Mental Influence

Characters can exert mental influence on others. The normal mechanism is a social attack. Some miscellaneous Charms and sorcery also allow mental influence. Mental influence is something that others can resist, but if it succeeds—that is, if the influence reaches someone's heart—they must spend Willpower to resist. See Social Combat for detailed rules.

How Mental Influence Works

Social attacks and mental-influence Charms create beliefs, causes, emotions or intentions. Sometimes they instantly create an emotional commitment—an Intimacy—to that idea.

Compulsions. Compulsion effects create intentions. They make someone decide to act in a certain way, such as "I will conquer Thorns" or "I will fall asleep now."

Emotions. Emotion effects create emotions. They inspire love, lust, respect, fear or some other emotion.

When an Emotion effect instills a feeling but does not specify a particular result, treat the Emotion as a sceneduration one-die situational internal penalty that applies to all actions that do not fall in accordance with the emotion (such as attempting to decipher a First Age text while enraged), and a three-die penalty for all actions that run directly counter to the emotion (such as resisting a seduction attempt while feeling lust). Beyond these mechanics, players should endeavor to represent their character's emotional state in their choice of actions as befits the balance of the character's Virtues, especially Temperance.

Illusions. Illusion effects create beliefs. They make characters accept something as true, even if it isn't.

Servitude. Servitude effects bind someone to a cause. They make the character certain that that cause is worth serving. The Storyteller is the final authority on how much freedom of interpretation a given character has in any given situation. A compulsion to destroy Gem might lead one Solar to attack its army and another to begin designing an ultimate Essence war engine. A compulsion to take five steps forward is generally less open to interpretation and argument.

Creating a long-term loyalty is usually a Compulsion—it forces the person to form an Intimacy to an idea.

Total Control. Total control effects are a special category of mental influence. The target can no longer take voluntary actions, but can still act as dictated by the specific influence effect exerting total control. Characters can suffer only one total control effect at a time. If a second total control effect is applied, the two effects must make an opposed roll as per "Unstoppable Force, Immovable Object".

Strategy

The most practical effects are those that create compulsions. These are the effects that let you control how people act. Servitude effects are useful, but it's important to remember that loyal but confused people can easily act against your interests. Players should not rely on the effects of emotions and illusions. Characterization and drama can lead to unexpected results. That said, the real world contains ample proof that the ability to manipulate the emotions and beliefs of others can pay off handsomely for a sufficiently ruthless person.

Unacceptable Orders

There are some causes and intentions people cannot embrace. There are some emotions and beliefs they cannot uphold. Without total control or extremely powerful magic, it’s impossible to make someone accept these ideas. They are "unacceptable orders."

The default system assumption is that every character finds ideas that he cannot survive ("suicidal despair," "challenge the Kukla to a duel," "you will fly if you jump off this bridge") unacceptable. It also assumes that these are the only unacceptable orders. Persuasion can overcome any conscious belief but not the survival instinct. This is sometimes realistic but is explicitly not based on realism. This rule exists to empower persuasion while making sure that characters influence their enemies to do more interesting things than "die."

Many characters use Charms or other abilities to define additional orders that they or others simply cannot accept. For many Solar Exalted, "defy your Motivation" is an unacceptable order. For some Dragon-Blooded, "break faith with your sworn brotherhood" is an order worse than death. Conversely, extras, martyrs, weary crippled death cultists and so forth sometimes accept suicidal orders, at the Storyteller's discretion.

Characters cannot use mental influence to issue unacceptable orders unless the Charm or spell they use specifically allows them to do so. Attempts to do so simply have no effect. The target resists automatically, pays nothing to do so and receives no benefit from doing so.

Impossible orders

Ordering a peasant to grow wings is generally unproductive. Characters cannot use mental influence to issue impossible orders—things the target simply cannot do—regardless of how powerful their Charms might be. It is acceptable to urge the stones of the field and the stars in the sky to march on your enemies, but they lose no Willpower for being unable to do so.

