#golemquest mentalism discussion

[18:37]	Ironybot	UBR, you asked earlier how good at magic Satai will become. I don't know how far he'll get in particular, but mentalists in general are a potentially powerful class, if limited in focus. It's a lot like saying "bloodliner"- because of how individualized mentalist powers are, given two mentalists they could have completely different power sets.
[18:38]	Ironybot	They don't even have to ever learn mental combat, Shadowbro just thinks that's important so he's forcing Satai's growth in that direction.
[18:40]	Ironybot	And this is one of those "when one door opens, another closes" situations. Your first skills are the easiest, and building on those skills will always stay relatively easy; skills you develop late in your career will always be harder to start learning and only become easier if you push an absurd amount of focus toward adding them to your skillset.
[18:41]	Ironybot	So mentalists as a rule have ridiculously personalized savant skillsets.
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[18:43]	BUTTZ	So Satai's going to always be a mental combat specialist?
[18:43]	Ironybot	No, he learned mental combat second.
[18:44]	Ironybot	The first thing he learned was some mind-over-body/soul tricks.
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[18:45]	Arkeus	Smart.
[18:45]	Ironybot	So that should be what he's best at forever, if I understand the system correctly. But mental combat will always be locked in as one of his favored abilities.
[18:45]	UBR	Ok so what is the main difference between mentalists and mind manip. bloodliners?
[18:45]	Ironybot	Favored ability in the "this costs less XP to advance" sort of sense, that is.
[18:45]	Arkeus	Also, i think we were semi-warned by OG about this for our winter bloodline, though i don't think it's quite as limited, it's possible the longer we wait before doing some real inner soul manip and the harder it will get.
[18:46]	Ironybot	Mind manipulation uses magic to affect the mind. Mentalism uses the mind to work magic.
[18:46]	UBR	Do mentalists have a separate energy pool like bloodliners or do they use their chakra?
[18:48]	Ironybot	Neither. Mentalists use their will, which is basically a static figure. They don't have energy limitations except insofar as they get weary; instead of having a limited energy pool to work with they're limited by willpower, experience, imagination, and prep time.
[18:49]	Ironybot	That is, instead of saying "you have a pool of 40 energy, how much do you want to throw at this" they have "you do whatever you want at a 5-energy effect level".
[18:51]	Ironybot	If they want to achieve more powerful effects than that, that's where prep time comes in- they spend long amounts of time and mental focus creating mental constructs, imbuing them with more and more energy, making them more mentally real. You remember when Armas was in his head and made a mental copy of the AA-12? Exactly like that.
[18:53]	Ironybot	But like Armas' AA-12 started out shitty, an on-the-spot construct is basically nothing more than a mental focus aid; anyone can make one. A mentalist would spend days, weeks, or years pushing willpower into the AA-12 until finally even if they stopped thinking about it completely- even if they died- it would still be real.
[18:54]	UBR	Ok so is it like normal/trancendant chakra use that all can use low level mentalism abilities but there is mentalists who are much better at it?
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[19:04]	Ironybot	My understanding is that there are basically only two mentalist abilities and all mentalists have them. One, every action you take mentally is backed by your will. Two, everything you imagine mentally becomes more real over time.
[19:04]	Ironybot	So a "low-level mentalism ability" is basically anything that a completely normal person can do if put into a mental or spiritual plane, and yes, any mentalist will be able to do them better than your average schmuck.
[19:05]	Ironybot	But if you put a normal person in someone else's mindscape, they would be perfectly capable of, say, locating a specific memory and destroying it. It would just take them more time and effort.
[19:07]	Ironybot	Getting into the mindscape in the first place is the tricky part, but if you're a mentalist you have your own mindscape already- that's one of the prerequisites for developing the powers, that you be imagining a mindscape of some kind.
[19:08]	Ironybot	Accessing someone else's mindscape once you're in your own is, again, something that anyone can do by my understanding... it would just be suicidal for most people, because they would have no natural talent for locating other mindscapes in the first place or finding their way back to their own.
[19:09]	Ironybot	So they would basically end up chucking their mind out of their body and getting lost, ultimately leaving their body to die as a vegetable and probably ending with their freed mind to eaten by some kind of mental predator. Mentalists can still do that, it's just not quite as suicidal for them.
