Okay the stat block for Mind Probe basically says the target is aware of what's happening, but doesn't really give you much indication of what that really entails or means. So what sort of thoughts do you have on the subject?

Mind Probe is "mental rape."

People tend not to like it much.

I've always imagined Mind Probing is like going through a pile of clothes really fast, kinda just getting all up in there trying to dig out what you want. Only in someones brain.

And the fact that they know what is going on means that they can take steps to stop it. Much like with real rape, it is an unpleasant and traumatic experience to have to endure, and many individuals will do whatever they can to make it stop.

Bubba The Love Mage.

So, Bubba the Love Troll with a magical lodge, then?

At best, the target gets the unpleasant sensation that someone is taking their memories, at worst every horribly memory is violently brought to the forefront of their mind and painfully ripped away, giving the target a sense of humiliation, pain, and worthlessness worse than can be accomplished by any physical act.

Up to your GM had bad it is, but considering the setting I'd usually wager more on the "it's bad" side rather than the "it's unpleasant" side.

I totally love how everyone reads that the experience is traumatic, and rape like without the text of the spell indicating anything of the sort, that's really wonderful.

I think I understand why they feel that way, but I agree that the text is rather vague on what the actual experience is. As I am the GM I am trying to decide on what the base line experience is when being mind probed.

Based on what the text is, you get a sensation that is unique, as in, not like anything other than "being mind probed," and doesn't have any other distinguishing characteristics. I would suggest using Logic+Magical Background (or other appropriate knowledge skill, or Logic-1) to recognize that it's "being mind probed" for people who haven't been mindprobed before. I don't think you need to throw on anything else for half-baked balance purposes - even if it felt like kittens and sunshine, most people will be plenty upset about the invasion of privacy.

I tried to find video of it, but basically whenever someone encounters the Shadows, pisses off the Vorlons, or gets forcibly read by a Psi Cop in Babylon 5 is what I see.

Apt comparison I would think...

That's when you go to the literature.
Various fiction novels have described it as a feeling of someone rifling through the filecabinet of the mind, as if all of your thoughts are bits of paper, filed away, some in dark corners, and then an intruder coming in and shining a light around, picking stuff up (which you then remember that event) and when they find what they want, the sense that they stole something (you obviously still have the memory).

That, that's what I wanted to say.

The whole "mind rape" is in my games anti-mage propaganda and it's nothing so traumatic.

Depends on how much the person resists in my mind. If you're OK with it, you got people going through the papers of your mind.

If not... Well, mental waterboarding is what you wish happened.

There is also a lot of shadow-talk tossing around brain-rape, mind-rape etc. Usually Winterhawk comes and calls it propaganda and drivel.

Still, you have to ask yourself, how would you describe another person's will pressed against your mind, flittering though all of your deepest secrets? Many people would think of that as a violation of their minds, on a very personal level. English doesn't have a lot of words for "deep, personal violation," which means the emotionally charged ones like "rape" will be used to describe the feeling.

Even if the physical sensation is drastically different, on an emotional and visceral level, the way the feeling is described after the fact will greatly depend on how impartial the subject is, how they were prepared for it--knowing it would happen or being caught by surprise, and previous experiences and emotional health.

The chapter on nagas in RW has a first-person account of being mind probed several times (which the naga seem to consider a normal means of communication), the writer does not sound too traumatized...

Probably because they're communicating, rather than trying to find out some deep, dark, hidden secret buried so deeply that the person doesn't even want to acknowledge it's existence him/herself.

Yes, I've had those come to the surface, don't know about rape, but it did make me feel soiled and polluted. Like a psychic boil that had been poorly lanced and the toxin spread throughout my soul.

The only problem I have with the "go to the literature" reply is that my literary experience may not be shared with my players. It's not that I oppose it out of hand, but rather that I'll have to be careful before i settle on it as the final answer.

*shrug* You're asking about fluff, so all we have to go on is fluff. No, there are no listed numeric effects for 'feelings of violation', 'distress', etc.

Sounds like a composure test, really.

That's a possible house rule, but I meant that the absence of crunch effects implies there *are* none. That's not incompatible with all kinds of emotional responses.

