Creating a Character Step 4:Determining Psionics RMB vs RUE

[mercedogre]

O.C.C. modification: The development of extra-sensory abilities means that a certain amount of time and energy has been expended on their development and not on formal education. The major psionic must select an O.C.C., but all skill bonuses are reduced by half (round down fractions) and the number of other O.C.C. Related Skills are also reduced by half. Secondary skills are not affected.

Why was this not included in RUE? Did they just want to buff up characters?

[Mack]

Why? No one really knows. I don't think we've ever heard from the author as to why he made the change (or even if it was intentional).

[Colonel_Tetsuya]

IMO, they realized that Major Psionics doesn't really give you much and losing that many skills was awful.

[Library Ogre]

I still use it; I view psychic powers as a natural ability that can be honed. Minor psychic powers require relatively little work... it's the kind of thing that you can develop without exceptional effort, and those who roll major psionics but don't want to pay it can default to minor. But major psionics requires a lot of dedication... you have to take time out of regular training to manage to get that good.

[Colonel_Tetsuya]

you have to take time out of regular training to manage to get that good.

Right, i just think the primary reason it was cut was because "that good" still sucks, aside from a very deliberately cheesy combos of powers that are still hard to use because of a lack of ISP.

[Nekira Sudacne]

O.C.C. modification: The development of extra-sensory abilities means that a certain amount of time and energy has been expended on their development and not on formal education. The major psionic must select an O.C.C., but all skill bonuses are reduced by half (round down fractions) and the number of other O.C.C. Related Skills are also reduced by half. Secondary skills are not affected.

Why was this not included in RUE? Did they just want to buff up characters?

It was removed. Being a major no longer impacts skills.

[Nightmask]

Probably because they'd been handing out psi-powers to so many characters that were ending up master psionics without having to waste any time training that after the original book came out that the idea you had to actually waste time training them had been already actively ignored so why put in a line that was being ignored in creating so many OCC since then? Just don't waste the space reprinting a rule you don't actually use.

[Shark_Force]

you have to take time out of regular training to manage to get that good.

Right, i just think the primary reason it was cut was because "that good" still sucks, aside from a very deliberately cheesy combos of powers that are still hard to use because of a lack of ISP.

can't agree with that. a number of psychic powers are worth picking up. for many OCCs that represents losing maybe 4-5 skills by the time they're level 7. i mean, i probably wouldn't want to make that trade if i was a rogue scientist or rogue scholar, but for a lot of characters, it isn't a major sacrifice.

for that, you get about 25 ISP on average (more if you had a good ME, which you knew before you rolled for psionics) increasing with level, 6 or 8 powers, and the ability to use most techno-wizardry equipment in a game where resource scarcity is a legitimate concern and TW equipment is one of the easiest ways to do away with that, not to mention that it greatly increases your options both in and out of combat.

and the abilities... you can gain abilities like total immunity to horror factor, ability to counter all poisons, drugs, toxins, and chemicals (both abilities apply to self and others you can touch), total immunity to psionic powers, being impossible to surprise (including a large bonus to some important combat rolls for the first round of combat), the ability to identify some otherwise hidden abilities and threats... and yeah, you wouldn't be able to use those abilities constantly, but seriously, how often do you need these abilities that being able to use them 3-4 times per day for often several minutes or even over an hour at a time is not sufficient? obviously see invisible at will is better than see invisible for a few minutes at a time when you activate the power, but it's still worth having.

[mercedogre]

I liked the rule and made total sense to me

[Colonel_Tetsuya]

you have to take time out of regular training to manage to get that good.

