Hiveminded Fission Power?

[MaxiDuRaritry]

Is there any combination of abilities that a psion could reasonably get to hivemind with a fission of himself whenever he manifests the power? As in, he's in full control of both bodies and their senses as if they were his own, and having two brains allows him to control both entirely separately?

You might be able to do something like this if you were gestalted with vermin lord and used aspect of the wolf to be treated as the animal type for hiveminding purposes, but that A.) takes quite a lot of time and effort, and B.) involves outside factors, such as all the other 48 animals needed to form a hivemind.

I mean, you could take the Old Blood feat from Bastards & Bloodlines (3rd party) and the Emulate Another feat from World of Warcraft - Alliance Player's Guide (also 3rd party) to emulate a living wall, from Dragon Magazine (practically 3rd party), or be an illithid savant and eat one of the bodies from a living wall, but those definitely have their issues.

Any other ways that this could be done reasonably quickly? Manifest fission and fully merge with it in a couple of rounds?

[AvatarVecna]

There's two ways to be a part of a Hivemind:

1) Be a legal target by default (ie an animal or vermin in a group of the same kind of animal/vermin you are).

2) Be the vermin lord who is starting the hivemind (who counts as the above regardless of what type they are or how similar to the specific animal/vermin they are).

Additionally, there are two ways to start a hivemind (at least without getting into DM fiat):

1) Use the Dark Speech feat on a legal target.

2) Be a vermin lord 10.

Both the 2s are part of a 10-level investment that is honestly complete garbage unless you're abusing hivemind shenanigans (in which case it's OP). Vermin Lord is an even worse investment on a build that is otherwise not interested in acquiring a 4th lvl cleric/wizard spell in the first place (such as a psion). I haven't looked into it too closely, but you might be able to qualify for Vermin Lord as a StP Erudite under some obscure clarification of the magic-psionics transparency that lets "powers that just mimic spells" count as those spells for PrC prereq purposes (and probably also a rule that lets you advance manifesting using things that advance spellcasting by default, but I'm pretty sure that's a thing? Eh).

The bigger problem with taking the Vermin Lord 10 approach (which is saying something considering the "smaller" problem is a potentially-useless 10-level investment) is that a Vermin Lord who starts a hivemind gains the hivemind benefits except for the increase Int/Cha (which are huge draws). If you aren't gonna go Vermin Lord, then in order to participate in a hivemind at all, you're going to have to be a vermin or animal by type. Fortunately, my understanding is that there is a relatively well-known trick that manifesters can use to have all of their class features and stuff available to them while shoving their consciousness into some other body (the "Psionic Sandwich" trick, or at least I think that's what that's about?). But yeah if you can put your mind into the body of, say, a rat, then as far as the hivemind rules are concerned, you are a rat, can be hiveminded with other rats, and will gain the full benefits of the hivemind if one is induced in you.

Incidentally, I do recommend becoming a rat if you're taking this route. The hivemind needs to be all the same kind of creature (not merely the same type), so while a vermin lords ideal target is a wasp swarm (lowest HD for a 10k member swarm, making them the ideal target to gate in for hiveminding, and they can start with two as companion vermin), your ideal is going to be a kind of creature that appears both as a singular individual (for ease of Psionic Sandwich trick) as well as a swarm (to most easily facilitate huge hivemind benefits). I'm less than familiar with how all the psionics stuff functions, so I'll also say this: if the Sandwich trick can let you put your mind into an existing swarm of creatures rather than only into a single individual, then take the wasp swarm (if gating in more hivemind members) or the hoard beetle swarm (if you just wanna hivemind with your fission-self). The latter is especially true if you're able to Fission more than once at a time; if you can get exponential Hoard Beetle Swarms, the benefits will accrue all the faster.

EDIT: And of course, any other method of truly changing your creature type without losing your capabilities would also work well. I think PaO gives you the Int of the new form, and lycanthropes in their full animal form still aren't Animals, so those don't work, but there's probably other methods out there that'll suffice.

[Kelb_Panthera]

-snip-

Could be wrong, pretty sure OP is looking for making his psionicist a defacto dvati without having to sacrifice his racial choice on the build.

I have to imagine the sense-link power fits in there somewhere.

[MaxiDuRaritry]

Could be wrong, pretty sure OP is looking for making his psionicist a defacto dvati without having to sacrifice his racial choice on the build.

Basically, yes. It'd be especially nice if I could somehow add it to the manifestation of fission itself so it happens automatically. Maybe a "cursed" item...?

I have to imagine the sense-link power fits in there somewhere.

Yeah, that's the general idea.

Say, does anyone know where I can find out WTH has been happening with these forums of late? Something's screwy, and it's really, really annoying. All the posts I see in the site/moderator forum have been closed, but nobody's actually answered the question.