Gestalt up a world-Dominating Evil Overmind (lvl 1-20)

[Cassus]

Hi!  Here's the deal.  I'm about to play in a long-term Evil Overlord game, where we begin humbly and progress to achieve some vast, world-changing/destroying villainous plan.  The DM has given us incredibly broad, powerful character creation rules and unlocked a metric ton of source material, including Pathfinder, third-party, and homebrew.  I'm at sea; I don't even know all the official D&D 3.5 stuff very well.
So I call upon the unholy powers of the minmax forum!  My concept is a character who wants to unite the entire world under one mind.  Literally.  I imagine that one side of the gestalt will be Psion, and the other side will be a bunch of support material.  My ultimate goal is to create a character who is
A. Viable at all levels (including level 1).
B. Has hordes of followers/summons/Charmed or dominated slaves
C. Will eventually be able to unite the entire world under One Mind (this last one might get a bit of plot-artifact support, but bonus points if you can do it all with RAW!)
D. Avoids "You Break It, You Bought It"-style material for most of his lifespan.  The DM wants to actually run this guy through adventures, after all.

To assist you, I offer the official character creation rules:

The books you are allowed to use are extensive, you can use any "Pathfinder" or "Dungeons and Dragons 3.5" material, including anything published from other companies (Green Ronin, Mongoose, etc...), all campaign settings, and any D&D Wiki Home brew with a rating above 15 or any personal home brew class.  As well I will implement the Gestalt rule from Unearthed Arcana. All gestalts must have a "Primary Class" which can not change as you level. I will also allow Flaws and Traits, with the standard limit of two flaws.

So there you have it.  Step right up, step right up, help me make sense of all the material out there... 


Please?

[LargePrime]

Hi!  Here's the deal.  I'm about to play in a long-term Evil Overlord game, where we begin humbly and progress to achieve some vast, world-changing/destroying villainous plan.  The DM has given us incredibly broad, powerful character creation rules and unlocked a metric ton of source material, including Pathfinder, third-party, and homebrew.  I'm at sea; I don't even know all the official D&D 3.5 stuff very well.
So I call upon the unholy powers of the minmax forum!  My concept is a character who wants to unite the entire world under one mind.  Literally.  I imagine that one side of the gestalt will be Psion, and the other side will be a bunch of support material.  My ultimate goal is to create a character who is
A. Viable at all levels (including level 1).
B. Has hordes of followers/summons/Charmed or dominated slaves
C. Will eventually be able to unite the entire world under One Mind (this last one might get a bit of plot-artifact support, but bonus points if you can do it all with RAW!)
D. Avoids "You Break It, You Bought It"-style material for most of his lifespan.  The DM wants to actually run this guy through adventures, after all.

To assist you, I offer the official character creation rules:

The books you are allowed to use are extensive, you can use any "Pathfinder" or "Dungeons and Dragons 3.5" material, including anything published from other companies (Green Ronin, Mongoose, etc...), all campaign settings, and any D&D Wiki Home brew with a rating above 15 or any personal home brew class.  As well I will implement the Gestalt rule from Unearthed Arcana. All gestalts must have a "Primary Class" which can not change as you level. I will also allow Flaws and Traits, with the standard limit of two flaws.

So there you have it.  Step right up, step right up, help me make sense of all the material out there... 


Please?

can you bit-torrent at sea, to get the materials?  I am asking because people are going to be throwing a bunch of crap at you that you will want to look up.

[Jackinthegreen]

Thrallherd deserves a mention.

However, since you don't know the rules very well you might have issues playing.  The vast majority of core 3.5 is available at http://www.d20srd.org/, so go nuts reading through it to make sure you've got down what you need.

[JohnnyMayHymn]

^^ Ninja Edit: ^^my guess is that it is blocked, but I don't know his exact situation, we could potentially revisit the "Destroying the Core" thread and supplement it with SRD/web supplement stuff
^^dang Ninja'd again  .. oh well

That's quite a goal... hrm, hope I can help:

Psionic Tricks Handbook: Brainstorms - by kalaskaagathas  especially shards of leadership

Azrael, an example high level Thrallherd build with many thralls/followers

You definitely want your "Primary Class" to be a Tier 1, I'm thinking (Spell to Power) Erudite, (Psionic) Artificer or (Magic Mantle)Ardent for what you're doing with it.

