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Old 09-30-2017, 05:54 AM   #21
Andreas
 
Join Date: Mar 2014
Default Re: [RPM] Mind Control

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Originally Posted by Anthony View Post
It's not clear how else you build 'slavishly obeys X and ignores everyone else'.
Wouldn't just Reprogramable and being ordered to do so work for that?
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Old 09-30-2017, 09:01 AM   #22
malloyd
 
Join Date: Jun 2006
Default Re: [RPM] Mind Control

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Originally Posted by Bruno View Post
You don't get protected from the effects of Slave Mentality by taking more disadvantages.

Sense of Duty and/or Reprogramable doesn't stop people from casually walking up to you and telling you to clean their shoes with your tongue.
But Slave Mentality doesn't actually force you to obey them either.

It confused me for quite a while too, but I think I understand the intent now. Slave Mentality is not a compulsion to obey orders - that's Reprogrammable - it simply prevents you from doing stuff *without* any. It's a lack of *initiative* more than anything. You could conceivably have Slave Mentality and some other disadvantage that prevents you from taking orders (say a complete inability to understand language) and basically never do anything. That just wouldn't be a very interesting character.

Edit: I would however say that Slave Mentality is incompatible with Sense of Duty, because Sense of Duty *is* a kind of internal motivation, and by definition sufferers from Slave Mentality do not have any of those. It's incompatible with pretty much all self imposed disadvantages.
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Old 09-30-2017, 12:38 PM   #23
Kelly Pedersen
 
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Default Re: [RPM] Mind Control

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Originally Posted by Bruno View Post
You don't get protected from the effects of Slave Mentality by taking more disadvantages.
I would argue that taking Slave Mentality and Reprogrammable together isn't actually significantly reducing the disadvantage value of Slave Mentality. The way I see it, with Slave Mentality alone, you have a very hard time resisting anyone's orders, or acting on your own initiative. If you take Reprogrammable as well, there's at least one person whose orders you ca 't disobey - you never get even the possibility of disobeying, even with the -6 that Slave Mentality imposes. That person can give you orders like "ignore orders that don't come from me", and that lets you out of Slave Mentality's normal "obey anyone who makes even a token attempt to command you" effect, but in exchange, you have absolutely no recourse if your master gives you impossible or suicidal orders, and others can still fool you into thinking that orders do come from "the master", and Slave Mentality will still impose its normal penalty on your attempts to see through such deceptions. And if your master words it so restrictively that that's impossible, that becomes its own form of restriction on both you and the master.

Also, I'd note that Reprogrammable, in 3e, used to be "Reprogrammable Duty". I'm reasonably sure, based on that, that the intent is not to make someone who slavishly obeys the orders of one specific person to take Reprogrammable, Slave Mentality, and an additional Duty disad.
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Old 09-30-2017, 12:46 PM   #24
Kelly Pedersen
 
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Default Re: [RPM] Mind Control

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Originally Posted by malloyd View Post
But Slave Mentality doesn't actually force you to obey them either.
It kind of does, actually - it makes you automatically fail rolls to resist social influence (except when the GM decides "success might be possible", which is undefined, but still imposes a -6), so anyone who uses social influence can basically tell you what to do. It's a little unclear if, in cases of Quick Contests, which most social influence rolls are, "always fails" means "always has a margin of failure greater than the opponent" or something a bit more lenient like "fails with a margin of failure of 1", but regardless, anyone even basically competent at social influence can generally get someone with Slave Mentality to do what they want.

Personally, I lean towards the "always fails quick contests with a margin of 1" interpretation, because that means someone with Slave Mentality can't be swayed by an utterly terrible argument or story - someone has to be at least marginally decent at it to get it to work. That's because I feel the point value of Slave Mentality is quite adequately covered by the "lacks initiative" bit of it, and the idea of someone running hither and yon, pushed by contradictory orders or the instructions of whoever met them most recently, just seems silly to me.
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