In my years of experience with tabletop gaming let me tell you this: 'Overbalance' is the complaint of one annoyed that an exploit he had been using no longer works. Let me tell you what's hurtful. Ssarak can functionally do everything Alaira can do except 'Lightning explosion' (which I've only done once), and unlike Alaira there are no heavy penalties or costs. He is an extremely skilled combatant, He can fly, he can disable opponents at range with Psychomancy, which is like lightning but he cannot miss.
In combat my character is basically useless in comparison since five or six lightning bolts is nowhere NEAR as useful and he's just as potent physically.
This isn't tabletop though. Some aspects don't quite apply due to the fact they don't have the same elements to help balance things out. Tabletop usually has streamline description (aka, mainly focusing on the action usually), rely on dice luck and number balance to achieve balance. Something we have to do through description, trust and wording. Tabletop doesn't account for creativity outside a strategy that seems pretty much straight forward, to me anyways.
If I was hunting Ssarak, who in this example is at level of a master, I already know how my rules would limit him as it would be no different than any other blood.
1. Range limit: getting out of the 500 ft range, no magic effects work including Psychomancy. This means Ssarak, or any other Psychomancer, can't read Alaira's mind at all or influence it in any way though sadly as a mage, nor can hers. However there's numerous long range weapons that can... And since an arrow hasn't an mind, how can he sense it coming?
2. Sight. If they can't see, through eyes or other means, they can't cast accurate magic, period. Which means if someone tries to mind control and you get behind a rock, smoke bomb, etc and out of sight, guess what? That spell can't be casted since they lost their target.
3. Doing many tasks/spell/actions at once. This lowers your chances of dodging or damage worth, mainly because dodging takes effort and awareness. To cast a spell, those two aspects lowers and the more you're doing determines the damage result. You do up to 4-6 things, you're going to get seriously hurt and likely killed because best you can likely do is sidestep in place.
4. Natural vs Manipulation, you're rewriting what has been there since birth. It takes some time which gives an opponent some time to react and stop the source before the spell is complete.
Another factor you might not have realized, Free, is that the mind is also influenced by electricity in the brain. I assume, though Lucius might want to correct me, that if a electromancer, which this is well in the range of one, can alter and sort of shock their brain out of the effects. This would make it hard for a psychomancer to retain control as they need to be familiar with the mind set they are latching into. Much like vitamncy needs a wide, detailed knowledge of anatomy to be used else you risk killing otherwise hitting the wrong stuff, potently causing more trouble then intended. Especially in healing. In addition, because of rule 4 which goes for all bloods, the targeted player has short time depending on the level (even a master has several seconds) to counter/stop the attack in a way they think is fitting. Which then involves rule concerning the points of focus or dodge, meaning their spell lessens in power due to having to shift focus briefly. This can even prevent the spell from being casted at all.
Any normal character, especially one not trained for combat, will have a hard time against mages of any sufficient level at least. A civilian would just panic and die, even against a trained soldier realistically. However someone trained to deal with combative situations can stay calm and cool, then use that time to either sent a fast attack into the mage or at least break the focus causing the spell to be either weaker (aka taking more time to activate and lessens power) or not be casted at all.
I hope this helps some.
Member
Oso,
Konan375,
Sep,
Echotech71,
pppp,
BrokenPromise,
Fetzen,
mickilennial,
Force and Fury
