Sell (or unsell) me on Spheres of Power

[FortuneXVI]

Hi, all.

I'm planning on starting a solo campaign soon..ish. I've more or less got the narrative side of things covered- although I might ask for help on that front a bit later- but the main point of contention which remains is mechanical. Namely, I've been reccomended one "Spheres of Power" magical subsystem, as well as the accompanying spheres of might and sphere champions. I hear them talked about a lot around here, so I thought I'd inquire to see whether it fits my needs.

My main desires from this system are twofold- one, I'd like a magic system more intuitve than vancian. I've just always found the existing magic exasperating and a bit silly- the idea that an almighty archmage only has the werewithal to cast Grease x amounts of times per day, when he can keep on throwing meteors at the enemy, and just the general fuss of keeping notes in that regard...yeah, not for me. Spheres seems to have that much covered. The second thing I want is to create flavourful, powerful and versatile characters with a particular theme- Ie, a Time mage who does more than prepare time stop every day, a warrior who seamlessly blends swordplay and sorcery, a mad scientist creating armies of magically engineered minions...looking through spheres, it seems to allow for some pretty squirelly concepts, but it also seems a bit narrow- like, you aren't really building mages, but more people with one particular superpower? I don't want to go too far in the other direction of Vancian, either.

TLDR; I guess, could somebody explain the limitations and strengths of the various spheres systems as opposed to Vancian. Basically inclusive of anything on the wiki, or available online for cheap, even if is third party.

[Batcathat]

This thread (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?610786-What-is-it-about-spheres) might have some of the answers you're looking for.

[Ruethgar]

General strengths for SoP, highly customizable and thematic magic out of the box. Pretty much whatever you pick will be useful. There is a bit of a higher optimization floor with many of the powers being at will. A SoP caster will have a lot more longevity than vancian for the ability to keep going, but they will trail off as they run out of Spell points, especially without healing. Healing is a lot more resource intensive with SoP, while you can buy into HP healing quick and easy, it is the conditions that bog you down.

SoM, generally speaking, if gives martials what they already had, but shortens times. There are a fair few new things like quick traps and sort of alchemy, you can also do some neat things with old tricks. The general power is increased, I mean just look at what a Coiled Blade loses vs what he could gain. But a lot of the spheres are a bit more flavor and style than outright power. Some of the talents do give martials more out of combat potential.

SoC, this can get a little tricky, but it does help make the idea of a spell sword more easily realized, and it can be many different flavors, not just elements on my sword/bow. SoP alone has this decently in the Destruction and Telekinesis spheres, but this adds more ability to use others as well in case you wanted a death knight or a force shield tank sort of character or w/e.

All of the classes added are pretty much more powerful than the archetyped normal classes, the exception being if you allow Rogue Genius Game’s Archetype Packages, as written and against suggestion, in which case a Paladin or Ranger can be better with base line chassis, but with little in the way of flavorful class features.

[StSword]

It seems you aren't sure if you like the versatility of any given sphere character.

I'm not going to lie, you aren't going to have as many tricks up your sleeve as a full spellcaster, even a sorcerer, unless.....

You make use of the ritual rules.

With the right feats, a spherecaster can learn a ritual to duplicate any spell they want (limited by having to choose arcane, divine, or psychic), and even allows one to prepare essentially up to four spells a day.

A spellbook even counts as a ritual book, so say a wizard bokor could ritually cast any of his spells.

If a Nature sphere is something you're interested in, there's the Formulae Geomancing feat, that allows one to use a formulae book to duplicate Alchemist extracts.

[Ruethgar]

With the right feats... prepare essentially up to four spells a day.

It is actually 4 spells per level. You have to have the CL to cast them, so you can't just grab Advanced Magical Training with Spell Dabbler and Adept and cast wish. A spell point is a somewhat valuable resource, typically a sorcerer will get about 65 by the time they are 20 if they have the full 5 casting drawbacks. Having all the spells prepared that he can would knock that down to 43. A wizard is worse off at 45ish taking the 22 SP hit to 23 SP. It is still a great tool for getting niche flavorful spells or pulling out particularly potent spells. In one of my games, I limited the possible spells known to anything divisible by their casting modifier per spell level. So Int 20 would be able to know one 5th, 4th, and 3rd lvl spell, two 2nd, five 1st, ten 0th. Could still get plenty of versatility out of it, but it didn't make every spherecaster an instant wizard.

[StSword]

It is actually 4 spells per level.

I sit corrected.

[stack]

I would not reccomend allowing the feats to prepare rituals unless you are in a game with casters that get 9th level spells.

[FortuneXVI]

Good to know that you can do some more thematic things with spheres than you can with Vancian. My player wanted to play a Might/Magic hybrid mixing swordplay with some form of Precognition- it seems there are spheres for time and fencing, so hopefully something like that would work out. If he ends up running a game for me as well, then I'd want to port over my Vancian Shadow Illusionist...does the illusion sphere have any option for quasi-real illusions?


It's also good that martials get nice things. Path of War has served me well in that regard, but it pigeonhole you with the various disciplines...

Ritual spells I'm wary of, I wouldn't mind making minor use of it, but I feel like the pre-preperation is a bit too great, with a full Vancian caster on top of spheres...but it is better in my eyes if the spellcaster can do something outside of whatever they decided to memorise for the day.

@Stack, I was planning on including regular casters, just mostly using spheres to help alleviate the aformentioned problems I had with Vancian. What do you think makes using rituals without 9th level casting a bad idea?

[stack]

Precognitive swordsman is definitely doable. Depending on how you want to split the weight of magic and martial, you could go mageknight (martial mageknight archetype), prodigy, or hedgewitch (martial hedgewitch archetype). Duelist (disarm/bleed) and fencing (extra damage and some tricks) will beof interest, though a number of other spheres can work. For the precognitive side, look at Divination, especially the sense talents.

For a shadow illusionist type, incanter is good for lots of talents, but fey adept is probably your best bet. Create reality is frankly broken by the standards of sphere-casting. Or was; I have not kept up on the Ultimate SoP changes. There was a lot of stuff in the Illusion expansion as well that gave quasi-reality options to others, but I can't speak specifically about any of it off the top of my head.

In a solo game, power level is less of an issue, so I suppose the ritual feats will be a matter of taste.

[EmperorGhosty]

If you want versatility, have you considered using the variant spell point system?

[SangoProduction]

Why I like spheres: It's much more free than the class based system.
You have a much better time of making a character thematic. And you aren't intentionally playing poorly just to have an ice mage (aka, building a wizard, but playing only with the ice spells, rather than the whole array). You just picked a less optimal class, which feels a lot better, imo. After all, a wizard could prepare fireball, regardless, but an ice-themed sphere caster might have to run on seeing a white dragon.

Also, although the SoP users are better than martials still, their progression is linear, rather than quadratic. You don't need to keep the campaign low level in order for one to not outshine the other in each and every aspect.

The sphere talents are a lot more unique and interesting than spells. You can take talents that affect other talents, which you simply can't do with the prescribed spells system.

There are some themes that are simply impossible until high level magic, and even then, only a few times a day. For instance, a bacteria mage would reasonably use Contagion (a 3rd level spell). So the defining spell of the theme would be locked behind being level 6, at least. In SoP, you can get the Inflict Disease talent and Disease Lord feat at level 1 if so desired, and you can use it as often as you have spell points, rather than just like once a day at level 6.

[torrasque666]

does the illusion sphere have any option for quasi-real illusions?
Shadow Infusion talent lets you spend an additional spell point to make illusions [Shadow]s