Toward a Psionic System

A couple of years ago I speculated on writing a Psionics system for OpenQuest. With development of my ritual magic system temporarily stalled, I decided to dust off my notes for a psionic system and see if I could work on that for a bit.

Why Psionics?

Psionics is essentially “science fiction magic”. I won’t trace through the whole history, but in brief science fiction editor John W. Campbell bought into early experiments on psychic phenomena and the assertions of his fellow writer L. Ron Hubbard and seemed to think future societies would unlock “the powers of the mind”. Thus he encouraged writers to include psychic phenomena in their ostensibly hard or semi-hard science fiction.

So, if it’s just magic, why a separate system? Why not just relabel magic, the way that, for example, the recently released “Mystic” for D&D 5e does? Honestly, it’s because RPGs have treated psionics and psychic abilities as a separate system with separate laws (rules) that I want to write this system. Fictional telepaths just seem to work differently from mind-manipulating magicians; fictional precogs and espers gain their visions from a different source than whatever gods or forces create magic.

Still, I would like to blend magical principles into traditional psionics, in part to make the rules simpler. My psions will use the Laws of Sympathy, Similarity, and Contagion rather than precise ranges in meters. Instead of tracking “psionic points” psions will make Talent Checks against their Talent Rating until they fail, at which point they experience “Psychic Strain” … much like the spell systems of Shadowdark and Dungeon Crawl Classics.

Inspirations

Many TTRPGs have provided “psionics” or “psychic ability” systems over the decades, including but by no means limited to:

• Barbarians of the Apocalypse (a supplement for Barbarians of Lemuria)
• Basic Roleplaying (2008 and 2023)
• Dungeons & Dragons (Original and Advanced)
• Faster Than Light: Nomad
• GURPS Psionics
• HarnMaster
• Luther Arkwright (a supplement for Mythras)
• Psi World (FGU, 1984)
• Rogue Trader
• Traveller (Classic and beyond)

While I’m drawing at least a little from most of these past rules, one of these deserves special mention.

True20

True20 does not include an explicit “psionic” system, only “powers”. However, the posers system of True20 developed from an earlier supplement for D&D 3.5, The Psychic’s Handbook, which used feats and skills to provide its psychic powers. The same author, Steven Kenson, wrote the True20 rules, and unlike the physical powers like Earth Shaping many mental powers are interdependent.

Most mind manipulation powers depend on the Mind Touch power, which simply places the user in contact with another mind. Once the user has made mental contact, they can use Mind Reading, Mind Probe, Mind Shaping, Bliss, Pain, and so forth. Psychic Shield, as well as simple Willpower, and certain skills and powers alert the subject of surreptitious mental contact.

In all likelihood Kenson added this feature because mind reading and mind control can screw up a Game Master’s plans, especially in an investigation scenario. Notably, other mind-affecting powers like Heart Reading, Heart Shaping, and Suggestion don’t require mental contact. Still I like the idea of requiring mental contact to root around in another person’s mind so much I’ll incorporate it into my eventual rules.

Taxonomy

The first step is to come up with a way to categorize different psychic effects into discrete and gamable units. My working model is that all psychics may (or may not) have an overall Potential rating. Actual psychic effects are divided into Disciplines, each of which includes one or more Talents capable of one or more Stunts.

Potential

It may (or may not) help to rate psychics in their overall “Psychic Potential”. This will give a default for skills related to the use of their powers, including the sensitivity of their perceptions or visions, the strength of their telekinetic abilities, the defense of their psychic shield, and/or the depth and thoroughness of their ability to cloud men’s minds.

Then again, since each Discipline may work on different principles, it may be wise to attach psychic potential to each Discipline. Or to forget the whole thing.

Discipline

Disciplines are high-level categories of psychic ability. Currently I have four:

• ESP: clairvoyance, remove viewing, astral projection, and other phenomena where the user can sense things beyond their physical senses.

• Paracognition: precognition, retrocognition, intuition, and other phenomena where the user knows things they couldn’t possibly know.

