SangoProduction
2020-05-21, 08:04 PM
Spheres of Power recently got a Hunter archetype named Master of the Hunt, which grants their animal companion an all-day benefit from a normally 1-10 minute / level buff. And each fey blessing may be applied and thusly persisted independently, letting your AC glow with the white hot magical aura of the sun.
So, I am here to look at the best and worst talents to benefit from this extension.
Ranking system:
(S) Super: You always want this. It's awesome.
(G) Good: You would certainly not complain about having this, especially in the right builds / situations.
(B) Bad: While perhaps better than nothing, you are giving up something for it, so probably shouldn't without a good reason.
(N) No.
<Angle brackets> around a rating indicates situational usefulness, and how good it is in that favorable situation.
<F> is situationally funny.
Nature-Connection (base sphere) (B-G): +1 to initiative, stealth and perception (+1/5 lvl) isn't much, but having it permanently up is definitely something to make mention of. I'll use this as a standard of middle-of-the-road, not-exciting, but-why-not talents. [Note: the archetype makes this free, once per day, meaning that unless it's dispelled, it's literally free. But I'm not factoring that in to the rating.]
Fairy Dust (S+): I make this S+ because of how potent having it all day is, relative to normal, rather than its independent power and efficiency (which is still incredible to great). This is because each of the granted blessings have an optional increased cost for an improved effect. Want to grant your entire team perpetual flight for one spell point? Here you go. (Oh, and you can apply it to natural weapons. Animals can have a lot. And you are granted unlimited use. Cat scratches + charm powder. Wait...)
---
Fairy Flight (<S>): Permanent flight starting at 5th level is nice. But what makes it Good is that it enables flight through fairy dust, which can grant flight to the entire party essentially for free. This also enables Chip Sky-Shark.
Mantle Of Autumn (S): Sharable friendly miss chance. Oh, and you can end world hunger, but who cares.
Fade (S): Gain concealment while flanking, and a get out of jail free card, once per cast. That's an incredibly potent defensive tool.
Weapons Of The Wild (S): For normal fey blessings, these are knock off alteration traits. For day-long blessings, these are as though alteration sphere had a permanent option. (Actually probably how I'd price it as well.) While lacking some of the perks of an actual form. Still, if you aren't going an SoM path, you want this every time. And even then, at least some of the time.
---
Gremlin’s Presence (G-S) Some nice "aura" effects and the ability to freely cast a permanent curse on an enemy for further debuffs.
Long Step (G-S): Basically an "ignore attacks of opportunity" as a move action ability, plus the niche benefit of very short range, LOS teleportation, and potentially tree-hopping. This can also sort of work to give an "effective" move speed to aquatic animals companions.
Fae-Light (<G-S>): Nothing incredible on its own, but if you invest in also having Light talents, then it's an all-day glow effect on your AC, which you can flare as you desire. Plus fascinate.
Unseelie Aura (G-S): A fear aura, plus an aura to make feared enemies not benefit from allies' aid. Both are very potent for entirely passive effects.
Pixie Sticks(G-S): Your AC probably isn't using sticks to fight, but getting to summon any plant type, only limited by its CR relative to your caster level is basically unheard of in Pathfinder. Such free form summoning is even less heard of in Spheres of Power - Even death sphere required you to at least have a corpse of whatever you wanted to summon. Oh, and you can also get infinite all-day healing.
Summon Fairy (G-S): OK, I was wrong. There was another "summon anything" talent. Fairies are more useful than plants, in general. But it doesn't have the other aspects. Just assume they are the same rating. This is probably better.
---
Winter Fey (G): Absolutely worthless normally. Kinda cool permanently. Incidentally, it can be inconvenient if anyone decides to get cold resistance, as it doesn't seem possible to dismiss the effect.
Spores (G): Even ignoring the stat-killing aspect, which is cheesy, it's still got decent debuffs which can run serious support without having to dedicate itself to supporting.
Animate Hair (G): 1 blessing to keep opponents from moving, and another to hold the bottle of rum - which is useful as many animals normally can't.
Crown Of The Courts (<G>): Grants a breakable, removable crown. But assuming you protect it, the associated fey can not knowingly take hostile action against you, regardless of compulsion. Only a minute per failed save, and 24 hour immunity on a save, but still, if your campaign revolves around the fey...
Listen to the Wind (<G>): If you are in a campaign that makes use of it, great. Won't be many / any games I know of (that shouldn't have been using D&D in the first place).
Snare Setter (G): Some pre-battle area denial / entangle, and it's better because the ability to do it doesn't expire after a minute.
