Can you take Multiple Head Casting if you are a Synad?

[Captnq]

MULTIPLE HEAD CASTING [GENERAL]

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- WIZARDS.COM (3.0)
You take advantage of an extra head to cast spells.
Prerequisite: Naturally possess two or more independently intelligent heads.
Benefit: If you have a hand free for casting, one of your heads can use a free partial action each round to cast a spell requiring verbal, somatic and material components while your other head takes normal actions, including melee or spellcasting, during the same round. Spells without somatic and material components may be cast as a free partial action even if you have no free hands. Spells that take longer than 1 action to cast cannot be cast while the other head is engaged in melee or spellcasting.
Normal: Without this feat, you can never use an extra head to cast a spell while another head engages in combat or spellcasting.
Special: You can gain this feat multiple times. Each time you take the feat, it applies to another head (if any), allowing it to take a free partial action to cast a spell.
Note: You can’t gain this feat if you do not naturally possess two or more independently intelligent heads. Thus, one-headed spellcasters can not gain this feat by resorting to polymorph self or similar magic. Shapechange or other appropriate 9th-level magic does allow a spellcaster to gain this feat.

SYNAD
- Complete psionics [3.5]

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A synads threefold mind is composed of parts that are often referred to as the overmind, the collective, and the oracle. In most activities, the overmind controls the synad's actions. However, sometimes the collective or the oracle—the parts known as the submind—rises to the surface, either bypassing the overmind or mentally advising it on topics the submind is more suited to understand.

Physical Description: In the bright light of day, a synad passes for a tall, slim human. In dim light, however, out of the corner of an observer's eye, a synad sometimes appears as a humanoid with three heads. The normal head appears bracketed by two ghostly heads completely "devoid of hair, eyes, ears, mouth, or nose. This happens only if the synad has exhausted all its power points for the day. For this reason, most synads avoid draining their power point reserve, lest their true nature be revealed.

Threefold Mind (Su): The threefold synthesis of mind, controlled by the overmind, grants synads an advantage when resisting mental attacks. They gain a +2 bonus on Will saving throws.
Oracle (Su): The part of a synad's mind known as the oracle grants him a daily precognitive edge. This translates into a +2 insight bonus that the synad can apply at any time to an initiative check, attack roll, or saving throw. In the case of an attack roll or saving throw, the synad can elect to apply the bonus to the roll or save after he determines whether his unmodified roll misses. A synad can apply only one precognitive edge per day.
Collective (Su): The part of a synad's mind known as the collective allows him to tap into a racial network of knowledge and information. A synad can spend 1 power point as a free action to gain a +2 bonus on any Knowledge or Psicraft check he makes.
Multitask (Su): A synad's threefold mind can temporarily separate, allowing him to take more than a single mental action during his turn. Once per day, a synad can spend 1 power point to gain a swift action that he can use to take any purely mental action. Examples include manifesting a psionic power or making a Knowledge, Psicraft, or other check requiring only mental cogitation. However, a synad can use his extra mental action to manifest a power only if the normal actions allowed to him during the round do not also involve manifesting a power.

So, the synad sometimes have three heads, but most of the time it has 1, but always has three minds. Can it buy the feat?

[awaken_D_M_golem]

Hey welcome back ...


Not to be a total killjoy, but Mind =/= Head.
However walking it back is quite possible.

"Multitask" is quite similar and in the same ballpark.

"Physical Description" clearly refers to it, in this case, as heads (not just minds?).

"lest their true nature be revealed."
Does this clause refer only to the physical description of the 2 ghostly heads?
Or could it be referring to a deeper level of meaning?
Normally spending 1 powerpoint lets people know you're psionic,
these guys spending 1 powerpoint reveals a secret about their Whole Race they specifically want to keep secret.


So I say maybe.
But even then it's subject to this :  " ... devoid of ... eyes, ears, mouth ... "
There's a large raft of cheese completely unavailable because of this part.

No visual targetting.
I don't think that part of the mind can hear (some other part does),
so that part is Deaf and suffers that action problem.
No mouth = mostly no V components.

C.O. can work around all this, but sans a specific guide, the average player couldn't.

[Captnq]

Good to be bad, on and off. The band is looking at getting back together, so I may be back to DMing again, for a while, at any rate.

Honestly, I don't know what to make of it. This is one of those... combos where there was clearly no intent of them ever working together. I'm leaning towards no. However, I did toy with the idea of "Yes, but because the other heads can't manifest naturally, you can only target yourself with your secondary manifest." (Psionic/Magic transparency)

Even then, I see this as horribly unbalancing, this breaks the action economy, big time.

[awaken_D_M_golem]

Schism is another thing to compare it to.

This clause :
" Naturally possess two or more independently intelligent heads. "

seems to be satisfied by:
" sometimes the collective or the oracle—the parts known as the submind—rises to the surface, either bypassing the overmind or mentally advising it on topics the submind is more suited to understand. "

... and is quite similar to some of what Schism does.

[Braininthejar]

Hmm. I think I've just found a way to make my rakshasa boss encounter sufficiently challenging...

[Unbeliever]

Hmm. I think I've just found a way to make my rakshasa boss encounter sufficiently challenging...

Multiheaded Rakshasas have a distinguished pedigree:  example is about as old as they come.

[kitep]

Hmm. I think I've just found a way to make my rakshasa boss encounter sufficiently challenging...

Multiheaded Rakshasas have a distinguished pedigree:  example is about as old as they come.

You have a period at the end of your link which confuses Wikipedia.

Corrected link:  example is about as old as they come.

[awaken_D_M_golem]

Found the feat at archive.wizards
http://archive.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/fc/20010223a

[Chemus]

This seems ok for Snyads, but  looks like it might work for Dvati:
The feat requires Naturally possess two or more independently intelligent heads*; dvati can use multiple actions, just not casting, so their heads are independently intelligent.

the Normal section says

Without this feat, you can never use an extra head to cast a spell while another head engages in combat or spellcasting.

This is true for Dvati.

It's a bit of a stretch (and derail), but it all fits.

[PlzBreakMyCampaign]

Probably not RAW, but since a synad has to blow pp for the affect I'd say its actually fine RAI. PP can do some interesting things. It's clearly balanced at 1/day.

Btw the feat you are looking at is probably replaced by one of my favorite feats: Multivoice [SS37]. With multivoice, RAI it shouldn't be allowed, but RAW it would work assuming you kept to the mental activation limitation. Wierd.

Cnq if u wanna DM, you could always do so online (skype, roll20, etc). You could probably recruit boards members that way. I know I'd join.