Future Imperfect chapter 8
WORK IN PROGRESS!
Contents
Psionics
The Operative: "Key members of Parliament." Key. The minds behind every military, diplomatic and covert operation in the galaxy, and you put them in a room with a psychic.
Dr. Mathias: Look... even if River Tam did, by any chance, read the minds of any of the visiting Parliament members here, whatever government secrets she may have read she may not even remember any them, for they are all probably buried under layers of psychosis...
The Operative: Secrets are not my concern. Keeping them is.
--Serenity
Psionics (sy-ON-iks), or Psi, is the pseudo-mystical science of the mind and the underlying energies of the universe. When one is attuned to these energies, and their mind has been trained, a person may sense their influence just as we can see when we open our eyes; he can manipulate them by projecting these energies from his own mind, just as we can turn a knob with our fingers. Psionics is the manipulation of the universe by normally unseen forces. It is easy for the unschooled to pass if off as magic or sleight of hand, or for information gained from telepathy or psychometry to be discounted, but the psionicist knows the truth. Because of the fear, hatred and mysticism within many cultures that surrounds psionics, its practitioners are known by many epithets: Warlocks, witches, Psykers, etc. The more neutral term we shall use in this text is Psion or Adept. This struggle against ignorance will likely play a role in the life of any adept. The story often lies in how they deal with it.
Of course for some, ignorance is bliss, and many adepts couldn’t agree more. Dependent on the views of the local culture or government, an adept may be seen as a witch, heretic or enemy of the state; some adepts may choose to wear their mundane lives like a cowl and cape, always keeping the secret of the power beneath from those around them at all cost. To do otherwise might risk persecution or worse, and the chains will ever be stronger and tighter on those who may have the means to break them…
Psionic Ability
Chosen during character creation, there are 5 ranks of psi ability. These are weak, normal, null, latent and adept.
- Weak—Sentient beings with psionically weak minds are like an open book to a psion. While a psion may sometimes struggle to focus energies to activate a talent, a weak mind acts like a beacon, allowing talents targeted against these people to trigger with ease. While it gives the character no direct disadvantage, per se, any psion directly targeting a psi-weak character will gain a +1 bonus to the activation roll of his talents. Luckily for the psi-weak, psions are a rare breed. Unless they are not. These characters will never have access to psionic abilities.
- Normal— This is just what it sounds like—nothing. The character is no more or less susceptible to many psi abilities than the average sentient being. These characters will never have access to psionic abilities.
- Null—Psionic nulls are those rare people whose minds are resistant to psychic meddling. Some aspect of their biology or sometimes arduous mental conditioning will proof their minds from being read, having thoughts or feelings implanted, or even make them resistant to mental attacks. When making resistance checks against psi abilities, these characters earn significant bonuses, equivalent to starting their check as though they had rolled the max for the resistance check. They will also be resistant to any kind of psionic aid one can render, but it’s the price they pay. Psionic nulls can never use psionic abilities.
- Latent—A Hero with latent psionic talents has the ability to use psionic abilities. Maybe they know of their gift, maybe they do not. They have likely suspected things have been different for them their whole lives compared to the experiences they have heard from those around them. Latent psions can use experience gained to purchase psi abilities. If the Master chooses, latent psions may allocate skill points to psi foci and talents during character creation, but the character will not have the ability to use them until his “awakening.” Once they have spent enough experience, adventured enough or whatever method the Master and player(s) choose to resolve the issue, opportunity will come knocking, and they may have the opportunity to find a PK crystal (see below). This is the field from which the vast majority of psions in the wild will likely hail; whether the majority of Heroes hail from this group is up to the tastes of the players in your group!.
- Adept—A psion is one who can wield psi abilities. An Adept, however, is a particularly talented type of psion. An adept is not an adversary to be taken lightly. These individuals can wield great natural talent, and often discovered their abilities—or were discovered—years ago, giving them plenty of time to train and hone their talents. Adepts can use skill points to purchase psionic foci and talents during character creation. Adepts have already been awakened, and begin the story with a PK crystal and the ability to use their talents out of the gate.
Psionic Foci
There are four fields of Psionic focus. Each one harnesses specific energies, and for each Focus, there are two that are considered "adjacent" and one that is considered in opposition" to A latent or adept must choose a primary focus during character creation (for adepts) or during their awakening (for latents). A psion will most easily learn talents that fall within their focus. Talents from adjacent foci may be learned, as well, but these require more training to achieve similar power levels. Talents from an opposing focus will be the most difficult to learn as the energies used to harness them are so fundamentally different than what the psion is used to dealing with. It is not impossible to learn opposing talents, but the investment may not be worth the end results. The foci are as follows:
- Telepathy--This is the art of detecting and influencing the minds of other sentients. Telepathy is adjacent to Clairvoyance and Discipline. It is in opposition to Telekinesis.
