If you can essentially treat someone as a solved puzzle and you can reliably and effectively push their levers and you know what they're going to say even before they do... well, ask a philosopher. At this point, "free will" has basically gone out the window if you can treat a human being as a computer that'll do a given output to a given input.
It's ethically dubious regardless, for exactly the same reason that an adult taking advantage of a child is ethically dubious.
And also potentially toxic to any narrative unless you're careful, but--
*Shrugs. Has stated my own uneasiness with the concept(s) (of Exalted) that's led to me not reading the corebooks for a game I'm never going to play (which is already enough to reduce the chance of me spending my time with it) whose mechanics are apparently broken*
A lot of the aesthetics/ideas and setting and stuff, and homebrew=Great.
IMO, on the other hand, don't really like a lot of the themes. Hence why I don't post that often.
There is a martial art charm that tears out a persons heart and offers it to him as a automatically successful prayer.
We don't know if he appreciates it or not.
Dragon Kings used to worship the Unconquered Sun directly, and ripped out the hearts of sacrifical victims.
Which wasn't actually that big a sacrifice, as long as the person in question was a Dragon King. After all, Dragon Kings can unlock the memories of their previous incarnations through schooling and training, so the loss is far less.
Of course, then they moved on to humans who don't reincarnate like that - the soul is completely wiped off memory and other impressions. But even then there was no protest from the Unconquered Sun.
And in the case of Heart-Ripping Claw, you're killing someone you were fighting anyway. It's not inherently different from stabbing someone in the gut and letting them bleed out, it's arguably more merciful and if it somehow prevents a hungry ghost from forming by destroying the soul - hey, that's a net-positive too. (There's no indication that it does, but still).
However, if you want to use Black Claw Style in 3E, beware of Doe Eyes Defense.
For 4m (and technically 1 Initiative, but the Mastery-effect actually grants Initiative so that's not an issue), it subtracts your Guile from the enemies attack. That's huge - Guile can easily be 5 (6 with a speciality, such as "feign innocence") at character creation, and the Essence 2 Socialize-charm Guarded Thoughts Meditation raises it by 3.
Subtracting 8 or 9 dice from your opponents attack roll basically means that you can only be hit by enemies who use full excellencies or equivalents (so, costing ~10 motes), and only if you don't use defense-enhancing charms.
The Charm basically breaks the combat system over it's knee and makes it near-impossible to hit you until you run out of motes, which can take a long time.
As a suggested fix, just give the charm the following text instead:
Cost: 2i
Doe Eyes Defense raises the martial artists Evasion by 1 against a single attack. If the attacking enemy has a positive Tie towards her, she may raise her Evasion by the Ties intensity, but only if she pays as many motes as this charm adds to her Evasion. Against an enemy with a defining Intimacy towards her, she would have to pay four motes, but gain +4 Evasion. Terrestrial: Total increase is capped by Essence. Mastery: as before.
This version is at worst a slightly worse version of Reed in the Wind. For Solars, it's actually cheaper on a success, though to be an Initiative-producer the enemy has to have at least a major Intimacy.
The extra evasion on a tie is cheaper than raising it via Excellency - it's half cost once you hit major and defining intimacies.
And more importantly, it's capped by normal dice-limits so that you don't break the game in half.
If you're not defining mind control as "I can reliably make you think or do something whenever I want without any threats, coercion or physical force", what are you defining it as? What exactly is the difference between mind-controlling someone by pushing a button on a remote control, mind-controlling someone by waving a magic wand and mind-controlling someone by saying a few words to them?
Is it some notion of "fairness", because they can say words back? Because that's like saying it's fair to shoot someone with an assault rifle because they have a BB-gun. They can't say words back at that level or exert anything like as much control over you as you can over them, so you're deliberately exploiting a hideously uneven power dynamic for your own ends if you use that "persuasive skill".
Bluntly, persuasion is a form of mind control. If you have persuaded someone to agree with you, you have exerted influence and control over their mind and how they think.
