[ericthered]

When mind control altering mental disadvantages I don't worry about total CP cost of an NPC, unless they're on a PC's sheet in some way... and even then it would take a lot.

I think I've seen somewhere the rule(? statement? principle?) that if you live in a society that can cure a disadvantage you have, your disadvantage should be somehow resistant to the normal methods of curing it. Of course, if you picked up the disadvantage in play, then getting it removed in play is all good.

One house rule I use a lot (including for dreadstormers right now) is that penalties from previous conditioning attempts apply to future ones. I find it makes conditioning a little more strategic and a little more meaningful. I've never run that rule in a game that lasted more than a month of in-game time with an effecting PC though, so that penalty probably eventually fades.

One very interesting aspect of mind control is the delivery method: while people talk about walking up to a fortress and mind controlling all the guards, I've found that in play the mind controller needs to be more cautious than that, and get close to targets.

A lot of mind controllers in fiction have high levels of talent or reliable, or have some setting that lets them automatically succeed against "mooks".