Psychic Power!

[Nullbear]

I'm working on human genomes now, And i've got about 10 'Psychic powers' Figured out.

Cryokinesis
PyroKinesis
Astral Travel
Telepathy
Telekinesis
'Apport'
'Death Alarm'
Bilocation
Premonition

So...Most of those should seem at least relatively recognizeable. But there will certainly be a few twists.

Cryokinesis, Freezes things around you. AT RANDOM.

Pyrokinesis, Sets things on fire around you. AT RANDOM.

Astral Travel, will occasionally allow force you to ghost. Leaving your body endangered for an unknown amount of time.

Telepathy, will occasionally let you hear things other people are saying, And will occasionally force broadcast what you say into random peoples heads. It cannot be controlled easily.

Telekinesis, will occasionally make shit fly around you, move, etc. For the most part it cannot be controlled.

'Apport', will occasionally make things around you just... TELEPORT. So if you see random shit out in space, that could be a possible cause. It triggers VERY rarely, though.

Death alarm, will occasionally tell you when someone is about to die, when they died, where they died, etc. It will not neccessarily give you ALL that information, just random pieces of it. Like "Death in holodeck" or "Captain!" and sometimes, It will give false alarms. Fun!

Bilocation, Well, the easiset way for me to explain this, is hallucinations. You know when you hallucinate someone accross the station and they start attacking you? Well this is similar to that. Occasionally a second you will appear somewhere. So if you see someone out in space, Wandering seemingly aimlessly (It will follow your controls, But you wont see it.) And walking into walls, that could be it! Of course, with this, The second person may also say what you say, or attack things you click, etc. causing random. They will disappear occasionally and respawn, as with their corpses.

Premonition... Well at first i was thinking of making this one a complete gag, for example, telling you something is going to happen, like "The clown is going to kill you!" for no reason. But I realised there was a way to actually make it work. Occasionally, when a random event occurs, It will give you some vague, randomized message about it. It will also OFTEN give you misleading information.

Many of these psychic effects can also be catalyzed by the characters state (sleeping, near death, HOPPED UP ON DRUGS, etc.)

[Hydre]

Can these be controlled better the more time passes?

[Nullbear]

Hmm... possibly.

My idea for them right now, is for it to be an effect, not a clicky/verb.

[Nullbear]

It'll be controllable to the point where you know how to set it off, and you know how to stop it from going off. For the most part. But with some margin of error.

[Par]

I love this! This is very creative, and makes a lot more sense than the current genetics system. One thing that really pisses me off is when a geneticist just gets hulk, x-ray, and telekinesis and basically becomes unbeatable. It's bull.

I love how this system has some useful traits(Imagine being a paramedic or something with death alarm) but also some bad points, and making it completely uncontrollable is more immersive, in my opinion. I think the effects shouldn't make the person aware that they have them. Obviously, for something like pyrokinesis, you will start noticing it when shit goes on fire. But something like bilocation could go completely unnoticed for the whole round.
For the premonition effect, I believe that it should give you some degree of information on round events, and instead of making it give you misleading info, make it pop in random info every now and then. Hearing "The clown will murer you in 7 minutes." would be hilarious, especially if you know they are a traitor or something.

[Hate9]

Will new characters have a chance of random genetic defects/diseases/powers/etc.?

[Nullbear]

Yep! Though with 88, It'll be pretty low chances...

Otherwise we could get people who have ridiculous amounts of genetic abnormalities.

[matt81093]

Some of these look pretty fun. Along with the 88 genomes bit.

[Par]

So, being a huge Roguelike fan, I played some DCSS today. In DCSS, your character can get various good/bad mutations. Some of them give you body parts, physical traits, etc, but others give you mental abilities.

Good mutations:
crawl.chaosforge.org/Good_mutations

Bad mutations:
crawl.chaosforge.org/Bad_mutations

There's a few that I thought might be interesting. I put my own names on them.

Farsight: based off the "antenna" mutation. This would work similar to x-ray, but only reveal random tiles around you, instead of absolutely everything. This might let you witness a crime, etc. However, it would give you a false view every now and then, such as seeing a clown behind the airlock you are about to go through, even though he isn't really there.

Disapparation: based off the "camouflage" mutation. This could turn you invisible every now and then. Might be useful in fights, guaranteed to be annoying when interacting with others.

Exokinesis(?): based off the "repulsion field" mutation. This would give you a chance to dodge projectiles launched at you, and a smaller chance to reflect them back altogether. Could push random items away from you to be annoying.

Bad temper: based off the "berserk" mutation. This could make you go berserk randomly, hitting harder with wielded weapons, and ignore some pain; but completely unable to fire ranged weapons, and would make you unable to use objects like computers or buttons for the duration.

Unstable: based off the "scream" mutation. Would randomly make you yell out extremely loudly, uncontrollably.

Translocation: based off the "teleport" mutation. You randomly teleport very short distances, even through objects like walls.


Psychic powers should be able to be catalyzed, like you said. Certain drugs could act as suppressants. If your character has "unstable," you might ask the chemist for a bottle of pills so that you won't scream obnoxiously. Other drugs, such as hyperzine, could make your powers go crazy. Someone with pyrokinesis could start heating up and setting a lot of stuff on fire until the drug runs out.