• Psychokinesis: all powers which affect the physical world with mental power, including telekinesis, pyrokinesis, biokinesis (altering or healing living things), etc.

• Telepathy: all forms of mind reading, mind manipulation, and mental defense.

Psychokinesis is by far the largest category, and one which I may have to treat separately. I may end up splitting astral projection out of ESP as well.

Talent

Within each Discipline is one or more Talents, which define a range of abilities with a common theme. For example, Talents within Telepathy might include Mind Scanning (searching for other minds), Mind Reading, Mind Speaking, Mind Probing, Memory Manipulation, Perception Manipulation, and full Mind Control.

Psychic characters or “psions” must acquire each Talent separately. Each talent will have an attached skill rating, denoting how adept the character is in using that Talent. Their actual skill test may vary depending on circumstances, including which Stunt they are attempting to perform.

Stunt

Each Talent can accomplish one or more related Stunts. For example, stunts for the Mind Scanning talent might include finding a specific mind, finding a mind with a particularly thought or intent, counting the number of minds within a specific range, finding the direction of each mind within a specific distance, etc.

Each Stunt will have a Difficulty Level. Right now I’m calling them Easy, Average, and Hard, with maybe an Extreme if I need it. For example, simply sensing the approximate number of minds in an area would be Easy, finding their direction and approximate distance would be Average, looking for a specific but familiar mind might also be Average, looking for a specif but unfamiliar mind may be Hard, and looking for minds with ill intent may be Hard or even Extreme.

Specifics

Border Between Stunt and Talent

The lines between Stunts and Talents is arbitrary. For example, I could decide that Mind Probing is just a Stunt of Mind Reading, and the various powers that affect minds, from speech to full Mind Control, stunts of a single Mind Manipulation talent. The questions I have to ask myself are:

• If a psychic has one ability, how logical is it that they have another ability? If one follows from the other, it’s a Stunt.
• Will a psychic have to refine one ability to use another? If so, the two abilities are separate if related Talents.

At one extreme, a Telepathy can do any mental stunt they want as long as they have the power and patience for it. At the other extreme, every Stunt requires its own Talent, much like the workable but somewhat disjointed psionic powers of Faster Than Light: Nomad.

How Many Stunts?

At this point I’m not going to limit the number of stunts per talent, although once a Talent acquires seven or so Stunts I may decide to split it up. While Talents may carry the base skill ratings, Stunts are what characters use to put the power into practice.

Mechanics

At this point I also need to consider what concrete mechanics I’m going to use to determine whether a power works. Right now I’m going with the base skill rating for the Talent, modified by the following factors:

• difficulty of the Stunt
• “psychic range”, i.e. whether the target is in mental contact, sensory contact, or falls under the laws of Contagion (e.g. familiarity), Sympathy (e.g. an object the subject owned), or Similarity (e.g. a likeness of the subject).
• physical range, area, mass, etc.
• factors affecting the user of the power, e.g. distraction, fatigue, or “Psychic Strain”.

I therefore need a single mechanic that allows me to impose one or more levels of difficulty

d100

In the standard d100 mechanic the player rolls two d10s (representing tens and ones) and attempts to score at or below a percentile value based primarily on the character’s base percentile skill rating. Circumstances may adjust the effective skill rating up or down. In some modern systems double digits indicate a Critical Success if the roll would normally be a Success, or a Critical Failure (or Fumble) if the roll would normally be a Failure.

Percentiles have the advantage of making the odds starkly obvious. For sanity’s sake I would probably adjust base skills up or down by no less than 10%, to prevent players doing complex math at the table. Still, modifying 43% to 23% on the fly due to an Easy Stunt with three Complications may give some players problems, at least in the beginning.

Some percentile systems multiply or divide by some factor instead. Chaosium’s Call of Cthulhu 7th edition uses predefined bands for Hard or Extreme difficulty/success, with space to record those on the sheet. Having played a similar variant where I had to work out those success bands in my head, I appreciate writing them down but I fear it would make what should be a small adjunct to the main system’s character sheet look cluttered.

