Mental Powers Tactics/Tips

[Dr. MID-Nite]

Ok,

 

I'm not the best at superheroic combat tactics, so I'm looking to the hero community for help. What cool tricks can you come up with for the following powers: Mind Control and Mental Illusions. I'm specifically looking for tips on creating effects and/or commands that use the EGO +10 or EGO +20 base line...as that seems to be the hardest for me to come up with. Any ideas?

 

Rob

[Hermit]

It depends on the situation... and the villain. Psychology and other skills that let you know your opponent are a great idea for a mentalist.

 

For example, mind controlling Durak to tell him to hit Fiacho might work... but, if you suspect Durak is loyal to Fiacho, why not instead tell him this as a command...

"Durak, Fiacho is under MY power...and the only way you'll free him is knocking him unconcious!"

 

It might work better

 

Speaking of getting one villain to knock out another, see if you can super impose the image of a super hero on a bad guy's teammate in a villain's mindseye with mental illusions. It can be.. interesting to watch (Though, as always, be careful you don't end up killing someone by proxy).

[Stone]

Are you trying to come up with tactics for villians or heroes? Hermit had a couple of good suggestions for heroes. If you are looking for tactics for villians, you could always project an image of a small child in danger as a way to set up a hero to be attacked.

 

For heroes, the old multiple images trick could work to confuse villians on which to image to attack (just be careful that a missed shot doesn't take out a bystander or a crucial peice of equipment).

[CrosshairCollie]

As stated above, psychology is key for Mind Control. Find out the target's Psych Lims and abuse them liberally. Tell someone who's Overconfident to take on someone who can hand him his head on a platter with fries and a Coke. Tell the Showoff that the crowd wants to see him perform some acrobatics (instead of fighting).

 

Mental Illusions is the *real* fun one. I never make a mentalist without this power. Carry around some dummy grenades, or reach into your pocket and pretend to throw something as you activate the mental illusion of a blinding flash of light or a smokescreen. Wait until someone isn't looking at you (or a teammate), then create the illusion that he's not there (which will be easily believable, since he didn't see him disappear).

 

My personal favorite, though, also requires Ego Attack that is neither Invisible nor Visible and a target without Mental Awareness. Now, choose your target and hit 'em with the Ego Attack. The next phase, create a Mental Illusion of your Ego Attack as a Continuous attack. He should believe it, since he knows you did it, and without Mental Awareness, he can't see you using your psi-powers on other targets, so he has no reason to suspect that you aren't maintaining your Ego Attack on him.

[Lightray]

Originally posted by CrosshairCollie

My personal favorite, though, also requires Ego Attack that is neither Invisible nor Visible and a target without Mental Awareness. Now, choose your target and hit 'em with the Ego Attack. The next phase, create a Mental Illusion of your Ego Attack as a Continuous attack. He should believe it, since he knows you did it, and without Mental Awareness, he can't see you using your psi-powers on other targets, so he has no reason to suspect that you aren't maintaining your Ego Attack on him.

I would just laugh at her if our Mental Illusionist tried to use such cheesy tactics with me. If she'd been repeatidly trying to abuse my lenience, she'd probably lose that phase.

 

Mental Illusions creates false sensory information -- how is someone (without Mental Awareness) supposed to know that any given Ego Attack is Continuous??? There'd have to be a recognizable special effect that the target would identify as continuous; Mental Illusions isn't going to just put that information into the target's mind.

[noumena]

Needless to say, the following is my opinion. Though this opinion was formed from the experience of playing a mentalist, your experience may differ. YMMV.

 

I've found playing a mentalist to be quite challenging. In practice, a good mental effect requires a lot of quick thinking, and very often I've gone with a quick ego blast since I couldn't think of anything better to do. The payoff, of course, is that when a mentalist succeeds, he can be devastating.

 

The key to playing a mentalist, I feel, is to start with the question "What do I want to happen?" and then deduce what would have to change about the target's beliefs to cause him or her to act in the desired fashion.

 

Consider this example:

His tactical expertise having temporarily deserted him, the team brick has dropped Thug A on top of my mentalist, who is then pinned under an unconscious thug. Capitalizing on the situation, Thug B puts a gun to the mentalist's head and orders the rest of the team to back off.

