Clouding Minds

[Gizmo]

So hey, y'know what probably would have been a good idea before playing a guy with a combination of Obscure, Concealment, Stealth and Hide in Plain Sight? Figuring out how all of those work and interact with each other. Yeah. Whoops.

Luckily, Atomic Think Tank had me covered with this. This gist of it is this:

• Stealth lets you avoid detection if you beat your opponent's Notice check, but you need cover to use it.
  Hide in Plain Sight waives that requirement, but you still have to beat their Notice check.
  Concealment means they flat out cannot use senses with the specified descriptors to 'see' you.

So, for example, if Midnight and Lukos are just standing in a cloud of midnight mist, Lukos can't see Midnight at all, but he can accurately smell him. If they're in the mist and Midnight is using Stealth, Lukos has to beat it with his Notice, or Midnight stays hidden from all his senses. Outside of the mist, HiPS lets Midnight use Stealth without cover, but Lukos could use sight or smell as the basis of his Notice check.

It still seems a little weird that you can use Stealth to hide from enhanced smelling or telepathy, but I guess the assumption is that anyone with a super sense has a pretty good Notice, too, enough to beat most Stealth checks, especially if the sneaky person is incurring penalties through shenanigans.

With that aside, here's my problem. Currently, Midnight has this:

Concealment 2 ["cloud men's minds" (mental, mutant); all mental, Power Feat: Close Range, Flaws: Partial, Phantasm] [2pp]

As it turns out, that really doesn't do what I wanted it to do. As it is, if someone has already succeeded in Noticing him with an accurate mental sense, they still have a 20% chance of missing him, unless they beat a DC 12 Will Save. That... isn't very good.

You know that effect in video games where that blur let's you sort of see the invisible guy? That's what I'm going for, but limited to mental senses. They can tell he's there, but they can't pin him down or tell much about him (via acute or analytical). You try to sense him and it's like he's just a shadow. Woo-OOO-ooo! It's supposed to be spooky!

The question, after all of that, is how should I go about this. Getting rid of Phantasm seems like the place to start, but even then, does this really have the effect I'd like it to? Anyone have any thoughts or suggestions? Should I just save up for Limited Immunity to Mental Effects?

[N/A]

Check out "Displacement" in Ultimate Power. For a -1PP/rank flaw on your Concealment, people with that sense type can still "see" you, they can still target you, but they suffer a 50% miss chance because you're blurry or you're not quite where they think you are.

Concealment 2 (All Mental Senses, Flaws: Displacement) [2PP]

[Gizmo]

Nice. That's why you're our favourite, Shaen!

Incidentally, I figured out what was giving me so much trouble conceptually with Stealth and Super Senses last night. It makes a lot more sense to me if I think of Super Senses as the raw capability, and the character's Notice modifier as a measure of the sense's acuity. So you can have telepathy, but if you've only got +5 Notice, it's weak enough that a lot of people are going to be able to trick it.

[N/A]

Glad you like it.

I agree with your analysis wholeheartedly.

[angrydurf]

Another quick point with stealth is that if you are using stealth you need to have cover VS. that sense type to use it. So if you don't have cover VS. Smell or mental senses or whatever you can't use stealth, Or a sense with penetrates concealment (X-ray vision). HiPS of course removes this restriction so you can use stealth regardless of cover.