Mental Clairsentience

[prestidigitator]

Using Clairsentience to perceive through another's senses has always bugged me a bit. Mostly this centers around targeting and range, I think, though I'm also uncomfortable with the fuzzy line between the kind of information you can transmit over Mind Link or Telepathy and the kind of information you can't get over such a connection. Can you use Telepathy to get a clear mental image of the target's mom? If not, does this also require some big Clairsentience somehow tied in with your Mental Powers? On the other hand, if you can get that kind of mental image, why not real-time images as the subject perceives them? Heck, I'd think those would even qualify as the "surface thoughts" level, while memories required greater levels of effect....

 

Anyway, while this conversation might touch on that latter subject a bit, I'd like to focus to begin with on the issues of targeting and range. What if we used Attack Versus Alternate Defense on Clairsentience to target Mental Defense, and used Alternate Combat Value to target DMCV with OMCV? Under AVAD it says:

 

Simulating Mental Attacks

At the GM’s option, an AVAD that works against Mental Defense and that also uses the Alternate Combat Value Advantage to attack with OMCV against DMCV is considered a “Mental attack” for purposes of most rules. It doesn’t get a Line Of Sight range for free, nor is it Invisible to Sight for free, but for the most part it can be treated as if it were a “Mental Power.”

 

So what if we do this with Clairsentience? While normally it targets an "area" (well, a point in space really), is there any reason you couldn't target another character/being instead, in order to effectively use their senses? This is touched upon briefly in the Only Through The Senses Of Others Limitation for Clairsentience, but it doesn't really talk about targeting, and only mentions in passing that any Mental Defense the target possesses might hamper or block the power. If you effectively turn the Clairsentience into a "real" Mental Powers with AVAD and ACV, could you ignore range--at least after it is started--by targeting the being's mind? What about using it through Mind Scan or Mind Link even? Would this power also be sufficient to allow Mind Link and/or Telepathy to retrieve images from the target's memories if you don't allow those Powers to do so normally?

 

Mental Clairsentience Template:

Clairsentience:

desired Senses/Sense Groups

, Mobile Perception Point (+5 base);

ACV: OMCV vs. DMCV (+1/4);

AVAD: Mental Defense (+1 I guess; Clairsentience doesn't normally act against a defense to begin with...);

Range: Line of Sight (+1/2);

Only Through the Senses of Others (-1/2)

 

What are your thoughts? Would you allow it? What changes would you make?

 

[EDIT: Added LOS to simulate a Mental Power even more closely.]

[Sean Waters]

Re: Mental Clairsentience

 

Normally you do not need to make a mental attack to place a clairsentience perception point. Unless all this actually makes it easier, shouldn't it be a limitation: rather than building AVAD (NND) for +1, take a limitation: doesn't work against targets with mental defence -1/4 to -1/2.

 

Sensing what someone else can sense is problematic because they may have different senses to you and different senses to the ones that you bought Clairsentience with. The nearest you can (probably) get is telepathy (you use their brain to interpret what they perceive then read that.

 

You might want to stick some 'rapid' on that as senses can bang out a LOT of information.

 

Then to lock onto a particular mind: Mind Scan.

 

This is not truly looking through someone else's eyes, but in some ways it might be better - you can use someone else's senses no matter how they are built as you are using their translation hardware/software. Once perceptions leave the sense organs they are memories, even if only fleeting ones, on occasion.

 

If I built this I'd also have some sort of feedback limitation so that if the target was affected by a sense affecting power you could be too, even if you were not in normal range of it (a flash to the target might blind you here, or a low drone hypnotise you, or whatever)