So, the effort to figure out how to do specialties, now called Aspects, was the breakthrough for the Psionic things I needed. Breaking things up so that each class has specific Fortes, establishing Disciplines and Veiled Knowledge and Orders and Mysteries gives me the special combat moves and magical tricks and space for the special talents that help define a class, and all of that, in turn, helps to bring the Esoterica into sharper focus, which just so happened to work out as a way to also bring into the light the presence of psychic abilities.

I’ve tried several times to bring in Psionics in the past, but the D&D rules were all very much different from how I envision the, and so finding a common space was always difficult.

I mean, it is easy to do in setting that are “science” or “modern” or “superhero” because it turns out that hin most of those situations, magic is the hard thing to figure out, lol. But what are we to expect from a concept that is essentially the idea of “magic” itself?

So as I worked out the organization of the Aspects, i had something going in the back of my head, and now I think I have managed to get it figured out, at least mechanically. I means going in and cracking up the stubs I have, but that should be worth it, and the hardest part will be settling down on the abilities themselves and how they work (but, huh, I have magic to help with that).

I even have a built in “psychic” class — Nomads. Who get a little extra oomph now, in a lot of ways.

Psychics in my simulations go *very* fast. Psychic turns come concurrent with the regular turns and “sit atop of” the rest.They screw with action economy and all that, but in a fun way, and add an extra layer to it all.

And that, in turn, means I can take a look at the psi beasties that I have always stepped away and shied away from using.

One of the more interesting effects is that they become both more susceptible to and also more resistant to psychic attacks. More susceptible because once they run out of the juice — the psi points — they don’t have the ability to

One of the side benefits to all the work that enabled that was that I was able to effectively and properly lay out the classes — and discovered that I had at least one class where my archetype was blended with another, and so poof, I had a new class. Basically, I went ahead and did a dedicated swordmage again.

I had done similar before, but not with the degree of clarity this afforded me, and so found out my rangers are closer to druids (they got the wild shape), my druids are totally shamans, my paladins are bad asses, and my bards are journalists.

And now they can all become more than just those tings — stuff like the echo knights and the blood hunters and all of that still have left their marks in the special abilities, and those are going to be able to be used.

It is still a bit of work to do, but it really helped to make it happen, and now the real trick is just to put it all together.

The final book is looking to be around 1000 pages for certain — at least 1020 of them. The use of the AI Art aspect has helped a lot, especially in helping me to fix in my mind how people generally look, and I am having far too much fun with it, and so far too much underlying guilt to go with.

It still sucks at any kind of group shot, though. The hands, of course, but also the faces. And I will not get into a discussion on the problem of gear…