Mental Illusions...what degree of 'reaction'?

[Immortaldreamer]

We had a really interesting question come up in the session tonight. A bunch of mutants, using their powers to practice in a training session. One student, a teleporter, was affected by another student who was a mental illusionist. Now, she -knew- that was his power, but at the same time, he caught her with a Ego+30 effect. So, her environment suddenly turns hostile. Her reaction was to try and rescue the other students, because she believed them to be in danger from the environment.

So the question came up...while yes, the environment will do damage either way to her (thanks to the Ego + 30)...does she have to believe that "this is reality now"? For example, can she realize "Well, this is unlikely to happen, I probably got zapped by Mental Guy" and choose to act as if the threat isn't real, even though she'd still be taking damage? Or does the fact of being zapped mean that she is forced to believe in the new subjective reality?

[Steve Long]

First, just to make sure you're clear, she's not going to take damage unless the character with Mental Illusions specifically declares that he's trying to achieve one of the "causes damage" levels of effect and gets a sufficiently high Effect Roll to achieve that, taking into account the base level he needs plus the modifier. If he needs an EGO +30 level as his base, and he wants to cause STUN damage (+10 modifier), he needs an EGO +40 effect.

Now, to the root of the question. The fact that she knows the other character has Mental Illusions is likely to affect her believability threshold. Much like an illusion that contradicts the character's Psychological Limitations (+10 modifier), this sort of situation probably calls for a +10 or greater modifier to the Effect Roll.