 

What do I want to happen?

I don't want my character to get shot. Ideally, I'd like to do this in a manner that disadvantages Thug B and allows my teammates to get back in the fight.

 

What does Thug B need to believe to accomplish my goals?

At some level, Thug B needs to believe that he can't or shouldn't injure my character. This can be accomplished by removing the means to injure the mentalist, putting the mentalist out of reach of the Thug, or leading the Thug to believe it's in his best interests to keep the mentalist healthy. There are many ways to accomplish this (disappearing, etc.), but I'd really like to disarm Thug B, if possible. This allows the rest of the team to jump the guy. The trouble, of course, is that dropping the gun is something Thug B very much does not want to do under the circumstances, so mind control is way too risky. Solution: mental illusions. Thug B feels his gun suddenly become red-hot, and the natural human reflex when holding something hot is to drop it. The team brick then KO'd Thug B.

 

In my experience, this depends a great deal on context, which gives the GM's mentalists a big advantage, since they can brainstorm in advance based off of what types of situation they are likely to encounter. Few people, for instance, are going to put themselves at risk trying to injure superheros. A woman might (this happened to us once) hand you several live grenades imploring you to "save her baby." In this same scenario, the mentalist bad-guy created an illusion of himself running through doorway A. When a brick in hot pursuit opened doorway A, he found it booby trapped with explosives - the mentalist had really gone through doorway B.

 

The key to all of these, as you pointed out, is using a relatively small effect. Ideally, your mental effect should induce the target to believe something quite plausible or do something they wanted to do anyway. It's even better if the effect is something that demands reflexive or immediate action, preventing the target from thinking about whether they are being deceived.

 

Concrete examples (which I think was what you wanted anyway):

 

Switch the appearances of a hero and a villian in a fist fight. This is an old standby, but it's still quite effective at getting the opposing team to injure each other. It's very difficult to get friends to act like enemies, but it's easy to get them to look like each other. Fortunately, in this case, they're acting in the same manner.

 

"You are held by a powerful telekinetic and cannot escape." I got this from Mike Surbrook's site. Some people think it's munchy, but if you have a TK on your team, it's also amazingly effective, since people are predisposed to think that the effect is something that might very well happen to them anyway.

 

"That guy behind you just insulted your mother." or "Nothing interesting is happening." The first is good for getting normals to start a fight (useful for creating a distraction in a non-silver campaign), while the second is good for crowd control (preventing normals from going berserk when you attempt to capture a bad guy in the middle of a truck stop).

 

"You hear nothing on your radio but static." Good for preventing a group from coordinating against you.

 

"Shoot at the brick." The bad guys really want to shoot at someone. Wouldn't you rather it be someone else? After all, the brick probably has disgustingly high PD and ED, damage reduction, and regeneration. Most mentalists, sensitive intellectuals (effete wimps) that they are, don't.

 

I also had some minor success with "Ms. Marvelous," a completely over-the-top illusory superheroine. Enemy thugs have shot each other, aiming for the illusory heroine. An enemy brick fell off a boat when he overbalanced by taking a swing at her (well, he would have, if our brick hadn't clocked him from behind). She had many uses.

 

This has been rather long. I hope I haven't bored you, and I hope this helps.

 

-noumena

[JmOz]

The Idea of Ms Marvel is wonderful (and I have used it ever sense I read Squadron Supreme)

 

Also, Give the Mentalist a small MA package...Just in Case

 

Okay:

 

The first Mistake many mentalists make is disregarding TELEPATHY, most mentalists should start out with a TELEPATHIC SCAN on the person in question to find DNPC's, Vulnerabilities, and MOST OF ALL PSYC LIMITS or BESERKS.

 

After you find those chessnuts use your Mental Illusions to call up the appropriate thing (Ohh Look Superman, there is Lois Falling from a building, what ever will you do)

[Houston GM]

Mind games.

 

You're on the right track. Think up attacks in advance, then modify them and apply them in combat.

 

When using a mentalist villain, I effectively took the team pilot out by rendering him incommunicado. All he heard over his radio was static. He couldn't hear the team. He tried talking to the team, but had no indication that they could hear him.

