Psionic range

[Henchman99942]

Where does the "Psionic Range Table" GURPS Psionic Powers, page 22 come into play with respect to "class of range penalties" GURPS Powers, page 108 ?

Which is the default range?

[Taneli]

Originally Posted by Henchman99942

Where does the "Psionic Range Table" GURPS Psionic Powers, page 22 come into play with respect to "class of range penalties" GURPS Powers, page 108 ?

Which is the default range?

It doesn't. The Psionic Range Table is used for the ready made abilities in the GURPS Psionic Powers, each ability is built in a way that incorporates the range details in the ability. You would have to refer to each ability that uses the table to see how it was built to have the range at the level.

Range penalty class that Powers 108 refers to the classes of range penalties that are built into GURPS system itself.

[ericthered]

Abilities in gurps have their range measured in one of two ways:


It the first way, they have a soft range cap. As a target gets farther away, more and more penalties accrue. The range is measured in terms of the penalty scheme. This is what the "Long Range" modifier in powers refers to. It changes how penalties are applied, thus increasing the range of the soft cap.



The second kind of range is a hard cap. The ability works fine out to a certain range, then stops working. This range is measured in yards. Or occasionally miles. The modifier "Increased Range" is used to extend this hard cap, or sometimes levels of area effect should be used instead. It simply multiplies the hard cap. Psionic powers has a table for looking these multiples up.



Some abilities have both a hard cap and a soft cap. For example, an innate attack has a soft cap of the standard range table to hit, but a hard cap of 100 yards.

[Anaraxes]

A number of base Advantages have their own idiosyncratic range specified in their text. (e.g., Clairsentience, 10 yards; Scanning Sense varies for every type -- Imaging Radar 200 yds, Radar 2000 yds; Illusion 2 yd radius; etc) Since there's no universal range, not all abilities fall neatly into one of those four classes for the Long-Range modifier in Powers.

If you look at the builds in Psi Powers in the "Statistics" blocks, it seems PK went to some trouble to try to regularize the one-offs by using Reduced Range to knock the range of the abilities based on those Advantages down to 1 yard, or 10, and then using the Psi Range Table to allow other power levels to increase or decrease that range (corresponding to buying off the Reduced Range to increase the range).

There is no universal default range for the rules as a whole. Probably the closest is the IA range, along with Speed/Range modifiers. Those four classes in Powers are basically the four main categories most abilities tended to fall into.

I'd count abilities using the Psi Range Table as the second category (Speed/Range table) for purposes needing that rule, so one level of Long-Range took you up to the Long-Range Modifiers table (miles), and two to "no modifiers". Though you'd probably be better off by deconstructing the ability to remove the range modifiers and rebuilding it with your desired range, rather than having contradictory range modifiers stacked on top of each other and fighting it out.