Dowser (Character Kit)

Description: The dowser, or diviner, is a psionicist devoted to searching for lost objects or answers to questions, much like the wizardly diviner. The principal tool of divination is the dowsing rod, a stick that gently tugs in the direction of the item searched for.
Role: The dowser can often be hired by individuals to hunt for a missing person or item, or locate hidden natural resources like gemstones, gold veins, or water. Most people are sufficiently ignorant of psionics to confuse dowsing with other forms of magical or clerical divination, so dowsers can usually operate safely in psionicist hostile areas.
Chosen disciplines: Required — clairsentience.
Recommended — psychokinetic.
Sciences/Devotions: Required — Dowse (free; see below for details).
Recommended—Know Direction, Know Location, Object Reading, Radial Naviga¬
tion, Sensitivity to Psychic Impressions.
Weapon Proficiencies: Any allowable to psionicists.
Nonweapon Proficiencies: Bonus — water divining 5 .
Recommended— cartography 2 , direction sense, orienteering 2 , navigation, tracking.
Equipment: The dowser must possess a divining rod, a Y-shaped stick made of willow. It must have grown into its shape naturally and fallen off the tree by itself; carved or cut rods have no inherent psychic potential. If the dowser loses his divining rod, a new one must be found and an attuning process, similar to that of the crystallite, must begin as the psionicist becomes familiar with his new rods psychic structure.
Special Benefits: When using his divining rod, the psionicist gains a bonus psionic power unavailable to all other psionicists. It is called Dowse, and it allows the psionicist to set his rod to guide the way to a hidden item. To work at maximum effectiveness, the rod itself must have actually come into contact with the item (or something of similar structure) being sought. If the psionicist is looking for a friends stolen long sword +2 his rod must have touched the sword before; if a vein of gold is being sought, the rod must be touched to raw, unworked gold (unworked materials have different psychic structures to the same worked substances). If the item or something similar is not available, the power check has a -1 to - 5 penalty; the DM decides the exact penalty based on the rarity and size of the item (bigger items are easier to locate).
The maximum range of the dowsing depends on the substances between the dowser and the object; a recommended maximum is 5–10 miles for normal terrain.
One round must be spent preparing to use Dowse, which costs 1 PSP to initiate and costs a further 1 PSP per turn employed. The rod gently tugs the psionicist in the direction of the object. If he does not hold the rod with both hands, it ceases to function.
Special Hindrances: Because the dowser's psionic skill lies mainly in the field of divination, he receives a - 1 penalty on all psychometabolic or psychoportivepower scores.
Races: Any race may be a dowser, although human, half-elven, elven, and halfling characters seem to suit this kit better; dwarves and gnomes have less of an affinity with wood than surface- dwellers. Psionicists from areas with little or no wood (deserts, the DARK SUN® world, etc.) may have developed alternatives, perhaps Y-shaped bones or dried cactus.
Category:Character Kit
Category:Character Kit Dragon Magazine