Mentalist Conundrum

[zornwil]

Re: Mentalist Conundrum

 

I'm not concerned, I'm just indicating that everyone balances things as they choose, and I'm interested in those choices. NND is another good topic.

[Sean Waters]

Re: Mentalist Conundrum

 

The problem with mental powers, especially telepathy and mind control, is their game breaking potential. Whatever safeguards you put in place, eventually they are going to mind-ream some mook who knows the whole carefully structured plot and you either cheat (in which case, why let them have the power int he first place) or you kiss goodbye to the next six weeks of gaming.

 

OK, you can get lucky with an energy blast too, but it rarely has the same sort of far reaching effect as mental powers can.

 

For this reason I tend to be either very wary of allowing TP/MC PCs, or I write scenarios that anticipate them.

 

My brother ran a great solo game for me using Golden Heroes an age ago. I had a telepath character.

 

Chap is attacked in an alley, left dying, perp makes off just as i arrive and i lose him. Dying chap can't speak, so I TP him and get an image of this 'Wolverine' type leaping towards him.

 

Track this fellow down and go about restraining him. Much blood (mine) later, I have him and read HIS mind. Turns out he is a vigillante who came across this bloke being attacked by someone else entirely and leapt in to try and rescue him. The dying man's last image was of his (attempted) saviour, not his attacker.

 

Mind you you can't do this kind of thing all the time. Mentalists are fine but they can take a game apart with a few lucky rolls in no time.

[Sean Waters]

Re: Mentalist Conundrum

 

NND may take someone down quickly, but it doesn't worry me in the same way as TP/MC (Ego attack and Mental Illusions are less of a problem in my book. MI can still be very dangerous but at least it requires some skillful handling by the player). Both TP and MC can compel the GM to tell you stuff, and information is far more power than any attack.

[Vondy]

Re: Mentalist Conundrum

 

I guess every single group of champions players I've ever run is just atypical because I've never had the problems with mental powers other people on the boards seem to have. I think its because I - and my players - have had a very different set of base expectations about how these things should work. Its not a DnD spell or a gamist mechanic. Its a power that functions as depicted in the relevant genre work.

[zornwil]

Re: Mentalist Conundrum

 

I haven't had problems, either, as players cooperate and play the genre or to a level of balance. I brought it up though because every GM does have to decide about sort of level at which they prefer it to function, much like people generally do Rule of X or other sorts of things to balance the physical world of combat.

[OddHat]

Re: Mentalist Conundrum

 

I guess every single group of champions players I've ever run is just atypical because I've never had the problems with mental powers other people on the boards seem to have. I think its because I - and my players - have had a very different set of base expectations about how these things should work. Its not a DnD spell or a gamist mechanic. Its a power that functions as depicted in the relevant genre work.

 

Yup, the group has a lot to do with it. The specifically "psychic" games I've run have never been a problem, but they've been run with mature players who were there for the story rather than for rules-munching.

 

Can't remember any real problems in my non-psychic-centered games from allowing mentalists, except when I made the mistake of not including possible Mental power use in my plot-outline.

[austenandrews]

Re: Mentalist Conundrum

 

Can't remember any real problems in my non-psychic-centered games from allowing mentalists' date=' except when I made the mistake of not including possible Mental power use in my plot-outline.[/quote']

That's the biggest danger, and the biggest challenge for a GM. One unaccounted-for insider can throw your whole scenario out the window.

 

Myself, I think mentalists get short shrift in most Hero games, because the system is designed around "cage match"-type encounters. Since most mental powers are (IMO unwisely) designed as "all-or-nothing" effects, too many boundaries exist to curb their potential dominance. So in my games I use house rules to strengthen them.

 

Ultimately, though, player expectation is paramount. How do the players expect mental combat to play out? The most critical factor here is whether a PC is a mentalist. If so, most likely he'll want a traditional Champions combat experience, pounding away at an enemy's defenses while they pound away on his. Mentalists aren't real good at this unless they're hybrid energy projectors (which I often encourage - Ablative Force Fields, will-based STUN and the like are a good way to squeeze familiar Champs battle tropes out of, say, a mentalist v.s. a brick).

