Is it just me....?

[SangoProduction]

Or is Sphere of Power's Invisibility (Illusion) incredibly powerful?


Invisibility

You may make things disappear. As a trick, you may add 1/2 your caster level to Sleight of Hand checks made to palm a small object or hide a light weapon

You may also place an illusion on a creature or object that makes it harder to see. Rather than make a Will save to disbelieve, creatures must make Perception checks to detect the hidden creature or object. Objects have a flat Perception DC equal to 10 + their size bonus + your caster level, while creatures gain a bonus to their Stealth checks equal to your caster level. In addition, since they are invisible, creatures may make Stealth checks even while being observed and do not require cover to retain or initiate Stealth. Even when detected by another creature, an invisible creature gains a +2 bonus to attack rolls against sighted targets and ignores their Dexterity bonus to AC. Attacks against the invisible creature have a 50% chance they will simply miss, even if the attack has targeted the correct square. Making a creature or object invisible also hides its magical aura from such effects as detect magic or the base Divination sphere divine ability.

50% miss chance, grants +2 to attack and ignores Dex to AC (the combat effects of invisibility). And there's nothing that prevents someone from picking this up level 1, and just going to town (using the equivalent of Greater Invisibility). I mean, unless you're a full caster (or spend a feat), you're not going to be able to act at the same time (at level 1), but that's still pretty powerful.

I mean, it also has the normal fun that illusions do (and skill bonus), but that seems like gravy, really.

[digiman619]

Yeah, but you also have to concentrate to keep it up or else spend your precious spell points and concetrating ueually takes a standard action, limiting wha tyou can do. And while, yeah, this seems a tad strong, I'm sure a casual search on these boards can find other, more broken 1st level shenanigans.

[Malroth]

My personal favorite lv 1 trick i thought of with spheres of power is to grab boon companion and dragon transformation and just let your pet be a dragon every fight.

[SangoProduction]

My personal favorite lv 1 trick i thought of with spheres of power is to grab boon companion and dragon transformation and just let your pet be a dragon every fight.

What is boon companion supposed to add to that?

[Necroticplague]

Or is Sphere of Power's Invisibility (Illusion) incredibly powerful?



50% miss chance, grants +2 to attack and ignores Dex to AC. And there's nothing that prevents someone from picking this up level 1, and just going to town. I mean, unless you're a full caster (or spend a feat), you're not going to be able to act at the same time (at level 1), but that's still pretty powerful.

I mean, it also has the normal fun that illusions do (and skill bonus), but that seems like gravy, really.

Yeah, spherecasting is incredibly open to abusive dips. More news at 11. For extra fun, sprinkle in a custom casting tradition for a couple inconsequential drawbacks to get Easy Focus, so you can still actually act while invisible. Use one of the 'gish' classes for this dip (like Armorer) and you don't even have to lose out on BaB.

[legomaster00156]

My GM and I thought so, too, until we realized exactly how the Illusion sphere's spell point use differs from most others. Remember, the Invisibility talent counts as an Illusion for all intents and purposes, and for you to use an Illusion...

As a standard action, you may spend a spell point to create a silent visual illusion within range for as long as you concentrate, to a maximum of 1 minute per caster level.
Yes, that's right. You spend a spell point just to cast the Illusion, and you must then also concentrate.

[KillianHawkeye]

A 50% miss chance, +2 to attack, and denying opponents their Dex bonus to AC are just the basic properties of being invisible as laid out by D&D 3rd Edition and inherited by Pathfinder. It's not doing anything that any other source of invisibility doesn't already do. In fact, it's actually worse than standard invisibility because the bonus to Stealth is limited by Caster Level.

I'm not familiar with how Spheres of Power works, but I'm not seeing the problem here. :smallconfused:

[Kitsuneymg]

A 50% miss chance, +2 to attack, and denying opponents their Dex bonus to AC are just the basic properties of being invisible as laid out by D&D 3rd Edition and inherited by Pathfinder. It's not doing anything that any other source of invisibility doesn't already do. In fact, it's actually worse than standard invisibility because the bonus to Stealth is limited by Caster Level.

