Edumicate a Spheres noob on Spheres of Might

[Warlawk]

So I'm looking into a PBP game involving Spheres of both Power and Might at level 15. I've leaned more heavily toward the Power side of things and I'm feeling fairly solid in my understanding of that (I'm sure that'll chance once we actually start playing!) but when I was paging through the SoM side of things I wasn't seeing things that struck me as viable damage output for level 15+. There is a LOT of very cool content, and I'm positive that the interactions are there in the system, I just haven't come across them in my surface depth scan of the material.

I would love it if anyone was willing to share some of their favorite interactions and talents. I'm not looking for specific character advice, I won't be using this in any immediate sense, I just want to help develop my understanding of the system so I can find a good balance of cool and functional for when the time comes that I do build a SoM character.

[inuyasha]

I'm somewhat well-versed in the system, but I don't know if I'm comfortable with it enough to clearly explain it to others. One huge thing though is that it tries to get rid of the idea that a fighter should be doing nothing but full-attacking every single round, and I think most of the cool combat talents will work with the Vital Strike feat tree, making that a more viable option. Increasing your damage can be done through really every different Sphere, and that's kinda neat.

For a random, fun damage build, I made a 1st level Conscript NPC (Generic build your own fighter class) with the elite array who could throw 2 darts each round with a +3 to hit and dealt 1d4+6 damage with every single hit. Granted, he's kind of a one-trick pony at that level, but I'm sure that would scale up pretty well and he could either branch out or really focus in on dart-throwing.

[Serafina]

All the Spheres that revolve around attacking do so by interacting with the Attack Action - either directly, or by giving you new Special Attack Actions.
First of all, that means it's only a Standard Action, vastly improving the action economy.
As for damage - Vital Strike is pretty much assumed to be mandatory for a Spheres of Might user.

At later levels, you'll also pretty much combine multiple Spheres to increase your damage output.
Fencing can give you something akin to Sneak Attack.
Gladiator can be used with Crit-Fishing to get immediate-action attacks.
It's sometimes possible to chain combat maneuvers into each other, and even get additional attacks off that (Ankle Strike Exploit Trip + Snap Kick -> Hand Slash Exploit Disarm + Blooded Strike + Swift Slice Swift Action Attack).

Just as a basic example for a higher-level Spheres Archer:
You're talking about a level 15 character, so I'll assume at least BAB +11 and 11 (+2 from Martial Tradition) talents. Mainly we'll use the Barrage sphere, and an appropriate magical Composite Longbow (so, +4). Assuming a Strength of 18 (with magical items) and Improved Vital Strike, a hit from this bow would do 3D8+8 damage, before anything else such as Deadly Shot or indeed our Sphere-stuff.
So now let's apply our Sphere-stuff.
We'll use Barrage from the same Sphere as a Standard action, and expend our Martial Focus. This gives our four attacks, albeit at a penalty of -4 (reduced thanks to Augmented Grip). Then we take a Move action, and thanks to Mobile Focus we get our Martial Focus back and can do the same thing on the next turn.
From the Sniper-Sphere, Targeted Assault will reduce Damage Reduction and Energy Resistance by half our BAB (so by -5), and Unblockable allows us to bypass Wind Walls, while Perfect Shot allows us to roll twice for Miss Chances.
But we can do more if we dip into other Spheres. We can use Distracting Shot to feint at range, and set up a Fatal Thrust from the Fencing Sphere. Expert Feint applies to that Feint as normal, so now we only have three attacks, but all three can gain +3D6 damage. Death from Afar allows us to apply the Fatal Thrust at any range, and we can grab Feint Strike to get a swift-action attack on top of all this. Unlikely Feint ensures this trick works against anyone.

So this character reliably puts out one attack at full BAB, and three attacks at -4 BAB, all dealing 3D8+8+3D6 (=32) damage and ignoring a good chunk of DR, for an average of 128 damage if they all hit (which isn't that unlikely, since they target flat-footed AC). With a flaming frost shock Longbow, it'd even be 3D8+5+6D6 (=39) average damage, and since Targeted Assault helps with Energy Resistance those 1D6 elemental damages are likely to get through.

That's just one example build, focussed on damage. You can do pretty nifty melee things too - Dual Wielding is the way to go there for lots of attacks, though it's not quite as good at that as the Barrage-sphere. But Spheres of Might is really good because it also puts out a lot of combat maneuver - the above build could trivially pull off Trips, Disarms, Sunders or Steals just from adding an Exploit Talent or two, for example.

[StSword]

I'm too much of a noob to be trusted with links yet here, but the spheres of power wiki has a tricks and strategies page, you might want to peruse for ideas.

For example, with the Athletics talent of Sudden Flank, while moving through an enemy's threatened area you basically count as your own ally for flanking purposes.

Combine that with fencing and you can add precision damage.

Add Skewer you can do extra precision damage, and do two exploits at a time. Like say Ankle strike, which allows a free trip attack.

You could throw in some Open Hand to say get Snap Kick, which would then give you an attack of opportunity when tripping an opponent, so another opportunity to do precision damage.

[Warlawk]

Thank you all, it gives me some direction in where to be reading. I was not aware of the vital strike interactions and focus on combat maneuvers. My impression from the info in the thread and initial read through is that it's going to give a bit less damage than PoW with more flexibility and many of the neat tricks will be available at earlier levels.

[Eldest]

I'm too much of a noob to be trusted with links yet here, but the spheres of power wiki has a tricks and strategies page, you might want to peruse for ideas.

This is the aforementioned page. (http://spheresofpower.wikidot.com/tricks-and-strategies) Quite handy.

But to sum it up, yes, SoM feels less damage focused than a "standard" combat focused build, but that's because damage isn't actually the point of the whole system, it's to make combos. The entire thing can flow together as long as you're even moderately careful to figure out which of your talents can interact with other talents! For example, throw together duelist (bleed damage and disarms) and dual wielding (name on the tin).

Duelist gives bleed damage on attack actions or AoO.
…And Stay Down! lets AoO trigger on people landing prone, and gives a bit more bleed damage on those specific AoO, as well as forcing them to make an acrobatics check to stand up from prone.
Dual Wielding allows multiple attacks on an attack action, with only the main hand one counting as an attack action.
High-Low Combination turns that second attack into a trip attempt.

4 talents, two of which are the basic sphere ability, and you have the a lockdown technique that keeps somebody scrabbling in the dirt trying to get up as their life bleeds out.

[JerichoPenumbra]

As mentioned in the other posts, SoM focuses on augmenting the attack action (more of a "mundane" fashion in comparison to PoW), and in a way making combat more cinematic and animated. One of my favorite talents is Mobile Striker from the Athletics Sphere which is basically Spring Attack (and Shot on the Run). However, while it is used as full-round action it specifies that you make an attack action which allows for most combos mentioned to work with it, like the aforementioned Barrage Build. A simple one would be using Whirlwind Knockdown from the Lancer Sphere, which you can pick-up with the sphere-specific drawback, which let's as an attack action make a trip attempt against all foes you threaten. If you have an ally with a "kick them while they're down" build you probably just helped them trigger it on any enemy that they wanted.