Stars Without Number Rules Explained: How the Psychic Class Works

Rules Explained

Jun 11

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Stars Without Number's psychic class is the setting's answer to magic: strange, dangerous, and limited by design. While warriors hit things and experts handle skills, the psychic gets access to six disciplines covering biological manipulation, precognition, telekinesis, telepathy, teleportation, and Metapsionics. Those powers run on a resource called effort, and when you run dry, the only option left is torching through your own neural pathways to squeeze one more use out of a spent system.

In Episode 24 of Dark Star Adventurecast, the crew reached the deepest part of Exosite 34b and hit a firefight that stripped away comfortable assumptions about resource margins. One crew member went to 0 HP. The clock started: six rounds. What followed depended entirely on mechanics most players don't think about until they need them. The stabilization window, the escalating DC, the system strain cap that limits what you can throw at someone who's already at death's door.

Brian, who plays Captain Thorne and serves as the show's assistant Star Master, breaks it all down in this episode: the six disciplines, how effort commits and recovers, what torching actually costs you, how the mortally wounded rules work in practice, and why system strain is the constraint that bites hardest when you're already out of options.

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[00:00:00] Brian: Howdy, all you DSA listeners, and welcome back once again to Stars Without Number Rules Explained, the special segment where we dig into the mechanics of the system to highlight how the rules can affect the stories that we tell. As usual, I'll be your host, assistant star master and occasional backup game master, Brian. As a lover of rules and systems, I'm delivering this segment to you to reveal the systems in play behind the narrative of the adventure cast. and how they impact our decisions at the table and our fiction on the podcast. Our regular episodes always focus mainly on the action and the story, but for a lot of TTRPG fans, there's another whole level of logic at work. I hope these segments are helpful for newer TTRPG or Stars Without a Number players who want more insight into how and when to use the rules of the game to their advantage, and also to people new to Stars Without a Number itself or who just want to know more about the mechanical aspects of a Dark Star Adventure Cast session.
[00:01:01] Brian: Today's topics are inspired by the events of the latest AdventureCast episode, Boom! Biosionics. The crew makes it back to the deepest parts of the alien exosite on Sibylen, but are they too late to save their friends? If you haven't already listened to it, you should head over and check it out. Hopefully you've already listened to the episode, so it should be obvious why this time I'll be talking about the psychic class and psychic skills, effort, healing, system strain, and death. We'll compare and contrast psychics to the other classes we've talked about in previous segments. I'll quickly touch on all the various psychic disciplines and some interesting abilities they can grant. What are effort and strain and how do you spend or recover them? And what options do you have when one of your comrades takes a bullet to the chest and the clock is ticking?
[00:01:51] Brian: In previous installments of this segment, I've talked about the other two primary classes in Stars Without Number, so today we'll go over the last, the psychic. Up to this point, everything we've talked about has been futuristic, but rooted in the mundane. The psychic class is for players who are interested in the weirdness of the setting, and want access to special psionic powers. The full description of the psychic class is on page 17 of the Stars Without Number revised rulebook. The class calculates its HP and attack bonus the same as an expert does, but where warriors and experts get access to additional combat and non-combat skills and foci, the psychics get access to psychic skills and techniques.
[00:02:35] Brian: There are six psychic skills, or disciplines, and at character creation, a psychic character can get access to one or two of them. Just by getting level zero in a discipline, a psychic gains access to that discipline's core technique automatically. This is a special ability that the psychic can use, and it gets more powerful the more skill points the psychic invests into that discipline. For example, Haleyy turns out to have access to one of the six disciplines in the latest episode, biosionics. This field of psionics deals with manipulating the physical biology of creatures using psychic power. With the Biosionic's core technique, Psychic Sucker, Haleyy can touch a creature to restore their hit points. Every discipline has a unique ability that they grant just by getting to level zero in the associated skill, but the book also lists several other psychic techniques that a psychic can unlock each time they gain skill points in that discipline. I'm not going to walk through every single technique due to time constraints, but here's a quick run-through of the six psychic disciplines. First, biosionics, the power to repair or damage living creatures. Precognition, the ability to sense and read future events. Telekinesis, the power to move and control things. Telepathy, the ability to sense the thoughts and emotions of others. Teleportation, the power to instantly move yourself or others from one location to another. And Metapsionics, which deals with powers related to sensing and controlling other psychic powers. Check out the full list of all of the disciplines and techniques starting on page 29 of the Stars Without Numbers revised rules if you want to see what each kind of psychic can do.
