Is there a way to affect mindless creatures with mind-affecting spells or powers?

Question

From the list of traits for an ooze, the mindless trait says that a creature with the mindless trait possesses

No Intelligence score, and immunity to all mind-affecting effects (charms, compulsions, phantasms, patterns, and morale effects).

While it's possible to affect creatures that are only immune to mind-affecting effects with mind-affecting spells or powers, mindless creatures seem to be a larger set of creatures than those that are only immune to mind-affecting effects. I'm looking at the Bypass Mental Defenses mythic path ability from Psionics Augmented: Mythic Psionics. It reads:

Bypass Mental Defenses (Su): When manifesting a power or using a class feature with the mind-affecting descriptor, you can expend one use of mythic power to affect creatures immune to mind-affecting effects and ignore abilities that apply their benefit only against mind-affecting effects, such as barred mind, as long as the creature being targeted is not mindless.

Is there is a way to affect mindless creatures with mind-affecting spells or powers?

Answers can include 3rd-party Pathfinder material, but nothing from D&D 3.5e.

Answer 1

Yes, for some types of creatures. These abilities are found on sorcerer bloodline arcana and on metamagic feats that require being 6th or 7th level to take.

Undead

The sorcerer Undead Bloodline arcana makes your spells affect formerly humanoid undead as if they were humanoids.

Corporeal undead that were once humanoids are treated as humanoids for the purposes of determining which spells affect them.

The Threnodic Spell metamagic feat makes mind-affecting spells affect any undead.

This feat only works on mind-affecting spells. A threnodic spell affects undead creatures (even mindless undead) as if they weren't immune to mind-affecting effects, but has no effect on living creatures.

Constructs

The sorcerer Impossible Bloodline arcana makes your mind-affecting enchantment (compulsion) spells affect constructs.

Constructs are susceptible to your enchantment (compulsion) spells as if they were not mind-affecting.

Constructs are treated as living creatures for the purposes of determining which spells affect them.

A similar ability is granted by the arcana of the 3rd party Constructed Bloodline.

Oozes and Vermin

The Coaxing Spell metamagic feat makes mind-affecting spells affect any ooze or vermin.

This feat only works with mind-affecting effects. A coaxing spell affects mindless oozes and vermin as if they weren't mindless, but has no effect on other creature types.

The 3rd party Vermin Bloodline's arcana makes you treat vermin as animals when casting spells.

You treat vermin as animals when targeting them with your spells. This can make vermin susceptible to mind-affecting spells, for example.

The Vermin Heart feat (available to druids) changes which spells can affect vermin, but doesn't seem to bypass the vermin's immunity to mind-affecting effects.

Plants

The Verdant Spell metamagic feat makes mind-affecting spells affect any plant.

A verdant spell affects plant creatures (even mindless plant creatures) as if they weren't immune to mind-affecting effects, but has no effect on other types of creatures. This feat works only on mind-affecting spells.

Answer 2

The Mesmerist's Psychic Inception Bold Stare ability gives allows them to do so to a limited extent to the target of their hypnotic stare.

Psychic Inception:

The hypnotic stare and its penalty can affect creatures that are mindless or immune to mind-affecting effects (such as an undead or vermin). The mesmerist can also partially affect such a creature with his mind-affecting spells and abilities if it's under the effect of his hypnotic stare; it gains a +2 bonus on its saving throw (if any), and if affected, it still has a 50% chance each round of ignoring the effect. Ignoring the effect doesn't end the effect, but does allow the creature to act normally for that round.

Hypnotic Stare:

A mesmerist can focus his stare on one creature within 30 feet as a swift action. That creature takes a –2 penalty on Will saving throws. This penalty changes to –3 at 8th level. A mesmerist can maintain his stare against only one opponent at a time; it remains in effect until the mesmerist stares at a new target, the opponent dies, the opponent moves farther than 30 feet away, or the mesmerist falls unconscious or dies. The mesmerist can remove the memory of his stare from the target's mind; The creature doesn't remember that it was affected (nor does it realize that it is currently being affected) unless the mesmerist allows it. The hypnotic stare is a psychic effect, and relies more on the mesmerist's focus than the target's perception of his stare. It can't be avoided in the same ways a gaze attack can. The mesmerist can use this ability even while blinded, but must succeed at a DC 20 concentration check to do so. Staring at a creature requires the mesmerist's focus, so if he uses a gaze attack or similar ability, he must target the subject of his hypnotic stare or voluntarily end the stare. The penalties from multiple mesmerists' stares don't stack, nor do they stack with penalties from witches' evil eye hexes. This is a mind-affecting effect.

Answer 3

The Sorcerer Bloodline "Impossible" gives you two passive benefits, the first being

Constructs are susceptible to your enchantment (compulsion) spells as if they were not mind-affecting.

Most constructs are Mindless, but an Impossible Sorcerer can still use SOME Mind-affecting spells. The second benefit is

Constructs are treated as living creatures for the purposes of determining which spells affect them.

However, I think that means that a mind-affecting non-Enchantment spell is now facing a... Mindless Living creature, like, say, an Ooze.

There is also a similar Bloodline that functions like this on Undead.

These bloodlines only let you use a specific school of spells on certain templates, however.

Answer 4

Yes.

Many tables will likely rule that the lack of any mind to actually effect goes beyond the usual sources of immunity to mind-affecting effects, and this is an entirely reasonable house-rule, but it is still a house-rule, not RAW. Furthermore, even if you do manage to land the spell or other ability, most things in the mind-affecting category will have their usefulness severely hampered (for example, Dominate is limited by the creature's ability to comprehend to what you want it to do).

However, by strict RAW, mindlessness is not a written as be a separate impediment to use of mind-affecting abilities in addition to the existence of immunity, it is simply another source of said immunity. Therefore, by RAW, anything that would let you affect a non-mindless undead or construct, or any other creature with an immunity to mind-affecting effects, so long as the method is not specific to those cases (like an ability that specifies it works just on undead), will also let you land the effect on an ooze.

As for specific abilities that can do this, the OP made it clear that he already knows where to find such things, but apparently it's an issue for others on the site, so I'll try to address those as well. There may be some from Paizo sources, but it's a fairly obscure thing to do, and I don't know Paizo's catalog as well as I do DSP's, so the only ones I know where to find are both from them, one psionic and one psionics-flavored martial. The psionic one is the Collective ability of vitalists and tacticians, though technically, it's not bypassing the immunity, it instead removes the descriptor from the power so that it can avoid invoking the immunity. The martial one is a direct immunity bypass: the Metamorphic Somnambulism Stance from the Sleeping Goddess discipline from Path of War: Expanded. That stance isn't out of beta quite yet, but you can find it on the beta test document for the Zealot, linked from the beta test thread here. Note that, by RAW, these only work for psionic powers and martial maneuvers, respectively, but ask your DM how your table handles transparency, as they apply much more broadly at some (perhaps most) tables than they do by strict RAW.