ESP

Type: Sensory Action: Move (active)

Range: Extended Duration: Concentration

Saving Throw: None Cost: 1-4 points per rank

You can displace one or more of your senses over a distance, perceiving as if you were at that location, up to 10 feet away. Each additional rank increases your range, as shown on the Extended Range Table. ESP overrides your normal sense(s) while you are using it. Subjects observed via ESP can sense it with a Notice check (DC 10 + rank). You can make Notice and Search checks normally using your displaced senses. To search a large area for someone or something, use the extended search guidelines given in the description of the Search skill (see Search, M&M, page 53).

ESP costs 1 point per rank for one sense type, 2 points per rank for two sense types, 3 points per rank for three, and 4 points per rank for all of your senses. Visual senses count as two sense types (so visual ESP is 2 points per rank). You can use perception range sensory effects via ESP if your ESP applies to their sense type and an accurate sense (usually sight). Sensory effects targeted on the spot where you have displaced your senses affect you normally.

POWER FEATS

• Dimensional: This power feat allows you to extend your ESP into other dimensions with range proximate to your location in that dimension. One rank of Dimensional allows you to sense into a single other dimension, two for a group of related dimensions, and three for any dimension in the setting suitable to your ESP’s descriptors. Dimensional ESP for an accurate sense is especially useful for targeting other Dimension effects.

• Subtle: ESP already has a degree of subtlety. Applying one rank of Subtle to ESP increases the DC to notice the effect to 20 + rank or makes it noticeable only to a particular unusual sense (with the usual DC 10 + rank notice check). Two ranks of Subtle make ESP completely unnoticeable, as usual.

EXTRAS

• No Conduit (+1): You are not affected by sensory effects targeted where you have displaced your senses, but neither can you use perception range effects via your ESP. Despite the built in limitation, this is an extra, since it allows you to use your ESP to observe subjects in relative safety.

• Simultaneous (+1): You can use both ESP and your normal senses at the same time, perceiving two locales like “translucent” overlays of each other. This means you’re more capable of taking physical action while also using your ESP, although the effect still requires its normal duration to maintain. The GM may occasionally require a Notice skill check to sort out the layered sensory information you receive.

FLAWS

• Distracting: Since it overrides your normal senses, ESP already has aspects of this flaw, so it cannot be applied. If you normally retain an accurate sense of your surroundings while using ESP (for example, your ESP pertains to hearing and doesn’t override your vision), then the Distracting flaw may be allowed with GM permission. This flaw may also be appropriate if your ESP has the Simultaneous extra (see previous).

• Feedback: With this flaw, damaging attacks directed at where you displaced your senses can affect you. Your sensory-point is considered to have partial concealment from attacks (with the usual 20% miss chance) and you use your ESP rank as your Toughness save bonus against any successful attack. The feedback may be psychosomatic in nature or due to some sort of disruption caused by an assault on the point where you have redirected your senses. Note that sensory effects already work on you via ESP and this flaw doesn’t apply to them.

• Medium: You require a medium for your ESP, such as shadows, flames, mirrors, open water, television screens, and so forth. You can only perceive locations where your chosen medium exists.

• Sense-Dependent: ESP is already Sense-Dependent and cannot apply this flaw. At the GM’s option another effect can have the flaw ESP-Dependent, working only through the “link” of ESP, regardless of the sense(s) involved. Since Sense-Dependent effects already work on ESP users displacing the effect’s targeted sense(s), the modifier is of limited use, but may apply to some unusual mental or magical powers aimed specifically at remote viewers.

DRAWBACKS

• Noticeable: ESP with this drawback has an easily noticeable display, like a glowing set of eyes or a phantom image of your face, head, or body at the location you are observing. This manifestation cannot be used for communication, however (for that, see Associated Effects, following).

ASSOCIATED EFFECTS

• Concealment: At the Gamemaster’s discretion, the Concealment effect can treat ESP as a “sense” regardless of what sense(s) ESP affects. So Concealment 1 can be configured as “Concealment from ESP,” preventing someone using ESP from perceiving the user, without affecting other senses. This suits certain sorts of magical “spells to ward against scrying” or mental shields that block out the questing minds of other psychics. Likewise, the GM can allow Dazzle, Obscure, and other sensory effects to treat ESP as a single sense, allowing for effects that temporarily “blind” or block out the effect. Sensory effects that work against a particular sense also affect that sense displaced by ESP. So a Visual Dazzle, for example, can blind a Visual ESP user.

• Communication: ESP is the power to sense things going on in a distant location. To send information, you need the Communication effect, often associated or linked with ESP. This allows two-way interchanges between distant points, where the power user can sense what is going on some distance away and also relay information to those present able to receive Communication.