 

Another time I convinced the team pilot that the VTOL had been rolled over and was plummeting toward the ground. He compensated and rolled the VTOL "back over".

 

Crash.

 

Your target hears a noise behind him. When he turns around, an agent is pointing a rocket launcher at him. (Ego +10) Of course, it's really his teammate, but nobody is going to stop long enough to figure that out.

 

Once you run mental illusions enough, your opponents become hesitant to act. They no longer trust their own senses.

 

Your opponents will also become hyper-paranoid, and try to see through your illusions. Use this to your advantage.

 

Example:

Durak is standing to the right and slightly behind Fiacho. Fiacho hears a radio crackle, and then Defender's slightly distorted voice, "I'm going to distract Fiacho, then you hit him from behind." Durak murmur's back in Ironclad's voice, "I'm ready."

 

Because he's paranoid, Fiacho will believe he has "seen through" your clever illusion, and retaliate first.

 

After Fiacho nails Durak, hit Durak with a mental illusion: he hears Fiacho say "Surprise" in Defender's voice.

 

You're now getting the same results for Ego +10 (or less) that used to cost Ego +20 (or more).

 

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Quick and dirty stunts:

 

Total sensory deprivation. All 5 (or more) senses go blank or black. (Ego +20)

 

The person they've squared off with disappears. This turns an evenly matched fight into a total mismatch. (Ego +10 or +20)

 

If the fight is evenly matched, one of the less brave opponents hears their leader call "Retreat." (Ego +0)

 

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If you can figure out someone's psychological buttons, push them hard. This works for other archetypes too. I once had a shapeshifter facing Ra (Egyption sun god). I went after him as a swarm of locusts (special effect for desolid).

 

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Mind Control is less elegant, but can be easier to use. Tell your opponent to attack one of your teammates. That's Ego +0 or +10. However, you've directed them to attack the teammate that's nearly immune to them.

 

While their brick is trying to smash the guy who's desolid, and their energy projector is shooting the guy with missile reflection, the rest of their group can concentrate on the enemies who are still effective.

 

For a lot of laughs, send their move-through specialist after your teammate with martial throw.

[noumena]

Originally posted by JmOz

The Idea of Ms Marvel is wonderful (and I have used it ever sense I read Squadron Supreme)

 

Never read Squadron Supreme, but I'm not surprised that this is a common trope. An illusory proxy is just too useful. It's great for getting the bad guys to shoot where you want, frighten them ("Look the bullets pass right through her! She's obviously way too powerful for us."), etc.

 

My favorite, as I mentioned though, is starting NPC gunfights. Thug A sees Ms. Marvelous about to whack Thug B from behind. He shoots Ms. Marvelous (who isn't there) and hits Thug B. Thug B, has

A. Been shot

B. Been shot by Thug A, and

C. Knows that there's a mentalist around.

Thug B comes to the obvious conclusion that Thug A is under mental compulsion and shoots back at him.

[Kevin]

Mentalists have always been my favorite characters. There is so much room for character development (trust issues for a character that commonly KNOWS most people say one thing and think another are interesting).

 

You didn't say if you wanted uses for mind control or mental illusions in or out of combat.

 

Out of combat these abilities can make for good roleplaying. Especially if you utilize the "remember actions and think they were natural" modifier for mind control and the "remember the illusion as being real" modifier for mental illusions. The guy who said it was essential to use telepathy first was dead on target: once you have learned another character's motivations, hopes, fears, secrets, and psych disads you can tailor mind control and illusions to them. Make the commands and illusions fit in with the characters "real" experiences.

 

In combat, illusions can be used in many effective ways. Do not think of necessarily doing direct damage, think of removing a foe from the fight or setting them up for a teammate. A flying foe that hits a wall atfull speed thinking it was open sky, a speedster that falls down a hole or an elevator shaft thinking it was a corridor, a brick who is fighting an imaginary enemy, these are all good. But don't forget: what is the enemies objective? If they are there to kidnap someone, or steal something, or smash something, AND YOU MAKE THEM BELIEVE THEY HAVE DONE IT, they head away and you stopped them.

