Aberrant RPG - Mental Attacks

[Templar]

What exactly is a mental attack (in reference to Invulnerability: (Mental)).

I was wondering because there are a lot of things out there that might qualify, but does it only cover things that attack the mind... or attacks that are used mentaly?

For example, Domination and Telepathy are obviously stopped by this ability, but what about things like Disrupt (which uses Intellegence) or Mirage?

There are a lot of abilities out there that use mental capacities to attack and I thought one of you guys might know better how it worked.

[Alex Craft]

I believe that the 'Mental Powers' label is intended to apply to those powers defended against by Psychic Shield - specifically, Domination, Hypnosis, Mental Blast, Mirage, and Telepathy.

In this case, the word 'mental' is used not to refer to powers that use mental attributes, but to powers which affect the mind.

This belief is supported by one or two references that lumped 'mental' or 'psychic' powers under the decription of 'powers defended against by Psychic Shield.' (Just off the top of my head, and example would be in the description of the Psychic Awareness enhancement in Brainwaves.)

[Templar]

I had always thought it worked more on everything that used mental energies, just like Invulnerability: Fire works on everything using fire energies.

Or is that too general, I could understand that it might need the extra to get an effect like that as it could be too broad.

[Singularity]

I'm with Alex on this one, Invulnerability (Mental) should only work on the same things as Psychic Shield. Especially in the light that the Invuln. is only a level 2 power.

[Hugin]

I think it would depend on how the power was defined specifically in some cases. In my TT game I had a npc whose Disruption power was defined as a telepathic intrusion in which he denied a character the ability to remember how to use the power, in that case I would say INV;Mental would apply.

In Prodigy's case Disruption is strictly a manipulation of someone's Quantum Field and then it wouldn't work.

[Neil Preston]

Invulnerability (Mental) would effect against assualts against your mind, not against assualts that have a mental origin.

Here is a question I have:

At level two, is Invulnerability(Mental Powers) against a specific type of Mental Attack, or against ALL mental powers listed in the book?

Personally, I have always played it as it would have to be a broad group to cover all Mental Powers.

[Templar]

It covers all mental powers, I think the power would work better if it had two modes... normal mode affects everything that directly attacks the mind, and the broad group that effects everything that uses mental energies, thats no more effective than Invulnerability: Physical or Energy IMHO.

[Ashnod]

No, you have to have Broad Category to cover all mental powers.

At level 2 it has to be defined against a certain mental phenomena. Ergo, Invulernability (Mental Control) which give you resistiance to things like Domination and Hypnotism, but not Mental Blast.

[Hugin]

Quote:

Originally posted by Neil Preston:
Invulnerability (Mental) would effect against assualts against your mind, not against assualts that have a mental origin.

Here is a question I have:
At level two, is Invulnerability(Mental Powers) against a specific type of Mental Attack, or against ALL mental powers listed in the book?
Personally, I have always played it as it would have to be a broad group to cover all Mental Powers.

I believe in the Invun power description they do mention Mental (as a broad descriptor) as an example of a 2nd level power. Though, I do have to admit, I agree with you, it really should be considered an extra.

[Templar]

Quote:

Originally posted by Ashnod:
No, you have to have Broad Category to cover all mental powers.

At level 2 it has to be defined against a certain mental phenomena. Ergo, Invulernability (Mental Control) which give you resistiance to things like Domination and Hypnotism, but not Mental Blast.

Ah I see, thats not how I read it... it seems to say in the book that you can pick the descriptor "mental" rather than "fire" which in my opinion kinnda makes sense.

Example... Psychic Shield: +2 soak/auto successes against blah blah you know the rest. Now if you look at Invulnerable the same way you pay double the cost but in essence you get the same protection... so why would it be limited to one type of power(such as Mental Control)? After all Psychic shield protects from a whole host of powers and you are paying the sam in the end (1 np for 2 protect, 3 np for 6 protect).

As a broad descriptor you would make it a third level power and as such get something as useful as "Invulnerable: Physical" which protects against everything from a punch and getting hit by a large plantoid. Or "Invulnerability: Energy" which protects against everything from quantum bolts to supernovas. So I don't think it is too much to say that a broad descriptor for "Invulnerability: Mental Abilities" would protect against everything that uses mental abilities eg. Disrupt, Domination, Mental Blast ect.

[Hugin]

Except that Invunerability also protects against agg damage. That's something Psychic Shield doesn't do.

[Templar]

I don't think it does, that's the defence extra by the name of "Impervious" isn't it? Unless I missed somthing....

