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Been playing my groups healer as a Vitalist. Now, the group consists of old players who have learned to hate Psionics. So everything I do is under a microscope.
The problem being currently is the Collective ability of the class. The way it is worded it says any living creature with a wisdom score of at least 1 can be part of my Collective.
The GM is convinced it's a mind affecting ability so any mindless creatures can't be part of my Collective.
Also I have Unwilling Participant as a feat.
"Collective (su)
A vitalist learns to use psionic power to connect willing minds through an internal network that strengthens their psychic bonds. As a standard action, a vitalist can join a number willing targets into his collective equal to his key ability modifier or half his vitalist level, whichever is higher. The vitalist must have line of sight to each target, each target must have a Wisdom score of at least 1, and all targets must be within Medium range (100 ft. + 10 ft. per class level)."
"Unwilling Participant
You may attempt to force a living creature into your collective as a standard action. The target may attempt a Will save (DC 10 + half manifester level + Wisdom modifier) to resist. If the target fails the save, it may attempt another Will save at the same DC every 24 hours thereafter, but is otherwise unable to leave the collective unless you allow it.
If you expend your psionic focus using this feat, the action required to attempt to force a living creature into your collective is instead a move action.
Normal: Only willing creatures may be added to a collective. Creatures may leave the collective as a free action."
The question being what are the restrictions on who can be part of my Collective. It's getting irritating not being able to use half my classes abilities due to rule lawyer.
Abilities that are mind-affecting are called out as such. The collective ability is not, flavor text aside.
Unfortunately, it isn't possible to convince someone that an absence of a descriptor is deliberate. You're looking for an explicit statement "this is not mind-affecting", but you won't find one just like you won't find "this is not a purple-frog-asteroid-taxation effect", because that's not how this game is written. We don't write what isn't, we write what is (with the exception of exceptions which need to be pointed out.)
How many spiders are you going up against anyway? There aren't very many non-undead, con-construct creatures which are still mindless. Vermin and plants being the obvious ones.
Anyway, take a look at the bestow curse spell in Core. Will negates, not mind-affecting, so there's precedent for such a thing. Clearly that spell is impacting some aura or essence of a creature even if it's mindless, so there's no real reason why a collective can't as well.
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Look at this line from the Vitalist's level 2 ability, Spirit of Many:
Whenever a vitalist manifests a power with the Network descriptor targeting only members of his collective, the power loses the mind-affecting descriptor (if it had it) and bypasses any power resistance, although it still provokes an attack of opportunity to manifest as normal.
Why would you need to be able to remove the mind-affecting descriptor if you can't put creatures immune to mind-affecting effects into the collective in the first place? Therefor, the collective is not a mind-affecting ability.