QHW, Day 6: Radiation

Dreamers

• Humans with a non-intelligent symbiont which grants them psionic powers.
• The symbiont can cross from one host to another, usually on the host's death, taking some memories with them.
• A single host is sometimes called an incarnation, with the switch between hosts being a reincarnation.
• Strong emotions carry over the best between incarnations. It is not unheard of feuds or affairs between Dreamers that span multiple reincarnations.
• Like an unborn baby, a symbiont absorbs any radiation the host is exposed to. This makes the host mostly immune to the Rad Wastes, but it also affects the psionics of the symbiont, increasing their power at the cost of stability and reliability.
• Some Dreamers purposefully expose themselves to radiation in hopes of getting a temporary power boost. However, an overdose will leave the symbiont broken, with their powers unshackled and uncontrollable. Such monstrosity is known as a Nightmare.
• Awakening is a rare and dreaded quirk where the symbiont gains full sapience. An Awakened takes over the host body and subsumes the self of the host completely.
• An Awakened will sometimes quickly jump from one body to another to gain the skills and knowledge of the hosts.
• Awakened are mortally afraid of Nightmares.

Special Senses

Alternate and enhanced senses can add interesting, non-numeric bonuses to the PCs, or a little flavour to an alien or monster. Add these to your mutation table.
 

 
Superhuman and Inhuman Senses

1. Accelerated perception: All your senses work at inhuman speed. You need not necessarily react at the same speed, but you have much more time to observe and study your surroundings.
2. Air-reading: You can sense the movements of air, feeling the layout of nearby area and any movement within.
3. All-around vision: You have a 360° field of vision, and thus cannot be flanked or sneaked upon.
4. Aquatic senses: Your sense are not dulled in the least by being underwater.
5. Aura reading: You can see auras of creatures and recognize their virtues, vices, sins and overall morality.
6. Chemoreception: You can taste the chemical composition of any substance.
7. Chi reading: You can sense the flow of life energies, highlighting injuries, diseases, or powerful individuals. Undead look like black silhouettes.
8. Clairaudience: You can recognize a single whispering voice in a shouting crowd.
9. Clairolfactance: You can smell exceptionally well, recognizing individual scents and flawlessly tracking by smell.
10. Clairvoyance: You can "throw" your sight to nearby vantage points or around corners.
11. Compass sense: You can always tell the cardinal directions.
12. Danger sense: You are always aware of danger and thus cannot be surprised.
13. Darkvision: You can see normally in negligible amounts of light, but not in total darkness. You are blinded by any strong light (including direct sunlight), though.
14. Deathsense: You can sense nearby injured, dying, dead and undead creatures.
15. Echolocation: You can map surroundings through reflected sounds.
16. Electroception: You can sense electric fields, including bioelectricity in living bodies. Works especially well in water.
17. Empathy: You can accurately tell the emotions of others.
18. Enhanced touch: You can feel the tiniest bumps, ripples or cracks. You could read by the impressions left by a pen, or find imperfections invisible to the eye.
19. ESP: You can sense nearby thoughts.
20. Far sight: You can see over great distances with telescopic precision.
21. Foresight: You can see your immediate future. This replaces all your other senses – you can no longer taste food, but already know how it will taste. Consequently your senses cannot be restricted except by blocking your precognition, in which case you loose all your senses.
22. Haptic sight: You can "touch" anything you look at.
23. Heightened hearing: You can hear infra- and ultrasonic frequencies.
24. Hydroception: You can sense the precise location of all nearby water in all its forms – rivers and puddles, vapour and fog, sweat and blood.
25. Infravision: You can see heat signatures in the infrared spectrum. With 50% chance, you loose a random other sight.
26. Magnetic sight: You loose normal sight, but can see magnetic waves. Metal dust offers a ghostly illumination, but solid metal will flare with unbearable brightness.
27. Microscopic sight: You can magnify your sight to microscopic levels.
28. Nightvision: You can see normally in negligible amounts of light, but not in total darkness. You only see in black and white, though.
29. Pheromone scent: You can smell and understand the pheromones given off by both humans and animals.
30. Radiation sense: You can detect the presence, amount and sources of radiation.
31. Radio hearing: You can hear radio waves.
32. Second sight: You can see ghosts, spirits and invisible creatures.
33. Sixth sense: You can recognize secrets, hidden things and lies.
34. Sylvan sight: Plants do not block your sight. You can see right through undergrowth as if through a green-tinted glass.
35. Temporal cognition: You can detect temporal disturbances and fluctuations, time-displaced objects, fixed points in time or time loops.
36. Tremorsense: You can sense the layout of a nearby area and any movement upon and within the earth through vibrations of the ground.
37. True sight: You can see disguised creatures and doppelgangers in their true form, and ignore illusions.
38. Ultravision: You can see in the ultraviolet spectrum. With 50% chance, you loose a random other sight.
39. Wizard vision: You can see enchantments, curses and ley lines as glowing outlines, and recognize spellcasters at sight.
40. X-ray vision: You can see in the x-ray spectrum, penetrating most materials with your sight. With 50% chance, you loose a random other sight.