 

The more intuitive mentalist experience is a sniper who relies on not getting hit. Take out his primary defense - generally distance and concealment - and he's down. I like this approach myself, but not all players want their PCs to perform that way. If there are no PC mentalists, though, this is easily my preferred method. PCs always want to quickly take down an enemy mentalist, but they can't do that without some work. Before they can find and/or reach him, he's a very powerful opponent. And best of all, PC satisfaction skyrockets when they finally nail the bastard. Setup + anticipation = payoff.

 

Conversely when the mentalist NPC is on the PCs' side, it's not hard to take them out when their presence may not be conducive to the plotline.

 

The other problem I try to solve is mentalist v.s. mentalist combat. This ought to be as natural as bricks v.s. bricks, but the mechanics don't support it. Instead ordinary mental attacks are mostly harmless to other mentalists, so special attacks are required to affect enemy mentalists. I'm still working on that one.

[Dust Raven]

Re: Mentalist Conundrum

 

The problem with mental powers' date=' especially telepathy and mind control, is their game breaking potential. Whatever safeguards you put in place, eventually they are going to mind-ream some mook who knows the whole carefully structured plot and you either cheat (in which case, why let them have the power int he first place) or you kiss goodbye to the next six weeks of gaming.[/quote']

 

I agree to an extent. Handling Mental Powers in a game is not much different than handling Clairsentience, Desolidification, N-Ray Perception, and is often much eaier. Any information is in someone's head, and you can control what's in there. Any control the PCs can have is restriction by who they encounter. The big nasty know-it-all bad guys won't get in LOS of a mentalist if they can help it and will often take extreme steps to avoid mentalists.

 

And when the know-it-all guy who's foolish enough to get caught is really just full of false information... the PCs will realize why he was so easy to capture in the first place... well, after a while that is.

[austenandrews]

Re: Mentalist Conundrum

 

I've considered putting time restrictions on Telepathy, to compensate for its plotbusting potential. Surface thoughts should be easy to read, but hidden thoughts and memories rarely just pop out in most source material. Just because you walk into a library doesn't mean you'll quickly find the book you're searching for. It takes time. Might save some headaches for the GM.

[zornwil]

Re: Mentalist Conundrum

 

(snip). Since most mental powers are (IMO unwisely) designed as "all-or-nothing" effects, too many boundaries exist to curb their potential dominance. So in my games I use house rules to strengthen them.

 

Great point, I should add I do something similar, when people indicate what effect they're shooting for, I judge the level of course (as normaly done), and the degree to which they make that level is the degree of success and the degree to which the target is buying it. So if a Mind Control is "kill your teammate" (with better elaboration, ideally, of course) and, as one would expect, one is extremely opposed but the level reached is, say, within 1 level of effect, I would typically say, "Your teammate (x) looks like he's about to strike an innocent (if that were applicable to the details of the Mind Control), you better stop him!" which results in an attack but not a "kill" mentality. Or it might simply be an indecisive moment and a phase is wasted. That sort of thing. For 2 levels short I'd probably just let it fail outright, since it's such an extreme command, but if the right level of richness and nuance were presented then some sort of effect might occur, if it makes sense in the situation. Sorry, can't think of a non-abstract example, but I hope that communicates the idea.

[zornwil]

Re: Mentalist Conundrum

 

(snip)

 

The other problem I try to solve is mentalist v.s. mentalist combat. This ought to be as natural as bricks v.s. bricks, but the mechanics don't support it. Instead ordinary mental attacks are mostly harmless to other mentalists, so special attacks are required to affect enemy mentalists. I'm still working on that one.

 

PS and a separate note, but I was just noting the Champions II rules on "mental combat maneuvers", that might be of interest for you to revisit - I don't think it solves what you're referring to, but might be of help with ideas.

