Quote from: BalbinusIllusions I go for 3, mind control I go for 2, not that either comes up much.

I would never use 1.

:ditto:

I'm not sure about "never", but I avoid #1...with extreme prejudice. I like to trust my players.

P.S. I'm another one of the people that aren't quite clever enough [a stone face liar ] to pull off #3 with consistancy, although I do giv'er the old college try from time to time.

For illusions I tell them what the illusion looks like and they react to that. For mind control I usually let them act it out, but if it's possession then I take over because it's not the character anymore, it's the possessing entity. For insanity they always get to play it out.

In all three instances I reserve the right to veto actions. Practiccally the only times I've ever had to use the veto is if I've failed to adequately explain an aspect of the situation.

All of the above, although rarely #1 and as people have mentioned #2 for mind control and #3 for illusions. Depending on the type of insanity, I'd use #1, #2 or #3.

Depending on the type of mind control I might use #1 as well. For example a failed save on against the Command spell doesn't really leave any room for player interpretation, so that's effectively #1, but Charm Person does so that's #2 in my book.

If the insanity is long term and debilitating and/or means the player will attack other party members then I tend to go with #1 over the other methods. If it's just a case of seeing things that aren't there then go for #3.

Just so people know, I usually use number 2, because I generally trust my players to RP the effects of these sort of things, and most of them get seriously into it.

I will use number 1 when the effect of whatever we're talking about basically makes PCs catatonic, like with insanity effects in CoC; where they temporarily become NPCs.

Number 3 tends to be too difficult to keep up in the long term, and only tends to work really well when its something that affects the party as a whole.

That said, I had at least one very memorable example of a number 3 technique in an Amber campaign (one where all the other PCs were in on the trick except the player who's character was affected), and likewise a very very good case of the longest term "number 2" I can remember happening, in that same Amber campaign.

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