Astral Seed + Mind Switch, accomplishable by UPD?

[sorcererlover]

Last (hopefully) obstacle in my warlock build. You playgrounders have been very, very helpful! Can't thank you guys enough.

Anyways onto the topic at hand. Astral Seed + Mind Switch combo is better than True Mind Switch because it doesn't require 10,000xp, which is why I've been brainstorming. Does this method work?

Buy a power stone of astral seed and mind switch.
Buy a scroll of gate.
Address both power stones.
Hold the power stone of astral seed with my hand and activate it creating my astral seed next to me.
Commit Suicide.
As a psicrystal, grow ectoplasm legs.
Verbally read the scroll of gate and gate in your victim
Wrap your ectoplasm legs around the power stone of mind switch to hold it and activate it, switching bodies with your victim.
Smash your astral seed.

Anyone see a problem?

edit: Removed wish scroll as it seemed to be confusing for some people to read.

[RoboEmperor]

Interesting. I always thought psicrystals can't use magic items, but it checks out. They got spider legs, they can speak, I don't see why not.

[Psyren]

Some interpret Astral Seed that you come back exactly as you were. i.e. you will be Mind Switched, but the Mind Switch will still have its duration going, at whatever point it was at when you manifested Astral Seed in the first place. Your GM will need to decide what reading to go with.

[Sagetim]

Last (hopefully) obstacle in my warlock build. You playgrounders have been very, very helpful! Can't thank you guys enough.

Anyways onto the topic at hand. Astral Seed + Mind Switch combo is better than True Mind Switch because it doesn't require 10,000xp, which is why I've been brainstorming. Does this method work?

Craft two scrolls of wish with increased xp and a scroll of gate using imbue item.
Decipher the writing of all three scrolls.
Use the two scrolls to create a power stone of astral seed and mind switch.
Address both power stones.
Hold the power stone of astral seed with my hand and activate it creating my astral seed next to me.
Commit Suicide.
As a psicrystal, grow ectoplasm legs.
Verbally read the scroll of gate and gate in your victim
Wrap your ectoplasm legs around the power stone of mind switch to hold it and activate it, switching bodies with your victim.
Smash your astral seed.

Anyone see a problem?

Yes, you seem to be wasting resources. XP, mostly. Power Stones are like Scrolls, when they are crafted, the xp cost is paid by the creator of the item and accounted for in the market value. It's going to cost you over 11,000 xp to make two scrolls of wish and a scroll of gate, from the xp costs of those spells alone. Now, you could get that cost to go down by having legendary artisan or what have you for scrolls, but that might be rather a waste of a feat unless you're going to be making a lot of scrolls to do a lot of other shenanigans with.

In addition, there's the crafting time of the scrolls. Each of those Wish scrolls is going to take about a month to make, while the gate scroll will be wrapped up in about 4 days. So, it could well be easier for you to shell out ~50k gold and find a person willing to make/sell you the stone of True Mind Switch, than it is to make multiple scrolls to pull off this complicated plan.

So, if you buy the power stone, or commission one, it's going to cost you 0 xp, and you still may wind up getting the stone faster than how long it would take you just to craft the scrolls for this plan. Since it will take around 54 days to complete the power stone, while it would take 2 months and some change (something like 62 days) to craft the scrolls.

So, you know....seems like it would be easier to part with the gold, than save some cash but dump more xp than the power you're trying to avoid using anyway.

[sorcererlover]

Some interpret Astral Seed that you come back exactly as you were. i.e. you will be Mind Switched, but the Mind Switch will still have its duration going, at whatever point it was at when you manifested Astral Seed in the first place. Your GM will need to decide what reading to go with.

I don't understand what you are saying. The power Astral Seed specifically say if you mind switch while you are in your astral seed and destroy your own seed, you permanently usurp the victim's body. What is this "come back exactly as you were" thing?

Yes, you seem to be wasting resources. XP, mostly. Power Stones are like Scrolls, when they are crafted, the xp cost is paid by the creator of the item and accounted for in the market value. It's going to cost you over 11,000 xp to make two scrolls of wish and a scroll of gate, from the xp costs of those spells alone. Now, you could get that cost to go down by having legendary artisan or what have you for scrolls, but that might be rather a waste of a feat unless you're going to be making a lot of scrolls to do a lot of other shenanigans with.

In addition, there's the crafting time of the scrolls. Each of those Wish scrolls is going to take about a month to make, while the gate scroll will be wrapped up in about 4 days. So, it could well be easier for you to shell out ~50k gold and find a person willing to make/sell you the stone of True Mind Switch, than it is to make multiple scrolls to pull off this complicated plan.

So, if you buy the power stone, or commission one, it's going to cost you 0 xp, and you still may wind up getting the stone faster than how long it would take you just to craft the scrolls for this plan. Since it will take around 54 days to complete the power stone, while it would take 2 months and some change (something like 62 days) to craft the scrolls.

