Psion
Where being an investigator, soldier or spy is a profession, taken by choice in adulthood, the psion really has no choice: they are what they are. Some just exude the power that they have, others have been trained, but they all suffer the trauma of just seeing too much.
As a psion you are a practitioner of occult arts. It might be intentional, or it might just be who or what you are. You've nevery really known a time when you were not this way, nor why, but you've survived this long and remained sane enough to accept and use this gift of sorts.
With the Mind We Make The World
Psions know that the world is not what it seems, because they are incessantly shown the view behind the veil, whether they want it or not. The five psionic skills present the five main types of psions. Each of the skills have some extraordinary capabilities, which are not always immediately apparent. For example, being a clairsentient (having ranks in the Clairsentience skill) means that you can often know that threats are coming, so your enemies at better hope they have the drop on you and shoot first.
Your Psion Character
How your psion character came to be, how they navigated their difficult and confusing childhood, and somehow survived the many trials to reach adulthood is always a fascinating story.
As you create your psion character, consider whether your parents heroically withstood your tempestuous being, or whether they institutionalised you. Were you kidnapped by government agents and spent most of your life in a research lab or being trained as a child assassin? Or were you more fortunate and trained in a religious school, where they appreciated and honed your talents?
Making a Psion
You can make a psion quickly by following these suggestions.
Choose Talents
Psions usually have a hard enough time getting around in the world and so don't normally spend intense periods of study of anything else, so your talent pool would consist mostly of resource, trait and procedure skills, over knowledge skills. Depending on your background and circumstances, the Strength skill and combat skills may be useful choices as well.
Selecting the following 10 skills as talents will quickly provide a realistic psion:
Health, Focus, Perception, Resolve, Agility, Insight, Stealth, Deceive, Investigate, Persuade.
Choose Background
As you are not going to get a lot of knowledge-based, qualifiers or other practical skills in this profession, so you might want to choose a background with a lot of such skills, like Colonist, Resistance Fighter or Spacer.
Apply Ranks Per Level
At each level (including the first), you distribute:
- 4 ranks to the range of skills, and
- 4 ranks to the range of techniques
presented below.
The psion's primary skill is any one of the psionic skills (Clairsentience, Psikinesis, Psimetabolism, Psiportation or Telepathy). You should try to have at least half your level as ranks on at least one of these skills.
4 ranks spread to these skills
Resource: Health, Energy, Focus
General: Agility+BOD|ASP**, Perception, Resolve, Insight, Stealth++BOD|ASP**, Deceive, Investigate, Persuade, Antiquities, Science, Society, Survival
Combat: Cbt-Melee, Cbt-Ranged, Cbt-Tactical
Engineering: Machinery, Materials, Munitions, Neuronetics, Robotics
Psionic: Clairsentience, Psikinesis, Psimtabolism, Psiportation, Telepathy
4 ranks spread to these techniques
General: Calmness (Insight|Resolve*), Clarity-Save (Insight), Enthral (Telepathy), Inspire (Telepathy), Rally (Telepathy), Revival (Resolve|Survival*), Spoil (Persuade), Staunch (Persuade), Track (Investigate), Tenacious-Save (Resolve|Survival*)
Psionic: Alarm (Clairsentience), Precognitive-Save (Clairsentience), Precognition (Clairsentience), Psychometry (Clairsentience), Remote-Seeing (Clairsentience), Thoughtseeing (Clairsentience)
Electrokinesis (Psikinesis), Focus (Psikinesis), Pyrokinesis (Psikinesis), Shield (Psikinesis), Telekinesis (Psikinesis), Thermokinesis (Psikinesis)
Action-Surge (Psimetabolism), Enervation (Psimetabolism), Harm (Psimetabolism), Heal (Psimetabolism), Preservation (Psimetabolism), Psychic-Decoy (Psimetabolism|Telepathy), Resistance (Psimetabolism), Resurrection (Psimetabolism), Suspend (Psimetabolism)
Blink (Psiportation), Blur (Psiportation), Phase (Psiportation)
Annihilation (Telepathy), Domination (Telepathy), Empathic-Projection (Telepathy), Focus-Drain (Telepathy), Possession (Telepathy)
* You can choose one skill to base this technique, if you need the technique under another skill, you must take the technique again, based on the new skill.
** You can choose one usage when putting your first rank on this skill, you must spend a rank on getting a second usage. When assigning ranks to Agility or Stealth for the navigator, you always take the ASP usage.