If you want to break bloodlines... WARNING: extremely controversial

(click to show/hide)

i'm pretty tired and i think i forgot something, or was going to change something... idk
(Stp)Erudite20 //  (any 3 Bloodlines a1,b1,c1, a2,b2,c2), Thrallherd1, Binder1, (Psionic Variant)Anima Mage1, (Bloodlines a3,b3,c3) Uncanny Trickster2, Fiend of Possession6

ML = 20 erudite + 9BL + (0 Anima Mage + 9 BL) + (1 uncanny trickster + 9 BL) = 47
EBL = 1 binder + 9 BL + (1uncanny trickster + 9 BL) + (1 Anima mage + 9 BL) = 30
Thrallherd "level" for the thralls/believers chart = 1 thrallherd + 9BL + (1 uncanny trickster + 9 BL) = 20
FoP "level" for weapon enhancements ect... = 6 FoP + 9 BL + (1 uncanny trickster + 9 BL) = 25

...now if for some reason your DM rules that bloodlines add to other bloodlines, it gets even worse 

From here you can still do the shards of leadership trick at any time(except Thrallherd is used instead of Leadership to get it going) to get every power and spell(as a power) known and you can spam summon monster as a 30th level sorcerer every 5 rounds
you have a ton of thrall/followers, and you can even possess people or objects and add +25 worth of enhancement bonus(think epic  )

[AyeGill]

Thrallherd deserves a mention.

However, since you don't know the rules very well you might have issues playing.  The vast majority of core 3.5 is available at http://www.d20srd.org/, so go nuts reading through it to make sure you've got down what you need.

I second this.

Okay, you want psionic. We can work with that, although the fact that one entire side has to be the same limits us somewhat, as it means we can't advance that class with PrCs. Slight problem, we can deal with it. Either we can find some other class, to support your psionics, that we can take through all twenty levels(Wilder, for a fuckton of PP, comes to mind), or we can make your psionics supportive to a casting build on the other side of the gestalt. I guess you'd prefer the first, since you asked for a psion build, so I suggest one side of Psion and prestige classes and shit, one side of Ardent with Dominant Ideal. At levels 1-9 you're fairly powerful. At level 10, you can potentially own the action economy.

[sirpercival]

I had an amazing (non-gestalt) evil overlord planned for a game that fell through.

Are dual-progression PrCs allowed on the changeable side?  Is dragon mag material allowed??

The build idea is this:

Kalashtar Conjurer 20//Erudite 10/Thrallherd 10.  (If you can PrC on the dominant side, which is unclear, you take Incantatrix 10.)  The Kalashtar mindlink ability gets you into Thrallherd.  Then you make sure to take the Psiotheurgist and Cerebremetamagic feats from Dragon 349.  Your CLs become enormous, and you can pay for metamagic with power points.

Then, your thrall is a Binder/Ur-Priest/Divine-adapted Anima Mage, gestalted with I don't even know what.  I guess you could just do something like Binder/Archivist.  Then the thrall binds Astaroth and sacrifices your limitless supply of believers for Dark Craft gold and xp, and equips your evil army completely ignoring WBL.  Since you can supply the arcane and psionics, and your thrall can supply divine, you can make literally any item.

[AyeGill]

I had an amazing (non-gestalt) evil overlord planned for a game that fell through.

Are dual-progression PrCs allowed on the changeable side?  Is dragon mag material allowed??

The build idea is this:

Kalashtar Conjurer 20//Erudite 10/Thrallherd 10.  (If you can PrC on the dominant side, which is unclear, you take Incantatrix 10.)  The Kalashtar mindlink ability gets you into Thrallherd.  Then you make sure to take the Psiotheurgist and Cerebremetamagic feats from Dragon 349.  Your CLs become enormous, and you can pay for metamagic with power points.

Then, your thrall is a Binder/Ur-Priest/Divine-adapted Anima Mage, gestalted with I don't even know what.  I guess you could just do something like Binder/Archivist.  Then the thrall binds Astaroth and sacrifices your limitless supply of believers for Dark Craft gold and xp, and equips your evil army completely ignoring WBL.  Since you can supply the arcane and psionics, and your thrall can supply divine, you can make literally any item.

That is brilliant. I wonder if we can work Dominant Ideal ardent in there, which we could use to get infinite actions, which you could ostensibly use with an an affinity field to grant your entire army NI standard actions, before they blitz the entire world in one round.

[sirpercival]

Well, there are no Wis-based arcane casters, which you need for Psiotheurgist, so you'd be introducing MAD.  But a DI Ardent is always fun

You know... you could always grab an ardent with Thrall#2.

