Blocking Metafaculty?

[Kaiwen]

So, I was looking through the SRD, and I found Metafaculty.

Metafaculty
Clairsentience
Level: Seer 9
Display: Mental, olfactory, and visual
Manifesting Time: 1 hour
Range: Personal
Target: You
Duration: Instantaneous and 1 min./level (D); see text
Power Points: 17, XP

You elevate your mind to a near-universal consciousness, cogitating countless impressions and predictions involving any creature you have seen before, whether personally or by means of another power such as remote viewing.

This process gives you an uncannily accurate vision of the creature’s nature, activities, and whereabouts. When you manifest the power, you learn the following facts about the creature.


Its name, race, alignment, and character class.
A general estimate of its level or Hit Dice: low (5 HD or lower), medium (6 to 11 HD), high (12 to 20 HD), very high (21 HD to 40 HD), or deific (41 HD or higher).
Its location (including place of residence, town, country, world, and plane of existence).
Significant items currently in its possession.
Any significant activities or actions the creature has undertaken in the previous 8 hours, including details such as locales traveled through, the names or races of those the creature fought, spells it cast, items it acquired, and items it left behind (including the location of those items).
A current mental view of the creature, as described in the remote viewing power, which you can maintain for up to 1 minute per level.


Metafaculty can defeat spells, powers, and special abilities such as screen or mind blank (or even a wish spell) that normally obscure clairsentience powers. You can attempt a caster level check (DC 6 + caster level of the creator of the obscuring effect) to defeat these sorts of otherwise impervious defenses.

Metafaculty is defeated by epic powers, epic spells, and epic special abilities that obscure divinations and clairsentience powers.

XP Cost
1,000.


The bolded text above implies that only epic powers, spells, and abilities can block it, which is both scary and plot-destroying.
Can anyone think of any ways to block this pre-epic?

[Psyren]

Sure - you have to have seen the subject, so just make sure the PCs haven't actually seen your Big Bad and Metafaculty won't dox them. The easiest way to do this is to make every prior appearance of the BBEG (if any) have in reality been a simulacrum, disguised minion, mind-controlled patsy or some other stand-in. (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ActuallyADoombot) They'll get lots of info about that particular facsimile, but little about the activities/capabilities/whereabouts of the villain themselves.

[ExLibrisMortis]

"By means of another power"

In principle, that could just be an illusion power, or a simulacrum (under transparency rules), or even phantasmal killer (if your personal horror is Orcus, you can now metafaculty Orcus).

[Hecuba]

Both the Spymaster and Z. Spy classes have an ability called Deep Cover, with minor differences between the two.

I can't check at the moment, but if I recall, one such difference is that one version is explicitly only overcome by epic/deific level abilities.


Edit: I lied. I can and did look. Zhentarim Spy's Deep Cover explicitly cannot be overcome by anything short short of deific level abilities.

[Bohandas]

Hang around near the Outlands spire maybe

[ExLibrisMortis]

Hang around near the Outlands spire maybe
The power has a range of Personal and a target of You. It doesn't target whatever is being divined, so it can't be countered by having high saves, high SR, or indeed, being in a dead magic zone.

[ShurikVch]

Vecna-Blooded template with it's Cloak of Mystery?

[Inevitability]

Get NI caster level Mind Blank cast on you?

[Dragolord]

Cover yourself in a three-foot layer of lead at all times. Do the same for your party members, important NPCs, the psion in question's head, and every significant city or similar location on the map. It's the only way to be sure.

[Troacctid]

The power has a range of Personal and a target of You. It doesn't target whatever is being divined, so it can't be countered by having high saves, high SR, or indeed, being in a dead magic zone.
Well, unless it was manifested by a lurk with the tracker variant. Then it targets your tagged creature or object.

[Bohandas]

The power has a range of Personal and a target of You. It doesn't target whatever is being divined, so it can't be countered by having high saves, high SR, or indeed, being in a dead magic zone.

So psychic poison wouldn't work either then

EDIT:
How about shenanigans with Clone or Magic Jar. Or phylacteries, soulstones, or aspects. If there's more than one of you or you're in multiple places at once that creates some ambiguity.

[sleepyphoenixx]

There really isn't much aside from the Deep Cover ability mentioned to completely block it pre-epic.

You can make it more difficult by casting a high CL Mind Blank.
Considering that CL is a lot easier to raise than ML and that Metafaculty costs 1000XP per use and there's few ways to negate that cost for psionics your players are unlikely to spam it, so you're pretty well protected. A 20 on a CL check is not automatic success, so if you can get a CL 20 higher than the psion using Metafaculty you're effectively immune until he raises his ML.

The best defense is still warding normally against divinations (which blocks stuff like Remote Viewing) and not being seen by the psion in question.

[ShurikVch]

Random note: unless Psion in question is also spellcaster, shouldn't he auto-fail CL check - since, you know, don't actually have any CL?
(CL and ML are two different things, and transparency don't change it)

[Troacctid]

Random note: unless Psion in question is also spellcaster, shouldn't he auto-fail CL check - since, you know, don't actually have any CL?
(CL and ML are two different things, and transparency don't change it)

Psionic powers are spell-like abilities, so they have a caster level equal to your hit dice, as per the default for spell-like abilities. It just doesn't usually matter, since you use manifester level for everything.

