[Powers] Reprogrammable Affliction

[Desthro]

There's a few threads covering this topic, but none of them really capture everything about this disadvantage. I am interested specifically in the relationship of Reprogrammable to Slave Mentality, how Reprogrammable is limited or protected to ensure only certain authorized individuals can gain access to it, and perks or skills to check against when actually programming something with Reprogrammable.

This all started with creating undead (lots of fun stuff there btw), but what if you needed to control it? How would you do that? How would you make it obey your orders, or something you told it to do? How would you change that programming? So naturally, Slave Mentality and Reprogrammable made sense.

I started with an Affliction that inflicted slave mentality and reprogrammable onto the undead target, and I just decided that the "spell" allowed them to "program" the target as a matter of due course taking more time for lesser instructions and more for more complex ones.

Anyway, so from what I read on the forums here, it is suggested that ANYONE can reprogram the target, which makes Reprogrammable seem far far far more detrimental than a measly -10 points. So what guidelines are there to perform the actual reprogramming? Do I let them buy perks for "programs" that they've developed for their undead minions to make the spellcasting faster? Do I let them spend some time to "program" them and then whenever they issue a command make them roll against an Undead Programming skill?

It just seems so. . . Lacking in detail unlike the rest of the system :(

[ericthered]

Reprogrammable doesn't restrict who can give the person orders. That's actually the whole point of it. Anyone with the right skills and equipment can come up to you and tell you to do something else. If it was limited to one person, it would not be programmable.

Examples include:

A robot. Anyone with the hacking skill may change its behavior to suit them better. They will need either physical access or a connection into its "wifi" (which may or may not exist), and a software suite in addition to their skills, and if they want the robot to do very complex things, they'd better spend time (possibly beforehand) to figure out what they want. But just flagging themselves as "friend" won't take long at all.

A Genie. Anyone with the lamp is the genie's master. He can play unwilling servant if he wishes, but he still has to obey the lamp's owner. No skill is required, but a physical object must be obtained.

A classic Jewish folklore golem. It must obey those who know the proper command words (I've seen this as either a theology or a ritual magic roll).

An affliction that makes a target serve you probably inflicts a duty. Actually, you probably want mind control rather than an affliction.

An affliction that inflicted reprogrammable would do something like make someone obey all commands spoken in Pharsi.

[Kelly Pedersen]

You're right that Reprogrammable does technically allow others to reprogram the subject. However, that doesn't have to make it easy to reprogram. At Reprogrammable's standard price, my usual rule of thumb is that reprogramming the subject should be at least two of obscure, technical, and inconvenient. Obscure means that it requires secret information that is non-trivial to determine: secret passwords, True Names, proper encryption keys, etc. Technical means it requires specific skills, usually at a bit of a penalty: Thaumatology or Ritual Magic for golems or zombies, Computer Hacking for robots, Brainwashing for mind-controlled sleeper agents, and so forth. Inconvenient means that you need to have the person in your power, either willing or restrained, and probably takes a few hours, meaning you certainly can't do it in combat time.

So, before dismissing Reprogrammable entirely, consider whether it actually makes sense to have zombie minions with it, if someone else taking control of them requires them to, say, know the Name of the body they're hijacking, and make a Thaumatology roll at -2 for each. That feels like it fits into a lot of fantasy stories about zombies, to me.

As for actually "programming" your minions, I'm going to go with what Kromm said in a recent thread about the topic of controlling zombies: basically, if you buy an Ally or Ally Group, that covers the zombies you've had time to "pre-program" appropriately with more complex orders. If you haven't paid for them as part of that Ally Group, the full weight of Slave Mentality means that the zombie probably isn't that useful in combat unless you, as the controller, spend all your time ordering it around rather than doing anything else useful.

By the way, if you're just looking to raise zombies, rather than take control of other, pre-existing undead, I'd suggest looking at the Dominance advantage, rather than Affliction. Dominance by default does imply that you're turning creatures into monsters like yourself, but that's not actually required - the "meat" of the advantage is just "you can create creatures with a supernatural template, which are friendly to you by default". It's reasonable to replace "injure the target" with a similarly-difficult condition, to represent a ritual or something rather than an infectious attack. I'd say that spending about a minute and requiring a Thaumatology-4 or Ritual Magic-4 roll sounds about right. Use Preparation Required to extend the necessary ritual time.

[Jariel]

I'm not sure what method your using to create undead, since most methods make you the default "master", i.e. the Zombie spell. If your trying to control other undead then you need a special version of Mind Control. I suggest looking at Gurps:Zombies since it actually covers a number of questions in this thread regarding the hierarchy of Reprogramable and Slave Mentality. It also addresses Dominance and various ways to modify it. Specifically it calls out using two versions of Cosmic to decrease the time needed(+50%) and to not require killing/almost killing the target(+300%).
ericthered You seem to have confused Reprogrammable with Slave Mentality. Reprogrammable means you have a Master and the master can change your standing orders. Slave Mentality means you might obey anyone who comes along if you fail a heavily penalized IQ roll.

[ericthered]

Originally Posted by Jariel

ericthered You seem to have confused Reprogrammable with Slave Mentality. Reprogrammable means you have a Master and the master can change your standing orders. Slave Mentality means you might obey anyone who comes along if you fail a heavily penalized IQ roll.

not at all! In the words of Zombies:

Reprogramable concerns masters ... Thus, it can be invoked to alter the subject of a zombie's duty

The slave mentality will roll is something different, and is a lot easier to exploit than the examples I gave above. See Mr. Pedersen's comments above.