Psionic Rules Clarifications and Suggestions (Core22)

[J. L. Brown]

I like Augment Range as you describe it, but the name is wrong, it's not an augment but a debuff. Call it Suppress Effect, and let it reduce any one element of all powers used by the target Psion, so you could suppress range, duration, area or something else. And you could have multiple suppressions on a target to really slow them down.

The idea is that the meta-psion is helping another psion; for example, the psion wants to use 'Suggestion' against a target at 'Medium' range. The meta-psion uses 'Augment Range' (with enough effect to reach 'Medium' range), and now that psion can treat that particular target as being at 'Short' range instead. If the meta-psion doubled the cost of the 'Augment Range' power, then that psion could use powers at that particular target as though it was only 'Close' range (two range bands closer) until the duration of the 'Augment Range' wore off.

If the target wanders closer, say to 'Medium' range, then the two range-band reduction still applies from the new range and can make follow-on powers much cheaper, or easier, or both. Once the target increases range such that the Augmented Range (shortened) range to the target is now beyond the range which the meta-psion reached with their effect, the power ceases prematurely.

 

[mavikfelna]

The idea is that the meta-psion is helping another psion; for example, the psion wants to use 'Probe' against a target at 'Very Long' range. The meta-psion uses 'Augment Range' (with enough effect to reach 'Very Long' range), and now that psion can treat that particular target as being at 'Long' range instead. If the meta-psion doubled the cost of the 'Augment Range' power, then that psion could use powers at that particular target as though it was only 'Medium' range (two range bands closer) until the duration of the 'Augment Range' wore off.

If the target wanders closer, say to 'Medium' range, then the two range-band reduction still applies from the new range and can make follow-on powers much cheaper, or easier, or both.

Ah, ok, I read it in the opposite manner. That makes more sense. So we can have Augment Effect, and Suppress Effect

 

[J. L. Brown]

I really like the plant powers. The talent comes from Core Adventure 3, along with Counter Psionics, and Changeling, and I couldn't think of anything to add to buff it up. Now I have something.

I like the change to Meta-Psionics, that sounds better and more versatile.

Thanks! I guess I should make it clear that I am just an opinionated grouchy grognard on the interwebz; and you are perfectly free to ignore everything I say. These are just suggestions, and reflect how I would run a game -- your table may be different.

I don't have a defense or attack talents because I felt each talent should include those options to spread them out more. I might be persuaded to change my thinking but I'm hoping to avoid a must have talent as well.

I understand that impulse; but (despite us greatly expanding psionics) psions are not supposed to be god-like in capability -- the Talents are supposed to be tightly focused to rein in the power of PC psions. If every given talent has a heal, an attack, a defense, an information gathering power, and so on, then even one-Talent psions will have capabilities for every situation. I believe that psions need to accept that broader applicability means having more (not easy to get) Talents; sometimes they will need to fall back on regular skills -- especially skills that other characters have.

I agree with the anti-psionic static and block.

And I am thinking that maybe a 'Counter' fits in meta-psi after all. Just something like 'force an opposed check vs the meta-psion, and if the meta-psion wins subtract their effect from the psions roll' for one psi point.

I put the transfer stuff in Projection, though Transfer or Transference is a better name now that I think about it.

I'm not sure if Augments should talent skills, or options all psions can do to empower their abilities by spending point like the current rule for extending range.

I'm not wild about the Projection Talent as written; I will probably suggest doing away with it. I'm not to it yet, though.

I am envisioning meta-psionics as being used to alter / shut-down / enhance psionic powers. If we give powers to affect skills those should be somewhere else.

So we can have Augment Effect, and Suppress Effect

Maybe 'Suppress Range', 'Suppress Duration', and 'Suppress Area' are overkill -- especially with static and block. We risk stacking in a bunch of powers. Maybe make Augment / Suppress all part of the same power -- so a meta-psion can either help or hinder a psion with 'Augment Range', or help or hinder with 'Augment Duration', etc.