- Clairvoyance--This focus deals with attuning oneself to the energies of the universe around them, allowing them to perceive events that no normal sentient can. Clairvoyance is adjacent to Telepathy and Telekinesis. It is in opposition to Discipline.
- Telekinesis--Students of this focus attune themselves to matter and energy. They can manipulate and move objects and create various types of disrupting fields. Telekinesis is adjacent to Clairvoyance and Discipline. It is in opposition to Telepathy.
- Disipline--This field of psionic study focuses on pushing the practitioner beyond normal limits by conditioning his mind and body. With enough knowledge of the self and the energies of various organic systems, students of this art can also manipulate living tissues, mending them to heal wounds and disease, or breaking them down to inflict grievous wounds. Discipline is adjacent to Telepathy and Telekinesis. As the art of the self, it is in opposition to Clairvoyance, the art of the other.
Learning Psionic Talents
Psionic characters have access to special abilities called talents. In other genres these may be referred to as "spells" or "powers." Learning these talents can involve quite an investment in time, mental energy, study and practice. In much the same way that a non-psion would hone mundane skills, so too does an adept cultivate and hone various talents. As such, acquiring psionic talents uses a Hero's precious skill points (during character creation) or experience points if developing talents during the course of a campaign. Psions who are wholly dedicated to psionic studies may find themselves lacking when it comes to more worldly skills, but they will have access to abilities that no amount of worldly study and training will allow.
Psionic talents are acquired using "psi points." During character creation, each skill point can be exchanged for 3 psi points to assign talents. During game play, 1 experience point can be exchanged for 3 psi points to learn new talents or improve existing ones.
Talents by Focus
Each of the four foci will focus on various aspects. Some foci overlap others to some degree. More details will be given later, but here is a brief overview of the more common general talents broken down by focus. This is not an exhaustive list, but it does cover a lot of bases. If you would like to create a custom ability not listed here, the examples and guidelines later in the chapter should aid the process. Work out the details with the Master and go to town.
- Telepathy
- Mental attacks (stun, disorient, pain)
- Mind control (terrify, dominate, confuse)
- Mental projections (Illusions, words, ideas, images)
- Mind reading
- Mental-based detection (detect/locate living, sentient beings)
- Communication (emotional and verbal telepathy)
- Mind shield
- Social combat defenses (detect lie, detect aura, danger sense)
- Telekinesis
- TK attacks (melee, ranged, disorient, hold, slow, EMP, ARPO)
- Pyro/Cryokinesis (temperature manipulation)
- Physical/energy/radiation defenses
- Levitation
- Flight
- Remote skill use
- Remote speaking (audio "illusion" or voice/sound projection)
- Identify/exploit material weaknesses
- Detect motion
- Power generation
- Physics hax (such as simulating or nullifying gravity or atmospheric pressure)
- Clairvoyance
- Sense/locate danger
- Enhanced senses
- Extra-Sensory Perception (ESP) such as detect lifeforms, Psi activity, auras, etc.
- Defense against some telepathic abilities
- Mind shield
- Clairaudience
- Remote viewing
- Direction sense/tracking/pathfinding
- Psychometry
- Mental projection
- Retrocognition
- Astral projection
- Discipline
- Boost traits/derived attributes
- Increase combat initiative/number of actions
- Healing (injuries, poison, crippling wounds, regeneration, revivification)
- Mental attack (pain/injury)
- Reduce biological requirements (food/water, sleep, breathing)
- Temporary skill edges
Designer's Note: This portion of the manual is not intended to be a "Tome of Spells," and we hope that Psionic talents within your game can be creatively applied to cover a wide range of uses and circumstances, rather than listing hundreds of different talents, many of which do almost exactly the same thing as several other talents except for certain variables. Even in sci-fi films and literature that include some form of psionics (whatever name it takes), the abilities shown to the audience often fall into a surprisingly narrow range of categories. That being said, many of the talents listed here are inspired from popular films and literature. Others are considered "traditional" mental abilities, the pop-culture perception of the CIA's MKUltra research. Some abilities listed here are also the bread and butter of the "Psychic Medium" set, however we have intentionally omitted any overtly ghost-y or religious/supernatural material. If that's up your alley, feel free to include it yourself. For the purposes of this set of rules, we shall attempt to endorse more mainstream sci-fi faire.