[Ashnod]

Nowhere does it say Mental Blast cannot soak agg. It says "If a power causes damage, like Mental Blast, Psychic Shield provides two extra soak per dot."

Since Mental Blast doesn't do "damage" like say a Quantum Bolt, but "health levels" of automatic damage after the resistance roll, this seems to apply regardless of whether or not it is aggravated or not. Unless you're stating that it requires the Impervious Extra to do it, but that makes little sense, in that there is no "Soak" for Health Level Damage, only a resistance roll. Impervious allows you to soak Agg as Lethal, but there is no difference between Agg,Lethal, and Bashing in terms of how you absorb damage from a Mental Blast. It's done automatically, so what type the damage is becomes insignificant. You're not soaking anything, you automatically take that what you can't resist.

[Templar]

I always look at the Mental Blast protection from Invulnerability as reducing the amount of successes from the power and thus the damage.... same with psychic shield, it makes more sense than 2 or 6 extra soak

[April Rice]

Invulnerability (Mental Attacks) does not require the Broad Category extra. Check out Andy Vance's statistics in World Wide 2.

[Singularity]

Or you can just read the main book. It clearly states Mental Attacks is a normal category not requiring the extra.

[April Rice]

"It clearly states Mental Attacks is a normal category not requiring the extra."

Hey, yeah. "Some possible examples include ... magnetic attacks or mental powers."

[Ashnod]

Seems more like an editing mistake to me. I could understand mental attacks being level 2, but mental POWERS? That's slightly broken for not being broad category.

[N News Service]

I agree, chalk yet another win for the WW Editing Team.

[Templar]

It's not "mental powers", just attacks (such as those covered by Psychic Shield I guess). For it to protect againts "mental energies" I would say that it would need a broad category, then it would protect against everything from Disrupt to Mirage.

[Kirby1024]

Hmm... I'm not entirely sure it's broken, all things considered. While there are more than a few powers that are classed under the "Mental" category, you have to admit that 3NP to protect against what's really a fairly small category of powers is fairly poor value. I mean, that's precisely the same cost to bring Psychic Shield up to that level (Invulnerability gives +6 per dot, Psychic Shield gives +2, but is only 1NP per dot). So, spend 3NPs on Psychic Shield, and 3NPs on Invulnerability, and you get... precisely the same thing.

I'm not sure if you can get more balanced that that. Psychic Powers are pretty damn powerful, it makes sense that the defenses against them would be too. Now, Invulnerability (Metasensory) would definitely be Broad Category, and would include Psychic Powers (at least to sense the person, anyway), and any other means of Quantum Power Detection...

[Hugin]

I dunno.

1 dot of Invun:Energy gives 6 soak against dice and automatic levels of damage. Q Bolt does what, 2*dots + 3*Quantum in damage? So 1 dot of Q Bolt fired off from Quantum 3, Dex 5, M Dex 2 (trying to make this very low level and reachable here) does 11 dice + a likely 3 extra dice from successes. 1 dot of Invun takes that down to 8 dice, probably 3 levels of health lost. You're hurt. Couple more of those and your dead.

Same scenario, with Domination. You get Dom 1 + Manip 5 + M Manip 2. Probable successes? Lets say 5. Willpower aside you're M Invun lets you totally ignore it. You'd have to get max successes with the target getting no successes on Willpower to be able to have any effect.

That's why it sounds excessive. On Domination in order to be able to really cook with that power you need usually 4 net successes above all defenses to have a real impact.

[David 'Dr. Troll' Smith]

RE: What INV:Mental covers.

In aberrant, ALL powers come from your node and therefore all have a mental origin. This includes things like Mega-Strength. INV:Mental protects your mind similar to Psychic Shield.

RE: Psychic Shield

From a cost perspective, this power isn't quite the same as INV:Mental. A dot of INV:Mental gives 6 auto-willpower succ. A dot of Psychie Shield gives 2 soak against mental attacks AND 2 auto-willpower succ. 3 Dots of it would stop 12 succ from a Mental Blast.

RE: Whether it is broken.

IMHO, no.

3 NP protect your character from most (hose your character this way) attacks.

Adaptability prevents gas attacks (and other things).

3 dots of Sensory Shield prevent Strobe & other sensory attacks.

3 dots of Psychic Shield prevent mental powers.

INV: Specific power prevents that power unless it can overwhelm your soak (which both energy and physical can do but others can not).

RE: INV: Quantum Detection

Wouldn't do much. INV gives auto-willpower or soak succ. You don't get a willpower roll against being detected. Similarly, you couldn't buy INV:Awareness and become super stealthy. If you want something like that, get Invisibility.

