[Psionic Powers] If Tesla were a Psionic
 

In a modern earth game without the gadgeteer advantage, what psionic powers would a secret society of psionics devoted to developing advanced technology, (and understanding the universe) employ? How effective would that be?

Or, in other words, my GM has recently switched to psionic powers nearly exclusively for a game in which I've been playing a gadgeteer (230cp). Obviously, I have to retool the character, which is fine, but I'd like to keep the "How does it work?" tag-line and the flavor of an inventor.

Thoughts? Mega-thanks!

Edit: forgot to mention that we're not using ergokenesis... which limits the scope of the conversation a little

Re: [Psionic Powers] If Tesla were a Psionic
 

Why couldn't you keep Gadgeteer, and just give it a Psionic power modifier?

Of the power groups in Psionic Powers, Ergokinesis is the most "technological", though that's mostly in regards to interfacing with and controlling computers or disrupting electrical devices, not so much inventing things. Psychokinesis could help an inventor perform fine manipulations, while Probability Alteration could help him get his devices to function (for him, at least). However, one unique aspect of Gadgeteer however is that it lets the inventor make the Concept roll with a penalty of a mere -0 to -8, rather than the -6 to -22 given for realistic inventing. As far as I know there's no trait in Psionic Powers that would help in this regard. Again, you should see if you can just take Gadgeteer as an ESP or Probability Alteration power.

Re: [Psionic Powers] If Tesla were a Psionic
 

He could have an instinctive understanding of mechanical concepts, machines, etc. Ergokinesis gives you electricity-control, but you may want a special form of ESP instead.

Personally, I'd model that with something like:

Visualization (Reflexive, +40%; Takes Less Time 6, +120%; Reliable 10, +50%; ESP, -10%) [30]

Add in an Aspected limitation if you can't use it for other things, but I think it'd work great for general 'awesome by analysis'-isms, which is another thing an inventor-type is great at.

Add in some talents (granted by ESP) and you can get a super-inventor pretty quick. Problem is that your super-inventor will still need to shell out lots of money and time to invent things if you can't have Gadgeteer. I'd do like vierasmarius suggests and try and take Gadgeteer with the ESP power modifier.

Re: [Psionic Powers] If Tesla were a Psionic
 

This is cool...

Gadgeteer is specifically taboo in the campaign world. So are gizmos, and a handful of other things.
As to spending time and money, that may be unavoidable - and thus push the actual inventing part to the background. Which is fine as long as the powers are useful outside of a specifically inventing context.

Re: [Psionic Powers] If Tesla were a Psionic
 

It ought to be pretty effective, as long as they are reasonable self-aware and anti-psi is available to screen out extraneous psi when necessary.

Telepathy allows scientists to communicate their findings and ideas directly mind-to-mind and verify their colleagues truly understand what they've communicated. It would also allow educating students better and faster to swell their ranks as well as screen them for loyalty, aptitude, and motivation to keep the ranks productive and secure.

TK, EK, and ESP are a providence for the necessary testing steps, it's much easier to build a vacuum chamber without view ports or power mains or probes to manipulate the spherical chicken under study.

Julian May's Galactic Millieu covers this in moderate detail, with the secret society part in the early book(s) INTERVENTION, also published as SURVEILLANCE and METACONCERT. Uncle Rogi is no scientist but is able to follow his family's research mentally and contributes to it as his rapport allows them to easily gestalt with him, multiplying their own psychic output at crucial times.

The scientific understanding also helps advance the psionic powers; Rogi's great-nephew Marc invents a cryogenic amplifier that allows him to survive power boosts that would otherwise inspire spontaneous combustion in his nervous tissues.

Re: [Psionic Powers] If Tesla were a Psionic
 

Good call on ESP, although Visualization is more properly a Probability Alteration skill. That, and TK (as mentioned by jeff) would all be of help to engineers in a setting like the one posited.

Re: [Psionic Powers] If Tesla were a Psionic
 

No, the Visualization build in Psionic Powers is a Probability Alteration skill. The Visualization advantage can be co-opted to represent several things, including an intuitive grasp of what'll happen when a character does things or the ability to see and react to future events (something I'm using for one of my characters).

Re: [Psionic Powers] If Tesla were a Psionic
 

Invention is a penalty, it can be made into a technique. If your really lucky you can even convince the GM to let "engineering: invention (X)" default to the technique "engineering: intention(y)-4". Then just take 25 points in the technique.

Re: [Psionic Powers] If Tesla were a Psionic
 

This and your examples are thorough in the case of fairly common and reliable psi. For the purpose of the exercise let's assume the gameworld features no more psi then is claimed in real life - that is to say rare, difficult to master, secret, and mysterious OR extremely unreliable.

Re: [Psionic Powers] If Tesla were a Psionic
 

This is a cool idea. But, I don't know how it relates to psi.

