Let's talk PF Wilders

[TiaC]

It seems to me that the Pathfinder Wilder is infinitely better as a class.

0. Favored class boni can give you more powers known.

1. New surge mechanics. Enervation is now fixed at 15% and you can use surge to freely manifest a power 1/10min.

2. Surge types. The big two are Student's surge, which is Educated Wilder + Psicrystal + no daze, and Raging surge, which is Rage + rage powers + enervation just deals a bit of damage. However, most of them are improvements over the 3.5 Wilder.

3. Psychic Reformation is much better in PF. It has no XP cost, but if you go back more than one level you take a temporary negative level for 24 hours. However, a 2-point augment reduces that to 8 hours and a 6-point augment removes them completely.

4. Surging euphoria is a morale bonus. Take Raging Surge and add a Courageous weapon and it's really impressive.

Now we get to things that aren't yet on d20pfsrd. (this thread has links to a bunch of material that appears unchanged at publication)

5. Surge crystals. For 15,000g (+1), 30,000g (+2), or 60,000g (+3) and 2 points of Con, your wild surge increases by the listed amount. (with these, an 11th level Wilder can use their free manifestations to manifest a fully augmented Psychic Reformation)

6. Circlet of the Sheltered Mind. 7.5k for reducing enervation chance by 5% sounds pretty good.

7. Mental Equilibrium, Biokinetic Feedback, Piercing Surge, Countersurge... These feats from Psionics Augmented: Wilder are amazing. Mental Equilibrium removes any consequences of enervation except HP/PP damage. Biokinetic Feedback turns PP loss into HP loss and allows stacking with Overchannel. Together, these allow you to basically ignore enervation. Add some Boots of the Earth and you're golden.

8. New powers that are boosted if you surge while using them. My favorite is Euterpe’s Prophetic Song, which turns you into a better buffer than the Bard.

9. Mind Stones. For 2000*level squared, these add a power to your powers known. It says it is supposed to be from your list, but that's why you have UMD.

So, in conclusion, the Pathfinder Wilder can surge for more with less consequences, can rewrite their powers easily, can know more powers, and has a great deal of support making it more awesome.

[Amechra]

Oh wow, Mental Contagion is stupidly strong if you build for it; manifesting it with the Wilder's capstone and a +3 Surge Crystal means that up to seven enemies get a -13 to all attack rolls, skill checks, caster level checks, and manifester level checks. For a number of rounds equal to your Charisma modifier. I like it.

Euterpe's Prophetic Song... Wow. Just wow. You weren't kidding about being a better buffer than a Bard. And you stack with the Bard.


As for the feats... you skipped over Vent Agony, which smacks some poor fool with your Psychic Enervation (Mental Equilibrium + Vent Agony means you are the funnest at parties.) Then you qualify for Pain Bonding, which lets you spread any damage due to Psychic Enervation out amongst your allies. And qualifies you for anything that requires the Collective class feature.

Inspired Gift took Skill Focus out back and beat it up for its lunch money. And then forces Skill Focus to smile and sit next to it,  because they stack.

The Biokinetic Adept line of feats are great (Biokinetic Rhythms brings infinite out-of-combat healing to Pathfinder), but the jaw-dropper is Biokinetic Surge. Heal appreciable amounts of ability damage at will.

Countersurge lets you "counter-spell" with your Wild Surge. Nice. And Surge Blade means that a one-level dip in Soulknife isn't terrible, especially if you picked Raging Surge. Actually, I might see if I can work up a build...

[phaedrusxy]

Wow... I had been meaning to check out the PF wilder, but just hadn't been able to find the time... Still don't have it, but will try to at some point in the (nearer) future.

[TiaC]

Oh wow, Mental Contagion is stupidly strong if you build for it; manifesting it with the Wilder's capstone and a +3 Surge Crystal means that up to seven enemies get a -13 to all attack rolls, skill checks, caster level checks, and manifester level checks. For a number of rounds equal to your Charisma modifier. I like it.

You can also just use it to mirror a dominate to 6 other creatures.

Euterpe's Prophetic Song... Wow. Just wow. You weren't kidding about being a better buffer than a Bard. And you stack with the Bard.

To really turn up the buffing, take the Surging Muse archetype and add your surge to hit and cha to damage in a 15' +5'/4 levels aura. If you're using Euterpe's Prophetic Song, you probably want Solicit Psicrystal, and if you have Solicit Psicrystal, grab the other good concentration powers like Energy Current, Telekinetic Maneuver, or even Control Winds(Makes ranged attacks impossible)

Another power I like there is Kyria’s Crystalline Aura. For a Wilder, it's both a nice defensive buff and a shredding aura of doom.

As for the feats... you skipped over Vent Agony, which smacks some poor fool with your Psychic Enervation (Mental Equilibrium + Vent Agony means you are the funnest at parties.) Then you qualify for Pain Bonding, which lets you spread any damage due to Psychic Enervation out amongst your allies. And qualifies you for anything that requires the Collective class feature.

Ah, but if you want to use Vent Agony, take Volcanic mind which turns vent agony into an area attack and adds more damage and a bunch of conditions to it.

Inspired Gift took Skill Focus out back and beat it up for its lunch money. And then forces Skill Focus to smile and sit next to it,  because they stack.

And yet, it's still one of the worst feats there. Look at Piercing Surge, which is already as good as Power Penetration at level 3, and only gets better.

The Biokinetic Adept line of feats are great (Biokinetic Rhythms brings infinite out-of-combat healing to Pathfinder), but the jaw-dropper is Biokinetic Surge. Heal appreciable amounts of ability damage at will.

This is why you should get your surge to drain HP instead of PP.

