Test Page 7

Let's talk about the psionicist for a minute.

• Devotions: 30 powers
• Sciences: 15 powers
• Arts: 5 powers

That list is roughly the number of powers of each grade should be available for each discipline. So... I need to write roughly 300 powers before I'm happy with psionics.

That's... yeah. Probably not going to happen any time soon. But it's something to keep in mind.

OKAY.

So... psionics. At the moment very similar to how the Divine works, in that they have their raw powers, all usable at will, and augmentable in some fashion. The differences are:

• All divine prayers require a move action to use. Almost all psionic powers require a standard.
• Prayers usually have a set duration of 5 rounds. Almost all powers require concentration to persist.
• Prayer augmentation just involves making the check harder. Psionic augmentation requires the expenditure of points, a limited daily resource.
• The best prayers can only be used against willing or weak targets. Psionics has no such limitation.
• Both prayers and powers require a check to be successful. Psionics can get around this by spending points from a limited daily pool.

And a bunch of other similarities. Basically it comes down to: psionics is way shittier than the divine. We need to fix that.

Hmm.

Mode and Focus

So here's what I'm kind of thinking at the moment.

Redo the whole psionic focus thing. Make psionic focus a status effect that psionicists can grant themselves. It does... a thing, whatever.

At the same time, introduce the notion of a "mode." A psionicist can put their head into a mode for each discipline. Each discipline's mode does a different thing, or maybe impacts their powers, whatever... point being that you're always in a mode, but not always having focus. While you're in a mode, it's harder to use powers of other disciplines, somehow.

Switching modes should be... something you can do reasonably in-combat. So probably a swift to switch, maybe a move. Yeah, move, then talent it into a swift.

Focus is not something you can regain in combat. Focus you something you gain after sitting around concentrating or meditating or whatever for a few minutes. We'll call it one minute: that way, its akin to the caller getting their eikon back.

Focus does a bunch of good things for you. You want to keep it. But you can burn the focus to do shit. Like... a bunch of basic things you can do with it, then maybe some things based upon your mode, then maybe each power has a thing? Like a... supercharge this thing for a moment.

Kind of a lot of accounting, eh? Three things... which mode am I in, do I have focus, how much PP do I have. I guess that's not too much, that's not too bad. Considering what the blue folks have to deal with these days, with tracking the recharge on all their memes... yeah, having those three isn't so bad.

Now we need to talk about implementation.

You always have a mode. You're never not in a mode; by default, if you go unconscious and lose your mode or whatever, when you come to or first wake up in the day, your mode is your first discipline. It's just how your mind naturally works and what it trends towards. Switching it isn't a big deal, tho, so whatev.

You don't always have focus. You have to gain it. While you have it, it gives you benefits; you can spend it to get a big burst, but that's essentially going nova: once you do, your shit sucks for the rest of the fight, or until you have time to regain it.

PPs refresh with rest, and are like... a reserve of power, or whatever. Like an internal battery. Whatever. You can use that shit to fuel things so they're more badass, or so that they work, but their impact should be linear, predictable.

Burning focus should have some flash to it. Should be considerably better than just dumping PP into a thing. Or whatever.