How do you run enemies with any kind of mind-control powers in a way that's still fun for the players?
>>93218290I let them control their actions just tell them "You have to follow the letter of what you were ordered" and I don't use long term stuff like a geasthis generally results in one of two results, either the guy who does the bare minimum to not fuck over the party or the guy who goes "FIGHT MY FRIENDS? FINALLY IVE BEEN WAITING FOR AN EXCUSE" and tears ass until the power's up
>>93218290Don't make controlling the players their plan.
>>93218316>the guy who goes "FIGHT MY FRIENDS? FINALLY IVE BEEN WAITING FOR AN EXCUSE"I had this happen just last session; player used a magic item that gives a buff in exchange for forcing you to keep attacking someone every round for its duration (or you can roll to try and end the effect early). They defeated the enemies, and when I asked if he wanted to start rolling to try to end the effect, he refused in order to finally have an excuse to fight one of the other PCs.He cut it out after a couple rounds when he was told to either start making the mental saves or the party wizard would just blow him up.
>>93218290Secretly tell the player "you are being controlled to have X motivation." Any player who doesn't have hella fun subverting the party is boring and sucks.
>>93218290By having players who find these things fun.
>>93218290Have the mind-control be smaller constrains rather than "I take your turn from you".Things like "you have to move toward/away from X", "you have to take X action, or cast THIS specific spell" while otherwise controlling there character. Or the opposite, they can do whatever BUT one specific thing the villain prevent them from doing. Preferably their go to action.Force them to play differently.
>>93218290Depends on whether we're talking about influencing or complete domination, and whether we're talking about straight-up combat or an ongoing issue.But generally I just don't. Not everything should be fun for the players at all times. Virtually all varieties of mind-control should and will suck for them, and that's a good thing.
>>93218316This mostly. Players are more irritated by the loss of agency than they are by a loss of control. Use mind powers sparingly and instruct them on what they are compelled to do. If they're good sports and do it well, leave loopholes open or allow sufficiently creative outs, but most importantly USE MIND POWERS SPARINGLY.The most important thing to remember when you're talking about mind affecting psionics or enchantments is that you are twisting your player's arm when you're doing it. A little might be okay as a part of a game, but they're going to get sick of it really fast if it's not for a particularly fun purpose.
>>93218290Know your players, know their fears and kinks, use the mind control to make their characters do things they normally wouldn't dare doing. Make it fun learning experience for everyone involved.
>>93218290>how do I inherently do a thing whose reception depends entirely on the people I'm doing it for ??
>>93218290I don't. They should hate every second of it if it is happening.
>>93218290Why is he purple? Did he fall into a vat of grape soda as a child?
>>93222824He’s a dick
>>93218290It really depends on the type of mind control. Is it technological? Psionic? Magical? What's the duration? The range? What, if anything, can snap a victim out of it? How many people can be controlled at one time?>>93218326This is a very good idea, and is what I'd do. Stuff like an enemy who for some reason makes the players his personal pet project to fuck with them by subtly controlling the people in their lives to fuck with them, and who also uses mind controlled innocents as proxies giving the players the dilemma of how to stop a threat without hurting the person. When it comes time to a direct confrontation find a way to set the players up with some kind of macguffin that nullifies the mind control, or at least severely limits it. It will just ignore players if they lose control over their characters, but some kind of protection that limits control to say 1 round of combat or provides difficult but achievable saving rolls to break mind control even when a settings version of Batman and Superman are controlled? That's doable. Focusing on super hero settings since that's what the op image is from, but I think the point gets across well enough.Only problem is I think Incredibles 2 used something like this approach? I haven't seen it but heard some stuff, mostly bad.
>>93218290Mind-control isn't unfun. Being unable to play the game is what's unfun.This also applies to shit like paralysis or being put to sleep. As a GM, I never hit my players with any effect that renders them unable to act whatsoever. I'll limit their options, but never force them to just sit there and jerk off until the effect ends.I haven't done mind control, but if I was going to, I'd be sure not to deprive the player of the ability to make decisions.For a more subtle mind control, I'd lie or stretch the truth when describing things to the player. I'll still let the player make decisions, but working off of bad information.For blatant mind control, I'll give the player an order that must be followed, but get to make the decision in how it's followed. They can follow the letter rather than the spirit.If I absolutely need to have the player be directly controlled with no ability to move their body, I would have a combat in the player's mind palace or something. Let the player proactively fight to get control back, concurrently with the player's body acting under my control and the other players trying to stop it.
