Is Mind Scan broken?

[gregghelmberger]

I’m preparing to run a supers game – my first after a series of modern-day, no-Power games – and I was reviewing the various Powers for potential problems and conflicts. During this process my eye was drawn to Mind Scan, and it struck me that there are some potentially very serious balance issues with this Power. However, I’ve never used this Power in a game and I thought I’d better check with the experts before tinkering with the cost or function or outlawing it altogether.

 

Basically, my concerns come in two areas. The first and probably most serious is that it allows the user to project other mental abilities at any distance and from a place of complete safety. Since relatively few villains have extensive defenses against mental powers, it’s easy to achieve the EGO+20 level necessary to allow other mental powers to be used remotely; the same rarity of mental powers among villains means that the mentalist has little to fear from such a remote attack. In the most extreme cases, a mentalist could, at least in theory, sit in the comfort of the team’s base watching beach volleyball and scratching his copious backside while laying low every member of a villain team and never being subject to any danger himself. The problems associated with this (Breakout roll, endurance, the victim knows who’s attacking him) seem relatively easy to overcome, and certainly don’t seem to me to balance out the manifest advantages of such an approach.

 

Another problem is that it makes designing certain types adventures very difficult, since the mentalist can find anyone, anywhere, with minimal effort and almost no time. That means that a whole range of scenarios – those that rely on having the players do detective work or legwork to find a specific person, especially on a deadline – become much more challenging to create and run unless the GM relies on a very limited bag of tricks to make them challenging. This might not seem like a big deal to some, but since I love those kinds of scenarios, both as player and GM, it seems to me to be a serious issue.

 

Of course, it’s when those two problems interact that they become most serious:

 

Emerald, the team’s Brick: Oh no, GRAB just robbed the bank and got away clean. Brainscan, do you copy?

 

Brainscan, team mentalist, back at HQ: Copy that. Let me find them… (Two minutes later) All right, I found them and knocked them out. They’re all unconscious at the corner of 5th and Elm. Better go pick them up quick though because I’m almost out of endurance and can’t keep pummeling their helpless, unconscious forms with Ego Blasts much longer.

 

Whee. What fun.

 

Now, since I have no actual experience with this Power, my fears might be completely overblown. But from reading the book, Mind Scan looks not just flawed but actually broken. What am I missing?

[Guest darthvegita666]

Re: Is Mind Scan broken?

 

dude mental powers still have a range limit

 

if you got 6d6 ego attack and there like more than 300 inches away you still cant zap them

 

and its like if the other team has a gageteer or anything its risky to sit there and mind scan for them cause maybe their sitting outside your house and you mind scan and hit a damage shield and then they move in and the rest of the team is like "brainboy where are you" and hes like drooling on the carpet and captured

[Hawksmoor]

Re: Is Mind Scan broken?

 

Old Mentalist Sniper ruse...

 

Only true way to stop the use of sniping is to make the *player* of a character with Mind Scan know up front that such actions do not make for a good game, BEFORE he even attempts to use them. If this does not work, ask the player again "Are you certain this is the mode you wish to take?" If the player persists give him 0 *ZERO* XP for the adventure.

 

It is all about the tone you want to set. Does Saturn Girl sit at Legion HQ and mindzap the villians? No. She is up in the line up dodging Mano like everyone else.

 

Hawksmoor

[Hugh Neilson]

Re: Is Mind Scan broken?

 

The issues are certainly there, but I don't see Mind Scan being any more broken than a lot of other powers. It's subject to potential abuse. Sub in Clairsentience for Mind Scan, and Our Hero gets a clear LoS pretty much anywhere. The mentalist with tunneling and N Ray vision is a classic powergame as well.

 

The ECV penalties for scanning large areas do restrict Mind Scan somewhat.

 

To me, the answer to your scenario is "While that works under the letter of the rules, it departs from the spirit of the game. If PC's can take that approach, so can NPC's, so let's make a greoup decision on what the ground rules are going to be."

 

You need to consider how you want your game to work, and that may mean banning some constructs or powers if you feel they will impede the game. High Telepathy can be devestating to detective work scenarios as well. So can retrocognition.

