Psion

A self-powered caster that trades a mage's damage for standing mitigation and the deepest utility tail in the game: minds read and written, force held as a stance, the body driven like a machine.

The Psion's power comes from nowhere but the self. No spirit answers, no pact binds, no spellbook is carried; what the class has is a mind turned on the world outside it. Play it as a caster that is noticeably harder to kill than a mage and noticeably slower to kill things: the two standing stances, Kinetic Barrier against steel and Mental Fortress against everything else, are percentage reducers that never run out, so what you mitigate in the first round you still mitigate in the fortieth. Around them sit a spike-smoother (Delay Pain), a guaranteed avoid (Foresight), a flat armour lift (Indurate) and a heal over time (Regenerate). Damage is a short rotation of Force Bolt, Ego Whip, Mind Thrust, Kinetic Crush and Psychic Burn, with Synaptic Overload as the payoff when the target's armour is cracked and its ego whipped.

What makes the class unlike anything else is the utility. A psion can learn a stranger's name from their head, make a creature forget a grudge, leave a thought on a room for another mind to find days later, point at a friend across the world and say which way they lie, talk to them down a thread nobody else can hear, walk out of its own body, project an image of itself to a marked place, and, at the top of the art, take a creature's body and wear it for a while. Every one of those powers is built on a system the game already has, which is why they work everywhere rather than only in a few scripted places.

Psion is a starting class. Guild ranks run Latent, Adept, Telepath, Ascendant and Guildmaster. It learns exactly one power per level from 1 to 60 and nothing after; the ten passives sit on top of that ladder.

Resources#

SP is the main pool and the costs are steep at the top of the kit: the capstone Psychic Crush costs 150 SP, Teleport and Mindread 100, Synaptic Overload 50. Force Bolt is cheap (5 SP, free with the Kinetic Economy passive), which is what makes it the filler, and Transfuse lets a psion in trouble buy health with spirit or spirit with health at a fixed rate.

The class resource is Feedback, a meter from 0 to 100 that is the mind's recoil. It builds by 8 for every damaging power that lands, by 4 for any other power used in a fight, and by 2 each time the Kinetic Barrier softens a hit; out of combat it fades a point every five seconds after half a minute idle. Four powers spend it: Foresight (20), Psychic Scream (40), Kinetic Shell (40) and Discharge, which empties the meter into a single burst of shock whose size scales with how much was stored. The Echoes passive makes it build faster and fade slower.

Psions wear leather armour and may use daggers, staves and maces, or the Mind Blade the class conjures for itself.

Talent Trees#

Telepathy#

The largest tree and the class's voice: reading and writing other minds. Its damage is psionic (Mind Thrust, Psychic Burn, Synaptic Overload, Psychic Crush), its control is the will itself (Ego Whip, Mind Lock, Ego Death, Dominate), and its utility runs from learning a stranger's name to linking two minds across the world.

Kinetics#

Force as a stance. Force Bolt is the filler that cracks armour, Kinetic Barrier is the always-up physical reducer, and the rest is pushing the world about: Gravity Well, Repulse, Wrench, Kinetic Crush, Telekinesis, a fire made of thought, a shell of force around the party.

Metabolism#

The body as a machine the mind drives. Transfuse turns spirit into flesh and back, Regenerate and Indurate keep you standing, Delay Pain refuses a hit until later, Adrenal Surge spends the body faster, Death Trance stops the heart, Iron Will refuses fear and stun, and Mind Blade gives a caster a weapon that swings on intellect.

Clairsentience#

Space and time as perception. Foresight sees the next blow, Psychic Compass finds a mind by where it lies in the world, Psychic Impression and Psychometry read what was left on places and things, and the top of the tree walks out of the body, anchors, teleports and projects.

Powers#

Telepathy#

Kinetics#

Metabolism#

Clairsentience#

Passives#

Ten passives, two equipped at a time like every other class.

Notes#

Mind powers used on other players are allowed. True Name, Mindread, Amnesia and Thought Theft work on people as well as creatures; Dreamsend reaches players only. True Name, Mindread, Amnesia and Dreamsend each roll a detection against a player target's wisdom, so a touched player may be told that something brushed their mind. Thought Theft needs no such roll: the target is always told what was taken, the room sees it, and it starts a fight. Ordinary player-versus-player rules are unchanged by any of this.

Psychic Impressions left on rooms are visible to anyone who looks ("a faint psychic impression lingers here") but only a psion can read them. They last three days, a psion may hold ten at once and one per room, and they are filtered like any other player text.