Astral Projector
A Psion Path of leaving the body: a short phase-step, a projected scout, passage through solid matter, planar steps and group travel through the Astral.
Identity
The Astral Projector, called a Soul-Walker in most traditions, is the rarest of the Psion Paths. Its training teaches a Psion to leave the world instead of acting on it, treating the body as an anchor and the mind as a vessel that detaches, drifts, observes and returns. Mythar-descended Psions describe walking as a homecoming. Aurelion Memory-marked Psions sometimes become Soul-Walkers without meaning to, when inherited memory pulls them too far from their own cortex.
Features
- L3 Phase-Step
As a bonus action, you can spend 1 Psionic Point to reappear up to 30 feet away in an unoccupied space that you can see or accurately remember from within the last minute. The path between the two spaces can pass through solid matter up to 5 feet thick. You cannot end the step inside solid matter. If you try, the step fails, you stay in your starting space and the point is not spent. Once per short rest, you can use Phase-Step without spending the point. You can take one unattached object of personal scale with you, such as a key, a datachip or a weapon. You cannot take other creatures.
- L7 Astral Scout
As an action, you can spend 2 Psionic Points to project a Scout, a separate envelope of your consciousness, out of your body. Your body falls Prone in a trance for up to 10 minutes, unable to take actions and unaware of its surroundings, and you experience the world through the Scout. The Scout has your senses and your passive Perception, and it has a flying speed of 60 feet. It can pass through solid matter of any thickness, but it cannot interact with objects. Ordinary sight, hearing and scent cannot detect it. Creatures with truesight, certain Halcyion Federation containment fields, creatures using Psionic Awareness within 30 feet of it, and anyone in a Psychic Tether or Mass Link with you can detect it. The Scout has AC 10 and 1 hit point. Only psychic damage or attacks from creatures with truesight can reduce it to 0 hit points, and if that happens, you return to your body and take 2d10 psychic damage. The Scout can travel up to 1 mile from your body. The GM decides whether walls, lead shielding and Tier IV and higher containment fields block it. The trance ends at the duration limit, when the Scout is destroyed, or when you end it as a free action.
- L11 Walk-Through
As an action, you can spend 3 Psionic Points to de-phase from the Prime Plane for 1 minute, along with up to your spellcasting ability modifier (minimum 1) willing creatures within 5 feet of you. While de-phased, each affected creature has the following properties: It can move through solid matter at its normal speed, treating walls and barriers up to 10 feet thick as difficult terrain. If it ends its turn inside solid matter, it takes 5d10 force damage and is moved to the nearest unoccupied space. It has resistance to bludgeoning, piercing and slashing damage from sources that are nonmagical, not channeled and below Tier IV. It cannot attack physical creatures, and physical creatures cannot attack it with physical weapons. Spells, force damage, psychic damage and creatures with truesight or planar perception affect it normally. A de-phased creature can end its own effect early as a free action and return fully to the Prime Plane.
- L15 Planar Footstep
Your Phase-Step range becomes 120 feet, and you can bring one willing creature within 5 feet of you along with each step. Once per long rest, you can use Phase-Step to cross to an adjacent plane you have visited before, arriving at a corresponding location you remember, and the GM decides what counts as corresponding. The cross-plane step costs 4 Psionic Points instead of 1 and otherwise works as normal. Your Astral Scout's range increases to 100 miles. The Scout can also interact physically with the Spirit Plane layers it passes through, manipulating objects on those layers and conversing with creatures native to them, as the GM allows.
- L18 Astral Journey Capstone
Once per long rest, as a 1-minute ritual, you and up to six willing creatures within 30 feet can leave the Prime Plane and enter the Astral through the Rift for up to 8 hours, with you guiding the group. While in the Astral: Time on the Prime Plane passes at 1 minute per 1 hour of Astral travel, so you emerge about 8 minutes after you left. You and your companions can travel between any two locations on the same plane that any of you has visited before, and you emerge at the destination at the end of the journey. The GM decides what the Astral terrain between is like. The GM decides what encounters the group has with Astral natives, Mythar-echo phenomena and creatures attuned to Astral travel. You keep access to all your spells and Psionic Points. You can end the journey at any point and return the group to your departure point at no further cost. If you become Incapacitated during the journey, the group is stranded in the Astral until you recover or another creature with planar-travel ability extracts them.
