Making a competent Psion in MgT2e+

[To Tha Moon!]

I see people ask sometimes about making a Psion in the current version of Traveller.

This is the best way I see to do it:

Pre-Career in Psionic Community
- From the Traveller Companion
- You get the Psionic Testing and Training free, even if you fail Entry
- Take Telepathy for the first Talent. There's no roll for it if you take it first.
- Increase Skill Levels in Talents you just gained
- Increase PSI if possible
- Try to get anything Psionics-wise that you can in the Pre-Career because it will only help later.
- Don't forget the extra PSI point the Pre-Career gives
- If you fail at Entry, you can still go into Psion as the 1st Career.

Term 1 in Psion
- This is really the best 1st Term if your character had Psionic Community for a Pre-Career.
- It works even if the character's PSI is a bit low. But not too low.
- This is where you build the Talents up so they are useable later.
- Increase Skill Levels in Talents you already have
- Increase PSI as much as possible
- Adding new Talents is nice, but they will always be low-level getting them at this point.

Term 2 in whatever you want
- You can take University here if you want.
- But if you don't make it well in the Pre-Career and the 1st Career, you will always be a low-level Psion without some enhancements like a PSI Battery.

Remember, you have a minimum of 2 on every roll, so it's:

PSI Bonus +
Skill Level +
Skill Check Roll +
Other Modifiers

And then you get almost all of the lower level skills without rolling or easily.

If anyone has anything else to add, please post it.

 

[Tom B]

You can up your psi skills using the connections rule in character creation.

 

[Condottiere]

 

[To Tha Moon!]

You can up your psi skills using the connections rule in character creation.

Where would I find that?

 

[boggo2300]

Where would I find that?

Page 19 of the 2022 Core rules, since the only 2 restrictions are, no skill above level 3, and not J-O-T

 

[Tom B]

And when rolling your skill remember that often you can take your time to gain a +2. Hmmm, I'm going to have to get that customs official not to look in that crate. I'll just spend a few minutes revving up my suggestion power.

 

[To Tha Moon!]

And when rolling your skill remember that often you can take your time to gain a +2. Hmmm, I'm going to have to get that customs official not to look in that crate. I'll just spend a few minutes revving up my suggestion power.

I completely forgot about that.

Page 19 of the 2022 Core rules, since the only 2 restrictions are, no skill above level 3, and not J-O-T

Makes sense now.

 

[To Tha Moon!]

Thanks to Tom B for reminding me about adding or subtracting for a Timeframe shift.

Here's a revised Task Roll for any Psionic power:

PSI Attribute Bonus
+
Skill Level
+/-
Up or Down a Timeframe
+/-
Boon or Bane
+
Other Modifiers
+
Skill Check Roll

So you can still end up rolling a 6 with +1 to PSI, a Skill-1, +2 for increasing the time the skill takes to use, and minimum of 2 on any 2d6 roll with lower level PSI stats.

 

[ottarrus]

Define 'competent'.
The way I run Psionic careers is that if the PC gets a Talent result on the skill table, they may choose to add 1 skill level to a talent they already possess at skill lvl 0 or greater - or - they may attempt to gain a new talent via the talent roles in the Core Rules, including the negative DM from the very first time they roll to gain a talent.

 

[To Tha Moon!]

Define 'competent'.
The way I run Psionic careers is that if the PC gets a Talent result on the skill table, they may choose to add 1 skill level to a talent they already possess at skill lvl 0 or greater - or - they may attempt to gain a new talent via the talent roles in the Core Rules, including the negative DM from the very first time they roll to gain a talent.

That's how I see it, too. I think that's in the rules somewhere about skills getting the next level if they already have the skill, but roll it again in CharGen.

Competent - I guess I mean that the Psion can be fully useable in the Talents they have.

 

[Saladman]

I think that's in the rules somewhere about skills getting the next level if they already have the skill, but roll it again in CharGen.

It's a reasonable house-rule that I'm not outraged by, but ottarus is describing a house-rule not anything in the rules.

RAW is, even in a career, if you roll a Talent on the Service Skills table, you test to gain that specific talent if you don't have it, or raise it if you do. A vocal minority of players really hate this rule, but it is pretty clear in the text. It's also manageable if you stay off Psion Service Skills and roll on other tables. (And Psion basic training comes from their specialty tables not service.)

That makes the rare Any Talent result pretty sweet, you can take it to something you already have. And the Adept's rank result of Any Talent 1 implicitly seems to bypass the testing requirement as well.

 

[ottarrus]

That's how I see it, too. I think that's in the rules somewhere about skills getting the next level if they already have the skill, but roll it again in CharGen.

Competent - I guess I mean that the Psion can be fully useable in the Talents they have.

Fair enough on the 'competent'.
However I will say you can get a Hell of a lot done with skill level 0 on some talent trees... Telepathy and Awareness come to mind. OTOH, you really do have to put work into it if you want anything to come out of Clairvoyance or Teleportation.

 

[Tom B]

Fair enough on the 'competent'.
However I will say you can get a Hell of a lot done with skill level 0 on some talent trees... Telepathy and Awareness come to mind. OTOH, you really do have to put work into it if you want anything to come out of Clairvoyance or Teleportation.

Hmm, I agree on telepathy and teleportation, however ...

Looking at the easiest rolls required in each talent ...
Telepathy - 4 (and you get shield)
Clairvoyance - 6
Telekinesis - 6
Awareness - 8
Teleportation - 8

 

[ottarrus]

Hmm, I agree on telepathy and teleportation, however ...

Looking at the easiest rolls required in each talent ...
Telepathy - 4 (and you get shield)
Clairvoyance - 6
Telekinesis - 6
Awareness - 8
Teleportation - 8

I was talking about the overall utility of powers in a given talent tree.
Obviously a telepath is gonna get a lot of use out of reading minds, life detection, etc.
Since Awareness mostly effects the psion themselves, they're far more difficult to detect and their powers have some great uses.
Clairvoyance has issues with range and location. These issues are greatly reduced by higher skill levels.
And teleport cuz, well, duh

 

[Tom B]

I was talking about the overall utility of powers in a given talent tree.
Obviously a telepath is gonna get a lot of use out of reading minds, life detection, etc.
Since Awareness mostly effects the psion themselves, they're far more difficult to detect and their powers have some great uses.
Clairvoyance has issues with range and location. These issues are greatly reduced by higher skill levels.
And teleport cuz, well, duh

Oh aye, Awareness is a great set of powers. It's worth it for regeneration alone.

 

[To Tha Moon!]

And the Adept's rank result of Any Talent 1 implicitly seems to bypass the testing requirement as well.

Oh wow. I missed that.

 

[MasterGwydion]

Make him a 12x creche-trained clone. No rolls for Psi skills. Just 4 0-level skills after one trip in the creche and 4 more ever year in the creche-training. Therefore, clones make the best psions due to the way the rules are written.

Edit- For clarity Robot Handbook page 98 and 99