BonesOfTheEarth

Merging mental magic with sensory makes about as much sense as merging translo with shifting; it only sounds decent to people who know nothing about how the magic actually works/didn’t actively practice it.

Point seems to generally be “metagaming.”

My thought on fixing it would be to buff mental barriers to be an actual conflict between a mental mage and target, and make them easier to get(not including wards). Have mental barriers able to come back up depending on if the mental mage tries to do certain things, rather than being a one-time weak way of attempting a defense.

Though that doesn’t take into account the fact that you’re immediately considered suspect if you refuse to let your mind be looked through. So I pose my next question:

If the intent was to write mental magic mostly true to its roots, what would be a way to stop people from demanding to check your head? I don’t particularly want to remove the ability to enter someone’s mind, but change how it works once inside.

My idea would be to write in something like this: If you fight the mental mage, and lose(though you could very well win this as well), then you cannot give fake memories. This would then be added in with the fact that more mental barriers could be thrown up in cases of personal things being looked at, etc(mental barriers not just being a 1 trick anymore but a continuous). However, if you willingly accept them into your head, you would be considered calm and collected enough mentally in order to give a fake recollection of an event, making it infeasible to just demand to look inside your head. Of course, with added methods to prevent a “Let me in your head, but fight me with a barrier first so you can’t do fake memories!”

the win or lose thing with barriers is good, i was thinking the same thing and then i realised you’d said it lol. though i think you should be able to get in with ease if they’re unconscious or incapacitated. something interesting could also be that you’re able to get in if they’re under the influence of drugs or alcohol, but all the mental **** you see is also affected by that.

i definitely think if you straight up accept it and get rid of barriers, you should for sure be able to tell unwhole truths and whatever.

tbh i think you’ve got this figured out and can definitely write some cool **** for it, obviously just make sure you don’t put in things that straight up fucks mental mages from doing anything whatsoever.

I’m taking on mental magic as my next writing project. If anyone wants to help along with writing and/or see progress, add me on discord: BonesOfTheEarth#4173

Can probably get it done in a week with my work pace.