Psychoportive Sciences

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Psychoportive Sciences
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Dimension Door

(Psychoportive Science 1)
MAC: 7 (base)
PSP Cost: 3/r
Range: 50+ yards
Area of effect: Not applicable

With this power, the user opens a human-sized portal that leads to the edge of another dimension. The edge acts as a lightning-quick transit system, carrying travelers to a destination chosen by the user. A gleaming portal appears’’ in front of him. At the same time, an identical portal appears wherever the user wants it (within the power’s range). The door can have any orientation desired. Stepping into either portal allows a character to immediately step out of the other. Both doors remain in place as long as the PSP cost is met.

A door has only one side and no thickness; it doesn’t exist from the "back" and can’t be used to screen missiles attacks. Up to four characters each round can use a door. If a group lines up, 8 can step through a round—though they may end up tripping over each other on the other side:

Commuting via this power is disorienting. Indeed, a traveler emerges dazed and can’t attack or move for a round. Even just poking a head through a door requires a system: shock roll. Failure means the hero loses 50% of his current hit points and passes out for ld6 rounds. Missile attacks made through a door suffer a -4 penalty. Distances between doors adjust the power’s MAC, as below.

Distance Between Doors

MAC Necessary to Succeed

50 yards

7

75 yards

6

100 yards

5

150 yards

4

200 yards

3

 

Diversive Field

(Psychoportive Science 2)
MAC: 7
PSP Cost: Special
Range: 0
Area of Effect: Special
Prerequisite: Psionic Awareness Field, Anchor

This power allows the user to create an area free from Teleportation, Dimension-dooring, and even limited protection from Grey-shifting powers like Phase, Dimension Walk, and Walk the Grey.

Characters transporting into or out of an area protected by a diversive field find themselves transported onto a special platform (psionicially empowered with time/space anchor) chosen by the psionicist maintaining the Diversive Field.

The Diversive Field is inexpensive to maintain, but extremely expensive to set up. Maintenance costs 30 psp plus 1 per 100 yards radius per turn; but increasing the field size (or initiating the power) costs this amount squared. For example, to maintain a 500-yard radius field would cost 55 psp per turn, but to set it up would cost [55]2 or 3025 psp. Fortunately this field can be set up incrementally.

These fields can be set up incrementally, maintained, shrunk, or expanded at will. The initial cost of a maintained field is subtracted from the cost of an expanded field, but a shrinking field does not return psps to the person maintaining the field.

Many psionic masters express bafflement at the question of how so many Sorcerer-kings manage to maintain such large diversive and interceptive fields.

Phase

(Psychoportive Science 3)
MAC: 10
PSP Cost: 4/r
Range: 0
Area of Effect: Personal

This power allows the user to shift his body into a different frequency of motion, making him transparent to the un-phased world around him. While this power is in effect, the user can walk through solid matter. No physical force or energy can harm him, though other phased objects or creatures can do so.

A phased character can move vertically at 10 feet each round; over solid ground at his normal movement rate, over water or silt at half normal; and through solid matter at one fourth the normal rate. If a character fails to pay the cost while moving through solid matter, he suffers 3d10 hp and psp of damage; if he runs out of psp and hp, then he dies, trapped in the rock.

Note that a phased character isn’t affected by gravity. If a hero is falling off a cliff and activates this power, he retains any momentum he had and phases into the ground 20 feet for every 10 feet he falls. He must then have enough PSPs to reverse his fall and phase out of the ground or suffer the consequences noted above.

A phased character receives a +2 bonus to his MAC during psionic combat and gets a +2 bonus to all saving throws vs. mind-affecting magic or [fix]. Conversely, his MTHAC0 receives a -2 penalty.

Note that the character’s clothing and equipment (except psionic items) do not phase. See Phase Objects devotion below.

Psychic Traveler

(Psychoportive Science 4)
MAC: 4
PSP Cost: 2/t
Range: 1 mile per level
Area of Effect: special
Prerequisites: Psychic Clone, Dream Travel

This power allows the user to project a large portion of his psyche away from his body, taking the appearance and substance of his body. The "traveler" will do anything that the psionicist wants to (in a psychic sense, the traveler really is him). Meanwhile, the real physical body of the psionicist is reduced to a turnip.

