SangoProduction
2020-12-03, 12:56 AM
I've gone over the Enhancement sphere several times before, seeing if there's anything to enhance my character's performance. Every time I did, I walked away disappointed. So to stop these silly treks down memory lane, I will go ahead and do a full review and see if there's any salvage to be had.
Post review analysis: This sphere actually blew my expectations out of the water. Granted, there's still not a lot of exceptionally good effects (barring certain combos), and there's an incredible dearth of talents. But the feats do sort of make up for that.
I do enjoy that this magic sphere is more centered around the low-casters of the spheres. Many of the talents are front-loaded with weak scaling. Not all of them, but a lot of them. And that's pretty good design when you want the less magically capable to think it's a relatively good pick up for them.
I kind of wished that Animate Object were just its own sphere. It's got more feat and talent support than the entire sphere has talents.
Ranking system:
(S) Superb: 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.
- Special Ratings:
(C) Cheese: A talent so broken that it will be instantly banned if you use it as you could.
(I) Impossible: Can't be rated because it is just not defined enough to give a meaningful rating - it depends too much on DM ruling, or personal use. I'll just place it where I guess the average result would put it.
(F) Flavor: This indicates that the main draw to the talent is going to be its inherent fluff or flavor, rather than raw power or utility.
Enhance: Standard action to throw an (enhance) talent on a target creature or object.
An unwilling subject can make a Will save to prevent it.
It lasts for either concentration, or for 1 minute / caster level without concentration, if you spend a spell point.
So, overall, Enhance is a very low-risk ability, not needing you to commit spell points (on the mechanic itself) until you're sure it'll stick.
Enhance Equipment (B): Woo. You make backup weapons less bad. Might help in a fight at level 1 or 2, or if your DM really doesn't want to give your martials any weapons.
Deep Enhancement (S): 10 minute / level duration, and lingering free duration is pretty awesome. The sphere probably needs at least that.
Dual Enhancement (<S>): Basically Quicken Spell, but for only 1 spell point ... though only for a few multi-use enhancement sphere talents. Neat. But meh. But wait. It can be reasonably argued that both effects are just 1 effect, so if you wanted to spend a spell point to extend both, then you basically didn't spend any additional points. If your DM agrees, this is really cool. If they don't, then...eh. Depends on if you face enough things with enough senses that are worth stealing.
Greater Enhance Equipment (G-S): This can turn the base sphere from a "neat" to have to something of an early-game, game changer. I mean...an extra +1 to attack and damage isn't. But you also aren't having to refresh it every fight. And with Deep Enhancement, you can keep it going basically the whole adventuring day, and force the martials to sing your praises.
Mass Enhancement (G-S): You save a bit of casting time when you want to hit multiple things. But if you want to extend the effect, you must spend a spell point on every single effect. So no real savings there. Is a mass two-round debuff good? Well...actually...kinda, yeah. Once you get enough levels to make it work.
Natural Enhancement (B-G): Amulet of Natural Armor is a bit out of the price range of most early game characters, especially for its relatively piddly benefits. This is neat if you already planned to get Greater Enhance Equipment, and doubly so if someone can also make use of the natural weapon boost.
Ranged Enhancement (B): For most purposes, long-term buff effects don't need long range. If you use it to debuff, take as many times as makes you comfortable.
Crippling Strike (N-B): You aren't just taking a touch attack and making it a regular one. You're taking no attack, just save, and adding an attack to it.
I'll separate the (Enhance) talents into buff and debuff and "Other".
Talents which can do both will appear in both sections, and be rated only for their ability in the given section.
Enhance Focus (<S>): Oh, wow. They made this good in USOP. Even if an Alchemy sphere user needed to gain Basic Magic Training, this is still worth the feats (in terms of pure skill bonuses). You'll be hard pressed to find other good uses for it. But it's a flexible talent, in so far as you have all skills in your hands.
Energy Enhancement (G-S): You can absolutely blow through your spell points to give your martial companion a heart attack at their damage. It's a very cute party trick, and every martial will love you. Especially since they can now buy interesting boosts to their weapons instead.
Magic Sink(<G-S>): Let's be frank, if you run into guys dispelling your hour-long enchants, you're going to be annoyed. You probably won't, if my experience tells me anything. But you'll be annoyed if you do.
Superior Poison (G): Two problems keeping it from being higher: Non-alchemy poisons not being particularly noteworthy (save for marvelous exceptions which will probably be shot down), and alchemy poisons don't last very long after creation. But for the scale of effect, this still gets a solid G rating.
