Using Class of Minds - sharing experiences, how-tos

[zornwil]

There was a thread debating Class of Minds, this is NOT that. This is instead, taking the rule as is, asking how people use it and how to apply some scenarios.

First, in general...share! :) I'm just curious how it is being used and what people are doing with it.

Also, second, how about addressing how you would use CoM to address a scenario I'm interested in...

Let's take a sort of "average" modern supers game. Let's say you want to really have lots of Classes, the idea is that each Class is a very specific subset of minds, and may be any sort of SFX. The SFX are (for simplicity) either Uncommon, Common, or Very Common, but Very Common is still a sort of sub-set of the sort of Human/Animal level (I'll get to the highest Classes in a moment). Examples of Uncommon would be "Insect Minds". Examples of Common would be "Water Minds", all beings that are water-based, which includes Lemurians, all water animals, Mermaids, and the like (no navy people or such). Examples of Very Common would be "Urban Minds" which is a little odd, but for a character (which is my old Urban Druid character), it's rats, alleycats, wild dogs in the city, roaches, and people who live on the streets.

Beyond that, we have, as the sort of broad sets of beings, Machines, Human/Animal, and Exotic, the last category being rare but extremely important and plot-affecting characters.

How would you model this using 5ER and CoM and whatever else (whether house rules, limitations, advantage, and so on)? I have plenty of ideas, but am curious how those actually using Class of Minds in their games already would do this.

[caris]

Let's take a sort of "average" modern supers game. Let's say you want to really have lots of Classes, the idea is that each Class is a very specific subset of minds, and may be any sort of SFX. The SFX are (for simplicity) either Uncommon, Common, or Very Common, but Very Common is still a sort of sub-set of the sort of Human/Animal level (I'll get to the highest Classes in a moment). Examples of Uncommon would be "Insect Minds". Examples of Common would be "Water Minds", all beings that are water-based, which includes Lemurians, all water animals, Mermaids, and the like (no navy people or such). Examples of Very Common would be "Urban Minds" which is a little odd, but for a character (which is my old Urban Druid character), it's rats, alleycats, wild dogs in the city, roaches, and people who live on the streets.

Beyond that, we have, as the sort of broad sets of beings, Machines, Human/Animal, and Exotic, the last category being rare but extremely important and plot-affecting characters.

How would you model this using 5ER and CoM and whatever else (whether house rules, limitations, advantage, and so on)? I have plenty of ideas, but am curious how those actually using Class of Minds in their games already would do this.

First, thank you for putting average in quotation marks.

A supers world like the Champions Universe or one based on either of the two main US comic companies, is going to be the most wide open in terms of possible characters, sfx, etc. Because of this generally, when running supers stay broad, and give myself wiggle room. I also tend to look at things like rare, uncommon, common, and very common a lot more flexibly in supers than I do in a lot of other genres. This is in part because it is almost a genre convention. For example, in the DC Universe Kryptonite is so extremely rare that you almost never see it in books that do not involve the Superman Family, but in Superman’s “life” I would list it at worst uncommon verging towards common. Outside his own title for the most part Auquaman’s mental powers seem pretty limited because they’ve stopped writing stories in the JLA to put him near water with useful critters, but in his own title where most of the action takes place in the sea it is another matter.

First off, I would explain to the players the important fact that anything I define as having “No Mind” can not be affected by Mental Powers under any circumstances. Things that have “No Mind” generally include, but are not limited (and some rare individual versions of these types might have a mind), single cell life forms, desk chairs, rocks, bullets, bolts of lightning, and sunbeams.

OK, I would use the three classes that you list, but name them differently: Biological, Mechanical, Unusual. I would also point out that generally the “Unusual” group is so rare that it will generally not be worth points, but their decisions at character creation can change that. Also, I will tell them that the “Unusual Class of Mind” is a catch all for a lot of different things that they may or may not be interested in having either as an adder for their telepathy or in their own right. Since it is a catch all the Unusual Class of Mind can not be taken as a whole, but each of them will have to be dealt with separately and the Adder will cost from 0 to 10 or as a Limitation of –0 to –2, depending on the specific group. Some examples of that might be in the Unusual Class of Mind: Spirits, beings of pure energy, some extra-dimensional beings, and of course the ever popular Space Gods. (Please note when dealing with NPCs, that the GM does have unlimited points and that some of them are not intended to be met/dealt with in a direct power/combat manner, this goes as much for Mental Powers as it does for Attack Powers.)

