Metanoia "Healing Rate"

Infinity The RPG
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Hi Infinity Forum Dwellers…

I can’t find anything specific regarding this other than ‘Minor Treatment and Serious Treatment’. Not sure if this has been answered before, but could Metanoia recovery be clarified.

Do Metanoia Harms heal the same rate as Wounds? I can understand a situation where a person’s world has been rocked so much by an argument that it may take a while to completely come to terms with it. But for most part seems a bit extreme, and should Metanoia harms remain for days/weeks (or even months) does that mean the person is far more susceptible to Psywar attacks while they recover from Metanoia Harms?

I have been using a little house rule stating that Psywar damage (and hence Metanoia Harms) against individuals have the ‘Nonlethal’ Quality with the same rules as for physical damage. So once a Psywar scene has been resolved, all Psywar mental damage from that are healed and Metanoia vanishes. So to convince that person of a new argument will require starting afresh again on them.

I should note that I am also using ‘Trauma’ Harms for actual psychological damage that can have a more permanent effect…

Many Thanks

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Well when you think of it, some conversation can hurt you for decades. Because it destroyed your self esteem, or your confidence etc. I have no problem with metanoia having long term effect, but i also understand your point of view.

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Metanoia recover just the same as any Harm, only using different Skills to recover or treat Metanoia.

Looking a the list of Metanoia effects in the corebook, some are of a rather short duration like “Force an Action”, others, like “Create/Break a Social Connection” or “Influence Belief” should last a long time if not indefinitely - until the character does something about it to recover.

Some Metanoia effects like Monitor are not really that obvious to the afflicted character. So one character could be under such a monitoring awareness without even knowing about it - which makes getting rid of it quite a problem.

In Infinity I haven’t missed the kind of psychological Trauma (as in Conan) which represents the character suffering from horrifying encounters, suffering torture or such traumatizing events. This is a bit too gruesome for my taste.

Metanoia effects influencing belief or cutting or changing social connections present a similarly grave consequence of losing a social conflict.

As a character has a certain Intransigence versus specific kinds of intended Metanoia effects, it would be VERY hard to shake the belief of a Father Knight, but it would be rather easy to make a customs official belief that you are an undercover security inspector checking on him keeping to the procedures as written.

And characters don’t get taken out of a conflict by any number of Metanoia effects at all. They can function as well as before, but have changed beliefs or feel the need to perform certain actions, but they are not “incapacitated” as in a physical conflict.
That means that characters in my games often have some Metanoia effects “sticking around” until they become important in the actual situation - or become obvious if the character wasn’t aware of them in the first place.

I find the Metanoia rules as per the corebook quite a functional social conflict system that enriches my Infinity campaigns remarkably.

1 Like
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I think @FrankF really hit on a lot of great points.

One thing that’s worth pointing out I think is even if the Metanoia effects themselves don’t persist, the fact that the character is still suffering from a Metanoia will be relevant for increasing their difficulty on future healing checks, or other variables where the number of Harms a character is suffering from come into play.

If a guard intimidated you into dropping your weapon in the middle of a firefight yesterday, that memory might still be haunting you. If you don’t take time to “heal” it, the next time someone intimidates you, it might make healing take longer, etc.

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Many thanks for the replies. I am glad that I didn’t miss any specific reference to Metanoia healing rate in the core rules.

I understand the viewpoint of some Metanoia having long lasting effect, especially if a person’s principles have been shaken to the core, but I don’t feel every Psywar attack will achieve this.

Another point I would like to make is that, yes, a compelling argument at the time can convince someone of something they, at heart, disagree with. But, sometimes when they reflect on what was said a mere hour or two later, they may realise they were wrong to agree with the argument, this would not, to my mind, leave them weakened to further arguments.

Frank: Please don’t think I have a problem or misunderstanding of Psywar rules as whole, I understand and like the way it works, except for the Metanoia healing rate…

Yes, I agree that the specific Effect caused by a Metanoia Harm caused will likely dictate how long it would last for.

Yes, it would be easier to convince a customs official of your legitimacy as their superior than that of a Father Knight… But would that leave the customs official open to be exploited by every smuggler that came along over the coming weeks? No, not in my mind.

I disagree that Metanoia effects cannot ‘incapacitate’ a character in combat, morale can be a huge factor; “surrender and give up coz the rest of your squad is down and you’re now severely outnumbered…” is a very compelling argument to ‘put yourself out of combat’. Sometimes, that argument doesn’t have to spoken at all to take effect, and in some cases, the weapon used does that all by itself (see Terrifying Quality). Though that last example is the reason I have introduced the Trauma Harm from Conan, yes gruesome, but being set on fire or watching a friend burn to death is just gruesome and should have more of an effect than ‘changing one’s mind’, but that’s just how I roll…

Murrdox: True about the guard intimidating a character could shake their confidence that they need to get over it before being able to deal with any further intimidation (from anyone). However, another argument could be that the intimidated character may well feel so humiliated by this, that it actually bolsters their reserve to not be intimidated again anytime soon. Though I suppose such emotion could be played upon to get them to act a certain way, but I would do this as a separate (non intimidating) Psywar attack with maybe their Intransingence reduced, depending on how this emotional state is being exploited…

Anyway. Thanks again for your thoughts, you have made some very compelling arguments yourselves… I may even have suffered a bit of Metanoia from them myself, but not quite enough yet to get passed my own intransingence. :slightly_smiling_face: