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08-05-2011, 05:25 AM | #1 |
Join Date: Jun 2008
Location: Provo, UT
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Psionic Powers: Awareness
So I have a player with a lot of of the Awareness power from Psionic Powers and tonight a few questions came up about it.
From reading the rules on the power we couldn't agree on exactly how detailed things "seen" with awareness were. I have been picturing the power sort of like radar or some high tech 3D imaging system. You know what there, but its not the same as actually seeing something. The question came up when a pack of dogs were shadowing the party while they traveled through the forest. Should the player been able to tell that these weren't normal dogs by sensing them with awareness? (They were Cu Sith or Faerie dogs, with green spots and glowing green eyes) Should the players have been able to tell that they had green spots? Can you make out colors with awareness? If an assassin took a shot at a player from a rooftop with a crossbow and was detected and examined with Awareness could the player later on identify that assassin in a lineup or if he saw him on the street? Could he make out that the assassin had a crossbow? If the Assassin's **** said Dave on it would awareness pick that up? Could you read a book with awareness? How about Braille? Would camouflage work vs. Awareness? |
08-05-2011, 07:30 AM | #2 | |
Join Date: Aug 2004
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Re: Psionic Powers: Awareness
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So, no ability to distinguish colors, nor read a normal book, but yes to braille, and Id allow a really smashing sense roll to make out the indentations on the paper to read a normal book if it had been hand written or impact printed, by a printing press, say, rather than a deskjet or laser printer. Yes to identifying the assassin in a line up (provided you could perceive him with Awareness!), yes to noticing the crossbow. You got filtered on what ever has "Dave" on it, but it would depend on if the Dave was carved vs painted, etc. Camouflage COULD work vs Awareness, if the person using the skill knew they would need to break up their profile to Awareness as well as normal vision. Id assess a skill penalty, -4 seems about right. Make it a technique to buy it off. Someone in a Ghilie suit might not immediately look like a person to Awareness, but they would probably stand out from the background all the same unless they took extra care. |
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08-05-2011, 11:20 AM | #3 | |
Join Date: Jun 2008
Location: Provo, UT
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Re: Psionic Powers: Awareness
Thanks.
I completely missed Scanning Sense on pg. 17. I was trying to find out where "Extra-Sensory Awareness" came from and couldn't find it. I couldn't find the advantage that Awareness was based off of. I kept thinking it was called ESP and was looking for that and forgot that in 4e it's been turned into Scanning Sense. Scanning Sense on pg. 81 of characters says specifically that it: Quote:
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02-22-2016, 12:03 AM | #4 |
Join Date: Oct 2015
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Re: Psionic Powers: Awareness
By my reading, it's a passive power that gives you an awareness of position but not particulars. You can tell "there are two people three meters from me" but would need modifiers (Analyzing, +100% in 4E according to Powers, p47) in order to get detail like you could at a glance with normal eyes in normal lighting conditions. It can be turned off so it can't be detected, but if you want it to have a duration (ie "activates for 5 minutes at a time") you'd need to apply a Limitation to it.
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02-22-2016, 11:32 AM | #5 | |
Night Watchman
Join Date: Oct 2010
Location: Cambridge, UK
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Re: Psionic Powers: Awareness
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Awareness in 3e was an advantage (15 points or 35 points) that let you detect "things that are not of the physical world, like the presence of spirits or magic." The name came from the old GURPS Mage: the Ascension and it's based on an ability from the White Wolf game Mage: the Ascension. The ability to do that is one of the things you can buy with the Detect advantage in 4e. Preserving the details of the M:tA adaptation was not a priority for 4e, since the relationship between SJG and White Wolf had broken down, and the name got re-used for an ability based on the 4e Scanning Sense advantage in Psionic Powers, five years after 4e was published. |
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02-22-2016, 10:59 AM | #6 | ||||
Join Date: Nov 2013
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Re: Psionic Powers: Awareness
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Can't see color or green spots. Quote:
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He can discern he has a ranged weapon of sorts, probably a crossbow by the shape of it. Unless the Dave was deeply etched on the crossbow (and even then I'd require a heavy penalty roll to discern such minor detail) he cannot discern if its colored or painted. Quote:
I'd say it's possible, but would require penalized rolls or long tasks to do so. It depends on the camo. Painted doesn't work because you're relying on contour for your waves to hit and get back to you, so image means nothing. Leaves and whatnot might make it more difficult to be perceived but still noticeable. Gotta remember most of camo, normally, is due to tricks to our eyes and vision capabilities and also how our brain identify colors, shapes and alike. |
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02-22-2016, 12:01 PM | #7 | ||||
Join Date: Sep 2007
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Re: Psionic Powers: Awareness
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That includes facial structures. This isn't a Scanning Sense with low resolution, like Radar. Identification is going to be somewhat hampered by the lack of color. But would you rule that a color-blind person is unable to recognize an individual? Take a a look at the left-hand side of this MRI image, which not only loses color but eyebrows and other hair. Impossible to recognize? I wouldn't think so, though I would assess a penalty for missing detail. (Notice the right-hand side has been literally "de-faced"; the image is a demo of an algorithm that exists precisely to render MRI images unrecognizable, which wouldn't be necessary if the lack of color and detail were sufficient to prevent recognition on their own.) Quote:
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02-22-2016, 03:32 PM | #8 |
Join Date: Apr 2005
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Re: Psionic Powers: Awareness
On a related point, look up Commonwealth v. Coutu, a 2015 Mass Supreme Court decision in scholar.google. Witness testified that she made an identification of the culprit by her ESP. Court says:
the gravamen of the defendant's argument is that it was error to permit the victim, by employment of her "sixth sense" or through extra sensory perception (ESP), to recognize the defendant as her attacker. We agree. "In general, a witness bases any identification [she] makes on [her] perception through the use of [her] senses. Usually the witness identifies an offender by the sense of sight — but this is not necessarily so, and [she] may use other senses." Commonwealth v. Franklin, 465 Mass. 895, 910 n.24 (2013) (quotation omitted). However, when our case law speaks of "other senses," it was meant to limit those available for identification to the five found in the natural world. Indeed, by definition, ESP or a "sixth sense," is beyond the corporeal or numerical senses of convention. The evidence of the victim's supernatural recognition of the defendant as her attacker should not have been permitted. Court then concludes the error was harmless based on other evidence in the case. |
02-22-2016, 05:13 PM | #9 | |
Join Date: Sep 2007
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Re: Psionic Powers: Awareness
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The 4e Update lists Awareness (from Mage) converting to Detect (Supernatural phenomena and beings), with the 35-point version adding Detect (Auras). Update doesn't list any 3e ESP sub-power called "Awareness". (Just Clairaudience, Clairvoyance, Precognition, Psychometry.) Posters here have suggested 4e ESP powers as a possible base for building an "Awareness" ability, since the OP mentions Awareness from Psionic Powers. That's a 4e book, so conversion isn't necessary, and it also shouldn't be a point of confusion for 3e, since the book didn't exist then. The 4e Psi Powers "Awareness" is built on Extra-Sensory Awareness defined therein as a type of Scanning Sense, also mentioned upthread. I'm not sure how something called "Spirit Form" could be confused with something called "Awareness". Not listed in 4e Update. Without knowing the description of the ability, it seems most likely that it's an Alternate Form. In any event, Update explicitly points out that names might have changed. Check the effects of the power, and use that to choose the new name, rather than get hung up on the name itself. Last edited by Anaraxes; 02-22-2016 at 05:19 PM. |
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