Reparing Wilder; Alternative Wild Surge Mechanics?

[Edea]

I'm trying to homebrew a wilder that's...not so awkward, and I wanted to see what objections might be raised to these changes to the wild surge and powers known mechanics.

Spoiler: Alternate Wild Surge Rules (Relaxed Language)

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When invoked, add +X manifester level to the manifested power. Under normal circumstances, this now expends your psionic focus, and you must pay any additional points yourself for augmenting the power up to its new manifester level. If you do both of these things, no psychic enervation occurs.

However, when wild surging, you can also choose to 1) forego expending your focus, 2) forego spending any of the augmentation points yourself (as if effectively supplied by the wild surge), or 3) both. Doing any of these, however, carries the risk of psychic enervation; if you choose to forego expending your focus, there's a 5% chance per manifester level added that you will be dazed until the end of your next turn. If you choose to have the wild surge effectively supply the additional power points, there's a 5% chance per manifester level added that you will be forced to pay an additional number of power points equal to the amount needed to manifest the base power being affected by the wild surge. If you do both, the percentage chances are rolled separately.

While you cannot stack the ML increases from Overchannel and wild surge simultaneously (as before), a wilder possessing the Overchannel feat can choose to take 1d6 damage per ML added when wild surging instead of risking any form of psychic enervation for that particular manifestation.

Spoiler: Wilder Power Acquisition (Spitballing)

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Instead of the glacially slow acquisition of generic psion/wilder powers, I kind of want them to use a mantle-esque system. However, instead of just building up multiple mantles and still picking from them, they'd pick a single "mantle" (I've been calling it their "Passion") which represents their primary emotion (the one that they draw power from as a wilder) and would automatically know all of the powers from it (much like a fixed-caster spell list). Each "Passion" would have two powers of each level (1st through 9th), so it's still a strict repertoire but it can be made thematically appropriate and can include powers which would otherwise be very difficult to find on the same list. In addition, all of them would know the wild blast 1st level power, which would be an eldritch blast-analogue (not the same mechanics, just the same general purpose) that ensures the wilder always has something 'blast-y' to use their wild surges on.

Do these changes make the wilder more attractive as a play option? I'd make a couple other changes (a wilder would hands-down have the most power points to work with, their BAB would go back down, their skill list needs revised, etc.), but those are probably the two most critical ones.

Also, I'm certain wilder's already been hit with a bunch of homebrew, so would be very happy to see those for other ideas.

[Maat Mons]

Personally, I'd give Wilder the Overchannel feat for free at 1st level. And I'd rework Wild Surge as extra benefits that apply whenever you use Overchannel.

Overchanneling doesn't require expending your psionic focus (unless you also make use of the Talented feat). So I don't see why Wild Surge should.

The Dazed condition prevents you from taking actions. I don't think there's anything reasonable you could give as a benefit that would be worth the risk of losing actions. So I think the drawback needs to be replaced with something less severe.

Edit: Wait, I finally remembered what I came up with last time I considered this. Make Wild Surge basically be Rage. But instead of increasing your physical prowess, it increases your psionic prowess. And instead of preventing you from casting/manifesting, there's some other restriction on what you can do.

[paddyfool]

Personally, I'd give Wilder the Overchannel feat for free at 1st level. And I'd rework Wild Surge as extra benefits that apply whenever you use Overchannel.

Overchanneling doesn't require expending your psionic focus (unless you also make use of the Talented feat). So I don't see why Wild Surge should.

The Dazed condition prevents you from taking actions. I don't think there's anything reasonable you could give as a benefit that would be worth the risk of losing actions. So I think the drawback needs to be replaced with something less severe.

Edit: Wait, I finally remembered what I came up with last time I considered this. Make Wild Surge basically be Rage. But instead of increasing your physical prowess, it increases your psionic prowess. And instead of preventing you from casting/manifesting, there's some other restriction on what you can do.

