"Classes of Minds" (for Mental Powers)

[Just Joe]

I recently looked at the "classes of minds" rules (regarding mental powers, on p. 79) and concluded that they're goofy.

 

The goofiness has to do with the "alien" class. When I first read it, I thought that the rule implied that humans were special among all living beings -- so that they (we) count as one class whereas all aliens count as another. The FAQ makes it sound better than this: "human" appears to be short-hand for something like "the character's own species". This is less goofy, but is still goofy nonetheless. Suppose a planet consists overwhelmingly of earthlings but contains very small minorities of aliens from various planets (e.g., like Earth in many typical comic book worlds and some SF worlds). An alien mentalist there could choose the "alien" class of minds and thereby affect humans and all aliens except his own species while human mentalists picking "alien" could not affect other humans. This strikes me as (a) unbalanced and ( arbitrary. If one can affect ALL aliens, then why not one's own kind? (In philosophy of science terms, "alien" is not a natural kind.)

 

I propose an alternative. There should be just three basic classes of mind: "animals" (roughly sentients that are not sapients), "computers" (sapients which are not sentient?) and "humans" (sapients of one's own species or kind). Regardless of which kind is chosen, the powers cannot affect an entity that is too alien (as GM defines/judges) without a 10 point adder. This is distinct from the 10 point adder (which can be bought twice, if desired) that would allow the power to affect more than one basic class of mind.

[Zeropoint]

Re: "Classes of Minds" (for Mental Powers)

 

How about:

 

Non-sapient organic

Non-sapient machine

Sapient organic

Sapient machine

Thing From Beyond the Veil of Reality

 

?

 

Those classes should cover pretty much everything, I would think. For some campaigns, the categories might need to be broken down further. For instance, in a cyberpunk campaign, the "non-sapient machine" category might need to be broken up by system type (embedded, PDA, personal, supercomputer, distributed processing net) or by operating system ("Sorry, your program grants telepathy vs. 'Windows' class minds. This one is Unix.")

 

A fantasy or space opera game might need more "sapient organic" categories, and in a hard science fiction campaign (obviously not TOO hard!), maybe psionics would only work on one's own species.

 

Just a thought.

 

Zeropoint

[JmOz]

Re: "Classes of Minds" (for Mental Powers)

 

My mentality on this is as follows:

 

Machine (computers, not cars)

 

Humanoid: This one includes any species that general thought patterns match that of a normal human. THUS 95% of aliens fall into this catagory, and any PC (Skrulls, Shi'ar, Kree, etc... In Marvel terms)

 

Animal: These are non sentient living creatures

 

Other: If it does not fit in the above scheme: Example is "The Green" from Swamp thing

[OddHat]

Re: "Classes of Minds" (for Mental Powers)

 

In my own games I'm now handling it much like a weapon familiarity:

 

Your Own Species or Type (Human): No modifiers

One Step Removed (Humanoid Aliens, Dogs, Cats, Apes, etc): -10 effect, or a 10 point adder to "learn" that class of mind.

Two Steps Removed (Non-Humanoid Aliens, Fish, Birds, Lizards): -20 effect, or a 10 point adder to learn that class of minds

Three or more steps removed (True Aliens, Plants): -30 Effect or 10 point Adder

Four or more steps removed (Machines): -40 Effect or a 10 point adder

 

Thus, a good (60 active point powers) Human telepath can always read his dogs mind ("Feed me! Play! More food now! Look!"), and has a good chance of reading the mind of a flower if he really feels like it ("grow"). Reading the mind of a Vulcan is not much of a problem, the mind of a shape changing Xenovore is harder, and a sentient shade of the color Blue is going to be really difficult if it has any serious INT score at all. Doing minor tricks with your laptop from across the room will be tough ("Ha! For only 6 END +10 from Pushing I ordered my computer to print!"), and serious cyber-hacking is going to require you to just spend 10 points.

 

Seems to be working out so far.

[pinecone]

Re: "Classes of Minds" (for Mental Powers)

 

I took one look at the class of minds and I handle it like this...ordanary aliens (90%+) use the human type Alien is for really out there items like HPL aliens...things so strange that even with the class telepathy is next to useless...really this boils down to the "philosophy of telepathy" Some people don't like letting you use telepathy on Forieners, they beleive that thought and language are one...me I feel thought and language are seperate and consider telepathy to function as a universal translator vs living minds...yep you guessed it...it's a style thang...

[Frenchman]

Re: "Classes of Minds" (for Mental Powers)

 

In my own games I'm now handling it much like a weapon familiarity:

 

Your Own Species or Type (Human): No modifiers

One Step Removed (Humanoid Aliens, Dogs, Cats, Apes, etc): -10 effect, or a 10 point adder to "learn" that class of mind.

Two Steps Removed (Non-Humanoid Aliens, Fish, Birds, Lizards): -20 effect, or a 10 point adder to learn that class of minds

Three or more steps removed (True Aliens, Plants): -30 Effect or 10 point Adder

Four or more steps removed (Machines): -40 Effect or a 10 point adder

 

Thus, a good (60 active point powers) Human telepath can always read his dogs mind ("Feed me! Play! More food now! Look!"), and has a good chance of reading the mind of a flower if he really feels like it ("grow"). Reading the mind of a Vulcan is not much of a problem, the mind of a shape changing Xenovore is harder, and a sentient shade of the color Blue is going to be really difficult if it has any serious INT score at all. Doing minor tricks with your laptop from across the room will be tough ("Ha! For only 6 END +10 from Pushing I ordered my computer to print!"), and serious cyber-hacking is going to require you to just spend 10 points.