I'm not familiar with how Spheres of Power works, but I'm not seeing the problem here. :smallconfused:

There isn't one, really. The "problem" is that the GM is forced to deal with at-will teleport or improved invisibility at level 1 instead of pushing those off until mid-game.

I always thought that warp + ranged warp + group warp + eldritch archer 1/bardX was one of the more abusive builds. Every round, do a full volley and teleport your friends to the exact place they want to be to full/sneak attack. Grab emergency teleport for immediate action rescues.

[Mehangel]

I always thought that warp + ranged warp + group warp + eldritch archer 1/bardX was one of the more abusive builds. Every round, do a full volley and teleport your friends to the exact place they want to be to full/sneak attack. Grab emergency teleport for immediate action rescues.

Unless you possess the Quick Teleport or Emergency Teleport talent, your Warp abilities are cast as a standard action; to make matters worse, since Group Teleport doesnt require touch attacks unless the targets are unwilling (Requiring yet another talent), you cannot use Warp in combination with Ranged Spellstrike. In addition, since both Sphere Magus and Eldritch Archer both modify Spell Combat, the archetypes are not combatible and thus you cannot use Warp with Spell Combat because Warp wouldn't be on the 'Magus List', but rather the Bard's. Lastly, Group Teleport costs spell points, which means you will be expending a daily resource each time you use it.

[SangoProduction]

A 50% miss chance, +2 to attack, and denying opponents their Dex bonus to AC are just the basic properties of being invisible as laid out by D&D 3rd Edition and inherited by Pathfinder. It's not doing anything that any other source of invisibility doesn't already do. In fact, it's actually worse than standard invisibility because the bonus to Stealth is limited by Caster Level.

I'm not familiar with how Spheres of Power works, but I'm not seeing the problem here. :smallconfused:

Having control over a plane is just a basic property of being a deity. I'm not seeing the problem here.

[KillianHawkeye]

Having control over a plane is just a basic property of being a deity. I'm not seeing the problem here.

Sarcasm aside, what's your point? No, really.

Turning invisible is not comparable to being a god in the least. Invisibility is a power normally available by level 3 in standard D&D/Pathfinder. How big of a problem could it be at level 1?

The question you posed was "Is it just me?" Don't sass me just because my answer was "Yes, it's just you. It isn't a big deal." :smallannoyed:

[SangoProduction]

Sarcasm aside, what's your point? No, really.

Turning invisible is not comparable to being a god in the least. Invisibility is a power normally available by level 3 in standard D&D/Pathfinder. How big of a problem could it be at level 1?

The question you posed was "Is it just me?" Don't sass me just because my answer was "Yes, it's just you. It isn't a big deal." :smallannoyed:

The point was: Your reasoning is meaningless. "It's a basic property of being invisible." OK. Y is also a basic property of being x. Same argument. It says nothing about...anything. I didn't spell it out, expecting you to see the similarities. I am sorry about that.

And, level 3's version is gone after attacking, making it a not-for-combat spell, generally. At level 7 is when one would normally get the type of invisibility being offered. The level difference is quite substantial.

Kinda conceited to think that I said it "just because my answer was 'Yes, it's just you. It isn't a big deal,'" when there's others who said it's not a big deal (or at least nothing unique to SoP).

[EldritchWeaver]

The point was: Your reasoning is meaningless. "It's a basic property of being invisible." OK. Y is also a basic property of being x. Same argument. It says nothing about...anything.

In this case the argument is that the talent Invisibility grants the benefits which you get from being invisible. Those benefits are defined by the core of Pathfinder. SoP merely follows the rules laid out by Pathfinder. If you dislike these benefits, you have to dislike the PF version of Invisibility, too, as it grants the same benefits. (At least the same subset. SoP boosted the basic spell by not falling apart immediately after an attack, but the Stealth bonus is lower, so there is a trade-off.)