Now, everything else comes down to negotiating with the players to find something workable, based on what everyone wants out of the campaign. In the case of the “Urban Class of Mind,” I’d start by getting the player to get a good feel how far out into things like city spirits or the Fae. I’d also talk to him about things like computers. I’m getting the feeling from the description, that what qualifies as an Urban Mind are those things very close to the “bones” of the city. In a DC or DC:AS style campaign this is going to get at a low Limitation –0 to –1/2 depending on what the player and I decide on how useful/effective it is going to be in the game. In a more broadly ranging game where jaunts to the moon, multi-session dimensional hopping are going to be common the Limitation would rise up to possibly up to a –1. I really don’t think a player buying this ability would want it to be so restricted by being the “Urban Class” that it would warrant anything higher.

As I side note, I do not use Automatons a lot, and I would seriously consider taking the “immune to Mental Powers” for free aspect off of them. I would just assign them to the appropriate category, rather than make them “No Mind.”

[tesuji]

Some general experiences...

Before HERo5, we used "animal mind" or "machine mind" or "curber mind" or "alien mind" as sfx justification for buying mental defenses, whether DR or simple MD. It worked find and allowed us to tailor each character/race to the specifics. A totally different alien mind ("its a rock!?!") could get high MD while a four-lobed brain near-human could take a little. The degree of divergence from "normal brain" could be given a wide variety of scales, not just a simpel binary "all or nothing". This worked well.

Somewhere in 4e, maybe after Cyber hero, we did try using cyberkinesis as a -0 lim which allowed use of mental powers on machines. It got very little play. We simply went back to building "normal" powers with "requires local machines" lims and went on from there.

In fantasy hero 4e, we allowed you to choose either animal only as a lim on mental powers, but typically you needed telepathic to communicate. However, mental powers got little use in the Fh due to cost vs benefit experience at lower point totals.

Our 5e games, did not see any real use of the CoM. We continued to just use class of minds as justification for buying MD and went from there.

[Onyxclaw]

I use human/machine/alien/animal mind classes. I also have "specific inanimate/sessile mindless object" class wich takes acare of things like "talk to stone" or "talk to trees." On ocassion I will alow a character who can "commune" with inanimate objects such as cofeee cups and random pieces of equipment to take the broader inanimate object class, but that depends on the concept (ie. does he only think they talk back...or do they) and especially if the comunication is image based. Though usually I'll make them buy clairsencience for past events that ocurred around the object, through touching objects instead.

The way I use the human class, is that I mainly use it as "character's species"

All minds other than your own species are instantly alien to you, unless you buy the class: alien mind. The difficulty of mind controling or taking information from an alien mind is determined based on it's willingness and how different the species is from you mentally. Some races are given mental defense only against alien minds (anyone who is not of thier species) due to extreme differences. For the most part I like to limit mental defense to "against attacks from alien minds farther from 2 steps away" unless the character's concept calls from mental defense against thier own species or ones closer (such as a mentalist or someone with exstensive mental training and control) I will not allow joe shmoe to take mental defense against his own specie's mind.

You can also model this mental defense as "does not work against X" Where X is the character's species.

Some of steps I usually consider are as follows:
Is the sentient alien plant like?
Does it come from a urban or rural envirnoment or community?
Is it primitive and more animal like, even though it's not an animal?
Does the alien communicate using language? Pictures? Colors?
Does the alien see the way the attacker does? Can the attacker even interprate what images they would recieve?

How does this relate to the person using the mind control? If they are completely similar then there is less of a penalty. If they entirely differnt than the penalty is incresed. If the difference is in more than 2 places than mental defenses bought against alien minds start to apply.

It seems to work out ok, but we'll see after I start running the campaign.

[Roy_The_Ruthles]

playing lowfantasy, i notice that there are definitly "human/humans with magical powers", "animals" "undead" and there might be a "dragon" class of mind, or a dragon just has lots of mental defense, i'm not sure and i don't really want to find out.

In the sci fi game i'm playing in, we have a "sentient" class of minds, an "animal" and a "machine", other than that i don't think we have any more.

