ricegf/elven-fire — Issue #5: Adjusting the Power of Sleep, Freeze, Control, et. al.
Author: ricegf
Created: 2012-01-20 23:53:11+00:00
State: open

Currently mental abilities such as sleep, freeze, control, avert, and their ilk tend to be unreasonably powerful due to the lack of saving rolls by the target and severe consequences when applied.

Rather than just add a saving roll, why not add a brief, intense mental combat sequence, taking into account the IQ of each combatant, their skill at the form of combat (e.g., Sleep), and related artifacts. This should be usually resolved in more than one but less than 10 rolls, with varying results similar to attempts to enter hand-to-hand combat - the target sleeps, the target's IQ and Dx are temporarily reduced by sleepiness, the target resists, the target temporarily reduces the attacker's IQ, or the attacker is slept. Negative consequences should only take place when the target is significantly more powerful than the attacker to avoid making the mental attack abilities too risky to employ.