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Old 02-21-2017, 05:25 PM   #1
Otaku
 
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Default [Basic] Advantage of the Week (#33): Danger Sense, Precognition, Psychometry

Last Week: Damage Resistance, Limited Defenses, Nictitating Membrane
Next Week: Destiny

Today we cover a trio of traits about sensing the future... or past. Danger Sense and Precognition are natural to cover together, but it was actually some text in Powers that made me realize Psychometry (originally schedule for a week on its own) was a solid fit here.

Basic

Danger Sense (p. B47) is a Mundane, Mental trait that costs 15 CP and is also found in GURPS Lite on page 9, where it reads
You can’t depend on it, but sometimes you get this prickly feeling right at the back of your neck, and you know something’s wrong . . . The GM rolls once against your Perception, secretly, in any situation involving an ambush, impending disaster, or similar hazard. On a success, you get enough of a warning that you can take action. A roll of 3 or 4 means you get a little detail as to the nature of the danger.
The entry in [Basic] doesn't add a lot more; besides categorizing the trait, it mentions that it is included in another trait, Precognition. Precognition (p. B77) is an Exotic, Mental trait which costs 25 points, and includes all the benefits of Danger Sense, but broadens the scope so that the character in question gets more than just a quick “heads-up” about incoming threats.

Through the appropriate means - the text cites “sudden knowledge”, visions, and voices as all be valid options - the character gets a glimpse of the future. This must be knowledge the character’s future self could have learned, and is usually about the near future. The more connected the character is to the event, the better, but the text doesn’t specify that remotely related revelations are impossible; as long as your character at least might catch a televised news report or the like, you could gain some information. The future seen is only Immutable if the GM specifically intends it to be; the GM should let the players know if premonitions are meant to be hard predictions, simply possible futures, or fall somewhere in between where something at least related to the premonition will always happen.

When the character with Precognition encounters a person or object, the GM rolls against IQ (secretly) to see if that character has a related premonition. The character may also attempt to force a precognitive flash by engaging in 10 minutes of concentration, spending 2 FP, and making an IQ roll at -8. The text states this only works for a premonition about yourself, or about another person whom you must be touching; I do not know if this was intended to prevent item or location based premonitions from being actively generated. Precognition includes some less general Limitations you may take for it. “Can’t See Own Death” removes the Danger Sense portion of the Advantage, worth -60%. “One Event” allows a narrower focus for Precognition, such as restricting it only to yourself, events related to death, events related to love, etc. This is worth -40%.

Psychometry (p. B78) is another Exotic, Mental trait. We are covering it today because it basically takes aspects of Precognition, but reverses the focus from the future to the past. Psychometry requires the character touch the subject (item or location, apparently not a person) for a second before making an IQ roll. IF something has - in the words of the text - "strong 'vibes'" you may be able to get a reading without concentrating, though at -4 Penalties may apply depending upon how far back one is trying to read: none for something that occurred the same day, -1 for up to -10 days ago, -2 for something up to 100 days ago, -3 for something up to three years ago, -4 for something up to thirty years ago, -5 for something up to 300 years ago, etc. Failure gives nothing and requires you wait at least 24 hours before trying again. A success gives the character a sense of events and emotions tied to the subject of the reading, so long as there are any. To get an actual vision requires a critical success. Psychometry is not for detecting things like magic or the like on an item.

All three traits may be taken with the "ESP" Limitation, worth -10%. This makes them part of the ESP psi power, which shifts Danger Sense from Mundane to Exotic. Both Precognition and Psychometry may require the user suffer a Fright Check if the emotions or vision is sufficiently disturbing.

Other Supplements


GURPS Powers helps clarify what Danger Sense, Precognition, and Psychometry may represent, for what Powers these abilities could be appropriate options and some good advice on GMing them. This book also includes some new Modifiers for Precognition and Psychometry and gives some worked examples of abilities created using these traits. It even gives some idea of Skills that could benefit from being used in conjunction with some of these traits. Where they showed up in my remaining supplements (Power-Ups 2: Perks, Power-Ups 3: Talents, Social Engineering) were minor clarifications or somewhat detail heavy alternate rules. If they become pertinent to the discussion, I'll add them in.