So far I am enjoying the thought of tinkering with the rules for psionics.

 

[Tom B]

For the counter-psionics, the cost is influenced by the cost of the opposed talent. But what is that cost? How do you work it out?

For telepathy you might think it is 8, the cost of assault. But assault can cost 16 or 32 if you do them over a longer range.

For telekinesis and awareness, the cost is variable.

Something else to put in the universal one.
I am playing a psionic character and was once being interviewed. The interviewer didn't him to be using any psionic so had to drink something that removed all psi-points. That got me thinking, there should be a power that reduces psi-points to zero, so I created this ...

Nullify Psi-Points​

Within a round a psion can get rid of all their remaining psi-points. Depending upon the method of detection, this might allow them to not be detected as psionic. A telepath could still have an active shield if they so choose. Also, the psion can still use any other power that has a cost of zero.

Psionic points will be regenerated as normal after three hours, though this can be delayed.

Check: Automatic

Reach: Personal

Duration: 3 hours

PSI Cost: All

To be honest, I'd been playing around, crating new rules, talents and powers. Some of these contradict the ones given here as I'd done a precognition one (and a post cognition one) - but named them differently. I had versions of Changeling but when I bought that book, I took it out.

I also have a version of the healer career called Empath.

I had quite a few telekinetic talents - each specialising in various aspects. If anyone wants, they can DM me and I'll send them the document.

 

[mavikfelna]

For the counter-psionics, the cost is influenced by the cost of the opposed talent. But what is that cost? How do you work it out?

For telepathy you might think it is 8, the cost of assault. But assault can cost 16 or 32 if you do them over a longer range.

For telekinesis and awareness, the cost is variable.

Something else to put in the universal one.
I am playing a psionic character and was once being interviewed. The interviewer didn't him to be using any psionic so had to drink something that removed all psi-points. That got me thinking, there should be a power that reduces psi-points to zero, so I created this ...

Nullify Psi-Points​

Within a round a psion can get rid of all their remaining psi-points. Depending upon the method of detection, this might allow them to not be detected as psionic. A telepath could still have an active shield if they so choose. Also, the psion can still use any other power that has a cost of zero.

Psionic points will be regenerated as normal after three hours, though this can be delayed.

Check: Automatic

Reach: Personal

Duration: 3 hours

PSI Cost: All

To be honest, I'd been playing around, crating new rules, talents and powers. Some of these contradict the ones given here as I'd done a precognition one (and a post cognition one) - but named them differently. I had versions of Changeling but when I bought that book, I took it out.

I also have a version of the healer career called Empath.

I had quite a few telekinetic talents - each specialising in various aspects. If anyone wants, they can DM me and I'll send them the document.

I'll take a copy

 

[mavikfelna]

Thanks! I guess I should make it clear that I am just an opinionated grouchy grognard on the interwebz; and you are perfectly free to ignore everything I say. These are just suggestions, and reflect how I would run a game -- your table may be different.


I understand that impulse; but (despite us greatly expanding psionics) psions are not supposed to be god-like in capability -- the Talents are supposed to be tightly focused to rein in the power of PC psions. If every given talent has a heal, an attack, a defense, an information gathering power, and so on, then even one-Talent psions will have capabilities for every situation. I believe that psions need to accept that broader applicability means having more (not easy to get) Talents; sometimes they will need to fall back on regular skills -- especially skills that other characters have.


And I am thinking that maybe a 'Counter' fits in meta-psi after all. Just something like 'force an opposed check vs the meta-psion, and if the meta-psion wins subtract their effect from the psions roll' for one psi point.


I'm not wild about the Projection Talent as written; I will probably suggest doing away with it. I'm not to it yet, though.

I am envisioning meta-psionics as being used to alter / shut-down / enhance psionic powers. If we give powers to affect skills those should be somewhere else.


