Psychic Abilities: 3e-style Psionics in 4e

dataweaver · 10-01-2016, 01:14 AM

OK; the following is a work in progress, so bear with me. In particular, I haven't playtested any of these numbers. As well, the following is somewhat stream of consciousness.

First, I'm going to assume that readers have access to the latest Dungeon Fantasy supplement, Incantations, as I will be borrowing some key mechanics from there. Familiarity with Classic GURPS Psionics will give a rough idea of what I'm after here, but isn't strictly necessary. Finally, 4e's Psionic Powers can be used to provide a catalogue of possible Psychic Abilities; but only as a source of inspiration: individual Abilities would need to be worked out for this meta-system individually.

The core idea is that you have a set of Psychic Strengths, represented by Advantages, which don't do anything in and of themselves for the most part; but each enables and empowers a collection of Psychic Abilities, each represented by a separate Skill.

A Psychic Strength has a base cost of 5–15 points per level, much like a Talent, although it is not a Talent. Instead, it is a source of “Psychic Points” which work in a manner similar to Incantations' Spell Points. Each level of Psychic Strength lets you charge its Abilities with ten Psychic Points whenever you use them.

A Psychic Ability is built the same way an Incantation is: choose one or more base Effects, add up their “energy” costs, and then add on more energy to cover additional modifiers. But instead of choosing a Path Skill and manifesting the energy cost as a skill penalty to that Path Skill, you choose a Psychic Ability skill and manifest the energy cost as the number of levels of an appropriate Psychic Strength advantage that you must have.

Also: instead of having a core skill, a set of broad “Path skills”, and individual abilities available in a manner reminiscent of Techniques, each Psychic Ability is purchased as a separate Skill. This offsets the fact that the activation time for a Psychic Ability is one second of concentration per Effect, rather than a period of time that starts with minutes and rapidly escalates from there.

That's the basic idea. I haven't had a chance to do any worked examples, for which I apologize. Also: while I've spoken in terms of “psychics” this whole time, there's nothing about this that restricts it to psychic phenomena. I could see it being used to produce a variation on standard magic that can compete with Sorcery without being so bound to the CP-accounting system that the Powers system uses. Or maybe, instead of Psychic Strengths, you have a set of Moral Pillars (Good and Evil, Order and Chaos, etc.) with skills representing how paragons of these ideals have learned how to utilize them.

Refplace · 10-01-2016, 01:45 AM

So kind of a replacement for the Realm magic system, though it sounds more narrow.

dataweaver · 10-01-2016, 06:12 AM

The only thing this has in common with Realm Magic is that it uses a mixture of Advantages and Skills. Psychic Strengths work nothing like Realms do, and Psychic Abilities are far more narrow than Realm Skills.

In a nutshell, psychic strength measures how much you can do in the form of a pool of abstract building blocks that you can configure in different ways to produce different results. Each psychic ability represents the skill of producing one possible configuration. Mind you, these abilities are still more flexible than the traditional spell: you can still customize them the same way you can customize incantation rituals.

( sent via cell phone dictation, I'll clean up the punctuation and capitalizations later.)

Refplace · 10-01-2016, 08:12 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by dataweaver

The only thing this has in common with Realm Magic is that it uses a mixture of Advantages and Skills. Psychic Strengths work nothing like Realms do, and Psychic Abilities are far more narrow than Realm Skills.

The initial description, but once you added the other options like Moral and Chaos it struck me as a possible Realm substitute.

10-01-2016, 01:14 AM	#1
dataweaver Join Date: Aug 2004	Psychic Abilities: 3e-style Psionics in 4e OK; the following is a work in progress, so bear with me. In particular, I haven't playtested any of these numbers. As well, the following is somewhat stream of consciousness. First, I'm going to assume that readers have access to the latest Dungeon Fantasy supplement, Incantations, as I will be borrowing some key mechanics from there. Familiarity with Classic GURPS Psionics will give a rough idea of what I'm after here, but isn't strictly necessary. Finally, 4e's Psionic Powers can be used to provide a catalogue of possible Psychic Abilities; but only as a source of inspiration: individual Abilities would need to be worked out for this meta-system individually. The core idea is that you have a set of Psychic Strengths, represented by Advantages, which don't do anything in and of themselves for the most part; but each enables and empowers a collection of Psychic Abilities, each represented by a separate Skill. A Psychic Strength has a base cost of 5–15 points per level, much like a Talent, although it is not a Talent. Instead, it is a source of “Psychic Points” which work in a manner similar to Incantations' Spell Points. Each level of Psychic Strength lets you charge its Abilities with ten Psychic Points whenever you use them. A Psychic Ability is built the same way an Incantation is: choose one or more base Effects, add up their “energy” costs, and then add on more energy to cover additional modifiers. But instead of choosing a Path Skill and manifesting the energy cost as a skill penalty to that Path Skill, you choose a Psychic Ability skill and manifest the energy cost as the number of levels of an appropriate Psychic Strength advantage that you must have. Also: instead of having a core skill, a set of broad “Path skills”, and individual abilities available in a manner reminiscent of Techniques, each Psychic Ability is purchased as a separate Skill. This offsets the fact that the activation time for a Psychic Ability is one second of concentration per Effect, rather than a period of time that starts with minutes and rapidly escalates from there. That's the basic idea. I haven't had a chance to do any worked examples, for which I apologize. Also: while I've spoken in terms of “psychics” this whole time, there's nothing about this that restricts it to psychic phenomena. I could see it being used to produce a variation on standard magic that can compete with Sorcery without being so bound to the CP-accounting system that the Powers system uses. Or maybe, instead of Psychic Strengths, you have a set of Moral Pillars (Good and Evil, Order and Chaos, etc.) with skills representing how paragons of these ideals have learned how to utilize them. __________________ Point balance is a myth.[1][2][3][4]

10-01-2016, 01:45 AM	#2
Refplace Join Date: Nov 2008 Location: Yukon, OK	Re: Psychic Abilities: 3e-style Psionics in 4e So kind of a replacement for the Realm magic system, though it sounds more narrow. __________________ My GURPS publications GURPS Powers: Totem and Nature Spirits; GURPS Template Toolkit 4: Spirits; Pyramid articles. Buying them lets us know you want more! My GURPS fan contribution and blog: REFPLace GURPS Landing Page My List of GURPS You Tube videos (plus a few other useful items) My GURPS Wiki entries

10-01-2016, 06:12 AM	#3
dataweaver Join Date: Aug 2004	Re: Psychic Abilities: 3e-style Psionics in 4e The only thing this has in common with Realm Magic is that it uses a mixture of Advantages and Skills. Psychic Strengths work nothing like Realms do, and Psychic Abilities are far more narrow than Realm Skills. In a nutshell, psychic strength measures how much you can do in the form of a pool of abstract building blocks that you can configure in different ways to produce different results. Each psychic ability represents the skill of producing one possible configuration. Mind you, these abilities are still more flexible than the traditional spell: you can still customize them the same way you can customize incantation rituals. ( sent via cell phone dictation, I'll clean up the punctuation and capitalizations later.) __________________ Point balance is a myth.[1][2][3][4]