Mantis Posted February 15, 2005 Report Share Posted February 15, 2005 I'm want to design NPC(s) who are completely immune to Mental Powers on the grounds they have no mind (Robots), or completely different minds to normal Humans (AI Robots, or Aliens). Is there a way to do this simply, or must such a Character simply buy high EGO/Mental Defence/Mental Damage Reduction? I'm thinking this falls into the 'invent your own rules' category, and that 75 pts for 100% Damage Reduction (Resistant) vs Mental Powers would do it. Expensive, yes, but it is a very powerful effect, and will be limited to the classes of NPCs referred to above. Opinions, please! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
OddHat Posted February 15, 2005 Report Share Posted February 15, 2005 Re: Immunity to Mental Powers? This is already built into the rules. Machines can only be affected by Mental Powers that affect the Machine class of minds. Just don't allow humans to take Ego powers against Machine Minds and clasify all AIs as belonging to the Machine class of minds. You'll be fine. Aliens can only be affected by those who have mental powers that affect the Alien class of mind, though some Aliens are considered to have Human class minds. Again, just choose the class of mind and don't let humans buy powers that cross over. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MitchellS Posted February 15, 2005 Report Share Posted February 15, 2005 Re: Immunity to Mental Powers? Oddhat has the answer! It's free. Just part of the special effect of the character! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lord Liaden Posted February 15, 2005 Report Share Posted February 15, 2005 Re: Immunity to Mental Powers? Agree with all of the above. Also check the rules on Automatons, which would include "mindless" robots, and for Computers that are not Artificially Intelligent. They have no EGO and are automatically immune to Mental Powers. (There is an optional Mental Power construct which allows MPs usable against such targets to work against the target's INT rather than EGO, for creating "cyberkinetics" and the like.) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mantis Posted February 16, 2005 Author Report Share Posted February 16, 2005 Re: Immunity to Mental Powers? Thanks everyone! I thought I'd seen that rule somewhere, but I couldn't find it under any of the Mental Defenses or Powers... finally found it in the summary of Mental Powers at the start of the Powers section! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dauntless Posted February 26, 2005 Report Share Posted February 26, 2005 Re: Immunity to Mental Powers? I see a slight problem here when you say that these machines will be totally immune to all mental powers. Really, you should define it as being immune to mental powers with a side effect of psionics of some sort. However, with the rules, you could create a "hacker" kind of character that had Mind Control, but with the limitation "Only vs. Machines" -1, and "Only when interfaced with Machine" -1. To simulate a more cyberpunkish feeling, it could require a skill roll too, and perhaps an activation time representing the time spent to reprogram the machine. You could even have super powers which could "hack" machines without a direct interface however. Machines still have a central processing unit which can be thought of as a brain. Assuming current models of computing, Automata generally have some kind of memory to hold previous states (though not always...Acceptors are Automata without memory), and some kind of processing function to translate inputs into outputs (and these inputs and outputs get stored in memory). Again, given current technology, all logic functionality is implemented though different kinds of logic gates....transistors (for example NAND, XOR, NOR, J-K Flip Flops, etc etc). If you can manipulate the voltage going to the gates, then you can manipulate the binary logical representation. Ditto for the memory storage devices which in current technology, are usually chains of flip-flop gates (which may or may not be volatile...volatile meaning they need periodic charges of energy to make up for any lost leakage of energy in the gates). If you can alter electricity, and if you have an intuitive grasp of how machine logic works...then you can reprogram the "mind" of any finite deterministic or non-deterministic automata (or even any Turing Machine based on conventional logic gates). The only tech that may be immune to this are quantum computers. Due to the nature of non-locality and quantum coherence, it may be impossible to manipulate the qubits. Then again, who knows since there's still so many interpretations on how quantum wave functions break down (quantum decoherence). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CourtFool Posted March 24, 2005 Report Share Posted March 24, 2005 Immunity to Ego gratifying posts? This is a non-issue because I am cooler than you are. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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