Psionic advice

[DerSchreiber]

I've recently started off in my first campaign set in the Traveller universe. We're using the mongoose books and I decided that I wanted my first character to be a Zhodani agent turned Imperial commando.

Character creation involved random rolls and I got lucky both in creation and for the actual careers. I ended up with a Zhodani with these characteristics: Str 10, Dex 15, End 15, Int 15, Edu 15, Soc 12, Psi 15. He also has an implanted Psi-battery that gives him 10 more points when it comes to using his abilities.

He also ended up with the following psionic abilities: Teleprojection 2, Psionic Defense 1, Teleportation 1, Telekinesis 0, Telepathy 1, Awareness 1, Clairvoyance 1, Personal Enhancement 1.

He also ended up with the following combat abilities: Gun Combat (energy pistol) 1 and Gun Combat (slug rifle) 1. He also ended up with Jack of All Trades 1.

I know that I'll probably never roll up a character like this anytime soon and I'm not keen on having this guy die. I'm a noob to this system, especially the combat, and my gm has suggested that I come up with several strategies for battle.

Anyone have any advice at what I should do in a combat situation with this guy?

 

[Old timer]

Wow, how did you get 5 attributes at 15? How many career terms did he go through?

 

[locarno24]

The same thing as most traveller characters; panic, seek cover, spot targets, then shoot people.

This guy is seriously awesome but he will still go down pretty fast if he takes a couple of shots in the chest.

General rules for combat:

Always take cover if you have the option. Not getting hit is the best defence.
Crouching behind a crate or low wall gives a DM-2 to hit permanently.
Dodging whilst behind said cover gives an additional DM-2 to hit - net DM-4 (!) whilst only inflicting a DM-1 on you (which should matter less as your stats will likely be higher than your opponent's)

In terms of your psionic abilities - don't get over-enamoured with them. Few psychic abilities match Twelve Rounds Rapid from a gauss carbine.

in order:

Teleprojection/Psionic Defence/Personal Enhancement - These aren't core disciplines and I can't remember their effects.

Teleportation - great for fiendish infiltrating and sneakyness. However it's a significant action and may take several attempts to achieve if you want to arrive anything but butt-naked, so it's utility in actual combat is limited.

Telekenisis - Telekinetic Punch and Pyrokinesis both sound awesome but pale in effectiveness compared to just shooting someone, especially since it's your weakest discipline. Flight and Microkinesis are for getting into places you shouldn't be, not for beating people up once you get there.

Telepathy - Mostly useless in combat. Commdots are a better form of communication, especially since - if psionics are likely to feature (in a Zhodani-set game? Never!) then only a muppet would voluntarily lower his mental shields in combat. Assail sounds good but it's so bleedy hard to use, that once again, it's easier to get into someone's head with rapidly moving chunks of metal than by grimacing meaningfully and waving your hand at them.

Awareness - The best combat discipline. It doesn't let you break the laws of physics, it just takes a skilled soldier and makes him or her better. Enhanced Awareness is quick and easy to cast and lasts until you fail a skill check - which becomes significantly less likely when you whack a PSI DM onto it. For one measly PSI point, your shooting DM will be +1 (Gun Combat)+3 (DEX) +2 (PSI), making it literally impossible to miss, even if you don't spend your minor action aiming (meaning you can instead spend it manouvring if you need to). Regeneration is hard to cast but (obviously) can save your life. Psionically Enhanced Strength is fine in theory but a couple of extra points of strength don't make you that much tougher - don't bother unless you know for a fact you're facing a hand-to-hand brawl. Even then, your DEX is better than your STR unless you dump massive amounts of energy into it - and I'd rather use Enhanced Awareness.

Clairvoyance - Situation specific - the situation being "have I got a motion tracker?" - but occasional flashes of Tactical Awareness may save your neck. It's too expensive to maintain at all times, but a 'pulse' should last for a couple of turns between your high PSI and discipline skill.


A carbine or rifle capable of autofire gives you nice flexible options. A good Aim & Burst with decent effect should drop most opponents without dropping your initiative too far from recoil.

