Optional Rules: Psionics for Rules Cyclopedia D&D

Psionics doesnt exist in the d&d rules cyclopedia. That doesnt mean it cant. Charisma is the core talent for Psionics. Its all ego. That flies in the face of all those psychologically oppressed teens who erupt with face melting Carrie level talent unless we assume charisma is what they have in spades and attacking them psychologically triggered an ego backlash.

Is Arko the Murderhobo a Mind-witch?

So lets say there is a zero percent chance of Psionic talent. It means you not only need to roll 1d100 and score a hundred your murderhobo needs a charisma bonus you can add to that roll. That means your murderhobo needs a charisma minimum of 13+ to qualify for the chance.
So roll 1d100 and add your character's charisma bonus. If you get 101+ your murderhobo has Psionic talent.

Arko is a Mind-witch but what does that mean?

We want our version of Psionics to work different to AD&D on to D&D 5.0. We want it primitive and raw so lets roll up a power on the existing spells list. That spell is it. The sum total of your murderhobo's talent. Rolling up 'magic missile' isnt going to throw your first level game out of whack but rolling up 'wish' will, but lets say rolling up 'wish' is okay. Your first level murderhobo boldly walks into a dragon's lair and wishes Smaug into the sun. If he survives, its a long fly home. Meanwhile Arko the mind-witch is rich. Until everyone else learns of his wealth and come looking. So what we need is the dungeon master to determine the talent. It means that Minotaur could be a Mind-witch with the maze spell or hallucinatory terrain spell depending on how nasty the dungeon master is feeling.

How does Arko the mind-witch develop his talent further?

Lets call it experience based. If you rolled 'wish' then there is nowhere you can go short of being able to use it more often which by tying to Hit Dice means improved but not excessive use. Whereas development allows fine tuning so if you got cure light wounds, it would be useful to develop that talent up a tier to cure serious wounds then again to cure critical wounds. Use vs. Development. You the dungeon master need to determine which talents belong to developable tiers and which are all your murderhobo will ever be. Levitate (level 2) might be evolved into fly (level 3) By burning a hundred thousand experience points.

• Use: Hit Dice divided by spell level is times per day or days between re-use.
• Development: sacrifice 100,000xp per spell level difference to advance.

It means that Psionic dragon with 20HD might use wish twice a day looting all those other dragon hoards and pissing off dragons everywhere. Meanwhile Arko the 1HD mind-witch can use 'wish' (9th level spell) once every nine days. It means at best Arko will use his 'wish' talent once a day: 9HD being the human hit Dice limit.

Enjoy!