Maybe 'Suppress Range', 'Suppress Duration', and 'Suppress Area' are overkill -- especially with static and block. We risk stacking in a bunch of powers. Maybe make Augment / Suppress all part of the same power -- so a meta-psion can either help or hinder a psion with 'Augment Range', or help or hinder with 'Augment Duration', etc.

So far I am enjoying the thought of tinkering with the rules for psionics.

Ok, let's take a step back.
Let's set the basics of the talents and their focuses.
First, I don't want attack and defense in their own isolated talent. Not every talent needs every type of function, but if an attack and/or defense is related to the focus of the talent, it should have it. Same with most of the others mentioned above with the exception of healing, as that is a major talent itself and I'd like to keep it as such. Same with altering self ranged powers to affect different targets.
I don't want talents and skills to be overly powerful but I do want even a one talent Psion to be useful.
As a note, in my own version of psionics, you can only attempt to learn up to 3+PSI modifier talents beyond universal but there is no penalty to learning a talent for the number of talents already know but the difficulty is 10+ and each time you attempt training you only have 3+INT mod attempts. So this limits psions in some ways compared to now and I'm not 100% committed to it yet but some of my ideas I'm working through here do take this into account, even if I'm trying to fit them into the current Mongoose 2e system here. (I hope that makes sense.)

So back on topic, focus of the talents.
Flora Symbiosis (better name than plant?): affecting plants and plant-like organisms. Things like identification, imparted movement, healing and augmentations or draining energy/killing them

Fauna Symbiosis: (Do we want something like this?) affecting non-sentient creatures

Machine Symbiosis: Technopathy, affecting and interacting psychically with machines

Dimensional Symbiosis: teleportations of self and group, jump sense

Healing: using psychic energy to heal all variety of damage and disease. Regeneration

Meta-Psionics: Using psionics to boost or disrupt psionics in others

Changling: using psionics to psychically and physically alter yourself for disguise

Self-Awareness: using psionics to augment yourself

Transference: The ability to project self range abilities onto others

Energy Kinesis: psychic manipulation of energy

Psychokinesis: psychic manipulation of matter

Telekinesis: psychic movement of matter (because there are too many other things you can do in psychokinesis so this reduces the skill count)

Remote Sensing: clairvoyance

Precognition: sensing events in time

Telepathy: mind to mind contact

What do you think? Keep, add to, remove, change?

 

[To Tha Moon!]

For the counter-psionics, the cost is influenced by the cost of the opposed talent. But what is that cost? How do you work it out?
For telepathy you might think it is 8, the cost of assault. But assault can cost 16 or 32 if you do them over a longer range.
For telekinesis and awareness, the cost is variable.
Something else to put in the universal one.
I am playing a psionic character and was once being interviewed. The interviewer didn't him to be using any psionic so had to drink something that removed all psi-points. That got me thinking, there should be a power that reduces psi-points to zero, so I created this ...

Nullify Psi-Points​

Within a round a psion can get rid of all their remaining psi-points. Depending upon the method of detection, this might allow them to not be detected as psionic. A telepath could still have an active shield if they so choose. Also, the psion can still use any other power that has a cost of zero.
Psionic points will be regenerated as normal after three hours, though this can be delayed.
To be honest, I'd been playing around, crating new rules, talents and powers. Some of these contradict the ones given here as I'd done a precognition one (and a post cognition one) - but named them differently. I had versions of Changeling but when I bought that book, I took it out.
I also have a version of the healer career called Empath.
I had quite a few telekinetic talents - each specialising in various aspects. If anyone wants, they can DM me and I'll send them the document.

There are several Psi powers in T4 - Marc Miller's Traveller that could be used here or help you build a new power.

Antipsionic
Drain
Battery (Transfer Psi)
Rapid Recharge

Here's a list from several sources:

PSI Chart - Consolidated PSI Article

Here's an updated Psionics Chart with the current Mongoose Traveller version 2 Update in 2024. It also has Special skills from previous ver...

sswstation.blogspot.com

No sense reinventing the wheel if you don't have to.

