Mental Powers: Roll for Effect First

[phoenix240]

What if you allow mentalists to roll their effect level first then decide on what they're trying to do? For instant a telepath succeeds in her attack roll and rolls enough to get into her targets surface thoughts. She can make decide what she's trying to find in their surface thoughts at that point instead of declaring before hand. If that's not enough she can try again (re roll effect level) if the target doesn't break out in the mean time.

[Arc Esu]

Re: Mental Powers: Roll for Effect First

 

There's a problem with that: it screws up the risk/reward dynamic.

 

Imagine a similar house rule with weapons, which states that rather than rolling for a hit location, or making a "called shot" at a hit location, instead you make you attack roll, we see how much you beat the target's DCV by, and then you can chose to target any hit location that has a lower or equal OCV penalty than the amount that you hit by.

 

As you can see, with this system any time a PC gets a great roll (beating the target DCV by 8 or more), they'll always go for a headshot. Why wouldn't they? It will do double damage. But they get that double damage at no risk, because a miss would still have been a miss, and a lesser hit would still have done something. Therefore, you might as well just make a normal attack every round and just hope you roll really well. That's not an interesting choice. In the normal system, if you want the double damage from a headshot, the trade-off is that you have a much lower chance of hitting. That makes for an interesting tactical choice because of the risk/reward dynamic.

 

Now apply that same logic to mental powers as per the house rule you mention. Every time I use telepathy or mind control, I might as well go for the biggest effect I can. There's no interesting tactical choice of "Do I go for an Ego+30 effect that would end the fight, or an Ego+20 effect that would just help us out, but is more likely to work?" Whenever I roll well on the effect roll, I'll go for a big effect, otherwise I'll go for a lesser one.

 

Now if this is a feel you want for your game (perhaps with non-tactical players), then fine. But know in advance what you're getting into.

[Martin2]

Re: Mental Powers: Roll for Effect First

 

There's a problem with that: it screws up the risk/reward dynamic.

 

Imagine a similar house rule with weapons, which states that rather than rolling for a hit location, or making a "called shot" at a hit location, instead you make you attack roll, we see how much you beat the target's DCV by, and then you can chose to target any hit location that has a lower or equal OCV penalty than the amount that you hit by.

 

As you can see, with this system any time a PC gets a great roll (beating the target DCV by 8 or more), they'll always go for a headshot. Why wouldn't they? It will do double damage. But they get that double damage at no risk, because a miss would still have been a miss, and a lesser hit would still have done something. Therefore, you might as well just make a normal attack every round and just hope you roll really well. That's not an interesting choice. In the normal system, if you want the double damage from a headshot, the trade-off is that you have a much lower chance of hitting. That makes for an interesting tactical choice because of the risk/reward dynamic.

 

Now apply that same logic to mental powers as per the house rule you mention. Every time I use telepathy or mind control, I might as well go for the biggest effect I can. There's no interesting tactical choice of "Do I go for an Ego+30 effect that would end the fight, or an Ego+20 effect that would just help us out, but is more likely to work?" Whenever I roll well on the effect roll, I'll go for a big effect, otherwise I'll go for a lesser one.

 

Now if this is a feel you want for your game (perhaps with non-tactical players), then fine. But know in advance what you're getting into.

 

I go with that reason too

[Christopher]

Re: Mental Powers: Roll for Effect First

 

I go with that reason too

Dito.

Would totally bust up the mechanic that a lower/weaker target result is more likely than a higher. Only advisable if your players are unable to stragegize on then normal level (perhaps they are children?).

[ghost-angel]

Re: Mental Powers: Roll for Effect First

 

We have done something like this, declaring "I want to get as deep as I can" the only thing was you needed to declare if you were hiding it first or not (the extra +20 on effect). It made Mental Powers (primarily Telepathy) always useful and seemed to help counter their short lived aspect of the almost always successful Breakout Roll that managed to make them unfun...

 

It work OK, wasn't a gamebreaker, but it was powerful.

[phoenix240]

Re: Mental Powers: Roll for Effect First

 

We have done something like this, declaring "I want to get as deep as I can" the only thing was you needed to declare if you were hiding it first or not (the extra +20 on effect). It made Mental Powers (primarily Telepathy) always useful and seemed to help counter their short lived aspect of the almost always successful Breakout Roll that managed to make them unfun...