Natural Blessing (<G>?): I mean, if you have a party of animals/plants/vermin, there aren't a lot of other luck bonuses to all saving throws available out there, and it scales reasonably quickly.
Natural Dominion (<G>): Command exactly one beast. If that's applicable to your campaign, then go for it.
---
Misplacement (<B-G>): In the specific case of having a very stealthy animal companion doing scouting, this could be some niche, risky pre-battle action economy debuff. Definitely the much less cool and less chad version of displacement.
Beckoning Call (B-G, <F>): Will or fascinate. Nothing incredible, and they become immune for 24 hours, which works against the permanent nature of the blessing. And you'd need to reapply it for each different "form" of creature you want to fascinate. Also, furries rejoice. This seems to be a strictly worse form of Fae-Light.
Enchanting Music (B-G, <F>): What's more fun than piano cat? Harpsichord dolphin. Why would you want a support-role AC? I dunno. Don't ask questions.
Trickery (<<B-G>>): Depends on DM discretion, but if it includes something like Feast and Famine's vomit ability to "humiliate" the target, then woo. +2 to its effective caster level. Else, it's utterly worthless as AC generally can't cast spells.
Tree Meld (<B-G>): If taken with Long Step it allows for longer range teleportation through trees. Else it's a stealth talent without mobility that's reliant on trees..
Stunning Glance (B-G): Eh...If you are allowed to Extend the effect, you could get 2 rounds of stun for 1 standard action. But I don't think you can, as the effect is the blessing, not the stun. Stun is better than a daze though, adding some debuffs. So it's not the worst cantrip in the world. It is worse than what you could do otherwise in SoP.
Unthreatening Form (B-G): Allows for non-time limited scouting. No combat use. Stops ambushes from being likely to outright kill your AC before it gets to act. Could let you use fey-blessing auras of it without exposing it to the chance of being killed (due to hiding it in your pocket). You can do just about anything that doesn't involve an attack roll. (Think of the hairless mole rat from Kim Possible, honestly.) Why you'd do this instead of letting your sky shark tear in to them with its full mane of prehensile hair is beyond me, but you do you.
---
Saboteur (B): Letting your animal companion pick locks doesn't seem like a good idea. But if you can give it a workable base, then here's a bonus.
Shadow Collector (B): I mean...the AC doesn't have much use for spell points, and can just use fairy dust instead for similar effect.
Aelfwine (B, <F>): Held back by being cancel-able by having the bottle destroyed. But the AC is sentient, and can gain barroom talents (which by and large aren't great). So if you ever wanted to command a drunk giraffe into combat, this is the talent for you.
Zolavoi’s Mantle (B): Unfriendly concealment that also does 1 damage / CL to those inside it. (Isn't there a really great talent that does this better?) Woo. Oh, and some fringe stuff that basically never comes up.
Grace Of The Sidhe (B): ACs tend to already get permanent evasion, and...admittedly, if you're giving your AC some combat talents, it could still be working at full capability even while moving at 20 feet / round for miss chance. So it does have potential there, with investment. (Such investment would bump it up.)
Mantle Of Spring (B): It's incredibly, incredibly light area denial via difficult terrain. The only reason you'd use this would be to complement your use of the nature (plant) sphere, but you're not a full caster, and it kinda sucks anyway.
---
Feast and Famine (N-B): grants a ranged touch attack to enable a fortitude save to not be sickened. And its upgrade is spent once per attack, not cast. So really getting very little benefit from the all-day buff.
Ventriloquism (N-B): I'm not sure why you'd care to have this with an animal companion. But you could get your animal companion to also speak common. WOOoo...
---
Wild Walk (N): Can't be tracked and not inhibited by natural terrain. Completely worthless if someone casts Entangle though.
Water Creature (<N>): This thing's poor at the best of times, and useless much of the time. And then you're sticking it on an animal companion who could be doing so much more.
Plant Friend (N): This is so incredibly, horrifically niche that it I think you couldn't actually have a substantially plant-based campaign. There aren't even plant monsters. Even if all of the blessings were just one, it still wouldn't be worth it.
Beastward (N): Unless you're in the most hyper specific campaign, where you actually care about bees and mosquitos as you're going to sleep, this is pretty much worthless. Even if you were facing beasts on the regular, any compulsion (even Handle Animal) bypasses this. It doesn't even let you know where east is.
Stone Shape / Wood Shape(N): That 6 int and 1 skill rank/HD isn't going to make it particularly good at craft checks. But if it were made viable, the equipment at least lasts all day. You can't take 20 on the actual magical portion, because it costs a spell point per use.
---
Fey Beauty (N-, <F>): If you're at the point where the flying shark is your face character, to the point where you want to give it a tiny, inconsequential bonus, you've already messed up.
