Quick and Dirty Savage Worlds Psychic Rules

I am often disappointed by the default Savage Worlds magic system, as it gives you three powers straight from the start, combined with a power point system I find fairly unimaginative. So, here's what I've used in a previous campaign.

In my campaign, I used the Guts skill for all psychic rolls. The reason for this was twofold: first, the Guts skill was kinda useless otherwise (it's not even featured in the Deluxe version of Savage Worlds anymore) and second, psychic powers are basically about controlling your own mind to affect the outside world. You could easily use another skill, maybe make it based on Smarts instead of Spirit or you can do like I did and "hide" the psychic rule system behind Guts until you reveal the psychic potential in your characters.

Unlikely Martial Arts: Toad Style

So yeah, haven't updated in a while. Sorry about that. So let's kick this blog back in gear with three system-agnostic vaguely defined martial arts styles!

Toad
Martial artists who are trained in the toad style often do everything in their power to seem nonthreatening and keep their status as a formidable fighter a secret. The toad style relies on a single determined surprise attack to start and finish a battle, like a frog suddenly snatching a wandering fly.

In game mechanic terms, toads can direct their vital energies to make their very touch poisonous. This can take many rounds of concentration, depending on the desired potency of the venom. After the toad stops concentrating, the poison starts to dissipate and weaken at the same rate that it's potency grows while concentrating. A toad cannot start creating poison while still retaining any amount of the previous dosage in his system and must wait until fully purged to begin the process again.

Next time: Slug!

Psychic Power List Part VI

This time we have on the power list puppeteer, remote viewing and sleep. Puppeteer is your basic mind control discipline, where you can direct your target's movements. Remote viewing is a power that is great for recon work and divination. Sleep allows you to put others to sleep, which can be very useful in the right (wrong) hands.

PUPPETEER
You can control the bodies of living persons. The movements of the controlled creatures seem jilted and awkward unless you are possessing them. You can affect the voluntary movements of the target, including speech, but cannot affect other functions such as thought, psychic powers, emotions, chemical reactions or involuntary functions such as breathing and heartbeat. It’s harder to control the whole body as opposed to individual limbs. The target can resist the control if your concentration is not wholly on controlling it.
Trappings: puppet, unnatural movement

Psychic Power List Part V

This time we have phantasms, possession and psychometry. Phantasms allows you to create hallucinatory images, which can be very useful as diversions or bluffs. Possession lets you inhabit the body of an other. Psychometry allows you to 'read' things so you can feel the aura and the history of objects and places.

PHANTASMS
You can create visual illusions. The target creatures in see something differently than before. You can make things appear or change the appearance of something that is already there. You cannot, however, make something disappear or appear smaller than it actually is. You must concentrate on your illusion, with the amount of illusions causing the normal multi-action penalty. You can create many identical illusions with no added cost of concentration, for example turning all weapons in the vicinity into snakes. If you have genius, you can create an exact replica of something, provided it is the only thing you’re visualizing at the time. If you have weather control you can create illusionary weather and so on with other powers.
Trappings: smoke, mirrors, a light source

Psychic Power List Part IV

In part four we have emotion manipulation, lucid dreaming and metabolism. Emotion manipulation can be a subtle tool for manipulating people or it can be used for more therapeutic purposes. Lucid dreaming allows a psychic to explore and control dreamworlds basically adding a new dimension into the game. Metabolism is yet another background power, allowing for a type of ageless immortality and survival in inhospitable conditions.

EMOTION MANIPULATION
You can affect other people’s state of mind, making them angry, sad, calm, giddy or lustful. This is a more subtle effect than puppeteer, where you do not have actual control over your target, but can still influence them. The power has a much more pronounced effect when used to heighten an already existing mental state, turning a rainy day into a spiral of depression or bolstering anger into a furious frenzy. You cannot direct the subject of the target’s emotion. You could make someone angry, but directing that anger towards your enemies requires more mundane manipulation.
Trappings: mood swings, extreme emotions

Psychic Power List Part III

So we have come to the third part of this list. This time we have mesmerism, genius and location. Mesmerism is your common fascination/captivation ability, which is useful among other things for preparing a subject to other psychic powers. Genius is a passive power, its most obvious utility coming from photographic memory. This power is mostly for flavor/consistency and so that devil-like creatures and dark muses can offer musical skills or mad genius for unfortunate souls. Location is another low-key power, though it can be useful if combined creatively with other powers as it allows you to know the exact location of anyone you have a psychic link to, including those sensed through telepathy or psychometry.

MESMERISM
You can emit an aura of fascination that encaptivates one or more non-psychics around you. While using this power, the targets’ attention is fully fixated on your every move and word. Anyone under the influence loses all awareness of their surroundings and become harmless, unless attacked or physically affected. If you have animal control, you can use this on animals as well. The targets need to be able to see or hear you for the power to work, the effect dissipating if they are unable to sense you for more than a few seconds. The number of successes you get on your will roll count as a bonus to any subsequent powers used on the captivated targets.
Trappings: captivating eyes and voice, dumbstruck audience

Psychic Power List Part II

So, on to the actual powers. First we have animal control, astral projection and commune. Animal control is useful for indirect operations, such as spying and guarding or even attacks. Astral projection is useful for exploration or sneaky maneuvers as you're invisible and pretty much untouchable while doing so, though your body is defenseless. Commune is mostly for NPC:s and is used by cultists and priests to commune with their god for advice or to provide sacrifice and prayer. To get the most out of commune you'd need to rely on the respect and fear the god itself has.

ANIMAL CONTROL
You can communicate with and command all types of animals. You can control the animals directly or assign them simple tasks that come to them naturally (such as hunting for a hound or running for a horse.) While you can control their actions, the creatures still remain of animal intellect and cannot perform complex tasks autonomously. Animals also never voluntarily attack you, even if you’re unconscious, though your control over them ceases if this happens. If you also have possession, you can possess animals at will. They will not resist your possession.
Trappings: one or more animal parts (teeth, feathers, scales, bones, etc)