Mental Evocations solutions?

[Lavecki121]

Mostly I would prefer that you self Compel (at least for your own Aspects and not Aspects I am putting into place). But should I Compel your characters, the threshold of a worthy Compel will be (I feel) quite low. Not quite a weak Compel but close enough to be neighbors. In fact, I was thinking of Compelling a scene Aspect to have Eugene voluntarily give himself away. Assume that I did make the Compel. Would you accept or do you want to negotiate it?

Some negotiation but mostly accepted

[Taran]

I kind of lost track of where this thread went, so don't be uspset if I'm going on a different tangent.

I compel scene aspects and consequences constantly.  If I don't, they don't get used.  NPC's don't always have the FP's and PC's usually go for one tag and that's it. I want to get mileage out of the aspects in place.  Self-compels are nice, but I like to challenge the players, so I do my best to compels their aspects.  It's harder though.  Sometimes my players have boat-loads of FP's and sometimes they have almost none because they've been forced to buy off hard compels.  I think it evens out in the wash.  They usually have more than enough FP's to do fun stuff on top of any tags they use.

[ReaderAt2046]

I'd say the simplest solution would be to rule that it's impossible to do mental stress with evocation. Molly-style mindbending can be thaumaturgy. If you want to have Corpsetaker-style mental battles, then I'd suggest using these rules.

1. Evocation or psycomantic evothaum (Your discretion on which) can be used to initiate a mental duel, probably using a variant of the rules for a grapple.

2. In such a duel, each participant can attack with Conviction (or other skills as justifiable) to inflict mental stress (These attacks are Weapon 0, just like fists). Both parties can defend with Discipline, or other skills as justifiable.

3. The party who initiated the duel in the first place can disengage on her turn as a free action, but not if she has already made a mental attack that turn.

4. Fairies and other nonhuman creatures get a +2 bonus to mental attack and defense, to represent the extreme focus and alien nature of their minds. Scale this up to +4 or +6 for more powerful creatures (Mab, Molly, Atropos, Uriel,etc.)

[Quantus]

Would there be a mechanism for the defender preventing the originating attacker from disengaging if they were so inclined and/or capable?  Or would that basically be the defender initiating a new battle?

[Taran]

I like the idea of a mental conflict.

If you want to get really into it, you make a rule of advantage where only the person with advantage could disengage.  That could be modelled various ways.