Empathy

Empathy is a School of Powers.

Overview:

• Empathy: Sense emotions, project emotions onto others.
  • Combat Intuition: Gain defensive advantage by sensing enemy's intentions.
  • Phantom Pain: Debilitate or even harm subjects with imagined injuries.
  • Charm: Make someone your friend...or more.
• Telepathy: Communicate over long distances, sense surface thoughts.
  • Suggestion: Incept ideas into another's mind.
  • Detect Minds: Detect the presence of others (regardless of vision) by hearing their thoughts.
  • Mind Probe: Delve into minds, alter memories, learn deep secrets.
  • Compulsion: Take direct control of someone's body by overriding their mind.
• Mind Shield: Protect your mind from telepathic invasion.

Empathy is a Power Skill.

Note: for now, Empathy contains all the powers of Telepathy. Eventually, these will be split in two.

Notes

Tracks:

• Empathy (brute vs finesse)
  • Finesse: read emotion, find weakness, exploit
  • Brute: push emotion, mind control, dominate
• Telepathy (brute vs finesse)
  • Low: suggestion. High: reprogramming
• Neurology
• Dream
  • Ritual: Inception
  • High-level: Astral Projection

Skill Uses

Totally useless, but still cool:

• 1 - Lucid Dreaming
• 2 - Shared Dreamstate

Notes

• It is not possible for targets to resist Read Emotions, unless they themselves are empaths, in which case they may make an opposed Empathy check against you. If they succeed, they can negate their emotional signature; you detect that they are doing so.

Feats

Rank 1

Assault

• Phantom Pain: At-will, std, medium range; subject feels as if he is being harmed. The exact type of harm is up to you, or you can even leave it up to the subject. In any case, subject suffers nominal psychic damage; if subject has knowledge of psionics, he may attempt a Willpower save for half.

Control

• Empathic Projection: At-will, std, short range, sustain std; you project a chosen emotion into the subject's mind, overriding their own emotions. This may affect their behavior. See Emotions below. Willpower ends.
• Suggestion: At-will, swift, short range, costs 1 Mana; subject must obey a single-sentence, spoken proposition (Willpower negates, language-dependent).

Defense

• Combat Intuition: At-will, swift, reserve; your empathy gives you slightly advanced notice of your opponent's intentions. Gain +1 to avoidance and negation checks per Focus slotted. Applies only to attacks from enemies with the capacity for thought and intent.

Utility

• Detect Minds: At-will, std, emanation short, sustain std; you use Read Emotions on all in area, potentially detecting unseen foes. Costs 1 Focus per minute sustained.

Meta

• Subtlety: You may use Persuasion to make your Control powers less obvious (situational modifiers apply). If you succeed, subject is not allowed a save to end, unless he takes very unusual actions due to your meddling, or others point out his odd behavior.

Rank 2

Assault

• Phantom Injury: At-will, std, medium range, costs 1 Mana; subject believes he suffers from a minor injury of your choice. The effect of the injury is real, even though the injury itself is not. Does not cause Wound Points. Willpower ends.
  • At rank 3, you may spend 3 Mana to choose a major injury.
  • At rank 4, you may spend 5 Mana to choose a critical injury.

Control

• Alter Emotion: At-will, swift, short range, costs 1 Mana; you alter subject's emotions. You can redirect emotions to different targets, or change their intensity, or even reverse their polarity (hate becomes love, etc). See description.
• Alter Senses: At-will, swift, short range, reserve 1 Mana; you nullify one of subject's senses, causing blindness, deafness, numbness, etc. Willpower ends.
  • For each extra point of Mana you reserve, you numb an additional sense. May reserve up to 1 Mana per rank. Willpower ends each sense individually.
  • At rank 3, you may provide false sensory input instead of nullifying.

Defense

• Mind Shield: At-will, swift, short range, reserve; subject gains 1 "charge" per Focus he reserved. Each charge allows subject to avoid one mental effect, or pass one save to end the same.

Utility

• Correspond: At-will, swift, short range, reserve 1 Focus; you and subject reserve 1 Focus. Thereafter, you may send Missives to each other at will, over the usual range.
• Read Thoughts: At-will, swift, sustain swift, short range; you read subject's surface thoughts. Subject can resist, but only if subject is aware you are using the power; if so, Willpower negates each round. Costs 1 Mana for each minute sustained.

Rank 3

Assault

• Mind Blast: At-will, std, short range, costs 1 Mana; you unleash an all-out neurological assault on the target, overloading their nervous system. Inflicts nominal psychic damage plus stun 1 rd (Will negates) plus 1 damage to Int, Wis, and Cha. Empower adds +100% damage (as normal), including the ability damage, and adds 1 rd of stun (Will negates each round).

Control

• Domination: At-will, swift, short range, reserve; subject must obey all of your orders as if each were a Suggestion, but without Willpower saves to end each individually. The overall effect can be resisted; treat as Willpower ends, but for each point of Mana you reserve (minimum 1), the effect can withstand 1 success...thus, the subject is not truly free until all such "charges" have been resisted. You may reserve additional Mana before the subject is freed, though you do not regain reserved Mana until the effect ends entirely. When subject passes a Willpower save, any orders he was currently following are cancelled, though you can of course re-issue them at the next opportunity.
• Mind Control: At-will, std, short range, sustain std (1 Mana each time); you take direct control of subject's actions. Does not grant you knowledge of subject's abilities that you were not already aware of. Subject suffers -2 penalty to all checks due to clumsiness. Willpower ends.

Utility

• Mind Probe: Read and alter memories, reprogram subject.
• Psychic Network: As Correspond, but multiple targets may join network, each reserving 1 Focus. Max members = 3 + 1/rank of each subject with Mentalism skill.

Rank 4

• Aneurysm: kill or injure with neurological trauma
• Phantom Death: phantasm makes subject believe they are dead, risk asphyxiation
• Psychic Chirurgery: totally rearrange subject's brain, can harm, heal, or just learn
• Mind Blank: based on Focus, can be overpowered with copious Mana spending
• Mind Seed: implant yourself in subject's mind to plant suggestions that are not noticed (the better to avoid pesky saving throws) or even take over remotely, slowly reprogram target to be more receptive in the future
• Emotion Seed: same as Mind Seed, but for emotions; truly alter subject's feelings on a permanent, nonmagical basis (the better for making thralls)

Rank 5

• Explode Head: cuz why not
• Thrall: force subject to be your slave; may cause diminished sanity due to cognitive dissonance (builds until totally insane), but nearly impossible to resist, and much faster than Mind Seed
• Astral Seed: create a demiplane in the Astral

Other Rules

To do:

• Mental damage from charms and compulsions
• List of emotions and their in-game effects, including:
  • Attraction
  • Aversion
  • Fear
  • Lust
  • etc..
• Degrees of enslavement; or, what happens when you suggest that someone murder their children or jump off a cliff