[00:04:21] Brian: Some of you who have played other games like this are probably thinking of psychics as a sort of mage or wizard class in a classic fantasy setting. And that's not too far off. But I'm sure you're wondering if all of these special powers come at some kind of cost. Like what about the psychic's mana or spell slots? Well, in Stars Without Number, psychics use what is called effort. Essentially, each psychic technique will ask the character to commit effort for either the scene or for the day in order to use it. A psychic's max effort is usually equal to the better of their wisdom or constitution modifier plus their highest psychic skill level. Once the commitment period is over, the psychic gets that effort back, and they get all of their effort back after a night's rest. Make sure to pay close attention to how much effort an ability requires, and whether it's for the scene or for the whole day. But if a psychic finds themselves without any remaining effort, they can push themselves through a process known as torching. The psychic burns through their own brain, risking complete insanity in order to tap into their powers in a pinch. All the rules about effort and torching are summed up nicely on page 31 of the revised rules.
[00:05:39] Brian: So as we saw in the latest episode, certain psychics, like Haleyy, can get access to abilities that restore hit points. But there are plenty of dangers out there in the universe, and psychics aren't exactly a common occurrence in every setting. So what is a space adventurer supposed to do when their companion is beaten, slashed, or blasted into submission? Stars Without Number is a fairly lethal system. The AdventureCast team are lucky to be alive after all this time, and most characters probably won't be so lucky. Player characters generally have around 1d6 hit points per level, and it's easy to imagine taking more damage than that when lasers, firearms, and incredibly jacked warrior women are always lurking right around the next corner. Biosionics are one way to restore HP, for example using the psychic sucker core technique, but there are also mundane solutions to this all too common problem.
[00:06:35] Brian: Of course, the most obvious way to heal is by getting some rest. The rules for injury and healing on page 53 of the revised rulebook say that any character who has taken damage but isn't mortally wounded can regain 1 HP per level after each night of good rest. But once a character is reduced to 0 HP, like what happened to Thorne in the latest episode, simply sleeping it off is no longer an option. A character that is reduced to 0 HP is essentially dying. This is what the book means by mortally wounded. This might mean they're unconscious or just out of the fight in some way, but they're not able to perform any useful actions. And after six rounds, or if they take any additional damage while in this state, they are dead. Another character can attempt to stabilize a mortally wounded creature with a heal skill check using their dex or int. This is a main action, and the target difficulty is usually 10, plus the number of rounds that have passed since the target went down. Various items can reduce this difficulty, like a medical kit reducing it to 8 plus time, or a healing drug called Lift that reduces it to 6 plus time. Once a character is stabilized, they regain 1 HP after 10 minutes, but they remain at death's door for up to a week depending on the quality of their medical care. And if they take any additional damage during this time, they can be killed outright with no chance of further stabilization. Pages 73 and 74 of the revised rulebook have lists of pharmaceuticals and medical gear that can be used to help injured characters. Some items require a certain skill level in the heal skill, so make sure to read the effects of each of these items carefully to check if it actually restores any hit points, whether it works on mortally wounded targets, and whether or not it gives that target any system strain.
[00:08:31] Brian: So now I hear you asking, what is system strain? Page 32 of the Stars Without a Number revised rulebook gives the best description. Essentially, system strain, or just strain, is how much healing, cybernetics, or drugs a body can take before it just gives up. If a power or drug would give a character an amount of strain that exceeds their constitution score, not the modifier, the score, then the effect simply fails to function. As long as the character gets a decent night of food and rest, they can restore a single point of strain. So not only do you need to keep in mind how much effort your biosionic character can use, or how many lifts you're carrying, but also the strain of the characters you're trying to keep alive. This can sometimes lead to impossible situations where an ally is bleeding out, but there just isn't enough time or resources to get them up again. Sometimes you have no choice but to say goodbye to a fellow in arms in order to accomplish the greater mission. Stars Without Numbers combat can be quite brutal, and it can end in a flash. Going first can completely decide the outcome of a fight, and sometimes it's better to try to avoid combat altogether. Keep these sorts of things in mind when you're trying to choose the games that you want to play at your own table.
[00:09:52] Brian: Well, thanks for listening to another episode of Stars Without Number Rules Explained. I really appreciate you taking the time to listen to me explain all these little details. I love tabletop roleplaying, and the mechanics of the games I sit down to play are a huge part of what I think makes a session or campaign fun and interesting. I hope that you feel the same way, or maybe these segments make you realize that they're more interesting than you thought. If you like this content and you want to hear more like it, then please leave a like or a comment wherever you're listening and tell us what you like about it. I'd also love to hear feedback from people on Reddit or on our Patreon at patreon.com slash darkstaradventurecast. Keep your radio tuned to the DSA frequency, because coming up next is Jeff's Star Master log for this latest episode. He'll be talking about his campaign plans and how everything was laid out to lead us to this episode's big reveal. I hope you'll give it a listen. And thanks again for all your love and support. And as always, keep following that signal.