[ShurikVch]

Psionic powers are spell-like abilities, so they have a caster level equal to your hit dice, as per the default for spell-like abilities.No, they aren't now, and weren't never before (at least in 3.X)

[Hecuba]

Cover yourself in a three-foot layer of lead at all times. Do the same for your party members, important NPCs, the psion in question's head, and every significant city or similar location on the map. It's the only way to be sure.

Work if the psion has already seen you and can target themselves.

[Zancloufer]

Would Deep Cover actually stop it? I mean it would stop a lot of mind reading powers in that they don't know the answer, but aside from making the creature THINK that they are someone else it doesn't explicitly block divination are far as I know:


While she operates under deep cover, divination spells detect only information appropriate to her cover identity; they reveal nothing relating to her spymaster persona.

So I mean you couldn't actively know things about them that they forgot because of their persona, but things like places they have been, items they have on person, where they are, what they are doing, the fact that they are a Spy Master / Zent Spy and have that Deep Cover ability. . .

Actually I don't think it stops any part of Metafaculty. Also remember this is a 9th level specialist Psionic power that costs EXP and takes hour+ to use. By the time Tier 1-2 characters are at this level they can break the game a lot worse than this power. . .

[MisterKaws]

Cover yourself in a three-foot layer of lead at all times. Do the same for your party members, important NPCs, the psion in question's head, and every significant city or similar location on the map. It's the only way to be sure.

So... cover the entire multiverse in lead?

[Dragolord]

So... cover the entire multiverse in lead?

Why not? The brief was to block Metafaculty. Not to provide reasonable or, at that, even slightly possible solutions.

[Endarire]

Why the ire for a level 9 discipline-specific power from a discipline that people don't normally take? (Telepathy and Metacreation are the Psions I see most.)

[MilleniaAntares]

One thing to keep in mind is that they can only use Metafaculty only so many times before the burn damage reduces them to 18 or less intelligence.

... so burn damage can be pretty good, though hard to implement into a game.

[Bohandas]

Wear a hat made out of foil

[Bohandas]

What if there was another one of you. Like some kind of There-Not There based effect, or a removed tumor kept alive somewhere and grown to be larger than the actual character's actual body

[Zanos]

Why the ire for a level 9 discipline-specific power from a discipline that people don't normally take? (Telepathy and Metacreation are the Psions I see most.)
3.5 is usually defensively focused when it comes to spells, especially information and teleportation. So a power that overcomes all normal anti-information defenses is kind of egregious.

You can also buy a power stone if you really need it.

[Crake]

3.5 is usually defensively focused when it comes to spells, especially information and teleportation. So a power that overcomes all normal anti-information defenses is kind of egregious.

You can also buy a power stone if you really need it.

Buying a power stone does require you to actually find a 17th level seer with the power though.


Cover yourself in a three-foot layer of lead at all times. Do the same for your party members, important NPCs, the psion in question's head, and every significant city or similar location on the map. It's the only way to be sure.

As others have said, the spell target is personal, so lead would not actually stop it from functioning.

[Extra Anchovies]

So... cover the entire multiverse in lead?

You really only need to cover the psion in lead, actually. The suffocation rules take care of it from there.

[Bohandas]

It does say that it looks at creatures, so if you were turned to stone or otherwise transmuted into an object it would fail

[Eldariel]

Presumably if you switch your body regularly (say, through True Mind Switch, Magic Jar shenanigans or similar), it'll gain information about some random discarded body and nothing more. It's really a decent defense anyways. Vecna-Blooded might indeed work. Or it might not. It's kinda funky like that. Either way, reapplying Vecna-Blooded might remove the information gained through Metafaculty so that's another good way.

[Name1]

On the topic of Vecna-Blooded, I'd say that Metafaculty trumps it, because Vecna-Blooded is less specific (all Divinations vs. specifically non-epic things that block Divination), though I'd say that Z Spy trumps Metafaculty (specifically non-epic things that block Divination vs. specifically on-deific Diviation spells that attempt to discover your true identity).

Though reapplying Vecna-Blooded should still remove the information gained.

[ShurikVch]

Anarchomancer PrC (Dragon #315) at 1st level get this:

Ritual of the Dark Infiltrator (Su): By undertaking a daylong ritual known only to the anarchomancers of the Revolutionary League, the anarchomancer can transform herself into a completely different character-one with a different race, class, and even abilities the anarchomancer does not possess herself. Using the Ritual of the Dark Infiltrator costs 1,000 gp and drains the anarchomancer of 1,000 XP. The ritual takes 24 hours, during which time the anarchomancer must be undisturbed.
When the ritual is finished, the anarchomancer chooses a new form, essentially creating a second character that she'll play instead of the anarchomancer. Calculate the anarchomancer's base Leadership score according to the rules for the Leadership feat in Chapter 4 of the Dungeon Master's Guide, the second character is constructed as if it were a cohort appropriate for a character with that Leadership score. Don't apply any reputation or leadership modifiers (great renown, has a familiar, and so on). The second character retains the memories, motivations, and goals of the anarchomancer's previous life, but she can't cast spells or use racial abilities that she does not possess anymore. Nothing short of a wish or miracle reveals the new character's former life as an anarchomancer. The anarchomancer gains new levels according to its character level as an anarchomancer, even if the second character is lower level.
As a full-round action, the anarchomancer can return to her original character, shedding the original body in a burst of eldritch power.Wouldn't it be enough to fooling Metafaculty?