 

Don't know what the foes objectives are? Then while your teammates are pounding them with energy blasts and fists, you scan their minds and find out this fight was all a diversion while they kidnap the president! Can be really helpful to know!

 

In combat, mind control can be used to alter targets, get foes arguing about personal matters, or something different. Have an impressive teammate make a presence attack and then reinforce it with mind control. Make one foe hit another BUT FORGET HE DID IT. (That can be amusing). If you hit one target with an illusion so he hits his evil teammate, then mind control the guy that just got hit into hitting back, you can get the entire villain team fighting each other!

 

A good game master can allow a telepath to learn just enough to feel satisfied in the game, bring a lot of color to it, and fill in areas of exposition, without giving anything away.

 

And criminal masterminds tend to stay out of the fight anyway, so the supervillains may not know the REAL plans...

 

Hope you have fun with your mentalist! I sure enjoy mine.

[noumena]

Re: Mind games.

 

Originally posted by Houston GM

You're on the right track. Think up attacks in advance, then modify them and apply them in combat.

 

Thank you, Houston. I did try to incorporate some of your best ideas (nastiest tricks).

-NCL

[Houston GM]

That's *too* good.

 

what is the enemies objective? If they are there to kidnap someone, or steal something, or smash something, AND YOU MAKE THEM BELIEVE THEY HAVE DONE IT, they head away and you stopped them.

That one's just too good to pass up. I'm going to have to use it sometime.

[phydaux]

One of my favorites is Megascale Clairsentience with the visible effect of a glowing nimbus. Add in Images, and the mentalist can stay safely at home while the nimbus "represents" the character on the battlefield. Using the Images the mentalist can "talk" to his teammates, and never go in harm's way.

 

Of course, the mentalist can't DO anything this way, UNLESS he first uses Mind Scan to contact the enemy's mind. ALTHOUGH, a creative use of Images can make everyone THINK the mentalist is doing stuff. And if the enemy is wasting phases atacking a glowing nimbus while the nimbus just makes bright lights and loud bangs, that's not a bad thing.

[Kevin]

No gamemaster I have ever played with would have allowed a player character to stay "safely at home" and fight using clairsentience and mind scan.

 

Hordes of robots, unable to be affected by mental attacks, would have tracked said mentalist down during the first outing and turned the character into swiss cheese!

[Lightray]

Originally posted by phydaux

One of my favorites is Megascale Clairsentience with the visible effect of a glowing nimbus.

Megascale effectively has a "position uncertainty" of the lowest scale factor involved (1 km on up). So, instead of targeting a hex for your Clairsentience, you're targeting 1 sq. km. That's an awful lot of space; you're likely to miss all the action while hunting around for the combat. ("Sorry guys, I was looking 10 blocks away!").

 

You need to buy a really, really big Increased Range advantage, instead.

 

edit: Re-read the rules now that I'm home, and looking at the FAQ it may not be as bad as I thought. You'd probably need to define it in such a way that you don't spend forever searching for the location. And don't take Attack Roll Required.

 

still cheesy.

[Dr. MID-Nite]

Wow....great ideas. I knew asking on the boards would get results. many tactics I never even though of. My only worry is the GM may not want telepathy "ruining" the plot...and I may get little information using it. Likewise, he may not want mental powers to be "too" effective. Using a mentalist where the GM is relatively strict on what you can do with the powers can be very boring for the player. Hopefully, I don't have that problem. My planned mentalist also has telepathy, ego attack, and mind scan, but mind control and mental illusions are far more interesting.

 

Rob

[Houston GM]

GMs and mental powers.

 

Some GMs don't want to deal with mental powers. Others do allow them; they just incorporate them into the overall plan.

 

Give them access to the minds of the agents. What self-respecting villain feeds the whole plan to his goons. They know part of the plan, and thats the part you want the team to know right now.

 

Learn from watching "The Dead Zone". If your group has precognition or telepathy, don't let it destroy the story. Use it to drive the story forward.

[Kevin]

A really bad gamemaster is threatened by telepaths. Plots so simple and obvious you could drive a truck through the holes in them do not hold up to telepaths, so bad GMs hate mentalists. Hack and slash games where combat takes precedence over plot are usually indifferent to telepaths (their motivation is to punch you, who cares what they are thinking). But most of all, bad gamemasters hate telepaths because their game plans are rigid and inflexible.