[SangoProduction]

In this case the argument is that the talent Invisibility grants the benefits which you get from being invisible. Those benefits are defined by the core of Pathfinder. SoP merely follows the rules laid out by Pathfinder. If you dislike these benefits, you have to dislike the PF version of Invisibility, too, as it grants the same benefits. (At least the same subset. SoP boosted the basic spell by not falling apart immediately after an attack, but the Stealth bonus is lower, so there is a trade-off.)

Yeah. Isn't that what this was about?

I kinda laid out what invisibility does so people don't have to look it up in order to engage with the conversation. Edited the OP to make that clearer.

[stack]

Invisibility is indeed a potent option even with its costs. The perception check limitation keeps it from being too crazy at the early levels where it would be most abuseable, since many creatures won't have ways around it yet (they could, using SoP or other things, it's just not a priority at those levels most of the time). If it is a problem I would suggest scaling it back a bit, either cutting duration, breaking it after an attack, or something else.

[digiman619]

There's also the fact that this invisibility will be your only trick. It's not a swappable spell slot that you can put color spray/stinking cloud/sleep/whatever in. It will be your entire schtick for a few levels; as that will take pretty much all your talents to do, as well as modifying your casting tradition. In other words: Yes, if you devote your entire build at level 1 to one specific trick, you can get a comparatively OP starting character. There are at least a half dozen different classes this can apply to. What's your point?

[SangoProduction]

There's also the fact that this invisibility will be your only trick. It's not a swappable spell slot that you can put color spray/stinking cloud/sleep/whatever in. It will be your entire schtick for a few levels; as that will take pretty much all your talents to do, as well as modifying your casting tradition. In other words: Yes, if you devote your entire build at level 1 to one specific trick, you can get a comparatively OP starting character. There are at least a half dozen different classes this can apply to. What's your point?

That's, what, 3 talents? Illusion sphere, Invisibility, and Lingering. An incanter gets 4 at level 1. That's hardly an entire build. And you still have the whole silent image deal going on.

[digiman619]

That's, what, 3 talents? Illusion sphere, Invisibility, and Lingering. An incanter gets 4 at level 1. That's hardly an entire build. And you still have the whole silent image deal going on.

You're right, it's not the entire build, it's just 75% of it, not counting making sure you have a casting tradition with the right boons. You're still putting the vast majority of your resources of a level 1 character into a desired outcome, therefore being OP in comparison. How is this different from an alchemist making a natural attacks build again?

[SangoProduction]

You're right, it's not the entire build, it's just 75% of it, not counting making sure you have a casting tradition with the right boons. You're still putting the vast majority of your resources of a level 1 character into a desired outcome, therefore being OP in comparison. How is this different from an alchemist making a natural attacks build again?

The "vast majority" of a of a single class feature1 for the first level. And it's not as though they are 1 dimensional by taking this talent, as the other talents building up to it are good in and of themselves, and still has all the other resources of the build to use, completely untouched by this ability.

Even if you picked up those talents purely for invisibility, and consider them to be down the drain, you haven't really eaten much in to your full build. And it isn't the majority of the build even by 3rd level.

And...I'm not sure where I claimed that this is so uber powerful it makes every other powerful option irrelevant.


1: Since talents is a separate class feature from the rest of the spell casting stuff, it's not just a single part of a single class feature.

[stack]

With the vanisher drawback, making things invisible is a 1 talent investment. So getting it isn't really hard for anyone. CL 1 gets medium illusions, so that covers most PC races. 2 SP a pop for minute/level duration. Heck, two feats and a normal rogue can make use of it (basic/advanced magical training) a few times a day (depending on stats of course, probably want a third feat for extra SP, so not a level 1 thing for PCs).

[SangoProduction]

With the vanisher drawback, making things invisible is a 1 talent investment. So getting it isn't really hard for anyone. CL 1 gets medium illusions, so that covers most PC races. 2 SP a pop for minute/level duration. Heck, two feats and a normal rogue can make use of it (basic/advanced magical training) a few times a day (depending on stats of course, probably want a third feat for extra SP, so not a level 1 thing for PCs).

lol. I honestly forgot drawbacks were a thing, even though I use them liberally in each of my SoP builds.

