Celestial Totem & Raging Wilder: Am I going too far?

[Falkyron]

I'm putting together a character concept for a 2-man pathfinder campaign, and it has to be strong.

My plan is for it to be a wilder with the 'raging' surge type.
Since we'll have no source of healing beyond basic psionics (the other character is a psychic warrior) I chose this so that I may pick up the Lesser Celestial Totem rage power at level 5 and suffer 1hp/ML for enervating:

Whenever she is subject to a spell that cures hit point damage, she heals 1 additional point of damage per caster level. In the case of non-spell healing effects (such as channeled energy or lay on hands), she heals a number of additional points equal to the class level of the character performing the magical healing. This does not affect fast healing or regeneration.
Wild Surge and Psychic enervation: A raging wilder unleashes pure, raw rage to boost her psionic power. A raging wilder cannot invoke wild surge unless in a rage, but any time a raging wilder manifests a power and uses wild surge, that round does not count toward her number of rounds per day she may rage. When the raging wilder suffers psychic enervation, she loses hit points equal to her normal manifester level (the increase in manifester level from her wild surge does not increase the number of hit points lost).
Surge Bond: You gain the rage class feature, as the barbarian, except as follows: the number of rounds per day you may rage is equal to 3 + your Charisma modifier, +1 per level of wilder you possess. If you have levels of barbarian, you do not stack your total rounds of rage together; instead you may add your Charisma bonus and your wilder level to the total number of rounds of rage available to you through barbarian. In addition, you gain the ability to manifest while in a rage, unlike other manifesters.

Improved Surge Bond: At 5th, 9th, 13th and 17th level the raging wilder gains a rage power as if a barbarian of the same level. If you have levels of barbarian, add your wilder levels to your barbarian level to determine which rage power you can select.

I will combine this with wild surge for extremely cheap healing when needed, and powerful healing 'on the spot'. I figure that using one power point on the power 'natural healing' would heal 3+(3xSurge)+CL, and the character would only lose HPxCL if it enervated. I also figure that if I really need some healing in combat then it really has to count (since losing an action in a 2-man party mid-combat is kind of a big deal), so when I go full strength on the power point use it'll augment by 3 per ML and do a tidy job. Not as great as a 'heal' spell in efficiency when cranked, but it'll be versatile.
I've considered picking up Mend Body (1d6/ML with focus expend means I can empower it with a second focus) but the investment seems to be too much. 4 feats minimum.

We'll be starting at level 2, meaning that the single-point surge will be healing for 8hp and dealing 2hp in damage if I enervate with no real downside.
It's clear that this is legitimate, but it's already healing 6-8hp for 1PP and it will get better without cost; maybe not when I enervate ML-wise, but it will with wild surge improvements.

I'm not going to sugarcoat the optimization: keep in mind that the staple theoretical best value for a power point to a decent psionic player (excluding vitalist) is 10hp (thanks to 'shared pain' plus 'vigor' with a psicrystal / 'heal injuries') and that doesn't count expending power to manifest share pain or having used a feat for the crystal in the first place.

I can already do this 16 times a day at level 2, plus use surge blast for damage and manifest a fully-augmented natural healing (or control power) for free every 10 minutes. Would you call this exploitative?

[Extra Anchovies]

What're the healing numbers by level? Because unless they outpace a self-healing-optimized Paladin, they're not going too far. By self-healing-optimized, I mean this:
Lay on Hands (1d6/2 levels)
Tiefling Paladin FCB (+1/level to LoH when used on self)
Fey Foundling (heal +2 points per die rolled when affected by healing)
The average healing/LoH use for this setup from levels 1 through 20, along with uses/day (not counting any features or feats that grant extra uses) is as follows:
1: n/a
2: 7.5, x1+Cha
3: 8.5, x1+Cha
4: 15, x2+Cha
5: 16, x2+Cha
6: 22.5, x3+Cha
7: 23.5, x3+Cha
8: 30, x4+Cha
9: 31, x4+Cha
10: 37.5, x5+Cha
11: 38.5, x5+Cha
12: 45, x6+Cha
13: 46, x6+Cha
14: 52.5, x7+Cha
15: 53.5, x7+Cha
16: 60, x8+Cha
17: 61, x8+Cha
18: 67.5, x9+Cha
19: 68.5, x9+Cha
20: 74, x10+Cha
Sure, you may get to deal a bit of damage with your ability, but LoH is a swift action and it can clear a number of nasty conditions. LoH also has its own resource pool, while yours (presumably) draws on power points that are also needed for your other abilities.