It's just that for the most part, it's not very powerful mind control, and it's generally accepted because we don't like thinking about/understand how much control over our own minds and worldviews we don't actually have.
What exactly is the difference between mind-controlling someone by pushing a button on a remote control, mind-controlling someone by waving a magic wand and mind-controlling someone by saying a few words to them?
Dragon Kings used to worship the Unconquered Sun directly, and ripped out the hearts of sacrifical victims.
Which wasn't actually that big a sacrifice, as long as the person in question was a Dragon King. After all, Dragon Kings can unlock the memories of their previous incarnations through schooling and training, so the loss is far less.
Of course, then they moved on to humans who don't reincarnate like that - the soul is completely wiped off memory and other impressions. But even then there was no protest from the Unconquered Sun.
And in the case of Heart-Ripping Claw, you're killing someone you were fighting anyway. It's not inherently different from stabbing someone in the gut and letting them bleed out, it's arguably more merciful and if it somehow prevents a hungry ghost from forming by destroying the soul - hey, that's a net-positive too. (There's no indication that it does, but still).
However, if you want to use Black Claw Style in 3E, beware of Doe Eyes Defense.
For 4m (and technically 1 Initiative, but the Mastery-effect actually grants Initiative so that's not an issue), it subtracts your Guile from the enemies attack. That's huge - Guile can easily be 5 (6 with a speciality, such as "feign innocence") at character creation, and the Essence 2 Socialize-charm Guarded Thoughts Meditation raises it by 3.
Subtracting 8 or 9 dice from your opponents attack roll basically means that you can only be hit by enemies who use full excellencies or equivalents (so, costing ~10 motes), and only if you don't use defense-enhancing charms.
The Charm basically breaks the combat system over it's knee and makes it near-impossible to hit you until you run out of motes, which can take a long time.
As a suggested fix, just give the charm the following text instead:
Cost: 2i
Doe Eyes Defense raises the martial artists Evasion by 1 against a single attack. If the attacking enemy has a positive Tie towards her, she may raise her Evasion by the Ties intensity, but only if she pays as many motes as this charm adds to her Evasion. Against an enemy with a defining Intimacy towards her, she would have to pay four motes, but gain +4 Evasion. Terrestrial: Total increase is capped by Essence. Mastery: as before.
This version is at worst a slightly worse version of Reed in the Wind. For Solars, it's actually cheaper on a success, though to be an Initiative-producer the enemy has to have at least a major Intimacy.
The extra evasion on a tie is cheaper than raising it via Excellency - it's half cost once you hit major and defining intimacies.
And more importantly, it's capped by normal dice-limits so that you don't break the game in half.
I mean, it's technically mind-control to Persuade people, sure.
And in Exalted 2e when people can be persuaded of anything given a week...well, yeah.
We've had that part of the conversation before.
But talking to people, in the context we're exploring (rather than perfect words) doesn't fit the aesthetics and themes of mind control, even if it fits a technical definition. And I think story-wise, it's the themes and aesthetics that matter. That said, supernaturally persuading people in the Exalted 2e system has literally every aesthetic hallmark of mind control. "You hate your family" "I...hate my family?" "Yes, you do." "I do!" "You will join me." "I will join you."
Which always seemed to be to be a narrative difficulty that's sorta prevented me from wanting to try out Exalted (that and hearing the mechanics were borked.)
It's actually really hard to portray those levels of competence, especially in fields you know nothing about, without making it frankly ridiculous. And there's nothing really to be done about it, because that's just a setting conceit (though it is made worse by how, while a lot of settings mostly make their superpowered beings good at hitting stuff or etc, Exalted makes them superb (great and terrible) human beings who can cook better than anyone, wash dishes better than anyone, lead better than anyone, etc, etc...)
Exalted are memetic Gaston.
So yeah, I do sorta admire people who can dive into the setting and make it work for them and tell interesting stories and the like, if only because it's somewhat divorced from my tastes and seems like it'd take a certain special set of skills.