[OddHat]

Re: Mentalist Conundrum

 

PS and a separate note' date=' but I was just noting the Champions II rules on "mental combat maneuvers", that might be of interest for you to revisit - I don't think it solves what you're referring to, but might be of help with ideas.[/quote']

 

Yup, that was a great section.

 

In Mentalist vs Mentalist fights, I try to strongly emphasize description (it's not an Ego Attack, it's waves of pure rage). I've tried allowing combat maneuvers including mental Martial Arts ("I protect myself against his rage with a shield of calm" = Mental Block) so long as you have Mental Awareness. DC are halved when added to an EGO Attack, or add 1d6 as normal otherwise. No offensive maneuvers permitted unles you had an offensive power to hook them to. This could be abused in a non-mentalist game, but worked well in my psychics games.

 

In a recent online game I used a mentalist's Ego Attack to provide background exposition; her Ego attack and Mental Transform were both described as flooding the mind of the target with her own worst memories. Made an interesting story telling device.

[Dust Raven]

Re: Mentalist Conundrum

 

The other problem I try to solve is mentalist v.s. mentalist combat. This ought to be as natural as bricks v.s. bricks' date=' but the mechanics don't support it. Instead ordinary mental attacks are mostly harmless to other mentalists, so special attacks are required to affect enemy mentalists. I'm still working on that one.[/quote']

 

I've had this problem myself. I've found that if Mentalists don't buy a lot of mental defense it works out. Consider placing limits on Mental Defense (and other special defenses). 10-15 is good when normal defenses average 20-30. Of course, this still wouldn't make an Ego Attack Damage Shield worth anything. That's got to be one of the most useless Powers I've ever seen.

[Hugh Neilson]

Re: Mentalist Conundrum

 

Of course' date=' this still wouldn't make an Ego Attack Damage Shield worth anything. That's got to be one of the most useless Powers I've ever seen.[/quote']

 

With all the other advantages it's got, making it NND wouldn't be that expensive, would it?

[austenandrews]

Re: Mentalist Conundrum

 

With all the other advantages it's got' date=' making it NND wouldn't be that expensive, would it?[/quote']

You'd bump into AP caps before you got enough dice to be worthwhile (another reason I don't use AP caps ).

[Hugh Neilson]

Re: Mentalist Conundrum

 

You'd bump into AP caps before you got enough dice to be worthwhile (another reason I don't use AP caps ).

 

I suspect you could make this more worthwhile than a straight Ego Blast damage aura (not that this is saying much...).

[austenandrews]

Re: Mentalist Conundrum

 

I suspect you could make this more worthwhile than a straight Ego Blast damage aura (not that this is saying much...).

It's potentially useful, but only if you build it as one of the aforementioned "Mentalist Buster" powers.

 

What I'd like to see is a way for mentalists to pound on each other to produce interesting combat tension. I home-spun a mechanic for my last fantasy game that worked pretty well. Instead of Mental Defense, I used a non-restricting Mental Entangle as the primary psychic defense power. The Entangle applied DEF+BODY as the equivalent of MD. "Normal" mental attacks did not damage the Entangle. "Killing" mental attacks did. So when two mentalists clashed they would wear down each other's defenses, chipping away the BODY of the Entangle. Each subsequent attack caused more damage than the last.

 

I found that the mechanic added excellent combat tension and pacing to the otherwise ho-hum Hero psychic combat system. I also tried to approach mental combat with the same respect as physical combat, with a full range of maneuvers, martial arts, weapons, tactics involving psychic landscapes, Force Walls, etc.

[Dust Raven]

Re: Mentalist Conundrum

 

With all the other advantages it's got' date=' making it NND wouldn't be that expensive, would it?[/quote']

 

Could, but an NND versus what? Certainly not Mental Defense!

 

The best I can come up with is:

 

Dirty Thoughts: Ego Attack 2d6, Damage Shield (+1/2), NND (target makes an EGO Roll with a -1 penalty for every "BODY" rolled for damage; +1/2), Continuous (+1) Real Cost: 60 points.

 

NND is only +1/2 because I feel being able to make a successful EGO Roll (with penalties) is equally common to having 12 points of mental defense.