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Dice Mob Home > Dice Mob Rules > Skills > Knowledge
Psionics
Psionics are supernatural abilities of the brain. Some races have these abilities appear more prominently, and even in those without it being prominent sometimes have a person here and there that are born with these powers. This can also be taught, though it takes much effort to learn and even more to become proficient.
Unless otherwise specified, all Psionic knowledge under Disciplines follow the Standard Effects of Degrees and Levels.
Psionics itself requires 10 Skill Points (though some professions award this knowledge with no additional skill point cost). Arcane Knowledge itself awards the following basic abilities:
Basic Abilities
| Clairvoyance and Clairaudience | Character's with this ability can hear or see things not within range of their senses. This task generally requires darkness and quiet and a sufficient amount of time to relax and perform the task. This isn’t something that is done in the heat of battle but rather to give clues as to what action should be performed next. There should be a requirement that the character knows something about the person, place, or item being “spied” upon or has an article of clothing or something else that is tied to it. This costs 10 mana. |
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| Telepathy | Telepathy may not, at first glance, seem like a mental attack, but it includes both the ability to read thoughts as well as the ability to project thoughts into the mind of another. If the subject is willing, this can be done without a roll. If they struggle against the intrusion, the telepathy requires a Win-Loss roll. This costs 2 mana if the subject is unwilling and is free otherwise. |
| Prescience | This is the ability to sense the future to be able to respond to it. For Dice Mob, this means that as a defender, a character with prescience may roll as many dice as the attacker that round. This skill requires 5 mana. |
| Psychic Barrier | As a defensive action, a character may throw up a psychic barrier to block cognitive and emotional attacks against them. This grant 4 additional dice to cognitive and emotional defense for that round and costs 5 mana. |
Disciplines
Illusions
Although this essentially has the same effect as illusions available under Arcane Knowledge, Arcane Knowledge actually creates the illusion whereas Psionic Illusions are only in the minds of the “beholders”. The one real difference is that allies generally don't see Psionic Illusions but they would see Illusions created by Arcane Knowledge and could potentially be fooled by them along with the enemies.
| Auditory Illusions | Auditory disruption can be used to create auditory illusions, deafness, or to make a person think they hear one thing when they’ve heard another. Pranksters often use this effect to cause mischief or even anger between otherwise friends. Races reliant on echolocation are severely affected. |
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| Olfactory Illusions | Olfactory disruption includes creating taste and/or smell illusions or effectively creating a loss in the sense of smell or taste. Races reliant on their sense of smell to locate prey are often severely affected by these types of illusions. |
| Tactile Illusions | Tactile disruption includes touch illusions and loss of sense of touch. Tactile illusions can be used to cause illusory damage, especially in conjunction with visual illusions which can make it look as if damage was taken. The combination of tactile and visual illusions causing damage can be used to make a person go into shock or fall unconscious, even though no actual damage was taken. |
| Visual Illusions | Visual disruption can not only be used to create optical illusions, but they can also mimic invisibility and blindness. |
| Combining Illusions | There is no reason a character can't use more than one type at the same time. An illusion combining all four types of illusions would require four times the amount of mana. |
Cognitive Disruption
Cognitive disruption means that the character creates a sort of block in the neural pathways of an opponent to prevent the brain from controlling motor functions or thinking clearly. This can take many forms with more dangerous functionality requiring a higher degree of skill.
A successful Win-Loss dice roll vs Cognitive Defense is required to be effective. The opponent receives a bonus of two if the action would cause harm to them, four if there's a good chance it would kill them.
| First Degree | Prevent an opponent from one conscious activity like speaking, moving an appendage, or breathing. (Once a character is unconscious, they would start breathing normally because this ceases to be a conscious function anymore and become an automatic organ function.) |
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| Second Degree | Same as first degree, but on two conscious activities, including two appendage OR reduce cognitive thought processes by 20 IQ points. |
| Third Degree | Same as first degree, but on any and all conscious activities OR reduce cognitive thought processes by 40 IQ points. |
| Fourth Degree | Short term memory loss OR reduce cognitive thought processes by 60 IQ points. |
| Fifth Degree | Affect subconscious brain processes OR reduce cognitive thought processes by 80 IQ points. |
| Sixth Degree | Affecting automatic organ functions such as heartbeat, pain receptors, bladder, and other internal systems OR reduce cognitive thought process by 100 IQ points. |
Domination
Unlike illusions and cognitive disruption, domination doesn’t just block a neural pathway. It effectively sends signals telling an opponent to do things it wasn’t planning on doing. There are many classes of cognitive domination from making a different choice or just not doing something they had fully intended to do to actually doing something they rarely or never would have done, whether that be based on morality or other reasons.
If an action is so against the will of the opponent being dominated (such as putting themselves or an ally in mortal danger), the opponent receive a bonus of two or four dice to battle against it (depending on how much in opposition an opponent's mind might be) and requires at least third degree skill. Maintaining control of an outright unwilling opponent requires a successful non-combat action to maintain it (rather than simply a passive action).
Psionic Attack
Unlike most of these other attacks, psionic attacks actually causes real damage based on dice roll successes against cognitive defense. Like physical attacks, mental attacks reducing an opponent to zero hit points renders them unconscious.
This can also be performed as a defensive action against opponents trying to use a cognitive mental attack on the character, including telepathy, cognitive domination, or even a psionic attack, but excluding illusions. In this case, all cognitive defense successes result in one point of physical damage against the attacker.