Well, isn't that sort of true? You have a bunch of logical fallacies, instinct-driven behaviour and blind spots that underlie many of your actions, which can be used to prey on you by anyone who knows how. While we have the pleasant illusion of being blessed with total free will and complete control over our beliefs and actions, many of them are not nearly as well-founded as we think. This is true for all of us. We just don't like thinking about it because it makes us very uncomfortable to acknowledge that the methods that an abusive spouse or a cult leader or a con artist use to exploit and control people would work on us just as well as anyone else. Pretending that you wouldn't fall for such tricks and that it's just a matter of holding to your integrity and that people can't make you believe or do something you disagree with (unless they have a magic spell which can be resisted through The Power of Friendship) is a comforting and reassuring lie.
But yes, "mind control" - or at least mental influence - is a common, basic part of human culture. If you interact with other people, you cede control over some of your actions and let your reality be dictated by other people. At the most basic level imaginable, your parents or whoever raised you have an enormous amount of control over the person you grow up to be - look at indoctrinated kids raised in cults or whatever and you can see how that power can be called "mind control" very easily when abused. But for the most part you're taught socially acceptable things in line with mainstream culture, and so it's not thought about.
"Mind control" is a sliding scale of "I do not have complete and utter autonomy over my own mind" - because anyone who did would be even more insane than an Ayn Rand protagonist. Most of it isn't very powerful and leaves you with a majority of self-autonomy, the exploitative hacks that can seriously fuck with you are mostly considered illegal or immoral, and the general push and pull of social influence is accepted because the only other option is locking yourself in a room and never talking to anyone, ever. But once you start playing with the axiom of "knowing precisely what words can be used to convince someone of anything you want to convince them of", we have gone way beyond the fumbling, weak, mostly-resistable type of persuasion you encounter in real life into "power dynamics that have a greater disparity than that between an abusive adult and their defenceless child". And that is, in essence, no different to full-blown magic-spell control-remote "mind control" that strips away all free will and leaves you little more than a puppet for your new master.
But talking to people, in the context we're exploring (rather than perfect words) doesn't fit the aesthetics and themes of mind control, even if it fits a technical definition. And I think story-wise, it's the themes and aesthetics that matter. That said, supernaturally persuading people in the Exalted 2e system has literally every aesthetic hallmark of mind control. "You hate your family" "I...hate my family?" "Yes, you do." "I do!" "You will join me." "I will join you."
Well, isn't that sort of true? You have a bunch of logical fallacies, instinct-driven behaviour and blind spots that underlie many of your actions, which can be used to prey on you by anyone who knows how. While we have the pleasant illusion of being blessed with total free will and complete control over our beliefs and actions, many of them are not nearly as well-founded as we think. This is true for all of us. We just don't like thinking about it because it makes us very uncomfortable to acknowledge that the methods that an abusive spouse or a cult leader or a con artist use to exploit and control people would work on us just as well as anyone else.
Well, isn't that sort of true? You have a bunch of logical fallacies, instinct-driven behaviour and blind spots that underlie many of your actions, which can be used to prey on you by anyone who knows how. While we have the pleasant illusion of being blessed with total free will and complete control over our beliefs and actions, many of them are not nearly as well-founded as we think.
The thing is, we don't refer to our serotonin levels as mind-controlling us (Despite the fact that they totally do) because at that point, mind-control stops being a useful label.
Free will is an illusion, and mind control are things that shatter it. But i don't think that Exalted persuasion does that (outside of certain obvious charms), and i don't think mind-control is the right way to refer to it.
Like, if an adult tricks a children, we don't say he is mind controlling him. He is just being a douchebag.
The same applies if a Lunar tricks me out of all my fortune in a game of chance.
The thing is, we don't refer to our serotonin levels as mind-controlling us (Despite the fact that they totally do) because at that point, mind-control stops being a useful label.
Free will is an illusion, and mind control are things that shatter it. But i don't think that Exalted persuasion does that (outside of certain obvious charms), and i don't think mind-control is the right way to refer to it.