 

ASIDE: I've commented before on Mr. Margarita, He sits on the beach, sipping his margarita. You don't see him using his 1d6 Cumulative, continuous, many doublings, 0 END, 0 END to maintain, fully Invisible effects and results, quadruple penetrating Mind Scan. He tries each phase (spd 2) until he rolls a 3 and gets a lock (average: 216 phases, or about 22 minutes). He then pumps his scan up to Ego +100 (for penalties to breakout and to ensure the target won't remember it hapened). That takes about 15 minutes against an opponent with 50 Ego, and Mental Defense (so he averages only 1 point through per phase), less if no mental defense.

 

Once that succeeds, he uses his Mind Control (same basic structure, with Telepathic Commands), averaging 22 minutes for a hit and about 15 minutes for a lock. He can also use Mental Illusions, Telepathy, etc., as multiple power attacks if desired.

 

Great abusive concept. No one would allow him in a game. I certainly wouldn't.

[Blue]

Re: Is Mind Scan broken?

 

I don't think it's broken unless you allow the players to buy powers that can do these things.

 

What I mean is, I might give a villain some kind of Mind Scan with, say... Mental Illusions for prejecting dreams into the sleeping minds of heroes... But I'd never allow a player to buy Mind Scan with the capability to perform Mental attacks from safety, and every one of my players knows why; Because it's not very heroic, and if there's no danger, there's no fun.

 

I made a PC (that I never get to play) who has a tremendous, outrageous mindscan (because that's all she does is track things through space), but she has no other mental powers, and it also has a feedback limitation where people can mental attack her through that link if they have such powers. Makes it impossible to track her primary enemy, a race of space-faring illithid-type mentalists.

[Roy_The_Ruthles]

Re: Is Mind Scan broken?

 

Mind scan has some stiff penalties when you increase the size of you search, as well as if you don't know who you are searching for.

 

While mind sniping can get ugly, discourage this from the start, and if it still goes on, there are a few fun ways to slow this down....

 

Diffrent class of minds so villians arn't effected by mental powers,

 

Invisibility or Shapeshift to the mental sense, so that villains look like random citizens or don't show up at all.

 

Mental damage shield. They try to ranged zap, you get backlash

[gregghelmberger]

Re: Is Mind Scan broken?

 

I suppose this does pretty much just come down to GM vigilance, then. I guess the reason it makes me nervous is that, having only run heroic level games and never having had the experience of dealing with lots of Powers, I see so many ways that the players can break the game by exploiting loopholes like this. I just hope I'm smart enough to catch them all.

[Hawksmoor]

Re: Is Mind Scan broken?

 

OK if that is a fear then tailor your game so that odd powers and the like never show up. Tell the players that ! powers/talents are heavily restricted and that [sTOP SIGN] powers are verboten.

 

Hawksmoor

[MitchellS]

Re: Is Mind Scan broken?

 

While it's true mind scan has some issues it also has the attack penalty drawback: A -12 roll to find someone in a city of around 1,000,000 [most larger cities will fall into the -14 range]. On top of that you have an unfamiliar mind penalty of -1 to -5 [The number of times the character has used a mental power on the target would lessen that pentaly]. So to find a member of Grab in New York you can be looking at up to -19 on the attack roll. Not a great chance of success.

 

A 9 ecv mentalist against a 3 decv target is looking at a 17-. Adding a whole day of searching will add +7 for a 24-. This means the mentalist would still only have a 5- chance of success after a day; 6- after a week; 7- after a month, etc.

[Guest Black Lotus]

Re: Is Mind Scan broken?

 

Here's the thing: no matter how good you are, there's always someone better.

 

You could create a strong Mentalist NPC to put away for a rainy day, and take him out for "playtime" if a player starts abusing the Mental Powers. After all, using your Powers like that attracts attention, if not from known authorities, then from... other, more mysterious forces. Lovecraftian? Yeah, but hey.

 

Or, you could design an organization which monitors the use of Mental Powers... kind of like in Harry Potter. That way, when your player starts abusing his powers, a few enforcers from the Bureau of Psionics (or whatever) show up and give him a hard time.

 

I'm just suggesting some possible alternate solutions to this problem without having to restrict character creation too much.

[Warp9]

Re: Is Mind Scan broken?

