Chi Power: What can and can't it do?

[Peter Knutsen]

How unusual is it to have a world in which chi can buff the character's own senses?

[thulben]

Originally Posted by Peter Knutsen

How unusual is it to have a world in which chi can buff the character's own senses?

I don't think it's without precedent in fiction. I can think of examples of Danger Sense and Acute Hearing/Touch off the top of my head.

[Bruno]

When people start comparing chi and psionics, I think of the old 2e AD&D psionics, which was a real bag of random things. It was more like "super powers" for a fantasy world than any coherent theme. Also, game mechanically suspect, but that's a separate issue.

The entire "Biokinesis" power or whatever it was called, that let you grow claws and leap like you were under moon gravity, sounds like exactly the kinds of things that should be detached entirely from psi and shoved under chi. With cleaned up SFX, naturally.
Not literally growing claws, for example, but "cutting them with your chi" for the same net combat effect.
Or if you like, you invoke your Tiger Paw technique and really do grow claws. That's getting a little flashy, but what things do is a separate thing from how they look when they do it. I think a game world can totally support chi doing basically low-key things in a dramatic way.

[Kromm]

Originally Posted by Peter Knutsen

How unusual is it to have a world in which chi can buff the character's own senses?

Not very . . . Real-life chi-building exercises involve a lot of efforts to increase one's awareness of the immediate environment – and, in martial-arts contexts, to sense movement and intent in the body of one's opponent. If the associated claims were true, you would have a lot of chi users with Danger Sense, Detect (Life), Discriminatory Hearing, Enhanced Tracking, Peripheral Vision, Subsonic Hearing, Sensitive Touch, and Vibration Sense. As I noted upthread, Clairsentience and Precognition would be straying out of idiom, though they might barely fit at the highest levels. Most other superhuman auditory and visual enhancements – like Dark Vision, Infravision, Microscopic Vision, Parabolic Hearing, Penetrating Vision, Scanning Sense, Telescopic Vision, Ultrahearing, and Ultravision – aren't really a good fit. Neither are outright supernatural senses like Medium, Mind Reading, Psychometry, and See Invisible.

[David Johnston2]

Some things that I wouldn't let chi do in a super-martial artist game (although I would probably allow other power sources in such a game):

Controlling machines
Reading verbal thoughts (but sensing emotions is fine)
Sustained flight
Turning insubstantial
Teleportation through solid barriers
Long distance teleportation
Actual physical shapeshifting into other species
Creating zombies
Controlling elements
Creating matter
Having visions of future events (but danger sense is fine)

[dcarson]

Haven't run a game where I use it but my chi notes have it being associated with living things.

So your chi enhanced punch would do X dice to living things and 2X to nonliving. So a martial artist can smash through a brick wall much easier then turn a person into a spatter on that wall.

It can enhance Attributes and grant mostly physical Advantages. Also certain kinds of Innate Attacks. For example.

Innate Attack (Crush) 5 - Melee Attack (Reach C), -30%; Chi, -10% 15pts

Long list of Advantages

Allowed
Acute Hearing
Acute Taste and Smell
Acute Touch
Acute Vision
Alcohol Tolerance
Arm DX
Arm ST
Autotrance
Binding
Breath-Holding
Catfall
Channeling
Claws
Clinging
Combat Reflexes
Damage Resistance
Danger Sense
Dark Vision
Deep Sleeper
Detect
Double-Jointed
Enhanced Defenses
Enhanced Move
Enhanced Time Sense
Extended Lifespan
Extra Attack
Fearlessness
Fit
Flexibility
Flight
Hard to Kill
Hard to Subdue
High Manual Dexterity
High Pain Threshold
Improved G-Tolerance
Indomitable
Innate Attack
Invisibility
Less Sleep
Lifting ST
Longevity
Metabolism Control
Mind Shield
Night Vision
No Hangover
Penetrating Voice
Perfect Balance
Peripheral Vision
Pressure Support
Rapid Healing
Recovery
Regeneration
Resistant
Scanning Sense
See Invisible
Silence
Striker
Striking ST
Super Climbing
Super Jump
Temperature Tolerance
Terrain Adaptation
Trained By A Master
Very Fit
Very Rapid Healing

[jeff_wilson]

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

Some things that I wouldn't let chi do in a super-martial artist game (although I would probably allow other power sources in such a game):

Controlling machines

Turning insubstantial
Teleportation through solid barriers

Creating zombies

You might want to rethink these:

Teleport and insubstantial allow vanishing/appearing by walking through walls or rising/sinking through floors and ceiling, as ninja are wont to do.

Controlling machines would not be good at a distance, but the ability to sense weakness or the key locations in a machine would let a martial artist know where to hit a robot to shut it down more quickly, or to release a stuck machine like Fonzie does with the jukebox at Arnold's.

Finally, jiangshi are evil hopping vampires or ghouls and they are animated by negative chi, though sometimes they accumulate it on their own and sometime they need to get it from potions or people.

[David Johnston2]

Originally Posted by jeff_wilson

You might want to rethink these:

Teleport and insubstantial allow vanishing/appearing by walking through walls or rising/sinking through floors and ceiling, as ninja are wont to do.

Controlling machines would not be good at a distance, but the ability to sense weakness or the key locations in a machine would let a martial artist know where to hit a robot to shut it down more quickly, or to release a stuck machine like Fonzie does with the jukebox at Arnold's.

Finally, jiangshi are evil hopping vampires or ghouls and they are animated by negative chi, though sometimes they accumulate it on their own and sometime they need to get it from potions or people.

I am perfectly content to represent the ninja ability to appear from nowhere using chi-enhanced stealth.

[jeff_wilson]

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

I am perfectly content to represent the ninja ability to appear from nowhere using chi-enhanced stealth.

Sure, but stealth won't get you in and out of a locked, booby trapped, moat-surrounded, etc room without disturbing the etc.

[Flyndaran]

Originally Posted by jeff_wilson

You might want to rethink these:

Teleport and insubstantial allow vanishing/appearing by walking through walls or rising/sinking through floors and ceiling, as ninja are wont to do.
...

I would prefer the Horror version of Warp that requires a technically possible method of travel.