Is barrier effective enough?

[RogueGunslinger]

Do you think barrier is an effective means to hide your mind from contact? I don't.


Personally I think it's way to easy to break through a maxed barrier. Someone with master barrier should be effectively logged out/dead for anyone who doesn't have master contact. And even then I think it should take 4-5 tries.


Edit: Damn S key.

[ShaLeah]

I'm on the fence. Why? There are times when the person is right in front of me and I can't reach them with their barrier on. Other times I break on through. Not sure the parameters.

[Nyr]

It's a pretty good means of hiding one's mind from contact.  It is not unstoppable, but there's more going into the whole thing than just skills (but that's mechanics info).

[Fujikoma]

I know at least a few of my characters could blast right through a barrier in 2-3 tries. I knew the people were barriered beforehand, or they let me know "Damnit! I just got that thing up!" from the other side of the known. Not sure if having multiple people trying to contact you at the same time has diddly to do with it, but it might.

EDIT: Line edited out because not relevant.

Not to mention:

Barrier
You form a psionic barrier around your mind (-bazillion stun)
1 second passes
You suffer from use of the way (-chunk)
half second
You suffer from use of the way -again (-other chunk)
three quarters of a second
You suffer from use of the way, sucka! (-more)
five seconds of relative calm
Your psionic barrier has been crushed!
three seconds go by
You sense a foreign presence withdraw from your mind

think (pissed) Not fecking again! Krath-damnit I'm going to find that little piss-brain, clamp down his feet, tie up his arms, and pull until he can kiss his own arse!

Just my opinion. I don't know, maybe if you don't make a lot of noise and interact, maybe you don't get that kind of issue, but it seems like a really dull time to me. Sometimes you just need a break, however.

Like,

Somewhere, in a dank, dark and bug infested apartment:

ooc: Hey Talia, consent for naughty bits?
The bulky, square-jawed savage oocs: Sure!

The bulky, square-jawed savage snaps her obsidian-tipped leather whip with a snarl, advancing rapidly.

barrier
You form a psionic barrier around your mind.

You suffer from use of the way.
Your psionic barrier is crushed!

The slack-jawed prick with no sense of fun sends you a telepathic message:
Hey Poopgargler, why the feck aren't you at training?!

EDIT AGAIN: Granted, there are many times it may have worked very well and I just did not know.

[evilcabbage]

He doesn't know you had a barrier up. And if he knows you're not at training, he's a mindbender

Master contact is not an end-all contact measure for people, just as master barrier is not an end-all blockout for people. Some people will naturally be better at blocking their minds, or breaking into other peoples minds. Psionicists even moreso because of their skillset.

[Narf]

He doesn't know you had a barrier up. And if he knows you're not at training, he's a mindbender

Actually, in my experience they usually know you're not at training because they're standing in the training yard looking at you not being there.

[Fujikoma]

THEY KNOW YOU'RE NOT AT TRAINING BECAUSE:

A) They're at training, and instead of assuming it's that time of the week you spend recovering from your beatings decide to way you
B) The Sergeant heard you weren't at training for whatever reason (maybe you're (un)popular)
C) They're secretly IN THE APARTMENT WITH YOU! AGGGHHHHH!

and
Z) Mindbender who gives a crap whether you're at training or not, who could probably find an excuse to get off duty, and I'm not sure about the skills here but, possibly watch(?)/interfere with(??)/make you go crazy and kill eachother (God I hope not) for her/his amusement, but has chosen instead to remind you of your duty to the clan.

[Patuk]

I think a master barrier being breakable by mundane contact(psions are another story altogether) defeats most of its purpose. You can say that it takes someone with master contact, and even then a few tries, to go through your barrier, but effectively speaking this means you might as well not have a barrier up at all.

[Delirium]

lower the cap for contact for non-psions to advanced. Leave barrier the way it is.

[Desertman]

I think a master barrier being breakable by mundane contact(psions are another story altogether) defeats most of its purpose.

This.

[Molten Heart]

lower the cap for contact for non-psions to advanced. Leave barrier the way it is.

[Desertman]

Also, change the Way so that when someone contacts me, it sends me their sdesc.

The blue-eyed man contacts your mind.

This would put an end to a ton of the Way sniffing that goes on.

[Harmless]

Also, change the Way so that when someone contacts me, it sends me their sdesc.

The blue-eyed man contacts your mind.

This would put an end to a ton of the Way sniffing that goes on.

It would put an end to some. I would argue that militia wouldn't give two shits if the person they're looking for knows who they are. Or, it would farm out the "job" of Way sniffing to people who don't have to keep their own identity hidden. Either way I agree with the suggestion.

[DustMight]

I think it's fine the way it is.  When I've had characters that needed to keep people out of their heads, they have been able to do so. Maybe not as fast as learning to cook, but one can get there with attention and focus.

[Desertman]

I think it's fine the way it is.  When I've had characters that needed to keep people out of their heads, they have been able to do so. Maybe not as fast as learning to cook, but one can get there with attention and focus.

