Now we get to see what psionic powers are available to learn. There are six of them: Telepathy, Clairvoyance, Telekinesis, Awareness, Teleportation, and...Special. Aren't these special by definition to begin with? Anyway, Telepathy is the easiest to qualify for, at 5+. Teleportation and Special are 9+, making them the least common abilities. And with the automatic DM for trying them, at best you've got a 1 in 6 chance (10+) to get either on, and that's on the first roll. By the fourth roll, there's no chance of getting either one.
It's possible to get a high PSR but have few or no special abilities. Well, that would suck. Maybe you'd be good at keeping other psis out of your own mind, though. We'll have to see in future pages. Or, what would really suck is having a power, and not being able to use it because your brain isn't strong enough. The example, again, is Teleportation, which requires a PSR of 7 to learn. If your PSR is only 5, you can't use it even if you rolled well to get it. And psi-drugs improve your strength, but not your rating, so you're screwed out of it regardless.
Oh, there's a quick note that you can't get psi training in the services (the six careers from book One); it's only through the Psi-Institute, which means that no character is going to start out with them. I guess that means that you can leave psionics out of the game entirely if you want, since you can easily keep PCs from ever finding them and getting trained.
Next up is psionic range, which includes a table. Close means touching, Planetary is up to 50,000 km. There's some granularity in between, of course. The 'close' to 'very long' ranges match those of tactical rangers from personal combat, which will make it easier to coordinate their use in combat. And there's another note that no psionic is strong enough to go interplanetary. So, if there's a psionic problem nearby, at least you know it's on the same planet. That may not be very useful information, admittedly, but it does narrow down your search grid a little bit.
The ranges are straight-line, and there's nothing that's going to block psionic energy, which moves at, presumably, light-speed. There are toys like electromechanical psionic shields available, but minor things like mountains aren't going to get in the way of mentally zapping someone on the other side.
Okay, now we get some detail on the first of these psionic abilities: Telepathy. There are going to be a few sub-abilities in this category, and we learn about the first one, Life Detection. This is basically being able to sense the presence of other minds in close proximity. The telepath can detect minds, how many there are, whether they are sentient or not, and roughly where they are. So, this would be a good counter to invisible opponents, since you can track them by their brainwaves even if you can't see them. Of course, that wouldn't work on robots and the like, but you can't have everything.
This is a level 1 ability, costing 1 PSP to use. Oh, I missed the part where longer ranges require more PSP to use a power. That was in the Range category, but I'll add it here since it's mentioned in the power's description. That one-point investment gives you a whole minute to sense anyone nearby. Use it well.
Next time, more psionic powers!
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