Well, most uses of mind probe (at least in the context of SR games) are not concerned with repressed childhood memories, but rather with judging intentions:
The first sign we had entered the naga nation was the sudden appearance of two large naga, backed by several large spirits. I assume they were using magic to hide themselves. The prevalence of metahuman hunters and corporate “harvesting” teams mean that metahumans are viewed with suspicion or hostility in naga territory. We each submitted to a magical mind probe by the larger naga—a highly trained magician, obviously—and was that a strange feeling! Very alien.
...or maybe something like this:
Also had a few strange moments when a pair of youths decided to “experience” my senses. Magic use on other beings is considered permissible, within limits. I have yet to see a naga use magic against another naga in a manipulative or hostile way. Where I find mind probes intrusive, they have evolved to see them as efficient communication methods.

Might also depend on the type of spell used. One variety of the Mind Probe spell might be "It's your first time, so I'll be gentle", while the other kind is more of a "SQUEAL LIKE A PIG!!!"

I've also seen a lot of "pry the data out of his skull" or "what good blackmail can we get to force him to do X for us."

Overall, I think we've ridden around the carousel a few times now. The feeling of the mind probe can easily be based on the intention of the mage casting it--from "grab your ankles and beg" to "this will feel odd, but I'll be gentle." Perhaps the more you fight against the probe, the more it hurts--which would be akin to the Psi-Cop analogy earlier. Fighting against a scan made it harder on the person than accepting it.

It's my opinion that the connotations of rape come from the forcible experiencing of what is considered by the subject as sacred and unique to them. Someone walking into your library of memories, the collection of all experiences that make you you, unbidden and out of your control must surely be harrowing to say the least. Feeling vulnerable and at the mercy of malicious strangers should be expected, not to mention existential questions that would have Descartes scratching his noodle.

I was burgled once - it was only my room at university and they only got a portable CD player, but I felt invaded on a very personal level all the same. Violation of the sanctity of the body must be far far worse and that of the mind even more so. They might only want to know what you had for breakfast, but that's really not the issue.

Yeah, that'd probably be more the personality of the mage...and how big his probe is, I imagine (Force 4 vs Force 12...)

I'm with Aerospider on this one. A similar experience in my background, too, with similar emotions.

"Show us on the Manadoll where the bad mage touched you."

I'm thinking the whole thing would be based on the success in the resistance test. If the target glitches, he doesn't notice a thing. The more successes on the resistance test, the more traumatic.
My group got around that with a couple of stick and shocks. Unconcious targets shouldn't notice anything.

By RAW it says the target notices though - it even suggests that the target will automatically know that it is a minde probe, but he or she won't necessarily know where it's coming from (but since it's a touch spell, I find that hard to believe...)

I would have to agree that the intentions of the caster have alot to do with the end result, and as nothing is clearly listed, i would say that it would be up to the GM about how to handle it.

In my own game I called for a composure test as it was the first time the player had every experianced the probe.


-- and for any Bujold fans. Fast-Penta would be MUCH easier to deal with.

Yup. Although getting Richard III and dirty limericks instead of intel would be a pretty funny thing to do to a Mind-Probing mage.

...That's it? Psh, that's funny, but not particularly cruel.
Start reciting the Ryumyo/Lung slash fiction you read the other night.

One issue with the mental rape comparison is that it somehow suggests the target is overpowered for the duration of the spell, reliving its past with the magician on a backseat. But the rules never state the target should have any trouble (like a negative modifier or stun damage) punching or shooting the mage into the face to end the experience.

I don't think it implies they're reliving memories, but you're right that there is a connotation of 'overpowered' in that terminology. I think that's appropriate in the sense of 'their mind is an open book', but could be misleading about a 'paralyzing' effect that indeed is not in the rules.

I imagine that this is analogous. A mean-minded person generally can't rape someone just by taking out their penis and attempting to initiate sexual contact; the would-be victim will either run or attack you (most of the time, anyway.) Other forms of force are required to render them unable to resist or evade, such as drugging them, tying them up, physically overpowering them, rendering them unconscious with stick'n'shock, having a couple of pipe-hittin' trog heavies grab them by the arms, and so forth and so on.

So you'd have to subdue someone to mindrape them, in most cases.