 

[J. L. Brown]

Ok, let's take a step back.
Let's set the basics of the talents and their focuses.
First, I don't want attack and defense in their own isolated talent. Not every talent needs every type of function, but if an attack and/or defense is related to the focus of the talent, it should have it. Same with most of the others mentioned above with the exception of healing, as that is a major talent itself and I'd like to keep it as such.

I think we are almost on the same page here -- the 'Plant' Talent has a power that can harm 'Plants', the 'Machine' Talent has a power that can harm 'Machines', the 'Beast' Talent has a power which can harm 'Beasts', etc. I think this is great, until we get to the 'Kinesis' talents; but we'll burn that bridge once we come to it.

Same with altering self ranged powers to affect different targets.
I don't want talents and skills to be overly powerful but I do want even a one talent Psion to be useful.
As a note, in my own version of psionics, you can only attempt to learn up to 3+PSI modifier talents beyond universal but there is no penalty to learning a talent for the number of talents already know but the difficulty is 10+ and each time you attempt training you only have 3+INT mod attempts. So this limits psions in some ways compared to now and I'm not 100% committed to it yet but some of my ideas I'm working through here do take this into account, even if I'm trying to fit them into the current Mongoose 2e system here. (I hope that makes sense.)

A psion, even a one-talent psion, has both surprise and less reliance on equipment -- but even so, a one-Talent psion should not expect to be able to apply their Talent to every situation. Consider the poor Jump-Drive Engineer -- he has to negotiate a price for perfectly legal whatzits from a black-market contact; or stand his ground in a firefight against fanatical terrorists; is his specialty applicable? No? Why should the psion expect their 'Flora Symbiosis' to apply? Now, there are situations where either of those characters may be able to excel -- but that is a referee-level decision, the referee needs to ensure that every character has a chance to be useful without shoving any other characters out of the spotlight when their time to shine is upon them.

Short version: I am against broadening psionic Talents too much. What 'too much' means is up for interpretation, of course.

So back on topic, focus of the talents.
Flora Symbiosis (better name than plant?): affecting plants and plant-like organisms. Things like identification, imparted movement, healing and augmentations or draining energy/killing them

Fauna Symbiosis: (Do we want something like this?) affecting non-sentient creatures

Machine Symbiosis: Technopathy, affecting and interacting psychically with machines

I like breaking these Talents out like this -- plants, animals, constructs. That leaves the obvious hole of 'raw non-living stuff which is not a construct', and I suspect we will be breaking that down into several different (probably 'Kinesis') Talents. 'Fauna Symbiosis' Talent is in, as far as I am concerned -- detecting animals, communicating with animals, obscuring things from animals, incapacitating animals, enhancing animals, getting animals to perform tasks, etc. Shifting shape into an animal is probably best left in 'Changeling'; and healing animals is probably best left in 'Healer' -- despite the 'Flora Symbiosis' Talent having a plant-healing power. I think that is barely justifiable on the grounds that plants are very different.

Dimensional Symbiosis: teleportations of self and group, jump sense

'Symbiosis' means 'mutually beneficial partnership' and doesn't really make sense here; I'd prefer to stick with 'Teleportation Talent' while explicitly having a power named 'Teleport' NOT 'Teleportation'.

Telportation is (to my mind) essentially five powers: 'Teleport Self' (adding clothes or equipment at extra cost and difficulty); 'Teleport Group' (teleport two or more people or objects the psion is touching, maybe or maybe not including the psion); 'Jaunt Self' (the psion makes one check and pays one cost for two teleports -- 'There' and 'Back' -- in advance); 'Jaunt Group' (same, but for more than just the psion or if the psion wants to send someone or something else); and 'Create Portal' (creates a short duration teleportation gate to & from a single destinaltion; anything which pays the PSI points -- or has the PSI points paid for it -- makes the trip).

