Lunar mental resistence thoughts

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Arek
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Lunar mental resistence thoughts

Post by Arek »

Lunar creatures receive a +10 bonus to resist various mind-affecting effects, right?

Thinking about it logically, terrans (read: us) should receive that same bonus against mind-affecting effects from them . I mean, a lunar telepath and a terrestrial one, upon making mental contact, should find themselves doing the psychic equivalent of staring at each other blankly, then communicating by, as it were, shouting each word very slowly.

Mutual incomprehensibility, you know?
mythfish
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Post by mythfish »

As a matter of fact I was thinking the same thing just a few days ago. Seems perfectly reasonable to me.
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walrusjester
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Post by walrusjester »

I don't agree - look at all the SF/fantasy stuff where the Creepy Alien Invaders have mental powers that we Earthlings can't resist. It's part of what makes them scary. I think that holds true for lunar creatures. Not only are they weird and tentacular and incomprehensible, they can get inside your head and make you do things... *ominous hum*

Just because we don't understand them doesn't mean they don't understand us.
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mythfish
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Post by mythfish »

walrusjester wrote: Just because we don't understand them doesn't mean they don't understand us.
I disagree with your disagreement. :)

If they can understand us, that makes them less alien and therefore less scary. They don't necessarily have to understand us to use creepy mental powers on us and make us do things.

Take the skinstealer for example...it taps into the nervous system of its host and has access to the host's knowledge and abilities. Even though it has access to them, it may not necessarily understand them fully. It could observe the host's actions through his memories to know what is and isn't typical behavior, so it can therefore pose as the host without raising many suspicions, but it may not really grasp WHY the host does the things it does. The way I see it, the skinstealer controls the actions but it's still the host's nervous system that does most of the work...it's kind of like a computer. You can use it to accomplish your tasks without fully understanding how or why it works, and the processor does most of the work for you anyway. In my mind the reason you get a saving throw to resist a skinstealer's domination is precisely because it doesn't fully understand terrestrial psychology.

Edit: I should point out that I don't necessarily believe that players should get a +10 bonus to resisting lunar creatures mind effects. I think that would make lunar creatures less scary, and perhaps be unbalancing. Just saying I agree with the logic that led to that conclusion.
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Arek
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Post by Arek »

I'm thinking if lunar minds are alien to terrestrials, then the other side of the coin says that terrestial minds are alien to lunars.

Besides, it does serve as a good method of evening things up. I can readily accept that lunar creatures are very, in a word, badass, but them getting an whole +10 on their saves against mind-affecting stuff is...wow. I mean, a wyrmling lunar dragon has a will save of +10 already. If you add another 10 onto that, that's adding an entire random number generator (+20) to their d20 roll on their throw, giving them an effective save of, "I succeed." And that's just the wyrmlings.

Dronogs get an effective save of +10. You might as well turn that rule into one that means neither terrestrials nor lunars are being effective if they're trying to mess with one another's minds, and make an exception for Skinstealers, because they really do mesh themselves with another creature's mind.

And I see here that Detect Thoughts has a major chance of failing against Skinstealers. I can see it being hard to make sense of the information from one gets from using DT, but, realistically, wouldn't that spell serve as a sort of "Detect Lunar Creature"? It should be pretty easy to tell a lunar creature's mind from a terrestrial creature's, right?

Just some thoughts.
walrusjester
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Post by walrusjester »

mythfish wrote: If they can understand us, that makes them less alien and therefore less scary. They don't necessarily have to understand us to use creepy mental powers on us and make us do things.
And I disagree with your disagreement with my disagreement. Harumph! I'm more scared by something that knows how I think than by something that's just alien to me. I remember reading Ken St. Andre's thoughts in the game Stormbringer about demons. He talked about how the more un-humanly weird you make something, the less scary it becomes: a floating triangle with three eyes on each face and weird mystical powers is just strange; a bipedal reptile with glowing red eyes and weird mystical powers is scary. That's the distinction. If lunar creatures are completely beyond understanding, they're not scary. They're just a problem. If they're just too smart/advanced/telepathic/whatever for us, and they can make us do what they want, that's scary. But beatable.

Anyway, while I understand the logic behind giving terrestrials a +10 against lunar mental powers, I think it doesn't serve the setting. Obviously GMs are welcome to house-rule it in. And I think Arek is right in pointing out that the +10 doesn't scale well at very low levels. Perhaps it should have been based on HD? That would be another interesting house rule to try.
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walrusjester
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Post by walrusjester »

Arek wrote:And I see here that Detect Thoughts has a major chance of failing against Skinstealers. I can see it being hard to make sense of the information from one gets from using DT, but, realistically, wouldn't that spell serve as a sort of "Detect Lunar Creature"? It should be pretty easy to tell a lunar creature's mind from a terrestrial creature's, right?
You have a point. If we were to do a DragonMech 2.0, I'd want to increase the value of divination when dealing with the lunar menace. Whether or not they understand us, they don't think like us, and clever players should be able to gain an advantage from that. It would also give investigator-types more to do.
DragonMech line developer, freelance writer, tall guy named Matt.
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