Like, if an adult tricks a children, we don't say he is mind controlling him. He is just being a douchebag.
The same applies if a Lunar tricks me out of all my fortune in a game of chance.
Not necessarily. I mean, not getting into the real world (really, why would we, fiction doesn't have to match our metaphysics, and it's a subject of debate anyways) but mind control could just as easily be seen as a supernatural way to bind a will that *was*, emphasis on was, free. That a man was free and is now enslaved does not make freedom an illusion, does it?
"Mind control" is a sliding scale of "I do not have complete and utter autonomy over my own mind" - because anyone who did would be even more insane than an Ayn Rand protagonist.
"I have dedicated myself to this lifelong cause with a fanaticism that stands proof against any attempt to change my mind, against even the condemnation of gods!"
"Oh wow, Solar Jane! What drove you to take up that cause?"
"Five seconds ago, I consciously decided that I would, and I am the CAPTAIN OF MY SOUL."
"Mind control" is a sliding scale of "I do not have complete and utter autonomy over my own mind" - because anyone who did would be even more insane than an Ayn Rand protagonist.
This is true for all of us. We just don't like thinking about it because it makes us very uncomfortable to acknowledge that the methods that an abusive spouse or a cult leader or a con artist use to exploit and control people would work on us just as well as anyone else.
I sort of disagree with this, because while we aren't islands of free will, we certainly don't all work the same way either, and being aware of those methods in the first place will in fact help you resist them, which I am sure you are quite aware of as well.
Because, of those examples that you listed, I do indeed have experience with one of them (and it's sadly not the con artist, because that's the easy one), and you can totally resist those techniques as long as you are aware of how they work and how they're put to use. Furthermore, these methods use specific exploits and loopholes in human behavior to function, and some people just don't have those specific loopholes.
As an example: I am mostly asexual and aromantic (I can't be 100% asexual or aromantic because again; more insane than an Ayn Rand protagonist), so I can generally be sure that sexual or romantic seduction won't work on me, because I genuinely don't care about them (bribes totally work though, give me money please).
Because, of those examples that you listed, I do indeed have experience with one of them (and it's sadly not the con artist, because that's the easy one), and you can totally resist those techniques as long as you are aware of how they work and how they're put to use.
(Remember, when your players are interacting with someone who knows what they are, giving them a -5 penalty because of distrust towards evil anathema is totally kosher).
Plus, the con artist and cult leader has to, and in fact does, tailor their approaches to fit specific people or groups that they are targeting. If the New Age Cult Leader tried to use the same tricks on crotchety old WWII vets who don't give a shit about aliens and chakra signs...
Well. There you go. You can watch an old grandpa beat a cult leader to death with his cane.
Yes, I should have elaborated on that, but got sidetracked by homebrew and hunger.
Basically:
By definition, it's persuasion.
In practice, it'll get you the same results as mind-control, or at least what people often call mind-control.
Mind-control is only really a useful term to describe some form of direct, puppeteering, magical control over someone. It's a speculative fiction term that doesn't bear any resemblance to how the human mind actually works, and get's used way too often for things that really are just changing someones mind, because we're not comfortable with the notion that our minds are easily changed. We'd rather imagine that this result is only possible if someone completely takes away our "free will", because that's more comfortable than acknowledging that our free will is inherently fallible and subject to influences all the time.
Incidentally, even by that definition 2E Exalted-style persuasion isn't mind-control, it's still persuasion, since you don't actually get to pupeteer your target - just re-write their mind.
A more useful question would be "is it persuasion or brainwashing".
To which the answer would be "that's only a matter of degree." Because brainwashing is really just persuading you over and over again of lots of different things. It's perfectly possible to brainwash people in real life, after all.
Take Deus and his "everyone, including my victims, always cast my actions in a good light" Charm. That's literary what abusers do to their victims and everyone around them, the only difference is that they have human limits. Which can mean much less than you might think, given what abusers can make look plausible.
"You hate your family" "I...hate my family?" "Yes, you do." "I do!" "You will join me." "I will join you."