Healing: using psychic energy to heal all variety of damage and disease. Regeneration

I think 'Healer' ought to be the king of heals; other Talents might get stuff to (for example) restore END points lost to wounds, or might provide a bonus to recovery rolls for wounds, but 'Healer' also works against Radiation, Poison, Diseases, Allergies, Fatigue, Starvation, Dehydration, and all other maladies. Equally important to me is the idea that 'Healer' powers can always target others, and works only at 'Personal / Touch' range.

This means we need to go through 'Awareness' and weed out / nerf stuff which steps on the toes of 'Healer'. As written, I think 'Awareness of Others' is out, especially if we are going to leave anti-aging and anti-radiation stuff in 'Awareness'; instead, I think 'Empathic Healing' might be put into 'Awareness' as the absolute limit of what 'Awareness' Talent is capable of -- the psion can take wounds (NOT Rads, or diseases, or poisons, etc) from another onto themselves.

Meta-Psionics: Using psionics to boost or disrupt psionics in others

Changling: using psionics to psychically and physically alter yourself for disguise

Self-Awareness: using psionics to augment yourself

Transference: The ability to project self range abilities onto others

Most of these look basically okay to me.
'Changeling' Talent should be physical changes only -- the charisma boost comes from enhanced pheromone control. The mental mirror / fake persona shield is neat, but it feels out of place. In Your Traveller Universe you consider 'Mind Shield' a freebie to all psions, so it works in that framework -- but I would be tempted to say that 'Mental Mirror' requires both the 'Mind Shield' power and any 'Changeling' power as prerequisites, so in other Traveller Universes the 'Mental Mirror' is only available to psions with two (appropriate) Talents & represents a synergy from using them together.

'Transferance' seems like it ought to be removed; it is just 'Meta-Psionics'.

Energy Kinesis: psychic manipulation of energy

Psychokinesis: psychic manipulation of matter

Telekinesis: psychic movement of matter (because there are too many other things you can do in psychokinesis so this reduces the skill count)

I think the 'Kinesis' Talents are going to be a mess. We have 'Luminokinesis' for light (including invisibility and lasers); 'Pyrokinesis' for heat and cold (including plasma and fusion-hot plasma); 'Energy Kinesis' for electricity (and radiation, and magnetism); and overlapping 'Telekinesis' and 'Psychokinesis' for objects -- which might be argued as a sort of 'Gravity Kinesis'.

Add onto this the concept that all of these 'X Kinesis' Talents are for 'moving X around' (kinesis refers to 'movement' in Greek); and powers to transform these things would be in separate Talents.

Remote Sensing: clairvoyance

Precognition: sensing events in time

Telepathy: mind to mind contact

What do you think? Keep, add to, remove, change?

'Precognition' Talent (and 'Object Reading' Talents) risk creating problems. I haven't seen any problems (that I recall) with any of the powers you have proposed for it, but it does seem to be tempting fate (or player munchkinism) to call it that.

 

[J. L. Brown]

For human Psions, 'Telepathy' is sort of a default Talent -- starting Characters (originally, and still sort of by default, just humans) who are rolling to acquire initial Talents may choose to take 'Telepathy' Talent as their first pick, and get it automatically if they do.

Through that lens, maybe we can interpret this group of psionic Talents and powers as 'Human psionics' (or 'Imperial psionics). That might justify expanding the 'Universal' Talent to include perhaps another one or two minor powers; or spliting 'Basic Telepathy' from 'Advanced Telepathy'. 'Mind Link' (cheap telepath-to-telepath communication) seems like an obvious and non-abusable choice for the 'Universal' / 'Basic Telepathy' Talent. Maybe a minor 'Awareness' power might also fit.

'Telepathy' is quite a large Talent, so that might be another reason to split it up.