 

It work OK, wasn't a gamebreaker, but it was powerful.

 

That was pretty much what I was going for. Some players were getting frustrated about how often their powers (most often Telepathy) weren't really useful or were shaken off almost immediately so the most effective action just was to go with a straight forward attack (like Ego Attack). I like the idea that trying to hide the attack still has to be declared first. It makes sense. I was also considering that any modifiers for Psychological Limitations and other situational modifers would be applied after effect was declared so the Mentalist could still overstep their level of control if they weren't careful.

 

Thanks for that suggestion and the reply.

[phoenix240]

Re: Mental Powers: Roll for Effect First

 

Dito.

Would totally bust up the mechanic that a lower/weaker target result is more likely than a higher. Only advisable if your players are unable to stragegize on then normal level (perhaps they are children?).

 

No, they're not children but have been finding the way Hero System mental powers function to be frustrating. Using the Hit location analogy it was like if you rolled a normal attack and if it hit then rolled a hit location and applied the OCV modifier and if the adjusted roll wasn't high your attack did nothing.

 

Edit: Hm an interesting but more drastic house rule might be to make the Intended Level of Effect a Mental Combat modifier...

[Christopher]

Re: Mental Powers: Roll for Effect First

 

We have done something like this' date=' declaring "I want to get as deep as I can" the only thing was you needed to declare if you were hiding it first or not (the extra +20 on effect). It made Mental Powers (primarily Telepathy) always useful and seemed to help counter their short lived aspect of the almost always successful Breakout Roll that managed to make them unfun...[/quote']

About how much dice, target effect, breakout roll modifier and how much EGO on the target side are we talking?

 

Using Attack Modifiers can give another problem: Does target still knows of the attack, when I missed him? For most parts I will notice the Bullet hitting something right next to me, but would this also be true for missing mental attacks?

[ghost-angel]

Re: Mental Powers: Roll for Effect First

 

The section on Mental Attacks covers attacks, missed and otherwise.

 

Our games ranged from low key 6D6 to 20D6 in use. In all editions from 4th to 6th.

[ideasmith]

Re: Mental Powers: Roll for Effect First

 

I like this, but would balance it by making mental attack powers have normal range modifiers.

[Christopher]

Re: Mental Powers: Roll for Effect First

 

I try to do the math, and then compare a 12d6 Mental Effect vs. the

Using 6d6 Mental Power against someone with 10 EGO, targetting for a EGO+10 result is effectively a average roll of 21 vs a target value of 20. The target get's an effective breakout roll at 11- (or 62%). Sure, bad chances but he also only paid for 6d6 Power so this result is to be expected.

Lets try this with 10d6: Targets EGO is 10, EGO+20 is the Target effect. Average roll of 35 vs 30 Target Value. The Breakout roll is at 10- (50%) effectively. But we are talking about 3rd Level effect here. If he only aims for 2nd Level, this would drop to a 8- breakout roll (26%).

 

Let's pit a 12d6 Mental attack vs. the Champion from the Champion sourcebook. Average Roll is 42.

Defender: EGO 15, 0 MD: EGO+20 is certain and his breakout roll will be at effective 11-. This is the "attack your allies" level (he wouldn't use deadly force, however).

Ironclad: EGO 10, 0 MD. For a EGO+30 Effect (Kill One of the Champions), he bound to do it and his breakout roll is at 11-

Kinetik: EGO 14, 0 MD

Saphire: EGO 14, 0 MD

Witchcraft: EGO 23; aiming for more than EGO +10 won't be very succesfull and give her a breakout roll of effective 13- (abut 83 %), but she could still fall for those rare good rolls, haymakers and the like.

 

When I get this right, one of the main Problems seems to be that Telepathy get's thrown of to easy. So how about just allowing 2-4 more dice for Telepahty?

I mean it is all nice and good as long as telepathy is used vs. bad guys, but once this affects how Mentons MC works players might object...

[Hugh Neilson]

Re: Mental Powers: Roll for Effect First

 

Let's pit a 12d6 Mental attack vs. the Champion from the Champion sourcebook. Average Roll is 42.

Defender: EGO 15, 0 MD: EGO+20 is certain and his breakout roll will be at effective 11-. This is the "attack your allies" level (he wouldn't use deadly force, however).

