Help With Designing Advantage: Nearly-Supernatural Insight into Others

[Trainik]

So, one of my players has the ability (established via backstory), to look at people and simply know things about them ("Nearly-Supernatural Insight into Others"). For example, he looked at a woman and knew she was pregnant even before she did. He can also just know someone is lying, or that someone is a good carpenter, or will make a strong leader. I say "Nearly-Supernatural" because I won't allow it to tell him anything that Sherlock Holmes on his best day ever couldn't figure out (i.e. it needs to be at least theoretically discernible - he couldn't spontaneously know the guy's randomly generated bank account pin number that the guy himself hasn't seen yet).

However, the ability will certainly be both Unconscious and Uncontrollable. Sometimes he just knows, but he can't control it.

The advantage this most closely resembles is Mind Reading, but this is a far weaker ability (it only gives you flashes of insight into a character, and maybe even things they don't consciously know about themselves). It could also resemble Mind Probe, but the player doesn't get to choose what the question is. Or, I could call it the 15 pt version of Empathy and just hand-wave the rest.

My question is: how should I stat this out? I envision this costing on the order of 10 points (it is useful, but so erratic that it shouldn't cost too much more). Also, while in the game-world I'm leaving it unanswered whether this ability is truly supernatural, or just sufficiently advanced as to be indistinguishable, but I'm perfectly fine using supernatural advantages to stat it out.

Thanks!

[vierasmarius]

This sounds close to Empathy (ie, roll IQ to have a "feeling" about someone). Maybe add Cosmic if it can also discern physical characteristics (pregnant, favors their left side, etc).

[Anaraxes]

Have you considered Psychometry for the base?

You might find this thread on skill-based "Sherlock scans" interesting:
http://forums.sjgames.com/showthread.php?t=92158

[vicky_molokh]

Well, there's something that was left off . . .

[Trainik]

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

Well, there's something that was left off . . .

Thanks for the cool thread! However, it didn't really seem to come to any consensus... so I'm still a little confused about where to go from there. I know I don't want this to be skill based (it's a nearly-supernatural ability, as opposed to logical induction/deduction/abduction, I don't want to get into that), I just require that it COULD be explained via Sherlock Holmesian skills if one so desired. This way I get to keep the mystery alive for the players about the root of the skill.

[Sunrunners_Fire]

"Nearly Supernatural Insight Into Others" [18]

• Empathy (Also Physical, +50%; Unconscious Only, -20%; Uncontrollable, -10%) [18]
• Features: Uncontrollable is not stress-limited, rather invoked by GM Fiat. Uncontrolled usage does not utilize the character's own statistics.