[KillianHawkeye]

The point was: Your reasoning is meaningless. "It's a basic property of being invisible." OK. Y is also a basic property of being x. Same argument. It says nothing about...anything. I didn't spell it out, expecting you to see the similarities. I am sorry about that.

And, level 3's version is gone after attacking, making it a not-for-combat spell, generally. At level 7 is when one would normally get the type of invisibility being offered. The level difference is quite substantial.

Well sorry if I misunderstood you, but your OP really comes off like you are complaining about the basic benefits of being invisible. And yes, being invisible is quite good. I admit that I'm a little unclear on whether your complaint was about the SoP version of invisibility being too powerful compared to standard invisibility, or whether it was about the invisibility option in SoP being too powerful compared to other things that SoP can do, but I assumed it was the former because of the way your post seemed to focus on the things that are provided by invisibility. I therefore explained that those benefits were normal and not anything to get worked up over, to which you responded with unwarranted mockery.

Anyway, given what others have said about it requiring concentration, I don't think comparing it to greater invisibility is valid. This version will end when you attack because you won't be able to attack and also maintain concentration. Just like normal. So, again, and please don't take this the wrong way, I don't see how this is crazy powerful at all.

[SangoProduction]

Well sorry if I misunderstood you, but your OP really comes off like you are complaining about the basic benefits of being invisible. And yes, being invisible is quite good. I admit that I'm a little unclear on whether your complaint was about the SoP version of invisibility being too powerful compared to standard invisibility, or whether it was about the invisibility option in SoP being too powerful compared to other things that SoP can do, but I assumed it was the former because of the way your post seemed to focus on the things that are provided by invisibility. I therefore explained that those benefits were normal and not anything to get worked up over, to which you responded with unwarranted mockery.

Anyway, given what others have said about it requiring concentration, I don't think comparing it to greater invisibility is valid. This version will end when you attack because you won't be able to attack and also maintain concentration. Just like normal. So, again, and please don't take this the wrong way, I don't see how this is crazy powerful at all.

No problem. It was my inability to get the intended point across. That said, Lingering Illusion allows you to persist it without concentration for 1 minute/level, which is equivalent to Greater Invisibility as well.

Legit question so I know for future posts: Was my edit sufficient enough to get my point across, or should I adopt a new structure?

[KillianHawkeye]

Legit question so I know for future posts: Was my edit sufficient enough to get my point across, or should I adopt a new structure?

To be honest, I'm still not sure if your issue is that Spheres of Power does invisibility better than the standard spellcasting method, or that the Spheres of Power version of invisibility is too powerful compared to whatever else you can do when using that system.

[Afgncaap5]

I'd argue that an Incanter devoted to invisibility at level 1 deserves to *very* good at it. However, an Incanter also probably shouldn't be a front-line fighter or scout even while invisible. As for the other non-Incanter classes in SoP, there's less of an issue here, since being a master of magic isn't as much what the other classes are about.

The blessing and curse of Spheres of Power is that general concepts of "staple fantasy literature magic" are viable mostly from the start whereas with Pathfinder and D&D 3.5 they tend to be relegated to (roughly) third level magic. Fireballs, Lightning Bolts, seeing or hearing things from a long distance away, breathing underwater, halting undead, and lots of other "stock" magic spells pop up in 3rd level (Invisibility comes a level earlier, but it's interesting to note that 3rd level is where "Make my friends invisible at the same time" becomes viable, something that, curiously, isn't easily available via Illusion except through multiple castings or a generous usage of Spellcrafting.)

Now, while I agree that this could allow a creative or lucky player to walk all over a standard 3.5 or Pathfinder premade adventure, it's also worth noting that those systems tend to have built-in "You must be THIS tall to enter" limitations on certain kinds of magic. A GM in SoP needs to be prepared for teleportation, invisibility, flight, and lots of other things all at level 1. Basically, the GMs need to prep with the understanding that mechanical limitations to progress aren't as viable as story-based limitations to progress.

If you're still concerned, though, SoP is easy to modify by limiting which classes are available to players and/or casting traditions, similar to how the book demonstrates making their lawyer-friendly version of the Last Airbender styles of magic.