How do you balance a character who can literally read people's minds? I'm of the opinion that it just can't be done

Your favorite system/5e.

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Well, he can sure read a sniper's mind before his brains are splattered on the wall. If you can read minds it doesn't mean you can stop bullets/swords/what have you. You encounter 5 orcs, and you read their minds, and you totally know what they're going to do to you in minute details, but you're a wimp so you can't prevent this. Pretty horrifying desu.

TL;DR: although he'll shine in social situations, combat encounters can still fuck him up.

Make them hear every thought without any filter. It will be like being in a room with everybody screaming all the time.

Dirty Harry style threat. Sure, you can read my mind, but I don't know if my gun's loaded or not either. I don't know if the coin will be heads and I kill you or tails and you walk away.

Eh, they did it in Skulduggery Pleasant to surprise a guy who could see the future. Fuck knows why he couldn't foresee the outcome of the coin toss, but it was a cool scene.

In a world where mind reading is possible, maybe coming up with defenses is just as possible, at which point you've basically got the cracker/security arms race in front of you.

He can read peoples mind, but it takes time. Time long enough for him only to pick out a few key details as in, he's going to stab you with a knife during an otherwise pleasant conversation. It is a skill, it takes time to enact.

There's a small thread in Oracle characters where they can't see the really small bits. Especially those related with chance.

Since there's a Dune thread up, it's like a nexus in that series. Too many possible outcomes to see. I know that doesn't really apply to a coin toss, but it's a good example of the idea.

Not to mention inducing memories and sh*t.

Okay, roll your save versus DN 40.

If he can sense your intent passively at a range WAY beyond your weaponry, your weaponry isn't very useful. He'll just make you shoot yourself.

Reading comprehension, please. He can READ your mind, not AFFECT it. Unless OP is talking about psions and telepaths specifically (which he doesn't). And they're broken in DnD 3.x and nonexistant in 5e (the system he specified).

>DM allows a character to have a broken ass ability with impossible DC
>then complains that the ability is broken

Reading isn't the same as understanding. As with books, so with minds.

OP said read minds, not control them.

even then, is our hypothetical psychic constantly scanning the minds of every person within a few miles for hostile intent directed at himself? even if you were powerful enough to do that it seems like it would require some kind of super-intelligence too.

I feel like that would be a really huge double edged sword in any system with some sort of insanity mechanic behind it.

At the very least overconfidence issues.

>sh*t

When a player reads someone's mind, they need to roll as to not let the person their are mind reading get a look inside their head too.

>still no mind bullets in 5e
Come on, step it up, wotc.

Can't read what's not there.
>I read his mind, what's he gonna do?
GROMNAR SMASH TINY MAN!
>Uh, okay, any details?
WITH STICK!

So basically the only time a telepath doesn't have an incredible advantage over everyone else is when they're fighting stuff with less than human intelligence.

Hope you like killing gnolls.

I just got this image of whatever it is that's having it's mind read responding out loud to the probing, instead of it being all mental.

The director of my division at work is called Bester and I have to bite my tongue so much because no one would get my genius Babylon 5 jokes and I'd look like some sort of oddball.

My life is so hard.

There is a hole in your mind.

There's hundreds of monsters that fit that category though.

Reading minds is not the same as understanding them.

Just because you see something on television doesn't mean you know it's context, meaning, or what will happen next.

>40
You have no idea how easy that is to pass when you have a handful of magic items/item creation feats do you?

>People who are actually robots, thus unreadable.
>yadda yadda yadda, mental strain can only do it x times per day
>delusional meta-fuckers that intentionally give misinformation
>keep track of every time he does it, then have an enemy that scales based on the number of times

Eight, sir; seven, sir;
Six, sir; five, sir;
Four, sir; three, sir;
Two, sir; one!
Tenser, said the Tensor.
Tenser, said the Tensor.
Tension, apprehension,
And dissension have begun.

I thought a lot about huge number of abilities and how to counter them because I'm writing scenario for my comic now.
There will be creatures who read minds, thoughts and memories. AAAND there comes 2 guys in MC squad. The first one is batshit insane, suffering from a severe depression and have seen shit which no one should see. Mindreaders just end fucked up even more, because he is permanently drugged and went through harsh course of psychoterapy. The second guy is from another plane of being. He cant be even referred as guy\gal\etc, because he comes from a place where time and space works a little differently, so when the mindreaders try to read him its a white noise at least and blue death screen at most, because his logic and thinking patterns is very strange for binary logic from traditional time\space.

Also you have snipers\assassins\whatever - if mindreader cant read thoughts of people who he dont know about. Also creatures with collective
consciousness. Or robots. People, who process 2, 3, 10 and more thoughts at the same time. People too fast\strong\etc to be killed by mindreader. Very agressive animals\trees\funghi. Zergrush - so what if you read one, two, three minds, when there are thousands. Not-thinking, like in some of zen-buddhist meditations. People under shit ton of narcotics.
Did I mentioned guys with mind-traps? Oh I didnt. Like he begins reading him and BAM, it is so comfy, so good and interesting that mindreader looses himself in a process and becomes his enemy's pawn. Mindread cockblock techniques and technologies. Or spells\hypnosis who makes mindreader forget that he is mindreader. And so on.

Sorry for my english, btw.

That's great that you can read my character's intent on killing them, but without something suitable to put in the way of his greatsword strike, there's not much use in it.

Why is mind reading that powerful of an ability? Without the charisma to really capitalize on what you find in there, you're just left with a guy who can read thoughts. Like, if you can figure out someone's plan, but that plan is to just murder you with three feet of steel through your torso right now and you can't really do anything about that, well I guess you're shit out of luck, aren't you. Not to mention it's not precognitive, so if his oratory just makes you angrier and quicker to murder him, he's not going to know that until you start running at him.

Does muscle reflex count? Does one audibly and intelligibly think about their sword strikes enough to telegraph them, and is the mind reader also quick and strong enough to counter/block/dodge those attacks? Also, are they skilled enough in combat to actually counter/block/dodge those attacks?

Like, there's a lot of assumptions in there, and it seems that maybe he might be able to read intentions and ambushes from threats that are far enough off to do something about with planning, but if some asshole catches you off guard and has your cornered, mind reading is not the best ability to have at hand.