 

Seems to be working out so far.

Great Idea OddHat. Of course, I say this in part because it is almost identical to how I wanted to do it in my groups star hero campaign (the last two groups were glommed together). Sadly my group didn't want to deal with it, and so it is just a question that is avoided entirely. The only non-humans we would ever want to use mental powers on are immune to mental powers entirely

I'm glad to hear that it is working well in your games, and I just may bring it back up again.

[Metaphysician]

Re: "Classes of Minds" (for Mental Powers)

 

I took one look at the class of minds and I handle it like this...ordanary aliens (90%+) use the human type Alien is for really out there items like HPL aliens...things so strange that even with the class telepathy is next to useless...really this boils down to the "philosophy of telepathy" Some people don't like letting you use telepathy on Forieners' date=' they beleive that thought and language are one...me I feel thought and language are seperate and consider telepathy to function as a universal translator vs living minds...yep you guessed it...it's a style thang...[/quote']

 

Yep. When they say "Alien" as a mental group, they are referring to critters that are genuinely alien. Almost all humanoid life counts as the Human class.

[Sean Waters]

Re: "Classes of Minds" (for Mental Powers)

 

I suppose there are two questions:

 

1. Can you perceive that type of mind at all?

 

2. How well can you affect it?

 

The first question will depend on your campaign to an extent. If you consider all minds to work in a basically similar way, you should be able to read all minds (human and machine minds are basically similar in that they both store thought in patters of electricity - although in radically different ways). If this is your approach, I think OddHat has the right idea - just make it harder the more alien the mind it to you.

 

If you decide that different minds work in such different ways there is no cross over, you need to stick with having distinct classes of mind.

 

The second question is also solved by OddHat's suggestiom, although I might be inclined to do it as bonuses to breakout rolls: I think a mind that is sufficiently different would continue to be difficult to hold on to.

 

I don't think that men should be able to read women's minds at all, BTW. They are an utterly different class, way, way beyond alien. Oddly, the same doesn't apply in reverse...

[zornwil]

Re: "Classes of Minds" (for Mental Powers)

 

I think the classes of mind is a neat demonstration of one way to do it, but to me it's all SFX. If a character triggers chemical impulses for mental stuff, anything with those similar chemical impulses will respond. If a character manipulates electronics, he's good with the computer stuff but very limited, probably to the point of uselessness, with humans.

 

I take the default setting for mental as brainwave manipulation/communication, and anything with a human-like brain wave can be affected.

 

Obviously one would have to adjust for widening/shrinking the usefulness, and the classes are a good example of where one might use Adders, but to me it's nothing more than an example.

[OddHat]

Re: "Classes of Minds" (for Mental Powers)

 

I think the classes of mind is a neat demonstration of one way to do it, but to me it's all SFX. If a character triggers chemical impulses for mental stuff, anything with those similar chemical impulses will respond. If a character manipulates electronics, he's good with the computer stuff but very limited, probably to the point of uselessness, with humans.

 

I take the default setting for mental as brainwave manipulation/communication, and anything with a human-like brain wave can be affected.

 

Obviously one would have to adjust for widening/shrinking the usefulness, and the classes are a good example of where one might use Adders, but to me it's nothing more than an example.

 

Agreed, and well put.

[Kristopher]

Re: "Classes of Minds" (for Mental Powers)

 

I think the classes of mind is a neat demonstration of one way to do it, but to me it's all SFX. If a character triggers chemical impulses for mental stuff, anything with those similar chemical impulses will respond. If a character manipulates electronics, he's good with the computer stuff but very limited, probably to the point of uselessness, with humans.

 

I take the default setting for mental as brainwave manipulation/communication, and anything with a human-like brain wave can be affected.

 

Obviously one would have to adjust for widening/shrinking the usefulness, and the classes are a good example of where one might use Adders, but to me it's nothing more than an example.

 

The book should probably have said something along those lines.

[Silbeg]

Re: "Classes of Minds" (for Mental Powers)

 

I apologize if this has been talked to death, but I look at it more like:

 

Human => Minds that work similar to normal humans (Mechanon is probably affected as a human rather than machine mind)

 

Animal => Animals that are considered "non-sentient" - a "superanimal" would probably have a human type mind

 

Machine => Typical AIs and/or computers. More usable for automaton-like machine minds than self-willed, but really depends on the construct (like Mechanon)

 

Alien => I would probably break this down to multiple types -

 

I also add "Demon" which includes extra-dimensional creatures... one would assume that an Earth Elemental doesn't think like a human... This may also be broken down into subtypes, but I really haven't thought that through as much...

[Kristopher]

Re: "Classes of Minds" (for Mental Powers)

 

Maybe another way to look at it would be to consider how the brain of the being works. An alien with a brain that doesn't physically work like Earth vertabrate brains is going to be rather hard to "link up with", unless one is using some kind of "soul=mind" or other non-physical definition of what a mind actually is.