The Psion - My First Try

Note:  I think I'm going to give all Psionic Powers a Range of Near unless otherwise mentioned, with an Advanced Move to pump them up to Far.

Clairsentience: When you manifest Clairsentience Hold 3.  Spend your Hold to:
-   Enhance one of your senses
-   Share another person’s senses
-   Get another chance.
When you enhance a sense, its distance, clarity, and power are increased by a factor of 10, giving you the eyes of a hawk, the ears of an owl, the nose of a bloodhound, the tongue of a snake, or the touch of a… mole?  Mole’s are good at touching, right?  Sure, we’ll go with that.  This sensory burst lasts for only a few moments.

When you share another person’s senses, you can sense what a person in range can sense.  Your target can feel you watching from inside his mind, but can only sense what you do if you allow them to.  Unlike many manifested powers, you may share senses over a period of time.  Take -1 Ongoing on all rolls as long as while your senses are linked.

When you get another chance, peer into the future and make a different choice than the one you were going to make.  You may reroll one roll that resulted in a 6-.  You must take the second roll, you only get one other chance.  Take -1 Forward, as your mind grapples with what is and what could have been.  

Astral Projection:
When you manifest Clairsentience, add the following to your list of options.
- Leave your body behind.
When you leave your body behind, your consciousness abandons its physical prison and walks free, like a ghost.  While you’ve left your body behind, you are intangible and transparent but not invisible.  You cannot be heard by anyone who is not tuned to ethereal frequencies.  Your body remains behind, connected to your astral form by an ethereal silver cord, an empty meat sack, still alive, waiting for your return.  All rolls are at a -1 Ongoing while you maintain the concentration needed to remain a spirit.

As an astral projection, you can perform purely mental actions, like Spout Lore, but you cannot exert any physical force on the real world.  You may not use psychic powers or moves relying on Focus while you’ve left your body behind.  You can move through walls and other obstructions.  You can interact physically with any magic or material which can interact with ghosts or other immaterial beings.  Your astral body must remain within range of your body at all times.  If your body is threatened or injured, you may Defy Danger using Wis, to attempt to notice the danger and return, instantly, to your body.  If your body dies, so do you.

Astral Adept Requires Astral Projection
You may manifest psionic powers and non-physical Focus-based moves while astral projecting.

Astral Traveller:  Requires Astral Adept
When astral projecting, you may travel further afield.  You may travel anywhere within a radius of 1 mile per level.

Additionally, you can spend 1 Hold at any time while astral projecting to leave the mundane world behind and travel into the Astral Plane, the realm of pure mind.  The Astral Plane is a strange place, full of wild thoughts and connections to the psychic realms that penetrate and intertwine with all thinking beings.  It is also a dangerous place:  astral bodies act as if completely physical on the astral plane, your ghostly intangibility will not protect you from the strange and terrible hunters of the Silver Sea.  Once you’ve left the physical world, you are no longer bound by rules of distance – you may travel as far a field as you wish while travelling through the land of thought.  But this is a mixed blessing, you can no longer Defy Danger to instantly return to your body or Detect Danger to it; you must trek back along, following your silver cord back to yourself.

Astral Guide:  Requires Astral Traveller
When you leave your body behind, you may spend 1 Hold to bring up to your level in other willing people along.  All members of your astral expedition must be touching in order to abandon the corporeal.  While other characters can use Moves and powers while astral projecting, the effects of those powers are ethereal.  An ethereal magic missile can only affect intangible foes; an ethereal domination spell cannot find purchase on beings still tied to the world.  If you choose to travel into the Astral Plane, you may bring none, some, or all of your expedition with you.  Without your assistance, people without Astral Traveller cannot enter the Astral Plane.

A new power modifier plus a new power (just rough drafts). :)

- AD

Pyrokinesis: When you use telekinesis, you can spend 1 hold to shape or direct flames.

Shaping: When you use this power, hold 3. Spend your hold to:
   - reshape as much of a existing natural, unliving material as you could hold in your hands into something of the same mass
   - assume an animal form for a few moments
   - change a small item or portion of a larger item into a similiar material (skin into scales, stone into metal, grass into leaves). Inanimate items stay changed permanently, while animate items and living things maintain the change as long as you concentrate, plus a few moments

So, I whipped this up today.  I don't have InDesign or the fancy fonts, so I made this the long way... in Word.

The first one has no picture, the second one has some art, but adding the art made the whole thing get converted a few times and it lost some crispness.  I'll try and fix that once I have page two....

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/23527099/ThePsion.pdf
https://dl.dropbox.com/u/23527099/ThePsionwArt.pdf

The picture on that second one is really old, but its the only piece of Psion appropriate art I had... I only wish I'd made Kobolds psionic.  This picture I did years ago would have been perfect....

