On Puppeting Myself

Question

Puppet says:

When you lift a creature with your telekinesis you may spend a spell point to take precise control over their physical form. You can force them to run, jump, manipulate objects, and wield weapons, but you cannot force them to use special abilities such as spells that are not a function of bodily movement, and cannot take control of their vocal cords, though you can prevent them from making sounds. If you force the subject to engage in combat, use an attack bonus equal to your base attack plus your casting ability modifier, and substitute your casting ability modifier for any ability modifiers on damage rolls. In addition, substitute your casting ability modifier for the subject’s Dexterity modifier when determining armor class. When performing actions that would require a skill check, use your skill ranks plus your casting ability modifier for the check.

Since the subject is only under your physical control, on their turn they can still take purely mental actions. You must use Hostile Lift to affect an unwilling creature, and they are allowed the normal Will saves to negate the effect.

Since I'm a valid target for my own telekinesis - and, I hope, I'm also a creature - a reading of Puppet ends up suggesting that I can use Puppet on myself, thus allowing me to use my casting modifier for a bunch of things - AC, attacks, damage, and skill checks.

Is this reading correct?

How does this talent interact with the action economy usually provided by Telekinesis, at large? It is clear that I can force a creature to move, run, jump - attack, even - but what does this cost, action-wise?

Is it possible to force a puppet'ed creature to execute a full attack?

Answer 1

Sure, you can do that

This appears to be part of a third-party supplement, but you can find the telekinesis rule here, on a different part of the same wiki:

As a standard action, you can use telekinesis to lift one willing creature or unattended object within close range and move it up to 20 feet + 5 feet per 5 caster levels (its telekinesis speed). The creature or object levitates as long as you concentrate, have line of effect, and the object remains within close range. The objects and creatures you may lift are restricted by size; the largest creature or object you can lift is given in the chart below. This assumes the creature or object is made from a dense material, such as flesh creatures or stone objects.

The rule just says "one willing creature" and you count as a willing creature

It will cost you a standard action each turn

The words "as long as you concentrate" appear to mean that you need to concentrate, meaning you spend a standard action each turn to maintain the effect.

Things get slightly weird because some of your actions are now actions that you're "forcing yourself" to do, and other actions are actions that you're doing in order to force yourself to do them. But I think it all works out: your standard action to maintain concentration is a "purely mental" action, and your actions to attack are physical actions, and the rules explicitly say that these can coexist.

You've asked:

It is clear that I can force a creature to move, run, jump - attack, even - but what does this cost, action-wise? Is it possible to force a puppet'ed creature to execute a full attack?

This costs the creature's move action and attack action, or its full attack if you choose to make it full attack. It costs you nothing other than the standard action to maintain the effect.

This doesn't seem very good

The stats described are slightly better than your base stats as a squishy caster, but they're not going to be as good as an actual dedicated martial character. Also, every time you get hit, you'll need to make concentration checks or lose the ability, as described in the concentration rules above.

The good use of the power appears to be to puppet an enemy creature, which both takes them out of the battle and hopefully distracts their allies. The trick is then to find an enemy creature with a bad enough Will save that you can keep your telekinesis active.