Spheres of Power - Tips, tricks, and crazy ideas

[stack]

So, I started working on a general guide to the spheres of power system (http://paizo.com/products/btpy96pr?Spheres-of-Power). For those unfamiliar, it is an alternate magic system for pathfinder, removing slot and level casting for a system based on spheres that gratn basic abilities based on a theme and talents that expand the capabilities of each of those spheres.

Given the size of the system and the difficulty of me getting actual playtime (PBP is SLOW), I though I would do a little crowd-sourcing. If you have any good combos, fun builds, broken tricks, or real-game stories to share I would appreciate the data.

For example, I like spellcrafting destruction - force blast to add the rider from crystal blast. Since it is +1 complexity to add a talent, it goes to a full-round action, but you get double-duty on the debuff. Combine it with the sphere or wall shape (add this to the base ability prior to spellcrafting to prevent an increase in complexity), and you can have some fun. Another trick is to stack actual size increases from alteration and virtual size increases from light (encompassing light) to get huge reach and damage.

As far as actual play goes, easy focus plus weather with the rain lord talent makes it easy to keep up a heavy fog with a small radius clear in the middle, dividing up an encounter so your allies can gang-up on one or two enemies that are in the clear and the others are blind.

[Mithril Leaf]

Juju Oracle is the best dip for necromancers, followed by Wizard or Incanter with the Death focus. After that I like a level of Thaumaturge. Three levels get you a massive increase in the total amount of undead you can have.

Incanter can have an absurd number of minions by taking the feather, eagle, and scalykind domains as well as the arcane bloodline, then dip a level of Witch with an animal patron familiar. Retrain a feat to animal ally during your Witch level. Take improved familiar with a familiar archetype. Enjoy an Imp familiar with (level)x2-1 advancement and two animal companions with (level)x2-(5 and 6 separately).

Fey Adept with the permanent illusion advanced talent can create weak but permanent conjuration companions. Good for out of combat stuff.

Creating copper with advanced talents is your best bet for money making.

[Aditus]

I'll admit that the damage isn't that impressive on equal-level characters, but the Climate Advanced Weather talent is really, really fun for BBEGs--3d6 per round no save can probably kill most commoners in about a minute, and covering a 2-mile radius isn't bad. To get Severity Level 7 in either heat or cold requires CL14--so a 9th level Thaumaturge with a +2 staff (or an 11th level Weather Specialist Incanter with the same) can pull it off.

Potential plotlines include:
1) There's a region of stormclouds going around, when it finishes passing through an area, everyone exposed to it is dead. The king wants someone to figure out what's going on, and stop it before it reaches some important location.
2) One of the party's perennial enemies is preparing to cast this Climate spell in the middle of a major city. Assuming that they somehow find out about this just before the casting begins, that gives them just over 20 minutes to stop a disaster--200 rounds. With some anti-teleportation protection around the guy's base, they might have to actually fight their way in--and the BBEG can actually, I think, cast the spell indoors then step outside to expand the radius out.

It's not a huge trick, nor is it even using the rules in unintended ways--I just like that it provides a fairly elegant way to slaughter the inhabitants of a good part of a city.

[stack]

Climate with boiling lord gets really nasty, as does just letting tornadoes rip everything apart. Climate is just mass destruction, basically. Hard to justify killing everything for two miles on a 'druid-ish' build though.:smallbiggrin:

[Aditus]

I don't know, there's the Children of Winter from Eberron, a druidic sect that explicitly embraces death and decay. Disease, poison, and extinction are as much a part of nature as growth and health, after all.

And of course, if you're going with the precipitation stuff, and letting the tornados loose, you basically have to grab Storm Lord twice. What says "megalomaniacal annihilation druid" like standing at the center of a tornado-shredded wasteland, laughing hysterically as boiling rains and extreme heat roast everything within two miles, and as lightning continuously crashes down to do even more damage?

By my count, that takes 11 talents--Weather Sphere, Boiling Lord, Greater Size, Greater Weather, Heat Lord, Rain Lord, Severe Weather, Storm Lord (x2), Wind Lord, Climate. Perfectly doable at Sphere Druid 14 or Incanter 13, if you're willing to focus a lot. (And you really may as well grab Cold Lord and Lengthened Weather at that point--you're so close to having the entire Weather Sphere, why stop two talents short?)

[Carboncopy]

Sticking with the weather theme, I'm building an incanter with a weather primary and dark secondary. While severity 7 weather kills quickly, hungry weather causes a fort save or 1 Con damage every round. With greater size, you can hit everyone at long range at level 1. Lengthened weather and you can let the weather sit there for an hour. 600 saves or con damage will make even the most hardy folk wither.

Other fun is had by simply adding the dark sphere's primary ability to greater sized weather and everything within long range is dim or dark for 1 spell point. Add pure dark, entangling dark or solid dark (think solid fog) either with or without the dark sphere for large scale battlefield control. Make sure to use clear sight meld on your allies if you are going to play well with others.

[Mehangel]

The following aren't exactly unknown, but are tricks that other players have used.

Warp Sphere + Teleport Object + Unseeing Teleport:

Teleport caltrops into an area to keep enemies from charging or running at you.
Teleport poison into a drink after the individual has had it tested for poison


Creation Sphere + Distant Creation:

Create a net over the enemy
Enveloping a creature in a bag
Create a rug over a pit. [Especially useful if you use Warp Sphere + Ranged Teleport + Unwilling Teleport, to warp the enemies ontop of said rug (which is solid)]

[LTwerewolf]

Another one I've used recently is using creation to put a monster inside a box with a stepping stool outside of it so a character with reach can go "fishing." Or putting enemies in a box in general to keep them out of the fight.