Clairvoyance/Precog scaling
Edited into the post. For convenience:
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Clairvoyance
At zero dots: You can guess what's on the other side of a card someone is holding—if you're concentrating—and thereby cheat at poker. It won't be perfect, but you'll be banned from Las Vegas in a hurry.
There are two variants of present-tense clairvoyance: "Vague impressions" and "clear sight". The information feed is the same for both, but it's too much information; the latter must always be focused on a smaller area, the definition of which varies with rating. Clairvoyance can be trained towards one or the other.
- Limited clairvoyance. This might take the form of a mental eye you can move anywhere within your field of view, or it might give you a second sense for everything happening within fifteen metres of yourself—good for dodging, not useful as vision—but it won't do both for the same person.
- Clarity reaches the level of your regular senses, within that same fifteen-metre range. The range limit for vaguer impressions, however, extends to the limit of your mental range. There's a lot of dials this can balance, and in practice it'll be different from each person; Clairvoyance is also the psionic skill with the most subtypes. Amu has the 'base' form, so in her case this is how it works, but at higher levels she effectively needs to decide which subtype she wants to have.
- Postcognition becomes possible: Tracing back the provenance of a physical object. That includes "this piece of ground", to be clear, but equally well "this letter". At three dots, you'll be lucky to manage a week.
The 'clear focus' range triples, and clairvoyants at this level are often able to move that area around; it's no longer anchored on themselves.
- If the clairvoyant is still focused simply on range, then their skill would manifest as limited omniscience within their mental range at this point; nothing escapes their sight, assuming of course that 'nothing' hasn't been shielded against them. In practice this is far too much information for anyone to handle, and someone who tries it regardless—or is forced to do so—would likely lose their ability to act independently of outside assistance. Exceptions may exist, but Amu isn't one of them—it would require superhuman attribute and ability values, i.e. above five.
There are other development paths. One is to instead extend the 'depth' of the sight, seeing things beyond regular vision. Magic; ongoing rituals such as Hikawa's, the weak points of Kagutsuchi, and similar. Another, fairly obviously, is to extend the range of her post-cognition. A third is to extend the depth of the post-cognition, which might then allow you to understand how an object is used, simply by touching it. This is the default option for Amu.
On a sidenote: At four dots it would also be possible to use Clairvoyance for mind-reading, should you train it in that direction.
- Do you want the Number Man? This is how you get the Number Man.
Ahem. At its maximum peak, the branches of clairvoyance would normally fold back in; you get all of the above, at maximum range, all of the time. It is almost entirely impossible for any sapient being to achieve this point and remain sapient, unfortunately. That does not entirely mean the dots can't be taken; but they would need to be coupled with a form of cognitive engineering that filters the input, preventing it from overloading the user. If it's then also supposed to be useful, it would need to be hooked directly to their reactions... at which point the user is no longer in control of their own actions.
Special note: 'Vague impressions' suffices to prevent any form of surprise attack while you aren't truly distracted. 'Clear sight' allows you to add your Clairvoyance rating to Dodge rolls, up to two dice, assuming you can see it coming. Similar distinctions apply for other uses of the skill. This overlaps with the bonus from Precognition.
In practice, "three dots" is the maximum rating for Clairvoyance that's viable for a regular human. To push it beyond that point it
needs to be limited in some form, or else its user will cease to be human. Specialisations are very much viable; focusing on combat usage, for example.
It's the odd one out, as scaling can't be handled simply by adding overgrowth machinery; the information needs to be actually processed to be useful.
Precognition
At zero dots: Nothing notable that can't be mistaken for vague feelings of doom about upcoming tests.
Extra special note: The
size of the event matters. The larger it looms in the future, due to
either high probability or high impact, the longer the range and higher the chance a precog will spot it. This means the
literal apocalypse, which is an almost completely inevitable event that affects the entire world, can be spotted a year out even at one dot; meanwhile, Amu's english scores would take five dots to predict precisely.
- At one dot, only uncontrollable but fundamentally predictable natural phenomena can really be predicted. The weather, with high likelihood of success, for three days or less; although the weather report does it better. The flight path of a bullet that's already in flight, and within your mental range. Your chances of acing the last English test.
That last one is a joke; precognition can't predict that. However, at a single dot it registers as vague senses of doom or potential wetness; if Amu's English scores are genuinely predictable (which they are), then there is no way for her to distinguish her perfectly ordinary conscious prediction of doom from the one she might have gotten from precognition.
- Still limited to events within your mental range, but the foresight becomes clearer; as in, you'll know when it happens. At this rating you're as good as the weather report. Some conditional events can be predicted, if the condition is already set in stone; for example, you would be able to predict when a timed bomb will go off. Assuming it's sometime in the next day or so.
- Forget the time limit on that bomb; add the ability to predict complicated machinery, again within a day or so. Anything at the level of a computer remains beyond what precognition can handle, but weirdly, many humans become somewhat predictable. This isn't necessarily beyond what a three-dot Socialize ability can provide... but doesn't requite socialisation, though it in fact doesn't apply as well to strangers.
Predictions at this point start failing in strange ways. While a weather mistake might just mean it's drizzling instead of overcast, precog gets more and more chaotic as you attack harder problems; it's more likely than not that not a single element of the prediction will come true.
- ...this is because there are multiple futures, as any precognitive will eventually realise. By the time they reach four dots, they're no longer limited to a glimpse of a single one; they can get glimpses of all of them, and predictions become more a range of possible outcomes than a single hopefully-most-likely possibility.
(Literally. Megaten runs on many-worlds quantum mechanics, with added cross-world interference.)
- ...and multiple presents. Why not look into a different present? ...why not cooperate with them?
Only information can be transferred, at least by the precog, but nothing stops you cooperating with yourself in a different timeline. This has interesting implications, although there aren't as many timelines as it feels like there should be, and far fewer than science would predict. There's a reason for that, which psionics will not provide.
Special note: Your precognition rating can, at
all times, be added to dodge rolls in combat; up to a maximum of two dice, in ordinary circumstances. That's as far as precognition applied to motoric nerves (or similar) will take you. This overlaps with the bonus from clairvoyance.
Additionally, Outsiders / Demons of Makai / Exaltation Shards et cetera always disrupt precognition, simply by their nature. They can only be accounted for post-fact.
