Balancing Path of War + Spheres of Power + Akashic Mysteries

[Knitifine]

I'm considering running a game from Levels 1 - 20 and MR 1 - 10 that's focused on dragons. (Bonus Info: It incorporate's Red Hand of Doom during levels 5 - 10).

I have a question regarding the use of several 3rd party spell systems I'm intending to implement.

How is the power level of Path of War, Spheres of Power, and Akashic Mysteries classes compared to default set up of Fighters and Wizards. Who needs to have special attention to make sure they don't break the game, etc.

Particularly interested in the perspective of anyone who has run these systems side by side, thank you.

[daremetoidareyo]

how cheesy are your players?

I can only speak to path of war vs. spheres of power.

Spheres of power + a dips can make a character that makes it literally rain knives by level 6. You can then pick those knives up and sell them. (weather + creation)

Path of war is roughly equivalently-powered to TOB. So PoW will tend to make characters that are more powerful in the first 6 levels or so before things equilibrate.

[Doc_Maynot]

Note that raining Knives example can only be done through spellcrafting. Which are custom spells players can make using the talents they have available and the system supporting them, but ultimately it is GM approval.

Honestly the systems will be better than fighters and worse than wizards. Both are decent T2/3 systems and I use them basically as my "core" when DMing.

Neither system really benefits much from Mythic, but like everyone they still get something at the end of the day.

[exelsisxax]

Path of war makes fighters, rogues, and monks obsolete. Not because it's overpowered, but because those classes are, well, crap. They've been useless next to wizards forever, but it makes them bad compared to POW classes and archetypes as well. If you go all the way to 20, most POW classes are still going to be inferior to old tier 1 classes, but far less than non-casters usually are.

[stack]

Spheres of Power and Akaashic mysteries do not (yet) have any direct mythic support. Not a problem for martial builds that can use the existing champion and defender paths. If you want, adapting many of the archmage and heirophant abilities to SoP shouldn't be too hard, though some simply don't work. Mythic spheres to replace mythic spells would be more work.

Both are pretty firmly in the tier 3 range. SoP might hit T2 if you go wide open on advanced talents. If alongside normal casters, I would recommend being liberal with the advanced talents since most are providing capabilities that the other casters will have access too.

[Knitifine]

Spheres of Power and Akaashic mysteries do not (yet) have any direct mythic support. Not a problem for martial builds that can use the existing champion and defender paths. If you want, adapting many of the archmage and heirophant abilities to SoP shouldn't be too hard, though some simply don't work. Mythic spheres to replace mythic spells would be more work.

Both are pretty firmly in the tier 3 range. SoP might hit T2 if you go wide open on advanced talents. If alongside normal casters, I would recommend being liberal with the advanced talents since most are providing capabilities that the other casters will have access too.

Thanks for the feedback. (This goes for everyone).

For future notice I should say that the only vancian caster I'm planning on allowing in the campaign is Alchemist.

[Ualaa]

In our experience...

Using Ultimate Psionics + Path of War + Spheres of Power + the default Paizo/Vancian classes... but no Akashic Mysteries yet.

My relative power scale would be:
Wizards
Arcanist/Sorcerer, Cleric/Oracle, Druid, Psion, other full casters
Sphere Caster
Sphere Melee/Path of War Melee
Ultimate Psionics Melee
Paizo Melee



A Sphere caster has a lot more resources, in that they have infinite uses (spell point free) of their base abilities.
But are limited to so many stronger/enhanced versions (costing 1+ spell point(s)) of those abilities per day.

Compared to a Vancian caster, the Sphere caster puts out less damage per round.

However, a Vancian caster is limited to the existing spells within the game.
While a Sphere caster has much more flexibility, at least at the design stage... choosing their Spheres & Talents.
You can build just about any magic concept with Spheres, but are pigeonholed with the default Vancian options.



Ultimate Psionics classes...
The Psion is fairly comparable in power to a Cleric, Druid or Sorcerer, but weaker than the Wizard.

