PSI

One of the themes I touch on throughout Rocketship Empires is the presence of Psi or Psionics within the setting.  The Order of the Golden Dawn occupies offices immediately across the street from Scotland Yard.  The Golden Dawn identifies and trains psi gifted individuals to act as the intelligence agency of The League of Nations.

There are two broad character classes of psi talents in RSE.  The Psi Witch and the Psi Warlock.  These titles are independent of the gender of the agent.

A Psi Witch manifests a broad talent in the regions of the mind.  Their psi talents have to do with telepathy, mind control, illusion and empathic healing.

A Psi Warlock manifests a broad talent in energy manipulation.  Their psi talents have to do with telekinesis, pyrokinesis and psiportation.

Skill pool rolls are used to achieve psi talent success.  Psi talents are governed by the Will stat.

Characters begin with a single psi talent fully developed and one psi talent partially developed.  As a character advances in level their partially developed talent becomes fully developed and they may then choose another talent from their available list as their partially developed talent.

Talents have a simple tree of building success based on the results of the psi talent skill roll.

I will offer up a very off the cuff and unfinished pryokinesis build as an example.

Pyrokinesis

Zero Success = Zero Manifestation
1 Success = Sparks and Candle.  The Psi surrounds themselves with a cascade of showering sparks as though they are standing inside of an iron foundry.  This has effect X.  Alternately the Psi can begin to spark and then focus their energy into a single globe of floating ball fire that emits the light of a candle.  This has effect Y.
2. Successes = Ball Flame.  The Psi surrounds themselves with a cascade of sparks that gather together into a brightly burning ball of rolling flame in their hands about the size of a softball.  This has effect X.
3. Successes = Flare.  As ball of flame but the Psi may grasp the ball with both hands and fire forth a geyser of flesh melting white hot flame up to a range of X.  This has effect Y.
4.  Successes = Flame Burst.  Explodes in a radius of flame as an area of effect attack.  The psi producing this flame manifestation is immune to this power as is all of their gear.

The idea here in the context of the game is that the Psi stands there and focuses their psi energy...and rolls...and the result is what their poor psionic brains can push out at that moment in time.  No final result is reliable or predictable.  The Psi has the option to reign in their result.  A Psi that just wants to create a ball of light can let go of the remaining power available to them in that moment and choose to not produce a full flame burst.  The additional success ranks can be put into extended durations for the light manifestation perhaps.

The party might be in a dire position where the flame thrower effect of a flare might be really helpful but all the psi manages to produce is a ball flame. Still helpful but not quite what the party was cheering for.

Like all skills the psi can spend aggression and logic dice to give their roll a one time boost.  Psi Warlocks run strictly off of aggression dice for their bonuses and a Psi Witch functions strictly off of logic dice.