 

Mediocre gamemasters are fine with telepaths. There is planning, thought, and creativity in their work and a mentalist only adds to the story. Misdirection, shell games, and layering of villain motivations are not too tough for the mid-level gamemaster to deal with. They can roll with the punches and handle the monkey wrenches players through into the mix.

 

A REALLY GREAT Gamemaster rejoices when someone wants to play a telepath. Exposition and plot development flow when you have a mentalist around. Time is not lost trying to gte players to figure out what the GM needs them to figure out. The best gamemaster knows that a telepath has to know what questions to ask to learn anything anyway, can think on their feet during a game, and enjoys the dance of player and gamemaster or he wouldn't be doing this. The great gamemasters plans are fluid, and they can make the story work in whatever direction the players take them.

 

I have played, and I have run games. Probably as a gamemaster I'm just mediocre. But I have been lucky enough to play with really great gamemasters. And I know they can change their plans in mid-game to match what the players are doing so that everyone enjoys the game to the maximum possible level.

[noumena]

Ruining plots

 

Up front, forgive me for pontificating again, but:

 

The thing about mentalists is...

No one trusts them. No one. No matter how nice they are or how trustworthy they've been.

 

There are some very good reasons for this. First of all, mentalists are at their most effective when they're manipulating people and being deceptive. No one likes to be manipulated, and no one likes to be deceived. Also, mentalism, under the HERO rules, is one of the less observable powers. If the TK, EP, or Brick is using his powers, people tend to notice, but how can you be sure the mentalist isn't reading your mind? Mentalists know this and seem a little more likely than others to abuse their powers.

 

Moreover, everyone has something to hide. Anyone with a secret identity or hidden motivations will almost certainly view the team's new mentalist as an adversary. (I speak with experience, here. ;>) However, it's not just those with secret agendas and criminal pasts who are uneasy around mentalists. Would you seriously want anyone to have front-row seat to your mind? Few people are really nice enough that they don't occasionally flirt with nasty and insensitive thoughts, even if only at a basic level. ("No, I love your new haircut!") What makes most of us (more-or-less) nice people is that we keep these unworthy thoughts to ourselves, suppress our baser desires, and try to behave as we know we should. Having a mentalist around makes it difficult to do this. I'm not talking about closeted serial-killers here. Do you really want it getting around to all your coworkers exactly how you feel about the guy in marketing?

 

However, I personally think that there's something even deeper than this. It's kind of hard to describe. If you search around, particularly in the threads from the old boards, you can find some fairly heated debates as to the morality of mentalism. Serious people have maintained that mentalists cannot be heroic. It has even been argued that mentalism is worse than murder. Now, I would rather be subjected to mind control or telepathy than killed, but...

 

Frankly, I think it would be kind of hard to have a heroic mentalist in a Silver Age campaign. Manipulation and deceit probably don't fit in the genre. However, it's more than that, I think. The EP may kill you, but he's killed you. The mentalist can change you. People are afraid that, once a mentalist is through with their mind, it won't be their mind anymore. They'll have been completely remade in the mentalist's image. They'll be someone else. In philosophical terms, their autonomous moral agency has been irrevocably violated/compromised.

 

"The ambition of Cæsar and of Napoleon pales before that which could not rest until it had seized the minds of men and controlled even their unborn thoughts." from the King in Yellow, by Robert Chambers.

 

So, given that people (rightly) are a little afraid of mentalists, there's a big temptation to hide that one is a mentalist. Naturally, this reinforces the belief that mentalists cannot be trusted - after all, they've been lying about being a mentalist, right?

 

This is where HERO mechanics help to keep mentalists in line. I don't have my book in front of me, but I think most mental powers require a +20 above the normal level of effect to keep the target from realizing what you're doing to them. With 60 AP in Telepathy, you get 12d6 (average roll: 42). That will get you a +10 effect (roll of 40) on a normal person. Enough to go through their conscious thoughts. Most of the time. Just don't roll an 18 on your targeting roll. And hope that no one with mental awareness is around. Are you still willing to risk it?

