Question for Mutants and Masterminds

[Bryan]

My group and I are new to this system but we've been having a good time so far. The next story arc I am planning to run includes a group of Psionic villains. One of the PCs is a sentient android. She hasn't built any immunity to psionics into her character but to me it seems like common sense that a robotic brain wouldn't be accessible to a telepath.
Does that track or am I just letting her off light?

[Rama]

If it's not an advantage that's bought and paid for, I'm personally leery of giving it to players - even though it would make logical sense.

The problem I've run into is twofold: (1) players begin crafting character concepts with the idea of benefiting from "unintentional immunities", and (2) once the precedent is set players will argue for advantage in similar situations where their character concept might deserve an RP-edge - and that wouldn't necessarily be unjustified on their parts.

Personally I would fluff it as the sentience itself that the psionics is hooking into - it's not the meat of the organic brain vs cybernetics, it's the energy of thought and free will. Ergo, sentient android remains vulnerable.

[Anonymouswizard]

Considering that psionics is as make believe as artificial intelligence right now what 'makes sense' is vaguely irrelevant.

(Note that I once played a robot PC in M&M, and although it never came up my character was not immune to psionics, but was immune to psychic illusions and invisibility. It was just cheaper and the GM wasn't a psionics fan.)

The simple rule here is that, as far as the game is concerned, if it ain't paid for you don't have it, and if you should have it come up with a comic-booky reason for it to not work. This is mainly for balance, a robot PC should probably have sunk at least 30 points into immunities anyway and can likely be resistant to psionics (no need to bump fortitude above 0 means they can pump Will like crazy if they have the free points), not to mention the fact they could have immortality (downloading to a new body or something similar), robots are innately very hard to permanently take out when built 'properly' (that is working more like a hard science fiction robot than a comic android).

Psionics is also a very broad descriptor probably requiring 20+ points to buy immunity to, giving it away for free is a major deal (conversely I might be tempted to allow a bot to go into point debt because they forgot to by Life Support or Disease Immunity, which I don't have as completely covered by fortitude effects).

This can also be a worldbuilding element. Have two varieties of psionics, one that works on androids and one that doesn't. Are robots/androids common? If so then any player who wanted to develop psionics would get them cheaper for not affecting androids (this isn't important for NPCs, but should be factored into encounters). If they aren't then just give the psychic the 'power loss' complication, they can get villain points when it comes up.

[Grod_The_Giant]

As mentioned, it's a sizable advantage to give for free, especially if it's going come into play with some regularity. By RAW, if she didn't pay for it, she doesn't have it. Now, you might suggest that she pick some up-- "I noticed you don't have an organic brain, but you're still vulnerable to telepathy; is that intentional?"-- and you might grant some circumstantial bonuses, but overall I have to agree with Anonymouswizard here. Find a goofy comic-book reason it works. ("I don't care if you're organic or not. You have a mind, you have a soul, and I. Can. Control. You.")


Psionics is also a very broad descriptor probably requiring 20+ points to buy immunity to, giving it away for free is a major deal (conversely I might be tempted to allow a bot to go into point debt because they forgot to by Life Support or Disease Immunity, which I don't have as completely covered by fortitude effects).
Ehh, it all depends on the particular game. I personally don't think I'd price it out at more than 5-10 points, I think; I don't wind up using psychic villains that often.

[Bryan]

Okay, that all makes sense, thanks. She did buy a lot of immunities but neither of us thought of this. The psionics locking onto the energy or electrical impulses of thought rather than manipulating the meat brain makes sense too.

Thank you.

[Anonymouswizard]

Ehh, it all depends on the particular game. I personally don't think I'd price it out at more than 5-10 points, I think; I don't wind up using psychic villains that often.

I mean, I lucked out when playing a bot because the GM never used psychic villains (actually the Will Defence came up once in that game), but in general I haven't seen psychic villains often (in fact I think I've seen only one, and I played that one, psychics tend to be heroes in the games I'm in). I was just working on the idea that 'immunity to psionics' is like 'immunity to mutants' or 'immunity to magic', it's a descriptor that can be slapped onto any power without too much explanation. I agree that frequency should massively affect it, I'd probably put it at 5-20 depending on the exact setting (although I don't run M&M, I don't actually like superheroes that much).

[Grod_The_Giant]

I mean, I lucked out when playing a bot because the GM never used psychic villains (actually the Will Defence came up once in that game), but in general I haven't seen psychic villains often (in fact I think I've seen only one, and I played that one, psychics tend to be heroes in the games I'm in). I was just working on the idea that 'immunity to psionics' is like 'immunity to mutants' or 'immunity to magic', it's a descriptor that can be slapped onto any power without too much explanation. I agree that frequency should massively affect it, I'd probably put it at 5-20 depending on the exact setting (although I don't run M&M, I don't actually like superheroes that much).
Officially, it's 2 ranks for an "uncommon power descriptor," 10 ranks for a "common power descriptor," and 20 ranks for a "very common power descriptor." Given that "bludgeoning" is an example "very common" descriptor, I think 20 ranks is probably much too high in your average game. Maybe if you're playing some sort of sci-fi type thing where psychic powers are the main type of superpower. Then again, I admit that I tend to be generous with such things.

[Nerd-o-rama]

Immunity to Psionics would be a 20-point immunity in like, Star Wars, or some other setting where it's more or less the main source of powers. And even then only if it meant immunity to both telepathy and telekinesis, one or the other'd probably be 10.

[smuchmuch]

If memory serves, immunity to 'mental' effects (power with a mental descriptor, telepathy, mind blast, mind control and phantasm (or resisted by wil if you are playing 3e) is only a ten point immunity.
Dosn't immunize to all psionic effect though, a telekinetic might still throw you around like radgdoll and a pyrokinetic will still light you on fire.
A terryfying presence would also still be terryfying unless you bough some emotional immunitiues, as long asd it'd from a feat, not a power.

[Drascin]

Yeah, an android would if anything only be immune to the mental effects, and total blanket immunity from mental effects (which would in an android's case probably include control powers flavored as hacking!) is only like 10 points, so making immunity to specifically psionic mind control a 20 point immunity is waaay expensive.

Honestly, if psionic telepathy isn't terribly common in your game, just have the dude pay five points for specifically immunity to psionic mind control it and say he always had it.

[Katrina]

Seconding the idea that an Android will want the 10 pt Immunity to the "Mental" Descriptor.
I feel that immunity to Psychic or Psionics might cause questions of "can I be lifted by Psychic Telekinesis" to come up.

A way to handle it is not to alter your PC, but to alter your Villain. This idea comes from BESM D20, where powers are flawed to not be able to affect certain targets rather than PCs buying immunities a lot of the time. Perhaps your Psychic has a flaw that says he cannot mind control Constructs.

There are many ways to handle it, the big thing is are you wanting to have the player be affected? Since the "flaw" in the player's build comes from either inexperience or oversight, I would personally say that the character is unaffected through the method mentioned earlier. After all, the player set out to build a Construct and you both seemingly overlooked this particular thing that she should have.

Now, in the game I run for my guys who are all experienced point gougers, I'd pull the big reveal of "You're not an Android, you've secretly been a full Conversion cyborg this whole time!" or something and use that to explain why they were not immune. Because my guys are really experienced with M&M and shouldn't have overlooked that tidbit. Mind you, i'd probably have brought it up when they presented a Construct because I've done very similar things in the past.

[Fri]

Another idea is give your villain power to control android somehow (because it's controlling mind not meatbrain) AND whenever you use the power to the android give him hero point saying if they/you feel like being an android should give him immunity.