Mass Contact
Name
Mass Contact
Type
Science
Field
Telepathic
MAC
Wisdom
PSP (Initial)
Varies
PSP (Ongoing)
1/rd./subject
Range
special
Area of Effect
300 ft. radius
Prerequisites
10th level, contact
Power Score
All established contacts are maintained for the first four rounds for free.
Critical (20)
The psionicist tries for more minds then he can handle and is unprepared for the psychic backlash from so many subjects at once. He must save versus spells or fall unconscious for 2d4 hours, expending all his PSPs in the process.
Description
Mass contact is the High Science of Telepathy. It allows the telepath to establish contact with a number of minds at the same time instead of contacting each subject individually. The range and life order modifiers listed under the description of contact on pages 80-83 of The Complete Psionics Handbook all apply normally to mass contact, just as they would to contact.
The cost of mass contact is the sum of the regular contact costs for each subject. The maintenance cost is always 1 PSP per round per subject, but the initial cost varies with the levels of the subjects, as shown on the table below.
Levels or HD
PSPs
1-5
3
6-10
8
11-15
13
16-20
18
All minds to be contacted must be within 100 yards of each other, although the range can potentially be thousands of miles by linking distant subjects to even more distant ones. When the psionicist uses mass contact, he may choose which minds in the area of effect that he wishes to contact and which he does not. The psionicist must roll a power check on each subject and spend the PSPs to contact that person on a one-by-one basis, so mass contact could allow the psionicist to attempt dozens of contacts in a single round.
If the DM wishes, the statistical average may be used to save a lot of dice-rolling. If the subjects are 20 identical gith and the psionicist has a contact score of 18, he would affect 18 of them.
Once mass contact has been established, the psionicist can follow up with any other telepathic power he wants to use, such as invisibility, invincible foes, or id insinuation. The cost of the follow-up power must be paid for each individual that is subjected to it, but the power checks can be statistically averaged as described above. Note that the combination of mass contact and domination is much more effective than using mass domination by itself.
Mass contact is a High Science and cannot he selected as a science without first engaging in intensive meditation and research. See Chapter Seven.
