Psychic Surgery (3.5e Variant Rule)

This material is published under the OGL

Psychic Surgery (Wis)

Psychic Surgery allows you to remove other psychic influences or to alter memories and behavior.

Requirements: Telepathy feat

Check: Make a Psychic Surgery check, with the DC determined by the task.

Remove Psychic Influence: Make a Psychic Surgery check with a DC equal to the check result of the psychic skill currently affecting the subject. If you succeed, that skill no longer affects the subject. Note that this only removes the effects of ongoing psychic skills, not permanent aftereffects. So you can use Psychic Surgery to remove Domination or Illusion affecting a victim, but not to restore ability score points lost to Drain Ability or damage suffered from Psychic Blast: for that, use the Psychic Healing skill. You can undo the effects of Psychic Surgery used to alter the subject’s mind in any way by equaling or exceeding the Psychic Surgery check result used to cause the alteration.

Alter Psyche: You can effect changes in the subject’s mind. The DC is based on the extent of the change you wish to make.

DC	Alteration	Time
15	Alter a single unimportant fact or brief recollection, about 5 minutes worth of memory.	1 full round
20	Alter a single fact or an hour’s worth of memory.	1 minute
25	Alter a single significant fact (such as the name of the subject’s spouse) or a day’s worth of memory.	10 minutes
30	Alter a deeply personal fact, such as the subject’s name or alignment. Alter a week’s worth of memory.	1 hour
35	Alter up to a month’s worth of memory.	6 hours
40	Alter up to a year’s worth of memory. Give the subject an entirely new personality, complete with false memories, or erase the subject’s entire memory, causing total amnesia.	10 hours

False or altered memories can cause dissonance within the subject’s mind, depending on how well they fit into the subject’s other memories. If the subject notices a conflict between the false and true memories (GM’s discretion), he gets an additional Will save to shake off the effect and regain his true memory. He gains a bonus of +1 to +4 on the save, depending on how strong the dissonance is between the true and false memories.

Implant Knowledge: You can use Psychic Surgery to implant knowledge of a particular skill in the subject’s mind. You can implant knowledge of any skill that you know, up to your rank in that skill or your Psychic Surgery rank, whichever is less. If the subject lacks a necessary prerequisite, then they have knowledge of the skill but cannot use it effectively. The subject uses his own ability score modifier with the implanted skill. Implanted skills fade at a rate of one skill rank per hour until they are gone. You can make an implanted skill permanent by paying 2,000 XP per skill rank made permanent.

Special: You must be in mental contact with the subject. You can take 10 or take 20 on a Psychic Surgery check. Taking 20 requires twenty times the usual time. Generally, this means the subject must be cooperative, unconscious, or restrained in some way.

Time: A full round to remove psychic influence. Altering psyche as given above. It takes 1 minute per skill rank to implant knowledge.

Retry: If you fail a Psychic Surgery check, you must wait at least 24 hours before attempting the same task again. Strain: 2 to remove psychic influence, half the DC (rounded down) to alter psyche, and 2 per skill rank to implant knowledge.

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