Telekinesis propelled Knives
- Thread starter infojunky
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Dolphin in a Robot Suit
SOC-7
Not seeing anything in the LBBs, but the Traveller Book states on page 119 that you can telekinetically throw objects "with a strength generally equivalent to physical throwing" at a double psionic strength point cost. So according to the rules for thrown knives on page 43, such an attack would do 2D damage.
Timerover51
SOC-14 5K
If you can throw a knife with telekinesis, it would make more sense to throw a very small, needle-tipped poison dart with a much higher velocity to take down a target. Either that or a small, adhesive-coated grenade to affix itself to the target and then explode.
kilemall
SOC-14 5K
Well, that doesn't directly answer the question, but I think I can figure something out from there.
ShapeShifter
SOC-13
If one's PC had telekinetic powers, just skip the knives. The best use of it to get rid of unwanted personnel would be to Force-push the target into the airlock and then hit the Big Red Button™. No need for a bucket and mop. 
"Knife propelled knife"?
Never mind. I just re-read the subject. I didn't see it when reading the posts.
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This. It wouldn't take much pressure on the brain to incapacitate or kill a target.
Hum my own typo is making me giggle today.
A silly Facebook game coupled to a silly Science Fantasy novel got me thinking about floating sharp metal bits used by a Teke. Son natureally the question occurs, "How do I do that in Traveller?"
True, and there's literary precedent (Niven's "Gil the ARM" story where the protagonist stops an organlegger's heart by telekinetically reaching through a videophone image, if nothing else.). But it may not be possible in-universe for the same reason there aren't any mass-blinding laser weapons in-universe -- it's overpowered.
Timerover51
SOC-14 5K
If one's PC had telekinetic powers, just skip the knives. The best use of it to get rid of unwanted personnel would be to Force-push the target into the airlock and then hit the Big Red Button™. No need for a bucket and mop.
That would depend a lot on how strong the T-K ability was. The user might not be able to handle more than a kilogram or so. Hence, uses the knife or other sharp objects. Glass would work nicely as well, or a nice full glass bottle of beverage.
There is that.
What I was thinking of is "knives" made of materials that are made of psionically receptive materials. Akin to the the flicking keyboard controls in the Zhodani book...
Might as well use gauss rifle darts ...
Timerover51
SOC-14 5K
As I do not recognize the existence of the Zhodani in my universe, I have no idea as to what "flicking keyboard controls" mean. I generally view adding Psi Powers as given in the rules to the game means to badly unbalance the game in favor of the Psi. See James Schmitz's short story "Glory Day" for example, or some of the other Telzey Amberdon stories. There is one where Telzey uses her telepathic ability to take over the mind of another person and use her to blast a guard that was causing her problems.
My rule of thumb for magic or psionic abilities is that there are no game balance issues if the effect can be reproduced through other means or doesn't have some silver bullet nature. So, for example, a psionic attack can be as powerful as a weapon as the same effect can be achieved by a character with a weapon. A psionic attack that reads more like a high level D&D wizard is probably overpowered.
For non-combat related effects, you might want to to establish limits like 'read surface thoughts' will potentially reveal some random information, but 'probe' requires the target to be cooperative or restrained so it's not possible to do it without the target knowing (think: something like a Vulcan mind meld). A 'suggestion' ability might work with 'These aren't the droids you're looking for' (which could possibly be replicated by a character with crap artistry skills anyway) but not for 'Go jump out the airlock'.
For non-combat related effects, you might want to to establish limits like 'read surface thoughts' will potentially reveal some random information, but 'probe' requires the target to be cooperative or restrained so it's not possible to do it without the target knowing (think: something like a Vulcan mind meld). A 'suggestion' ability might work with 'These aren't the droids you're looking for' (which could possibly be replicated by a character with crap artistry skills anyway) but not for 'Go jump out the airlock'.
The problem is lack of a resistance roll (saving throw, if you prefer) for targets of a psi attack. Most other game systems with psi have this, to prevent psis running free over muggles.
You could argue this is what the designers wanted, but it results in a poorly balanced subsystem.
Schmitz does a passable job of thinking through his mcguffinite in the Telzey Amberdon stories - actually, the TA stories are amongst the better treatments of this in sci-fi IMHO. However, characters with equivalent abilities would be too powerful for a run-of-the-mill Traveller game unless you were primarily facing your players off against psionically adept adversaries and/or muggles using anti-psi countermeasures were reasonably common.
At the level of the Telzey Amberdon stories, you would be creating a setting specifically for strongly psi-talented characters and it would be a key mcguffin of the universe. You can certainly nerf the capabilities down from the sort of stuff Telzey does in the stories while making psionics mechanically interesting. It's by no means necessary to have psionics in a given setting, but it is possible to design and run them in such a way as not to be unbalanced or difficult to adjudicate (see my article above).
CT was a first generation system and has a number of significant design flaws and balance issues *cough*gauss rifle*cough* - of which this is but one. DMs have been houseruling Traveller for 4 decades now and adding some sort of saving throw is a pretty straightforward fix.
Flaws in the game mechanics are not equivalent to flaws in the underlying concept of having psionics in your universe. You can have a psi or non-psi setting, and I've done both with Traveller. Per my posting above, you can design psi abilities in a way that they don't cause balance issues.
Canon Schmanon. A little house-ruling never hurt anyone.
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