Hot Topic (More than 10 Replies) Emotion Control: a deep study (Read 3297 times)
John
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Emotion Control: a deep study
Dec 13th, 2010 at 1:01am
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  Emotion control is one of the harder powers to play.  It requires some acting on the players and the GM.   And it sucks when your player has to pretend to be afraid of something he would rather smash.
  I have yet to have a player possess this power*.   And I think I have only had two NPC's use it.   For years I just avoided it, but I have come to some basic rules that I will use to keep the accounting low.
  Keep in mind, when I make up rules, I think of the average human's stats and I assign the modifers based on that.
   So when a character is afflicted by Emotion Control, they get a pentalty of -4.   This penalty comes into play accourding to the type of emotion.
     If they are made to fear something,  they will have a -4 to hit, -4 on intitative due to their fear, and a -4 on Intellegence saves if needed.
    Using this simple modifier,  you can insert it into any type of Emotion.      Say a player is made to love another player.  The afflicted player than has a -4 on Intellegence saves  when it comes into play ( like not realising he is being used, or to walk first into a trap, etc...)
     If the character has two doses of one paticular emotion than its -8.  Fear becomes Terror,  Hate becomes Obessive Hate,   Love becomes Obessive or Possessive Obession,  Courage becomes Foolhardiness, etc...

    I think that one of the most crippling emotions would be Doubt.   The player would get a -4 to hit, intitivate and Intellegence saves.  Wouldn't doubting yourself in combate be deadly for a superhero?

  Also, not all emotion control attacks are bad.  Think about a patriotic superhero than can inspire Hope, or Bravery, or even Confidence.   I Would assign those emotions a +4 when applicable. 

What about a sneak with Trust?   Or Paranoia?  Hoplessness?  So many emotions to play with.


So in my game,  Emotion Control can be a very powerful, and subtle power.   I would write the emotion they are afflicted by on a small note and hand it to the player in question so the other players don't really know what is going on.    I would even reward extra experience points if role played well.



* Paul's Character had Emotion Control: Fear, I forgot about that as he rarely used it.

  

I am scary, very, very scary.
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Paul
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Re: Emotion Control: a deep study
Reply #1 - Dec 13th, 2010 at 12:03pm
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When I was making up Elusion based on the thoughts I originally had, this was the intent. But when we started to write down the specifics we decided to make it Fear Detection.

I was originally going to use a mixture of emotion control and some sort of psionic ability to learn someone's fear then accentuate the fear in the person's mind for even more minus's or even wasted actions to save against. But it became a bit too compliated so we went the fear detection route along with me potentially transmuting objects into "feared" people/items/etc. based on the learned fear.

The name Elusion was thought of based on a mix of eluding (the evasion power) and illusions (manipulating ones mind based on the learned fear).

But doesn't matter anymore since you calculatingly killed Elusion.   Angry
  

Anticipation of death is worse than death itself -- Steven Segal
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Paul
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Re: Emotion Control: a deep study
Reply #2 - Dec 13th, 2010 at 12:04pm
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Oh, meant to ask a question. Can one train in emotion control to increase the minuses?
  

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John
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Re: Emotion Control: a deep study
Reply #3 - Dec 13th, 2010 at 4:38pm
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Paul wrote on Dec 13th, 2010 at 12:04pm:
Oh, meant to ask a question. Can one train in emotion control to increase the minuses?


Sure. 
  

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Ranger
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Re: Emotion Control: a deep study
Reply #4 - Dec 13th, 2010 at 10:45pm
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Couldnt/wouldnt you use Weakness Detection or a Heightened Sense to acertain an individuals Fear?

I think the +/- 4 is an elegant way to simulate a character response to Emotion Control. I think I especially like one major effect such as -4 on Intiative or to Hit, tyed to a -4 to a Characteristic (for saves/skills only)

Nice job John
« Last Edit: Dec 13th, 2010 at 11:08pm by Ranger »  

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John
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Re: Emotion Control: a deep study
Reply #5 - Dec 13th, 2010 at 11:03pm
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If there fear was their weakness.
  

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Re: Emotion Control: a deep study
Reply #6 - Dec 14th, 2010 at 11:38am
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Agreed John, I see one's fear and their weakness to be two different things.

Some characters might not even have a weakness, but everyone fear's something.
  

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Re: Emotion Control: a deep study
Reply #7 - Dec 14th, 2010 at 11:20pm
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I guess what I was getting at with the Heightened Sense addition, was that I don't see Emotion Control allowing someone to sense an individual's fears on it's own. To know their true fears it takes some form of discovery.

Now if you say Emotion Control naturally triggers a particular fear and said psychic is aware of that fear through some form of feedback then all's cool.

When it comes to this kind of stuff you could stay simple of get way complex - all depending how you like to flavor the storyline. Hell I think there's a couple RPGs based on psychic powers alone

And yes your fear is only a weakness if you allow it to control you instead of you it Smiley
  

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Re: Emotion Control: a deep study
Reply #8 - Dec 15th, 2010 at 4:55pm
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No, emotion control would make the target afraid, but it wouldn't reveal if the target has specific fears.
  

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Re: Emotion Control: a deep study
Reply #9 - Aug 8th, 2011 at 2:32pm
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fightingspirit has this power. he can cause fear.
Tongue
  
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John
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Re: Emotion Control: a deep study
Reply #10 - Mar 5th, 2017 at 2:59pm
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Bumping this for Yoshi.
  

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Re: Emotion Control: a deep study
Reply #11 - Mar 11th, 2017 at 8:22pm
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Thanks for bumping this one, John.

I'm currently working on an all-girl villain team calling themselves "Double X" from the female chromosome.  A bigger bunch of man-haters never befouled the planet. One of the members is called Schadendfreude.  Her main power is emotion control, causing crippling feelings of despair and hopelessness in her victims.

I'll be using this one.
  
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