>>93222824This is made fun of in the comic itself. The backstory we're given is that Purple Man is an agent of a (non-specific) foreign government who stole a secret pheromone that dyed him purple but also lets him control people's thoughts. So he gave up his espionage mission to basically become a full-time Grand Theft Auto power fantasy, killing anyone he wants to kill and sleeping with any woman he wants to fuck. Because of this, he has a super detached, "meta" outlook and comes to see his reality as being a fictitious work with himself as the main character.Later, Jessica confronts him while he's in prison and takes him to task about his backstory, and he straight-up says that he's a villain who wasn't written for a mainstream comic audience (whom he denigrates as being "obsessed with continuity") and that she should be happy that his backstory is vague and kind of stupid with no clear cause-and-effect because it gives her a lot more room to editorialize and read into him
>>93223025Incredibles 2 is really good and you should watch it, people are just grumbling because it's more about Elastigirl with Mr Incredible as a stay-at-home dad (but the first movie was more about Mr Incredible and it's fine either way and people are silly).Mind control guy actually tries to mind control the heroes but fails because the heroes keep their wits about them also mind control guy was being mind controlled, he was just a random pizza delivery guy with no memory of what he had done.
>>93224651I'll admit this isn't the best reason to avoid the movie, but I wasn't a fan of the new hero designs. It felt like they went out of their way to make them as hideous as possible. No, I don't mean I'm freaking out about someone having a sidecut or whatever. It just feels like with all of the background work the put into the heroes in the first film, even if it only comes out in the DVD extras, it felt like such a downgrade. Like they weren't really putting in the effort.Like I said, not the best reason, and probably unfair too. Other than that the premise sounds funny. Mr. Incredible forced into a situation he can't just hit his way out of, definitely out of his comfort zone. And I can't imagine people legit griping about more focus on Elastigirl given all the posters posting her posterior over the years. What has become of us?
>>93218290Just make the durations shorter than the average D&D shit. "Ohh this guy's in control of your actions for one turn." No one is bothered over that short term an effect.
>>93218316>"FIGHT MY FRIENDS? FINALLY IVE BEEN WAITING FOR AN EXCUSE"This is me and I make no apologies for "failing" spell saves to force this to happen
>>93218316>FIGHT MY FRIENDS?Just casually walk away remarking that you'll need to make some first, your adventuring companions are barely an acquaintance
>>93229962As in the game, so too in the gaming group. A tale as old as time.
>>93218316This, taking away the players control of their character it best avoided, but place limitations on what they can do and people are more willing to play ball.My favourite was when the party were dungeon crawling >Party in a trap room, identified the trap and knew what it would do, (Silvery skull on a pedestal, moving the skull causes the walls to crush in on everyone in the room)>However they missed the tripwire by the door that acted as an alarm>Enemies start pouring into the room>One of the characters was carrying around a spooky artefact looted from one of the antagonists>Said artefact could do a few thing, stored spells was the primary thing>Artefact was cursed and had a chance to mind control when used>Desperate times, player used it during combat, >Fails save gets mind controlled >Character is now convinced that everything in the room is her enemy>Player Immediately proceeded to push the skull off the pedestal and bolt for the exit>Half the party and all of the enemies get turned into pasteShe nearly turned a winnable encounter into a TPK
>>93218290I don't, since I don't find it fun nor do my players.I often make mind control spells not work on the "strong willed" and the adventures are naturally strong willed.Doesn't prevent the madtermind mind controller from controling pessants and even some nobility.Even allies of the characters.It's much more fun this way imo.
>>93225063This is also good.
>>93223025Give the enemy a specific reason for not just mind-controlling them to do ridiculous things, the more well-meaning they think they are, the better.>Of course, I would never use my powers on you! I respect you!
>>93218290have mind-controlling enemies not be just combat encounters where if you lose the roll you lose your characters, but major overarching villains or even neutral-but-potentially-dangerous npcs. then besides this set up just make sure that at least half the party has hypnosis-related fetishes and you're golden
>>93218290I treat mind controlled players like additional enemies.You can still take your turn, but mind control and other control-loss effects give you an extra "evil" turn where your character does something unfortunate.My players consider this fun as fuck, because it doesn't break action economy, and makes the mind control or lycanthropy or whatever something they can actually fight and strategize around.One example was a character in one of my games who was going berserk from turning into a werecreature, and spent his "good turns" getting as far away from the party as possible, so his "evil turns" only had enemies within range to maul mindlessly.
>>93241149>You can still take your turn, but mind control and other control-loss effects give you an extra "evil" turn where your character does something unfortunate.That's a good ideia.
I played a game of pokemon tabletop like 10 years ago where one of the missions for my players was based on john carpenters "the thing"when my players would be alone I would give them a random note which either said that they wanted to get the other players alone or that they wanted to investigate the actual mission more.no one really knew who was who, thing's or regular humans. it was fun because my players were cool and wanted to have fun. thats how you have mind control type effects that are fun.