[19:11]	Ironybot	I should follow all this with a statement that much of this is interpolation/extrapolation on my part based upon my understanding of the mechanics, and Bob might end up contradicting some specific points. I don't think it likely, though, and I don't really expect the details of mentalist powers to ever be relevant for anyone other than Satai anyway.
[19:12]	UBR	Then I guess that it would be a huge advantage for a mentalist to have acces to accelerated thought.
[19:14]	UBR	Like SB or Armas when he does mental communication.
[19:14]	UBR	Also HB would probably make a great mentalist
[19:15]	UBR	Would it be possible for HB to become a mentalist?
[19:15]	Arkeus	No.
[19:15]	Ironybot	Very much so. The fact that Satai got that quirk not only made him turn into a mentalist over the course of days rather than months or years, it also means that he can work on basically all mentalist skills much, much faster. Most mentalists wouldn't risk accelerating their mind until they reached a very high level of skill, because fundamentally changing how your mind works is a good way to...
[19:15]	Ironybot	...get yourself effectively lobotomized.
[19:16]	Ironybot	And by the time they reach a very high level of skill, unless they've put their focus in mental self-examination and modification in the first place they might be essentially locked out of that kind of change due to specialization momentum.
[19:17]	Arkeus	It's kinda funny, time sheniengans mean you should have had access to the mind before the Shade bashing.
[19:17]	Arkeus	*the shade assaulting you for training.
[19:18]	Ironybot	Eh, don't care too much.
[19:18]	UBR	So if a normal mentalist can do something like 5 energy effects and Satai's mind works thousand times faster...?
[19:18]	BUTTZ	No doubt SZ is going to make a fuss about not turning the scabbard over until the last minute
[19:18]	Ironybot	He can do a thousand 5 energy effects in the same amount of time.
[19:19]	Arkeus	Ah, SZ.
[19:19]	UBR	So either normal mentalists are very weak or Satai will be dragon level?
[19:19]	Ironybot	But because of the nature of mentalism, he still can't do even one 6 energy effect.
[19:20]	UBR	I would think that a thousand 5 energy attacks would defeat almost anyone below dragon level
[19:20]	Ironybot	Satai is going to take weeks to build a mind that would take a normal mentalist years or decades.
[19:21]	Ironybot	Well, anyone with accelerated thought can fight back. But as a general rule if anyone with accelerated thought mentally attacks anyone without it, the party without is royally fucked.
[19:23]	Ironybot	And I should clarify that "5 energy" was just an example figure. I don't actually know how much magic from a mind manipulator it would take to replicate the amount of force that Satai's will can normally exert.
[19:24]	UBR	But even if they do have accelerated thought, can they really fight back effectivly unless they are also a mentalist (or transcendent mind, mind manip bloodliner etc)?
[19:24]	Ironybot	For all I know he's pinging people with 0.02 point attacks.
[19:25]	UBR	That would make most mentalists almost useless.
[19:26]	Ironybot	It's important to note that mental and spiritual planes are intertwined. If Satai attacked Armas mentally, then if Armas knew what he was doing (he doesn't, but if he did) Armas would bring his super-soul into play and Satai basically couldn't do shit unless he got clever.
[19:26]	Ironybot	There is a reason that the build-mental-constructs-over-time thing is essential, mate.
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[19:27]	Ironybot	This is pure speculation on my part, but I suspect that one's own mental avatar can be considered a mental construct as well, from a mentalist's perspective, which would mean that it would gradually grow in power naturally with age and experience.
[19:28]	Ironybot	Particularly for someone with a focus on offensive mental combat, this would likely be extremely important.
[19:28]	Ironybot	Defensive mental combat it's less of a thing. Satai hardly uses his mental avatar at all on defense.
[19:29]	BUTTZ	Can a mental contruct become real enough to become a physical, material, object?
[19:29]	Arkeus	What does he uses on defense?
[19:29]	Ironybot	If one of your base mentalist specializations leans in the right direction, then yes, a top-tier mentalist can pull mental constructs into the real world.
[19:30]	Ironybot	Otherwise no.
[19:30]	Ironybot	Satai will probably never get that ability, given his development so far.
[19:30]	Arkeus	...Can a top-tier mentalist, if his talents lean in the right direction, pull a physical object in his mindscape?
[19:30]	Seventeen	What's he looking to specialise in?
[19:31]	Ironybot	Satai wrapped his whole mindscape in obscuring acidic fog, so that any mental intruder can't find anything and gradually has their memories and psyche eaten away.
[19:31]	Seventeen	Very nice.