Useful Links

Hate to make this a habit, but if I wanted to get this posted today, I had to delay searching for these myself. I will add them later, especially if some are mentioned in the thread. It is easy for me to miss such things, so feel free to PM me if you think that has happened.
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Last edited by Otaku; 02-28-2017 at 09:28 PM.
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Old 02-23-2017, 12:45 PM   #2
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Default Re: [Basic] Advantage of the Week (#33): Danger Sense, Precognition, Psychometry

As there are no other posts yet, I shall go ahead and address some of the changes between 3e and 4e. I did this last time because I thought it was rather illuminating, and because I had such a large post I had to break it up into two halves. I don't know if no one has responded due to total lack of interest, total lack of time, or because they assumed that this was going to become a staple feature and I needed that first reply... but I guess we'll find out soon enough. ;)

Past Editions

I know little of anything pre-Third Edition, so once I encourage those who do to share their experiences with the rest of us. Danger Sense can be found on page 20 of Base Set: Third Edition. It is almost identical to its Fourth Edition entry, save for the roll being against IQ instead of Perception, a lack of some clarifying text, and no specifics about handling this as an ESP ability (though it is explained later on p. 175). The price is even still 15 CP.

Where things become quite different is with Precognition and Psychometry. These were flat out psionic abilities, using the 3e psionics rules, where the character purchased levels of a particular psionic power (in this case, ESP) and could then learn skills to use said power. ESP contained the Skills Clairvoyance and Clairaudience, in addition to Psychometry and Precognition, all found on page 174-175 of the Base Set: Third Edition. I believe GURPS Psionics included a few extras, but I no longer have access to that book. All Psionic Skills were Mental/Hard. Here we find that Danger Sense is just the untrained use for ESP, and buying that trait just means you bought five levels of the ESP power without any training.

If you didn't want a character capable of doing all of these things, you could purchase an ESP for a single Skill; Psychometry was only 1 CP per level while Precognition only 2. As you can tell, that meant skipping out on less than all other powers was in no way cost effective; just Psychometry plus Precognition together would cost as much as buying a full level of ESP outright. There are some other changes in how these traits are used, given that we now have a "power level" to plug into formulas.

...

So with that out of the way, anyone willing to share their experiences with these traits? Whether as the player whose character had at least one of them, or fellow player of someone who did, or GM for the adventure, or adversary... or even just your thoughts and opinions on it, even if you've never actually used it; feel free to comment.
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Old 02-23-2017, 01:00 PM   #3
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Default Re: [Basic] Advantage of the Week (#33): Danger Sense, Precognition, Psychometry

I was kinda waiting for you to edit in the useful links section for this post and the DR one, since seems incomplete

Precogniton or Danger Sense are, I think, required per MA for precognitive parry but maybe I'm wrong
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Old 02-23-2017, 01:00 PM   #4
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Default Re: [Basic] Advantage of the Week (#33): Danger Sense, Precognition, Psychometry

Of these three, I see by far the most use out of danger sense: it provides a concrete adventuring use, and it isn't a pain for the GM to work with. Not sure why more people aren't commenting on that.

Precognition is a pain for the GM to work with. They have to remember to include the premonitions, and they have to work out all the nuances of how the prediction works.

Psychometry is odd in that you need an enhancement to get the basic effect of actually seeing what happened. Actually, it'd probably break a lot of my games if I ever played with it, but its either not an option or players don't go for it.
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Old 02-23-2017, 02:25 PM   #5
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Default Re: [Basic] Advantage of the Week (#33): Danger Sense, Precognition, Psychometry

Edit: An excellent Kromm posting on Danger Sense, and the one after it is also valuable.

Precognition is just hard on the GM.

