Hi all, quick question here. Does the victim of a Control Thoughts spell know they are being controlled? Also what's the limit of what you can make some one do while under the spell? I'm still new to the magic side of things and one of my players insisted he play a mage (oh ya that was fun everyone else sitting around for 30 minutes to an hour while I franticly try to figure out how to answer all the guy's questions about it)

I'm asking because I have this horrible sense of impending cheap victories and abuse of the spell.

The whole "Control" spells are totally insane. Also Suggestion, which can be massively worse (since it IMPLANTS an command - can't be found and dispelled after it is made permanent)

The way i see it it is this: You are likely to cast it on high force on somebody. He is likely to know that SOMETHING has been cast on him (as per rules for recognizing spells). After that he can't waste a thought on it though and will follow all directions.

When the spell fades or is dropped, he will know that he was controlled (or suspect that he is TRULY insane... and was a victim of an unrelated spell *g*).

Same with Mindprobe. They WILL know. Not perfectly WHAT happened maybe, but even without any magical training the people might have a very good idea.

This is why our mage also rewrites their memory after. Ridiculous combos which cuts through most legwork/detective work like butter.

Note that it is a 6-Force of Spell to detect someone casting a spell, and nothing in RAW prevents cameras from recording it.

The easiest way to handle it is to play it straight. Lower level enemies might not have access to the restricted information the mage seeks. Higher echelons are usually accompanied by bodyguards, and maybe a bound spirit with counterspelling.

Aside from noticing the spellcasting, from the text of the spells (which all require elaboration) victims of Control Actions do know they are being puppeteered ("The victim's consciousness is unaffected ...") but victims of Control Emotions and Influence do not. Control Thoughts is really ambiguous, but without an obvious clue I would take "... gives commands ... compelled to obey" to imply that they are aware. Whether victims of Control Emotions/Influence can work out after the event that they have been manipulated will be a circumstantial issue, but the chances are that you'll have made them feel/do something they would never normally contemplate so it may be quite likely.

The major limiting factor on mental manipulations is duration. Every (Force) combat turns the subject gets another resistance roll to further reduce the caster's net successes. Suppose you take over someone's thoughts with a Force 5 spell and get three net hits. If they average one hit per resistance roll (i.e. average Willpower, no Counterspelling) you've got a puppet for 18 seconds. In combat that's pretty damn sweet but in most other endeavours 18 seconds is not long.

Influence (which I believe is what Summerstorm meant by "Suggestion") is nasty because it's 'permanent', but it's limited to one 'command' and the victim can still make extra resistance tests (especially if the suggestion requies interraction with other people).

Control Thoughts is powerful because it stops the target from doing anything else, but he'll only act on the magician's say so and thus no extra actions are gained by the magician. I.e. You can have him shoot someone for you, but you need to spend a simple action to order him to do so and he'll stand there dribbling until then.

Control Actions is weaker than the two above because not only does the target still require simple actions to be controlled but there is a negative DP modifier to reflect the difficulties of direct puppetteering. Also, the target can act independently when not being actively controlled so you'll need to keep a close eye on him. What I'm not sure of is how to manage the initiative/IPs with this spell. I think it would be wrong for the magician to give the target more actions by controlling him inbetween his action phases, but I'm not sure how best to manage swapping between the target's initiative/IPs and those of the magician.

To surmise, these spells aren't quite as broken as is commonly believed but the GM does need to have their limitations very clear in their head.

Simple: the magician gives orders on his turn, and the target carries them out on his own turn. The target doesn't get extra IPs just because he's being brain-raped.

But that doesn't square with the text for me. With Control Actions the magician is meant to be controlling him like a puppet, hence the negative modifier equal to Willpower. That seems to imply there should be no delay between the magician controlling the target and the target moving accordingly. I would prefer to make it that the target's Initiative and IPs are forgotten until the magician spends an action phase not controlling him. Would that be reasonable?