So, you know....seems like it would be easier to part with the gold, than save some cash but dump more xp than the power you're trying to avoid using anyway.

Buying the power stones directly is the best option, but in the event the DM says such power stones are not available, I came up with this plan. Creating a power stone of true mind switch via wish requires 15,000xp+ which means I gotta be level 15+ to have enough xp to craft it, but by using astral seed and mind switch, I can do this as soon as I get imbue item, which is level 12.

[Psyren]

I don't understand what you are saying. The power Astral Seed specifically say if you mind switch while you are in your astral seed and destroy your own seed, you permanently usurp the victim's body. What is this "come back exactly as you were" thing?

I forgot that line, but it's also contradictory - your storage crystal can't be empty, because you swapped the mind switch target into it. It also doesn't actually change the duration of Mind Switch.

[icefractal]

The Astral Seed / Mind Switch interaction is entirely separate from the "Astral Seed Effect Laundering" thing.

For some reason, Astral Seed says this:
"Conceivably, you could manifest mind switch to utilize a temporary body, but only an evil creature would smash his own temporarily empty storage crystal to permanently usurp a subject’s organic body (unless the subject is itself irredeemably evil)."

If you think this is not how Mind Switch normally works, at all, you're right. But that's what it says. It's either a mistake by the author or an intentional special interaction of those two powers.

[sorcererlover]

I forgot that line, but it's also contradictory - your storage crystal can't be empty, because you swapped the mind switch target into it. It also doesn't actually change the duration of Mind Switch.

See, again, I don't know what you are talking about. Yes the storage crystal isn't empty because the target is inside it, but how does that matter at all? You destroy the storage crystal, the target dies, and you permanently usurp his body. I don't understand what the problem you see is.

[Sagetim]

*snip*
Buying the power stones directly is the best option, but in the event the DM says such power stones are not available, I came up with this plan. Creating a power stone of true mind switch via wish requires 15,000xp+ which means I gotta be level 15+ to have enough xp to craft it, but by using astral seed and mind switch, I can do this as soon as I get imbue item, which is level 12.

Oh, well, that's fine then. I just figured it was worth pointing out that this didn't seem like a good Plan A. One of the problems with implementing the plan though, is going to be the saving throw of whatever you're trying to body swap with using Mind Switch.

The problem for Mind Switch is the wording that says the storage crystal is temporarily empty. Because it doesn't account for where the target of Mind Switch's mind went. So, there's that.

Anyway, back to my new point: The Will Save of your target is probably not going to be inconsequential. Since Mind Switch is a Telepath 6 power, it's baseline DC is a nice, fat 16 + int mod. Now, if you can finagle it with a wish, you could have that keyed off of Charisma instead, because a Wilder can pick up Mind Switch using Expanded Knowledge to create a power stone of it. This would be important to help you pump the dc for resisting the effect up, since I assume your Warlock is probably going to favor Charisma over Intelligence. Miserable 19. Power Stones have their DC set as if the minimum ability score required to manifest the power were being used, so 10 + power level 6 + the +3 modifier of a 16 int = 19. You're probably going to want to prepare some means to lowering your target's will save to have your best chance of making this work. This likely means team work from the rest of the party.

[sorcererlover]

Oh, well, that's fine then. I just figured it was worth pointing out that this didn't seem like a good Plan A. One of the problems with implementing the plan though, is going to be the saving throw of whatever you're trying to body swap with using Mind Switch.

The problem for Mind Switch is the wording that says the storage crystal is temporarily empty. Because it doesn't account for where the target of Mind Switch's mind went. So, there's that.

Anyway, back to my new point: The Will Save of your target is probably not going to be inconsequential. Since Mind Switch is a Telepath 6 power, it's baseline DC is a nice, fat 16 + int mod. Now, if you can finagle it with a wish, you could have that keyed off of Charisma instead, because a Wilder can pick up Mind Switch using Expanded Knowledge to create a power stone of it. This would be important to help you pump the dc for resisting the effect up, since I assume your Warlock is probably going to favor Charisma over Intelligence. Miserable 19. Power Stones have their DC set as if the minimum ability score required to manifest the power were being used, so 10 + power level 6 + the +3 modifier of a 16 int = 19. You're probably going to want to prepare some means to lowering your target's will save to have your best chance of making this work. This likely means team work from the rest of the party.

That's why you use a scroll of gate. The gated creature is 100% under your control for 17 rounds, so you just order it to intentionally lower its spell/power resistance and let my next psionic power affect it.

[Psyren]

See, again, I don't know what you are talking about. Yes the storage crystal isn't empty because the target is inside it, but how does that matter at all? You destroy the storage crystal, the target dies, and you permanently usurp his body. I don't understand what the problem you see is.

RAW, there is no problem. It's an internal consistency thing.