Psionic Career and Basic Training

[Tom B]

Life Detection is, by far, the most frequently used ability by the psion in my group. She's never bothered with a psionic "attack" given how ineffective they are. She has a good skill in Teleport and Telepathy, but lvl 0 in Awareness and Clairsentience. Even with a decent by normal skill standards bonus in Teleport, it is unreliable. And the low skill level in Awareness and Clairsentience means those are basically 50/50 to pull off. Succeeding on a psionic assault would be a fluke.

Most of the Telepathy abilities I rule as being chain skills for other skills rather than doing a lot on their own. So Telempathy, Suggestion, and Read Thoughts boost social/investigation skills. Like Deanne Troi more than Emma Frost. And Probe is basically about as subtle as a Vulcan Mind Meld. That makes them useful without dominating play.

Don't forget the reach for Probe is 5m, so you don't have to touch the person being interviewed. It's difficult to do, however when my psionic character used, it was for interrogating prisoners during a jump. So a whole week of interviewing. Not that I found out anything useful.

The difficulty is 12, but by taking time you can reduce it to 10 and because the first attempt of the day is at +2, then all I needed to roll was an 8. The biggest risk was other Travellers realising what I was doing!

 

[Vormaerin]

Sure, you can play it however you want. I was just saying how I did it in my campaign. Read Thoughts could be subtle, but Probe wasn't.

Don't know what you mean about +2 on the first attempt. Unless you had a 12 PSI, so your stat DM was +2 until you spent the 4 PSI and were down to 8 for the next attempt?

 

[Tom B]

Sure, you can play it however you want. I was just saying how I did it in my campaign. Read Thoughts could be subtle, but Probe wasn't.

Don't know what you mean about +2 on the first attempt. Unless you had a 12 PSI, so your stat DM was +2 until you spent the 4 PSI and were down to 8 for the next attempt?

I had training in Telepathy (+1) and a Psi score of 9.

After the first attempt, you\d need to roll higher. But then you can probably do two sessions a day.

Yeh - how subtle psionics are and if people can spot you using this very illegal thing is part of the fun.

 

[Vormaerin]

Spending your PSI reduces your PSI stat. IIRC, Probe is 4 PSI. So if you have a 9 PSI, after the first use, you'd have a 5. So that would be a -1 stat bonus. So that tracks.

I just was wondering where that 'it's harder the second time" thing came from. I hadn't seen the effects of PSI drain expressed that way before.

 

[To Tha Moon!]

My uncertainty arises from the insert text on p229,

"The Psion must still roll to acquire talents when they determine their PSI. When rolling on the Service Skills table, if the Psion gains the skill for a talent they do not yet possess, they may attempt another roll to learn that talent."

Which book are you looking in?

 

[Fresnel]

Which book are you looking in?

Core. Unchange in the latest update...

N.b. p229 as indicated on the page itself. P230 of the pdf file.

Still no indication that the accumulative -1 DM does not apply to these rolls. So by RAW this mechanic is an annoying tease (imo).