Right, i just think the primary reason it was cut was because "that good" still sucks, aside from a very deliberately cheesy combos of powers that are still hard to use because of a lack of ISP.

can't agree with that. a number of psychic powers are worth picking up. for many OCCs that represents losing maybe 4-5 skills by the time they're level 7. i mean, i probably wouldn't want to make that trade if i was a rogue scientist or rogue scholar, but for a lot of characters, it isn't a major sacrifice.

for that, you get about 25 ISP on average (more if you had a good ME, which you knew before you rolled for psionics) increasing with level, 6 or 8 powers, and the ability to use most techno-wizardry equipment in a game where resource scarcity is a legitimate concern and TW equipment is one of the easiest ways to do away with that, not to mention that it greatly increases your options both in and out of combat.

and the abilities... you can gain abilities like total immunity to horror factor, ability to counter all poisons, drugs, toxins, and chemicals (both abilities apply to self and others you can touch), total immunity to psionic powers, being impossible to surprise (including a large bonus to some important combat rolls for the first round of combat), the ability to identify some otherwise hidden abilities and threats... and yeah, you wouldn't be able to use those abilities constantly, but seriously, how often do you need these abilities that being able to use them 3-4 times per day for often several minutes or even over an hour at a time is not sufficient? obviously see invisible at will is better than see invisible for a few minutes at a time when you activate the power, but it's still worth having.

Except for the number of powers, though, you gain all those benefits for being a Minor, without the skill penalty. The extra few powers simpy dont add up to the massive skill penalty.

[Killer Cyborg]

Why was this not included in RUE? Did they just want to buff up characters?

Originally one of the themes of Rifts was that power came at a price (at least for humans).
But that was scrapped in favor of the theme of power being awesome and not having many real drawbacks.

[Library Ogre]

Why was this not included in RUE? Did they just want to buff up characters?

Originally one of the themes of Rifts was that power came at a price (at least for humans).
But that was scrapped in favor of the theme of power being awesome and not having many real drawbacks.

This is pretty accurate, yeah.

And I disagree that the number of powers available to a major psychic isn't significant, especially as more powers have come out. While certain powers are darlings of the PC crowd, there's a lot of useful stuff in there, enough to qualify as a secondary MOS. I don't think "half your skills" is a good choice, but that's because ratio based reductions tend to penalize the top end far more than they do the lower end.

Which is also why my ideal Palladium system would make psionic powers a choice, fueled by skill slots. Want to be psychic? Being the equivalent of a Minor Psychic will run you 3 slots... one for psychic potential, one for each power.

[42dragon]

In my games I like to use both the old and new rule. 6-8 minor powers aren't going to push the needle one way or the other very often. So no longer having the skill cost is nice. But as others have said with more abilities being added some combinations really can impact the game.
So how I like to use the rules is:
RMB but you get to select your powers. Hence you worked on developing them in a particular way so you lose the skills.
or
RUE but you roll randomly for powers as you didn't spend that extra time and focus and ended up with being able to do some things but not focused in any way.

[eliakon]

In my games I like to use both the old and new rule. 6-8 minor powers aren't going to push the needle one way or the other very often. So no longer having the skill cost is nice. But as others have said with more abilities being added some combinations really can impact the game.
So how I like to use the rules is:
RMB but you get to select your powers. Hence you worked on developing them in a particular way so you lose the skills.
or
RUE but you roll randomly for powers as you didn't spend that extra time and focus and ended up with being able to do some things but not focused in any way.

That is an interesting thought. I might try that in a future game.

[Shark_Force]

Except for the number of powers, though, you gain all those benefits for being a Minor, without the skill penalty. The extra few powers simpy dont add up to the massive skill penalty.

there are more than 2 great powers to know. only getting 2 is better than none, but getting 8 of one type or 6 across non-super types is way better than 2 of a single type (admittedly the 2d6 extra ISP is relatively not that exciting, but being able to get immunity to fear and poisons and psionics and being surprised, plus getting stuff like see the invisible and astral projection on top of that... sounds pretty worthwhile if you're not a skill-oriented class and thus don't lose much in the first place.

[flatline]

I always downgraded from major to minor to avoid losing my skills.