Good ideas all. For the other restriction on what you can do... I'd be tempted to give the player options. Maybe they pick one when they take the class, but can select alternative penalties to switch between as they advance:

- Turn off word-based communication for the duration of the surge (rendering you incapable of sending or understanding communication except by telepathy). Essentially you're overloading the language centres of your brain. With some lasting penalty to skill checks based around communication (diplomacy, bluff, sense motive etc) and maybe illiteracy until you rest.
- Loss of physical coordination for the duration of the surge (significant penalties to any physical activity or skill check), through overloading the motor centres of your brain, with some lasting slight penalty to Str and Dex based skills and attacks until you rest.
- Generalised partial loss of sensory perception for the duration of the surge, through overloading the sensory centres. Give yourself a significant miss chance on attacks, a penalty to Reflex saves and become flatfooted because you can't see threats coming etc., and a lasting slight penalty to spot / listen / search and reflex saves until you rest.
- Limbic system (emotional) overload. Carrying a moderate risk of negative consequences along the lines of the spell Confusion, and a penalty to Will saves [I would never take this option personally, but some people would like this, just as some like the Frenzied Berserker]. Slight penalty to Will saves, concentration and autohypnosis checks until you rest.

Tricky to judge how you'd balance these against each other, of course...

[dspeyer]

My feeling on Wilder has always been that it should be able to choose powers freely from any list. The whole concept is wildness. Why should it be restricted to following some sort of pattern?

Also, most of the best psionic powers are on the specialist lists, so being able to mix and match those freely almost makes up for the slow power acquisition.

[sreservoir]

Do these changes make the wilder more attractive as a play option? I'd make a couple other changes (a wilder would hands-down have the most power points to work with, their BAB would go back down, their skill list needs revised, etc.), but those are probably the two most critical ones.

Making wild surge do two things that you're rolling the same kind of dice for separately that you have to distinguish seems rather clunky.

If anything, I'd say the action cost of psionic focus more than covers the possibility of enervation that you avoid by consuming it. Remember, gaining psionic focus is a full-round action that you can take a feat to reduce to a move action; enervation is a *chance* of being dazed, the main effect of which is ... losing a round of actions. You only come out ahead when (a) it's the first round of an encounter, so focus could be prepared ahead of time, (b) it is vitally important that you have the option to perform a high-impact action next round, or (c) you have Psionic Meditation, which doesn't come online until at least level 6, you value a move action at less than 10-30% of a full round's worth of actions, and you didn't have anything better to do with your focus. (Note as you gain levels, the value of the enervation chance you avoid goes up, but the opportunity cost of expending focus also goes up.) The power point costs, meanwhile, can be kind of significant at the levels where you have to spend a full-round action to gain focus (and is thus deeply not worth it action-economy-wise), but by the time Psionic Meditation is available comes out to basically pocket change.

My feeling on Wilder has always been that it should be able to choose powers freely from any list. The whole concept is wildness. Why should it be restricted to following some sort of pattern?

Also, most of the best psionic powers are on the specialist lists, so being able to mix and match those freely almost makes up for the slow power acquisition.

This actually sounds like a pretty solid simple change. It would put wilders generally one level behind for general and discipline powers, but let them gain cross-discipline powers a level ahead of when they'd be available for expanded knowledge (plus or minus a level due to feat/powers known timing). Still just as tight on powers known, though.

[Rerednaw]

I'm trying to homebrew a wilder that's...not so awkward, and I wanted to see what objections might be raised to these changes to the wild surge and powers known mechanics.

...
Also, I'm certain wilder's already been hit with a bunch of homebrew, so would be very happy to see those for other ideas.

Probably no longer relevant as this is an old thread so *thread necro* Just wanted to add, Dreamscarred Press using the 3.5x OGL redid much of the 3.5 Psionics. Many of the loopholes (endless power points for example) were addressed as well as the Wild Surge. As it falls under OGL you can look at the stuff legally for free on places like d20pfsrd, dreamscarred's own wiki, etc.