Need to negate Force-type damage & Disintegrate.

[AuraSeer]

I grant that it's inefficient, but it's still unbalanced.

Even a good PC has plenty of evil targets for the ability. Just find the nearest marauding army of orcs and start blasting. You get your goody points for stopping the invasion, and as a side effect, you get a few dozen cohorts out of the deal.

 

[AuraSeer]

I just had a particularly evil thought: is the ability restricted to humanoids only? If not, you don't have to kill intelligent beings at all. Zap some crates of laboratory mice, and let the survivors loose near your enemies' base. Wait seven days, then watch the place explode as a few hundred rodents start using their new psionic powers.

 

[Nareau]

Man, it sounds like you have a really nice DM to let you get away with something like that.

If I understand this Mindseed power, it basically makes a weaker mental clone of you within a week. Is that right?

OK. Let's say I'm an evil psion who's willing to break a few eggs. One day, I wake up (probably bound and gagged) in a strange body. I look around to find that my Original (who's got my body) is lording over me. "Oh no," I think to myself. "The Original me is going to use me as a pawn in his army. You know, I bet there's some way I can get the hell out of here and figure out how to get my old body back."

Or something like that. At any rate, it would be a very rare sort who'd be willing to go along with this plan. It could make for an interesting campaign: looking at what makes us individuals, how our experiences shape our identities, and whether we'd be willing to send ourselves to our deaths for a particular cause. But I hardly think it's a particularly useful way to raise an army.

All that said, I think an army of psionic, evil, powerful mice would be really cool.

And the suggestion of cover is probably the best one yet for your purposes. You can get cover for free. It'll help protect against all the damaging effects (including granting the bonus to AC vs. disintegrate). And you only need a small portion of the target visible to get line of effect on the Mindseed. Just take your villagers out to the forest, tie them to trees, and position yourself to just try and "clip" them with the spell.

Spider

 

[Hardhead]

You know, a literal reading would indicate that, no, it's not restricted to humanoids, as the original Mindseed is. As a DM, I would certainly rule it was, though. I'd also expect some ****ing irate mini-yous when they find themselves in mouse bodies. Although, if you're playing 3.0 I suppose you could get a Wizard friend to polymorph them into humanoids. You even get to choose all the minor physical qualities, so they could all still look like you.

 

[Piratecat]

I really don't see it as a problem, at least not in my game. You're going to be minimum of 15th level when you get this power, which would make your mind seeds 7th level. If you're good, you won't be trying this mass extermination on people... and if you're evil, you absolutely don't want a bunch of evil you's running around. You couldn't trust them worth a damn.

And at 15th lvl, 7th lvl NPCs are little more than a speed bump to a typical foe.

Nope, way more negatives than positives. This power seems to sound a lot more effective than it would be in an actual game.

 

[FrankTrollman]

If you're good, you won't be trying this mass extermination on people

That's hogswallop. The forces of Good kill orcs and stormtroopers by the hundreds of thousands.

As written, killing them by transforming them into more Agent Smiths isn't any more evil than killing them by hitting them with the Most Excellent Prismatic Spray. Either way they are going to die.

And one of the ways gives you armies of 7th level Psions for free.

And Psionic Combat - being the unbalanced joke that it is - having hordes of 7th level Psions means that virtually nothing at any level can stand against you.

Hand waving away an infinite army loop and saying "good guys wouldn't do that" solves nothing.

-Frank

 

[jmucchiello]

Mind Seed, on it's own, doesn't get unbalanced until well into Epic progression, I think. Understandable, since the Epic Handbook wasn't even being considered when the Psi Handbook was written. And, let's be honest, a *lot* of stuff breaks down when you get into Epic levels.

The author of the prc is the co-author of the Epic Handbook. The book existed when the prc was published.

If you're good, you won't be trying this mass extermination on people...

What kind of campaign do you run? Parties of good aligned men and women always break into the homes/caves of evil humanoids and kill them to a man. This, arguably, is far more humane.

 

[Piratecat]

Gang, he isn't running into a room of bad guys mid-melee and activating the power; based on the explanatory post, he's systematically taking captured and helpless villagers and subjecting them to cold-blooded extermination while trying to mind seed them. Keeping morals and ethics out of the discussion, there's a big difference in terms of the actual play dynamic.

For instance, you have to keep possibly affected subjects around for a few days (up to a week) to learn whether or not you were successful. How is this compatible with a typical dungeon raid?

Frank, you think that psionic combat as written in the Psi Handbook is powerful? Now that's funny. Psionic combat is virtually always sub-optimal to manifesting actual powers, so I'd love to hear your rationale. Psionic combat is unbalanced, but on the really weak side of the equation. I'm also not sure where you're getting an "infinite army loop" from, since 7th lvl psions won't get this power for eight levels, but I may just be misunderstanding you.

 

[AuraSeer]

... and if you're evil, you absolutely don't want a bunch of evil you's running around. You couldn't trust them worth a damn.

Being evil does not imply that I'm stupid, nor that I'm a self-destructive megalomaniac. There are plenty of reasons for an evil dupe to ally with its creator.

Perhaps my character is willing to put a goal ahead of personal glory. If I want revenge on the Church of Pelor, I don't care who gives the orders as long as I get to kill Pelorites.

Maybe I'm just not greedy. If my original manages to become Emperor of the world, I could be perfectly satisfied with being Evil Overlord of some large country.

Or most likely of all, I might simply be a pragmatist. I realize that many duplicates working together have a good chance of accomplishing [insert goal here]. Once we reach that goal and eliminate the pesky do-gooders, then we fight amongst ourselves to see who gets to be the sole remaining BBEG. Sure we end up killing each other, but it doesn't matter to the good guys because they're dead.

And at 15th lvl, 7th lvl NPCs are little more than a speed bump to a typical foe.

That is only true if the dupes are encountered one at a time. It's a different story if they come in groups of ten, or fifty, or two hundred.

[Edited because I can't spel.]

 

[Piratecat]

It's good to remember that those NPCs are all under DM control, not player, and exhibit the same personality traits that the PC does. Wow, that would be a fun roleplaying challenge for the DM! If your player is argumentative, imagine him trying to give orders to equally argumentative copies.

And if you're good? The roleplaying challenge of trying to convince "yourself" that your belongings and friends aren't his belongings and friends is a wonderful one. Handle it poorly, and your potential ally will be out there feeling abandoned and alone. I wouldn't want that, not if my PC valued his reputation.

It's also worth mentioning that the mind seed ability would crop up relatively rarely. Roughly 1 out of 8 times, with a variable saving throw when it does succeed and no immediate way to tell that your enemy has been affected; I'm guessing that at least a few mind seeded enemies are going to get accidentally cut down in the heat of battle.

Auraseer, I'm willing to chalk it up to campaign differences. My game is high level (15+), I'm fairly sensitive to power imbalances, and I wouldn't have the slightest hesitation about allowing this power or the class. Heck, I can think of so many ways to make the manifester nervous of abusing the power that it doesn't faze me in the least.

Even better, it's a power that creates instant DM plot hooks! There are so many fun and interesting story paths that could come about from this that I'm suddenly wishing someone was playing one in my game. Luckily, though, it's easily house ruled for someone who doesn't feel the same.