GURPS: New Emotion Concealing Psionic Ability and Techniques

Psis often have ways to conceal their themselves and their abilities. Today’s post contains an ability and a few techniques for concealing emotions.

Telepathy

Emotion Clouding

3.6/level; 1.5/level with Multiplicative Modifiers

Skill: Emotion Clouding (IQ/Hard)

You can manipulate your own emotions to hide them from detection. Make an uncontested Emotion Clouding roll. If successful, each level of Emotion Clouding gives -1 to rolls to discern your emotions. This includes Body Language, Detect Lies, Criminology, Interrogation and Psychology as well as IQ rolls for Sensitive and Empathy. It may also apply to influence skills if the GM believes understanding your emotional state would be important.

Statistics: Obscure (Emotions; Defensive, +50%; No Area Effect, -50%; Requires IQ Roll, -10%; Stealthy, +100%; Telepathy, -10%)

Expansion

Hard

Default: Emotion Clouding-7; cannot exceed Emotion Clouding.

You hide the emotions of anyone you choose in a two yard area. For every 5 points by which you make the (modified) roll, double the affected area.

This technique does not expand the area of the Suppress Fear and Suppress Influence effects.

Suppress Fear

Hard

Default: Emotion Clouding-10; cannot exceed Emotion Clouding.

Prerequisite: Emotion Control level 4 or higher; level 8 or higher if using Multiplicative Modifiers

Instead of merely hiding your emotions, you channel some of your ability into suppressing your fear. You become exempt from Fright Checks and immune to Intimidation. Using this ability reduces your effective Emotion Clouding level by 4 (or 8 if using Multiplicative Modifiers) and lasts for 1 minute.

Suppress Influence

Hard

Default: Emotion Clouding-10; cannot exceed Emotion Clouding.

Prerequisite: Emotion Control level 4 or higher; level 8 or higher if using Multiplicative Modifiers

Instead of merely hiding your emotions, you channel some of your ability into defending against emotional manipulation. You become exempt to ordinary influence skills. Any attempt to influence you from a character without Empathy (or another suitable advantage) automatically fails. Using this ability reduces your effective Emotion Clouding level by 4 (or 8 if using Multiplicative Modifiers) and lasts for 1 minute.

Mind Shield

Hide Emotions

Hard

Default: Mind Shield-10; Mind Shield-6 if using Multiplicative Modifiers; cannot exceed Mind Shield.

Instead of shielding your mind, you hide your emotions. If you use this technique successfully, replace your Mind Shield with Emotion Clouding. This technique lasts for 1 minute.

Anti-Psi

Mind Shield

Hide Emotions

This technique is also available for the Anti-Psi version of Mind Shield.

Designer Notes

Obscure (Emotions) was detailed in Pyramid #3/99 p. 9. Suppress Fear and Suppress Influence are Unfazeable and Indomitable respectively. A technique based on Fearlessness is an alternative to Suppress fear, but the Rule of 14 makes Fearlessness less useful without heavy Fright Check penalties. Resistant at the +3, +8 and immunity levels is another option for both techniques.

A non Defensive variant is possible. It would obscure your ability to discern emotions of others. Recalculating the cost is left as an exercise to the reader.

The material presented here is my original creation, intended for use with the GURPS system from Steve Jackson Games. This material is not official and is not endorsed by Steve Jackson Games.