 

[CosmicGamer]

Telekenisis - You can have lots of fun with this.
Throw one enemy into another.
Make that grenade thrown at you go elsewhere.
Pull the pin on the grenade that is on your enemy's belt.
Engage the safety on your enemies weapon.
Eject the ammo magazine on your enemies weapon.
Tie your enemies shoelaces together.
Have something float in front of the enemy blocking their vision.

 

[F33D]

Wow, how did you get 5 attributes at 15? How many career terms did he go through?

From skills it looks like ~3-4 terms. Probably used (roll 8D6 throw out lowest 6 dice for each attribute)

 

[DerSchreiber]

Thanks for the advice so far!

From what I know teleprojection is just the same as teleportation except it allows you to teleport other people and objects.

He did indeed allow us to drop the lowest die for the attributes and my character went through 6 terms before retiring. He didn't fail any age checks.

What would be the sort of difficulty rating on putting an enemy's weapon's safety on? Would it increase it dramatically?

 

[locarno24]

Anything like flicking switches, pulling pins, or sliding small components around qualifies as Microkinesis.

Telekinesis, Psionic Strength, 10–60 seconds, Difficult (–2), Costs: 3, Range: Always Personal.

There are therefore three key problems with 'telekinetically pulling a pin on a grenade' - one, it takes an average of ten combat rounds to do it, two, it costs 3 psi points and has a DM-2 - quite significant even for this guy, and three, you have to be standing within 1.5 metres of someone to do it, at which point the effect of doing so will be terminal for you as well.

Throwing around something to make a noise behind your opponent, or to throw something in the way, or whatever, fair enough, you can do that quickly and easily, and it may give you quite an advantage, but it's only good for 'clumsy' work - i.e. something which doesn't require 'fingers' (e.g. you can pick up a bunch of keys with just your hands but couldn't sort out and put a specific key in a lock).

 

[Dunia]

Wow, how did you get 5 attributes at 15? How many career terms did he go through?

To be honest, this character looks like it was NOT made by the rules of the book.

Firstly: There are no background/homeworld skills.
Secondly: Where are all the service skills for the agent class?
Thirdly: You must have rolled all 12's on those 5 attributes. Not impossible, but highly likely with 2D6.
Fourth: In order to have this number of skills, it is hard to see whty you have no skills based on ranks.
Fifth: neither Zhodani agent, nor Marine gives you Jack of all trades.

 

[alex_greene]

Face it - the psionics rules as written suck.

They were not designed for displays of near-magical prowess along the lines of The Force, allowing your psions to leap thirty feet in the air like Jedi or pull all the pins of grenades on the webbing of enemy soldiers like Magneto.

A lot of Traveller fans hate the idea of psionics at all, despite the fact that they quite happily accept a whole bunch of impossible things such as FTL, grav plates, manoeuvre drives which operate on principles other than Newton's Three Laws, laser pistols that behave like the blasters in Star Wars, AI and handheld disintegrators. Oh, and aliens who are a bit more evolved than pond scum and who all speak perfect English.

Psionics were written into CT rules to accommodate the fans who liked the use of psi in their science fiction stories, despite the insistence of the diehard grogs who hate psi. I'm afraid that pretty much every science fiction author worth their salt has dabbled in psionic characters - some more than others. Isaac Asimov even came up with a telepathic android in one story.

Like it or not, if your characters can accept humanoid aliens and FTL travel, they can accept that telepathy and SF go hand in hand, as much as laser guns and ambulatory robots.

I know the above doesn't exactly help your situation, but let's look at it another way.

Even unenhanced, your character is one of the most powerful beings they will ever encounter. More agile, tougher, so much smarter than anyone the characters will ever meet - he's a male River Tam, with the fortitude of Captain Reynolds and the mind of Sherlock Holmes and Gil Grissom combined. And he thinks fast. Borg fast. Velociraptor-confronted-by-door-handles fast.

As much as possible, he is going to be the one who chooses the battlefields, often three steps before the enemy knows they are even going to be going into battle against him. Tactical Awareness is also known as "danger sense," and it allows him to fight in total darkness without even so much as night vision goggles to aid him.

