so I started to make a character that is a mentalist, his M/O was fire. He is known as the fire merc because his merc nature and of course, his command over fire. anyways, his psychic potential is really high and he has the advantages of amplify sustained power and psychic inclination. He only has one disciple, which is Pyrokinesis. Anyways, holy hell! I think this characters broken. lol. with being so concentrated in one discipline his powers operate at least at absurd diff, at first level. so here's the question....

at a base psychic project. of 155, coupled with teh psychic inclination, which raised the diff automatically one level does my amplified sustained power then raise the diff another level? So this characters innate powers (usually fire immunity) is at almost impossible right?

Level 1. A Base of 155 in Psychic Projection. That can't work. The maximum number of DP you can put into Psychic Projection is exactly half of those alloted to your Psychic Abilities, so that's 180, which would give a base of 90. With an assumed 10 in DEX, that's 105 Psychic Projection.

Assuming you did that, that would then leave 180 DP for your Psychic Points, so that's 18 PPs, plus one for your level. Again assuming that you had 10 in WP, which would give you a base Psychic Potential of 60. To achieve Absurd, that would require for you to achieve Very Difficult, due to Psychic Inclination, so 140 Psychic Potential. So you'd need about 100 in Psychic Potential to be fairly sure of success (60% chance to get it), but you'd more likely achieve only Very Difficult (Difficult on your roll, go up by one for the advantage, so that's 120 difficulty, so an 80% to get it). That requires you then to go up by 40 in Psychic Potential, which would cost you 10 PP, leaving you with 9. So that's 1 for Pyrokinesis, 2 for an Innate Slot, so that's 6 points for powers/free PPs.

Does that sound like your character?

So yes, you could achieve Absurd difficulty, but not always, and you'd be restricted to Pyrokinesis, at least as your essential Discipline.

So finally, to answer your question, I doubt that they stack on Pyrokinetic powers, but I'm not sure, it is rather vague. All it says is ''use'' powers, and I'm not sure that includes Innate Powers. Besides, even if they did, you could only achieve Very Difficult (your Psychic Potential is 100, so Medium difficulty, up to Difficult for Amplify Sustained Power, up to Very Difficult for Psychic Inclination). You can't push it up higher, since your Psychic Potential would have to be 120, which would involve investing a total of 21 PP into Psychic Potential, and you're 2 PP short (unless you reduce your Psychic Projection by 20 points).

If your character is the one I have described, then he isn't broken, merely very powerful. But then again, most specialists usually are.

midnightprince said:

No, they wouldn't.

Psychic Inclination gains one level of difficulty greater than normal when using a power.

Amplify Sustained Power makes maintained powers one difficulty level higher than what you could normal attain.

They don't apply to the same things. Psychic Inclination doesn't work on maintained powers, since no matter what you roll to activate the power, it uses only your base Psychic Potential. Amplify only works on maintained powers.

Only a power like Psychokinetic Shield would benefit from both, according to its own rules for maintenance.

DarknessEternal said:

And even then I doubt Psychic Inclination would apply.

Well, the shields use the initial value you roll (which I think would be modified by Psychic Inclination) and then degrade back to your normal maintenance value over time.

Hmm, true, but I'm wondering if Psychic Inclination would drop the moment the shield becomes maintained?

Ok upon revision and to clarify. The character has a WP of 12 due to taking 2 points in advantages to raise the WP from this roll of 10. Max points were placed into psychic abilities, so a +90 on projection, plus the 80 that the 12 WP gives you equals 170, without dex! Seems like your figures forget the base psychic potential perhaps. So thats a base diff of 170 for maintained powers max, and then the advantage kicks in giving the character 1 step up on using the powers (so long as they are pyrokinesis) which equals absurd. According to what is written here, his maintained powers would act as the same absurd diff. since they advantages do not stack up raising diff levels. Make sense?

Oh and you can even have a higher projection than that simply by spending permanant psychic points to raise the potential. Although I'd say that is a costly route to do so.

Psychic Projection does not have a base value, you have to purchase it from scratch, but you get to add your DEX modifier to it...

Psychic Potential has a base value based off your WP score and is not affacted by your DEX score...

Psychic Potential and Psychic Projection do not interact in any way in regards of adding modifiers to each other...
*you roll the Potential to activate the power, and then you roll Projection to affect a target or targets (unless the power or discipline description states otherwise)...

Well ****. lol. Just when I think I got an aspect of the game understood. lol. Back to the drawing board.

Yeah, with the translation artifacts in the book things like this can get pretty hard. Sometimes the book calls the same thing by different names, like Ki accumulation and Accumulation Multiple.

I thought Psychic Potential and Psychic Projection were the same thing for a while.

I even thought DP and CP were the same thing for a while. Yeah I was really confused on advantages and disadvantages.