Reasons Not To Use Mind Control in Self Defense?

One of my characters has the ability to manipulate the actions of others, but doesn't want to use it in combat or self defense against opponents and foes. What reasons would be good to argue against the use of it?

Is it just a moral belief that he doesn't believe that one's own mind should be used against them in a fight? If so, that's all the justification you need. Your character sees it as wrong and that's that.

Assuming that it can be somehow proved in your universe that someone used mind control, maybe using mind control in self defense no longer makes it self defense in your setting's justice system?

Combine the above two: the use of mind control is not legally self-defense and the character, on hearing this, is deeply shocked that enough people would be so immoral as to use mind control in combat that a law had to be put in place forbidding it...

Aaaand everyone has already said what I was going to...

Could be a religious thing—the body is a temple, the mind is part of the soul and controlling someone else is just as bad as the satan figure....or something.

or perhaps someone used mind control on this character or one of their friends or family members when this character was a child and it scarred them enough that they vowed never to use it against someone.

or perhaps it's more than illegal, it marks this character as being part of a culture/ cmmunity that is in hiding for whatever reason and if it gets out, bad things will happen to everyone your character cares about and using it isn't worth that risk.

Or maybe getting into the mind of another person is a bad idea because it's difficult to get out.

Easy: panic.

if your character's in a bad spot, then that pressure could be enough to subtly (or heavily) influence actions — adrenaline rush, fight-or-flight response, straight-up anger, what have you. So even if your mind-controller has enough skill to use those powers, who's to say that the stress won't lead to one false move — and with it, turning an approaching thug into a drooling baby for the rest of his days?

The risk might just be too much to deal with — and the consequences even more so.

I would ask how it is that your character "manipulates the actions of others". Is it better described as "suggestion" or "compulsion". If the former, it may be that their abilities are ineffective against an actively hostile opponent. Who's going to listen to someone they're in a life-or-death struggle against, after all?

Maybe they need half an hour to meditate or something for mind control to be effective. Or mind control isn't instinctive or even second nature.

Or, maybe even if they can use mind control right away, they get distracted by trying to control the other person's mind, so they can't take attention away from whatever weapon or person is currently going to harm them. So, the only way to successfully control the attacker's mind would leave the mind-controller vulnerable to physical attack, which would defeat the purpose of trying to mind-control in self-defense.

With something as potentially overpowered as Mind Control, Power at a Price seems like a good thing to have in effect. Depending on what kind of control you're looking at, there could be the danger of minds bleeding over into each other, leading to Loss of Identity, or maybe there is a risk of the controller losing the mental battle and becoming controlled themself. Maybe using the power just causes massive headaches and migraine. Plenty of potential drawbacks to think of.

edited 31st Dec '14 4:50:40 AM by QuestionMarker

Or alternatively, it could be trauma.

If mind control powers (heck, any powers) are used in self-defence, then they are used impulsively, without pre-planning, in a situation that undoubtedly is already frantic. Unless the character with those powers had been isolated throughout their whole life, had only gained those powers very recently, or is virtually apathetic to everything around them, it is very likely that they had already used their power on a whim at least once, and likely saw some sort of consequences.

Even if those consequences are something mild like taking control of someone who had been handling ... say, a knife (maybe that other person had been cooking, they came to a disagreement, emotions flew, and the power got used), and seeing them wound themselves lightly (just enough that bandages are preferred but not really necessary), the sight of any blood being spilled as a result of their own impulsive use of the power can result in them consciously or subconsciously trying to control themselves to stop their use of powers in such situations. That is an even more likely result if the one with that power had only been a child at the time, as over time things like that can grow in severity if they are not addressed (and most children generally wouldn't ask for counselling after such an event, but rather they'd try to repress it which wouldn't really help), and at least some children outright panic when they see someone bleeding (well, some adults do that too, to be honest).

Do keep in mind, though, that basing such a thing on a trauma of any sort, even a "light" trauma, means that you will have to know something about traumas in order to be able to write it believably. Which isn't hard, to be honest, but I've seen people mess it up and write characters that were supposedly traumatised, so wrongly that hitting the desk with my head seemed to be the most appropriate comment.

edited 11th Jan '15 2:32:45 PM by Kazeto