Tuesday, November 2, 2010

Seeding the city with Wild Psionics

Wild psionics are those people who have inborn psionic power. I postulate these people as separate from those of the [optional] Psionic class, who develop their psionic powers as a science and therefore progress in levels and psionic power. The "wild psionics" of the world just have it as an inborn and never-changing power (perhaps as a vestige of their descent from a god).

As detailed in a previous post, wild psionics are not as rare as most people play them. In a city of 36,000 people, random chance would indicate the presence of 80 people with wild psionic power. In order to get the nice round number of 100 psionics, we would require a city of 45,000 people. The following list is based on the percentage charts in Appendix I of the 1e Players Handbook.

In our protype city of 45,000, those 100 wild psionics would line up as follows

25 with one attack mode (01-25)
25 with two attack modes (26-50)
25 with three attack modes (51-75)
20 with four attack modes (76-95)
5 with all five attack modes (96-00)

25 with two defense modes (01-25)
50 with three defense modes (26-75)
15 with four defense modes (76-90)
10 with all five defense modes (91-00)

10 with 1 minor & 0 major disciplines (01-10)
15 with 2 minor & 0 major disciplines (11-25)
15 with 3 minor & 0 major disciplines (26-40)
15 with 2 minor & 1 major disciplines (41-55)
15 with 3 minor & 1 major disciplines (56-70)
10 with 4 minor & 1 major disciplines (71-80)
10 with 3 minor & 2 major disciplines (81-90)
5 with 5 minor & 1 major disciplines (91-95)
5 with 4 minor & 2 major disciplines (96-00)

The PH1e lets the PCs choose their modes, but for random purposes we can use the d10:
--attack modes
1-2 --> Psionic Blast
3-4 --> Mind Thrust
5-6 --> Ego Whip
7-8 --> Id Insinuation
9-0 --> Psychic Crush
--defense modes, d8 (all have Mind Blank automatically)
3-4 --> Thought Shield
5-6 --> Mental Barrier
7-8 --> Intellect Fortress
9-0 --> Tower of Iron Will

Psionic attacks upon a non-psionic creature can only occur if the attacker has a current psionic strength of 100 or more. Of course, by the book, only a psionic blast can be used upon a non-psionic creature. In my house rules, I would open that rule up a bit. After all, don't all humans have a mind, an ego, an id, and a psyche? Since attacks target those aspects of the mind, it only makes sense that any human would be vulnerable to them. I will detail this house rule in a future post.

Minor Devotions
1 Animal Telepathy
2 Body Equilibrium (walk on water/feather fall)
3 Body Weaponry
4 Cell Adjustment (heal wounds/cure disease)
5 Clairaudience
6 Clairvoyance
7 Detection of Good or Evil
8 Detection of Magic
9 Domination
10 Empathy
11 ESP
12 Expansion
13 Hypnosis
14 Invisibility
15 Levitation
16 Mind Over Body (no need for food/water/sleep)
17 Molecular Agitation (cause heat)
18 Object Reading
19 Precognition
20 Reduction
21 Sensitivity to Psychic Impressions
22 Suspend Animation (death-like sleep)

Major Sciences
1 Astral Projection
2 Aura Alteration
3 Body Control (withstand hostile environment)
4 Dimension Door
5 Dimension Walk (quick long range travel)
6 Energy Control (cancel energy attacks)
7 Etherealness
8 Mass Domination
9 Mind Bar
10 Molecular Manipulation (break hard objects)
11 Molecular Rearrangement (transmute metals)
12 Probability Travel (to parallel worlds and planes)
13 Telekinesis
14 Telempathic Projection (sending emotions)
15 Teleportation
18 Shape Alteration

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