Fey Potency (N-): Permanent spell penetration...on an animal companion. This doesn't even get the benefit of being funny when memed with. It's just pointless.
So, I am here to look at the best and worst talents to benefit from this extension.
Ranking system:
(S) Super: You always want this. It's awesome.
(G) Good: You would certainly not complain about having this, especially in the right builds / situations.
(B) Bad: While perhaps better than nothing, you are giving up something for it, so probably shouldn't without a good reason.
(N) No.
<Angle brackets> around a rating indicates situational usefulness, and how good it is in that favorable situation.
<F> is situationally funny.
Nature-Connection (base sphere) (B-G): +1 to initiative, stealth and perception (+1/5 lvl) isn't much, but having it permanently up is definitely something to make mention of. I'll use this as a standard of middle-of-the-road, not-exciting, but-why-not talents. [Note: the archetype makes this free, once per day, meaning that unless it's dispelled, it's literally free. But I'm not factoring that in to the rating.]
Fairy Dust (S+): I make this S+ because of how potent having it all day is, relative to normal, rather than its independent power and efficiency (which is still incredible to great). This is because each of the granted blessings have an optional increased cost for an improved effect. Want to grant your entire team perpetual flight for one spell point? Here you go. (Oh, and you can apply it to natural weapons. Animals can have a lot. And you are granted unlimited use. Cat scratches + charm powder. Wait...)
---
Fairy Flight (<S>): Permanent flight starting at 5th level is nice. But what makes it Good is that it enables flight through fairy dust, which can grant flight to the entire party essentially for free. This also enables Chip Sky-Shark.
Mantle Of Autumn (S): Sharable friendly miss chance. Oh, and you can end world hunger, but who cares.
Fade (S): Gain concealment while flanking, and a get out of jail free card, once per cast. That's an incredibly potent defensive tool.
Weapons Of The Wild (S): For normal fey blessings, these are knock off alteration traits. For day-long blessings, these are as though alteration sphere had a permanent option. (Actually probably how I'd price it as well.) While lacking some of the perks of an actual form. Still, if you aren't going an SoM path, you want this every time. And even then, at least some of the time.
---
Gremlin’s Presence (G-S) Some nice "aura" effects and the ability to freely cast a permanent curse on an enemy for further debuffs.
Long Step (G-S): Basically an "ignore attacks of opportunity" as a move action ability, plus the niche benefit of very short range, LOS teleportation, and potentially tree-hopping. This can also sort of work to give an "effective" move speed to aquatic animals companions.
Fae-Light (<G-S>): Nothing incredible on its own, but if you invest in also having Light talents, then it's an all-day glow effect on your AC, which you can flare as you desire. Plus fascinate.
Unseelie Aura (G-S): A fear aura, plus an aura to make feared enemies not benefit from allies' aid. Both are very potent for entirely passive effects.
Pixie Sticks(G-S): Your AC probably isn't using sticks to fight, but getting to summon any plant type, only limited by its CR relative to your caster level is basically unheard of in Pathfinder. Such free form summoning is even less heard of in Spheres of Power - Even death sphere required you to at least have a corpse of whatever you wanted to summon. Oh, and you can also get infinite all-day healing.
Summon Fairy (G-S): OK, I was wrong. There was another "summon anything" talent. Fairies are more useful than plants, in general. But it doesn't have the other aspects. Just assume they are the same rating. This is probably better.
---
Winter Fey (G): Absolutely worthless normally. Kinda cool permanently. Incidentally, it can be inconvenient if anyone decides to get cold resistance, as it doesn't seem possible to dismiss the effect.
Spores (G): Even ignoring the stat-killing aspect, which is cheesy, it's still got decent debuffs which can run serious support without having to dedicate itself to supporting.
Animate Hair (G): 1 blessing to keep opponents from moving, and another to hold the bottle of rum - which is useful as many animals normally can't.
Crown Of The Courts (<G>): Grants a breakable, removable crown. But assuming you protect it, the associated fey can not knowingly take hostile action against you, regardless of compulsion. Only a minute per failed save, and 24 hour immunity on a save, but still, if your campaign revolves around the fey...
Listen to the Wind (<G>): If you are in a campaign that makes use of it, great. Won't be many / any games I know of (that shouldn't have been using D&D in the first place).
Snare Setter (G): Some pre-battle area denial / entangle, and it's better because the ability to do it doesn't expire after a minute.
Natural Blessing (<G>?): I mean, if you have a party of animals/plants/vermin, there aren't a lot of other luck bonuses to all saving throws available out there, and it scales reasonably quickly.
Natural Dominion (<G>): Command exactly one beast. If that's applicable to your campaign, then go for it.