[Library Ogre]

I also think some of this could've been avoided if the power levels were more graduated... if minors were a 14 save, majors a 12, and masters a 10, I think you'd have a more open attitude towards majors being a perk.

[drewkitty ~..~]

O.C.C. modification: The development of extra-sensory abilities means that a certain amount of time and energy has been expended on their development and not on formal education. The major psionic must select an O.C.C., but all skill bonuses are reduced by half (round down fractions) and the number of other O.C.C. Related Skills are also reduced by half. Secondary skills are not affected.

Why was this not included in RUE? Did they just want to buff up characters?

It was stated that with RUE there were changes made for everything to be easier for incoming/new players.

Which is, in part, saying they dumbed things down.

Yes, this change does also pander to rifts playerms.

Warning: No need to take shots at your fellow board members over their choice of games.

[Alrik Vas]

If you have to choose one or the other, I'm happy to take the RUE version. It's simpler. The real challenge, regardless of which you choose, is getting the characters to acknowledge they are psychic, rather than just a bro with some free bonuses if they spend points on their sheet.

[glitterboy2098]

i think they changed it because the old system was rather unfair to some OCC's, and rather awesome with others. because different OCC's had different numbers of OCC related skills and different bonuses. if you get only 3-4 OCC related, like some OCC's, this is not a big loss in tems of numbers. but if you have 6-8 like some others, this is huge. and the bonuses thing is the same. some OCC's have few bonuses to their OCC skills, instead just having a larger number of skills, or more skills with no %'s involved. others have skills with really big bonuses. why should one OCC be barely effected with little bonus loss and losing only a couple skills, and another lose a ton of skills or a lot of bonuses? and it doesn't have an easy in universe explantion because some of the least effected OCC's would be the ones representing the most amount of time spent learning the OCC, while the ones that were hurt the most were usually the ones with less training represented in the class.

getting rid of it, while making the psionics have no real drawbacks, does make things more fair.

[ShadowLogan]

Personally I think Major Psychics should be removed from the random table like that and just replace it with different types of Minors like:
multiple listings of Minor w/# of [insert assigned category], and ISP values
multiple listings of Minor w/# of [# from each of these these # categories] and ISP values
standard Minor listing

maybe with the ISP values for some of them give a different rate/base, maybe even give a bonus power if the ME is high enough. Master psionics are impossible to roll because you have to pick a class, why not make Majors that way to?

[Nekira Sudacne]

i think they changed it because the old system was rather unfair to some OCC's, and rather awesome with others. because different OCC's had different numbers of OCC related skills and different bonuses. if you get only 3-4 OCC related, like some OCC's, this is not a big loss in tems of numbers. but if you have 6-8 like some others, this is huge. and the bonuses thing is the same. some OCC's have few bonuses to their OCC skills, instead just having a larger number of skills, or more skills with no %'s involved. others have skills with really big bonuses. why should one OCC be barely effected with little bonus loss and losing only a couple skills, and another lose a ton of skills or a lot of bonuses? and it doesn't have an easy in universe explantion because some of the least effected OCC's would be the ones representing the most amount of time spent learning the OCC, while the ones that were hurt the most were usually the ones with less training represented in the class.

getting rid of it, while making the psionics have no real drawbacks, does make things more fair.

although looked at another way, those who only get a few OCC related skills get hit even harder than those with lots, because then they only get 2 OCC related skills which actually hurts in a skill heavy game like Palladium.

[eliakon]

Personally I think Major Psychics should be removed from the random table like that and just replace it with different types of Minors like:
multiple listings of Minor w/# of [insert assigned category], and ISP values
multiple listings of Minor w/# of [# from each of these these # categories] and ISP values
standard Minor listing

maybe with the ISP values for some of them give a different rate/base, maybe even give a bonus power if the ME is high enough. Master psionics are impossible to roll because you have to pick a class, why not make Majors that way to?

To be honest?
Its a hold over from PF1
Minor psi had powers from level 1
Major psi had powers from levels 1-3
Master psi had powers from levels 1-10
you could roll the first two, but had to be a Mind Mage to be the last.