Natural Mental Influence

Natural mental influence comes from communication and interaction. Characters with high Appearance exert a certain influence simply by existing. The fire kindled in others by a high Charisma is natural mental influence. Manipulation shows a character's mastery of deliberate mental influence. Charms that enhance the character's social Abilities exert a natural mental influence.

Characters successfully affected by natural mental influence have two choices. If the influence is compatible with their Motivation, they have the option to accept the influence. They accept the kindled belief, cause, emotion or intention. If they want to resist the influence, or if it is not compatible with their Motivation, they must spend one Willpower to resist. This allows them to ignore the influence attempt.

Natural mental influence must break others' Motivation to force them to betray it. Even if the character has 0 temporary Willpower, unbroken characters cling to their core principles. Characters spend two Willpower per scene at most to resist natural mental influence—after that, unless the attacker uses a stunt to come at the character from an unexpected direction, the character can resist all forms of natural mental influence without cost. Natural influence cannot ever give someone an "unacceptable order"—such orders do not cost Willpower to resist.

Latest Errata: Characters cannot be forced to spend Willpower more than once within a scene to resist natural mental influence originating with the same character. After a character has spent Willpower to resist natural mental influence from any character during the course of a scene, all other individuals' attempts to levy natural mental influence against the character suffer an external penalty equal to the character's Integrity.

Strategy Notes

Natural mental influence is a normal interaction. This means that characters need not consider it more or less savage than ordinary persuasion attempts. It is not perceived as sinister or as supernatural mind control by its victims or its practitioners. It is a neutral tool applicable to both moral and immoral ends.

It is also limited in its impact. The reason targets do not see natural mental influence as an abusive invasion of their minds is that it's not. To actually brainwash a character with these techniques requires breaking them over the course of days.

Note that the Willpower cost of rejecting influence comes from the fact that the character exerting influence makes a good case. Players are entitled to resist any influence they think is inappropriate for their character, but resisting every form of persuasion is closer to paranoid isolation than independence.

Unnatural Mental Influence

Sorcerous mind control and powerful Social Charms carry Essence-charged effects into the minds of others. These are unnatural effects. Some overwhelm their victims, literally invading their minds; others invest Essence into the words and actions of the Solar to give them unnaturally potent Social effect.

Characters who are successfully affected by unnatural mental influence have two choices. If the influence is compatible with ¨their Motivation, they have the option to accept the influence. If they want to resist the influence, or if it is not compatible with their Motivation, they must spend Willpower to resist. The default is one Willpower to entirely ignore the influence. Some influence is more powerful, requiring up to five Willpower to cast off. Some influence is more tenacious— spending Willpower might cast off the influence for only an action, a minute, a scene or a year. Characters cannot resist unnatural mental influence without spending Willpower, regardless of how much Willpower other mental influence effects have cost them this scene.

Resisting unnatural mental influence also puts a strain upon a character's soul. Each time the character resists, if the character has a Limit trait, he gains one Limit. Characters gain at most one Limit per scene from resisting mental influence. After that, unless the attacker uses a stunt designed to impose Limit, the character does not gain further Limit from resisting mental influence.

Unnatural mental influence can force a target with 0 Willpower to betray her Motivation. Only rare and special unnatural mental influence effects can force the target to obey an "unacceptable order." Unless the attacker is using such an effect, the target does not spend Willpower or gain Limit when resisting such orders.

Latest Errata: Unnatural mental influence does not clearly announce itself as magical mind control unless it comes from an Obvious source and fails to affect the targeted character—characters targeted even by Obvious unnatural mental influence only realize this fact once they have successfully resisted it (although unaffected bystanders who witness an Obvious Charm's use can tell the target is being subjected to mental coercion of some sort).

Strategy Notes

Unnatural mental influence is magical mental influence. Targets recognize the supernatural force behind the character's actions. If this influence is hostile, inappropriate, or used against targets who value their liberty and independence, unnatural mental influence makes enemies.

Unnatural influence has unlimited impact. Using Essence to shape others' minds can make even the most terrible enemy into the most abject servant.