Psychic Traveler deceives all detection methods except for Cosmic Awareness and the True Sight spell. The Traveler will, however, trigger abilities that detect the operation of psionics, but the exact operation will not be revealed.

Not only does the psychic body have access to all of its normal psionic powers, but it can use the following psionic powers (if the psionicist possesses these powers) without paying a psp cost: Alter Features, Animal Affinity, Body Control, Body Equilibrium, Carapace, Chameleon Power, Displacement, Ectoplasmic Form, Enhanced Strength, Expansion, Flesh Armor, Metamorphosis, Psychokinetic Flight, Reduction, Shadowform.

The psychic traveler is affected normally by mental or psionic attack. It can only move in the same way that the psionicist can move, and it cannot move over 600 yards away from the physical body of the psionicist.

As a physical manifestation, the psychic traveler affects and is affected as a normal physical body, with one exception: hit point damage is actually translated as PSPs. Perhaps the simplest key to identifying a psychic body is that psychic attacks appear to damage it physically; e.g. a mind thrust might create a spear-like wound, etc. If the psionicist reaches 0 psps, the body of the psychic traveler appears to disintegrate; the psionicist must make a system shock roll or die; if he succeeds then he awakes with no psp, but no further damage.

Summon Planar Creature

(Psychoportive Science 5)
MAC: 7 or 2 or 0
PSP Cost: 40 or 90 or 120
Area of Effect: 1 creature
Prerequisite: Summon Planar Element

Some psionicists can use their minds to summon creatures of the planes. The easiest planes to reach are the Grey and the Black, then the Astral and Ethereal Planes, then finally the Inner and Outer Planes. The creature is randomly determined, cannot be controlled by the summoner, and will in fact try to kill the summoner if it discovers her identity.

Fumble—The Creature knows the identity of the Summoner.

Summon Planar Element

(Psychoportive Science 6)
MAC: 8
PSP Cost: 30
Range: 0
Area of Effect: Personal
Prerequisite: Summon Grey/Black Matter

Some psionicists can use their minds to summon elements of the inner planes. A character with this ability can sometimes use the element to attack her enemies. Some planes are more useful than others for this purpose—the Para-elemental Planes are most useful for summoning harmful energy.

Plane Quantity or Damage Area
Water 5d6 gallons water 1 target
Wind Knockdown *
Silt Blinding/Choking 10’radius
Rain Sprinkling 10’radius
Fire 2d8 flame 10’cube
Sun dl2/dl2 heat 2 targets
Magma 3d8 1 target

Water attacks drench an opponent which may surprise or distract most opponents, but may also damage unusual creatures, put out torches, etc.

Knockdown attacks create a gust of wind 20 yards wide and 20d10 yards long. All in this area must save vs. spells at +2 or be knocked down.

Blinding/choking attacks create a cloud of noxious silt that settles after d6 rounds. Those surprised by the cloud must save vs. spells twice: once to see if they are blinded, and once to see if they choke on the silt for d3 damage.

Sprinkling attacks cause a small, low cloud to appear emitting moderate rainfall in roughly a 10-40 yard radius. The rain lasts 3d12 rounds

Heat rays strike two times, inflicting 1d 12 points of damage per hit. They can affect two targets.

Flame attacks fill a 10-foot cube and cause 1d8 additional points of damage in the following round.

Magma affects one target, but inflicts 2d8 points of damage in the following round and 1 d8 in the third round.

The psionicist’s MAC "hit" is not only compared to 10 to see if the element arrive, but also to the AC of the target to determine whether the element is summoned on target. This power is very taxing, and if a psionicist attempts to summon planar element more than twice in a single day, she must save versus spells or fall unconscious for 1 d6 turns.

Fumble—The summoned element drenches the summoner.

 

Time Dilation

(Psychoportive Science 7)
MAC: special
PSP Cost special
Range: 0
Preparation Time 0
Area of Effect Self
Prerequisites Stasis Field, Time Shift

This power allows the psionicist to affect the time stream itself. Speeding up or slowing down its flow relative to herself. Slowing down the flow of time effectively hastes the psionicist, while speeding the time flow slows the psionicist. The amount of the dilation affects the initial cost of the tower, as shown below.