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v35/Primus/CarrnGul.gif

I'm so much interested in this playbook, as I let one of my players choose this playbook. I think there is not so much left. If it had Gear, I think this would be full-fledged. The one power move at first level and chose anything (new power or not) at additional levels seems to work fine. Though, my player is urging me to make Psychometabolism / Biofeedback available. Can we manage Gear and Biofeedback soon?

I'm dumb to Gear right now, but I tell what I have in mind for Biofeedback right now. I think the hardest thing is to balance this between the D&D magicky feel where psionics produce lots of obvious effects and the more sci-fi, real-world thing when psionics is just good self-discipline and self-control.
I sadly don't know the Battlemind or the Psion's advanced moves yet. We should evade stepping on the advanced moves at least.
I will soon come up with the move when I read all of the advanced moves.

A basic AW newbie question: what about the individual uses, spending of the holds? Can they require a roll? If I throw a cart at some charging orks (using some highly buffed Telekinesis), what happens? Can this trigger a move? Or do all these hold expenditures work on the basis of GM fiat?

Hey czipeter!

Antisinecurist and I actually did a lot of work on this Playbook before I got a new job and lost track of the whole project.  Here's my most recent version, it's VERY updated from the last posted one:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1xaXoOsIBk5yqydBDYa02RCowBvB7_FWT00Fl-Bx90xE/edit

Now, as for whether spending your Hold should require a roll, generally, the answer would be "No".  You've already MADE your roll back when you used your Manifest Psionic Focus move.  Now, some powers allow you to do things that require rolls, for instance, attack with a psionic weapon of some kind, but, generally, Psionic Powers should be similar to a Druid's shapeshift moves or a monster's moves -- you spend Hold and they just happen -- the fiction is affected as described.

Wow, you have done a huge thing, dear sirs! Thank you very much!

Heh, yeah.  We sunk quite a bit of time into it.  We worked up a few classes, the start of a few Advanced Classes, two new psionic Monster Settings, a dozen-or-so of new monsters, and a few dozen psionic items.  I should really go back to that....

If you use anything from the Psion Playbook, please let me know how it goes.  I'd love to hear your experiences/problems.

2 questions and 1 observation:
 - What does "you are harmed" mean under Manifest psionic focus? Does this harm come from an outer source (monster, trap, etc.) or can it be some self-inflicted bodily stress? If yes, how much is it?
 - What is the Damage of the Psion? It's playbook says d6, but also an advanced move "improves" it to d6 when they have focus left.
 - The psionic power moves usually come without a roll. This means that after you got your foci, you don't risk anything directly when using them up. Am I right? It's a bit hard to accustom myself to, but that's all.

-  Psion damage should start at d4.  d6 is a typo.  My bad.

-  "You are harmed" is for the GM to decide.  In my mind, I imagine the "basic" manifestation would be the Psion taking serious mental stress -- manifesting as nosebleeds, headaches, etc -- with the option to have other damaging effects as the story allows.  A good baseline damage would be the Psion's class damage, again, with the potential to scale up as needed.

-  the answer is yes.  Manifesting powers is "safe" with the caveat that you have already put yourself at risk by rolling for focus.  It didn't seem very fair to give Psions two failure chances, one for the focus, one for the power... And this way they're quite different, mechanically, from other casters.

Now, honestly, I have yet to Playtest any of this (my players are out of the fantasy mood).  It's all theoretical.  And it's quite possible that none of this plays as I want it to.

One more thing: I don't know where to look for the special items amongst the Gear options. My player is really interested in those things, but he doesn't want me just make up stuff based on the names.

From an unfinished section of the doc:

Gear (Non-Artifact)
Ground Urdoroot [dangerous, 3-uses, 1-weight]: This herbal formula can greatly enhance the imbiber’s focus. One use provides +1-focus (even above the users maximum), but there’s a chance they’ll suffer from it. Roll 3d6; if the result is greater than their constitution, they take 1d6 damage and a mental debility of the GM’s choice.
Fine Incense: When this incense burns, the minds of anyone who can smell it begin to wander and they lose 1-focus (if they had any). Anyone who relaxes and opens their minds while in the haze of this incense gains +1 to spout lore or parley, but takes -1 to all other rolls.
Psion’s Mandala [3-uses, 1-weight]: This finely crafted talisman contains many maze-like patterns that help focus the mind. When someone rolls to gain focus, they may study a new portion of the pattern and spend 1-use. If they do, they take +1 to the roll.
Purified Urdoroot [dangerous, applied]: When purified with bizarre rituals, ground urdoroot becomes intensely dangerous to those with focus. A person with focus instantly loses their focus and takes 1d6 damage; non-focused targets are unaffected, beyond perhaps a slight headache.