Ironclad: EGO 10, 0 MD. For a EGO+30 Effect (Kill One of the Champions), he bound to do it and his breakout roll is at 11-

Kinetik: EGO 14, 0 MD

Saphire: EGO 14, 0 MD

Witchcraft: EGO 23; aiming for more than EGO +10 won't be very succesfull and give her a breakout roll of effective 13- (abut 83 %), but she could still fall for those rare good rolls, haymakers and the like.

 

Four of the five will break out of that +20 effect on an 11-, so 62.5% of the time, I get no effect. Getting past a single phase of effect hapens about 14% of the time. How does that compare to a Blast?

 

Maybe Mind Control et al should be 10 points per 1d6, but Cumulative by default. 3 hits would then put all but Witchfire at +30 with an 8- or 9- breakout roll. Mental Defense then becomes much more potent, as it reduces each shot and slows the accumulation. I suspect that would compare better, from a combat perspective, to a Blast.

[Christopher]

Re: Mental Powers: Roll for Effect First

 

Four of the five will break out of that +20 effect on an 11-' date=' so 62.5% of the time, I get no effect. Getting past a single phase of effect hapens about 14% of the time. How does that compare to a Blast?[/quote']

Target effect: Only defend/rescue bystanders/make sure nobody in the vicinity gets hurt. EGO+10 at top. Makes those 11- rolls 9- (37.5 %).

 

EGO, or EGO + 10 effects are closer to an entangle or flash. May keep the enemy out of the fight for a few phases.

EGO +20 and EGO +30 are close to a very short lived summon (no orientation, but duration is equal to the burn of one Service/Phase).

[Hugh Neilson]

Re: Mental Powers: Roll for Effect First

 

Target effect: Only defend/rescue bystanders/make sure nobody in the vicinity gets hurt. EGO+10 at top. Makes those 11- rolls 9- (37.5 %).

 

You're assuming use on a hero who values the safety of those bystanders. And even there I get a fair chance of no impact at all and just under a 40% shot at more than a phase.

 

Still not a favourable comparison to Blast. The Entangle holds people reliant on Accessible foci a lot more readily, and a Flash reliably limits many opponents for extended periods (2 turns or so for a 12 DC Sight Flash against many targets).

[ghost-angel]

Re: Mental Powers: Roll for Effect First

 

If you're going to bring Math into the discussion you can't measure the overall effect and compare the power based on what you think a command will/should be.

 

It's a simply fact that at 10 EGO, the initial breakout is 11- for an average Roll on 12D6. Nevermind the chances of even getting EGO+10 Effect on less dice, like 6D6. And it almost puts the idea of even trying to declare EGO+20 or EGO+30, which makes higher levels of Telepathy (just as an example) really hard to work into all but the high powered campaigns.

 

I have a Heroic character with a 9D6 Telepathy, I usually lose 5 Dice (sometimes 6) to trying to make the attempt Invisible, leaving 3-4 Dice to try anything out at all, half the time I'm lucky to get EGO, it's a virtually useless ability against anyone with Psionics.

 

Which is one of the reasons the group has decided you Roll Effect and the results say how deep you go, how much of the command will be obeyed (almost never fully, Mind Control in our campaigns usually end up with a significant amount of RPing behind them to get the full effect. It's never "worked/didn't work" anymore.

[ghost-angel]

Re: Mental Powers: Roll for Effect First

 

That was pretty much what I was going for. Some players were getting frustrated about how often their powers (most often Telepathy) weren't really useful or were shaken off almost immediately so the most effective action just was to go with a straight forward attack (like Ego Attack). I like the idea that trying to hide the attack still has to be declared first. It makes sense. I was also considering that any modifiers for Psychological Limitations and other situational modifers would be applied after effect was declared so the Mentalist could still overstep their level of control if they weren't careful.

 

Thanks for that suggestion and the reply.

 

Another thing to try is sometimes You Get More - like if you're actually just trying to get Surface Thoughts and you roll really well, you accidentally sneak in a little extra - say just one level deeper than intended.

 

That way you can declare a lower level and hope you get the greater level, a reward for a really good roll.

[AmadanNaBriona]

Re: Mental Powers: Roll for Effect First

 

Yeah, I'm pretty OK with this.It counteracts some of the above-mentioned problems with Mental powers, to whit that they really suck compared to other offensive effects of the same AP.

 

I'm with everyone else, to make physical attacks work like Mental attacks we'd have to have a "target Damage" threshold that avoided all damage if it wasn't achieved AND a "Saving Throw" (breakout roll) to negate all effect, the combination of which I'd say comes to around -2 worth of Limitations.

