Psion or Wilder? ....Or sorcerer /sigh.

[SangoProduction]

Hey dudes. I can't sleep because I decided to check the forums, and found that I had a vestige made after me. So, since I have nothing better to do with my time, I may as well ask your opinions on a conundrum I've been having with a character of mine.

I wanted to multiclass my MADMAN Monk in to psionics. It just felt like where the character was headed (character-wise, not build-wise), especially with the recent near-death experience. He was really squishy if anything hit him, so mage armor (or inertial armor) would be nice. Which made me get the image of him covered in flexi-metal plates... Which then got me thinking that this was the result of his draconic heritage.

Yeah. Yeah. Sorcerer has that dragon-heritage fluff built in, and they have so much more support for their powers, and ..and..and... but I play so many of them. But they may be the best for my purposes... Also might be less of a headache to think about the more or less linear scaling of spell slots, compared to the exponential growth of power points (and how much I lose by not being a full-class manifester). Anyway, to describe my purposes...

I saw a couple of the powers on the Wilder/Psion (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/psionic/powerList.htm) power list, which fit the dragon theme I had going pretty easily. There were many that could be "worked" in to the theme, but then again, you could "work" Disintegration in to a Care Bear theme (that's just how fluff works).

So yeah, I only wanted a few powers from that list, and I wanted to use them basically all the time. The Wilder was the obvious first choice...but oh my god! It has one of the most painfully slow progressions I have ever seen. Given that we aren't planning on leveling quickly, this seemed...painful, especially multi-classed, where I can halve or even quarter the speed of power acquisition (from the class. The one level of Psychic Warrior for Expansion adds its power to my list, but still).

"I could just dip 1 level of Psion and go back to the Wilder." I thought...but then I'm giving up a large number of Power Points. If I'm giving up the non-linear scaling of the power points for a long period of (IRL) time (months, maybe more), then what's the point of going Wilder?

Of course, I was allowed to take Mantled Wilder, which lets me take an Ardent Mantle and I really liked the Freedom mantle, both from the fluff-wise of being an escaped slave, and because swift-action- teleports and move actions are really really nice for a monk. Especially the MADMAN Monk, whose primary ability (for which he traded all the other ...bad... abilities for) requires a full attack action.

And Psion gets nothing like the Freedom Mantle until quite a ways in. It is also a bit overkill on the powers, compared to the ones that I really actually want. It also doesn't have that surge ability to make up for my manifester level being behind what the should be for the party level (especially as I am working with +2 LA at this point in time...which is part of the reason I'm so squishy).

I won't mention the Psychic Warrior except for the one level dip for Expansion, because it has bad PP gain, and non-great power gain.

.... OK it's 2 in the morning. Screw it. I'm going Sorcerer. I can cast Mage Armor just as many times as the god damned Wilder can at first level, and have quadruple the powers, and have 50,000 more books of resources to pull spells from. The time I'm putting in to debating with myself about which psionic class to take to do a worse job is really annoying.

[Rebel7284]

If you only want armor, may I suggest saving up for Bracers of Armor or whatever that Psycoactive Skin is that gives +4AC instead of burning class levels? If you want to teleport as a swift action, get a few Anklets of Translocation. Swap them out between combats. If you want to leave the monk class, that's fine of course, but one level dips that attempt to patch these types of holes tend to be ineffective in the long run.

[Crake]

Does your DM not allow you to take tashalatora? Wouldn't that make psion the obvious choice?

[SangoProduction]

If you only want armor, may I suggest saving up for Bracers of Armor or whatever that Psycoactive Skin is that gives +4AC instead of burning class levels? If you want to teleport as a swift action, get a few Anklets of Translocation. Swap them out between combats. If you want to leave the monk class, that's fine of course, but one level dips that attempt to patch these types of holes tend to be ineffective in the long run.

You have a point. Of course, I was planning on something of a Gish multiclass.
Then again, thinking on it again, it seems a bit cheap that I'm going to a casting class after getting a stupid good point buy for playing monk.
Ty for the item suggestions.

[Soranar]

If you do decide on a wilder, do not take the mantled wilder ACF, its mostly a trap.

It forces you to take the powers on the mantle as soon as possible, since you only get 11 powers known you better love that mantle.

The best wilder build is pretty specific because there's so little options available.

-First, you should stay a wilder 20 otherwise the other psionic classes multiclass better. If you're only staying until you get +3 manifester level from wilder abilities, you're better of playing any other full manifester and taking overchannel. The easiest multiclass option are ardents due to the way they manifest powers.

-second, a shifter wilder gets access to all the egoist list (which means you get power knowns you should want anyway like metamorphosis, greater metamorphosis and fission)

-due to the educated wilder ACF, you can cherry pick the best powers of other disciplines

I highly recommend astral construct, charm and dominate. They all augment very well and are equal about a dozen different spells (summon monster 1 to 9, all the charm spells, all the dominate spells)

Inertial barrier augments really really well too

If you prefer powers that don't augment well (or at all) you're basically wasting your best class feature (again in that case play something else)