Haste

Slow

Cost

MAC

x2

x 1l/10

18

6

x3

x 1/20

36

3

x4

x 1/50

54

0

If the psionicist hastes herself by slowing down the time stream, she can maintain the power for a number of rounds (her own, not everyone else’s) equal to her level. Movement, physical attack rates, and even spellcasting and psionic powers increase as well.

However, any spell or psionic power that leaves the psionicist’s accelerated time stream (for example, casting magic missile at or attempting to contact a non time-dilated target) stands a chance of being disrupted. Each time the psionicist tries to do this, she must make a saving throw versus spells to successfully use her spell or devotion in the normal time stream.

If the psionicist slows herself by speeding up the time stream, the power lasts a number of her own turns equal to her level. For example, a 6th-level psionicist with a l/20 factor of dilation can make 6 of her own turns stretch out for 120 turns (20 hours!) in the outside world. She can end the power at any time but her perceptions are slowed so much that she is automatically surprised by any enemy that approaches. Note that the psionicist consumes food and water and is affected by things like poison at her own pace, so this power can be used to reduce water consumption to zero or to slow poison.

If the psionicist is maintaining any other psionic powers, they are paid for only on her subjective rounds. If a psionicist was on a ship that sank, she could use levitation and time dilation to hover over the sea until another ship came along, since she is only paying the maintenance cost for levitation in her own creeping time frame.

Fumble—The psionicist fails the dilation and must save versus spells or age d10 years.

Walk the Black

(Psychoportive Science 8)
MAC: 4
PSP Cost: 60
Range: 1000 miles
Area of Effect: Personal
Prerequisite: Shadow Walk, Shadow Form, Black Sense.

This power allows the user to travel the elusive plane of existence known as the Black. If the user also successfully uses Shadow Walk, she may pass for a denizen of this plane.

The most practical aspect of this Science is that it functions as a long-range Shadow Walk (q.v.). The user can take along up to three companions of her own approximate mass.

Fumble—The destination shadow is somehow absent; the psionicist must save vs. spells or be lost in the black; if successful she exits a shadow somewhere else (DM’s perverse discretion).

 

Walk the Grey

(Psychoportive Science 9)
MAC: 4
PSP Cost: 10/person/turn
Range: Not applicable
Area of Effect: Personal
Prerequisite: Dimension Walk, Phase Other, Grey Sense

This power allows the user to bring up to two companions through the Grey, effectively allowing them to dimension travel (q.v.) with her. If the psionicist dies or abandons her companions, they are stranded in the Grey.

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Wrench

(Psychoportive Science 10)
MAC MAC of target
PSP Cost 10
Range: Sight
Preparation Time: 0
Area of Effect 1 creature w/ equipment
Prerequisites Phase Objects, Lock

This power allows a psionicist to phase a living being and its equipment. The psionicist does not have to touch the target, and may choose whether or not to phase himself and his equipment along with the target (and its equipment). If the "other" is unwilling, it gets a saving throw vs. spells to avoid phasing — if it succeeds, neither it nor its gear phases. This power can be used to phase inanimate objects, with the same restrictions described in Phase Objects (except the psionicist does not have to touch the target, and does not have to phase with the target.) Inanimate objects up to the psionicist’s full body mass may be phased at the normal psp cost. Larger objects may be phased at a cost of 1 psp per pound of the object.

If the psionicist does not phase with the target, the "wrenched" target remains phased for rounds equal to the psionicist’s level — otherwise the power must be maintained round to round. The psionicist may attempt to physically force the target into a solid object and release the power, with the dangerous results listed under the Phase listing above.

A phased psionicist may be Wrenched back into the material world, after a contest (one psionicist’s Phase against the other one’s Wrench — the lowest successful MTHAC0 roll wins). This power can also be used to wrench a creature with dual-planar existence, such as shadow creatures, elementals, and most undead, completely over to one plane or the other. Creatures over twelve Hit Dice receive a saving throw vs. magic against this use of the power, but other creatures do not. If used in this way, a successful Wrench lasts rounds equal to the psionicist’s level, and the target is stuck in the material world for the duration. In addition, the target will lose abilities that were based on its dual-planar nature; it may for example:

Lose d6 AC and MAC
Hit by normal weapons
Lose its ability to gate in allies
Lose some attack immunities
Lose regenerative powers
Lose non-psionic teleportive abilities
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