Fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate...

I never really had a chance to play with psionic classes over the last editions of Dungeons and Dragons. Mainly because I didn’t have the supplements that presented psionics and because I’ve always heard the rules were complicated and psionic powers were unbalanced.

In fact, I did bought the Expanded Psionics Handbook for 3.5 but by the time I got it fourth edition was released in a couple of months. I read it, I liked it, but I never played with psionic classes until recently.

With the release of the Player’s Handbook 3, Psionic Power was introduced to D&D fourth edition. Not that there weren’t psionic monsters and effects, but this book presented psionic classes, four of them. The Psion, classic psionicist who developed his powers through hard study and discipline; the Battlemind, which powers were honed with a combination of physical and mind training in battle; the Monk, who is the embodiment of the perfect balance between mind and body through hard discipline and martial arts; and, one of the most interesting classes in my opinion, the Ardent.

The Ardent is a psionicist that developed his psionic powers through emotions. He feels the mood around him and can absorb it to empower himself or he can do just the opposite. He can spread the feelings he has to those around him. Some Ardents are disciplined and keep their emotions very tightly controlled not to be overwhelmed by them. Others embrace them freely and let them have control of their actions. This class really reminds me of characters of a movie I really like. If you said Jedis, you’re right.

A lot of things about the Ardent class reminds me of Jedis: The relationship with their powers and emotions; The ability to heal and manipulate feelings; The skills in combat; The leader role. We have to admit that there are a lot of characteristics in this class that makes me associate it with the Jedis of Star Wars.

But why am I saying this? It’s certainly not to accuse Wizards of plagiarism. I am here to highlight the possibilities of this association. I love D&D, and I love Star Wars too. Why not mix a little of both? I mean, why not insert a little of the Jedi history into the Ardent’s history in D&D?

In the Star Wars universe there are basically three kinds of Jedis (to be more technical, three kinds of Force users). There are the proper Jedis, who are kind of a knightly order of good doers that are very disciplined and control their emotions. There are the force adepts, who use the force but without any of the Jedi disciplined or organized methods, they are not organized in any kind of group and each one learned his power by himself or through a single mentor. The last kind is the Siths. Those are the villains of the story. They have a secret society with just a few members and pass their knowledge only if one of them dies. They empower their abilities with the use of strong emotions, focusing primarily on anger, hate and suffering. Because of that they had stronger powers than the Jedis who controlled their emotions, but, on the other hand, they were many times controlled by those emotions and paid the price for that.

Those similar kinds of Ardents could be introduced in a Dungeons and Dragons campaign easily. They could be just the way they are in the Star Wars universe, with good Jedis, neutral force adepts and evil Siths, or you could change some details. Maybe the Jedis are the bad guys in the campaign this time. They are trying to suppress all the emotions of the people. They may have a growing empire of mindless, emotionless soldiers, ready to do as they are told to please their masters. The Siths on the other hand could be the ones fighting to free everyone from this emotionless state. They do not need to focus on bad feelings, they could focus on joy, happiness and freedom. Another possibility would be the two major groups, Jedis and Siths, fighting against each other for dominance and the force adepts the only ones with caring for the rest of the world.

Ardents make great NPCs also. They can be allies, patrons, people in need and villains. I have a thing for villains. Ardent villains could be a great threat to world. An enemy that can strike the heroes with fear, spread despair to their victims and fill the world around him with sorrow is a great villain. A secret society of such individuals can be an opposing force for the adventures in many kinds of campaigns (political intrigue, hunt down an evil organization, war campaign).

One thing I really liked in the Star Wars universe was the possibility of corruption of the heroes, the possibility to slip to the Dark Side. This would be great to introduce in the Dungeons and Dragons game, but how? Dark Sun has a similar situation, defiling magic. Why not adapt the rules for defiling magic to create something for psionicist. Tapping into strong feelings of hate, anger and fear could empower the abilities of a psionicits, but at a cost. Those feeling would spread to their allies, filling them with fear, hate and anger, hampering their abilities in combat since they don’t know how to deal with a sudden increase of strong feelings. The power would work very similar to the Arcane Defiling power from the Dark Sun Campaign Setting, but instead of necrotic damage it would do psychic damage. By using such power the characters would certainly be taking a step toward evil, and corrupting themselves. Isn’t it cool?

Psionic Empowerment                                         Psionic Feature

You draw upon the strong feelings of fear, hate and suffering to fuel your powers, heedless of the consequences of spreading these feeling over your allies.

At-Will ● Arcane, Psychic Free Action                             Personal Trigger: You make an attack roll or a damage roll as part of and psionic daily attack power.

Effect: You can reroll the triggering roll but must use the second result. In addition, each ally (willing or unwilling) within 20 squares of you takes psychic damage equal to half his or her healing surge value. This damage ignores immunities and cannot be reduced in any way.

Special: You can use this effect once for any psionic daily attack power you use, affecting any single attack roll or the damage roll for that power.

So what did you think about this association between Star Wars and Ardents? Do you have any other associations between the D&D game with movies or novels that could be implemented into the game?