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An interesting scenario came up the other day and I thought I'd share it.

First a tiny bit of background. Two of the players were captured during a raid on a large group (200) of high tech bandits, stopping them from taking over a mine in the area. The bandits took their stuff, beat them, imprisoned them and started torturing them to find out where the rest of the group was based as the group had been foiling the bandits' attempts to take over the three small communities in the area.

A Mind Melter in the group doing recon on the bandits decided to sneak into the camp using the Psionic Invisibility super power. During this he had what I thought was a pretty good idea but it eventually caused quite some debate in the group.

He had good prowl rolls to go along with the invisibility and the psychics within the bandits were unable to detect him (none with any real abilities in that area) he followed a tired looking middle rank "officer" to his tent to see if he could find out anything and as they were alone he came up with the idea to attempt the following plan:
As quickly as he could his character would; get into position behind the officer (who had sat down to rest) where he could lightly touch his temples and do a mind bond with him in order to see if he could find the location of the prisoners an any info that could help in their escape, using the officers confusion at what was happening to disguise the touch. As soon as that was over, his character would then immediately start a Mind Wipe, erasing everything the officer had just learned about him, making it seem like he had dozed off and had a dream that would fade completely within minutes of waking.
This is what caused the debate in the end: Some argued a mind bond was an attack because he was part of a group that wanted to stop all the bandits and rescue the prisoners so he would become visible as soon as he started it, causing associated problems. Also that the guard might notice the touch and so on.
The player argued that as it is shared and they both gain from the bond, it is beneficial to both and that it's not an attack, just a startling, strange and confusing experience, and then using the resulting confusion begin the mind wipe, erase the experience and sneak out with all the officers knowledge, no betrayal of his comrades or himself, and none of the enemy any the wiser that they had been compromised.

In the end the GM allowed it because of the ingenuity providing the officer was allowed to save again 4 times for: Invisibility in the tent, Involuntary Mind Bond, Mind Wipe, and another Invisibility to leave....

Phew that was heaps longer than I intended.

Any thoughts? Wanna know how it turned out? How would you or your group play this one?

Some excellent points there both of you. I agree, they were attacks and the GM did too so he had to try and the officer failed his saves (the second with a 2 I think), so off it went and the Mind Melter's player pointed out that a mind wipe takes 3 minutes (still an age really) but only mentions ISP cost for various levels of erasure not how long each one takes. I really agree that bio manip would have been heaps better, can't remember if James has that power or not though.

Our group tends to reward creative plans so it worked and it made for a great scene later when the rest of the group managed to used the info to rescue all the captives and capture the bandit leaders for trial.

gadrin wrote:as for touching someone -- good bye to Invis. It would have been better to Bio-Manipulate (Paralysis) the guy then bond him "from behind"

Well, not for sure going to have to some looking around, but touch is a range under 5ft. So so it would break when the mind bond is completed. Though he would still be seen for the mind wipe so I would say bio-manipulate would still be the way to go.