The R/A/T/E/D System
The cost and capabilities of any particular talent are determined by the levels assigned to several categories:
- Range
- Area of effect
- Targets
- Effect strength
- Duration
Each category starts at 1 for a basic talent, and generally goes up to 4. For most talents, these categories will be fairly consistent; two different attacks that produce different results (say, a painful mental blast and a telekinetic bullet attack) will have the same effective range if assigned a 2 in the R category. Some talents may use the various categories to reflect different capabilities; for illusions or enhanced senses, the T category (# of targets) may refer to how many senses are affected (how realistic an illusion is or how immersive a clairvoyant talent is). For telekinetic flight, Range may determine how far one can travel in one combat round. Some talents may have one or more categories that are not used, or essentially will not benefit by any value greater than 1. Categories that are unused or default to a value of 1 are considered to have a value of zero. For example, telekinetic flight only works on the psion using the talent, so there is no need to increase the A category beyond 1 (self), so under A, flight would always have a value of zero. Flight does use the R category, so if you only applied a value of 1 to it, it would remain at 1. This distinction is made for calculating the psi point cost for talents (explained below).
- Range
| Value | Effect |
| 1 | Touch |
| 2 | Pistol (10m) |
| 3 | Rifle (25m) |
| 4 | Heavy Weapon (100m) |
- Area of Effect
| Value | Effect |
| 1 | Self |
| 2 | Other |
| 3 | Speaking distance/Grenade (5m radius) |
| 4 | Shouting distance/Bomb (50m radius) |
- Targets
| Value | Effect |
| 1 | Single target |
| 2 | Burst 3 |
| 3 | Burst 5 |
| 4 | Burst 10 |
- Effect Strength
| Value | Effect |
| 1 | Essence trait @ base training value (XdY) |
| 2 | Essence +1 row |
| 3 | Essence +2 rows |
| 4 | Essence +3 rows |
- Duration
| Value | Effect A | Effect B |
| 1 | 1 action/check/test | 1 extended action |
| 2 | Actions x Essence Training | Minutes x Essence Trait Value |
| 3 | Actions x Essence Trait Value | 10 minutes x Essence Trait Value |
| 4 | Hours x Essence Trait Value | Indefinite (active until dropped/neutralized) |
The values listed above are general guidelines, and may not fit for every talent. Where necessary, variations will be noted. With Master approval, some categories for some talents may exceed 4. For example, for Range, a value of 5 might be "Line of sight" (to imply that the talent works as far as the Psion can see and that there are no range penalties). A range of 6 might be something outlandish, such as the ability to use a talent regardless of the range, so long as the Psion can see the target. For example, being able to choke out an admiral that has displeased you just by seeing him on a video monitor, even though he is on an entirely different ship... R/A/T/E/D values should be approved by the Master, not just to determine the new effect, but to ensure that the proposed talent will not disrupt game balance.
Mastering powerful talents can be exceedingly difficult (i.e., expensive!). One way of increasing the power of your talents is to enhance them with the power of other talents. Each psionic focus is geared toward enhancing specific aspects of various talents:
| Category | Focus |
| R | Clairvoyance |
| A | Telekinesis |
| T | Telepathy |
| E | Special* |
| D | Discipline |
- Effect can only be boosted if one is a psionic adept (rank 5 Psi purchased during character creation).
Certain basic talents within each focus will be identified as "enhancing" talents, and they can be linked to other talents to boost one of its R/A/T/E/D categories by one level, if the enhancing talent is properly activated. This can be a cost-effective method to eke a bit more mileage out of a lesser talent, but it is not without its drawbacks: In use, enhanced talents are more likely to fail, they will cost more to activate, and they are slightly more costly to purchase/learn (though not nearly as costly as permanently boosting a R/A/T/E/D value for an already-potent talent can be). The sections on cost calculation and use will explain more about enhancing talents.
Calculating Talent Cost
To determine the cost of a talent, multiply all of the non-zero R/A/T/E/D values and add any modifiers. This is the total cost in Psi points. The cost of powerful talents can easily skyrocket, so be mindful of your budget!
| Modifier | Psi Point Cost |
| Secondary trait activation | +1 |
| Each R/A/T/E/D value of 0 | +3 |
| Each enhanced R/A/T/E/D value | +2 |
| Linked to skill (cause) | +1 |
| Linked to skill (effect) | +1 |
| Linked to skill (cause and effect) | +3 |
