Psychic Points

[Malcadon]

One of the odd hold-overs of classic Gamma World are those mental mutations that would place limits on how often they are used to prevent abuse. It would say something along the lines of "After the mutant uses it, the mutant is exhausted and is unable to use this mutation for another 24 hours." That is an OK rule, but what if mental mutations have point costs? Points that account for mental exertion.

The idea is simple: Characters with mental mutations start out with a pool of Psychic Points (PP) based on one's Willpower score; and to assign a number of mutations a cost of use and/or upkeep. With Psychic Points totals, one would rolls so many dice based on one's Willpower score — basically, its like rolling Hit Points. With mutation costs, not all mental mutations have a cost. Things that you can do innately, like Dual Cerebellum, Intellectual Affinity, etc., would cost nothing to use, as that is how the mutant's brain works. On the other hand, Ability Boost, Acute Hyper Healing, etc., would require mental energy to use. The costs includes the cost to manifest the ability (much like casting a spell), and/or the cost to maintain the effects. In the case of the latter, the mutant needs to focus to maintain the effects, taking no other action in the meantime. Loosing concentration — by taking damage, people doing pervy things around you, etc. — means have to pass a save vs Stun roll to maintain concentration, otherwise the effects are broken.

Loosing all your Psychic Points means loosing consciousness for so many rounds or turns, and you have a lack of mental focus (Willpower and Intelligence are effectively lowered) until you rested. Recovering lost PP is handled the same as Hit Points. You may heal HP and PP at the same time, and they are rolled separately. Brain eating mutants like Brain Lashers can consume Psychic Points to recover their own lost PPs. This would equal to all unspent PPs once consumed, and for anyone with no mental abilities, they can draw PP equal to one's WILL score (this is one's innate mental force). (This means that they will take prisoners who have a lot of psychic power, so they can quickly draw on it in battle.)

Mutations with no costs:
All drawbacks
Combat Empathy
Dual Cerebellum
Intellectual Affinity
Know Direction
Metaconcert
Neural Telepathy
Quick Mind

Mutations with costs:
Ability Boost
Acute Hyper Healing
Ancestral Form
Body Adjustment
Control Light Waves
Control Weather
Damage Turning
Density Alteration (Others)
Disintegration
Empathy
Flight, Psionic
Force Screen
Force Screen, Greater
Killing Sphere
Mental Phantasm
Mind Thrust
Plane Shift
Possession
Teleport
Temperature Control
Vampiric Field

Still mulling it over:
Accumulated Resistance
Increased Willpower
Mental Barrier
Mind Reflection
Neural Telekinesis
Precognition

[Agrippa]

This seems like a reasonable idea. I'd consider letting PP be used for enhancing mutations like Combat Empathy and Intellectual Affinity though. Maybe even allow use of psychic points (PP) for enhancing a select number of Physical Mutations too.

[JDJarvis]

Not a bad idea. Likely want to scale it so the more crazy and disruptive powers suck up a lot of PP so they don't get used very often at all. Perhaps one way to manage that would be a small basic pool of PP (maybe half of Will) and add to it the PP required to use each powered mutation once. So a major power like dimension shifting costs 10 PP and Neural Telekinesis costs 1 PP. If you had a mutant with a Will of 16 you are talking about a mutant with 19 PP, still not going to be dimesion hopping frequently but as they have a powerful ability they have the means to power lesser abilities more frequently.


Mental Barrier,Mind Reflection, and Neural Telekinesis look like they would all be candidates for mental mutations that burn PP.