 

Given the social stigma on mentalists and the fact that, in our (superpowered police) campaign, mentalism was considered "unreasonable search and seizure," my character wasn't, most of the time. His anonymity was just too valuable to risk casually. I mean, I'd probably have gotten away with it for quite some time, but the law of averages would have caught up eventually. I got pretty good at using conversation rolls to get people to think about the things I was interested in (a +0 effect for telepathy) and talking people into allowing me to use telepathy on them.

 

"I'd like to telepathically check that the Idiot King hasn't left any kind of post-hypnotic suggestion in your mind. He's done that before."

"No way."

"Sure, I understand how you feel. You haven't, by any chance, gotten the urge to take an icepick to your daughter, have you?"

"Why, has that happened before?"

"Not that I'm at liberty to discuss."

"Oh. Just don't tell my wife anything you learn, OK?"

 

Sorry for another tome. Hope this helps.

-noumena

[Kristopher]

Re: Ruining plots

 

Originally posted by noumena

This is where HERO mechanics help to keep mentalists in line. I don't have my book in front of me, but I think most mental powers require a +20 above the normal level of effect to keep the target from realizing what you're doing to them. With 60 AP in Telepathy, you get 12d6 (average roll: 42). That will get you a +10 effect (roll of 40) on a normal person. Enough to go through their conscious thoughts. Most of the time. Just don't roll an 18 on your targeting roll. And hope that no one with mental awareness is around. Are you still willing to risk it?

 

Wouldn't a roll of 42 be 32 points over the average normal?

[noumena]

Re: Re: Ruining plots

 

Originally posted by Kristopher

Wouldn't a roll of 42 be 32 points over the average normal?

Yes. But the example assumed the +20 modifier "telepathy cannot be detected by target." So the net effect is telepathy at EGO + 10 (well, +12 actually) that cannot be detected by the target. That's what I was trying (in my own ineffectual, rambling way) to get across. The effectiveness of a mentalist is often (in practice) reduced by their desire to avoid detection. If you start casually reading the minds of people you come across, someone is liable to become angry.

 

Hope that was clearer.

-noumena

[Kristopher]

Ah, gotcha. Understood.

 

And you do have a good point about mentalist secrecy, by the way.

 

What about buying the Telepathy w/ IPE (+1/2) to disguise the source of the mental probing? The target would eventually know that someone had been rifling through his brain, but would not know who had been doing the rifling.

 

 

 

 

[Kevin]

Wow. A discussion on the ethics of telepathy.

 

I think Babylon 5 probably hit the nail on the head about how society would really treat a telepath.

 

Telepaths had to be identified as such at all times, and it was illegal to read anything but surface thoughts without permission.

 

And they abused their abilities all the time.

 

A telepath in "real" life would be cynical and manipulative.

 

Cynical because they would know just how much of everyone's social presentation was a veneer, and manipulative because inherently their powers are manipulative.

 

BUT...no telepath would be able to abuse or manipulate his friends or companions. Because the VERY FIRST TIME they were discovered, they would have no more friends and companions. Trust would simply not be returned.

 

And a telepath would get very tired of not being surprised by friends and loved ones. Seeing all the hidden warts, all the time, would get old. Making people do what you wanted or see what you wanted without letting them be themselves would get old. If a telepath started out as a "master manipulator", he or she would end up unhappy and miserable.

 

Also, as telepaths have been written in fantasy and comic book terms, they spend more time trying to shut everyone else out than trying to pry their way in. (And I would love for anyone to share how they have dealt with that in game terms.)

 

Being alone with your thoughts would be a luxury for a telepath!

 

But, yes, on the whole they would be set apart from others with "super powers" the same way normal people woudl set apart anyone with such an ability.

[Chuckg]

Re: Re: Re: Ruining plots

 

Originally posted by noumena

If you start casually reading the minds of people you come across, someone is liable to become angry.

 

You don't wanna know what almost happened the time our team mentalist forgot about that part and tried to mind-read Firewing...

[Kevin]

In game terms, players who use mentalists to abuse other player characters are going to get creamed by the other pcs AND by the other players.

 

Frankly, other players are going to police abusive mentalist characters.