I want to create a twisted, dark-sided adversary who has outright mind control powers, like those typically seen in superhero comics. While this is similar to the Influence power, I want him to be able to control people like puppets, and force them to do things they otherwise never would, even hurt themselves.

Have I missed some way to represent this with the Force powers already in the game? If not, do you guys have any ideas on how this sinister force power could be designed?

Oobviously, there has to be some limits to his power, he can't be Purple Man-levels of powerful, as that'd let him conquer the whole galaxy in no time. (I'll likely give him Force Rating 4 or 5 though). One option I'm thinking about, to balance it, would be that he needs to gradually break down people's mental defenses before he can control them completely. Another could be that he needs an emotional or blood bond of some sort; for example, one of his first victim was his big sister, whom he forced to pour acid in her own eyes. After him having controlled both his sisters like puppets for weeks or months, they managed to set a trap for him and kill him. Or so they believed...

He's a Togruta, so yet another option would be that the mind control somehow is connected to his echolocation sense.

I'm not sure of anything beyond Influence. I just want to caution against taking too much agency away from your players. It isn't fun when your character is a puppet.

When it happened to me, if you are interested:

9 minutes ago, TheSapient said:

I'm not sure of anything beyond Influence. I just want to caution against taking too much agency away from your players. It isn't fun when your character is a puppet.

When it happened to me, if you are interested:

I played in a game with rotating GM's. One GM used a despair on my part (while trying to slice an old Sith database), to place a small subroutine into my character's brain implant. The next session, a new GM made my character full-on possessed by a Sith spirit of sorts. The details are not important. What matters is that I spent the whole session doing nothing but rolling what the GM told me to roll for whatever the GM was having my character do. This was not fun. On occasion, I was allowed to roll my Discipline against that of the ancient Sith. Two green vs 4 red. Near the end of the session, I rolled 2 despairs and my implant was destroyed (which was also not fun!)

oh, don't worry, I'm well aware of that. I'd never do that.

But that's the trick, of course. The power needs to be designed so that it can have devastating power over NPCs, but make player chracters very hard to control, or give them plenty of opportunity to break free, or at least enough agency to have fun. The classic old "Geas" spell in D&D was good that way - it gave you a mission that you -had- to fullfill, but how you went about it was up to you.

One could always design the power so that it affects minions and rivals more strongly that nemesises and player characters. If I'm not mistaken, that's even a rather common approach with certain high-end talents already in the game.

The Control: Emotion/Belief upgrade of Influence is the Jedi Mind Trick/Dominate Mind power. Use it sparingly against your players. I had one npc villain use it twice and rolled well enough one of the times that a player was mind tricked to assist them in escaping and defending them for 6 rounds of structured play. The player was frustrated a bit by it but started to get into playing as their mind tricked self. Afterwards, it became a great story point where the character dealt with the ramifications of attacking their crew (it was the captain and leader of the crew that got mind tricked). Since then I haven't used it. One player has begun to use it himself to handle situations in a non violent manner which has been neat.

I also talked things out with the players and made sure we were all on the same page. It was mainly a cool villain ability to turn the heroes against each other. I was not going to use it to have them kill each other and wasn't using it maliciously against the players. In turn, anyone who can obtain that power can use it as well.

I left the choice up to the player of either fulfilling their command or letting me play them for those rounds if they didn't want to turn on their allies. I think the player made the best choice then when they chose to play and make decisions still in character but with the new priority of protecting the one guy. I even left it up to then about how they would defend the dude, which I believe they used stun instead of lethal blasts intentionally because they weren't ordered to kill, just defend.

2 minutes ago, Natsymir said:

oh, don't worry, I'm well aware of that. I'd never do that.

But that's the trick, of course. The power needs to be designed so that it can have devastating power over NPCs, but make player chracters very hard to control, or give them plenty of opportunity to break free, or at least enough agency to have fun. The old "Geas" spell in D&D was good that way - it gave you a mission that you -had- to fullfill, but how you went about it was up to you.

