Quote:
Originally Posted by copeab
I think a simple mechanic allowing someone to attempt to resist psionic influence -- which CT lacks -- would have been a much cleaner solution to game balance.
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That misinterprets the game balance issue.
Traveller had no real mechanic for character advancement. Characters who are young and unseasoned suck, and will always suck for the duration of the campaign. Oh in theory if the campaign goes on for year after year of in-game time you can improve a rookie...slightly...but no faster than the grizzled 50 year old. Comparatively speaking the rookie will always suck provided that the veteran managed to get his anti-aging roll pills. That's the primary driver for a default campaign, the quest to get enough money to arrest the aging of the elderly protagonists.
Except...there's another driver. There's the bit where you wander from planet to planet looking for a psionics institute so the characters who aren't grizzled veterans can suddenly not suck because while they may be lacking actual skills they make up for that by being the only ones who have superpowers.
That's the game balance trade-off. The Psionics Institutes are rare and illegal in the original game's default setting because that gives firstly something to quest for, but more importantly it explains why the grizzled veterans don't have have just as much woo-woo as the kids because like the kids they were tested and trained in high school.