Illusion
“Now you see me… Or do you?”
Range: 100 feet
Hand Requirement: One
| Subpower | Description | |
|---|---|---|
| Smoke and Mirrors (affinity) | You gain a psionic ability to create illusionary images and sounds. As a baseline, these images are of Medium size or smaller, are intangible, have limited animation, cannot shed light, cannot harm someone, and lasts 1 minute or until out of range. This typically takes a major action and does not need a check, though the SM may require a channeling time, a check, and/or a lesser slot, at their discretion. As a rule of thumb, creating and maintaining a score of illusions for extended amounts of time might need you to channel for that duration, something bizarre and psychedelic and requires someone actually skilled in audiovisuals might require a check with consequences like not actually fooling anybody on a failure, and fortifying an illusion to last a day outside of your range might require a lesser slot. Any illusions modified by a lesser slot subpower can also last up to a day and can exist outside your range unless specified otherwise. At your SM’s discretion, you might also spend a lesser slot to attempt something extraordinary with your affinity not covered in this writing. This affinity is used as a major action if an action cost must be specified. | |
| Shroud Self (at-will) | Major action: Create an illusory disguise on yourself, changing your appearance and voice. If the disguise is a different size category to yourself or a non-humanoid shape, creatures have advantage to discern if the illusion is real. This lasts 1 hour or until you use a damaging ability. | |
| Shroud Self (greater) | Free action: You turn Invisible for 5 minutes or until you deal damage through a damaging ability. This extends to your psionic signature and muffles any soft noises you make, but does not extend to other supernatural or unconventional senses, such as echolocation or heat vision. Channeled action: If your Invisibility ends prematurely, you can channel for half a minute to regain it for that unused duration. This channeling does not cost a slot. | |
| Fortify Illusion (lesser) | Major action: Empower your affinity to refine your illusions. For the next hour, you can use your affinity to give your illusions increased defense against scrutiny; heat as if they were a living creature, emotions as if they were emotion-capable, and a limited facsimile of surface thoughts and deeper memories for mind readers. At your SM’s discretion, it can be used to create some other falsifiable quality not covered above. Major action: Empower your affinity to rewrite illusions’ psionic makeups. For the next hour, you can use your affinity to reorder your illusions, diminishing their psionic signatures against detection or rewriting them to be indistinguishable from ordinary psionic beings, items, phenomena, etc. It will be sufficient to fool cursory inquiries, though it may not stand up to thorough or powerful scrutiny. Alternately, you may use it to create illusions of purely psionic energy, to bait or mislead psionic detection and extrasensory perceptions. Major action: Empower your affinity to stabilize your illusions. For the next hour, you can use your affinity to fortify your illusions to last up to a month. | |
| Fortify Illusion (greater, 5 minutes) | Major action: Your fortify an illusion to last indefinitely. You also gain all the uses of the lesser slot version of Fortify Illusion but only with this illusion, but their usage is empowered; the heat signature fluctuates, the illusion can convincingly act out complex emotional states and seem to think and remember like a sentient being, the illusion can even seem to expend energy as if it were using at-wills subpowers, etc. | |
| Program Illusion (lesser) | Major action: Empower your affinity to animate and command your illusions. For the next hour, you can use your affinity to specify patterns for your illusions, and your illusions will act according to those patterns. It also allows you to fortify them to last up to a day, and allows them mundane sight, smell, and hearing to respond to outside phenomena, but any patterns that dictate what to do in response to outside phenomena are limited to simple commands, and the illusions have no innate intelligence or ability to think for itself. | |
| Program Illusion (greater, 5 minutes) | Channeled action: Create sophisticated behavior patterns for an illusion. Specify patterns for this illusion, and it will act according to those patterns. The illusion also has the same type of senses as its creator and an innate intelligence with which it can obey any commands you give, respond to outside phenomena appropriately to preserve the deceptive quality of the illusion, and possibly pass the Turing Test, but it has no innate sentience of its own. | |
| Dream Induction (at-will) | Major action: Touch an object of Small size or smaller. For the next 1 minute, your illusions can interact with this object as if they were tangible. Only one object can be altered in this way at a time. | |
| Dream Induction (greater, 5 minutes) | Channeled action: Modify an illusion to learn an affinity that you know and hold a reserve of psionic energy, enough to use the affinity for 5 minutes. It cannot use any slots and any checks it must make is made with your psionic skill but at disadvantage. When empty, the reserve can be recharged by touching the illusion with a lesser slot. | |
| Notes: All Illusion subpowers use a DC equal to your total psionic skill bonus plus 15, or your psionic attack bonus plus 15, whichever is higher. Any checks to successfully scrutinize your illusions, whether by Investigation or Perception (old-fashioned way) or by Occult or psionic skill (to tell the illusion’s composition directly), are made against this DC. |