Now imagine that, let loose in a pitch dark room filled with choking IR-blocking smoke that even obscures mechanical night vision goggles, where he can strike at them with as much ease as a sighted man picking at blindfolded people in a well-lit room, his capabilities - including Tactics skill, Athletics and all forms of combat - enhanced by a dice pool of +3 thanks to Enhanced Awareness and no visibility penalties.

He won't need to be able to teleport like Azazel in the CIA's courtyard in that fight scene from X-Men: First Class. But his victims will believe that he can, the way he seems to weave out of the line of fire and melt into the dark, to reappear right behind them like Batman.

But even before he meets them in battle ... he will have had plenty of time to use his intelligence, education, perhaps social standing, and his J-o-T skill to offset many of the skills he lacks (such as Admin, Diplomacy, Deception, Investigate, Streetwise, Survival ...) to do the research.

Unless they jump in on him right out of the blue he can, given time, know the characters. Even better than they know themselves. Their faults, their weaknesses ... any outstanding warrants on them, any enemies after their money or their blood, or both ...

And in battle, his Tactics and Leadership will still have a natural +1, after the -3 untrained penalties are deducted, simply due to his J-o-T-1 and +3 Enhanced Awareness - before the natural Int and Edu DMs apply. Remember, that only costs you 1 Psi point - which you can take from your reservoir before it comes from your character's natural Psi rating.

If you want your character to survive to fight his next combat, time for you to bulk up on those above skills. Even the likes of Admin-0 or Investigate-0 will still carry a +3 DM due to Enhanced Awareness before the natural INT and EDU DMs kick in - giving your character a reputation as someone with surprisingly little formal training but who can wing it, a lot, and who thinks fast and always lands on his feet.

Also worth noting: Athletics does not apply an untrained penalty. Your character's J-o-T-1 is of no use there; but again, Enhanced Awareness and Dex DMs, or the End DM if performing an endurance task, will give your character a nigh-unstoppable positive DM to such mundane tasks.

 

[CosmicGamer]

Anything like flicking switches, pulling pins, or sliding small components around qualifies as Microkinesis.

MICROKINESIS - This more challenging form of telekinesis allows for fine manipulation
of very small or even microscopic objects. A telekinetic can use this
power to pick locks, perform microsurgery, sabotage a computer
system and so forth. The range is always Personal.

I guess it's up to the GM. To me, flicking switches, pulling a grenade pin, or sliding small components around is far easier than microsurgery or picking locks. It is not small enough nor does it require fine manipulation.

Very small is a hard term to quantify. A very small whale can still weigh several hundred pounds. A Chihuahua is a very small dog but could be tossed around without Microkinesis.

IMO, Microkinesis would be for things that you couldn't typically do with your hands without utilizing tools.

 

[alex_greene]

Mechanically, the rules as written truly suck. Why is there no rule for using Psi in a characteristic roll alone, to represent the refined instincts of the active psion? Why hold on to the legacy of Psionically Enhanced Strength and Psionically Enhanced Endurance, but neither Psionically Enhanced Dexterity or Psionically Enhanced Intelligence? Why do they have to translate Psionic Strength points into enhanced Strength or Endurance points on a one-to-one basis, a holdover from CT, when such a heavy boost has little or no effect on rolls - where what you need is a +DM to skill rolls?

In CT, spending Psionic Strength doesn't weaken the psion's performance of psionic abilities - in Mongoose Traveller, even the lightest touch of Psi can debilitate your character psionically.

And let's not go into the fact that a character can roll a really high Psi - a natural 12, say - and fail to learn any Talents whatsoever; and conversely they might have access to every Talent, but only have a natural Psi of, say, 3 - which gives them a -DM when activating even the lightest ability. And once spent, they can't use those powers again.

And finally ... recharging Psionic Strength once spent. Another holdover from CT.

In creating the Psionics rules, Mongoose had a chance to create a rich, detailed psionics system that not only works, but could give characters the chance to portray psion characters from Talia Winters or pre-Vorlon Lyta Alexander, through to Bester and post-Vorlon Lyta Alexander, as well as psions with abilities like the Jedi from Star Wars. What they came up with was part-holdover from CT and part-holdover from the MegaTraveller game, and it really doesn't fit Mongoose Traveller at all.