[19:31]	UBR	So what is the restrictions on who can become a mentalist? I remember it being incompatible with mind transcendance. What about bloodlines? Why is it that HB would be unable to become one?
[19:32]	Ironybot	Makes them forget what they're doing and everything about his mindscape as the primary target, so they can't accumulate any knowledge of him or his defenses.
[19:33]	Ironybot	After that it works on their knowledge of him in general so they forget who he is, and their resolve/other beneficial personality traits to drive them insane.
[19:33]	Arkeus	http://pastebin.com/eTUL8Xmt for Seventeen
[19:34]	Arkeus	Also, logs are up to date as of an hour ago.
[19:34]	Seventeen	Thanks Ark
[19:34]	UBR	So even if you only attack with a mental avatar, the fog can eat away at other things that you have stored in your mindscape?
[19:35]	Ironybot	To become a mentalist you need to be saturated with magic- such as from eating magic food- but not have anything that your magic is being sunk into. Any constructive way to channel your magic will stop it from being channeled into mentalism, basically.
[19:35]	UBR	except chakra?
[19:35]	Arkeus	So a chakra master will have to stop using chakra extensively to become a mentalist?
[19:35]	Ironybot	I think Satai became a mentalist before he was good enough at chakra to flush the magic out of himself.
[19:36]	Ironybot	Or it might be an exception, I don't know.
[19:38]	Ironybot	The fog works because your mindscape is a mental construct. It has its own reality based upon accumulated will. Satai doesn't need to attack with it; it attacks on its own, although the way he's built it there's IFF and it works as a sensory extension of his mind so that he's always aware of everything touching it.
[19:39]	UBR	I meant for the attacker. Should not the attacker be storing important parts of his personality in his mindscape and not in the mental avatar used for attacking?
[19:40]	Ironybot	That may or may not be possible, depending upon the type of attacker. Many people can only access mindscapes spiritually; in order to be in them at all, they have to bring their soul along.
[19:40]	Ironybot	Armas is like that, I think.
[19:40]	Ironybot	Sake also.
[19:41]	Ironybot	Although Sake has three souls because of how he works so he only actually needs to bring a third of his soul anywhere he goes, spiritually.
[19:42]	Arkeus	You had time to talk to Bob about that Mentalist mind?
[19:42]	Ironybot	Anyway. The mindscape is the mind, in a very real way. I'm honestly not that clear on the distinction at this point, but basically, in a very real sense, if you're in someone else's mind they are also in your mind- it's just a matter of perspective.
[19:43]	Ironybot	If you want to and know how, you can invert the perspective and start assaulting their mindscape immediately if they enter yours.
[19:45]	Ironybot	For that reason mind manipulators have a substantial advantage, because they can make purely magical bullshit and use that as disposable firepower, whereas a mentalist has to build everything out of himself. Satai's defenses are literally made of him; Armas' mental defenses are just magical fluff. If you managed to destroy Satai's mind fog he would take actual psyche damage; if you destroyed...
[19:45]	Ironybot	...Armas' Sphere Labyrinth he would just make a new one.
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[19:46]	Ironybot	Out of his endless chakra energy.
[19:47]	Ironybot	So you can wear a mentalist down, if you've got the patience and magical juice to smash their constructs little by little.
[19:47]	BUTTZ	http://tgchan.org/wiki/Guns_for_Hire_Magical_Mechanics#Mind
[19:48]	Ironybot	That is... taking a lot of my rambling here out of context and some of it is phrased in a way that's wrong or only applicable to mentalists.
[19:49]	Ironybot	The first paragraph with that last bit, that is.
[19:49]	Seventeen	Is Satai going to try teaching any of the other minions anything about mental defense?
[19:49]	Ironybot	Man, do you know how much time Satai has to spare for that kind of thing right now?
[19:51]	UBR	a lot because he acts a thousand times faster then the others?
[19:51]	Ironybot	No.
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[19:52]	Ironybot	If you want Satai to use the other minions as experimental "let's try to reshape someone else's psyche for mental defense" learning projects, maybe he can worry about your mental defenses.
[19:53]	Seventeen	You might end up needing to do that on Feodor.
[19:53]	Seventeen	More along the lines of just fixing his mind, though.
[19:53]	Ironybot	But he knows fuck-all about defending mundanes' minds using their own abilities; all his own mental defenses are based on mentalism. He can't teach that.
