Question on Life Detection (Psionics)

[SirGamingScotsman]

Psionics has just recently become a part of my game and I ran into an issue regarding the Life Detection power last night. The party was aware that they were being followed/spied on, and two of the party were repairing damage to their ship as the others were at a hotel. The two party members at the ship were kidnapped and taken somewhere within the city. When the rest of the party hadn't heard from them they went to the ship to see if anything was wrong. Knowing that they had been getting spied on they were cautious and the character with Psionics used the Life Detection power to see who/how many people were in their ship.

They passed and I was able to tell them that there were 3 humans on the ship, there should have been one human and one vargr, and that the character didn't know who they were as the power describes that if they know the people they detect then they know that it's them.

The issue was that the power can be used at Distant range, and for Psionics this is between 501m and 5km. What we were trying to solve is that when using Life Detection is the character aware of every life form up to 5km away or do they have to 'target' a specific area to detect any lifeforms. The way the power is written is a little vague and doesn't address this specifically but seems to read that the character can detect life up to the maximum distance and has a vague idea of where those life forms are. The main issue I have as GM is that there are thousands of life forms, at least, within that 5km and I don't know if the character could detect their friends within all those other people.

If they are able to detect every life form up to 5km away then do they know, roughly, where their friends are as the description states they would know them through the power. The kidnapped characters are within the 5km range, and depending on if the Psionic can tell where they are or not will determine what they do next. They might just try to track down their friends rather than risking a confrontation on their ship.

I couldn't find any information regarding this on the forum or elsewhere online.

Hoping someone can clarify this for me, thanks.

 

[Garran]

Per the description, they do have a general idea of the location of their friends. It's not pinpoint, though, so in the case of a crowded city it would probably be necessary to 'ping' again when they're close(r) to that building/area/etc to get the specific spot. Not a big deal unless they've blown all their PSI in the meantime, but Life Sense is really, really useful for this sort of detective (detection) work.

 

[SirGamingScotsman]

Per the description, they do have a general idea of the location of their friends. It's not pinpoint, though, so in the case of a crowded city it would probably be necessary to 'ping' again when they're close(r) to that building/area/etc to get the specific spot. Not a big deal unless they've blown all their PSI in the meantime, but Life Sense is really, really useful for this sort of detective (detection) work.

Thanks, that's the way I was going to go, I just wasn't sure if I had missed or misunderstood something. The character also has Clairvoyance so would be using that as well to try and give the most information to the group before they put any plan into action. The player is new to Psionics and this is the first time he's used any of his powers in a detailed way to try and solve a problem outside of combat.

 

[Garran]

That's totally valid. Psionics in Traveller is a great noncombat toolkit - much more so than it is a direct in-combat one - unless Awareness is your only talent, and even that has plenty of utility.

 

[ChalkLine]

Just to reboot this thread, I just had Life Detection totally wreck a scenario where the PCs were crawling through a deep-atmosphere gas mining rig in a sub-Jovian planet (the old Sky Rig from White Dwarf).

A player just pings this thing off, a skill with a puny cost and a 5km range, and suddenly everything's pretty obvious, I won't say anything more in case some digs up the scenario to play it (I recommend it!)

Personally I think this power is far too cheap and is far too accurate with only a 4+ task rating. Its level of confidence makes it almost impossible to beat and forces the GM to do all sorts of unfair cloaking methods of minds through natural or artificial methods that make it a bad game mechanic.

 

[Reynard]

This is why the Imperium hates psions and will go to the ends of the Earth to find and 'punish' them. Being a psion in the OTU is not a blessing. If you are not using OTU, even more measures will be used to protect against and prosecute abusers of such powerful abilities.

Also remember the Imperium PUBLICLY says they don't like psionics. What you don't hear is they use them on their side to oppose and hunt the rogues. Don't get cocky.

 

[Garran]

To some degree this is an issue with typical Traveller adventure design, and some of the the older ones are particularly bad offenders. They're often written to expect/demand that the PCs be limited in various ways or deal with a situation in a specific fashion, even if that makes no sense with the PCs in question and/or requires blatant railroading. In short, they're fragile; psionic powers are by no means the only thing that can break them.

In short, don't expect them to work as-is unless you have an awfully generic set of PCs.


So whether it's psi, or tech, or rank/influence, or whatever else, you do need to know what they can do, but rather than trying to tie the story into knots to prevent any of those things from working, apply the "Don't negate: embrace." principle. They have these things, they WILL use them to their advantage, and the story can be (re)written around that fact, and even expect those things to be used as part of moving it forward. Yes, this means some types of challenges won't work, but that's because those things aren't challenges to this group of characters; it's a feature, not a bug.