Psionics

Psionics is the science of manipulating reality using only the power of your mind. To a trained psionicist, not only are mind and body one, but mind, body, someone else's body, or a table lamp are all one. Lifting a lamp off a table is no more difficult and makes no less sense than lifting one's own arm. While wizards channel the powers of the universe through them, psionicists realize that they are the universe.

Point Cost: 3

Skills Affected: Discipline, Scholarship

Effects
Psionics - you have learned to harness the power of your mind. See "using psionic powers" below for what that means.

Stay in your lane - Psionics covers a vast range of different specialities of study. A practitioner begins with knowledge of three of the fields. Access to further fields can be purchased via the PSIONIC REFINEMENT power. The six fields of psionics are:


 * Clairsentient Sciences: extending your senses beyond the limits of your body, and beyond the basic 5.
 * Psychokinetic Sciences: creating and manipulating physical matter
 * Psychometabolic Sciences: the ability to manipulate ones own (and to a limited extent, others) body
 * Psychocorporative Sciences: teleportation and extra-dimensional accesss
 * Telepathic Sciences: accessing the minds of others
 * Metapsionic Sciences: this field covers questions of consciousness itself, and the enhancement of other psionic abilities

Specialization - The practitioner begins having studied one science most extensively, granting a +1 to all actions in that science.

I don't believe, I know - Psionicists use scholarship to determine mental stress capabilities rather than conviction.

Using Psionic Powers
A difficulty is determined for the task to be performed. Typical modifiers on difficulty follow a log 10 scale. For example, a range of 1 meter adds 1 difficulty, a range 10 meters adds 2 difficulty, 100 m adds 3, and so on. Modifying ones body adds one difficulty for approximately 1 pound of matter modified. 2 for 10 pounds. 3 for 100 pounds, etc. Effectively increasing an ability score (for example, heightening senses to improve alertness) typically adds 2 difficulty per 1 point of improvement. Time effects different powers differently. For example, using clairsentience to attempt to get a glimpse of someone who held an object last week is significantly easier than attempting to use psychocorporation to hold open a pocket dimension for a week. Adjust the scale steps as seems appropriate to the situation.

The maximum difficulty that the psionicist may attempt is limited to his scholarship plus any specializations. Unlike the evoker, he cannot call on more power to assist him. However, he also doesn't face the threat of backlash or fallout.

The psionicist then rolls his discipline score and adds any specializations. He succeeds or fails on his own merits. Do or do not, there is no try. And the psionicst wouldn't have it any other way.

Under normal circumstances, when the psionicist has unlimited time to meditate and focus on the task at hand, performing a psionic action causes no stress. However, that is not always the case when conducting field research. Being rushed (attempting to perform a psionic action in less than 1 round per difficulty point) causes a point of mental stress.

The psionicist may maintain up to 1/2 his discipline (rounded down) powers without incurring stress. Maintaining additional powers causes two stress per power per round. In addition, it increases the difficulty of activating another power by 2 per additional power maintained.

Telepathy and Mental Combat
All telepathic powers first require establishing contact with the target. For a willing target, this is a simple skill roll, modified for the distance between the target and the psionicist. For an unwilling target, the target must first receive stress in excess of their greatest stress box before contact can be established. At this point, the target may be removed from the action (for example, pass out from mental exhaustion, or run away screaming "lalalalalala"), or choose to continue with the psionicist having access to their mind. Note that maintaining contact counts as maintaining a psionic power and must either count against the number of "free" powers that may be maintained, or induce mental stress.

A mental attack is carried out using discipline for both the attacker and defender. It is a use of a psionic power that has a base difficulty of the "weapon rating" that the psionicist wishes to use for the attack. For example, Sally, the psionicist wishes to contact Sam the Sailor's mind. Sam does not wish to be contacted. Sally has a discipline of 4, and a +2 speciality in telepathy. Sam is no mental heavyweight, having a discipline of 1 and only 2 mental stress boxes. Suspecting that Sam is soft, Sally selects a "weapon rating" of only 1. She reaches out with her mind and viciously attack's Sam's ego. Immediately a thousand voices fill his head, screaming that he is in no way up to this task. They sound like his own. Sally rolls -1 on the fate dice giving her 4 + 2 - 1 = 5, Sam rolls a respectable 2 giving him 1 + 2 = 3. Sally succeeds by 2, she chose a "weapon rating" of 1 for the attack, making the difficulty 1, and since she took 1 round to carry it out, she incurs no stress. Sam takes 1 (weapon rating) + 2 (excess successes) = 3 mental stress. If Sailor Sam were wise he would slither back to his ship screaming. Sailor Sam is not wise, and now Sally psionicist is in his head.

Make Yourself At Home
What can you do while inside someone's head? Any number of things! To start with the uninteresting, additional psychic attacks may be used to cause physical stress. But you can do so many more interesting things. Questions may be asked. The target may attempt to conceal the answer using deceit, but the roll is deceit vs. scholarship as the psionicist's knowledge informs him of where to look for the information. Cybernetic enhancements may be temporarily disabled (base difficulty 3 + the number of refresh the enhancement costs, note that keeping them disabled requires maintenance). Blocks may be established against senses or specific actions (discipline + telepathy speciality vs. discipline to set the strength of the block, alternately it may be used to cripple a sense/action, causing a negative penalty equal to half of the block strength rounded down). Specific memories may be erased or implanted. Specific skills may be reduced by one point per successful telepathic attack (loss is temporary but cumulative, for maintenance purposes it counts as one power per skill attacked, not per point lost).

Note that all telepathic powers used after contact is established may still be resisted by the target, using their discipline. They can't kick you out, but they don't have to be happy about it.

Any mental effect may be made permanent but this requires time on the order of hours, days, or even weeks depending on the intricacy of the effect required. Making a Renfield is simply a matter of persistently pruning away any problematic regions of the mind.

Psionic Refinement
Point Cost: 1

Choose one - either gain access to a new science (with an automatic +1 specialization), or gain 2 specializations in sciences already known. Specializations must follow the skill tree rule - i.e. you can't have a +2 specialization in any science without having an equal or greater number of +1 specializations in other sciences.