How do I keep Hypercognition Awesome without it winning everything completely?

[under_score]

So, one of my players just gained access to hypercognition (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/psionic/powers/hypercognition.htm). Obviously, he's been looking forward to this for quite a while, and it's one of the coolest things that psions, especially Seers, can do. I don't want to lose that, but I also don't want it to be an insta-win for too many things.

To provide a little context, they are currently in Eberron at the year 894 (104 years before the campaign typically starts). Three of them are from the future (along with a few NPCs that scattered into the winds). The [broken] artifact that sent them back in time has gone missing, and they learned trough commune that it's in Sarlona somewhere. They also just awoke a Rajah, accidentally, and will need to figure out how to defeat that (simply figuring this out should be at least one session if not more). They also know that a very small Mourning happened in Aundaire. They don't know why or how, but there was evidence that it was intentional and one of the party suspects the Cult of the Dragon Below. As you can see, there are a number of things I don't want them to be able to completely figure out with just a power manifestation.

There is the Int check that I can require, but I'm not sure how to set the DCs. I was thinking something like:

30 - known by few mortals on the material plane
40 - no longer known by mortals on the material plane, but known at one time
50 - never known to material plane mortals

Does this seem workable? Anyone with experience using and/or dealing with hypercognition? Any other thoughts on how I can properly adjudicate the questions my player will pose?

I should also mention that this player is the least likely of all of them to abuse any rules or mechanics.

[Grendus]

Treat it like a way to give the party any plot hooks they've missed. Presumably some things can't be figured out until you have the information. After all, someone who's never even heard of D&D, no matter how smart they are, couldn't tell you what caused the mourning. If he wants to find out something the party doesn't have enough information, tell him "you make a few logical leaps about (information already given), but there are still gaps in your knowledge."

Unless he starts abusing it (manifesting Hypercognition every time the party gets stuck without even trying first), use it to gently guide him back towards the party's destination. This could actually be the best tool a DM could ask for, given a mature player. No more needing to railroad the players back towards the goal, they're carrying the train schedule.

[Zaq]

Treat it like a way to give the party any plot hooks they've missed. Presumably some things can't be figured out until you have the information. After all, someone who's never even heard of D&D, no matter how smart they are, couldn't tell you what caused the mourning. If he wants to find out something the party doesn't have enough information, tell him "you make a few logical leaps about (information already given), but there are still gaps in your knowledge."

To be fair, Hypercognition is a 8th level discipline-specific power. It's pretty much supposed to be "yeah, I know that, even though you just made it up." The fluff even explicitly states that it can pull "echoes of knowledge from the Astral Plane," so it's totally conceivable to me that Hypercognition can let you know about something you knew nothing about ahead of time. That's kind of the point of the power, or at least part of the point.

That said, I too recognize the problems here, and I don't have a good solution. Its very purpose is to, well, solve everything. That's the point of it. That's what makes it awesome. I don't think it's a good idea to let it solve everything, but it's a very tricky situation to stay true to its purpose without having it trivialize things.

I don't have much useful advice to add. I mostly just agree that it's an issue.

[under_score]

That said, I too recognize the problems here

Thank you for appreciating my difficulty.

Anyone else have any thoughts on how I can balance this power but keep it awesome? I don't want my player to feel cheated, but with a party as powerful as they are, puzzles and mysteries seem to be the only real challenge they face.

[Optimator]

Zaq said pretty much everything I was going to say, only better. I, too, have an upcoming campaign with someone who just got Hypercognition. I'm trying to set up the campaign so that it can't instantly solve problems, but the guy's got a lot of power points :smalltongue:.

[Epsilon Rose]

Hm, I'm not sure how good a plan this is, but if you don't mind setting up a new sub-plot, you could have something fairly major going on in the astral plain that slightly disrupts the power.
If he then used hypercognition to figure out what's wrong with Hypercognition you could give him a weird answer (not necessarily wrong or inaccurate, just weird [perhaps in a different format than normal, or containing lots of unrelated info]). And then make it so they have to go off and fix what ever's on the astral in order to get the perfect version of hypercog (maybe even boost it a bit). At this point just make it so it's something that either A) they can't fix all at once or B) something that'll come back if left alone so they have to either suffer through the slightly gimped version of the power or go and hold a spot on the astral for a bit if they want the full version.
If your really good, you could probably even tie it back into what ever's going on in the main quest.

[Veyr]

On some level, I think the mistake here is playing 15th level characters in Eberron. What challenges them at that level?

But if you really wanted, you could claim that the Mourning itself defied efforts to learn about it. Something so illogical happened that the logical analysis of Hypercognition cannot help.

Of course, this makes it very hard to reveal later...

[AmberVael]

Hypercognition is like an incredibly complex equation. It takes all the readily available information and derives an answer from it that you otherwise might not have guessed.