 

Heck, If I was playing a Mentalist, I'd be throwing around Transformation Attacks rather than Mind Control, because they're MUCH easier to affect the target with

[Lucius]

Re: Mental Powers: Roll for Effect First

 

One thing I've noticed about Mental Powers based on the discussions I see - they seem to be hard to balance. Either they come out too powerful and people complain that they're combat-enders, or they come out too weak and the complaint is that they seem to do little or nothing.

 

So I think suggestions like this are useful additions to the toolbox - one more way to tweak the way Mental Powers work to try to hit that sweet spot where players are saying "Hey that's cool" but not "Hey! The psionic gets all the fun!"

 

Lucius Alexander

 

Hey, that's a cool palindromedary

[AmadanNaBriona]

Re: Mental Powers: Roll for Effect First

 

I actually suspect that mental powers are SO gimped because players HATE to lose control of their characters. I've played many campaigns over the years where the players could handle being killed far easier than they could handle being "subverted", and this seems to be a common thing among gaming groups, IME

[dmjalund]

Re: Mental Powers: Roll for Effect First

 

I am just working on a way to make Mental Powrrs more like Physical combat including:

 

treating Mental powers like Melee weapos which you can add EGO dto do more effect.

mental maneuvers specific to each power with OMCV, DMCV and DC bonuses

 

Mental Defense martial arts for those without powers

[Lucius]

Re: Mental Powers: Roll for Effect First

 

Personally I often grow nostalgic for the way Psychic Powers were handled in the original Justice Inc.

 

That's Pulp Hero before there was a Pulp Hero, for those of you who weren't around in the "good old days."

 

Lucius Alexander

 

Palindromedary Hero

[AmadanNaBriona]

Re: Mental Powers: Roll for Effect First

 

Personally I often grow nostalgic for the way Psychic Powers were handled in the original Justice Inc.

 

That's Pulp Hero before there was a Pulp Hero, for those of you who weren't around in the "good old days."

 

Lucius Alexander

 

Palindromedary Hero

 

Aura Vision FTW

[casualplayer]

Re: Mental Powers: Roll for Effect First

 

The uncertainty of Mental Powers is why I usually set a sizeable portion of the dice to Standard Effect when I make a mentalist, or I make different slots of a Mentalmultipower with different ratios of random to Standard. One slot with 14d6 straight up, one with 10d6 Standard (+30 effect) and 4d6 random (to cover the EGO) lets me go for broke or be sure to get the job done when need be.

[Christopher]

Re: Mental Powers: Roll for Effect First

 

Yeah' date=' I'm pretty OK with this.It counteracts some of the above-mentioned problems with Mental powers, to whit that they really suck compared to other offensive effects of the same AP.[/quote']

This asumes Mental Power are supposed to be used in a fight, in the same way a Blast/HTH is supposed to (as a mayor attack to disable enemys).

For Mental Blast and Illusions, that seems certain.

 

For Mind controll, one problem might be the great difference between EGO+10 and EGO+20.

EGO or EGO+10 disables an Oponent/hinders him

EGO+20 or EGO+30 disables one Opponent and gives you the equivalent of a Summon (one more sheet on your side).

 

There seem to be a vast difference between these two effect levels, this could be the main Problem some players have when talking about "to powerfull" and the others talk about "useless".

 

For telepathy, with a little help from your allies to get the searched information to the surface level (interaction roll), EGO+0 and EGO+10 seem very powerfull effects. Or the GM can just use an alternate Way to haymaker Telepathy out of combat, like: Drains your ability a little bit (perhaps 4 DC Drain), or high END cost (when it is likely you retry and you need your END).

[ghost-angel]

Re: Mental Powers: Roll for Effect First

 

I am just working on a way to make Mental Powrrs more like Physical combat including:

 

treating Mental powers like Melee weapos which you can add EGO dto do more effect.

mental maneuvers specific to each power with OMCV, DMCV and DC bonuses

 

Mental Defense martial arts for those without powers

 

The problem here is that Physical Combat is very straight forward, Attack Effect - Defenses, Check how much Stun you have left.

 

Mental Powers are not, they're inherently tied to role-playing aspects, unmeasurables, and other non-number related aspects of the game.

 

Making them similar is a mistake.