Zhodani Psionics

[MasterGwydion]

Zhodani! We can MAKE you mentally healthy! lolz

 

[MongooseBella]

Not to get too deep but you're all still thinking like Solomani/Vilani. To the Zhodani, being mentally cared for by the government is not only common, but for it not to be available would be considered a failure on the government's part.

The Tavrchedl' aren't secret police to the Zho, they're professionals there to help. It must be terrifying to be a Zho and experience negative thoughts for the first time, and the Tavrchedl' are there to help, much like we would phone 999/111/911/whatever.

 

[WHULorigan]

Not to get too deep but you're all still thinking like Solomani/Vilani. To the Zhodani, being mentally cared for by the government is not only common, but for it not to be available would be considered a failure on the government's part.

The Tavrchedl' aren't secret police to the Zho, they're professionals there to help. It must be terrifying to be a Zho and experience negative thoughts for the first time, and the Tavrchedl' are there to help, much like we would phone 999/111/911/whatever.

Whereas to us, "I am from the government, and I am here to help . . . " is just as terrifying a thought and statement . . .

 

[Condottiere]

Zhodani! We can MAKE you mentally healthy! lolz

Substitute WILL.

 

[CordwainerFish]

thinking like Solomani

To paraphrase Lazarus Long: Many people would rather die than imagine what it would be like to think differently. Some do.

 

[ProfGrizzlyJon]

This is a great example of a critical review.
I went through a period where the campaign centered on Second Contact with a psionic and biotech focused race. We spent about a year running games involving blockade running, counter imperialism, espionage and the like.

This resulted in more than a few questions about how Psions learn the subtalents (and the utility of the Droyne Telepathy subtalent Transfer and the creation of a psion similar to the Sybils of the novel Snow Queen by Joan D. Vinge)

Regarding the Zhodani write up in AoCS Vol 1, I prefer the way the Droyne are handled in AoCS Vol 2. IMTU, we simply treated the Zhodani talent as lacking subheadings,

• Telepathy – Psychic Transfer, Blocking
• Awareness – Awareness of Others; Empathic Healing; Mimic;
• Teleportation – Teleprojection
• Machine Symbiosis (Rare DM -2 to learn) – Interrogate; Control; Interact

I allowed psions to treat Machine Symbiosis as Meta-Psi talent (requires both Telepathy and Telekinesis to replicate the effects of the Talent), while also allowing some psions to simply learn those skills only.

This approach integrated well with the later introduction of Counter-Psionics, Botanical Symbiosis and Changeling in 2021 with Core Adventure 3- Errant Lightning. That is where the Rare (-2 DM to learn) originated.

Any non-Zhodani attempting these subtalents receives a -3 DM (as if untrained), until they are mentored in the skill by another psion or they successfully self-train.

I'm starting this thread on the basis that Aliens of Charted Space 1 is going to be re-examined.

There are several things I think are problems with the Zhodani psionic talent. I'm listing these below and what I think can be done to fix them.

Problems:​

1) The talent is virtually impossible to learn as it is -3 and if learning after attempted after the five main talents then it is at least -8.

2) It contains a variety of different powers that have no relationship to each other.

3) Some of the individual powers have specific issues.

What I would do:​

Split it into at least four different talents as specified below.

a) Take out the powers Control, Interact and Interrogate and put them in a new talent, add in a few more related powers.

b) Create a new telepathy talent, it could be called Advanced Telepathy or Zhodani Telepathy, put in the powers Blocking, Mimic and Psychic Transfer. You can only learn this talent if you already know telepathy. Not sure of the learning difficulty but it should be around zero. Other telepathic powers should be added in to flesh it out.

c) Teleprojection. This should be put in its own talent that can only be learnt once you know teleportation. At the moment it is an easy-kill power, far easier to use this to kill someone than any other powers.

Currently the range is the same as teleport which is Personal - which makes no sense. The range should be Short or Touch.

Also, it should either only be possible to use it on willing individuals or the unwilling get the opportunity to resist.

d) A new talent that can only be learnt if the psion knows Awareness. This would include Awareness of Others and Empathic Healing. Both these powers can heal other people though their effects are different. Therefore I would rationalise them.

Personally, I like the idea of a talent that would allow the psion to transfer damage, diseases etc, onto themself and then heal them using Awareness. Perhaps each of these could be the basis of new talents.

There is also an argument for Psychic Transfer not being a telepathic power but be part of the new Awareness ones. Perhaps it could be in more than one talent.

Also​

I'd also revisit every power to make sure that there are no unresolved questions. For instance, there is no stat block for mimic, does that mean it's always on and the cost is zero?

When are these new talents available? For non-Zhodani, only in-game when a specific individual that is willing to teach them is met. For Zhodani, at character creation? Not sure.

These talents should be hard to learn but not impossible.

Edit
Also, I'd say you can't have any more ranks in a more advanced talent than in the basic one. For instance someone has 1 rank of each of teleportation and teleprojection. They want to increase teleprojection to 2, they have to increase teleportation first.