[Onyxclaw]

playing lowfantasy, i notice that there are definitly "human/humans with magical powers", "animals" "undead" and there might be a "dragon" class of mind, or a dragon just has lots of mental defense, i'm not sure and i don't really want to find out.

In the sci fi game i'm playing in, we have a "sentient" class of minds, an "animal" and a "machine", other than that i don't think we have any more.

nope, I think that's it for Lord Zod's game. I'm going to expand thm in the new one, only because I think that the difference between the mental energy of one race ALL of the other sentient ones is not the same. It wont be overly complicated, There will be a free floating Mental defense house rule that you don't necisarily need to buy to have effect you.

For example, you will recive mental defense if you are simply a human being and a Trliad tries to influence your emotions with it's mind. Because the Triliad has a plant class mind even though it is sentient, and how it manifests emotions is not similar to the way a human does. How differnt is up to the GM
(me)
You will not recieve mental defense if a crossbreed between the triliad (god forbid this happen) a humna being tries to do the same.

If it becomes too cumbersome then I'll rethink it. A lot of the first months of the game will be retweaking =P

[Onyxclaw]

As I said in another thread, we would model it as follows:

We use 4 classes called Sentient, Animal, Machine, Exotic. What our GM does is apply penalties within those classes:

Human sentient: -0
Human-like sentient: -1 ecv
Non-human-like sentient: -2 ecv
Exotic sentient: -3 ecv

So if a human has the Sentient class as the base class they can use it on other humans at no penalty, a persied at -1, insectoid at -2, and someone like Mechanon or an energy-based alien at -3.

It would be the same for animal class. Mammals might be -0, avians -1, fish -2, jellyfish -3, etc.

So basically you have sub-classes within the main classes. The sub-classes make it harder to establish contact. So that makes it like the very common, common, uncommon concept you are talking about.

yeah that's about it. hmm, I think I like the ECV better, it's a lot cleaner.

[Roy_The_Ruthles]

yeah that's about it. hmm, I think I like the ECV better, it's a lot cleaner.

but then given enough time and effort, eventually you could mind control a rock

[Onyxclaw]

but then given enough time and effort, eventually you could mind control a rock

well in the right campaign I might let you ^-^

Hehe, Stone Man uses his object communication to "commune with stone" and ask about recent events. The Granite Avenger doesn't want the rock to tell him what actually happened so he mind controls the rock and forces it to lie to him (i.e. send false messages) or to omit the scenario. Stone Man believes noone would ever waste thier time mind controlling a rock and is happy with the information he recieves!

hehehe, see crazy things can happen ;)

I'll probubly try both and we can see what we like. Sound good?

EDIT: (but in all honesty...who would bother talking to a rock!)

[Roy_The_Ruthles]

You can only mind control a rock if the GM says a rock has some degree of int and/or ego within the game that can be controlled. You can't control something that has no way of comprehending what you are trying to tell it to do.

It could make for an interesting animate stone spell though. :)

well since onyx will let us talk to rocks, mind link and mind scan are only a few leaps away....

Can you imagine scanning for rocks using mind scan? But then you could just look for "table classes of minds" and look for tables a few phases later. It'd get silly. very very silly

[Vondy]

Why type?

http://www.herogames.com/forums/showpost.php?p=762271&postcount=151

[Vondy]

but then given enough time and effort, eventually you could mind control a rock

Sure, with TK.

[Fox1]

How would you model this using 5ER and CoM and whatever else (whether house rules, limitations, advantage, and so on)? I have plenty of ideas, but am curious how those actually using Class of Minds in their games already would do this.

As noted elsewhere, I use four classes of minds: Sentient Creatures, Animal, Machine, and 'Things man was not meant to know'.

All players must be in the Sentient Creatures group. No Animal, Machine, or 'Things man was not meant to know' PCs.

I suppose to be complete, there is a fifith class- Mindless, mental powers don't work at all.

I'd use limits to represent sub-classes or sometimes even other powers.


Example:

Insects- Mindless Class, buy the effect you're looking for with other powers (Darkness to represent a swarm of flies blocking out your vision for example).

Humans (and nothing but humans): -1/4 limit

Water Sentients: -1/2 limit

Water Animals only: -1/2 limit

Land Based Animals only: -1/4


Etc.