I have got some good use out of Psychometry, in an occult investigative game. The initial build was:

Psychometry, Costs 4 fatigue -20%, Magical -10%, Preparation Required (10 minutes) -30%, Reliable (+2 to roll) +10%, Takes Recharge (1 hour) -30% [4].

This has got modified, to make it more useful, and when I understood the distinction between Preparation Required and Immediate Preparation Required, the latter always being the way it was intended to work:

Psychometry, Costs 2 fatigue -10%, Magical -10%, Immediate Preparation Required (10 minutes) -45%, Reliable (+2 to roll) +10%, Sensitive (Gives uneventful history as well as high points) +30%, Takes Recharge (1 hour) -30% [9].

Last edited by johndallman; 05-07-2020 at 09:43 AM. Reason: Kromm posting
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Old 02-23-2017, 05:34 PM   #6
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Default Re: [Basic] Advantage of the Week (#33): Danger Sense, Precognition, Psychometry

Quote:
Originally Posted by johndallman View Post
Precognition is just hard on the GM.
Yes it freaking is. I even wrote about it at one point.
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Old 02-23-2017, 05:51 PM   #7
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Default Re: [Basic] Advantage of the Week (#33): Danger Sense, Precognition, Psychometry

Quote:
Originally Posted by johndallman View Post
Precognition is just hard on the GM.
I put a couple of suggestions for it into Chapter 6 of GURPS Supers. . . .
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Old 02-23-2017, 06:10 PM   #8
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Default Re: [Basic] Advantage of the Week (#33): Danger Sense, Precognition, Psychometry

Is there any precedent for some sort of Accessibility or similar limitation that puts a hard cap on how far into the future Precognition can go, or would this be a purely cosmetic effect? I'm working on a power that specifically only shows events within the next week's worth of time.
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Old 02-24-2017, 02:15 AM   #9
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Default Re: [Basic] Advantage of the Week (#33): Danger Sense, Precognition, Psychometry

One of my players tends to take Danger Sense and even Precognition.
While I agree that it adds some considerations and complications to GMing, I'd say that it's nowhere near as bad as the trait's reputation seems to suggest.

Over the years, I think the way to make it worth the points but not game-breaking is to interpret the precognitive usefulness in the following way:
It should provide information that as about as useful to the a 'quest' as information that can be gained using other abstract means (e.g. 10-25 points worth of Ally Group (Spies), of Intelligence Analysis etc.); it should provide this information in such a way that it is useful long before the predicted events happen, and should not be a retrospect-justifiable prophecy like the infamous 'will destroy a big empire' one; this information-gaining should normally not be duplicatable by mundane means, and should not normally duplicate the info-gathering ability of mundane means - it should provide some different angle instead.

(Also, my PC in a non-GURPS MtA campaign currently has Danger Sense, which functions similarly but not identically to the GURPS version, so maybe it'll give me some other insights into the topic.)
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Old 02-24-2017, 06:33 AM   #10
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Default Re: [Basic] Advantage of the Week (#33): Danger Sense, Precognition, Psychometry

Quote:
Originally Posted by Fossilized Rappy View Post
Is there any precedent for some sort of Accessibility or similar limitation that puts a hard cap on how far into the future Precognition can go, or would this be a purely cosmetic effect? I'm working on a power that specifically only shows events within the next week's worth of time.
Quote:
Originally Posted by powers page 68
Grittier tales portray Precognition as more quantified and less forgiving. If the GM prefers, he can roll whenever the user has an encounter that might trigger a vision . . . but at a penalty found by consulting Long-Distance Modifiers (p. B241) and reading “miles” as “weeks.”
Quote:
Distance Penalty
Up to 200 yards 0
1/2 mile -1
1 mile -2
3 miles -3
10 miles -4
30 miles -5
100 miles -6
300 miles -7
1,000 miles -8
so 1 week is another -2 on top of the base -8 for active attempts; you would need an effective skill of 13+ to have any chance of seeing week in to the future. Passive attempts are entirely at the GM's whim.

one level of short range -10% would mean you'd have a -18 to see a week into the future plus the -8 for an active attempt.
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