[Falkyron]

What're the healing numbers by level? Because unless they outpace a self-healing-optimized Paladin, they're not going too far.


7
8
12
13
14 <- When the combo comes online
15
19
20
21
22
26
27
28
29
33
34
35
36
40
41


These are base numbers for spending a single power point. Note that a manifesting-focused wilder ends up with over 500 power points without items at level 20.
Increase the cost to equal the level of the character and you add an additional (CL-1)x3 hp.

I would normally agree that it's not over the top but... this entire setup cost the character one power slot. Beyond that, the chosen surge type suits the original concept and is fairly potent in its own right.
A normal wilder has a 15% chance to enervate any time that it uses wild surge. The staple penalty for enervation is to become dazed next turn and lose power points equal to your manifester level.
A raging wilder instead loses hit points, which is far more efficient. The risk is offset by having +4 con (6 with a feat I'll have) while in a rage. The downside is that you are fatigued after rage-surging for double the rounds you were in combat, but it's not a big deal compared to anything else.
As discussed, it's very easy to recover that health with this setup. With how wild surge works, this build could effectively manifest all day (albeit very weakly) once its power runs out. It may use power points but a wilder can surge some into existence by dealing with the risk of enervating which (funnily enough) is effectively a non-issue.

I will note that apparently the healing doesn't come online til level 5, due to how Extra Rage Power works (I do have to wait til level 5 to get it naturally). Even so I'm losing nothing in the short term, and remember that an optimal amount of health pulled from a single power point is 10. That's what's got me looking at it and thinking carefully.

I'm a bit tentative when using strong combos like this because I've managed to get a reputation amongst my peers. They have a tendency to bring tier 3 at best to the table and drop the tier even further through strange decisions, like taking the feat 'Self Sufficient'. Yeah, like that.
I've straight-up seen a Complete Warrior Samurai at this table who didn't have points in intimidate, and played a Healer from Miniatures Handbook to have the DM rage quit the campaign because 'the heals are too powerful' after I spent all my starting gold on mundane leather armor and bunches of healing wands, desperate to not be in the spotlight for one damn dungeon crawl.
Things have improved a lot since then but nine bloody hells... only one group from the five I play in doesn't go 'full inquisitor' on my characters constantly.

Some of the groups are even more frustrating because they make silly decisions all the time but always seem to have stupidly overpowered free stuff. Think half-dragon, vampire, minotaur, obscure templates etc for free... but my 3.5 half-elf bard sang and mate what? The DC of the save was his perform check? (not specced for Dragonfire Inspiration, just a bard with Melodic Casting and Extra Music) Man screw you with your overpowered crap. Bards are banned now.
Why? Oh, I dunno... maybe because I used fascinate and let the party waltz up without weapons drawn into position to be ready to wreck everything, then suggested that the leader should walk over and let me see how masterful his greatsword's balance was (hand it to me) and step away so I couldn't hurt him, so I could give it a quick harmless swing?
Is that all? Wait, what? The grease spell I dropped under those undead you sent at us just to counter my music?
Wasn't I just playing my class properly?
Nah, I'm just a powergamer, set in his power gaming ways. The big, bad, thoughtless powergamer.

I'm getting pretty invested into this character, the campaign sounds fun, and I really don't want to roll something new. I've only played a wilder once before and... well, look at my sig.