...when the subject makes a Crash test.

Sounds pretty reasonable to me.

You could have the Magician's orders act like an interrupt for the subject, using up his next available action. If the Mage has more IP than the victim then the victim effectively gets additional actions that turn but is restricted to doing the puppet actions only.

-D

My honest advice to you and all GM's is jsut ban these spells or heavily modify them. Here is my current houserules.

Mental manipulation spells are resisted with willpower + charisma (+ counter spelling) as opposed to know where is just willpower + counterspelling. Additionally the following spells will be changed or removed:

Control Actions: Banned. This spells is just pure ghouda.
Control Thoughts/Mob Mind: This spell is almost fine as is except for reminding everyone that it takes a complex action to cast the spell and a simple to issue the commands. During that time the target knows mentally that they have been controlled and knows exactly how it's going to work so you can presume your going to be target number #1 for anyone your affecting. Additionally when ordering a target to do something they would never normally do. I.E ordering Joe Office slave to rush the barricades with an AK in hand or commanding Sally ganger to attack one of her gang memebers they may roll an additional Willpower + Charisma test vs the casters hits to resist the action and instead stand there motionless.
Alter memory: Change the spell to touch and the character gets to retest days per force of spell rather then months. Also the time it takes to make the spell permanent is going to be adjusted as the GM's discretion based on the complexity of the alteration.

Other people already answered about noticing that a spell was just cast. As far as what you can do, Control Thoughts allows just about anything. The big limiter is the extra resistance tests the target gets, so any Control spell will wear off fairly quickly. Also, if the target is asked to do anything obviously suicidal or "against his nature" (Your discretion, but turning on a friend can count) then he gets a free resistance test. That makes it less than ultimate in a combat situation, but it's great for getting passcodes out of a guy.

Influence is potentially more powerful, since it implants a single command which is then carried out. Handled right, it's just as powerful as Control Thoughts, but without the nasty side effects.

Actually only Influence provides extra resistance tests for actions the target would normally be opposed to. By RAW it should also get the extra roll every Force combat turns but I think RAI is that it doesn't.

That's where clever wording comes into play. If you word the Influence right, the target will never get another resistance roll. And even though it lasts longer potentially, I've never used it for more than a short-term thing: "You don't need to see our identification" type of deal.

So, basically you roll to resist like a composure test?

I've thought about introducing a Willpower/2 threshold for mental manipulation spells (pretty much like in SR3).

There's no need. Except for Influence, no mental manipulation spell will last for more than a minute or two. The extra resistance tests make sure of that. Influence doesn't have that restriction, but it's more controllable, since you can't change the command once placed.

Hm. Probably. However there's still a lot that can happen in a minute.

I guess this has also to do with me coming back to SR after some time off and just really getting into SR4 now. So I'm still partly thinking in "SR3 mode", where I'm used to high-willpower characters outright resisting domination by "average" mages.

Oh, mental magic in Sr4.5 is still powerful. It's just not possible to sustain it for a long period of time, so you can't ritually cast Control Thoughts and get the CEO to transfer you all the funds tomorrow. A high willpower definitely helps you shake it off faster, too. The big change is that willpower alone isn't enough to fully resist a high force spell anymore.

I would prefer it that way too. (Threshold)

Of course that means that the control spells should be "REAL" sustained after that. No resistence tests after the first. The problems coming from that are mostly self-regulatory though, i guess: Leaving an active spell on someone can lead to someone following the link. Wards will still block, or at least give alarm.

Just from a setting/plot stance it would be GREAT to have the possibility to control people without week-long "therapy" sessions or implanting them with personafix stuff.

Of course EVERY spell needs to follow the same rules too, then. Physical forced changes for example. (Ever tried to turn a Troll into clay?). Since the values on that side are way more varied (and higher) that might lead to some problems.

Ah well, maybe we can just say: "Eh... the MIND is something special and harder to change"