In
Strange Relations, all of the Colony Telepaths get agitated. Byron tells Lyta to let down the shields that the mundanes cause them to put up. She then realizes that Psi Corps Bloodhounds are arriving on the station.
According to the episode
Objects at Rest Sheridan says to Delenn that the station is over 5 Miles long. That would put Down Below about 2 miles from where passengers arrive at B5. The Telepaths could detect the Bloodhounds from that distance, or the Bloodhounds were broadcasting on a level that only Telepaths could detect that they were on the station. They could have been broadcasting because they know that when people are afraid, they do stupid things. The equivalent of a dog herding sheep.
I KNOW that 2 miles away is out of LOS.
I KNOW that there is a lot of metal in between the two.
There are plenty of instances where direct Line of Sight is not available. When the Telepaths are holed up and they are messing with the mind of the welders to keep everyone out. Bester comes up, quits the welder and blocks the Telepaths on the other side of the wall.
Later Bester projects to Byron using
Reality Fabrication which is an LOS power. He doesn't just "talk" to Byron telepathically, he projects an image of himself to Byron, through a lot of metal and distance.
The LOS is a crutch that the weaker Telepaths have until they are shown otherwise.
In Dust To Dust the female Psi Cop (played by Judy Levitt, who is also Walter's wife) said at the end of the episode that she had been attempting to Send to Bester since they came through the Jump Gate. Bester was on the sleepers (which were only good for about 4 hours, which is strange since the Psi Corps only administered it once a week to telepaths that did not want to be part of the Corps) and said that he was unable to receive her sendings. This implies that stonger telepaths can send to each other over great distances without LOS to each other. To use
Communication with a mundane perhaps a telepath needs to have LOS such as in
Mindwar when Bester was talking to the Security Guard and to Sinclair...unless you have the power level Lyta has. She was able to send a message to Captain Lochley even though there was no LOS and a lot of metal in between. In
The Hour of the Wolf, Lyta attempts to contact Sheridan even though she does not see him. The Whitestar is several thousand Km from Z'ha'dum, and she was able to broadcast to the planet's surface.
There are several crutches the the Psi Corps perpetuates besides LOS.
Deep Scans always cause pain. Talia was sure that Bester was using it on her after the Telepath Underground Railroad was destroyed. However she did not look like she was in pain when he left. Sheridan assumed that the Rogue Telepaths from the colony were only scanning surface thoughts. Byron knew otherwise as he sent powerful telepaths to scan. The Centauri telepath that brought back Brother Edward's former past crimes back by doing a
Deep Scan, then nudging the memories back to the surface. Lyta was also able to Deep Scan the Centauri telepath without causing pain either. When Lyta did a Deep Scan on Garibaldi to determine the truth about Bester controlling him, there was a headache (and the realization that he needed to add more fiber to his diet), however she also had to cut through "Level 12 blocks" that she noted that only a Psi Cop could get through.
Bottom line, the rules for Telepaths need to be re-written. I am looking forward to the new Pocket Players guide since it should have some of the mistakes fixed. I am sure that not enough will change to fix the whole system, but I am optimistic enough to have it on Pre-order at my local gaming store. Maybe the distances will change to Meters (which the rest of the game is based on), which would make a Telepath 3 times as powerful.
http://www.midwinter.com/lurk/countries/us/eplist.html
Good luck finding a definite answer though. Telepathic range, like everything else in the show, bows to the power of the plot.