So, as an unfinished / raw first pass, here is my proposal:

'Basic Telepathy':

'Basic Telepathy'
	Life Detection	Distant	4+	1D x10 Seconds	Instant		Pick a direction and distance and get number of animals and sophonts detected. If a known individual is detected, they are identified.	(CRB p230)
	Mind Link	Distant	4+	1D Seconds	Combined Effect Minutes, Minimum 1		Must be with another telepath, unrestricted mental communications.	(CRB p230)
	Mind Shield	Self	Automatic	Instant	Always active		May be dropped voluntarily. Opposed roll for trying to bypass	(CRB p231)
	Telempathy	Long	6+	1D x10 Seconds	Instant		Read or Implant emotions of target, may be non-sophont. Effect determines strength of emotion.	(CRB p230)

I would change 'Life Detection' power to ONLY detecting animals and general sophonts -- unless the psion ALSO has any ranks of 'Read Surface Thoughts', then they also get the 'Recognize Familiar Individual' function for free.

'Recognize Familiar Individual' is opposed by 'Mind Shield'; if the 'Mind Shield'ed psion wins, they are not detected.

I would change 'Mind Link' to the power to establish or join a Mind Link; the initial telepath spends one point to start the Mind Link, then every other telepath spends exactly one PSI point to join. An number of telepaths (beyond the establishing telepath) equal to half of the combined score in 'Mind Link' may be connected to the link; they must be within range of the establishing telepath to join the link. If the Establishing psion becomes unconscious or out of range of disconnects from the link for any reason, the whole link collapses.

If the establishing telepath has 'Read Surface Thoughts' or 'Send Thoughts' then they can spend extra power (and difficulty 6+) to change duration from 'minutes' to 'hours', and may allocate added 'effect' to extend the maximum range (one effect per range band) between participating telepaths or to extending the duration (one effect per minute or hour). An unlimited number of telepaths may be connected to the link; they must be within range of any participating telepath to join the link; the establishing telepath may prevent sending, receiving, or completely disconnect, any or all other telepaths at will as a free action. If the establishing telepath leaves the link for any reason, no telepath (other than the establishing telepath) may join or re-join the link, and it expires when the (already established) duration is reached. If the original establishing telepath re-joins before the link collapses, they treat it exactly like a freshly-established link.

I would change 'Mind Shield'; it provides a constant barrier against all attempts at telepathic contact or intrusion. If the psion has any ranks in 'Read Surface Thoughts', then 'Mind Shield' also alerts the user when an attempt to scan or detect them has been made, and may (opposed by the scanning psions 'Mind Shield') provide the identity of the scanning or contacting psion.

I would change 'Telempathy' to ONLY reading or sensing emotions -- unless the psion has any ranks in 'Send Thoughts', then they also get the 'Send Emotion' function for free.

'Advanced Telepathy'

'Advanced Telepathy'
	Assault	Short	14+	1D Seconds	Instant		Effect x3 damage, and target unconscious if unshielded.	(CRB p231)
	Mind Wipe	Short	12+	1D x10 Seconds	Instant		Remove D3 x Effect Minutes of memories.	(SA1 p49)
	Probe	Close	12+	1D Minutes	Effect x10 Minutes, Min 1 minute		Deep read target mind, effect determines clarity.	(CRB p231)
	Read Surface Thoughts	Long	8+	1D x10 Seconds	Effect Minutes		Read active thoughts of target mind, without detection if unshielded. Effect determines clarity.	(CRB p230)
	Send Thoughts	Distant	10+	1D x10 Seconds	Instant		Send a message to another mind.	(CRB p230)
	Suggestion	Short	12+	1D x10 Seconds	Instant		Implant a command, idea, suggestion, or thought in target mind. Effect determines efficacy.	(CRB p231)

I am not sure how to handle the racial Droyne powers; it seems like Droyne psions should get them as part of the 'Universal' package. I would tend to make even 'racial' powers learnable by everyone -- the correct race / culture gets a nice bonus to acquire it, while all others get an equal penalty. If we were following that pattern, then the racial Droyne powers would be in 'Advanced Telepathy' (and other similar non-'Universal' Talents) for non-Droyne psions, while Droyne get them (even untrained!) in the 'Universal' / 'Basic Telepathy' Talent.