Newbosauras
2016-02-22, 11:36 PM
Full disclosure, I've DM'ed games for about a year now, but I've never had the pleasure to actually play in a campaign, so I'm a massive noob in a lot of ways. This makes me nervous about potentially stepping on peoples toes. The roles of DM and player are really really different, so I'm worried that my lack of experience could negatively affect the game I'm playing in.
So I've recently convinced my DM to allow Spheres of Power in his campaign. Provisionally. He's pretty wary of 3PP, and I don't blame him, a lot of it can cause balance issues. All in all though I've had a really good experience with SoP, I run it in my own campaign with pretty solid success (albeit occasional issues with a high powered necromancer, but whatcha gonna do with a Soul Weaver who can summon a pair of enhanced fast zombie giant wasps). My one worry the game where I'm a player is that I seem potentially overpowering in a lot of situations. This is partially an issue of party tendencies. We don't have a lot of high-op characters. Actually pretty much none. It's an Incanter (me), a pair of gunslingers, an ancestor oracle, a warpriest, and a barbarian. The other side of it is that SoP has some really, really powerful uses that haven't really been touched on.
So quick rundown of my character. Human Incanter level 5 (no specilaization), Spell pool 12, magical talents 14 (lots of extra talents feats).
Creation Sphere: divided creation, distant creation, larger creation, lengthened creation, expanded material, forge
Time Sphere: ranged time, group time, steal time
Destruction Sphere:
Warp Sphere: Ranged Teleport
Essentially I play him as a battlefield control expert. With distant, divided, larger, and lengthened creation with expanded materials I can drop 3 spell points to put up an iron fortress around my entire group, giving them full cover, a forge or two later and they have arrow slits letting them take out enemies with basically no danger. Alternatively I can trap a target in an iron cage with no reflex save as it's not encasing them, but without access to teleportation they either have to be able to output enough damage to break through 2 inch thick steel walls (which at level 5 is going to take some time for pretty much any enemy), or wait out hours per caster level. Now the DM could of course alter encounters to trivialize some of this, after all if all of your opponents can now cast Dimension Door at will, a fortress isn't much protection (well unless you make it exactly the size of your party in which case they can't portal in. But as the person bringing in 3PP content I feel an obligation to keep the DM from having to rewrite all his encounters.
Also Creation in general is just a really fun, powerful sphere. I can diffuse traps by dropping a statue on them from a distance, I can put up walls in dungeon crawls to give our party time to pull itself into proper combat formation, hell I can punch a hole in the wall next a trapped door if I really need to. Honestly I'm probably underselling it, but that's just what I've done so far.
So I'm asking for some advice, assuming that I'm trying to control my power level, what can I use the creation sphere for in terms of battlefield control that is both effective and not likely to cause my GM to have a stroke and/or ban Spheres?
Any input is appreciated.
So I've recently convinced my DM to allow Spheres of Power in his campaign. Provisionally. He's pretty wary of 3PP, and I don't blame him, a lot of it can cause balance issues. All in all though I've had a really good experience with SoP, I run it in my own campaign with pretty solid success (albeit occasional issues with a high powered necromancer, but whatcha gonna do with a Soul Weaver who can summon a pair of enhanced fast zombie giant wasps). My one worry the game where I'm a player is that I seem potentially overpowering in a lot of situations. This is partially an issue of party tendencies. We don't have a lot of high-op characters. Actually pretty much none. It's an Incanter (me), a pair of gunslingers, an ancestor oracle, a warpriest, and a barbarian. The other side of it is that SoP has some really, really powerful uses that haven't really been touched on.
So quick rundown of my character. Human Incanter level 5 (no specilaization), Spell pool 12, magical talents 14 (lots of extra talents feats).
Creation Sphere: divided creation, distant creation, larger creation, lengthened creation, expanded material, forge
Time Sphere: ranged time, group time, steal time
Destruction Sphere:
Warp Sphere: Ranged Teleport
Essentially I play him as a battlefield control expert. With distant, divided, larger, and lengthened creation with expanded materials I can drop 3 spell points to put up an iron fortress around my entire group, giving them full cover, a forge or two later and they have arrow slits letting them take out enemies with basically no danger. Alternatively I can trap a target in an iron cage with no reflex save as it's not encasing them, but without access to teleportation they either have to be able to output enough damage to break through 2 inch thick steel walls (which at level 5 is going to take some time for pretty much any enemy), or wait out hours per caster level. Now the DM could of course alter encounters to trivialize some of this, after all if all of your opponents can now cast Dimension Door at will, a fortress isn't much protection (well unless you make it exactly the size of your party in which case they can't portal in. But as the person bringing in 3PP content I feel an obligation to keep the DM from having to rewrite all his encounters.
Also Creation in general is just a really fun, powerful sphere. I can diffuse traps by dropping a statue on them from a distance, I can put up walls in dungeon crawls to give our party time to pull itself into proper combat formation, hell I can punch a hole in the wall next a trapped door if I really need to. Honestly I'm probably underselling it, but that's just what I've done so far.
So I'm asking for some advice, assuming that I'm trying to control my power level, what can I use the creation sphere for in terms of battlefield control that is both effective and not likely to cause my GM to have a stroke and/or ban Spheres?
Any input is appreciated.