Power Thoughts

[Greywind]

I'm working on a bit and started thinking specifically of how powers work. It's a given that, in most cases, a person that has abilities can use those abilities without harming themselves.

 

As I go further into this, a person, say in this instance a telepath, "knows" how to read a person's thoughts. They may not do it well, the ability will need to be honed, but they can do it without causing damage to the target, unless that is also part of their power. The ability, for lack of a better way of putting it, has a built in safeguard.

 

Now, say a non-telepathic person, is given the ability to read someone's mind. I'm not talking like G'Kar and Londo where the Dust did as much damage to G'Kar as the reading did to Londo, but instead a situation where G'Kar had no side-effects, was able to see what it was he was after.

 

What I'm thinking would be akin to the difference of: you go home, you have an innate sense that someone has been in and searched the place, though you can't find anything really out of place, as opposed to: you go home and find all the drawers and cabinets dumped on the floor and some one kicked over the trash.

 

Thoughts?

[Hyper-Man]

Is the ability actually seeing inside someone's mind or just a history of what occurred at a particular time and place where the target was present?  If it's not actually giving access to a target's thoughts and only to what they physically did or experienced it could easily be modeled using Clairsentience with the appropriate Adders.

[Greywind]

More of an actual tap dance through someone's mental faculties. Right now I'm not looking at a power build. More like brainstorming.

[Cassandra]

Clairvoyance that only lets you see/experience things in the past.

 

The powers is you experience what the person who was in the immediate area was during a certain time in the past (say, one hour).  You know that the room was searched because you pick up the "vibes" of the person who searched it.

[IndianaJoe3]

What I'm thinking would be akin to the difference of: you go home, you have an innate sense that someone has been in and searched the place, though you can't find anything really out of place, as opposed to: you go home and find all the drawers and cabinets dumped on the floor and some one kicked over the trash.

 

Thoughts?

 

Well, Telepathy already offers the ability to be undetected by the target (at +20 to level of effect).  If a player wanted to be only subtly detectable I might rule it as +15 instead of +20.