What are your thoughts on Spheres of Power?

[digiman619]

Because **** it, every other major subsystem is getting a thread.

[weckar]

I'm not really a fan for this threads for the sake of threads mentality. Especially since they seem to be liberally blending 3.5 and PF.

[CasualViking]

Mostly positive. Wands seem kinda stupid though. And the whole thing could do with a rewrite from someone more precise.

[khadgar567]

Same as previous post but we can add more signiture techniques from diffrent animes like emotion bomb from ranma or ionian heteroi from fate series

[Knitifine]

It's pretty good. Superior to vancian and psionics for the following reasons.
1. It actually makes sense and doesn't deliberately grind against the norms of every popular fantasy magic system in fiction. Plus traditions add to customization.
2. It puts a soft lock on most of the game breaking powers by shoving them over into the advanced talents DM-tool section.
3. It's not as prone to creating the 5 minute adventuring workday scenario as the other aforementioned systems.

[weckar]

1. It actually makes sense and doesn't deliberately grind against the norms of every popular fantasy magic system in fiction. Plus traditions add to customization.You know, other than the works of Vance, eh?

[stack]

Since discovering SoP, I have become completely unable to care about normal casters. Won't play them. I like it so much I started writing for it.

[Kish]

You know, other than the works of Vance, eh?
The works of Vance are only "popular" if, tautologically, D&D itself is counted toward the popularity of a fictional magic system.

[EldritchWeaver]

Over the years, I've looked at a number of magic systems. Psionics and Elements of Magic in its various incarnations come to mind in particular. But none captured what I wanted from a magic system so perfectly like SoP. In fact, my favorite free-form roleplay magic system I use is effectively a less restricted SoP (plot is there more important than game balance), so it coincides very nicely with my dream system.

In actual play, SoP provides at-will damage options (why should casters be restricted to crossbows for damage dealing once the spell slots run out?) and thematic spellcasting, supporting concepts starting from level 1. I also like that the power ceiling (which caps what you can do given a certain level) is not automatically granting access to everything on earth at once, unlike a cleric who can access all spells of a given level. That helps creating a more cohesive character.


You know, other than the works of Vance, eh?

I'm not familiar with his works himself, but I've seen the claim, that D&D spellcasting isn't actually Vancian, too. Nonetheless, it remains a fact that SoP is more customizable than core magic. If SoP misses to simulate core magic, but you want to use such a system then my advice is to use simply core magic.

[Ualaa]

Our group was polarizing... we had a couple of players trying Spheres of Power and a couple trying Path of War, in the last campaign.

Since then, three players are almost exclusively going with Spheres of Power, one is still trying the assorted Path of War options (but he says, even with PoW being a martial is boring now that the current campaign is no longer Gestalt), and the last player is bouncing between Spheres and PoW.

My pledge on Spheres of Combat is actually for four of our five players, so Spheres is successful enough and liked enough that 80% of our group wants their own copy, having not seen it... just the Spheres of Power work leading in.

Spheres generally results in a character that is less powerful than a Vancian alternative, in terms of flexibility of spells and such. Sure, with sphere specific disadvantages you can get extra talents within that sphere, but you pay the price of not being able to buff your party as a buffer or to heal your party as a healer... tough choices for many.
While a Cleric or Druid knows every last spell on the list (for their level) and can prepare any that does not conflict with their deity, or a Wizard who has done research and used scrolls to add spells to their book may have a thousand options to choose from... a Sphere Incanter, or (Sphere) Wizard, (Sphere) Arcanist etc (very cool that there are sphere archetypes for most of the Vancian/Paizo casting classes) might have say 25 talents... much less flexible comparatively, and therefore less powerful overall.

However, with Spheres you're much more flexible in terms of what you can play. If you want to play a mage who controls the forces of Life (healing) & Death (undead minions), and uses both Light & Darkness, while summoning the equivalent of an Eidolon from another plane to serve and corrupt them... you could build just that. They don't need to have arcane spell failure or the need for verbal/somatic casting, but you can add in those options if so desired. You could have their magic powered by their very health, as the planar creature has them consume themselves.
As I said, very flexible in terms of what you can play... even if less flexible than a Vancian caster once you've decided what you're playing.

A DM could take the spheres chassis, say five of their classes and build the spheres those classes can access... maybe one type of Wizard in their setting has access to teleportation magic, but they can only use fire & lightning, cannot wear armor, whatever. And another type of caster can do the heals or such. By saying this class uses Incanter but can only select their powers from specific spheres and must take these traditions/drawbacks, while another Incanter class has different spheres they can access and a different set of traditions/drawbacks they can take... they can effectively craft the classes for their story/campaign.
In most groups, I'd imagine anyone can take any of the sphere classes or add the sphere casting archetype to a base caster, to retain their flavor while using the sphere casting system... that's not to say you could not craft the classes that are options for your campaign to either duplicate the magic system of a specific novel, game, movie whatever, or to create your own dynamic.

Spheres also scales very nicely.
You have the option of base abilities, depending on your spheres and the talents from within those spheres. Then there are spell points, which are finite and can run out, which represent stronger uses of those talents or special abilities that always require the spell point expenditure.
A caster has the option of their nuke spell, without spending a spell point, so they don't suffer from the five minute adventuring day; they can spend their spell point, to have a greater effect, so many times per day. But they can take a talent to modify the casting time (standard to full-round action) to have the option for the stronger (spell point) version, without actually needing to spend the spell point. Feats can modify the orb (AoE from a central point, within range... ala Fireball) to be a larger orb which is harder to save against, or to make it much smaller than normal and not cost any spell points, when normally an Explosive Orb always costs a point.

Casters are always going to be more powerful than martials... more flexible and more ultimate power at killing things quickly or buffs or resistances or whatever.
But the sphere system reduces the disparity by making the casting classes less powerful, but more flexible in what you can play, so martials are closer in ability to the casters.
The less the difference in relative power levels of your characters within a group, the easier it is to balance an encounter for that group.