Fusion + Astral Seed, with a twist!

[TheLastTimeLord]

I'm putting together a campaign world. I'd like fusion +astral seed to technically work, but with problems.

After awakening in the storage crystal, the fused entity must struggle in some way for control. I feel like this should be some will save against HD (or along those lines) using pre-fusion stats. Whoever wins is in control until they relinquish control. Perhaps when they wake up every day, or finish a table to regain spells/PP if the being doesn't sleep, a similar struggle ensues. The point is to make life difficult for this being. I'd like input on different mechanics to achieve this, making it harder than I've described.

I'd also like to hear ideas on an epic level power to separate the other being's consciousness from the whole to circumvent the above struggle. The running idea I have going is a combination of Psychic Chirurgery and Crystalize, basically shunting the other being into a specially created Psicrystal that contains their mind.

I like high powered fun, but I find that it's often more fun when there's still a struggle to be had and overcome. That's really the core of what I'm trying to accomplish and I'd like to build from this thread to others with future ideas.

[Psyren]

Only willing creatures can fuse though. Why would they struggle at all if they never struggled in the first place?

Also, Grod's Law.

[ExLibrisMortis]

Generally speaking, I'd (greater) metamorphose or mind switch my psicrystal into whatever form I wanted to take, to pre-empt exactly this fluff problem.

Also, psychic chirurgery and mind rape can prevent conflicts of personality.

[Jack_Simth]

I'm putting together a campaign world. I'd like fusion +astral seed to technically work, but with problems.

After awakening in the storage crystal, the fused entity must struggle in some way for control. I feel like this should be some will save against HD (or along those lines) using pre-fusion stats. Whoever wins is in control until they relinquish control. Perhaps when they wake up every day, or finish a table to regain spells/PP if the being doesn't sleep, a similar struggle ensues. The point is to make life difficult for this being. I'd like input on different mechanics to achieve this, making it harder than I've described.

I'd also like to hear ideas on an epic level power to separate the other being's consciousness from the whole to circumvent the above struggle. The running idea I have going is a combination of Psychic Chirurgery and Crystalize, basically shunting the other being into a specially created Psicrystal that contains their mind.

I like high powered fun, but I find that it's often more fun when there's still a struggle to be had and overcome. That's really the core of what I'm trying to accomplish and I'd like to build from this thread to others with future ideas.

Seems like a good spot for an opposed will save.

Another approach: It works fine. The catch is that the fused being isn't you. It was merely under your control while the Fusion power was running. That's gone now. The revived fused being is an NPC.The PC may be resurrected as normal.

[Kayblis]

Seconding Grod's Law: Don't try to balance something by making it annoying to use. It doesn't stop the power-gamer from exploiting it, it just makes the mechanic a chore to anyone.

Also, that ruling assumes you can use Fusion+Astral Seed, and that you somehow keep a copy of the other creature's consciouseness around to torment you. While I see that ruling was made to make things harder on the user, you'd have to work out how this interacts with other mind-manipulation tactics, like Mind Rape on yourself to subjugate or eliminate that second consciousness. Hell, with things like Mindscape and Dream-related magic, you could have a whole character arc related to controlling your second mind. If you're already homebrewing a problem into existance, might as well homebrew the way out to be something kickass.

[TheLastTimeLord]

A lot of this is based on an arc for a BBEG. I'm building a Mindborn(DSP Seventh Path book in Pathfinder) StP Erudite, Thrallherd, Arch Psion, Body Snatcher, possible society mind. (Ruling that PrC level progression doesn't count for the Erudite's other psionic class limitation.) The world is Spelljammer->3.5 content converted to Pathfinder. With a nice block of cheese melted with red hot conflict.

At some point they reach epic and work on finding more and more ways of manipulating the future. Eventually they make a soul gem powered device that spits out dream demiplanes of the future and gives a user near-constant future vision as long as they're in contact with it. They want to get more powerful and feed the future vision device with souls. So they turn to astral seed + fusion. They craft an epic power to separate the other mind into, effectively, a Psicrystal-flavored soul gem to feed the DreamGen5000. The fusion is then given the memories of the original. They work together, because plot reasons and minibosses.

That's where these questions stem from. While I'm building this for the BBEG, I want to have a thought out answer for players if they talk about using the combo. Grod's Law makes sense here... And is a likely source of the block in my thinking on making it annoying. But then a wisp of fluff floats through my head and I'm back to trying to work it out anyhow.