Therefore, Hypercognition is at its best when you have information to work from already, even if it doesn't appear the most relative to the question posed.


I'm currently in an epic game here on the boards, playing an epic Seer who has Hypercognition. It has been a really great power thus far, but my DM and I agree on the fact that it works only with what you already know, even if it can extrapolate wildly from there. Because of that, I view it as having the following limitations.

1) You can't really use it on something you know nothing about (an equation this complex requires some variables to be filled in, even if they're just small ones). Now granted, you might have knowledge of the subject that you've forgotten, or don't relate to it yet, but in general, if you're entirely ignorant, Hypercognition does nothing for you.

2) Garbage in, garbage out. This is a simple rule of logic and math- you stick in faulty information, or make a nonsensical question, and your answer will be the same. Working with faulty data or assumptions gives you faulty answers.

3) Proportional understanding. The more facts you already have, the more Hypercognition can derive. If you have only a few facts, it can give you broad conjectures, or hints on what to do next or what facts you might need- if you have quite a few pieces of the puzzle and are just having a hard time putting them together, however, Hypercognition can basically solve it for you instantly.

Even with these limitations, Hypercognition is an awesome power- I've used it numerous times and been quite happy with it. However, it means you can't just divine everything, or bypass investigations by thinking hard. It also has advantages such as not really involving anyone except yourself (you know how awesome that is with a divination? No one is ever going to know you did it except you- that's GREAT).

You might not want to do it this way, and that's fine, but I've found these limitations to help the story while still giving me a really cool power to use.

[under_score]

1) You can't really use it on something you know nothing about (an equation this complex requires some variables to be filled in, even if they're just small ones). Now granted, you might have knowledge of the subject that you've forgotten, or don't relate to it yet, but in general, if you're entirely ignorant, Hypercognition does nothing for you.

2) Garbage in, garbage out. This is a simple rule of logic and math- you stick in faulty information, or make a nonsensical question, and your answer will be the same. Working with faulty data or assumptions gives you faulty answers.

3) Proportional understanding. The more facts you already have, the more Hypercognition can derive. If you have only a few facts, it can give you broad conjectures, or hints on what to do next or what facts you might need- if you have quite a few pieces of the puzzle and are just having a hard time putting them together, however, Hypercognition can basically solve it for you instantly.

This seems really excellent. The sort of guidelines I can use to feed my player with useful information that he and the rest of the party might not have been able to obtain (certainly not with a standard action), but not answer questions for them until they know at least something. I may throw in the occasional knowledge roll to see if the character might know the first few things he needs. Thanks!


On some level, I think the mistake here is playing 15th level characters in Eberron. What challenges them at that level?


This indeed has been a problem, but has more to do with how opted a couple of them are. The ones who aren't overly opted are still really good (being a psion and an artificer). The party is just now 21st level on average, due in large part to the huge CRs they've been cutting through like butter.

In my defense, the game started at level 3. And now that they are the power that they are, there are only a few more things for them to legitimately face, and they are quite obscenely powerful.


Thanks everyone for the input.

[Veyr]

21st? Eberron doesn't really support Epic. My first opinion is that the campaign should have ended a long time ago. It seems that at that point, a level-appropriate encounter would be something like... the invasion of Xoriat, take two?

At this point, the Dragon Prophecy is just about all that's left. Either they're the prophesied ones, or their power is influencing the prophecy (which the prophecy itself may or may not take into account). They should be getting a lot of attention from Argonnessen, and Khyber is probably where they'll be heading soon.

[under_score]

Well, I didn't figure the campaign would go this high level, but they've been leveling faster than they've been exploring and solving. They still have a couple of big problems to deal with. Xoriat is indeed one of the things they are concerned about. They have been talking about going to Argonnessen. And, more importantly, they released a Rajah, the single most powerful thing in the campaign setting. As a rule, they have 20 outsider hit dice, obscene unique powers, 30-50 class levels, and then some other stuff piled on top.

After they finish these things, there really won't be much for them to do.

[faceroll]

What if it made a perfect conclusion- about the wrong thing? Feed them a constant stream of misdirection and lies, so when they use hypercognition, they're asking the wrong questions.

[NichG]

So I'm going to argue against those suggesting that Hypercognition give flawed answers. The player has basically built towards this power, and its one of the big things his class and discipline can do. So at the least, it shouldn't generally screw him over.

I think its fine for Hypercognition to return a 'this information cannot be deduced from the echoes that can be accessed' for things that are properly shielded (I mean, think Elder Evils and their immunity to the divinations of gods aspects, or the God-blooded of Vecna and how you just can't seem to remember them). However, it shouldn't return 'yeah, you're pretty sure its X' when its really not X.

You could even make a bit of a subplot about it. Have Hypercognition reveal holes in what its capable of knowing, and the locations of those holes tell the user something about what's going on. It's interesting, makes the power useful, and makes it so that it isn't just a 'hand me your notes, GM' power.