[AyeGill]

That could work. So now we're at a limitless supply of magical items which we use to equip our sizeable army, which we then grant infinite actions which we use to conquer the entire world in one round before anyone can respond. Now we just need an actually infinite army, which we can get by controlling a shadow, which we use to create spawn from the critters we pull out of our infinite bags of tricks. 

[JohnnyMayHymn]

how about a  druid9,planar shepherd10,hierophant1//DI ardent  for that second thrall now he can be swapped out(sacrificed lol) daily if needed to get different planar bubbles and with hierophant, he can give outsider WS uses to the main char and 1st thrall, doubled up WS & shapechange all around!

[Cassus]

Wow!  I go away for a day, and come back to all of this...  I'm impressed.  Alrighty, I'll go down the list and answer questions.

1.  Psion-- I'm not particularly fixated on Psion; it just seemed like the easiest way to do what I want to (Psionic Dominate and all that).  If you can find a way to pull this off with a Conjurer//Monk or whatever, go right ahead.

2. The Ultimate Goal-- I want to remind everyone that this character does not want to conquer the world, or destroy the world.  He wants to unite everyone under a single mind (his own).  I see a lot of people giving builds that produce huge armies, or infinite actions, or what have you.  That's fine, but only as a means to an end.  The endgame scenario is seizing power over everyone's brain.
If you could, when you suggest a build, give me a line or two about how it achieves the Ultimate Goal?  Remember I'm new to all of this, so things that seem intuitively obvious to all the veterans need to be spelled out for my brain.  Thanks!

3. Dragon Magazine-- Yep, that's allowed.  So is third party.  So is Pathfinder.  So is (most) homebrew from the D&D wiki.  Assume any material you've ever read is allowed, and suggest away.

4. Using that Shards of Leadership trick...  If you have NI psicrystals with Thrallherd cohorts, is that guaranteed to enslave every person on earth?  Or are some people just not psionically pliable enough?

[awaken_D_M_golem]

... well ... doing a psicrystal Loop with Thrallherd
should get every person alive up to a certain level.
"Should".
There ought to be a response by various grumpy authorities.
If there's no one left to thrall, except for the psychotic'ly loyal
Cleric of Thor, and you go ahead and thrall him = mad Thor.

Arty or Druid that focuses on Summoning
Summoner Wizard type
Mind's Eye update on the AC focused Psion that goes Thrallherd
... sure mix and match.
Heck you could stick a Psion 1 / Thrallherd 1 on top of 18 levels of whatever.

[Jackinthegreen]

The distinction between followers and army is pretty thin.  If you don't want your followers to participate on combat, you don't have to.  Same thing with thralls, although having another character with you means a more powerful party.

Keep in mind the bookkeeping required for all the followers and such.

[Cassus]

It's not so much "I want my followers to stay out of combat."  It's more "In the endgame, there won't -be- any combat," at least between intelligent creatures.  What I was really hoping for was a way to use Psionic Dominate or something on everyone alive.

[sirpercival]

If only this were a Magipunk game, you could be a biosynth and rock out Pheromones. 

/derail

[Endarire]

If you become a Thrallherd and kill enough thralls, the multiverse will run out of beings.

Similarly, if you're a Thrallherd with a Thrallherd thrall who has a Thrallherd thrall who has... then eventually you'll control a lot of the multiverse's beings.

[Von Krieger]

Small world. I too am applying for that particular game.

[jojolagger]

I'd suggest Psion(Telepath) [or erudite] 10/ Thrallherd 10//Enchanter 19/Mindbender 1
Get piles of Social skills, and you should have piles and piles of minions, via magical and mundane means.
Add in the Renown Courtesan Feat from Dragon 315 and you can make everyone fall in love with you.
Once we near the end, all we care about is having a large enough range on telepathy to keep everyone friendly while we slowly mind seed everyone into being us.

[Lycanthromancer]

I second the erudite/thrallherd//whatever (I suggest factotum for the other side, myself, though it doesn't matter).

Note the mind seed power. Normally it has a nasty XP cost, but the Supernatural Transformation feat in Savage Species can turn your [psionics] into a supernatural ability. Su's don't have XP costs. So just grab a thought bottle, use it, spam Mind Seed like crazy, then have the new you's use the thought bottle to bring them up to your level and have THEM start spamming it on all of their followers.

So long as you can get along with yourself, you'll have the entire world under your thumb (or tentacle, or whatever) in no time.

[Rebel7284]

So long as you can get along with yourself

This may be harder than it sounds.