7 6 Gating

Every power (and presumably skill or technique) allows for all uses as soon as you take it. Potentially.

However, all skill uses fall under one of four categories:

• Untrained: anyone can do it, even without taking the skill. Generally only found in mundane skills.
• Proficient: anyone who has taken the power or skill can do it. A "normal" use.
• Expert: only experts can do it reliably; the merely proficient can try, but will likely fail.
• Master: only masters can do it reliably, experts will likely fail, and the rest is obvious.

The key will be that it isn't just about DC; something about the check is actually harder, regardless of DC. One possibility:

• Attempting anything rank+1 means you cannot spend Focus on it. You simply have to pass the check honestly.
  • Conversely, attempting anything at rank-1 means your Focus counts double (+10 per point).
• Attempting anything rank+2 means the margin of critical failure increases from 1 to 5; that is, any roll of 1-5 on the d20 is a critical failure, regardless of the mathematical result.
  • Conversely, at rank-2, all rolls from 16 to 20 are critical successes, regardless of the math.

It is possible to improve a skill or power such that you are an "expert" or "master".

• Expertise costs 5 BP and cannot be added until 5 levels after you first acquired the skill/power.
• Mastery costs 10 BP and cannot be added until 10 levels after you first acquired the skill/power.

This should help balance the "jack-of-all-trades" against the "master of few", giving the latter something to spend BP on in later levels besides acquiring new skills and powers they don't actually want.

Feats

Reimagining feats. Basic idea is that they always cost more than 1 BP, and are thus more rare, but are also correspondingly more powerful.

Some ideas:

• The Telekinesis power lets you fly, albeit awkwardly and with constant concentration and Mana expenditure. The Fly feat gives you a permanent levitation or fly speed for bookoo BP.
• The Fire power is great for making fireballs, but not everybody who takes it is immune to fire. However, spend some BP and you can be.
• There are all sorts of complex rules for summoning, binding, and dominating outsiders with Invocation, but for a cool 5 BP you can just gain a permanent minion.

The pattern should be clear: feats are convenient, they tend to simplify otherwise complex uses of skills and resources, and they are expensive enough that you'll likely only take the ones you really care about. Truly essential abilities like Power Attack and Cleave should not be feats, but should be wrapped up in skills and techniques. Feats are totally optional and significantly powerful. And they make an excellent sink for BP at high levels.

Putting it all together

Let's try an example with the Empathy power (Mentalism school, Telepathy discipline).

;Proficient uses:

• Sense Emotion: You always sense emotions passively (similar to a 1st-round Detect Magic). If you concentrate, you can focus on specific emotions and track them to their source, or focus on a specific source and feel only those emotions. Touch or eye contact helps this process significantly. The presence of powerful emotions can overwhelm you if you weren't already actively suppressing your senses--and sometimes even if you were.
• Project Emotion: You create a simple emotion in your mind (and, optionally, a subject or trigger to which it is tied), and project it into the target's mind (via a connection such as touch or eye contact). Requires Concentration to create the emotion and Willpower to overcome subject's defenses.
• Sense Psychic Impressions: You sense latent emotional "echoes" in an area or tied to an object from psychically powerful events that happened in the past. These can also be overwhelming at times.

;Expert uses:

• Alter Emotion: Having latched onto a particular emotion, you can alter it's subject or change its intensity (higher or lower). This is a temporary effect, but can be made permanent with Empathic Seed.
• Deep Empathy: You can sense deep, fundamental emotions with Sense Emotion. If you achieve focus on them, you can latch onto a particular emotion and follow it to its source. For instance, the target may feel a constant, low-level sense of guilt for some past misdeed--you could learn the truth of the matter by sorting through memories, senses, and flashes of insight.
• Empathic Leap: Once you focus on a particular emotion, you can "leap" to the mind that caused it, even if that mind isn't present. This works best when the one who caused the emotion was close to the original target--otherwise, your grasp on their identity is poor, and the result is vague at best. For instance, a person might feel betrayed by a loved one; you can leap into the loved one's mind and discover that they in turn feel guilt at the betrayal, but are strengthened by resolve to a cause, perhaps indicating they had some more complex motive than is known to your target.
• Empathic Seed: You create an emotion as in Project Emotion, but rather than an instantaneous effect, it is permanent and self-renewing. It can only be removed if the subject is made aware that it was implanted artificially, and works over time to overcome it. This can cause deleterious effects to the subject's psyche if used injudiciously.

;Master uses:

• Transform Emotion: Having latched onto to a particular, fundamental emotion in your target, you transform it permanently. This requires the use of Deep Empathy, and a thorough and complex understanding of the target's psyche. For example: your target is undermined by a sense of insecurity and fear about the world, stemming from an incident in childhood where they were assaulted, and their caregivers did not adequately protect them. You might explore this, through a series of Empathic Leaps and Deep Empathy, learning that the target simply did not understand the context or motive of those involved, and ultimately helping the target realize that, while they should learn from their experience, they need not fear, for they have grown stronger as a result. (Note: using this power without adequately understanding the target's psyche can have disastrous results)

;Rules:

• Emotions are tied to a "subject", either a specific person/place/thing/situation/etc, or a class thereof; that is, a person might love their spouse, hate their enemies, or fear the darkness.
  • When you detect an emotion, you also detect its subject.
  • Subjects are always identified simply; complex cognitive information is not conveyed. Thus, if you detect love for "my mistress", you do not automatically learn her name, her whereabouts, etc. Of course, you can delve deeper, reaching for other emotional aspects of the subject, such as "the smell of her fiery hair" or "her funny way of saying certain words in her accent", which can provide clues to the subject's identity.