational?
Directly neural?
External?
Magic comes from sources of power, i.e. radiates from certain things and connections. The largest source which goes throughout all the worlds comes from the drifting of blood from a heart of dead primordial being.
Psionics comes from the fragments of the minds of those same primordial beings, their great powers of the mind and soul.
Magic is brought about from harnessing the energy of your soul or from tapping into the ambient energy of the world via its connection with your soul.
Psychic abilities are brought about from your mind drawing on the energies of the body or shaping the ambient energies of the world.
Then there is a third distinction of spiritual abilities which is entirely from how your soul perceives the world.
There is a large field of overlap between them depending on how much of each you can pull off.
For example:
Telepathy is purely psychic. Your mind is projecting thoughts or picking up projected thoughts.
Talking with a ghost is Psychic and Spiritual, as you project and receive from your mind to a bodiless soul.
Seeing a ghost is purely spiritual, Your soul perceiving what is around you.
Manifesting an astral body is using magic to create a body in which your soul can temporarily use.
Creating a physical construct is purely magical.
All three would be talking telepathically from an astral body.
This is mostly purely cosmetic and all three pretty much are just called magic to keep things simple, mechanically.
There are a few exceptions where this distinction is important, like most illusion spells having little effect on someone with high spiritual or psychic abilities, but when this happens our DM makes it known if we hadn't already been aware ourselves.
>>44584547
Magic is something wizards do with learned class spells
Psychic powers is something rogues and bards convince people they do with their bluff skill
>>44584547
They have different spell lists.
Psychics use raw unrefined forces of the universe (read: pure energy produced from both things going boom and people thinking about pies)
Magic uses more defined forms of natural powers and use them in a more controlled manner.
This is becoming a popular subject.
Psychic Power isn't supernatural, it's just a natural aspect of human evolution. It's quick flash, and it's over. There are no "Psionic" items.
Magic in general breaks the internal rules of the universe and warps everything around it. Humans are incapable of it.
Psychic powers are an action of one's inner mental world being applied to the external world, magic is an action of one's spirit's power to affect the world.
>Mind reading
Baby steps for psychics, higher lore for mages.
>Telekinesis
Pretty med level for either.
>Scrying + divination
Basic stuff for sorcerers, advanced discipline for psychics
>Evocation
Magic only
>Vulcan mind melt
Psychics only
>>44584547
similar to the difference between the electromagnetic force and gravity.
>>44586391
Poorly understood by most people and only properly explained through mathematics?
>>44586415
Oh, don't be so electroweak. Conform to the standard model, be supersymmetrical, or just vibrate on your own brane. Free Higgs for everyone!Just technobabble your way out of it.
All humans are latently psionic to some degree, and divine "magic" is just the manifestation of this collective energy.
Arcane magic is when extradimensional cosmic beings start whispering in your ear about how to unravel things that really shouldn't be, and then you start unraveling said things.
>>44584547
TETSUO!
>>44584547
Psycic powers are using an ability to draw power from an other dimension to change reality.
Magic is using an ability to draw power from your soul to change reality.
Both are highly corrupting and deserve a propa BLAM!
