[Basic] Skill of the week: Mental Strength and Mind Block

[johndallman]

"Tension, apprehension, and dissension have begun." -- Alfred Bester, The Demolished Man

Mental Strength is a Will/Easy esoteric martial-arts skill, with no default, requiring Trained by a Master or Weapon Master, and optionally learnable by those with Magery or psionic powers. If you have it at better than Will, it replaces Will for resisting magic, psionics, Hypnotism, Invisibility Art, Kiai, and simliar abilities. It only works if you are conscious, not stunned and generally in control of yourself, and does not replace other Will rolls. No other skills default to Mental Strength, which appeared in Martial Arts for 3e.

Mind Block is a Will/Average skill that can be used to hide your thoughts and feelings from mind reading. It defaults to Will-5 or Meditation-5, and no skills default to it. It works by filling the foreground of your mind, with poetry, mathematics, or something similar, and does not require any special advantages. Roll every minute to maintain your Mind Block, or every second in stressful circumstances, like combat. On a critical failure, you thought about whatever you were trying to hide. If you have a working mind block, a mind-reader, after making contact, also has to win a Quick Contest of his skill with your Mind Block; if they fail, all they can read is whatever you're using as a Mind Block. Modifiers are +2 if you do nothing else, -3 if you are stunned and -2 or more to hide emotions, possibly dependent on circumstances. This skill appeared in Psionics for 3e.

While these skills are similar in some ways, they don't overlap. Having both of them is of limited use: buying more Will and Mind Block is likely to be more cost-effective, unless you're hitting an attribute cap, or have a relevant Talent.

Mental Strength, naturally, only appears on templates for cinematic martial artists. Mind Block only shows up on templates for settings where mind-reading is common. DF martial artists, ninja and mentalists can learn these skills and DF14 has expanded rules for the setting. Fantasy's Holy Men have Mental Strength as an option, as does the Future Kill style from Gun-Fu and Horror's Mystics and Slayers; the latter two can also have Mind Block. Mental Strength is useful against Anunnaki programming in Madness Dossier, and Paralabs teaches Mind Block in Infinite Worlds. Martial Arts extends Mental Strength to resisting chi-based effects, mental effects that aren't resisted by Will, and winning the Contest of Wills; a few monks have Mind Block. Several Yrth Fighting Styles provide one or both of these skills, some with Unusual Training (Mental Strength) for those without cinematic advantages. Monster Hunters also have access to these skills, and Powers offers them as a "mental self-defence" option. Power-Ups 1 has a martial-arts style that uses these skills, and volumes 3 and 7 provide Talents and Wildcard skills that include them. The Psi books have a lot on these skills; notably, Psi-Tech tells you how to use Mind Block to avoid thinking. Supers provides techniques for Mind Block, and Thaumatology has magicians with Mental Strength as their key skill.

What have you refused to do, via these skills, in a game?

[Mailanka]

Mental Strength came up with Cherry Blossom Rain, and I think it's underrated. Mind Block is pretty specific, but Mental Strength avoids all kinds of things. In our case, we used it to stop stuff like Hypnotism, but it also applied to Contests of Will, and we used home-made Chi Powers that used Mental Strength as one of the skills.

In practice, we found it a bit like Observation: In practice, not worth putting more than 4 points into, as increasing the underlying stat was pretty cheap and tended to raise more skills around it as well. That said, characters with Inner Balance tended to have gobs of Mental Strength.

[Crystalline_Entity]

GURPS Magical Styles: Dungeon Magic has Mental Strength as a Required Skill for the Way of Echoes style, too - and for DF games it explicitly states you don't need Chi Talent.

I'm never sure whether these skills are worth it compared to just raising Will, or buying Mind Shield (assuming that's an available option for a particular character). Both of these seem to be an active talent, i.e. you need to know you're under some sort of mental attack to start reciting poetry in your head, or focus your mental defences, whereas Mind Shield has no such restriction.

[cbower]

Mind Block is useful, especially with its techniques from Supers. Mental Strength is really a waste of points in general, as you get a lot more mileage out of Will for only a point more per level.

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by Crystalline_Entity

I'm never sure whether these skills are worth it compared to just raising Will, or buying Mind Shield (assuming that's an available option for a particular character). Both of these seem to be an active talent, i.e. you need to know you're under some sort of mental attack to start reciting poetry in your head, or focus your mental defences, whereas Mind Shield has no such restriction.

But it could if you wanted it to, with a limitation to require preparation, concentration or the like, which would come out cheaper than all but the lowest levels of the skill anyway. I think these are additional skills carried over from 3e that only exist because buying up attributes or advantages in play was discouraged there and anything learnable had to be a skill instead.

[ericthered]

I've occasionally built NPC afflictions (ie gear based or no points calculated) where Mental Strength or mind block is the ONLY thing that blocks it, though I also allowed a default. Very house-ruley, but it occasionally makes sense for only trained people to be able to resist something.

[RogerBW]

Mental Strength for me would fit better into the attribute framework: it would be extra Will discounted with Limitations, like Lifting ST and Striking ST.

[Prince Charon]

I've included them in a couple of Kryptonian Martial Arts styles.

[simply Nathan]

Originally Posted by cbower

Mental Strength is really a waste of points in general, as you get a lot more mileage out of Will for only a point more per level.

I think if you're going to be facing a lot of mind control/Will resisted spells, 4 points for +2 to resist the lot of them regardless of power source is worthwhile, and another 4 for a total of +3 is worth considering.

[Phil Masters]

Note also that a point in these skills converts each level in a Talent that encompasses that skill to +1 to resistance rolls.