Pathfinder 1E Venting my rage at all the people working on 3rd/PF who continued to make monsters that are immune to mind-affecting effects.

[RangerWickett]

I would be very interested to see what you have in mind, because I agree that mental effects could do with some expansion.

The idea would be a rework of how mental attacks work from the ground up, to make them more like physical combat. The short version is that mental powers create mindscapes where people's thoughts can shape a psychic plane, and there would be various basic psychic maneuvers that work sort of like how push, grab, attack, and dodge work in normal combat. Many mental effects would be akin to 'grabbing' someone's thoughts or emotions, which they would be able to wrestle out of, even if their body is acting on its own. And if you impose an effect in the mindscape then end your connection, your influence ends. (Usually; there would likely be a ton of exceptions based on character abilities and such.)

To actually impose any lasting effect, you'd have to breach from the shared 'outer mindscape' into a creature's actual mind, the 'inner mindscape.' Doing that would require bypassing defenses that would vary from creature to creature - an incidental effort for mooks, but something personalized for PCs and prominent NPCs.

Once you're in someone's inner mindscape, you can use the power on them directly, and the duration would persist.

I have a ruleset worked up with the basics, but not enough to really publish.

Like, ego whip restricts the target's actions. Id insinuation gives them an emotion against their will. Mind thrust does damage and is good at breaking concentration. Psyche push lets you take psychic damage to force someone to make another save against a mental effect. Thought shield gives you a bonus to your defenses. Then there's the advanced stuff that requires you to be able to attain a psychic focus.

 

[Art Waring]

The idea would be a rework of how mental attacks work from the ground up, to make them more like physical combat. The short version is that mental powers create mindscapes where people's thoughts can shape a psychic plane, and there would be various basic psychic maneuvers that work sort of like how push, grab, attack, and dodge work in normal combat

Yeah I remember something similar in 3.5/PF... here it is, the PF version of the dreamscape spell.

Create Mindscape

 

[Alzrius]

Yeah I remember something similar in 3.5/PF... here it is, the PF version of the dreamscape spell.

Create Mindscape

That works too, though I was more reminded of "psionic combat" from the 3.0 Psionics Handbook (and which author Bruce Cordell later revisited in third-party products such as Mindscapes: A Psion's Guide (affiliate link)).

 

[glass]

That works too, though I was more reminded of "psionic combat" from the 3.0 Psionics Handbook (and which author Bruce Cordell later revisited in third-party products such as Mindscapes: A Psion's Guide (affiliate link)).

I was trying to remember the latter - I was at a table with a player who used it once, but by my recollection that although the fluff was similar to @RangerWickett's description, the effects were more short-term - just one roll IIRC (and therefore not worth the handling time). At least at lower levels; the player got bored after a couple of levels, so I never saw how it worked at higher levels.

 

[Voadam]

I am very much a fan of rogues sneaking attacking everybody, save or die/suck spells and effects having saves each round, and most things being subject to mind affecting spells.

To give the save each round an active PC element you can make it be you can use your action each round to break the effect, or use your action to gain 5e advantage on the save so that the PC has some choice in the matter.