WHAT TO DO IF YOU HAVE NO PSYCHIC POWERS AND ARE SAD

Do you have any recommended 'things that might give you random psychic powers' ideas?

- Ezra Bloom

Sure!

Some of the entries below are more suited for a fantasy setting, some for a sci-fi. Take what you like.

Psionic powers can be found here.

 

WHAT TO DO IF YOU HAVE NO PSYCHIC POWERS AND ARE SAD

1. Mutations, mutations, mutations! Have I mentioned mutations yet? Also mutations.
2. Be very, very ill. It's well known that brain cancer can very rarely grant psionic powers before killing you, but there are other options, too. The best known is probably Naussian fever, a highly contagious disease that causes rapid development of telepathic powers in its victims. It is suspected to have been bio-engineered as a simple way of establishing communication network by ancient Naussians.
3. Lifetime of meditations. Through asceticism and introspection, hermits strengthen and sharpen their minds into powerful tools. Multiple monastic orders offer teachings for you to follow on a path towards enlightenment. Enlightenment means understanding. Understanding means power. Power means mastery. Mastery means control. Control your mind, and you shall control the world around you, too.
4. Get possessed. It may be a demon, an ancestral spirit, or just any ghost you can find. Having a spirit break its way into your mind and squat there sometimes breaks your subconscious limitations, too. Any demon hunter will tell you that a possessed heretic may snap your neck with a glance, but sometimes such powers remain even after a successful exorcism.
5. Get attacked by psions. Your mind will slowly adapt with repeated exposure, until one day you'll shrug off the attack and fry their brain with a power of your own. Unfortunately, psions tend to be well aware of this phenomenon and will take great care to cull any slaves that start to show resistance to their powers.
6. Get tapped into by "energy vampires". These psions can leech your mental strength to fuel their own psionics, leaving residual imprints of their powers in your brain. If you are thus drained frequently, you will either go insane or gain psychic powers of your own. The insanity is more likely.
7. Do a dream quest. The Dreamlands are vast and dangerous, with creatures made of nonsense and monsters made of madness. If you venture there successfully, maybe you can return with the conceptual treasure of a psionic power. Be careful though, as you might prove a tasty morsel for a gug, or have your dream-self stolen by the slavering Men of Leng.
8. Find yourself in mortal danger. When faced with imminent death, sometimes the body will push you over the edge to survive. Maybe it will flood you with adrenaline until you can can push the car off yourself. Maybe it will prod your mind to throw the car away.
9. Get it all jumbled in the head. Mental trauma brings insanity, and insanity turns heroes into nervous wracks. Mostly. There are the lucky ones for whom with great insanity also comes great power. Unfortunately they tend to turn quite homicidal with their new found abilities.
10. Be crippled. You lost your arms but still can feel phantom pain? Maybe you can use it, focus it, master it. You will soon have no need for arms. Of you were blinded, but still imagine the world around you in incredibly lively detail? Maybe your clairvoyant mind really can see without seeing.
11. Brain surgery. If you cannot find the way to power yourself, have someone cut it into your brain with a scalpel. Just hope you've paid the back alley surgeon enough.
12. Eat raw brains! Mind flayers, elans, su-monsters, yuan-ti, they all can be devoured in your quest for psionic enlightenment. It's not likely that it will actually work, but you can always try. Don't eat aboleth brains, though.
13. Stick psicrystal needles right into your grey matter. Psicrystals are formed in brains of powerful psions and contain psychic imprints of powers. Shattered into sharp "needles" and embedded into your brain, they let you channel your mental energies through them, manifesting similar powers that the original psion had. Of course, you just stuck needles into your brain, which is not very healthy.
14. Overdose on psi-drugs. While such drugs are invaluable to psions, even people without psychic powers can use them to enter a queer state of expanded awareness. In massive doses, they may force you latent talents to manifest into full-blown powers of your own. You will much more likely die, but the point is you can do it.
15. Find an alien artifact. I'm sure it's completely save to use the unsettling polyhedron of metal and liquid sound that makes you float above the ground and see the future.
16. Get a symbiont. Pyllasian headcrabs serve both as a source of psychokinetic powers, and as a fancy non-removable helmet. Even a parasite will do in a pinch - several types of mind worms will grant you empathic or suggestive powers before they eat your brain out.
17. Inject a highly experimental superserum. Recorded effects include mild headaches, nose bleeds, various psychic powers, cerebral apoplexy, near-omniscience, and several cases of exploded heads.
18. Cerebrospinal fluids transfusion. Get a powerful psion and drain them of some brain juice. A measure of their psychic potential should pass on you, but repeated transfusions might be required if your psionics start to fade. I hope you were prepared to become a serial killer, leaving behind victims with dried heads.
19. Implants. Impossibly rare and expensive, plus banned in all civilized societies. Unless you're a spy or a supersoldier. They don't grant you psionic powers as much as provide a focal point, a doorway to your hidden reserves of power.
20. Wish for some. Easier said than done unless your GM likes to throw wishes around.