 

[Hopeless]

I'm thinking this character either took a tour as a core rulebook Psion and then 2 tours as a Psion Agent since that does have an option for gaining Jack of Trades as part of an event roll.
I figure three tours in total as a Psion to up Psi score to 15 with the other attributes increased to their levels through eventual use of the other occupation mentioned.

To go back to the original question, perhaps a better means of answering is asking how exactly did a Zhodani end up in the Imperium because off the top of my head I figure either this is an npc or you're playing a sleeper agent who was set in place and woke up at the wrong time keeping enough of the cover identity to not want to go back "home" but having to muster out as if their true identity is found out and what they can do the Imperium will undoubtedly imprison and use this character in experiements to figure out how to create their own super soldiers which is what those characteristics imply.

In combat I figure you would want to keep your abilities a secret as much as possible and only use them in emergencies since even with your battery that needs to be recharged periodically as it doesn't keep that charge indefinitely meaning you require longer to recover your Psi points even when you don't use them.

My first reaction on seeing this thread was openly wonder what was really being asked as this might be due to something in the Zhodani alien book but if your dm has agreed to this character have they revealed anything about the plot for the adventure/campaign they're planning?

 

[Hopeless]

The same thing as most traveller characters; panic, seek cover, spot targets, then shoot people.

This guy is seriously awesome but he will still go down pretty fast if he takes a couple of shots in the chest.
Teleprojection/Psionic Defence/Personal Enhancement - These aren't core disciplines and I can't remember their effects.

Can't find teleprojection the closest I can find is called Projection which allows the user to astral project, project their emotional state onto someone else, psychic invisibility or project an image of themselves as long as they're familar with the area they're projecting to so being able to see that area will help greatly.

Psionic defence allows them to defend against psychic attack whether rendering them invisible to the psion trying to attack them, absorb their attack, literally clad themselves in psychic armour or reflect the attack straight back.

Personal Enhancement allows them to enhance their physical abilities such as athletics, charisma and artisitc abilities its seems to be an expanded form of Awareness.

Projection actually sounds very useful but don't know where this teleport other ability mentioned perhaps the Zhodani alien book has it.

 

[DerSchreiber]

Wow, how did you get 5 attributes at 15? How many career terms did he go through?

To be honest, this character looks like it was NOT made by the rules of the book.

Firstly: There are no background/homeworld skills.
Secondly: Where are all the service skills for the agent class?
Thirdly: You must have rolled all 12's on those 5 attributes. Not impossible, but highly likely with 2D6.
Fourth: In order to have this number of skills, it is hard to see whty you have no skills based on ranks.
Fifth: neither Zhodani agent, nor Marine gives you Jack of all trades.

This was created using the rules. I didn't publish all of his skills, only what I deemed to be his combat related skills. The house rule for the attributes was roll 3d6 for attributes and drop the lowest die.

All of his skills: Comms 2, Drive 0, Engineer 0, Gunner (Turrets) 3, Gun Combat (Energy Pistol) 1, Gun Combat (Slug Rifle), Investigate 1, Jack of all Trades 1, Medic 0, Persuade 1, Streetwise 0, Tactics (Military) 1, Zero-G 0, Teleprojection 2, Psionic Defense 1, Teleportation 1, Telekinesis 0, Telepathy 1, Awareness 1, Clairvoyance 1, Personal Enhancement 1.

He got Jack of all Trades on his fourth term when he was working for the Special Forces in the Imperial Marines. He rolled something that gave him 1 in any skill and my gm suggested I take Jack of all Trades 1 since it is pretty rare.

 

[DerSchreiber]

Face it - the psionics rules as written suck.

They were not designed for displays of near-magical prowess along the lines of The Force, allowing your psions to leap thirty feet in the air like Jedi or pull all the pins of grenades on the webbing of enemy soldiers like Magneto.

A lot of Traveller fans hate the idea of psionics at all, despite the fact that they quite happily accept a whole bunch of impossible things such as FTL, grav plates, manoeuvre drives which operate on principles other than Newton's Three Laws, laser pistols that behave like the blasters in Star Wars, AI and handheld disintegrators. Oh, and aliens who are a bit more evolved than pond scum and who all speak perfect English.

