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Old 09-21-2020, 12:11 PM   #13
Ejidoth
 
Join Date: Jul 2009
Default Re: Psionic Sorcery (and psionics questions)

Quote:
Originally Posted by transmetahuman View Post
I might at the very least drop the Modular Abilities base structure and simply have those points represent the highest cost psi ability. This means a Psi will save 1/5th of the base cost compared to a Sorcerer, because he won't have to buy his first ability as an alternate ability. I don't know if that makes up for the other comparative weaknesses though.
It's worth noting that dropping the modular abilities will make the Hardcore Improvisation option much more difficult.

Using Abilities at Default has a few things you need to keep in mind:
  • It has to be a plausible variation of your existing ability. For Sorcerous Empowerment, that's easy--since the modular ability can be any spell, you can swap in any spell. If you don't have a modular ability and only have, say, Telekinesis and Mind Control, though, you have to choose something that's a plausible variation of telekinesis or mind control, so, e.g. Warp is probably just off-limits.
  • The penalty is -2 per 25% of the cost of the ability you're substituting from. If your most expensive ability is Modular Abilities, that's simple; that can be anything, so you can always use a proportion of the full point value. If you just have a collection of psi powers, though, improvisation will have to be based on the power you're varying: if you have telekinesis and mind control and you want to do a telekinetic improvisation, you need to use -2 per 25% of the cost of telekinesis, even if you have significantly more points in Mind Control.
  • There's an extra -2 penalty if the ability you're improvising is a significantly different 'type' than the one you're basing it on. Once again, with Sorcery this can be ignored because the modular abilities build can be any type of ability. On the other hand, if you want to improv 'Detect Minds' from 'Mind Control', that's enough of a difference in ability type to probably require the extra -2.

I know some people aren't fans of the modular ability thing in Sorcery because it's an expensive ability that doesn't seem to do much, but aside from the low-cost spells it lets sorcerers cast, it's doing a lot of heavy lifting behind the scenes in terms of simplifying the improvisation rules.
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