[Basic, Powers] Advantage of the Week: Psi Static and Static

[johndallman]

Psi Static [30] is a supernatural mental advantage. You, and things you’re wearing or carrying, are immune, by default, to psionic abilities. This advantage first appeared in GURPS Psionics for 3e.

Static [30] is likewise a supernatural mental advantage, a generalisation of Psi Static. You, and things on you, are immune to powers from one particular source, such as “generic super-powers,” magic or psionics. You can buy this advantage for more than one power source, but you’ll need to talk to your GM about the limits of this, and what powers are susceptible to interference or jamming. You cannot have abilities with the power source that your Static defends you against. This advantage first appeared in GURPS Powers.

Powers says that you emit “energies” that cause the effect. That makes perfectly good sense for magic or psionics, but seems unlikely for divine powers, for example, where Static could be explained as being due to protection by a deity. Static only protects you from direct use of a power: if you had Psi Static, someone with telekinesis cannot use it to pick your pockets, but they could still drop a piano on you.

These advantages have several special modifiers: Area Effect is +50% per level, where the first level gives you 1 yard radius, and successive levels double the radius. Discriminatory is +150% and means only hostile uses of the power source are blocked (see Powers p. 98). Switchable is +100% for obvious reasons. Resistable is ‑50% and allows an attacker to affect you if they can win a Quick Contest of Will with you; if they are using an ability that would require a QC anyway, there’s only one QC, but you defend at +5.

These advantages aren’t used a great deal in GURPS supplements. Psi Static will protect you from one of the Magic: Artillery Spells, and Anti-Psi abilities are fairly common in Monster Hunters. PU5 Impulse Buys lets you make permanent areas of any kind of Static, and Psi-Tech has technological “null-field generators” which produce Psi Static. Psionic Powers makes Psi Static part of an Anti-Psi power, and Sorcery: Protection and Warning Spells creates Static for a whole category of attacks, gazes, justified because they’re quite rare. Supers points out that a racial template can’t have a power source – if you need magic to survive, that’s a Dependency – but Template Toolkit 2 qualifies that: powers on a racial template can have a power source.

I’ve never seen these advantages in play. Have you?