Psionics were written into CT rules to accommodate the fans who liked the use of psi in their science fiction stories, despite the insistence of the diehard grogs who hate psi. I'm afraid that pretty much every science fiction author worth their salt has dabbled in psionic characters - some more than others. Isaac Asimov even came up with a telepathic android in one story.

Like it or not, if your characters can accept humanoid aliens and FTL travel, they can accept that telepathy and SF go hand in hand, as much as laser guns and ambulatory robots.

I know the above doesn't exactly help your situation, but let's look at it another way.

Even unenhanced, your character is one of the most powerful beings they will ever encounter. More agile, tougher, so much smarter than anyone the characters will ever meet - he's a male River Tam, with the fortitude of Captain Reynolds and the mind of Sherlock Holmes and Gil Grissom combined. And he thinks fast. Borg fast. Velociraptor-confronted-by-door-handles fast.

As much as possible, he is going to be the one who chooses the battlefields, often three steps before the enemy knows they are even going to be going into battle against him. Tactical Awareness is also known as "danger sense," and it allows him to fight in total darkness without even so much as night vision goggles to aid him.

Now imagine that, let loose in a pitch dark room filled with choking IR-blocking smoke that even obscures mechanical night vision goggles, where he can strike at them with as much ease as a sighted man picking at blindfolded people in a well-lit room, his capabilities - including Tactics skill, Athletics and all forms of combat - enhanced by a dice pool of +3 thanks to Enhanced Awareness and no visibility penalties.

He won't need to be able to teleport like Azazel in the CIA's courtyard in that fight scene from X-Men: First Class. But his victims will believe that he can, the way he seems to weave out of the line of fire and melt into the dark, to reappear right behind them like Batman.

But even before he meets them in battle ... he will have had plenty of time to use his intelligence, education, perhaps social standing, and his J-o-T skill to offset many of the skills he lacks (such as Admin, Diplomacy, Deception, Investigate, Streetwise, Survival ...) to do the research.

Unless they jump in on him right out of the blue he can, given time, know the characters. Even better than they know themselves. Their faults, their weaknesses ... any outstanding warrants on them, any enemies after their money or their blood, or both ...

And in battle, his Tactics and Leadership will still have a natural +1, after the -3 untrained penalties are deducted, simply due to his J-o-T-1 and +3 Enhanced Awareness - before the natural Int and Edu DMs apply. Remember, that only costs you 1 Psi point - which you can take from your reservoir before it comes from your character's natural Psi rating.

If you want your character to survive to fight his next combat, time for you to bulk up on those above skills. Even the likes of Admin-0 or Investigate-0 will still carry a +3 DM due to Enhanced Awareness before the natural INT and EDU DMs kick in - giving your character a reputation as someone with surprisingly little formal training but who can wing it, a lot, and who thinks fast and always lands on his feet.

Also worth noting: Athletics does not apply an untrained penalty. Your character's J-o-T-1 is of no use there; but again, Enhanced Awareness and Dex DMs, or the End DM if performing an endurance task, will give your character a nigh-unstoppable positive DM to such mundane tasks.

Awesome post, very knowledgeable and helpful! I will definitely use some of this!

To go back to the original question, perhaps a better means of answering is asking how exactly did a Zhodani end up in the Imperium because off the top of my head I figure either this is an npc or you're playing a sleeper agent who was set in place and woke up at the wrong time keeping enough of the cover identity to not want to go back "home" but having to muster out as if their true identity is found out and what they can do the Imperium will undoubtedly imprison and use this character in experiements to figure out how to create their own super soldiers which is what those characteristics imply.

For his first 3 terms he worked for the Zhodani as an Agent working in Imperial space. He reached the rank of Defender of 100 before mustering out. He chose to defect to the Imperials due to his own "aberrant" thoughts that non-psionics should be considered to be the equals of psionics (largely influenced by his non-psionic brothers and sisters). He was then with Imperial Special Forces where he reached the rank of General and became a Baron.

In this campaign he is acting as a high priced mercenary for an independent organization.