---
Misplacement (<B-G>): In the specific case of having a very stealthy animal companion doing scouting, this could be some niche, risky pre-battle action economy debuff. Definitely the much less cool and less chad version of displacement.
Beckoning Call (B-G, <F>): Will or fascinate. Nothing incredible, and they become immune for 24 hours, which works against the permanent nature of the blessing. And you'd need to reapply it for each different "form" of creature you want to fascinate. Also, furries rejoice. This seems to be a strictly worse form of Fae-Light.
Enchanting Music (B-G, <F>): What's more fun than piano cat? Harpsichord dolphin. Why would you want a support-role AC? I dunno. Don't ask questions.
Trickery (<<B-G>>): Depends on DM discretion, but if it includes something like Feast and Famine's vomit ability to "humiliate" the target, then woo. +2 to its effective caster level. Else, it's utterly worthless as AC generally can't cast spells.
Tree Meld (<B-G>): If taken with Long Step it allows for longer range teleportation through trees. Else it's a stealth talent without mobility that's reliant on trees..
Stunning Glance (B-G): Eh...If you are allowed to Extend the effect, you could get 2 rounds of stun for 1 standard action. But I don't think you can, as the effect is the blessing, not the stun. Stun is better than a daze though, adding some debuffs. So it's not the worst cantrip in the world. It is worse than what you could do otherwise in SoP.
Unthreatening Form (B-G): Allows for non-time limited scouting. No combat use. Stops ambushes from being likely to outright kill your AC before it gets to act. Could let you use fey-blessing auras of it without exposing it to the chance of being killed (due to hiding it in your pocket). You can do just about anything that doesn't involve an attack roll. (Think of the hairless mole rat from Kim Possible, honestly.) Why you'd do this instead of letting your sky shark tear in to them with its full mane of prehensile hair is beyond me, but you do you.
---
Saboteur (B): Letting your animal companion pick locks doesn't seem like a good idea. But if you can give it a workable base, then here's a bonus.
Shadow Collector (B): I mean...the AC doesn't have much use for spell points, and can just use fairy dust instead for similar effect.
Aelfwine (B, <F>): Held back by being cancel-able by having the bottle destroyed. But the AC is sentient, and can gain barroom talents (which by and large aren't great). So if you ever wanted to command a drunk giraffe into combat, this is the talent for you.
Zolavoi’s Mantle (B): Unfriendly concealment that also does 1 damage / CL to those inside it. (Isn't there a really great talent that does this better?) Woo. Oh, and some fringe stuff that basically never comes up.
Grace Of The Sidhe (B): ACs tend to already get permanent evasion, and...admittedly, if you're giving your AC some combat talents, it could still be working at full capability even while moving at 20 feet / round for miss chance. So it does have potential there, with investment. (Such investment would bump it up.)
Mantle Of Spring (B): It's incredibly, incredibly light area denial via difficult terrain. The only reason you'd use this would be to complement your use of the nature (plant) sphere, but you're not a full caster, and it kinda sucks anyway.
---
Feast and Famine (N-B): grants a ranged touch attack to enable a fortitude save to not be sickened. And its upgrade is spent once per attack, not cast. So really getting very little benefit from the all-day buff.
Ventriloquism (N-B): I'm not sure why you'd care to have this with an animal companion. But you could get your animal companion to also speak common. WOOoo...
---
Wild Walk (N): Can't be tracked and not inhibited by natural terrain. Completely worthless if someone casts Entangle though.
Water Creature (<N>): This thing's poor at the best of times, and useless much of the time. And then you're sticking it on an animal companion who could be doing so much more.
Plant Friend (N): This is so incredibly, horrifically niche that it I think you couldn't actually have a substantially plant-based campaign. There aren't even plant monsters. Even if all of the blessings were just one, it still wouldn't be worth it.
Beastward (N): Unless you're in the most hyper specific campaign, where you actually care about bees and mosquitos as you're going to sleep, this is pretty much worthless. Even if you were facing beasts on the regular, any compulsion (even Handle Animal) bypasses this. It doesn't even let you know where east is.
Stone Shape / Wood Shape(N): That 6 int and 1 skill rank/HD isn't going to make it particularly good at craft checks. But if it were made viable, the equipment at least lasts all day. You can't take 20 on the actual magical portion, because it costs a spell point per use.
---
Fey Beauty (N-, <F>): If you're at the point where the flying shark is your face character, to the point where you want to give it a tiny, inconsequential bonus, you've already messed up.
Fey Potency (N-): Permanent spell penetration...on an animal companion. This doesn't even get the benefit of being funny when memed with. It's just pointless.