My master barrier villains would only get their barriers crushed ten times a RL day just by people checking to see if they were online and "hunt-able"/"not a threat to them". (Seeing if I was online or offline, no other reason, or the latest bounty hunter just getting my sdesc.)

I would love to know what you were doing to prevent this.

[Fujikoma]

I think it's fine the way it is.  When I've had characters that needed to keep people out of their heads, they have been able to do so. Maybe not as fast as learning to cook, but one can get there with attention and focus.

My master barrier villains would only get their barriers crushed ten times a RL day just by people checking to see if they were online and "hunt-able"/"not a threat to them". (Seeing if I was online or offline, no other reason, or the latest bounty hunter just getting my sdesc.)

I would love to know what you were doing to prevent this.

I'd make the joke about nobles and tinfoil hats but I think someone did in a thread somewhere, I forget if it was me or someone else, likely, someone else.

EDIT: Ok, it was me, whoops.

[TillForPie]

I think it's fine the way it is.  When I've had characters that needed to keep people out of their heads, they have been able to do so. Maybe not as fast as learning to cook, but one can get there with attention and focus.

My master barrier villains would only get their barriers crushed ten times a RL day just by people checking to see if they were online and "hunt-able"/"not a threat to them". (Seeing if I was online or offline, no other reason, or the latest bounty hunter just getting my sdesc.)

I would love to know what you were doing to prevent this.

What I don't understand is how doing this, clearly to check if you're online, isn't reportable metagaming. Is it?

[DustMight]

My master barrier villains would only get their barriers crushed ten times a RL day just by people checking to see if they were online and "hunt-able"/"not a threat to them". (Seeing if I was online or offline, no other reason, or the latest bounty hunter just getting my sdesc.)

I don't understand how you know for sure someone is metagaming you unless they somehow admit it to you in an OOC channel or something?  How do you know it's not someone looking for someone with a similar sdesc? 

[Malken]

I think it's fine the way it is.  When I've had characters that needed to keep people out of their heads, they have been able to do so. Maybe not as fast as learning to cook, but one can get there with attention and focus.

My master barrier villains would only get their barriers crushed ten times a RL day just by people checking to see if they were online and "hunt-able"/"not a threat to them". (Seeing if I was online or offline, no other reason, or the latest bounty hunter just getting my sdesc.)

I would love to know what you were doing to prevent this.

Same here. I long gave up on barrier, and when someone tells me to "barrier up" because they're about to tell me some dark secrets, I just pretend that I'm barrier'ed up.

[Desertman]

My master barrier villains would only get their barriers crushed ten times a RL day just by people checking to see if they were online and "hunt-able"/"not a threat to them". (Seeing if I was online or offline, no other reason, or the latest bounty hunter just getting my sdesc.)

I don't understand how you know for sure someone is metagaming you unless they somehow admit it to you in an OOC channel or something?  How do you know it's not someone looking for someone with a similar sdesc?  

Because it only happens to my villains with unique sdescs? I have played a few of them. It never happens to my non-villains. I guess it is just one big coincidence that happens no less than five to ten times a RL day and only with those characters that I know are being hunted.

[Delirium]

Being able to effectively maintain a barrier would make the game world feel a little less tiny. It isn't just about being hunted or hiding secrets or what have you - it's about the fact that it's nearly impossible to remain truly low-profile - in a vast world - because of the small playerbase, and because of the Way. It would help all sorts of PCs be less visible, if they so chose.

I recognize that the Way does make it easier to facilitate interaction, but it does so at the expense of making the gameworld feel extraordinarily small.

Obscuring sdescs and making barrier more effective would be a nice step at the very least.

[LauraMars]

lower the cap for contact for non-psions to advanced. Leave barrier the way it is.

Yeah, I like this.  The Way is OOC convenience, sure, but if your character doesn't -want- to talk to people, it should be a little easier to avoid doing so.

[Fujikoma]

Being able to effectively maintain a barrier would make the game world feel a little less tiny. It isn't just about being hunted or hiding secrets or what have you - it's about the fact that it's nearly impossible to remain truly low-profile - in a vast world - because of the small playerbase, and because of the Way. It would help all sorts of PCs be less visible, if they so chose.

I recognize that the Way does make it easier to facilitate interaction, but it does so at the expense of making the gameworld feel extraordinarily small.

Obscuring sdescs and making barrier more effective would be a nice step at the very least.

Hee-hee, have low level failures on contact maybe contact a different faint shape in the playerbase.

[Patuk]

I recognize that the Way does make it easier to facilitate interaction, but it does so at the expense of making the gameworld feel extraordinarily small.

Obscuring sdescs and making barrier more effective would be a nice step at the very least.

This, very much. Buffing up barrier wouldn't make interaction harder, it would merely make avoiding the interaction you may not want easier.

[Barzalene]

He doesn't know you had a barrier up. And if he knows you're not at training, he's a mindbender

Actually, in my experience they usually know you're not at training because they're standing in the training yard looking at you not being there.

If I wasn't attached to my sig, this would be my new one.