 

[locarno24]

Mechanically, the rules as written truly suck. Why is there no rule for using Psi in a characteristic roll alone, to represent the refined instincts of the active psion? Why hold on to the legacy of Psionically Enhanced Strength and Psionically Enhanced Endurance, but neither Psionically Enhanced Dexterity or Psionically Enhanced Intelligence? Why do they have to translate Psionic Strength points into enhanced Strength or Endurance points on a one-to-one basis, a holdover from CT, when such a heavy boost has little or no effect on rolls - where what you need is a +DM to skill rolls?

I'm not sure if enhanced intelligence works (may just be I can't picture it right) but there should certainly be enhanced dexterity. The low effect of the boost (~ 3 PSI per +1) I agree is an issue, if only in comparison to Enhanced Awareness, which is essentially 1 point for +2. The latter is capped at just +2, and doesn't improve your ability to take punishment, but even 2 temporary STR per PSI would make the ability more useful.

In CT, spending Psionic Strength doesn't weaken the psion's performance of psionic abilities - in Mongoose Traveller, even the lightest touch of Psi can debilitate your character psionically.

And let's not go into the fact that a character can roll a really high Psi - a natural 12, say - and fail to learn any Talents whatsoever; and conversely they might have access to every Talent, but only have a natural Psi of, say, 3 - which gives them a -DM when activating even the lightest ability. And once spent, they can't use those powers again.

And finally ... recharging Psionic Strength once spent. Another holdover from CT.

In creating the Psionics rules, Mongoose had a chance to create a rich, detailed psionics system that not only works, but could give characters the chance to portray psion characters from Talia Winters or pre-Vorlon Lyta Alexander, through to Bester and post-Vorlon Lyta Alexander, as well as psions with abilities like the Jedi from Star Wars. What they came up with was part-holdover from CT and part-holdover from the MegaTraveller game, and it really doesn't fit Mongoose Traveller at all.

To be honest, I don't mind the mechanic - I've always liked Mongoose Traveller's simple stat-as-damage-track approach. The question is simply that (as noted) psionics takes it out of you too fast. All that's needed (more or less as you suggest) is for some abilities not to require psy points - a weak employment of a discipline that is almost 'at will'.

I'm not sure if the Psion core book includes this - I do know, however, that it's supposed to contain alternate character creation rules for psy-heavy universes (B5, newer Star Wars, etc) to give characters the awesome high PSI scores they need. Psionics in the core book are intended for OTU (yes, I know it's meant to be generic, but that's what they're for) and in the OTU barring Zhodani with specialised equipment and on psi-boosting drugs, psionics aren't meant to be that good.

 

[Egil Skallagrimsson]

Wow, how did you get 5 attributes at 15? How many career terms did he go through?

To be honest, this character looks like it was NOT made by the rules of the book.

Firstly: There are no background/homeworld skills.
Secondly: Where are all the service skills for the agent class?
Thirdly: You must have rolled all 12's on those 5 attributes. Not impossible, but highly likely with 2D6.
Fourth: In order to have this number of skills, it is hard to see whty you have no skills based on ranks.
Fifth: neither Zhodani agent, nor Marine gives you Jack of all trades.

This was created using the rules. I didn't publish all of his skills, only what I deemed to be his combat related skills. The house rule for the attributes was roll 3d6 for attributes and drop the lowest die.

All of his skills: Comms 2, Drive 0, Engineer 0, Gunner (Turrets) 3, Gun Combat (Energy Pistol) 1, Gun Combat (Slug Rifle), Investigate 1, Jack of all Trades 1, Medic 0, Persuade 1, Streetwise 0, Tactics (Military) 1, Zero-G 0, Teleprojection 2, Psionic Defense 1, Teleportation 1, Telekinesis 0, Telepathy 1, Awareness 1, Clairvoyance 1, Personal Enhancement 1.

He got Jack of all Trades on his fourth term when he was working for the Special Forces in the Imperial Marines. He rolled something that gave him 1 in any skill and my gm suggested I take Jack of all Trades 1 since it is pretty rare.

Absolutely awesome stats, your 3 dice and drop the lowest house rule certainly ramps up the characters, does your GM similiarly increase the stats of NPCs, and skills, 6 terms with promotion everytime and good events rolls? Seems quite a long way from the characters I see, stats rolled up on 2d6, typically 4-5 terms, not always successfully completed, your PC looks like a bit of a super hero. However, why not, different games different vibes.

