Multiple Contacts

Multiple Contacts is an enhancement for Mind Reading on pg 62 of GURPS Powers
It still requires "must focus on one contact at a time to read minds" so Compartmentalized Mind is still needed to SIMULTANEOUSLY read multiple minds' surface thoughts.
*to emulate a psychic able to receive messages from an entire team without CM: B91 Telecommunication would be the answer, specifically the Telesend variant
The benefit of the enhancement is that by establishing "channels" to "established contacts" a new Quick Contest to re-establish a channel is no longer needed.
*this resembles the 'multiple contacts' cumulative penalty built into Telecommunication
The cumulative penalty naturally limits how many contact channels can be kept open at once: eventually rolls will fail unless previous contacts are dropped to reduce it.
==Note==
Multiplicity is a psi technique found on page 59 of GURPS Psionic Powers. It is for Telereceive which is constructed from Mind Reading.
PP lacks "under the hood" for techniques, only UTH for base abilities, sometimes leaving readers to guess the crunch behind it.
Pg 9 explains they use the Temporary Enhancements rule of -1 per +10% of enhancements, so the -5 penalty implies +50%, which is the value of the Multiple Contacts enhancement.
PP59's wording seems to misunderstand how P62 works though:
:read additional minds without leaving the one
you’re in.
That makes it sound like it's adding the equivalent of Compartmentalized Mind (ability to read multiple minds simultaneously) which goes beyond what Multiple Contacts does. You might remain "in" the mind (if that's what remaining in contact with it means) but you can't pay attention to it while you focus on another one.
A concentrate maneuver is still needed to switch between minds: there's just no more contests to go back to established contacts.
To allow more rapid switches between minds would require Reduced Time to make it a free action. Possibly Reflexive might be useful to unconsciously switch to hear the 'most useful mind at a given time' like for example if an ally was shouting for help (you couldn't hear them or see them) while all other allies were calm.
One other possible approach might be to use the Persistent enhancement to give a 10 second duration and interpret that as being you can hear that person's thoughts for 10 seconds after switching away from paying attention to them, which could allow hearing up to 10 people's thoughts simultaneously if you kept rotating through them all (1 per second).
There is however a difference between "hear ten people at once" and "understand ten conversations at once" so Compartmentalized Mind is probably necessary to do that properly, or else whatever standard penalties might apply to a situation like that, would.
Another possibility is to use Affliction (Advantage: Telesend: Self Only) on allies. This would allow them to voluntarily contact you, rather than Mind Reading which is an intrusive form of Telereceive.
"TeleREAD" is probably a more accurate term to describe what Mind Reading does. True passive reception would be afflicting others with the ability to send to you.
Category:Enhancements