One could always design the power so that it affects minions and rivals more strongly that nemesises and player characters. If I'm not mistaken, that's even a rather common approach with certain high-end talents already in the game.

I don't know enough about your campaign, but could the NPC stories be handled through the narrative? He doesn't need to have actually rolled to see how well he controlled other people. You can just say that he did. Give him the full Influence tree and a high Discipline. Maybe he does control a PC for a few rounds. That can be a legitimate part of a combat encounter, and could be peppered throughout a story line.

A sex change could allow the character to be a Nightsister, one of the mercenaries sent out in the clone wars era (if you are set then) gone rogue and out for her own nefarious needs. Then you could make whatever Magic-imbued-force-effect-voodoo thing you want.

3 minutes ago, TheSapient said:

I don't know enough about your campaign, but could the NPC stories be handled through the narrative? He doesn't need to have actually rolled to see how well he controlled other people. You can just say that he did. Give him the full Influence tree and a high Discipline. Maybe he does control a PC for a few rounds. That can be a legitimate part of a combat encounter, and could be peppered throughout a story line.

Yes, of course that's an option, but I see it as a backup option if I can't come up with a good enough unique force power to represent it.

To me, this would fall under a special ability, something like [NPC's name]'s Domination. This is what I would do:

Allow an opposed Discipline check once another character has exceeded their Strain Threshold and your NPC has flipped a Destiny Point. The NPC must commit a Force Die, but it effectively grants control over the dominated character. If the NPC forces them to do something antithetical to their beliefs, they get another opposed Discipline check to break free. Nemesis NPCs and PCs may make a Discipline check every round. Force wielding characters may add their Force Dice to the opposed roll, spending pips to gain success or advantage.

Battle Meditation used by the darkside can also be good for mind control since it reduce the willpower of the target(s) to 1.

There is also Battle Meditation . when you use Dark Side pips to power it, you reduce the targets’ Willpower by 1. With the Mastery upgrade , using DSPs , the targets must make a Doscipline check to resist obeying the orders given.

Jenserra's influence has a mastery that lets you force people to do as you will.

15 hours ago, Decorus said:

Jenserra's influence has a mastery that lets you force people to do as you will.

ooh...which book is that in?

Ghosts of Dathomir @Natsymir

I don't think its really what you are looking for tho. The target has to fail a fear check and then the user makes them do an action out of turn.

1 minute ago, SithArissa said:

I don't think its really what you are looking for tho. The target has to fail a fear check and then the user gets to decide there next action.

yeah...just took a look at it. That whole power tree feels really, really underwhelming compared to other force power trees...

that being said, the idea of a failed fear check being the basis for the mind control is interesting.

Battle Meditation along with influence...and enough force rating to commit the points as needed...since you're building this as an antagonist you can bend some of the rules of range bands and line of sight and all that...it could be that they land on some planet, and everything seems "okay" but always just a little bit off...they get into a few fights, and those fights are always going just a little bit better than expected. Like lucks in their favor a little more than usual. Folks are in high spirits...then they start noticing the voices..."Look out!", wow that was a close one..."They'll betray you", and they totally did...keep track of how often they listen to the advice, how quickly they come to "depend on it"...and each time, just make a little note...can have the voice become more demanding, "commanding" even as things go along. Spread this over a couple sessions even...

Basically, just remember the cardinal rule of Puppet-Master's...they're rarely "Direct"...and much prefer to sit safely behind the scenes and have their minions do the dirty work. If they ever find them, and aren't drooling puppets themselves, then the villain should go down rather easily in a direct fight; but they'll avoid that as much as possible. Puppet-Master's are always great to bring back around later on as recurring villains for that reason...taking over contacts, acquaintances, and if you want to go full bore on BBEG status for them, friends and loved ones, and the characters have to start watching out for it, because betrayal could be around any corner...even from those they work the closest with...or even from each other. (Cue the Dun-Dun-DUUUUUH's!)