[Extra Anchovies]

The risk is offset by having +4 con (6 with a feat I'll have) while in a rage.

Not true. Rage HP are almost useless. When your rage ends you lose HP equal to the amount that you gained, e.g. a level 10 barbarian (or raging wilder, or whatever) gains 20 HP when they enter a rage and loses 20 at the end. This means that if they're at 10 hp or less when they stop raging, they drop dead on the spot. The Con bonus while raging is like the Diehard feat; it only makes you seem harder to kill, it doesn't actually make you any tougher HP-wise.


I've straight-up seen a Complete Warrior Samurai at this table who didn't have points in intimidate, and played a Healer from Miniatures Handbook to have the DM rage quit the campaign because 'the heals are too powerful' after I spent all my starting gold on mundane leather armor and bunches of healing wands, desperate to not be in the spotlight for one damn dungeon crawl.

Oh geez, that's crazy. I think you should be okay using this build; it is for a two-man game, after all.

[Story]

The Pathfinder Unchained Barbarian does get Temp HP from raging though.

[Falkyron]

Sorry for the sporadic replies; I've been multitasking.

Well, yeah... the loss of the health when rage ends is dangerous. I'm thinking of it more like a set of two 'suffer enervation in combat free' tokens, since it's easy enough to stay raged for one more round when combat ends and wild surge heal it back.

Feats are still in the air for me. I already feel like +2 more constitution from Raging Vitality is a given, and at level 5 Psionic Meditation is basically mandatory as a wilder.
I've considered changing that thinking though. Here are my ideas so far:

Picking up Psicrystal Containment for two sources of focus, then combining Empower Power with Split Psionic Ray. Energy Ray would be an excellent source of single-target damage for the large and scary types. 4 feats is a nasty investment but... psicrystals are alright as-is, 'Containment is helpful since it's practically 'have one move action you wouldn't have, once per combat', and the two metapsionic feats can still be useful later (*cough* Disintegration *cough*). Losing 4d6 damage to deal 300% of the remaining damage is scary. Would come online about level 7 when surge 3 hits. 10d6 damage becomes (6d6+6d6)x1.5 damage for the same cost except for focus, and would only get scarier from there. Would scale with usefulness tanks to Empower Power being an okay feat at level 5, psicrystals being good enough at level 1, an extra focus being great for surge blasts (since Psionic Meditation requires autohypnosis 4, ugh).

There's a new feat out that lets you stack Overchannel with wild surge. I can have the combo online at level 3 for two feats, since my GM waved one requirement that literally did nothing for a raging wilder. Not kidding. Negated status effect from enervating, which raging wilders don't suffer. Oddly enough, the other part of the stack-up feat allows you to use health instead of PP when you enervate, which I also already have. Meh.
I would change to a different surge type but... the heals combo, Anchovies! The heals! It works on any source of healing, too! Your paladin would heal its CL in extra healing on the wilder. It's pretty hard to pass up in a 2-man game.

Third idea was to take the Psionic Shot line, and focus on tabbing it onto surge blasts so that I could rely on it for most of my blasting. The blasting wilder archetype looked nice for it; it gives 'Meditation along with a bunch of other blasty goodies for free, and allows you to double the damage by risking surges. Downside? Using two focuses to fire with Psionic Shot seems ridiculous.
Still, having 6d6+1 (Point-Blank Shot required) force damage ranged touch attacks at level 3 was pretty tempting, even if it would have been a major pain in the arse to reload the blast.

Fourth plan was to just stack up some Psionic Talent feats since I'm an Elan, then to use 'reform' later. Why not? Crank those power points up at low levels when they matter. Never a bad choice when Psychic Reformation is at the table. It's like taking extra slot but it gets better every damned time you take it.

Opinions? Ideas?

[Falkyron]

Another idea: I could go into Surge Adept and lend my surges to my psiwar buddy. I wonder how much oomph a buffing psiwar can really pull out of wild surge, though?