 

dude mental powers still have a range limit

 

if you got 6d6 ego attack and there like more than 300 inches away you still cant zap them

 

and its like if the other team has a gageteer or anything its risky to sit there and mind scan for them cause maybe their sitting outside your house and you mind scan and hit a damage shield and then they move in and the rest of the team is like "brainboy where are you" and hes like drooling on the carpet and captured

 

Sorry, you are incorrect about the range thing.

 

If you consult the rules under a power like Energy Blast, or Darkness, or Dispel, you'll see (right under the main heading) Range (5" X Active Points), but under the Mental Powers it says: (LOS) Meaning Line of Sight.

 

From the Book:

Mental Powers do not have the standard Range (5" X Active Points)--a character can use them to attack any character within his Line Of Sight (LOS).

[Vondy]

Re: Is Mind Scan broken?

 

1) how familiar you are with the mind gives bonuses or penalties to the roll

2) how large an area you are searching gives penalties to the roll

3) the longer the lock the better the breakout roll (IIRC)

4) you have to purchase mind scan as a stand alone power (not in a framework) or purchase a pool big enough to run mindscan and the attack power at the same time (otherwise you can scan for them and not do anything once you have a lock because, once you switch to another power the lock ends)

5) It does NOT give more than the mental presence and general proximity of the person. You need other powers for precise information.

6) the person KNOWS they've been hit with a mental lock.

7) since mind scan is an attack power it ends the phase. the target of the lock will likely get a breakout roll before the mentalist gets another attack action

8) the target of the lock can use their own mental powers to attack through the lock without establishing their own lock - its two way.

 

In of itself, Mind Scan is not that problematic. If the character pays points for it they should get some utility out of it. At the same time:

 

1) the player needs to know who he's looking for - until he knows that your villian isn't an unfamiliar mind - he's an enigma.

2) the player needs to know where he's going to look - unless he's got a gazillion dice of mind scan.

 

Those two factors alone leave most mysteries or investigations largely in tact. The master villian may not be the one who committed a crime or be in the vicinity, and finding out who you want to scan for might not be a simple affair.

 

Also, once the lock is established, you still have to take them on and down, or establish a long enough telepathic link to find out what you want to know. Now, if every villian is prepared for it: psionics are either status quo in your world, or you're penalizing the character for having an inconvenient power. At the same time the villian who IS AWARE OF THE LOCK may have:

 

1) his own telepath (esp. for teams) who can intercept and engage over long distances.

2) a psionic interference screen (mental defense) that he can activate

3) a psionic feedback generator (damage shield) - the lock going two ways

4) a psionic trace mechanism (ouch)

5) his own mental powers

6) an ego booster (to help break the lock)

7) images for the mental sense group representing training for fooling mentalists (you used your telepathy and he owned you!)

 

Etc.

 

And for your GRAB scenario: what if other villians dressed like GRAB did it. The mentalist goes looking for GRAB and either 1) GRAB isn't in the area and the penalties are so steep he can't get a lock, or 2) finds one of them and blasts them into the dirt. Only, in either case, the real villians still got away and Grab, if he did nail them, knows some mentalist torched them for no good cotton picken reason and may find out who (or know who if they've had run ins with this mentalist before and therefore recognize his presence) and come looking for a little revenge...

[gregghelmberger]

Re: Is Mind Scan broken?

 

Good points, all! This does ease my mind considerably, so I don't any longer think that the power is broken. However, the threshold for attacking through it is still a little low for my taste. I might push that up to, say, EGO+30 or maybe even a bit higher. I think that would make me calmer and more sanguine about having the power around.

[Hugh Neilson]

Re: Is Mind Scan broken?

 

A 9 ecv mentalist against a 3 decv target is looking at a 17-. Adding a whole day of searching will add +7 for a 24-. This means the mentalist would still only have a 5- chance of success after a day; 6- after a week; 7- after a month' date=' etc.[/quote']

 

Why would I take a +7 bonus for a whole day of searching rather than simply try 1 phase searches repeatedly? Eventually, the character will roll a 3. Assuming he has to restrict himself to one attempt per turn for END reasons, a 3 should come up in under an hour of game time.

 

Abusive? Sure, but so are the scenarios G is concerned with.

[MitchellS]

Re: Is Mind Scan broken?

