The Prevalence of Psychics in Certain Professions

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The Prevalence of Psychics in Certain Professions

Unread post by Library Ogre »

So, I'm thinking about the Scholars and Adventurers, here. Operators, as we know, get some OCC-specific psionic options. Why don't other Scholars and Adventurers?

Like, yeah, sure, I might be a random psychic and a city rat, but how many Body Fixers or Cyber-Docs are going to have, and use, healing psychic powers? Or Scientists and Scholars having Sensitive powers? Or Wilderness Scouts physical powers?
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Re: The Prevalence of Psychics in Certain Professions

Unread post by taalismn »

Mark Hall wrote:So, I'm thinking about the Scholars and Adventurers, here. Operators, as we know, get some OCC-specific psionic options. Why don't other Scholars and Adventurers?

Like, yeah, sure, I might be a random psychic and a city rat, but how many Body Fixers or Cyber-Docs are going to have, and use, healing psychic powers? Or Scientists and Scholars having Sensitive powers? Or Wilderness Scouts physical powers?



There's probably arguments in the medical profession whether psionic healing powers can be really relied on as opposed to training, or whether they should be used as primary care or only supplement regular medical practice, especially if psychic healers receive better pay for their work. Those who don't have psi-powers in such occupational settings might argue that the psionics are a 'crutch'.
Of course, the counter-argument is 'psychics train too' and 'if it works, and saves lives, who cares if the healer has a PhD or not?'.
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Re: The Prevalence of Psychics in Certain Professions

Unread post by Library Ogre »

taalismn wrote:
Mark Hall wrote:So, I'm thinking about the Scholars and Adventurers, here. Operators, as we know, get some OCC-specific psionic options. Why don't other Scholars and Adventurers?

Like, yeah, sure, I might be a random psychic and a city rat, but how many Body Fixers or Cyber-Docs are going to have, and use, healing psychic powers? Or Scientists and Scholars having Sensitive powers? Or Wilderness Scouts physical powers?



There's probably arguments in the medical profession whether psionic healing powers can be really relied on as opposed to training, or whether they should be used as primary care or only supplement regular medical practice, especially if psychic healers receive better pay for their work. Those who don't have psi-powers in such occupational settings might argue that the psionics are a 'crutch'.
Of course, the counter-argument is 'psychics train too' and 'if it works, and saves lives, who cares if the healer has a PhD or not?'.


See, I was figuring that it was more akin to an Operator... 40% of them just have psychic powers that help them in their mundane profession. There's no healing equivalent of Telemechanics, but three powers like Healing Touch, Psychic Diagnosis, and Psychic Surgery would make for a heck of a street doc.
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Re: The Prevalence of Psychics in Certain Professions

Unread post by drewkitty ~..~ »

The one thing I liked about the PB system is that the character classes are unlike the D&D/Path. "everyone has magic" classes.
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Re: The Prevalence of Psychics in Certain Professions

Unread post by Library Ogre »

drewkitty ~..~ wrote:The one thing I liked about the PB system is that the character classes are unlike the D&D/Path. "everyone has magic" classes.


Of course, everyone DOES have magic. Like, 25% of characters who don't already have psionics will just randomly have psionics. What I'm proposing is that certain types of people will be drawn to certain fields... that those with useful psionics will lean towards jobs where their powers will be useful, thus increasing the incidence of those types of psionic powers in the profession.
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Re: The Prevalence of Psychics in Certain Professions

Unread post by Shark_Force »

drewkitty ~..~ wrote:The one thing I liked about the PB system is that the character classes are unlike the D&D/Path. "everyone has magic" classes.


funny, I'm the opposite.

it isn't as bad in rifts, where magic has some serious competition in terms of technology (and rifts is not the only game where something else has other options that provide equal power), but in many games magic quickly comes to outshine other things in a lot of areas. having every "class" explicitly be magical solves that problem neatly, because the warrior as a magical warrior can do things that are impossible for a non-magical person to do. they can make crazy jumps like a jedi, or attack with supernatural speed and precision, or instantly recover from a grievous wound, in much the same way that a wizard or priest might be able to teleport to a difficult-to-reach location, or hurl a fireball at a group of enemies, or heal a wound with magic.