RE: Psychic Shield not protecting against agg damage.

I assume we are talking about Mental-Blast + Agg. Agg damage ignores SOAK, not defenses. The only thing that gives soak against Mental-Blast is Psychic Shield, so Agg would ignore this. However, Psychic Shield ALSO gives two auto-willpower succ. That would still work. The damage done would be Int succ +Q (minus target's willpower succ). If the target had both Psychic Shield and Hardbody, they would get the normal +2 soak as well as +2 auto-willpower succ.

RE: Mental Blast doesn't do "damage"

Don't know where you get this. Mental Blast does normal bashing damage, it is just resisted rather than soaked. Mental Illusion doesn't do "damage" (it is stun only). Normal Mental Blast can still kill people by doing lethal damage after they are unconscious.

[Templar]

Quote:

Originally posted by James 'Prodigy' Meehan:
I dunno.

1 dot of Invun:Energy gives 6 soak against dice and automatic levels of damage. Q Bolt does what, 2*dots + 3*Quantum in damage? So 1 dot of Q Bolt fired off from Quantum 3, Dex 5, M Dex 2 (trying to make this very low level and reachable here) does 11 dice + a likely 3 extra dice from successes. 1 dot of Invun takes that down to 8 dice, probably 3 levels of health lost. You're hurt. Couple more of those and your dead.

Same scenario, with Domination. You get Dom 1 + Manip 5 + M Manip 2. Probable successes? Lets say 5. Willpower aside you're M Invun lets you totally ignore it. You'd have to get max successes with the target getting no successes on Willpower to be able to have any effect.

That's why it sounds excessive. On Domination in order to be able to really cook with that power you need usually 4 net successes above all defenses to have a real impact.

If you got past the soak by 5 for Quantum Bolt, you do a bunch of damage.

If you got a net total of 4 or more with Domination you say... "kill yourself"... end of fight.

Although it is harder to dominate someone the effects if you manage it are much greater, thus making it a trade off of reliability for power.

[Templar]

Mental Blast does not do damage, it does "health levels" you wouldn't get double the effect of Psychic Shield when going against a Mental Blast because after the resisted roll you automaticly apply the minus to health levels... if you got the resisted roll and soak Mental Blast would be completely useless.

[David 'Dr. Troll' Smith]

Quote:

Templar:Mental Blast does not do damage, it does "health levels"

Although my book isn't in front of me, I'm pretty sure it does bashing damage. Go back and re-read the rules.

And I'm not sure what "health levels" would mean in this case. The only power that deals with "health levels" is Q-Vampire(Health), and even that does bashing damage.

Quote:

Templar:...you wouldn't get double the effect of Psychic Shield when going against a Mental Blast because after the resisted roll you automaticly apply the minus to health levels...

I've looked up this specific issue several times. You get 2 auto-willpower succ, AND you get 2 soak. Go back and re-read the rules.

[Templar]

So your saying a 1st level power makes a sencond level power completely useless?

It does do bashing type damage unless the damage is already beyond a certain point, but I don't think you can soak it.

[Ashnod]

Troll,

It does "Health Levels" of Bashing Damage. This means the damage is automatically done after the resistance roll and you get NO soak. The resulting damage is considered bashing for the purposes of healing it, but it's not damage in the sense that a Q-Bolt does damage.

I'm trying to understand how you're applying soak against an attack that you get no soak against.

Page 211 "Each net success achieved causes one health level of bashing damage."

Page 255 "if the source says 'takes a health level' she takes the damage regardless of any defenses."

[Hugin]

I've read that "Health Levels" damage is soakable. The only difference is that it is damage done as opposed to dice rolled. Something that does 10D+6L gets 10 dice attempts at succesful damage and 6 automatic levels of damage, but soak is still applied to both (not seperately though).

If Mental Blast damage wasn't soakable, why does Psychic Shield have soak?

[Jager]

On the flipside, Mental Attacks often pit a Stat+M-Stat+Power Rank vs. Willpower. Most Mental attacks are fairly devestating due to this inequality.

Ashnod (Basic Book pg. 215)- it states that "If the power causes damage, like Mental Blast, then Psychic Shield also provides two extra soak per dot."

Thus, Psychic Shield (lvl 1) does in fact run rampant over Mental Blast (lvl 2).

Likewise, under the Aggravated damage section, it states that Hardbody allows you to soak Aggravated damage, so an Aggravated Mental Blast would be soaked by Psychic Shield if you had Hardbody. Note that an Aggravated Mental Blast does more damage as the Agg. Extra changes the damage to [Q] plus successes on the attack roll.