 

Why would I take a +7 bonus for a whole day of searching rather than simply try 1 phase searches repeatedly? Eventually, the character will roll a 3. Assuming he has to restrict himself to one attempt per turn for END reasons, a 3 should come up in under an hour of game time.

 

Abusive? Sure, but so are the scenarios G is concerned with.

Why? Because it's abusive and out of genre. While it is legal I would never allow it. If you allow something like that then what is the point of having imposed time penalties? Just because a roll of "3" is always a success doesn't mean the GM should allow it.

 

Would you allow a player to make 200+ inventor rolls to negate your GM-imposed -7 penalty or to by-pass the week period you told him it would take just because eventually he will roll a 3? Is there any skill you would allow someone to do that for? Of course not. Combat rolls should not be treated any differently.

 

There are lots of little "cheat" quirks in the system. That doesn't mean a GM should allow them to be exploited.

[Roy_The_Ruthles]

Re: Is Mind Scan broken?

 

I would have to agree that you shouldn't let players reroll many times for that eventual 3 payoff, DnD does that to speed things up, but it's really a lazy way to go about things.

[Super Squirrel]

Re: Is Mind Scan broken?

 

Mind Scan isn't that easy to work with. The Number of People in the area you are scanning gives you some problems. In this case you have an example of someone trying to find a target within a block. I'd call it around 1,000 minds giving it a -6 Modifier. Finding those targets is not going to be easy.

[Supreme Serpent]

Re: Is Mind Scan broken?

 

It may or may not be broken, but it's annoying and boring, especially when used in the ways described above.

 

How many GM's, when asked by a player for input on character ideas, would suggest such a thing? "Well Bob, you could play 'The Snitch', who's got lots of Mind Scan with bonuses, who sits at home all day finding villains and telling the other heroes and cops where they are." I think that would rank right up there with "I Have No Senses Man" as far as how fun it would be to GM.

 

"Howabout a Brick? Nice, simple, straightforward Brick. Or a Martial Artist? Flame guy? Sonic Battlesuit? Dachsund Damsel, with stretching and dog powers? C'mon..."

[Super Squirrel]

Re: Is Mind Scan broken?

 

I remember when Alice was playing Beacon. She would walk into the post office, rip off a missing person flyer and leave. She would use Mind Scan, find the person after spending a while searching. She would call the FBI, tell them where the person was and said she didn't want the reward. Because it was mostly background and wasn't abused for finding GM important fugitives, we ran with it. It was kind of fun flavor for the campaign.

[Roy_The_Ruthles]

Re: Is Mind Scan broken?

 

here's another "evil GM" idea. You roll the mind scan dice, if he fails by a large amount, maybe he hit someone else and thought it was the right mind (after all never meeting the guy you can make theses mistakes). Instead of dropping a bank robber, he hits a corporate embezzler, who gets up and sues MindSni00r for a million dollars for mental assult.

[Hugh Neilson]

Re: Is Mind Scan broken?

 

Why? Because it's abusive and out of genre. While it is legal I would never allow it. If you allow something like that then what is the point of having imposed time penalties? Just because a roll of "3" is always a success doesn't mean the GM should allow it.

 

Would you allow a player to make 200+ inventor rolls to negate your GM-imposed -7 penalty or to by-pass the week period you told him it would take just because eventually he will roll a 3? Is there any skill you would allow someone to do that for? Of course not. Combat rolls should not be treated any differently.

 

There are lots of little "cheat" quirks in the system. That doesn't mean a GM should allow them to be exploited.

 

As I said in the original post, it is abusive, and it is within the letter of the rules. Gregg's original post was quite clear that he was concerned with the poiwer being abused in a fashion which was technically legal under the rules.

 

Obviously, that hits a hot button with you.

 

At the same time, if everything else gets a +7 bonus when you try for a full day, why can you keep re-rolling to hit an opponent in combat until you get a 3?

 

The obvious answer: this is not abusive, since the opponent can target you back. However, The Amazing Turtle (OCV 1, DEF 75) can keep swinging at Captain Rabbit (DCV 15; Damage 10d6) all day, and eventually will get that '3' and hit Captain Rabbit. No one says that's abusive, or gives him +7 OCV for one shot after swinging all day.

