The Hidden Truth

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Player > Starships > Role > Magic Officer

Magic Officer

Even starships that are not explicitly powered by magic or hybrid technology have enough mystical components and are exposed to enough ambient magic that they can be influenced by those rare few who command a deep understanding of the intersections between magic and the vastness of space. If nothing else, simply accessing the Drift requires both technology and magic, and the underlying magic of the universe is prevalent even in the void, so the usefulness of arcane expertise cannot be overemphasized, especially in a starship combat environment in which even the smallest advantage can mean the different between life and death. The magic officer deeply understands this truth and provides both mystical knowledge and resources that can push the starship’s interaction with the inherent magic around it to new heights.
While not every ship has a magic officer, it’s often useful to have someone who understands digital portents, the flows and eddies of raw magic through the void of space, and how the inherently eldritch forces unleashed by powerful engines can impact starship operations. A magic officer acts during the engineering phase during starship combat. A ship can have any number of magic officers.

Magic Officer Actions

As a magic officer, you can take any of the following actions, depending on your ranks in the Mysticism skill. (Note that the Mystic Haze and Psychic Currents actions both require a minimum number of ranks in Mysticism to perform.) These actions can be taken only during the engineering phase. If your starship has an arcane laboratory, you gain a +2 bonus to Mysticism checks to perform any of these actions. Unless otherwise noted, each action can be performed only once per round, no matter how many magic officers are on a starship.

Eldritch Shot (Engineering Phase, Push)

You augment a starship weapon with a burst of your personal magic in much the same way that weapon fusions augment personal-scale weapons. Such an effort is considerable, and the magic lasts for only a single attack before it fizzles and the starship weapon returns to its normal functionality. Choose one weapon on your starship to augment and attempt a Mysticism check (DC = 10 + 1-1/2 × your starship’s tier). If you succeed, the gunner treats the range of that weapon as 5 hexes longer than normal. This does not work for weapons with the point special property.
Critical: Your magical energy also augments the damage of your selected weapon’s next attack. On that attack roll, the gunner can treat each damage die roll that results in a 1 this round as having rolled a 2 instead.

Precognition (Engineering Phase)

You use your supernatural senses and a spark of divination magic to see opponents’ motion before it happens, giving you just a split second to shout a warning to your ship’s pilot. Attempt a Mysticism check (DC = 10 + 1-1/2 × your starship’s tier). On a success, you grant the pilot a +2 circumstance bonus to their Piloting check at the beginning of the helm phase to determine piloting order.
Critical: Your precise senses give you detailed information about your opponents’ next move. Increase the circumstance bonus to the Piloting check to +4.

Scrying (Engineering Phase)

You employ a substantial form of divination, such as dealing from a digital harrow deck, reading the future by interpreting the splatter of leaking coolant on your ship, or visually scanning the readouts of your starship’s myriad screens to pull deeper and predictive meaning from the lights and sounds around you. This functions as the scan science officer action, but you attempt a Mysticism check instead of a Computers check. For information about the effects of a successful scan action, see page 325 of the Core Rulebook.
Critical: Your divination reveals a weakness in a random quadrant of the targeted starship. The next time one of your starship’s weapons deals damage to the targeted starship’s Hull Points, it has a 25% chance to also deal critical damage to a random system.

Mystic Haze (Engineering Phase, Push)

If you have at least 6 ranks in Mysticism, you can spend 1 Resolve Point and attempt a Mysticism check (DC = 20 + 1-1/2 × your starship’s tier); if you succeed, you call forth a magical burst of static to block your enemy’s view. This obscuring field garbles your opponent’s sensors and hinders their ability to gain information about your ship’s defenses and positioning, providing your starship a +1 enhancement bonus to AC until the end of the next round. In addition, the increased interference means all science officers on the opposing starship taking the scan or lock on actions before the end of the next round must roll twice for their checks and use the worse result.
Critical: Your conjured haze is especially powerful. The granted enhancement bonus to AC increases to +2 and also affects your starship’s TL.

Psychic Currents (Engineering Phase)

If you have at least 12 ranks in Mysticism, you can spend 1 Resolve Point and attempt a Mysticism check (DC = 20 + 1-1/2 × your starship’s tier) to manipulate mysterious, invisible forces in the void of space, expanding and contracting the basic physics around your own vessel and altering how your starship can negotiate the confines of physical space-time. On a successful check, reduce your starship’s minimum distance between turns by 1 (to a minimum of 0) for that round.
Critical: You manipulate the currents to push your starship along, increasing its speed by 2 until the start of the next turn.

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