CoC7 also features an Advantage/Disadvantage mechanic, wherein the player rolls two (or more!) tens dice and picks the best or worst depending on whether they have net Advantage or Disadvantage. I have not played with this mechanic, nor really analyzed it. It might be an option, but a quick session with Anydice shows the first die of Advantage or Disadvantage changes probabilities by about 20%, with additional levels showing diminishing returns.

2d6 Roll Over

In the standard 2d6 roll over mechanic, the player rolls two dice, adds a modifier based on skill, and attempts to roll at or above a Target Number (TN). Notoriously, 2d6 has only 11 possible totals, where 7 is the most likely and 2 or 12 are the least. Every ±1 can change the odds significantly. Thus if I represent difficulty by adjusting the Target Number I could only adjusted by 4 or less without making certain rolls virtually impossible.

Faster Than Light: Nomad by Stellagama Publishing offers an alternative to simply adjusting Target Numbers. For each net level of Advantage, the player rolls an extra die and keeps the highest two; for each net level of Disadvantage the player rolls an extra die and keeps the lower two, with each level of Advantage canceling each level of Disadvantage.

Since I already calculated the odds for this mechanic in my analysis of probabilities in FTL: Nomad, I’ll just repeat the table here.

This mechanic seems to be the best compromise between simplicity and incorporation of difficulty factors, since the dice do the math, not the player. The interaction between Advantage/Disadvantage and modifications to the effective Target Number may not be as intuitive as, say, percentile dice, but qualitatively players can appreciate big bonuses and more Advantage are good, less bonuses and more Disadvantage are bad.

d6 Pool, Count Highest

In this mechanic, skill with a talent is rated in a number of six-sided dice. Rolling at least one die meeting a difficulty level counts as a successful use of a Stunt: 4 for Easy Stunts, 5 for Average Stunts, and 6 for Hard Stunts.

Since I already calculated the odds for this mechanic in my partially complete ritual magic system, I’ll just repeat the table here. For “Extreme” I’ll insist on rolling two or more sixes, which fortunately I also calculated.

Novices might only have one die, whole experts might have 4 or more, and true psionic monsters would have 10 dice or more.

I can also subtract dice to denote difficulty … but there’s not a lot of room for difficulty factors. We get a smoother progression if we only count how many sixes we rolled, but not everyone is as enthused about rolling fistfuls of six-siders as I am.

Diceless

Why not Diceless?

Without dice, I would have to give psychics some other limiting factor, e.g. the dreaded Psionic Points. Otherwise they would overpower non-psychic characters easily. An entire psychic campaign would be interesting, but I’d rather start with rules that can be balanced with non-psychic characters, and give GMs the tools to do the balancing.

Dice seem to be the perfect way to limit powers which even in literature tend to be unreliable and ill-understood.

Next Steps

First I have to sort out the various psychic effects in each Discipline as either a Talent or a Stunt. Then I have to decide on the mechanics I use for acquiring, using, and improving a Talent. (Right now I’m leaning to 2d6 with Advantage/Disadvantage, although maybe I’ll carve out a percentile variant for OpenQuest.) Finally I have to type it all up into a form an average gamer would understand.

Perhaps I’ll start with Telepathy first, since it’s the easiest to draw a boundary around, even if the more complex in practice. ESP and Paracognition would logically be next, since most of the hard would will be done in Telepathy. Finally I’d tackle the sprawling discipline that I’m calling Psychokinesis, but which would include traditionally separate disciplines like Teleportation, Biokinesis, etc.

(BTW, it occurs to me that this framework might also emulate conventional magic systems where magicians study a particular element or type of magic. Those can be their Disciplines; they develop Talents for particularly forms of elemental manipulation, and the Stunts are their specific applications. Just a thought.)

When will this system be finished? Who knows? I have too many irons in the fire already.