Mindscape Fighting

[Dr paradox]

So! my game next week will involve some members of the party stuck in a room with a murderous brain in a jar, attempting to kill them so it can use their bodies like puppets.

I'd really rather not make this a "save or die" affair, even with multiple saves. that just isn't interesting. So, what I was thinking was that it would start off with the players fighting a big mechanical rig the brain is using to immobilize them for the lobotomizing process. at a point, the characters DO end up immobilized and bound up, but they keep hallucinating a fight. if they pay attention to inconsistancies in the world around them, they'll come to realize what's going on. this is the part where I want things to get interesting.

basically, realizing that they're fighting in their own minds opens up possibilities like a combination between the Matrix and Inception. they can will the environment to change around them, develop amazing abilities beyond what is physically possible, etc. They decide to set gravity a-spinning, cause the ground to turn into geysers, leap fifty feet at a time, gain telekinesis.

The issues are as follows - how should fighting work in such a way that it's based on strength of will rather than physical ability? bonus points if I can apply these rules for fighting without the players noticing.

Secondly, any ideas or examples of the mechanics for reality bending fights like this? are there maybe similar mechanics in a cyberpunk game, to represent hacking? or will I have to totally homebrew this?

[NichG]

With a mind-bending false reality, the way to win is to not play the game that the reality is trying to get you to play. So lets say they're fighting in their minds. Winning the fight they are experiencing doesn't actually mean winning the mindscape battle. So for that fight, their physical abilities can continue to dictate physical things, and so on.

But you could make it such that whenever they use an ability that uses Int, Wis, or Cha to drive it, there's a chance that they create a glitch. For instance, whenever someone rolls a Spot check there's a second DC which determines if they notice 'the monster is over there, but it flashed into being when you bothered to look for it' or something like that. You could perhaps keep a tally of the number of points of die rolls based on these things that have occurred, and have a table of reality-breakdowns that kick in when that running total exceeds certain thresholds.

A vague list of things:
- Any saving throw powered by Divine Grace. Will saves, always. This is probably manifested in the form of a splitting headache and a moment of double vision, where the double vision reveals bits of the real world when the tally gets high.
- Spot/Listen checks (I see something that makes no sense)
- Knowledge checks (wait, something is inconsistent with what I remember...)
- Spellcasting, use the DC of the spell (barring weird stuff that casts from Con or whatever)
- Use of Combat Expertise or derived feats (manifests as a keen physical intuition about things move, so 'something is wrong about how the enemy is being moved by my attacks'. Use the person's attack roll for the tally.)
- Bard Song (Use 10+Bard level or something. The sound echoes strangely.)

You could also have a flat plus to the count when they experience something that goes against how the false reality wants to go. The false reality wants them to win their fight, continue exploring the dungeon, etc. But say one of them is killed. Being killed but still being aware of yourself is very immersion-breaking, and forces the thing to go 'no, you were just knocked out' or whatever, so it adds a +50 to the tally.

I'd have thresholds every 100, perhaps. Maybe have the first one at 50 so they get the idea pretty early, and then try to 'break' reality by making lots of perception-based checks and ignoring the fight.

[Dr paradox]

mmmaybe. Except, how does the brain intend to kill them if it wants them to just keep going?

[NichG]

mmmaybe. Except, how does the brain intend to kill them if it wants them to just keep going?

It's busy doing stuff with them in the real world perhaps. Or alternately, everyone has a hidden stat associated with the situation that degrades every time they do something that accept the false reality. Like, if they loot a fallen foe in the false reality they take 1d4 points of 'Loss of Self', and when this exceeds their Wisdom score they're basically forever lost in the illusion without the ability to break free on their own.

[Dusk Eclipse]

You might want to check the Mindscape rules in Hyperconcious (3rd party book though authored by the main developer of the XPH) which while is psionic-only can give you some ideas.

[Madara]

I would set it up as a different plane. With the right traits, all the things you listed could be done.