Actually, I think it'd be amusing to have something like the God-blooded of Vecna scenario going on. There's a being that, when you learn more than a certain amount about it, that knowledge is wiped from the universe (i.e. its redacted from the Akashic Record or some other metaphysical construct that allows memory to exist, so you can't use Immunity to Mind Affecting against it). Hypercognition immediately hits this threshold, but it also makes you super-smart, so you find that you've left yourself notes while under the influence of hypercognition that you don't remember writing. The notes are basically your super-intelligent self's way of leading you to what you need to know without telling you enough that you forget.

[under_score]

Actually, I think it'd be amusing to have something like the God-blooded of Vecna scenario going on. There's a being that, when you learn more than a certain amount about it, that knowledge is wiped from the universe (i.e. its redacted from the Akashic Record or some other metaphysical construct that allows memory to exist, so you can't use Immunity to Mind Affecting against it). Hypercognition immediately hits this threshold, but it also makes you super-smart, so you find that you've left yourself notes while under the influence of hypercognition that you don't remember writing. The notes are basically your super-intelligent self's way of leading you to what you need to know without telling you enough that you forget.

Sounds somewhat familiar (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0209144/). :smallwink:

Interesting ideas. I probably won't be throwing in any subplots (unless it works in with any Sarlona stuff that might be coming up) just because they already have several threads they are half-following at once -- the result of me giving them things to chase after but not telling them what to do or what leads where. I try to keep things sandboxy, at least for this campaign.

[classy one]

On some level, I think the mistake here is playing 15th level characters in Eberron. What challenges them at that level?
that is not true. They just woke up a rajah...... Have looked at their stats? They are basically gods without SDA. All have at least 60 HD and abilities that are just "screw you players".

The generals of Reidra are around level 20 and that's them in mortal bodies without many of their more blatant SLAs like teleport without fail.

And let's not forget that continent of dragon chessmasters.

If you can't find something for your players to do at this level you need to look harder.

[faceroll]

that is not true. They just woke up a rajah...... Have looked at their stats? They are basically gods without SDA. All have at least 60 HD and abilities that are just "screw you players".

The generals of Reidra are around level 20 and that's them in mortal bodies without many of their more blatant SLAs like teleport without fail.

And let's not forget that continent of dragon chessmasters.

If you can't find something for your players to do at this level you need to look harder.

And then the captain of a flying cityfortress is like a level 3 fighter....

[Grendus]

Face it, most of D&D survives because the creatures powerful enough to kill them haven't noticed them yet.

[erikun]

Two things I notice about Hypercognition:

First, it works on the character's knowledge. If the character had no way of knowing about something, this value is zero. This is especially true if they just arrived in the past - if a group that did something back then but didn't get noted or talked about much, then it is entirely possible that the character never learned even a rumor about them.

Second, "echoes of knowledge from the Astral Plane" is not exactly a wholy accurate source of knowledge. It is basically bits and clues, not whole pages of campaign notes downloading to the psion's head.


Together, I would use Hypercognition more as a plot tool than a plot problem. Does the player want to use Hypercognition to find out how to kill the rajah? The result they get is "Kettleburg, in the west". If they don't know what that means, well... perhaps they should go to Kettleburg and find out? After all, those "echoes of knowledge" floating around the Astral Plane don't have to be a direct answer. It could be that the answer was determined to be in Kettleburg, even if they couldn't determine exactly what that answer was.

Just make sure the answer is actually in Kettleburg.

[under_score]

This is especially true if they just arrived in the past

They've been in the past for over a year now (part of why they are now epic level).


After all, those "echoes of knowledge" floating around the Astral Plane don't have to be a direct answer. It could be that the answer was determined to be in Kettleburg, even if they couldn't determine exactly what that answer was.

That is excellent. I hadn't thought about the echoes of knowledge being more vague, but that makes wonderful sense.

[Alabenson]

And then the captain of a flying cityfortress is like a level 3 fighter....

Given the fact that this part of the campaign is taking place at the start of the Last War, that probably won't be the case. The ingame reason that Eberron has a lack of high level NPC's is that they were mostly killed off during the course of the Last War. In 894, Eberron NPCwise might look a great deal more like Faerun than it does in a normal Eberron campaign.

[under_score]

The ingame reason that Eberron has a lack of high level NPC's is that they were mostly killed off during the course of the Last War.

Where do you see this? Not disputing you, but I've never seen anything along these lines.

[faceroll]

Given the fact that this part of the campaign is taking place at the start of the Last War, that probably won't be the case. The ingame reason that Eberron has a lack of high level NPC's is that they were mostly killed off during the course of the Last War. In 894, Eberron NPCwise might look a great deal more like Faerun than it does in a normal Eberron campaign.

There's even some of that in the fluff I've read, where they made super magical cities and then their **** failed and it was all terribad. I think.