Group Mindlink

Group Mindlink   Mystic Proficiency (Personality)   200 hours    Psionic    Requires: Telepathy I

This is a refinement of the normal linking of a group in psychic conversation that any telepath can do. By specifically training and practising on this particular aspect of your psionic gift, you can overcome many of the obstacles of mindlinking using Telepathy alone. Most importantly, you can still use your telepathic talents to their fullest when engaged in a mindlink. You can safely and effectively link a number of people equal to your Group Mindlink skill level. Additional heads can be brought into the mind-share with a skill check at a cumulative -1 per extra, and these supplemental links are in danger of being dropped if your conversation falters. As your telepathic prowess is not limited by setting up a mindlink with this skill, you can use your standard Telepathy skill to mentally read or send thoughts to minds in the group, or make any other use of your psychic talents without additional penalties. You can turn down the mental volume of the chatter, or just tune one person out. You can keep the network up while separating yourself from it (such as when you need full attention to a task & your buddies are all telling jokes on the mindlink)--you can still listen for someone sending you an important message (basically, by 'shouting' your name mentally) or block even that. You have full control over your mindlink. You can even connect different groups established by other mind mages. In this case, the other psychic (who set up his own group) is the only one that counts as a mental contact, and you get all of the minds he is connected with for free. If this other mind mage is also linked to different mind-shares, they also come along for the ride. There is no effective limit on the total number of minds that may be contacted this way, but it can get noisy pretty fast. Group mindlinks take almost no effort to maintain. They can be in place for years, and operate even when you are asleep. Injury or other concentration-breaking events do not harm the mindlinks established with this skill. This is a powerful skill, but social concerns keep it from being abused. Look at the psychotic miscreants in your guild (and the players running them). Would you want to be in constant telepathic contact with this bunch of yahoos 24-7?