When looking for inspiration for psionic abilities, I checked the Expanded Psionics Handbook from D&D 3.5. I didn’t find much. Most of the powers were either covered by GURPS Psionic Powers or were boring or strange or were already converted by Enraged Eggplant. One power that I considered interesting is Shared Pain.

The D&D version is a Psychometabolism power that “creates a psychometabolic connection between [the user] and a willing [or unwilling with the “forced” version] subject so that some of your wounds are transferred to the subject.” It reduces the damage the user takes by half. The subject take the damage instead.

Note: The D&D psionic “spells” are called “powers,” and their “schools” are called “disciplines.” In GURPS terminology, they would be called “abilities” and “powers,” respectively.

I realize that this is fantasy and “mind magic,” but the “psychometabolic connection” seems strange to me. It is “unrealistic.” How does it work? The game effects are also difficult to translate to GURPS. Instead, I designed the following Telepathy ability:

Share Pain

31/33/37/42 for levels 1-4 + 35/additional level; 15/25/35/40 + 33/additional level with Multiplicative Modifiers

Skill: Share Pain (Will/Hard)

You can telepathically shift some of your pain to another individual who fails to resist for one minute times the margin of failure. While shifting the pain, you experience half of the normal shock penalty and reduce the your level of pain by one. Agony becomes Terrible, Terrible becomes Severe, Severe becomes Moderate and Moderate becomes Minor (-1 to DX and IQ). You can still feel pain below Minor, but it has no real game effect. Your target experience the same pain and shock penalties you do.

Range by level is as Sleep (Psionic Powers, p. 49).

Resistant to Pain renders the target immune to this ability or adds to the target’s resistance. High Pain Threshold provides the target its normal benefits but does not diminish this ability’s effects on you. The target is able to tolerate the pain but still feels it.

You can use this ability on a willing target in which the subject may waive his resistance roll. Nothing prevents you from sharing your pain with multiple targets, but you gain no additional pain reduction.

Statistics: Affliction (Will; Based on Will, +20%; Contact Agent, -30%; Limited by Own Pain, -40%; Malediction 1, +100%; Melee Attack, C, No Parry, -35%; No Signature, +20%; Shock, +10%; Telepathy, -10%, Terrible Pain, +60%) [24] + High Pain Threshold (Dependent on Affliction, -10%; Pain Reduction, -10%; Telepathy, -10%) [7] for [31]. Further levels remove Contact Agent from Affliction [33] and then Melee Attack [37] then Increase Malediction to 2 [42]. Additional levels add levels to Affliction [+35]

Full Shock Transfer

Default: Share Pain-1; cannot exceed Share Pain.

You can transfer all of your shock to the target. Your target takes the full shock penalty while you take none.

Full Transfer

Prerequisite: Share Pain 4

Default: Share Pain-10; -8 at level 5+; cannot exceed Share Pain

The target receives all of the pain you would have received. You become immune to pain for the duration of the affliction - retaining just enough of a sense to be aware of your injuries.

At level 4, you must make skin-to-skin contact to use this technique. At level 5 or more, your ability’s level is reduced by one when using this technique.

Default: Share Pain-1; cannot exceed Share Pain.

You can transfer your link to another individual. Instead of your pain being transferred to the target, a third individual’s pain is transferred to the target. You must touch the third individual (or make skin-to-skin contact at level one).

Designer Notes

This ability was a tricky. The Shock modifier is priced relative to Stunning and Moderate Pain and considering that it stacks with pain. +5% may still be a better price.

Pain Reduction is priced based on the halved shock penalty. The penalty reduction for Moderate and Severe Pain are identical to reducing by one level, Terrible Pain is slightly worse while Agony is better making it nearly a special effect.

Full Transfer uses Abilities at Default to convert High Pain Threshold and levels of Affliction to Immunity to Pain (Telepathy, -10%) [24].

Transfer Link is simply Usable on Others.

It might be nice to give the target a new chance to resist after moving a certain distance from the user, but this 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.