Clairaudience, from Heroes

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.

 

Simple Psionics

Psionic powers are normally gained as a mutation. Nearly all powers allow a Save to resist the effects. Powers that are not instantaneous last until your concentration breaks. Each psionic power takes up a Memory slot.

Mental psionics target living, thinking creatures - droids are immune and invisible to mental psionics, while replicants (synthetic humans) and cyborgs are highly resistant (and thus have advantage on their Save).

Every time you use a psionic power, roll an Intelligence check to retain the power. On a failed roll, the power manifests normally but you cannot use it again until you take a daily rest.
 

d30 Psionic Powers

1. Biokinesis: Your mind can alter living flesh. Heal 1d6 hp with a touch.
2. Brain Lock: As long as you stare into someone's eyes, they are paralysed.
3. Charm: A creature regards you as a good friend for the rest of the day.
4. Disruption: Tear at the molecular structure of the target, dealing 2d6 damage and disintegrating them into dust once they reach 0 hp.
5. Dominate: Until you loose concentration, the target is forced to act according to your will.
6. Electrokinesis: Control the flow of electricity, power up electronic devices, or deal 1d4 electric damage with a touch and force a Save vs stun.
7. Empathic Projection: Alter emotions of creatures you see, though it must be within the limits of sanity (no berserk rages).
8. Empathic Reading: Read emotions of creatures you see (and incidentally always know when they are lying).
9. ESP: Sense nearby minds.
10. Hypnosis: Force a nearby creature to sleep.
11. Invisibility: With concentration, warp the perception of nearby foes until they cannot see nor hear you.
12. Kindle: Object or creature you stare at must Save or catch aflame.
13. Kinetic Blast: Fire a blast of telekinetic force, dealing 1d8 damage and forcing a Save vs knockback.
14. Kinetic Shield: Reduce damage taken from a physical attack by 1d12.
15. Levitation: With concentration, hover slowly above the ground.
16. Memory Manipulation: Read memories, erase memories or plant false memories. This power takes a while to use.
17. Mind Blast: The target is stunned on a successful Save and knocked unconscious on a failed Save.
18. Mind Block: Automatically succeed on a Save vs mental psionic power and cause the manifester to fail her check to retain it.
19. Precognition: Examine the future to tell if a straightforward choice will likely result in imminent physical injury or mental distress.
20. Psychic Imitation: Once you have seen a psionic power, you can imitate it for the rest of the day or until you fail the check to retain it.
21. Psychometry: Touch an object to see its past. The most important or interesting events of its history are shown first.
22. Pyrokinesis: Control existing fires, move or extinguish them.
23. Sense Location: Sense the location of objects and creatures related to a focus item.
24. Sixth Sense: You cannot be surprised. Roll the check to retain the power every time it warns you about an ambush or trap.
25. Suggestion: A creature will act as if one sentence you tell them was their own idea.
26. Synchronicity: Alter probabilities in your favour. You may choose the result of a single die roll.
27. Synesthesia: Create false sensations that creatures perceive as real.
28. Technopathy: Interface with any cybernetic device through touch and read computer data directly.
29. Telekinesis: Lift, move or hurl up to person-sized object. You don't have complex control.
30. Telepathy: Read surface thoughts of creatures you see, and talk in thoughts with willing targets.

Psionic Treasures

Psicrystal
Slowly formed in brains of powerful psions and extracted after their death, it contains the psychic imprint of a psionic power. Anyone can use it to manifest its power, but once the roll to retain the power is failed, it blackens and falls apart.

Yes, it's a sci-fi scroll.

Psionic crown
Artifact of a bygone era, made of ridiculously complex tech and powered by raw quintessence. When you fail a check to retain a psionic power, you may choose to loose a different power instead.

You need at least two psionic powers to make any use of it.

Psychic stimulant
Psi-drugs, brain fuel, miracle sugar. Delivered as (d4): 1) an eyedrop, 2) a transparent pill, 3) a serum injector, 4) a sniffed powder. All of your powers are refreshed and for 1d6 minutes, you can use them without rolling to retain their use. Highly addictive.

Sensory deprivation tank
A soundproof coffin, its inner walls painted vantablack, filled with gel that numbs your body as you float in nothingness. The range and precision of your powers is vastly increased while locked inside.

Some powers are simple to enhance - telepathy lets you probe deeper into the mind, operate with greatly extended range, or access mass mind, the world-wide telepathic network. But even powers that would normally seem useless while locked in a tank should have some use, so don't be shy about inventing something that could be an extension of the base power.

Kinetic shield could be enhanced into a large inertia dampening field. Sixth sense might allow you to guess the location of all nearby points of interest. Biokinesis might let you regenerate lost limbs or reverse ageing through sheer power of will.