Everyday Psionics: the Psychic Reader

The village psychic is a common feature in all human habitations. The typical psychic is a willowy individual with a strong spirtiual sensitivity, being, often as not, poor in common sense but good with people. In game terms, they have a low strength and constitution, average to low intelligence, but high wisdom with average to high charisma.

Being spiritually inclined, with a stronger constitution, they might have made an effective cleric. Without a psionic master to apprentice them, they never really develop the full range of their mentalist potential, but they can often parlay their natural psychic talents into profitable careers.

In game terms, their natural talents lie in the areas of psychic sensitivity, and psychic projection. Specific disciplines would include precognition, object reading, clairaudience, clairvoyance, and locate person. Astral travel would also be present, but in an uncontrolled form, mainly occuring at night while the psychic slept.

--Low level psychics can be found in tents and at fairs, struggling along in poverty reading palms and fortune telling.
--Those with more skill and accuracy will be found in their own shops in town, with a regular clientelle and a solid reputation for useful information.
--The most accomplished psychics will be wealthy, working directly for kings, nobles, and merchants, and will not be availble for immediate pubic consultation.

Adventuring Hooks

Consultation with psychics can be a regular source of adventuring hooks.

PCs can find themselves hired out to find lost people or items, perhaps with only a map drawn by a psychic (of questionable repute) to guide them.

PCs might pay a psychic for rumors and information that the psychic has picked up from her clientelle. Naturally, the psychic would be privy to all manner of secret information, and might divulge some, in complete confidence and secrecy of course, for the right price.

A psychic might come to the PCs, warned in a dream of an impeding danger/disaster, begging for assistance.

The PCs might be accosted by strangers, or by law enforcement, for their role in some dark dealings, which was revealed by the "spectral evidence" testimony of a psychic at trial.

Perhaps a local psychic saw the PCs doing something IN THE FUTURE, which motivates the townsfolk/authorities to give the PCs some trouble.