[Library Ogre]

Not quite, Eliakon. You could roll master Psionics... but random psychics rolled at each level for what powers they had. A minor psychic might get lucky and have every level 1 power, or they might have no level 1 powers, despite being a minor psychic. A master psychic would likely have a scattering of powers across the levels.

A mind mage knew ALL the powers of each level, as it was attained. 1st level Mind Mage knew ALL 1st level powers. 3 level Mind Mage knew all powers from levels 1-3. There was even a major psionic "Pseudo-Mind mage", who would learn all the powers from levels 1-3, but nothing higher.

[eliakon]

Not quite, Eliakon. You could roll master Psionics... but random psychics rolled at each level for what powers they had. A minor psychic might get lucky and have every level 1 power, or they might have no level 1 powers, despite being a minor psychic. A master psychic would likely have a scattering of powers across the levels.

A mind mage knew ALL the powers of each level, as it was attained. 1st level Mind Mage knew ALL 1st level powers. 3 level Mind Mage knew all powers from levels 1-3. There was even a major psionic "Pseudo-Mind mage", who would learn all the powers from levels 1-3, but nothing higher.

As all things Palladium it was....unclear.
But yes my mistake you could roll master/mind mage on the table. I probably should have double checked the old table instead of trying to recall it from memory.

[glitterboy2098]

i think they changed it because the old system was rather unfair to some OCC's, and rather awesome with others. because different OCC's had different numbers of OCC related skills and different bonuses. if you get only 3-4 OCC related, like some OCC's, this is not a big loss in tems of numbers. but if you have 6-8 like some others, this is huge. and the bonuses thing is the same. some OCC's have few bonuses to their OCC skills, instead just having a larger number of skills, or more skills with no %'s involved. others have skills with really big bonuses. why should one OCC be barely effected with little bonus loss and losing only a couple skills, and another lose a ton of skills or a lot of bonuses? and it doesn't have an easy in universe explantion because some of the least effected OCC's would be the ones representing the most amount of time spent learning the OCC, while the ones that were hurt the most were usually the ones with less training represented in the class.

getting rid of it, while making the psionics have no real drawbacks, does make things more fair.

although looked at another way, those who only get a few OCC related skills get hit even harder than those with lots, because then they only get 2 OCC related skills which actually hurts in a skill heavy game like Palladium.

either way the results are rather unfair. some classes get hit hard, others barely at all. the classes in the RMB generally didn't have too much trouble with it, but as the game expanded and more OCC's were introduced, it became a bigger problem.

[Library Ogre]

i think they changed it because the old system was rather unfair to some OCC's, and rather awesome with others. because different OCC's had different numbers of OCC related skills and different bonuses. if you get only 3-4 OCC related, like some OCC's, this is not a big loss in tems of numbers. but if you have 6-8 like some others, this is huge. and the bonuses thing is the same. some OCC's have few bonuses to their OCC skills, instead just having a larger number of skills, or more skills with no %'s involved. others have skills with really big bonuses. why should one OCC be barely effected with little bonus loss and losing only a couple skills, and another lose a ton of skills or a lot of bonuses? and it doesn't have an easy in universe explantion because some of the least effected OCC's would be the ones representing the most amount of time spent learning the OCC, while the ones that were hurt the most were usually the ones with less training represented in the class.

getting rid of it, while making the psionics have no real drawbacks, does make things more fair.

although looked at another way, those who only get a few OCC related skills get hit even harder than those with lots, because then they only get 2 OCC related skills which actually hurts in a skill heavy game like Palladium.

either way the results are rather unfair. some classes get hit hard, others barely at all. the classes in the RMB generally didn't have too much trouble with it, but as the game expanded and more OCC's were introduced, it became a bigger problem.