>>93218326spbp
>>93218290Well, what are some good limits on that kind of power to keep it from being OP? Does it only work on a certain number of people at once, does it have a max range, that kind of thing.
>>93218290Only happened once and was probably the worst player to have it happen to. He is notorious for making characters with mary sue backstories, stuff like "I persoanlly know the king" and "my biggest flaw is that everyone was jealous of me for being such a skilled swordsman". Every backstory he came up with I had to sit down with him and modify it until made sense and fit the world better.Anyway one character he made was a Warforged with amensia. The idea that he was playing a person who was transfomred into a machine and was trying to figure out his past and I would just write it for him. I came up with something based on a older character idea he hadn't gone with from an earlier game.Session pass and he ened up making a deal with an evil demi-god/witch to discover his past. I told him he used to be a Drow that led a slave rebellion, and he thought that was cool, so he made another deal with the witch to be transformed into his true self. The witch agreed, but her price was "an hour of service in this life". He agreed and the party went on to save the day defeating the witches forces that attacked a town a couple of session later. Then during the award ceremony, I secretly messaged the player that his hour of service had begun, and the witch orders him to kill the local lord leading the cermemony. Problem is we play online and he didnt check his messages. So instead of having a dramatic reveal, I had to tell him to check his messages over voice. And when he still didnt understand it (he is also really dumb sometimes), I just took control of his character for the first attack as I explained to him the consqucenes of his actions of making a deal with a evil witch.
>>93248373(Cont)After the Lord died I then had the witches voice tell him in his head that he has served 24 seconds (4 rounds) and she will collect the rest of the hour at a later date freeing him from her control for now (I stole the idea of the hour not having to be served all at once from OOTS). I fully expected the party to rally around him and subdue him and this to be the start of a quest to try and free him from the curse. Instread the other players had been drinking (this was near the end of a full day session) and beheaded the player infront of the crowd of onlookers to save their reputation since they were associated with him.The player didint fight agasint them since he has a habit of if he gets sick of a character or they get even slightly weakened he just starts playing really suicidal or just asks to swap to a new character since he doesnt like playing this one anymore. Felt bad for him and ened up letting him play a subclass that I probably would have said no to if he had asked any other time for his next character who ened up being as much of a Mary Sue as all his other ones.So never got to try mind control properly, but I trust most of my other players enough that if I asked them to play hostile to the party, they probably wouldn't pull punches or meta game to save the other party members. Some players though I could easly see doing stuff like stadning in the way of other enemies and using their weakest attacks on their allies. Just got to know your players.
>>93248373>>93248461That's a cool take on it. Shame your players didn't bite. I would've rolled with it just for the curse breaking quest.
>>93248373>>93248461this player sounds like a huge drag
>>93218290Don't have the mind control affect them or give the villain a reason to not go after the PCs directly. If a system has Saves and those apply to the mind control, you can reason the party might be too high-risk for a cautious mind controller, so he'll try to work around them by targeting those with weaker wills.
>>93225050I think the idea with the new heroes is that the heroes of the first movie were obviously patterned after and were supposed to look like superheroes from 1950s and '60s comic books, to fit the general aesthetic of the movie and to suggest that they were part of a bygone era. You could take any of their designs and they'd fit right in with the cast of DC and Marvel of those decades.Incredibles 2 is very much about a new generation of heroes beginning to take root, so the idea was probably very deliberately to make the new heroes have more modern appearances. They don't fit the classic aesthetic because that's the *point*, they're not the classic heroes, they're the new guys.Now whether or not you like that or the particular designs that Pixar went with, that's entirely a matter of taste. But I don't think the new heroes' looks are what they are due to laziness or a lack of effort, but rather a deliberate choice to break with the classic look that they'd established in the first film. The reasoning is solid, the execution, well, that's up to the individual viewer.
>>93218385First thing to do in that situation is nail a sunder against the item.Then but on your biggest shit eating grin and say 'What, that evil, cursed item was clearly controlling you, we just saved you, you're welcome, U-fucking-wU' and watch him seethe for the rest of eternity over it.
>>93218290They have absolute power to control someone else, but only one person at a time. Its still a very potent ability, but it means that as long as the mind-controller has someone else that is *more important* to keep under their control, the PCs getting mind controlled is a risk they need to be aware of but will almost never happen. Keeping the Emperor mind controlled is more important than some dipshit level 7 Ranger, with the possible exception of if that ranger is seconds away for killing you and you are out of options.But that means that, even in that situation, the PC was *won* something. Yes, they have temporarily lost control of their character. But in doing so you have forced the villain to give up control of a much more valuable piece of their grand plan.
>>93224563God that sounds up it own ass.
>>93224563i don't think purple guy read comics, because that backstory isn't at all incoherent nor ridiculous for comic book standards. you know, the most famous superhero villain in the world doesn't even have a backstory
