Cheap Contact; Expensive Psi

[nauta]

Hi,

I had this thought after playing a fairly iso role during off peak where I can go RL hours, even days, without encountering another PC.  I tend to do this every hour or so:

who c <my clan>

then (assuming nobody is on in my clan):
contact Bob
contact Sue
contact Jim
contact George
etc.

Sometimes I don't want to say anything, but if I know they are online, I'll move myself to the location where I know they tend to congregate -- which often involves a lot of travel.

I noticed, however, that contact takes a pretty big chunk out of your stun.  So the proposal:

Lower the hit significantly to stun from a mere contact.

To compensate, I'd say (maybe) raise the hit to stun from a 'psi'.

Hence, you can tap minds as an OOC convenience for pretty cheap, but actually messaging with people still takes as much (maybe even more) concentration.

Thoughts?

[Desertman]

*shrug*

Why not.

[JackGibbons]

The only downside there is for people who have more extensive conversations with fewer people passing out, instead of the ones trying to find minds in the first place. I guess it's a balance based on use case.

[Delirium]

Sorry, but I don't like this. It would make it even easier for people to break through barriers if contact stun was lowered.

[Desertman]

I don't want to derail but yes barrier being shit-tier to begin with is an entirely different issue.

I stopped even raising it on characters when I realized even at Master I never managed to keep anyone out who wanted to find my mind.

Sort of pointless in every way really. If someone is trying to get my mind, especially someone I want to keep out, they might not get me the first time, but they aren't going to try just once. They are going to try once every half hour or so and they WILL eventually get me no matter what.

Barrier isn't actually a barrier. It should be renamed to "Minor Hindrance".

[Delirium]

Lately I've been thinking that people should start with expel, then barrier should branch from it, and be insanely hard to break through.

That said, I think things are fine the way they are now, and making contact cheaper would cheapen barrier further.

Barrier isn't totally worthless, it's actually very useful in some scenarios, but it definitely doesn't need to be further nerfed.

[Jingo]

I'm pretty neutral about any changes to the way.

*COUGH* Intercept skill. *COUGH*

[nauta]

The barrier stuff is relevant, I hadn't thought about that.  Two options:

a) A modest boost to barrier's effectiveness.

b) A sliding scale of stun damage for contact: 1 for the first in the hour, 2 for the second, 4 for the third, 16 for the fourth and beyond.

But.  The more I think about barrier, the more I like Delirium's proposal: make expel happen first, then barrier. 

Setting aside whatever magickal stuff barrier does (honestly: I don't know but I can guess), how often do people actually use barrier to block out people?  For one, as a matter of fact, it isn't very useful for that.  For another, expel is much more useful for sending the message: leave me alone!  For three, I mean, seriously, if someone is spamming you with 'psi' messages, you might just file a player complaint, or in any case you can just ignore it.  That seems like a really silly thing to do.

So in sum, I guess I don't see the usefulness of one function of barrier: blocking people from messaging you, both as a matter of fact, and in principle.  If we abandon the idea that barrier blocks people from contacting you, then we don't even need to tweak barrier.

[CodeMaster]

Somewhere in a past post Morgenes described barrier as one of the most powerful skills in the game... makes you think.

[edits:]

To stay on-topic though, those of us without access to who c probably just have a rolodex they go through to see who's online.  I wouldn't mind it being easier.

I once idead a monitor psi command that was very cheap to maintin but would tell you if a specific person newly became available over the Way.

[Synthesis]

Setting aside whatever magickal stuff barrier does (honestly: I don't know but I can guess)

If you don't know, you probably can't guess beyond the obvious.

Anyway, starting with expel and branching into barrier would be silly, because using expel is considered to be at the very least quite rude (for good reason), and nobody would ever branch barrier at all without coordinating with another PC for expel practice.