Which gets back to making psionics a fixed cost. I've talked about it before, but ratio-based reductions tend to heavily penalize those with lots and minimally penalize those with little... or, as Nekira pointed out, still have a huge impact on those with minimal resources. You run into a similar problem with "-10, no bonuses"... if I have a +2, I'm effectively -12. If I have a +22, I'm minus -32 from my normal.

[glitterboy2098]

Agreed though i'd say that the penalties need to be engineered to avoid issues with OCC"s still. removing skills for example can run into the issue that if you remove too many some of the more skill limited OCC's (that only get 2-3 OCC related and secondaries) might not even be able to afford the extra psionics.

honestly, i think it would be better to penalize XP rather than skills. have the Psionics+OCC combo level up slower than an OCC alone.

[Dog_O_War]

I still use it; I view psychic powers as a natural ability that can be honed. Minor psychic powers require relatively little work... it's the kind of thing that you can develop without exceptional effort, and those who roll major psionics but don't want to pay it can default to minor. But major psionics requires a lot of dedication... you have to take time out of regular training to manage to get that good.

I think this has some merit.

That is; I wouldn't give a skill-deduction automatically, but what I would do is allow the player to trade skills for psychic powers. Like, you could trade a secondary skill to get a minor power, or an "other" skill choice for a major, restricted by the level of psychic you are.

So a minor psionic character could trade secondaries for minor powers, while major and master psionic characters could also trade "other"s for major powers. This could accurately represent just how much training they were put through (willingly or otherwise). The difference then between major and master psychics would be available ISP, so to represent the widening gap, maybe master psychics also get a small ISP bump per power they take, like +1 for each additional minor, and +1d4 for each additional major (or whatever amount seems reasonable).


I didn't read most of the thread, so if this idea has already been mentioned, I endorse it.

[Library Ogre]

I still use it; I view psychic powers as a natural ability that can be honed. Minor psychic powers require relatively little work... it's the kind of thing that you can develop without exceptional effort, and those who roll major psionics but don't want to pay it can default to minor. But major psionics requires a lot of dedication... you have to take time out of regular training to manage to get that good.

I think this has some merit.

That is; I wouldn't give a skill-deduction automatically, but what I would do is allow the player to trade skills for psychic powers. Like, you could trade a secondary skill to get a minor power, or an "other" skill choice for a major, restricted by the level of psychic you are.

So a minor psionic character could trade secondaries for minor powers, while major and master psionic characters could also trade "other"s for major powers. This could accurately represent just how much training they were put through (willingly or otherwise). The difference then between major and master psychics would be available ISP, so to represent the widening gap, maybe master psychics also get a small ISP bump per power they take, like +1 for each additional minor, and +1d4 for each additional major (or whatever amount seems reasonable).

My rules were:

To get a minor psionic power (anything from the lesser categories), you just spend one skill. If its a secondary skill, you get that power at first level ability. If its an OCC related skill, it is assumed that you studied the power, so you get it at your actual level.

To get a "Super" power, you first need to have 3 minor psionic abilities. You then must spend 2 skills to gain the super-psionic power. If both are secondary, you get that power at first level, if both are OCC Related you get it at your own level, and if one is secondary and the other is OCC Related, you get the power at one-half your own level. Note that the rule about 3 minor powers to get a super power is just for the first one. If someone were crazy enough, they could have 3 minor powers and all the super powers.

To move between the levels, simply learn more powers. once you exceed the limits for your current level of power, you start acting like the next higher one. Once you learn your first power, you gain your M.E. as an I.S.P. base. Before that time, you have no ISP and register as non-psionic to most probes, but a See Aura will show that they have psionic potential. Once a minor psychic picks up their fifth power or their first super power, they becomes a major psychic, with all the saving throw advantages that carries. Also, starting at the next level (not the one that they just got), they start gaining ISP like a member of that power level. So, if I became a master psychic by picking up some more powers at level five, I roll my 1d6+1 like all major psychics at level 5. Then, at level six, I gain 10 ISP, just like the master psychic I am.