The Psion has the potential to blow several encounters worth of power points in one encounter, but to then be next to useless for the remainder of the day; if you run 4 encounters, prior to a rest/recovery period... or conversely give the players the option to rest rather than pursue the bad guys, but then the bad guys escape or plunder something that the PCs chose to not protect because they wanted to rest after one encounter... then that balances itself out.

The melee classes seem more powerful and interesting than the Paizo melee classes.
They're not as far behind the Path of War, as the classic classes are, but they're still weaker.



Path of War is essentially giving melee/spells to melee classes.

They have one of multiple stances that they can be in.
They have the option of a full-attack (like a non-PoW melee), but they can choose to use an Encounter Power that is similar to a spell, as a Standard action usually.
Each of the PoW classes has a couple of methods to refresh their powers, unique to their class.

Categorically, a Path of War character is superior to a non-PoW melee character.
Casting classes are definitely still stronger, but in a non-Vancian game the PoW characters are a lot closer...

[stack]

For the record, using the destroyer's handbook you can build a sphere caster that puts out pretty good damage. Gather energy helps keep the cost down and there is a talent to boost the damage if the basic ray blast shape. A bit of optimization can lead ti respextable numbers.

[Mehangel]

I dont have alot of experience with Akashic Mysteries. Having said that, every game I participate in uses both Spheres of Power + Path of War.

Path of War characters usually end up dealing more damage than the Spheres of Power characters (but isn't that what they are supposed to do?). Even still, in my experience the damage output of pure Path of War characters are still about even with standard optimization Paizo-Melee Classes (such as a Raging Barbarian power-attacking with a 2-handed weapon).

I have never run into any issues with spherecasting dominating the encounter or game. That is not to say it is impossible, just saying I dont have the experience (But I also don't have spherecasters who decide they are going to stand far-off and drop storms ontop of their enemies with the Weather sphere).

Because spheres of power encourages/supports the players to build their characters with a theme in-mind, I have found that not all spherecasters are given the same tools that vancian spellcasters have to solve encounters. So while a core Cleric, Druid, or Wizard may be able to swap out their spells each day, spherecasters (much like sorcerers) are stuck with what they have. There are many ways to resolve this, including scrolls, potions, dipping into the Hedgewitch class and grabbing the spiritualism tradition, etc. But it is something that has slowed the game before.

In short, I would say that combining Path of War + Spheres of Power is not only fun, but balanced. Although, depending on the encounter the players may find themselves completing it with ease or may find themselves having more trouble than your standard party array. It all boils down to the party build and what spheres the player's choose to invest in.

[Hogsy]

I'm considering running a game from Levels 1 - 20 and MR 1 - 10 that's focused on dragons. (Bonus Info: It incorporate's Red Hand of Doom during levels 5 - 10).

I have a question regarding the use of several 3rd party spell systems I'm intending to implement.

How is the power level of Path of War, Spheres of Power, and Akashic Mysteries classes compared to default set up of Fighters and Wizards. Who needs to have special attention to make sure they don't break the game, etc.

Particularly interested in the perspective of anyone who has run these systems side by side, thank you.

You can use the Witchdusk (https://sites.google.com/site/bardawilcampaignsite/) campaign setting, which has buffed pretty much all martial classes to be the equivalent of a T3 or T2, and then has erased all(if not one or two? Not sure) T1 classes and rebalanced them as T2. PoW is pretty much core in that setting, and it's more 3.P than Pathfinder. I've been using the whole system, along with my own alterations, as my own core and it has worked just fine. It gives way more HP(the Barbarian rolls a d20 for HP!) as a way to stay away from rocket tag at later levels, and it also has something called Skill Exploits, which are the equivalent of half a feat, or sometimes a feat, at the cost of 2 skill ranks. The system itself has incorporated many ideas I would implement myself given time and it's perfect for me. I suggest you check it out.