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.

 

[Tom B]

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 also like the way the droyne psionics are handled in that they are specific to that race and I presume could only be learnt by non-droyne under very special circumstances, if at all.

Putting the Zhodani powers into existing talents, would make those talents a lot more powerful, especially awareness and teleportation as what were effectively self-talents are now opened up to performing on other people.

Also there are two very different powers to share/transfer psi points between individuals in the system. One in the Droyne (boost) and one in Zhodani (psychic transfer), another place where similar powers could be rationalised.

 

[ProfGrizzlyJon]

I saw your edits to the original post.

• Boost is very different from Psychic Transfer, as Boost is basically an Aes Sedai Circle (or "Captain Planet"-style) that creates a temporary pool of psionic power from a group for a duration of at least ten minutes. Psychic Transfer is an immediate handoff of Psi power. However, they both still seem appropriate for a Telepathy subtalent.
• I didn't intend to state that those Zhodani sub-talents are available to ANY psion by being placed in the Talent category. What I meant was to remove the artificial and clunky Zhodani Talent, and simply allow Zhodani psions to use these only if they have the Broad talent. I could see the argument being made for making them Meta-Psi as well (i.e., you need both Telepathy and Awareness for the Awareness of Others subtalent, or both Clairvoyance and Teleportation for the Teleportation of Others subtalent).
• I also agree with your statement that psionics ought to be treated as "special knowledge", and not openly passed between psions of different races without an incredible amount of rationale, back-story and careful consideration by the Referee.

Spoiler: Spoiler- Mi-Go Box

One of my adventures involved a well-concealed experiment using a Droyne brain in a Size 2 Robot- effectively a reanimation medical chamber in a box- compelled by a remote initiated biological avatar control interface (RIBACI), pumped full of psi-drugs, overclocked using psi-amplifiers, trapped within a psionic-nullifying Gaasha cage, and forced to use the Transfer Talent at the whim of a truly mad scientist. Because the Transfer talent specifically says ",,, Droyne can teach another to perform any skill they know, up to their own level of skill...", I allowed it to bypass the normal Talent training roll with the Transfer skill check. This horrible device was never expected to be discovered by the Travellers, and merely served in the behind-the-scenes answer for how an Animal's rare psionic talent was transferred to a Human psion. Or in this case, several unlucky subjects who all eventually suffered mental health degradation as a result.

 

[Tom B]

I saw your edits to the original post.

• Boost is very different from Psychic Transfer, as Boost is basically an Aes Sedai Circle (or "Captain Planet"-style) that creates a temporary pool of psionic power from a group for a duration of at least ten minutes. Psychic Transfer is an immediate handoff of Psi power. However, they both still seem appropriate for a Telepathy subtalent.
• I didn't intend to state that those Zhodani sub-talents are available to ANY psion by being placed in the Talent category. What I meant was to remove the artificial and clunky Zhodani Talent, and simply allow Zhodani psions to use these only of they have the Broad talent. I could see the argument being made for making them Meta-Psi as well (i.e., you need both Telepathy and Awareness for the Awareness of Others subtalent, or both Clairvoyance and Teleportation for the Teleportation of Others subtalent).
• I also agree with your statement that psionics ought to be treated as "special knowledge", and not openly passed between psions of different races without an incredible amount of rationale, back-story and careful consideration by the Referee.

As for Boost & Psychic Transfer - yeh, if they are used in different ways then keep both.

My second paragraph, I now realise could be read the wrong way. I was trying to point out that it was a bad idea to just allow any individual to get awareness of others or teleprojection as part of an existing power without due consideration to the consequences. I think we're in agreement but just coming from different directions.

I'm playing a reasonably powerful psion character at the moment and I know how game unbalancing that can be. I don't want to have psionics dominate the game. Having too many powerful powers in one talent could unbalance the game. Whatever is done with the Zhodani psionic talent in the rewrite, care must be taken as to not unbalance things.

 

[ProfGrizzlyJon]

I was a huge Dune fan in the 80's and 90's. So yes, we had certain adventures with lots of quasi-Fremen and Bene Gesserit inspired Traveller characters, who were competing with Jedi wannabe's (although, in hindsight, they did act a lot like the Jedi in the prequels- thankfully, we didn't have any arc-field weapons back then).

 

[wintertraveller]

thankfully, we didn't have any arc-field weapons back then).

Are arc-field weapons available in the Third Imperium or is this viewed as an exotic technology? I don't recall seeing this technology in published adventures but may have missed it. Thank you

 

[ProfGrizzlyJon]

Are arc-field weapons available in the Third Imperium or is this viewed as an exotic technology? I don't recall seeing this technology in published adventures but may have missed it. Thank you

They are listed in various ways in the Central Supply Catalogue

 

[Sigtrygg]

Central Supply Catalogue contains equipment that doesn't exist in the charted space setting.

Sadly Mongoose does a very poor job of saying what is and what is not allowed.

 

[mavikfelna]

My Aslan steward in Singularity is very much looking forward to getting her ARC dewclaw augment when they get to Capital. So they may not be in any modules specifically, they are getting used.

 

[Terry Mixon]

My Aslan steward in Singularity is very much looking forward to getting her ARC dewclaw augment when they get to Capital. So they may not be in any modules specifically, they are getting used.

Be careful scratching random itches. That's how accidents happen.

 

[Condottiere]

I would think contact lenses, would be an issue.

 

[Jet_Black]

Central Supply Catalogue contains equipment that doesn't exist in the charted space setting.

Sadly Mongoose does a very poor job of saying what is and what is not allowed.

Why should they? I like to decide stuff like that for myself!

There are, as mentioned above, arc-field dewclaws for Aslan, and the Hiver security robot from the Robot Handbook is also equipped with arc-field blades.

 

[MongooseMatt]

Why should they? I like to decide stuff like that for myself!

That is a big part of it.

Charted Space is very large, and there are enough people about that someone will have at least tried any random item from the CSC - so we are extremely reluctant to say that anything is never appearing in Charted Space, even if we have no intention of said item ever appearing in an official adventure.

 

[Vormaerin]

They should because *you* can ignore that for yourself, but it establishes a baseline for what is and isn't expected.

If no one knows whether or not every piece of machinery is a robot or arc field weapons are commonplace, then you have no consistency in the products.

Take ion weapons. They exist primarily to disable ships without seriously damaging them. Yet quite a few adventures published comment that it is difficult to actually disable ships. Most recently, I think there was something to that effect in Hellworld Heists. But if ion weapons are commonplace, that's just not true. The fact is, Charted Space is designed assuming such weapons are for other settings.

Can you put them in your game? Of course. But you shouldn't expect that any published 3I ships have them.

 

[Vormaerin]

That is a big part of it.

Charted Space is very large, and there are enough people about that someone will have at least tried any random item from the CSC - so we are extremely reluctant to say that anything is never appearing in Charted Space, even if we have no intention of said item ever appearing in an official adventure.

So, instead, you have constant discussions about why your product makes garbage versions of whatever because it doesn't solve the problem with this or that from the CSC that was never expected to be part of Charted Space.

Any referee can ignore guidance for their own campaign. But if they come to charted space with the rules and nothing giving them any guidance to accept or ignore and all their PCs are tricked out in gear that no published ship or NPC ever has, it's gonna be like "wtf?".