Re: [Psionic Powers] If Tesla were a Psionic
 

I am with Langy on Visualization also being built as an ESP skill.
It can be prediction and adjusting to the outcomes (See Next or any number of movies and books) or used to boost an Analysis roll a special perception of the object or for many skills a tap into the global or universal subconscious.

Racial Memory, Intuition and most sensory powers could be aspects of ESP.
temperature control could also help in lab work.

Re: [Psionic Powers] If Tesla were a Psionic
 

In a world where people have supernatural abilities at all, it's easier to justify an ability to 'intuitively be good at inventing' than it would be in a realistic world.

Re: [Psionic Powers] If Tesla were a Psionic
 

From your original post, your edit and your other posts in the thread, my thoughts are: Your GM doesn't want you playing a gadgeteer and is being passive-aggressive about telling you to play something else. As such? My suggestion would be to ask your GM what kind of character it would rather you play instead.

...

Less usefully, I'll second the esp-based (modified) visualization and suggest that you also purchase esp-based (modified) precognition and esp-based (modified) psychometry.

Become a "knower of things" rather than an "inventor of things".

Re: [Psionic Powers] If Tesla were a Psionic
 

There was going to be some psi involved but then I got sidetracked... oh, you might have precognitive visions, and use that to justify a higher TL. Then grab visualization, justified by "peering into the future" and finally a bunch of the skill/technique for your higher TL. Also something to buy off the penalty for improvised equipment since you don't have access to high TL tools. All in all you can manage a pretty good approximation of gadgeteer by: High TL 3, technique: 10

Re: [Psionic Powers] If Tesla were a Psionic
 

Yeah that was kind of my thought as well.
If as a gadgeteer he found you too hard to handle I suspect he will fin it worse as an ESPer.
Having a PC rebuild his character in a campaign is a pretty drastic thing.

Re: [Psionic Powers] If Tesla were a Psionic
 

To be clear my intention is not to recreate the gadgeteering advantage using psionics. Banishing gadgeteering means the GM doesn't want that. What I'm looking for is suggestions of pisonic powers that an inventor might be inclined to pursue. As suggested already, intuition and visualization are great options. ESP and telepathy would be useful but only if lots of scientists share them.

What about precognition focusing on machine events? Or Oracle for reading the movements of parts to deduce future events?

Re: [Psionic Powers] If Tesla were a Psionic
 

Oracle (Digital) (ESP, -10%) would likely be more thematic than Oracle (Requires observation of moving pats, -5%; ESP, -10%)

Re: [Psionic Powers] If Tesla were a Psionic
 

If you have psionic powers and you want to invent stuff, jumper(time) is the best. Go forward, learn all the new science, pop back. You can fund your classes in the future by investing now. Then buy a bunch of gold and make a huge profit in the present. You have time to invent because of time traveling through the same moment over and over. Ect. Ect. Second is someway to see the future, just look at the patent offices records 100 years in the future. Third is something to make you better at what you do: Visualization, luck and super luck.

Re: [Psionic Powers] If Tesla were a Psionic
 

The op was referencing Psionic Powers, so it seemed reasonable to stick with the concepts used there. The ProbAlt power represents the user actually making changes in the environment, like what a skill bonus to craft-like skills would imply, while ESP can give you less directly helpful knowledge, like which line of development might be more likely to be successful. You'd get that latter with things like Precog or Intuition.

Re: [Psionic Powers] If Tesla were a Psionic
 

The ESP power I presented does use the concepts from Psionic Powers - I made it for a precog character of mine who uses Psionic Powers. (the only difference is I gave it a +50% Cosmic to make it so the bonus is always equal to the Margin of Success, rather than the +50% Reliable)

The Visualization advantage is perfectly acceptable for representing direct knowledge of the future and reacting to it.

Re: [Psionic Powers] If Tesla were a Psionic
 

If they are extremely unreliable, you have to do without them per Niven's Law.

Re: [Psionic Powers] If Tesla were a Psionic
 

Detect: Machines (Analysis Only, -50%; Analyzing, +100%; Cosmic: No Roll +100%; ESP, -10%; Reflexive +40%; Remote +50%.) [99]

At a glance you understand everything about a machine.


Insider Glance (Armoury, Electronics Repair and Mechanic) [4]



If you want to be able to analyze everything:

Detect! (Analysis Only, -50%; Analyzing, +100%; Cosmic: No Roll +100%; ESP, -10%; Reflexive +40%; Remote +50%.) [396]

Re: [Psionic Powers] If Tesla were a Psionic
 

Truth.

How-about a directed precognition for knowing the outcomes of experiments?

Precognition - Directed [+100%], One event only (experimental outcomes) [-40%], Reduced Fatigue Cost 2 [+40%], Reduced Time 10 [+200%], Active Only [-60%], Cosmic (no die roll required) [+100%], Requires Concentrate [-15%] - total [107].
For each second you concentrate on an experiment you accurately predict one outcome. That should cut your R&D time down considerably. Kind of expensive though...