Countersurge lets you "counter-spell" with your Wild Surge. Nice. And Surge Blade means that a one-level dip in Soulknife isn't terrible, especially if you picked Raging Surge. Actually, I might see if I can work up a build...

I was working on a 12th level raging surge build. Get a Dueling, Furious, Couragous Amulet of Mighty Fists, cast Metaphysical Claw for all-day +4 weapons and take Spell Sunder. Now, Rage gives you +7 to stats, your Surging Aura is +5, and the CMB on Spell Sunder is nearly +60 and he rage-cycles. So you begin each round by killing whatever buff they put up, and then hit them twice more, all with no buff rounds.

[TiaC]

Oh, another nice trick if you have completely mitigated enervation is to use your free manifestation to keep min/level buffs up all day. One of the best for this is Power Resistance. "Yes, I will take that all-day level+17 PR, thank you"

[Mr. woop woop]

Time to kill stuff?

OK, so first we will assume that you max con to a 36(cause why the fuck not)
go barbarian 16/wilder 4
with some godly means get max on all hp amount rolls
take toughness
all favored class points go to hp(take the feat that gives 2 favored classes)

I get a hp total of 260(con)+32(wilder)+192(barb)+40(favored + toughness)= 524

use sympathetic drain

(click to show/hide)

Sympathetic Drain
Discipline: Psychometabolism
Level: Psion/wilder 2, vitalist 2
Display: Visual
Manifesting Time: 1 standard action
Range: Close (25 ft. plus 5 ft. per 2 levels)
Target: You and 1 other creature
Duration: Instantaneous
Saving Throw: Will partial
Power Resistance: Yes
Power Points: 3
You establish a channel between you and a victim, through which you both bleed life force. When you manifest this power, sacrifice any number of HP up to ½ your full maximum total (you may not sacrifice temporary hp). Your victim loses an equal amount of HP and must succeed at a Will save or be sickened for 1 round.
 
Augment: For every 2 additional power points you spend when manifesting this power, the duration of the sickened effect increases by 1 round and its save DC increases by 1.

Surge Augmentation: If you invoke your wild surge when you manifest this power your opponent loses 2 HP for each 1 HP you sacrifice.

use wild surge and deal 524 damage with no save. ... with minimal min maxing too.

[StreamOfTheSky]

On the dream scarred press website, and...it apparently never made it over to d20pfsrd, there was a prepared version of Wilder that got something different than the Surge feature and could change daily what powers it knew.  I think it was called the Contemplative (which means google searching turns up mostly unrelated cleric threads...), but I can't look on dream scarred's own forums, because all of them give me some "Content Encoding Error" ("The page you are trying to view cannot be shown because it uses an invalid or unsupported form of compression.") when I try to look at them.

It's probably in the "Psionics Augmented: Wilder" thread on this page, if anyone can read it: http://dreamscarred.com/forum/general-discussion/pathfinder/

[Keldar]

Nope, that's just a thread of questions about the new Wilder material.  They seem to be doing a site move.  Badly.  Reloading a page has gotten me past the error message consistently, so you might have some luck looking that way.  Though after using a Google search of the site the only reference to the word Contemplative was a lone post asking about Heightened State.  If that sounds right to you, they may not have moved the material to the new server yet.

[PsyBomb]

Mental Contagion is actually hilariously fun when you're teamed up with a Dread. The Power works on any Mind-Affecting, not just powers, so if the Dread uses Paranoia you can recreate the church scene from Kingsman.

[StreamOfTheSky]

Nope, that's just a thread of questions about the new Wilder material.  They seem to be doing a site move.  Badly.  Reloading a page has gotten me past the error message consistently, so you might have some luck looking that way.  Though after using a Google search of the site the only reference to the word Contemplative was a lone post asking about Heightened State.  If that sounds right to you, they may not have moved the material to the new server yet.

Yeah, it's looking like that info has fallen into the abyss...

[TiaC]

On the dream scarred press website, and...it apparently never made it over to d20pfsrd, there was a prepared version of Wilder that got something different than the Surge feature and could change daily what powers it knew.  I think it was called the Contemplative (which means google searching turns up mostly unrelated cleric threads...), but I can't look on dream scarred's own forums, because all of them give me some "Content Encoding Error" ("The page you are trying to view cannot be shown because it uses an invalid or unsupported form of compression.") when I try to look at them.

It's probably in the "Psionics Augmented: Wilder" thread on this page, if anyone can read it: http://dreamscarred.com/forum/general-discussion/pathfinder/

THe Contemplative has been printed in Psionics Augmented Volume 1. They're Wis-based. This is their big feature:

Meditative Powers: Each morning, while meditating for power points, the contemplative chooses a number of powers equal to his powers known. When a contemplative recovers his daily power points after resting, he may choose to rotate one or more powers he knows for new ones. These powers must always be chosen from the wilder power list. If a contemplative learns a power through other means, such as the Expanded Knowledge feat or psychic chirurgery, this power is known in addition to his normal powers. He may never exchange it for another power from the wilder power list when he chooses his powers known, and it doesn’t count against his limit of powers known at any one time. The contemplative must choose at least one power from each power level he can manifest when selecting his powers for the day. This ability replaces surge bond.

Instead of Wild surge, they get Overchannel and Talented.

Mind blast is a slightly improved version of Surge blast, but it doesn't work with any means of improving surge blast so it still sucks.

Heightened State replaces surging euphoria. Using Overchannel gives you level temp HP and +1 saves and AC for a round. If you do it again before it wears off, you get another round and the bonus goes up by 1 (max 1/2 level).

5th level, bonus Psionic Meditation.

Greater Overchannel at 9th lets you spend focus to cover the PP cost of Overchannel.

Expanded Knowledge at 13th and 17th.

All-in-all, it's not bad, but past 8th level Rsyref blows it out of the water.