[19:54]	Seventeen	Fair enough.
[19:54]	UBR	He could practice attacking their minds so they get to practice defence.
[19:54]	Seventeen	So not fair on them, UBR
[19:54]	Ironybot	That would be like shooting people and expecting them to learn how to defend against being shot from it.
[19:55]	Ironybot	No matter how many times they get shot, they're not going to learn any defensive measure against it other than "don't".
[19:55]	Seventeen	You mean like Vlad, Ito, and Boris do?
[19:55]	BUTTZ	They have a defensive framework in place though
[19:55]	BUTTZ	They have a technique, the shooting is just refining and practicing it
[19:56]	Ironybot	Are you proposing that some minions pour that much focus and chakra energy into learning mental defense, that is quite different from saying "Satai teach me shit".
[19:56]	Seventeen	To be fair, they have chakra. So, Satai attacking minds is useless until they're using chakra nental defences.
[19:56]	Seventeen	mental*
[19:56]	Ironybot	Doesn't have to be chakra, but they need something, at least.
[19:56]	Seventeen	And why oh why must I type so slow.
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[19:57]	Ironybot	They could get brain mods, or soul quirks, or specialized charms... whatever.
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[19:57]	Ironybot	Spirit animals would also work, but probably not familiars.
[19:58]	Arkeus	Why not familiars?
[19:58]	Ironybot	If they still have bodies they're stuck in them. If they've got nothing left but souls they can putz about in mental and spiritual planes.
[19:58]	Arkeus	Ah.
[19:58]	Arkeus	Unless they are weird like HB, but yeah, makes sense.
[19:58]	Seventeen	The closest things Feodor has to mental defences: i) a kinda-broken mind that might be harder to find stuff in and ii) a mind that is partially separated from his soul
[19:59]	Ironybot	Mind partially separated from his soul? Unless you mean "mostly based in his body instead of his soul", that's not at all healthy.
[20:00]	Seventeen	No, it certainly isn't.
[20:00]	Ironybot	The mind is, by default, software run on body/soul hardware. If you try to leave your hardware behind and become free-floating software, you'd best really know what the fuck you're doing.
[20:00]	Seventeen	Feodor's not doing it.
[20:01]	Seventeen	It's a defence mechanism to protect his mind from the soul damage he does to himself.
[20:01]	Ironybot	Oh. You can just run your mind on body for that, not a problem.
[20:02]	Juroko	hello world
[20:02]	Seventeen	That might be an option if Feodor was aware of what was going on. He doesn't even know about the soul damage.
[20:02]	Ironybot	In fact, if you run your mind on 100% body, you get handy tricks like being able to disjoin your soul and then ignore soul binds.
[20:02]	Ironybot	And, potentially, get your soul destroyed and not die from it.
[20:03]	Arkeus	That's not healthy either
[20:03]	Ironybot	No shit, but it'd better than dying.
[20:03]	Ironybot	It's, rather.
[20:03]	Ironybot	Basically regressing yourself into an animal, though. Become less good at things, awkward situation all around.
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[20:04]	Ironybot	Unless you have really good body quirks your body can't handle a full mind's level of processing power very well.
[20:04]	Juroko	so the ginger option
[20:13]	Seventeen	The only minions with any kind of non-item mental defence at the moment are Satai and Matvey, right? Although I guess Lyubov could copy something fairly quickly.
[20:14]	Ironybot	Lyubov should be inherently better at mental pursuits in general because of Tesla's mind domain.
[20:14]	Ironybot	Even lacking anything to copy, I would expect her to be able to put up much more of a fight than the average minion.
[20:15]	BUTTZ	So far she's mostly been using her Mind inclination to explore the bounds of her creativity and inventiveness
[20:16]	guile	Karganya can apparently backdoor divine lightning into mind tricks. Titus has no idea, though
[20:16]	BUTTZ	Yeah that's not too hard
[20:16]	Ironybot	That's the sort of thing that Satai would never do, in her position. Any kind of mind-altering-mind stinks of "this is how to cause damage to yourself" to him, and he's not doing it until he has an instructor or experimental subjects to test things on.
[20:16]	guile	Titus should get an electrified crown
[20:16]	BUTTZ	Lyubov's well aware she could accidentally kill herself if she started tampering with her own mind
[20:17]	BUTTZ	She's mostly just playing with her new education and enjoying the mental development that comes from cementing the gains through use. That's what I meant by exploring her boundaries.