(Aberrant) Let's ask the board...

[SpectacularTentacular]

So I notice that Aberrant no longer has a Mega-Edge for resisting powered persuasion or telepathy or other mind effects. (According to the early release, it makes it's reappearance in Adventure!) In your games, will Iron Will/Indomitable also work against Mind Reading and/or Revealing Read? Or will you introduce a Mega-Edge to rectify that?

What roll do you think the nova's resistance roll should be? Composure plus what? Does Mega-Composure give Scale? Since the main Aberrant book doesn't give much guidance, let's see what homebrew rules there are.

[Mateus Luz]

Mega Composure (or Resolve, not sure) adds scale to resist mental and social attacks, so it is covered. It don’t allow you to block telepathy, but may help you to resist it.

[Deadmanwalking]

Actually, by default, Mega-Composure and Mega-Resolve do nothing to resist anything but certain types of 'mundane' social manipulations (though they resist even high Scale manipulations of that sort). In terms of mind control Mega-Composure can give you Iron Will or Indomitable, which do help. Mega-Presence interestingly also helps vs. a lot of direct mind control since many published mind control effects (and all that Novas can perform) are opposed with Presence + Integrity and the Mega-Presence scale increase is not restricted in any way (this doesn't work on emotion control from the Rapport Mode, as that has no resistance roll, only Indomitable with expenditure protects against those, though Mega-Composure can resist some of its effects as well indirectly...it also doesn't help against higher level Psychbending effects, which are opposed with Resolve + Integrity, though again Iron Will or Indomitable will help).

Versus having one's mind read, at the moment there is no real defense vs. most powers (Mega-Manipulation helps against Mindshare's 'Surface Scan' if you know they're performing it, but not against later powers). Most (including Revealing Read) have a Difficulty of the target's Composure and personally, for reasons of logic, I just add Mega-Composure to that, which is technically a House Rule, but solves the problem pretty directly, IMO.

[Shalmaneser]

I'd be inclined to not assume it's a problem at all. If a nova winds up crossing a powerfully telepathic psion/psiad, the nova will have a problem.

Novas are powerful enough; I'm okay with them having some irreducible problems to work around that they can't solve with powers, and no effective resistance to telepathy seems sufficiently troublesome to be interesting.

[Deadmanwalking]

They should definitely have some resistance to Revealing Read, that being another Nova effect, and Deep Scan has almost identical mechanics, which makes me inclined to apply such resistance there as well...but even if you think they shouldn't apply there, you definitely need to do something for Revealing Read or it becomes an insta-win effect, which isn't much fun.

[Mateus Luz]

Mega Composure and Mega Resolve (the higher of the 2) should be enough to increase the difficulty of all mind effect powers, not to make completely immune to it, but to make it hard to use on them.

If you treat “invasive” telepathy as a very precise and powerful way to influence the target, targeting directly the subconscious, it is still a “social influence to encourage or prevent behavior or shift attitude”. As opposed to blackmail and extortion that force the character to do things to avoid overt kinds of punishment, Telepathy forces the target to do things by convincing the mind it’s ok, and that’s why things that go against their nature are harder to convince.

Same for Revealing Read, the Nova looks ultra micro expressions and deduce a lot of information, but Mega Composure removes this microexpressions to a certain degree. Basically they have such control over their body reactions that not even their unconscious thoughts cause any expression, at least to anyone of lower scale.

[Dataweaver]

If you're defending against literal mind reading (such as from a psiad with Telepathy), I could see Mega-Intellect or Mega-Cunning helping — the former because the thought patterns are increasingly alien to the telepath, and the later because the telepath just can't keep up.

[Mateus Luz]

That is an amazing image. The telepath trying to read the Nova’s mind and receiving an overflow of information, with even the surface thoughts being super dense or amazingly complex.

It should work against Revealing Reading too, if the one reading is not fast enough or their mind is not powerful enough read the sequence of thoughts and it’s complexity would be impossible.

[SpectacularTentacular]

If you're defending against literal mind reading (such as from a psiad with Telepathy), I could see Mega-Intellect or Mega-Cunning helping — the former because the thought patterns are increasingly alien to the telepath, and the later because the telepath just can't keep up.

Likewise, I was thinking of allowing the Mastermind Mega-Edge to be effective against telepathy/mind-reading, treating them as investigative procedures against the nova. After all, wouldn't a Mastermind be prepared for anything?

[Shepherdboi]

Talking about the Surface Skim psi power, is it actually meant to be easier to use against aware opponents, because that's what it looks like to me? It has Difficult equal to the target's Manipulation if they're unaware, but becomes a contested roll against their Integrity + Manipulation if they think their mind is being read. The problem is rolling that dice pool should usually provide a smaller number than your Manipulation score, so in most cases it is easier to read the mind of someone who is actively working against you.

[Deadmanwalking]

Likewise, I was thinking of allowing the Mastermind Mega-Edge to be effective against telepathy/mind-reading, treating them as investigative procedures against the nova. After all, wouldn't a Mastermind be prepared for anything?

I really like this, and have officially stolen it for my House Rules (alongside adding Mega-Composure to Composure to determine difficulty).

[Florin]

If you're defending against literal mind reading (such as from a psiad with Telepathy), I could see Mega-Intellect or Mega-Cunning helping — the former because the thought patterns are increasingly alien to the telepath, and the later because the telepath just can't keep up.

Or even just the penalty to form bonds from having Transcendence could be applied, since that is kind of the same thing.

[Mateus Luz]

After re-reading Telepathy and the Mental Mega Attributes I would say that Psychibending would be resisted by Mega Composure or Mega Resolve (the higher of the two) for trying to command or at least attack the mind of the Nova, and so must be resisted with Leadership scale, while Mind Bending is more passive, you read what is coming and the most you do is try to pluck some memory hooks to see what you get, so it would be facing Mega Intellect or Mega Cunning, the higher of the 2, for the Mental Scale.

[SpectacularTentacular]

Cool! Thanks for the responses.

Now: As far as the Toughness Mega-Edge goes, I'd tend to treat it as naturally Innocuous (as the Tag) unless the nova PC has a Transformation attached to it, or one that naturally suggests a visibly not-quite-human body. Seem right, or should the Innocuous Tag be purchased for that?

[Shepherdboi]

Alternately, you could claim that Toughness - by default - prevents sunlight from penetrating the skin enough to cause subsurface scattering. This means novas with Toughness naturally look a lot like high quality CGI effects from a decade or two ago. A proper perception check would clue an observer into why the nova looks subtly weird, and warn them that the nova is more durable than normal.

This justifies smart enemies going after super tough novas with anti-tank weapons, and could lead the group to investigate what lead their enemies to choose such over the top hardware. Did some spy betray their secrets? Nope, someone with a telephoto lens took their picture, and it came out looking photoshopped. If any member of the party has Mega-Cunning, they should get one free perception check to notice the problem due to their natural enhancement to such checks.