Unless you've got a body 2 mage who shape shifts into a small bug of some kind and hides under the collar of your shirt, or you're in the middle of a crowded concert with bodies pressed against each other, or someone add a point or two the drain code via street magic, and gives the spell range of sight(I mean everyone else seems to be rewriting the text of the spell)... or something else similar.

Anyone else notice that for a group of people which say RAW like it's a chant, so many people seem to be willing to write the spell anew to add all kinds of texts and effects the spell itself doesn't even hint at?

Basic rule of Running the shadows that they run in.

Make it fun.

if that means you need to fluff it, fluff it.

If that means it needs to be re-written, then start with the writin'

It's in the fluff, Mordinvan. *shrug* Do what you want at your table.

If I had to guess, the RAW chanters aren't the same people, though.

Pretty sure some fluff was quoted which described the sensation as more alien then rape. Haven't seen any fluff quoted which described it as the other way around.

If come up with a page number on that please let me know. I almost always have an answer before I post on these forums, so pretty much I know what I'm going to dfo. I ask because want to see what you do. And why.

It was referenced out a chapter in running wild on Nagas, where they are probed by a security force, and then by children who use it to communicate. I don't own the book, and thus can't quote the page, but someone did reference it earlier, and quote the relevant text in the thread already.

You're confused about how it works, which is not surprising because it is very bizarre.

The target of the spell (which the text calls "the subject") is the person who gets the ability to do the probing - and the caster must touch the target of the spell. The target of the probing needs to be "within range of the sense." The target of the probing needs to be within the LOS of the target of the spell (note: not, necessarily, the caster) and also needs to be within Force x Magic meters of the target of the spell (again, not, necessarily, the caster). You could learn Extended Mind Probe for +2 DV and make that Force x Magic x 10 meters.

Example: Bob the mage and Jim the street samurai are hanging out and want to mind probe Tod the wageslave. Bob casts Mind Probe on Jim at Force 5, and Bob has Magic 5. Jim pokes his head around a wall so he can see Tod (note: Bob does not need to see Tod, but he does need to designate Tod when he casts the spell). Jim then attempts to use the Mind Probe on Tod. Jim checks that (a) he can see Tod, and (b) Tod is withing 25m of Jim. At this point, Bob makes a Spellcasting+Magic test and compares it to Tod's Willpower (+Counterspelling, if applicable) test.

Tod automatically knows he is being mind probed, but doesn't have any special way to know Jim is the source. As with all spellcasting, anyone who was around when Bob cast the spell get to make a Perception (1) test to notice the spellcasting. Anyone with Astral Perception would be able to see the sustained spell aura on Jim.

Clearer?

Hmmm - I hadn't seen the designate part before. Is this just for Mind Probe, or all Detection spells in general? Is there a page that I haven't read carefully enough?

Just Mind Probe. It's the parenthetical at the end of the first sentence of the spell description.

They seriously need to fix the way Detection spells work, or add a note.

Ah, I see it now - I've been mentally skimming over that part, thinking MP works the same as other Detection spells. Thanks.


It does seem strange, that Detection spells allow a different subject than the caster...makes things much more confusing, and it seems...wrong. Why can a caster give Clairvoyance to a different person? Strange strange strange

It's Miles Vorkosigan's... unique reaction to Fast Penta (the truth drug in his setting). Due to his utterly messed up metabolism, he gets even more hyper (think chipmunk on Speed, Novacoke and the entire caffeine content of all of the coffee consumed by undergraduates during finals week at a major college...) and finds that, while he can't stop from answering their questions, he can derail them with poetry and dirty limericks. He ends up getting stuck reciting the entirety of Ricard III, from memory, doing all of the parts (including the female parts in falsetto), to the point of his captors throwing him back in his cell in disgust.

But, nah, if someone used Mind Probe on me and I realized it, I'd quickly use my commlink to open a few pages from a certain Matrix site and let the poor mage bask in my new surface thoughts. This tactic would also be enhanced by making the team mage learn Alter Memories for the aftermath...

I mean, there's nothing terribly wrong with being able to cast it on others, in terms of functionality. It's just very confusing for everyone.

Personally, I'd be okay with SR magic not giving that option: 'magic senses can't be shared', kinda thing. Or, require a separate 'share senses' spell.