An evil overlord with access to hellwasps

[King of Nowhere]

you are an evil overlord who managed to breed and control hellwasps.
they are a fundamental part of your plan for conquering the world. you managed to ambush a handful of high level people, and take control of them. you want to take more.
Unfortunately, hellwasps have a major weakness; remove disease will force them out. and then your dominated minion will suddenly become your enemy. Even a mid-low level cleric could accomplish the trick. And a mass heal would instantly revert the loialty of your whole army.
How would you protect your dominated minions from being turned so easily?
Through your minions you have access to more or less every resource, except clerical spells. What you're about to do is opposed by all the gods, and if you dominate a cleric, his god can at least revoke his powers to keep you from using them. though scrolls and magic items would still work, so I guess you have access to clerical spells in moderation.

you are the same evil overlord, and you somehow found a way to keep hold of your minions and use them in high level combat. You have a sizable army. But you still lack clerical spells.
though you are stronger than your enemies, you are at a severe disadvantage, because you can't use resurrections. your opponents can, and have enough diamonds to replace their losses for at least a few fights. even if you managed to grab a rod of resurrection, your dominated clerics have gotten their powers revoked by their gods, and can't use them. Even if you found ways to use them, for example a rogue or bard with high ranks in UMD... well, your minions, now dead and free of your enthrallment, would never want to be resurrected by your side.
Although you have at least a few minions who are actually loial.
How would you try to overcome your limitation and reuse your thralls? Or at least negate the disadvantage?

[loky1109]

How would you try to overcome your limitation and reuse your thralls?

Fiend of Blasphemy

[Glimbur]

Get some Ur Priests to cover cleric casting (or evil clerics, or vampire existing clerics). Cast Modify Memory or worse on your captured subjects so they want to work for you now.

Hell wasp controlled minions are good for making paladins make tough choices as you fight them, but not your A team. Commoners you find lying around, maybe some low level rogues or such for fighting from ambush. Curing a disease is harder than just killing them, so make the heroes make the hard choices. But for your good minions you want a more durable form of control underneath the hell wasp control.

[King of Nowhere]

But for your good minions you want a more durable form of control underneath the hell wasp control.

Looks like a good proposition, I was only thinking about ways to protect the wasps from being evicted from their host.
However, what would be a more durable form of mind control?
the one thing that comes to mind is having a thrall wizard stay safe and cast dominate on all your minions. If they are healed from infestation, they are still dominated.
However, this is far from a foolproof solution. For start, that domination can be resisted with a will save. Sure, you can order them to fail their first saving throw when you dominate them, but once you use them in combat you are using your minions to fight their former allies, which in my interpreation means they are allowed a new saving throw as soon as the wasps leave them; having been used as puppets for a long time should ensure that they hate you aplenty, giving them a hefty circumstance bonus. And they are high level people, this implies pretty decent saving throws.
Sure, you could just give them appropriate equipment to leave their will save weakened - and you MUST eschew anything that would give them protection from mind control - but that would just leave them with a gaping weakness.
Not to mention how easy it would be to just dispel the effect. So instead losing your minions to a cure disease, you'll lose them to cure disease + dispel magic. It's only a mild improvement.

i suppose multiple castings of dominate person on a single subject would increase the likelyhood that at least one of them is neither dispelled nor resisted. protection from evil is not a big deal, your thrall will make a saving throw to resist it. you're still toast against disjunction, but at least it's a rare resource.
It would be better to have some permanent item to enforce mind control, but - putting aside that i don't know any non-artifact ones - i don't like what it would do to the story; this villain is supposed to be unique for his control over hellwasps. If a magic item allows him to control his thralls, then every other evil overlord could also do the same, and this villain would lose his unique status.

So, knowing that you want to bring some of your stronger thralls against the party, and the party will have 9th level spells by the time they face this villains, how would you avoid the party freeing your thralls from your control with two spells?

[icefractal]

With standard Hellwasps, I think they're better suited to caster/crafter minions that you keep safely at home. They need either protection from ability damage or frequent healing to deal with the Con damage the wasps cause, and it effectively means the possessed people can only take 162 damage regardless of their HP (because at that point the wasps have taken enough to lose their hive mind). So for the premise given, you may want variant Hellwasps.

On the plus side, people who get de-inhabited won't immediately be a threat, because when the wasps leave the effects of their poison stop being negated, and the victim now has Dex 0.

As far as weakening their defenses vs your own control without having a huge weakness to everyone, that sounds like something (Greater) Bestow Curse could do: "-6 to Will saves, only vs followers of ___" seems in line with other curses.

While only suitable for some minions, I notice that Inhabit is Ex, which means it remains inside an AMF - which would block any healing spells that could remove the swarm. That does suppress any other forms of control, but they'll resume if the field goes down.

However, since Inhabit works "as if using dominate monster", they'd still get saves for "actions against their nature" - although it's not clear if this would end the inhabitation, only end the control (which could be re-established as a standard action, I guess?), or skip that action but not otherwise end the control.

[Segev]

Consider the Necrotic Cyst line of spells from Libris Mortis. The Mother Cys feat gives sorcerers and wizards (and clerics) access. Even if you hellwasps leave, they are infected as unwitting spies and possible bombs.

[King of Nowhere]

On the plus side, people who get de-inhabited won't immediately be a threat, because when the wasps leave the effects of their poison stop being negated, and the victim now has Dex 0.

doesn't seem the proper reading of the text. it says that they "neutralize" their posion in a victim they inhabit, meaning that the poison is not there anymore.
your reading would be correct if the text said that they "suppress" their poison, but that's not the case

As far as weakening their defenses vs your own control without having a huge weakness to everyone, that sounds like something (Greater) Bestow Curse could do: "-6 to Will saves, only vs followers of ___" seems in line with other curses.

looks like a viable option

Consider the Necrotic Cyst line of spells from Libris Mortis. The Mother Cys feat gives sorcerers and wizards (and clerics) access. Even if you hellwasps leave, they are infected as unwitting spies and possible bombs.

also looks like a viable option

[King of Nowhere]

the necrotic line of spells actually works even better than the wasps, and it's something that the villain may actually have himself. . I have some questions about it:

- what about healing spells and everything? the spell description only mentions a heal check to remove the cyst. does it really mean no other spell can actually do it?

- "necrotic tumor" states that the subject "may resist control", but it has no saving throw and the tumor "ensures their loialty". what does it mean "resist control" in this case then? perhaps that they can try to literally follow your order while also sabotaging them?

[Segev]

the necrotic line of spells actually works even better than the wasps, and it's something that the villain may actually have himself. . I have some questions about it:

- what about healing spells and everything? the spell description only mentions a heal check to remove the cyst. does it really mean no other spell can actually do it?

The heal check is for literal surgery to remove it. I would argue that you're going to need something at least at Limited Wish level, possibly higher, to remove it without surgery. The spell provides no mechanism other than the heal check.

- "necrotic tumor" states that the subject "may resist control", but it has no saving throw and the tumor "ensures their loialty". what does it mean "resist control" in this case then? perhaps that they can try to literally follow your order while also sabotaging them?

That is how I would interpret it. They cannot disobey, but the can try to find ways to obey in a minimally offensive (to them) manner.


Edit to add: Consider, too, the horrifying ability to send your victims in, pleading for help, and then using necrotic eruption to explode them for better-than-fireball damage and to infect everyone who survives the explosion with more necrotic cysts.