 

Whether it is abusive to do the same thing with mind scan is a matter of opinion. In my opinion, it isn't an abuse to keep trying until you succeed. It is abusive to design a character specifically to be able to keep trying until he succeeds, with little or no fear of counterattack.

[Ternaugh]

Re: Is Mind Scan broken?

 

As I said in the original post, it is abusive, and it is within the letter of the rules. Gregg's original post was quite clear that he was concerned with the poiwer being abused in a fashion which was technically legal under the rules.

 

Obviously, that hits a hot button with you.

 

At the same time, if everything else gets a +7 bonus when you try for a full day, why can you keep re-rolling to hit an opponent in combat until you get a 3?

 

The obvious answer: this is not abusive, since the opponent can target you back. However, The Amazing Turtle (OCV 1, DEF 75) can keep swinging at Captain Rabbit (DCV 15; Damage 10d6) all day, and eventually will get that '3' and hit Captain Rabbit. No one says that's abusive, or gives him +7 OCV for one shot after swinging all day.

 

Whether it is abusive to do the same thing with mind scan is a matter of opinion. In my opinion, it isn't an abuse to keep trying until you succeed. It is abusive to design a character specifically to be able to keep trying until he succeeds, with little or no fear of counterattack.

 

What I think is forgotten here is that a situation where a character "demon dials" his Mind Scan just isn't very fun. And if something isn't very fun, why would we want to play it? It doesn't fit the superhero genre very well. It doesn't allow for a good story to be told. It is a fine example of metagaming, however: a character wouldn't know that by repeating an action a statistically significant number of times that they'd succeed, but a player would.

 

But as always, YMMV,

JoeG

[Greywind]

Re: Is Mind Scan broken?

 

Also keep in mind, while you are re-rolling to hit the guy in combat, he's also trying to hit you. Fair exchange. He gets actions when you miss.

[Hugh Neilson]

Re: Is Mind Scan broken?

 

What I think is forgotten here is that a situation where a character "demon dials" his Mind Scan just isn't very fun. And if something isn't very fun' date=' why would we want to play it? It doesn't fit the superhero genre very well. It doesn't allow for a good story to be told. It is a fine example of metagaming, however: a [b']character[/b] wouldn't know that by repeating an action a statistically significant number of times that they'd succeed, but a player would.

 

Exactly - within the letter of the rules and completely outside the spirit of the game. Would I disallow the approach? Absolutely. Would a power gamer argue that "the rules say I can". Positively.

 

The GM has to be willing to say "if any power or combination of powers removes the fun from the game, the tactic, the construct or the power will be didsallowed." This is the key for gregghelmberger, and any GM, in my opinion. You don't need to ban, up front, anything that could be unbalancing. You need to deal with anything that does become unbalancing.

 

If you simply decided "Mind Scan can be unbalancing thertefore no mind scan", or "Mind scan cannot be used to attack from outside LOS because that could prove unbalancing", then a player who comes up with an unbalancing construct you didn't consider (say telescopic N Ray vision) can rightly say "My character is legal - I didn't use any banned constructs." You risk turning the game into a player vs GM "find the loophole" contest. Instead, focus on the game up front. And don't be afriad to enlist your players. If MindScan Man is making the game boring for everyone, the players will also want an end to this unbalanced tactic.

[Markdoc]

Re: Is Mind Scan broken?

 

Just a couple of comments:

 

We had a character in one of our games with exactly this combo - mindscan and mind powers (Sister Morphine - "It's nighty-night for you, bad boy!"). She turned out not to be abusive for two reasons.

 

The first one has already been covered in depth: the difficulty of finding an unfamiliar mind in a large city or area (and the impossibility of finding mind you don't know)

 

The second one, is that it's one thing to find someone - it's quite another to be able to hold that mental lock and still have enough oomph left over to do them serious harm.

 

Like many mentalists, Sister Morphine had a multipower - she *could* in fact ramp up enough power to have a good shot at tracking down a target. But once she had done so, she was left with enough firepower to launch about 1d6 ego attacks, or 2d6 of telepathy (enough basically to threaten and make annoying comments or give someone a mild headache).

 

In short, it only becomes abusive if the character can launch two big-ass mental powers at once: so watch out for this combo in Elemental controls. Other than that, it's never been a problem. Telepathy (or "mind-reaming" has always been more of a problem in my games).

 

cheers, Mark