Help me with psionic abilities - especially Clairsentience

[subtledoctor]

Hello all. I'm pulling my hair out trying to come up with cool psionic powers, especially in the Clairsentience discipline.

 

Background:Right now I have four disciplines, with five powers in each discipline:

 

Telepathy

- Mind Thrust

- Id Insinuation

- Domination

- Psychic Crush

- Intellect Fortress

Telekinesis

- Hold

- Kinetic Ram

- Inertial Barrier

- Psychic Knife

- Free Action

Pyrokinesis

- Static Transfer

- Energy Draw

- Psychic Combustion

- Generate Lightning

- Energy Shield

Biokinesis

- Adrenaline Rush

- Metabolic Boost

- Camouflage

- Carapace

- Bioregeneration

 

I want to add 5 powers in the Clairsentience discipline since Clairsentence really represents classic "psychic" abilities. And overall, I think 25 powers is a good number. But I'm struggling to come up with 5 good Clairsentience abilities in this very combat-oriented game.

 

First, it's important to understand how these powers work. The can be used at-will, but they cause a temporary decrease in your max hit points, which then slowly regenerate. Use powers too much, and you can actually drop yourself to negative hit points... at which point you can still do stuff, but a pin-prick will kill you.

 

So far I have:

 

- "Object Reading"...? There's no way to do an Identify ability for non-wizards, so this would be a short-duration increase in Lore. Of course you can pause the game and go to the inventory screen (stupid BG2 engine) and identify all the items you like! But, given how these powers work, *any* out-of-combat ability can easily be spammed, so who cares. To balance it, I would make it a +5 lore bonus per level. It's a classic ability... but kind of boring. But OTOH, another option for identifying stuff would let you have more varied playthroughs (no bards/wizards!) so that's cool.

 

- "Life Detection:" This would act like SR's See Invisible, allowing the user to see and target beings under Improved Invisibility. (I don't want it to *dispel* invisibility because other party members should not benefit from the power... but maybe add immunity to backstab to simulate the user being aware of the invisible enemies.) I also want to apply the Farsight effect, but centered on the caster ("Nearsight?" ), so you can see around corners and stuff like that.

 

- "Danger Sense:" Pretty basic, a nice AC bonus plus immunity to backstabs and crits. This one is fairly simple and easy.

 

- "Mental Projection:" This would be a variant of Wizard Eye, hopefully I can give the Eye a different animation/avatar. But the idea is, scouting + using psionic powers from afar. I need to investigate the powergaming implications of this - hopefully if you hit an enemy with a Kinetic Ram through your Mental Projection they will aggro and come find you - not stand there like idiots and let you kill them. We'll see.

 

If those all work, that's 4 powers in Clairsentience. So I would need another. It could be something low-powered, maybe the first ability in the discipline... maybe Detect Evil or Know Alignment? Do those actually have any real application in gameplay?

 

Maybe think outside the box... how about an *out-of-combat* ability, that would apply a single Stoneskin? So you could prepare it ahead of time and avoid the first attack that comes your way, but you couldn't spam it during combat?

 

Any other ideas?

[argent77]

How about "Areal awareness"? Something like the Ranger's tracking ability to give you the general direction of all hostile creatures on the map and display a summary of potential dangers in the log window.

[subtledoctor]

That could be cool, but would it work? Isn't tracking dependent on scripts, or data in the .ARE file?

 

If so, do BGEE/SoD areas contain such data?

 

If you give the Tracking HLA to a level 1 ranger out of Candlekeep, what happens?

[Jarno Mikkola]

... maybe Detect Evil or ... Do those actually have any real application in gameplay?

Well, the clerics and Paladins have it for a reason, it should dispel a few illusions such as the civilians looking orcs in the circus tent quest, and it could dispel regular invisibility and reflect image, if the effected target is evil, like 90% of them are. But there's not that many uses for it.

Of course if you were to copy from Spell Rev, you could get some what more handy work out of them, as I fail to remember what did what in the original game and what were added and not.

[argent77]

That could be cool, but would it work? Isn't tracking dependent on scripts, or data in the .ARE file?

 

If so, do BGEE/SoD areas contain such data?

 

If you give the Tracking HLA to a level 1 ranger out of Candlekeep, what happens?

Afaik, the general directions to enemies are hardcoded into effect opcode 307. The displayed area information is pulled from TRACKING.2DA. BG1EE/SoD includes this file as well, but it doesn't contain any useful data. And the default string reference for unmentioned areas has not been adapted to the BG1 dialog.tlk, so you have to fix it first.

[lynx]

How about a shortlived luck boost?

[Jarno Mikkola]

Subtledoctor, you never mentioned what this was part of ? I remember forgetting what that it was, but like I said, I just remember... that I forgot.

Also there should be one mod that adds psionic classes to the game... I don't know where it it thou.

 

EDIT, well here it is.

[subtledoctor]

It's for Might & Guile:

http://gibberlings3.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=27573&page=1

 

Nothing against kwiat, he does good work, but that late-edition idea of "psionics" is not for me. It's really just magic (up to 10th level!) with the word "psionic" in front of some of the spells. "Psionic Grease," "Psionic Charm," "Psionic Fireball," etc.

 

My mod adds lots of feats for thieves to learn, emphasizing their role as characters who survive by their wits and cleverness. If you can learn to pick a lock or build a trap, you can learn to brew a basic antidote or make a noxious smoke bomb. Or kick sand in your opponent's eyes in melee combat, or put burning oil on your dagger, or use magical scrolls and devices, etc., etc.

 

My psionics are inspired by 2E psionics - it is a nonmagical talent that you can *learn.* And rogues, being clever and good learners, are the ones who can learn it. They are generally low-power abilities, fueled by the user's own vitality.

 

How about a shortlived luck boost?

I like this idea! In fact in another mod I already moved the Luck spells into the school of Divination, so in my head it already makes sense. (A split-second advantage born of supernatural foresight makes for slightly better results in whatever you do, which *appears* similar to a run of good luck.)

[kreso]

- "Object Reading"...? There's no way to do an Identify ability for non-wizards, so this would be a short-duration increase in Lore.

Fwiw, I always use Tweaks "All items identified". I personally have 300 lore in BG2 so....

[Fiann of the Silver Hand]

- "Object Reading"...?: ID'ing is a huge pain in the ass at low levels, especially when objectively simple things like an acid arrow are 25. OTOH, I wouldn't want this discipline to outclass a high level bard, so I would put the initial lore bonus at something like 15, then +1 per level. Combined with (I think you're doing this) the bonuses from a high INT and WIS, this would allow for greater usefulness at low to medium levels without become the dominant specialist later on.

 

- "Life Detection:" Base it on... consciousness not "life"? So higher level CREs are easier to detect than lower?

 

- "Danger Sense:" I see crits as weapon knowledge based, so I'd probably lose that benefit. How about a bonus to Breath saves?