if you're going to have a game where one player can bend reality to their will with a few simple hand gestures and another player is just pretty good with a sword, it starts to become confusing why the person who can bend reality to their will is bothering to bring the other person along unless magic either has some major limitations (maybe it costs a lot of strength or sanity, or maybe it isn't very powerful, or maybe it takes a long involved ritual to use at all, or similar) or the warriors are either explicitly supernatural (like a superhero) or are just effectively supernatural without drawing any attention to that fact (for example, while it may be possible for someone to survive a 500 foot fall... there are games where you can *consistently* survive a 500 foot fall without significant injury but say absolutely nothing about their warriors being supernatural. likewise, while it may be possible to kill something the size of a blue whale using a dagger, there are games where warriors - or more likely some variety of thief/rogue/assassin/etc, given it is a dagger and not a sword - can accomplish that feat consistently, but won't say there's anything supernatural about those characters).

the problem, of course, is that if you're busy trying to pretend that your warriors (or whatever) aren't magical, if the things that explicitly *are* magical get to a point where they're doing world-altering feats of magic... you start to wonder why the guy who can mind control a tribe of fire giants for a year and a day needs any help from the non-magical person who is ultimately quite impressive in that he probably equals or surpasses a fire giant in combat effectiveness individually, but is still not as dangerous in a fight as the full tribe...
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Re: The Prevalence of Psychics in Certain Professions

Unread post by drewkitty ~..~ »

Mark Hall wrote:
drewkitty ~..~ wrote:The one thing I liked about the PB system is that the character classes are unlike the D&D/Path. "everyone has magic" classes.


[1] Of course, everyone DOES have magic. [2] Like, 25% of characters who don't already have psionics will just randomly have psionics. What I'm proposing is that certain types of people will be drawn to certain fields... that those with useful psionics will lean towards jobs where their powers will be useful, thus increasing the incidence of those types of psionic powers in the profession.


1 Nope. While most races in the PB system are "Able to Learn to Use Magic"..... that is a far cry from ..."Every Class Has Its' Own Magic Abilities."
These are two separate issues. So they shouldn't glommed into the same paragraph.

2 The books already do that, with classes that say that the chars the go that direction might have psychic abilities. (And letting the players pick psi powers that would help their chars in their proffesions if they got to be a major/minor psi.) Even if they are not at the thinking level of ability, some....there are pressures (survival, social) that prevent an individual from just going their own way...will find their way into safer Jobs...aka Occupations....which means O.C.C.s are 'Job' classes [/end of side track]....

So I guess I agree with you in principle, but "The Devil is in the Details". Writing a job class to 'always' or mostly possess psi powers...other than with P.C.C.s.... isn't something humans do.

(Exceptions being the rewritten CyberKnights. Since they really should be a PCC' of sorts. With mind-blind exceptions. I don't agree with the Master psi bits in the RUE text.)
Last edited by drewkitty ~..~ on Wed Dec 30, 2020 6:28 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: The Prevalence of Psychics in Certain Professions

Unread post by ShadowLogan »

Mark Hall wrote:So, I'm thinking about the Scholars and Adventurers, here. Operators, as we know, get some OCC-specific psionic options. Why don't other Scholars and Adventurers?

Like, yeah, sure, I might be a random psychic and a city rat, but how many Body Fixers or Cyber-Docs are going to have, and use, healing psychic powers? Or Scientists and Scholars having Sensitive powers? Or Wilderness Scouts physical powers?

I think it is important to remember that Operators psionic selection is a bit wonky given they can take super psionic power(s) which via the character creation random psionic selection they could not do. Operator frequency of being psychic is also different than the general population (15-20%) and automatically considered a Major (which in creation process step 4 would be only 10% of the random population with another 15% being minor).

The other S&As it would seem line up with the Step4 in terms of occurring and haven't been "breed" like the operator for certain powers that favor their particular class. Per the fluff text for the Operator, it is stated that some are the result of passing down knowledge from "father to son", which could lead to a selection for breeding. Others classes just haven't selected for certain psionic powers, or not enough of them to have an impact on the general population for their class.

Would the other S&As use psionic powers if they had them in their class and they could benefit their job, sure I think they would but the powers are not likely to be relied upon given ISP expenditure and recovery rates. I would also think that given the way Random Psionics work, the player would select powers they think are useful to their class or the party which might not always be evident (Resist Fatigue/Hunger/Thirst could be a potent combo for a healer during a long surgery, or Nightvision if the lights went out).
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