Egil

 

[Egil Skallagrimsson]

Face it - the psionics rules as written suck.

RUBBISH!! (IMHO :lol: )

The psionic rules are excellent precisely because they do not create flying magician warriors (sorry, Jedi knights). There are some useful abilities, but most are pretty limited by the average psi power (7), the way skill rolls are required, the way psi strength reduces with use, and some specific limits in particular power.

And this is good, because it ensures that psionic characters do not dominate the game to the expense of other characters (unless, of course, you make all PCs and NPCs psionic). As Locarno24 has pointed out, a burst of gauss rifle needles (or, for that matter, from rounds from a SMG) are usually a more effective contribution to combat than telekinetic punches or the psionic "assault".

Usually, the best use of psionics is in a much more subtle manner, providing information, enhancing situations and improving opportunities.

I admit, I am one of the doubters about "mind powers", I think that Yuri Geller, Derren Brown etc are showmen, not prophets, and whereas I am happy to accept that extropolations of current technology may lead to things like FTL and grav control at some point in the future, hocus pocus "mind powers" are not likely. If I want to play with magic powers, I play AD &D (btw, Alex, have you thought about just lifting the AD&D psionic system and bolting it onto you trav games, should give you a lot of the effects you are looking for (though, ironically, we don't use the psionics rules when playing AD&D).

However, some magical mind abilities are part of the general 50, 60s genre scifi that Trav derives much of its background from, so for style reasons, inclusion is a neccessity. I feel that MgT has hit a very good balance. Many of us can down play psionic powers, keeping them as a plot device likely to be used by the evil brain eating Joes, or similar, but the Psionics book offers other ideas for enhancing the use to psionics, with new skills and a greatly increased number of psi points for those who want space ships and sourcery.

Egil

 

[Egil Skallagrimsson]

Mechanically, the rules as written truly suck. Why is there no rule for using Psi in a characteristic roll alone, to represent the refined instincts of the active psion? Why hold on to the legacy of Psionically Enhanced Strength and Psionically Enhanced Endurance, but neither Psionically Enhanced Dexterity or Psionically Enhanced Intelligence? Why do they have to translate Psionic Strength points into enhanced Strength or Endurance points on a one-to-one basis, a holdover from CT, when such a heavy boost has little or no effect on rolls - where what you need is a +DM to skill rolls?

In CT, spending Psionic Strength doesn't weaken the psion's performance of psionic abilities - in Mongoose Traveller, even the lightest touch of Psi can debilitate your character psionically.

And let's not go into the fact that a character can roll a really high Psi - a natural 12, say - and fail to learn any Talents whatsoever; and conversely they might have access to every Talent, but only have a natural Psi of, say, 3 - which gives them a -DM when activating even the lightest ability. And once spent, they can't use those powers again.

No, the rules don't "suck", they reflect a clear interpretation about how to portray psionics, allowing it to be present but not dominating.

And on your last point, a character with a psi of 12, will get, at the very least, the telepathy talent, (needs to roll 8, but with +4 for that talent, and a +2 psi bonus, he is not going to fail, he will only need to roll a 3 to get clairvoyance, a 4 to get telekinenis, 5 for awareness and 6 for teleportation, so the chance of him not getting any other skills is pretty remote). The character with a psi of 3 will just have to be careful about when they use there skill, and accept that the higher order abilities are just beyond their capabitily (unless they prepared to take damage at times to activate abilities, an interesting plot device!)

Egil

 

[DerSchreiber]

Absolutely awesome stats, your 3 dice and drop the lowest house rule certainly ramps up the characters, does your GM similiarly increase the stats of NPCs, and skills, 6 terms with promotion everytime and good events rolls? Seems quite a long way from the characters I see, stats rolled up on 2d6, typically 4-5 terms, not always successfully completed, your PC looks like a bit of a super hero. However, why not, different games different vibes.

Egil

I didn't automatically get promoted each time, I just got pretty lucky with the survival rolls and such with every term. I think that my character might potentially be like a "super hero" at least stat-wise in his game.

But that just makes me paranoid he'll throw something my way that will get rid of him so I have to make a new character, lol