Spherecasters or Sphere Casters?

[Knitifine]

I'm currently working on a setting that uses Spheres of Magic, Path of War, and Akashic Mysteries.

Regarding sphere casters, I'm wondering if there's really any vital abilities or concepts that are lost by just using the classes presented in Spheres of Power instead of the default classes with Sphere Archetypes.

Anyone have experience with this?

[digiman619]

While I don't claim to be an expert with SoP, but the major bonus of using Wizards, Bards and Rangers over Incantors, Hedgewitches and Mageknights is that there are more archetypes to use than the SoP classes, but as a general rule, they're all good.

[EldritchWeaver]

You can have a look at this thread (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?427261-Replacing-Core-Classes), where I collected ideas to replace all core classes (I do not use Akashic, so it's not included). It might a bit outdated by now compared to what I actually use (I would actually replace the Cleric by the Soulweaver and give the Soulweaver a Cleric chassis, as otherwise a Death Specialist Incanter is too close to the specialist class). Also I pared down the various options for a class to one option, so players don't get overwhelmed.

Overall, a surprising number of concepts can be realized with SoP in a similar way, but not necessarily all at once (Druid gets split into the casting aspect and the shapeshifting aspect). Nonetheless, there are some gaps, but not having those is not a problem in my game thanks to overall party composition.

[stack]

For cleric I would favor a hedgewitch with the triple goddess archetype to have healing, status removal, buffs, rebuffs, and undead. Grab the covenant tradition to get pay hands/channel energy or combat for a more martial focus. Spiritualism gives you flexibility for status removal as well, even if you only dip it with a secret.

The hardest thing to pull off is a Batman wizard, since it relies on leveraging the huge variety of spells available. At higher levels wands and other items help. It is also harder to pull the massive BCC and summon spam a conjurer is capable of. If the spell dabbler and spell adept fears from players guide to skybourne are available this difficulty dissapears, but I would out sharp limits on them or ban them entirely if I wasn't allowing normal casters too.

[Afgncaap5]

In general, there's no major problems, not really.

Though as a side note: if you use SoP in 3.5 instead of Pathfinder, you might notice the curious quirk that Sorcerer becomes "Wizard without the class features", and that if you take the suggested magic traditions you can end up with a Sorcerer who casts fewer times a day than a wizard. However, that's a quirk of using a different system than SoP was made for, so I'd call it excusable.

[Mehangel]

In general, there's no major problems, not really.

Though as a side note: if you use SoP in 3.5 instead of Pathfinder, you might notice the curious quirk that Sorcerer becomes "Wizard without the class features", and that if you take the suggested magic traditions you can end up with a Sorcerer who casts fewer times a day than a wizard. However, that's a quirk of using a different system than SoP was made for, so I'd call it excusable.

Is this because the sphere sorcerer wouldn't get the sorcerous blood feature? Because pathfinder sphere sorcerer vs sphere wizard, at level 20 a sphere sorcerer has 50 + Charisma mod spell points (and 22 talents) while a sphere wizard has 40 + Intelligence mod spell points (and 32 talents).

[Ualaa]

I'd say, if you were playing in 3.5 instead of Pathfinder.

The Sorcerer becomes a Wizard without class features... because in 3.5, the Sorcerer didn't have a Pathfinder Bloodline.