Pyrokinesis

Pyrokinesis   Mystic Proficiency (Grace)   400 hours   Psionic

Ah, you saw Firestarter on late-night television and were hoping for a way around the 'no fireballs' rule, weren't you? Well, you're out of luck, spud. This is the skill of moving & manipulating existing flames, not exploding buildings & burninating shadowy government types. A flame can be spread, fanned, diminished, or even picked up & moved in its entirety. Pyrokinesis lets you do pretty much anything with flame except ignite, extinguish, or burn without fuel. Even that last one has some latitude. As long as there is plenty of air, you can keep a fire burning on the basis of your psychic talent alone for a moment or two (one round per skill level). You must be able to see the fire to manipulate it, but this is as much a reasonable safety precaution as a limitation of skill. Not all of the flame need be visible, just part of it so that you can get a mental 'fix' on it. That is, you can dampen the flames of a whole room even if most of it is hidden by smoke & fire, or pick it up & twirl it in a ribbon around your body. Increasing a flame's intensity burns it hotter, but it uses up its fuel faster. Admittedly, in some cases both of these are desirable effects. Every point of skill is an increase or decrease of 10% intensity. This affects damage, temperature, rate of consumption, et cetera. Yes, I am aware that a decrease of 100% or more for level X+ is how the math works out, but you cannot heal fire damage, cool something off, or actually extinguish a burning blaze with pyrokinesis. What you can do with such a high skill however, is reduce the flame to warm coals and a smaller fire than a cardboard match in the rain, which then almost always goes out on its own right away. Like its less-interesting older kinetic brother, pyrokinesis has a range of sight, duration of concentration (for the control part anyway--the burning part is a different matter), and requires a skill check of 15 or higher. Another thing that the two skills have in common is trading fatigue for power, but as the progression differs, that factor is not as useful with pyrokinesis. Flames may be moved about purely by the power of your mind (at about the same speed as you could spread the flames via torch) but you can physically scoop up a handful of fire with your bare hands using this skill. Note that pyrokinesis does not truly offer any resistance to fire. In other words, a pyrokinetic mind mage burns just as well as any other witch. However, this skill does allow you to touch & hold fire or to move through a burning building without harm by keeping the heat & flame a fraction of an inch away from skin or clothing while directing the heat away from you. This skill only affects fire, not coals, hot air, smoke, or ash. That means you still sweat on a sunny day, will still burn yourself touching a hot pan without an oven mit, and cannot pyrokinetically pick up a flame along with any fuel.