Inter-species Telepathy

[Michael Hopcroft]

Are there penalties involved in trying to use Telepathy to communicate with a different spieces, such as an alien or a non-sentient animal? Does the penalty get worse the more alien the mind is? And can a really alien race take an EGO-based damage shield that harms minds that attempt to establish telepathic contact with it?

[Steve Long]

See the rules for "classes of minds" on 5E 79. There's some further discussion of the issue on SH 250.

Whether a character can take a Mental Damage Shield of some sort depends on the GM. If he can accept "really alien mind" as a valid special effect for such a thing, there's no reason a character couldn't buy one if he wanted to.