[Ashnod]

Quote:

Originally posted by James 'Prodigy' Meehan:
I've read that "Health Levels" damage is soakable. The only difference is that it is damage done as opposed to dice rolled. Something that does 10D+6L gets 10 dice attempts at succesful damage and 6 automatic levels of damage, but soak is still applied to both (not seperately though).

If Mental Blast damage wasn't soakable, why does Psychic Shield have soak?

Because you could have a Quantum Blast defined as a Mental disruption?

More specifically, I think that Psychic Shield does it's work in the resistance phase of Mental Blast.

I made a thread regarding why Here

[Ashnod]

Hardbody allows you use your LETHAL soak to soak AGGRAVATED damage, Jager. You get no Lethal Soak when taking damage from Mental Blast because there is no soak. It doesn't apply because you aren't taking "Damage," you are taking health levels defined as damage on your Health Chart. This is not the same thing.

[Hugin]

Quote:

Originally posted by Ashnod:
Because you could have a Quantum Blast defined as a Mental disruption?

That sounds like a huge stretch to me.

Quote:

Originally posted by Ashnod:

More specifically, I think that Psychic Shield does it's work in the resistance phase of Mental Blast.

Quote from page 215, emphasis mine

Quote:

Description: Psychic Shield is a potent defense against powers that directly affect a nova's mind (Domination, Hypnosis, Mental Blast, Mirage or Telepathy) Each dot grants two extra successes to any roll to resist mental powers. If the power causes damage, like Mental Blast, then Psychic Shield also provides two extra soak per dot.

It is very specific. Mental Blast is specifically mentioned, it specifically states that it causes damage, and it specifically states that there is an additional effect of two soak per dot.

[David 'Dr. Troll' Smith]

Psi-Shield never says whether it provides lethal soak or non-lethal soak. It just provides soak.

Interestingly it is the only thing that provides soak to mental attacks. Even INV:Mental only provides 6 auto-willpower succ. That might be poor editing, or it might be a delibrate difference to make psi-shield different from INV:Mental.

[Ashnod]

Prodigy,

That's because Mental Blast is the only mental power that defines any kind of loss on the health chart. Nothing else, Domination, Hypnosis, etc, actually HURTS you. Yes, it is damaging in that is injury, but it's not the same kind of effect as getting blasted with laser.

It's a health level loss.

I believe you're right on the issue that Psychic Shield does allow for both resistance AND soak after reading the power again, but I don't believe Mental Blast can be soaked with anything but it and/or an Invulernability.

[Hugin]

I'm sorry, are we talking about the same thing?

My only argument is that Psychic Shield can soak Mental Blast because the book says it can. If we're talking about MegaStamina soaking it, well, then I agree.

[Ashnod]

okay, then yeah, we agree.

I thought you were saying that Mental Blast did Stamina soakable damage. My bad for misunderstanding.

[Templar]

That makes Psychic Shield like the most broken power in the game the... there is a problem with any 1st level power that makes a 2nd level power useless AND on top of that provides even more bonuses.

I don't think that just because it mentions Mental Blast means you can soak it, because even if it does provide soak by the description on Mental Blast you can't soak it anyway. I think the reason the show Mental Blast there is because there is nothing to compare it to.

If anything is badly edited, then I belive it is Psychic Shield saying that it provides soak.

[Matryoshka]

Yes,becuase a power that otherwise owns novas shouldn't have have a weakness.

[Myrmidon]

Ashnod, in that case, you can't apply the Aggravated Extra to Mental Blast.

Pg. 231. This Extra, when applied to a power that causes bashing or lethal damage, makes the damage aggravated.

Since Mental Blast does "health levels", it can't become aggravated. Sorry, Ms. DeVries.

Now, if it does bashing damage, and can thus get the Aggravated Extra, then Hardbody does work, as per two paragraphs on pg. 254.

- Aggravated damage may not be soaked except by novas with the Hardbody Enhancement or other similar powers.

-Aggravated damage cannot be soaked unless the nova has the Hardbody Enhancement or other similar protection.

My vote is that the editting sucks.

I also say that if you have Hardbody, but not Psychic Shield, then you are out of luck. Hardbody would allow you to use your "psychic soak" if you have one.

You need both, or the Impervious extra.

Templar, I would point out that a 5xp/3Np enhancement virtually renders Disintegrate (lvl 3) useless, as well as most aggravated attacks.