Spectral Enhancement (<G>): If incorporeal enemies are relevant, and you want your martials to do something, here you go. Also Negative Energy Resistance is super rare,
Physical Enhancement (G): It's a neat little boost that anyone can appreciate. Even (or especially) martials don't have the money to buy items to boost all their physical stats, so this always has a use. Not always an incredible one, like Dexterity essentially just being temporary Dodge feat for most, bested by Natural Enhancement. But a boost none the lest.
Harden/Weaken (G): Very flexible. Nice. The DR is still beaten by Alteration sphere, but you can decrease bypassable DR by that amount. And give normal weapons a misfire chance. Nothing extremely incredible. But it's got to have points for flexibility.
Staunch Resistance (G): Strictly speaking, it's not a bad effect. It stacks with everything, and very slowly scales. If you know what you can expect in terms of saves, this could be cool. It has potential.
Lighten (B-G): It's a very small set of effects, outside of allowing Telekinesis to actually touch things. Which probably explains why you can target 2 sizes larger than telekinesis at the same CL. And you just take a single talent for it. So for improving your telekinetic friend, have a bump. If you wanted to get rid of Armor Check Penalties, just use Enhance Focus. It's just better.
Emphasize Belief (B-G): Very small amount of DR, but it stacks with other DR, and aligned damage is pretty difficult to come by, so it's quite reliable.
Mental Enhancement (B-G): Eh... Mental abilities tend to only truly need a boost when they are your primary ability, or you're a monk. You probably would prefer your higher effect, permanent item than this.
Alter Movement (B): Tiny boost in speed. Tiny boost in some movement skills. Alteration sphere does this better.
Deadly Weapon (B): Woo...crit...sigh. But also lets you flex damage type and into cold iron and silver. Not a good deal of flexing there, but it's something. Good if you're in a vampire/ware wolf/tinkerbell fanfic campaign
Supply Vigor (B): Strictly worse than Life sphere's solution...except for the USOP buff where it can apply to [stat] Enhancement, on top of the normal effects, at no extra cost. That still doesn't make it particularly good, but at least you simply get to bundle in a penalty suppressor with a real buff.
Superior Reflexes (N-B): Will a person who uses AoOs as a tactic really need +1 more? Eh...probably not. In most cases. So, is half of a trait as a boost to initiative worth a 10 minute spell? ...Eh...probably not.
Improved Flexibility (N-B): A niche bonus to a not very used skill doesn't sell me on it being worthwhile. If you're consistently getting pinned and tied up, well, someone's just being mean, but Dimension Door or Warp sphere might be better investments.
Energize Body (N-B): You could Restore from Life sphere. And the rest is just really blood niche, and you wouldn't even spend a feat to get those effects permanently. Let alone needing to spend spell points every 10*CL minutes.
Traveling Weapon (N-B): Returning weapon ability is not good. Blink Back Belt or SoM's Throwing Mastery is non-actions that happen immediately rather than at the end of turn. The cover reduction also isn't a good effect. It serves a decent early game role, but you're spending your more limited early game talents on such a minor role.
Ragged Edge (N): You realize you can already spend 4 spell points on 4d6+4*CL points every swing, right? You don't need to take this for slightly more damage. It doesn't even stack with multiple hits.
Lighten (C): If you are at a level where you can make an enemy weightless, it's essentially a save or lose for any martial enemy. Not because of the inconsequential attack penalty, but because they can't move, outside of a single jump off a wall/floor at 1/2 their move speed. They don't fall back to the ground. Pepper em with arrows. Or Shurikens. Unlike Hostile lift there's not a save every round to be released.
Steal Senses (G-S): Blind for CL minutes. And they don't have a way, implicit to the effect, of cleansing the blindness, and it can extend to other senses, if so desired. That's nice.
Steal Capacity (<G-S>): A reasonable DM would only allow the type of actions listed. But even so, many mages have issues casting without being able to talk. And you can tell Earth Gliders to stop doing that, arguably trapping them as soon as they pop up
Cripple (G): Even with the USOP buff to make it immediately comparable to sickened, it still falls short of most sickened-inflicting talents for having no other effect or escalation it can do. That said, if you've already got people inflicting sickened and fatigued, and what not, and you're still set on inflicting a debuff, this is an option that stacks with everything else.
Harden/Weaken (G): Very flexible. Nice. The DR is still beaten by Alteration sphere, but you can decrease bypassable DR by that amount. And give normal weapons a misfire chance. Nothing extremely incredible. But it's got to have points for flexibility.
Alter Movement (G): Actually, giving 5-foot steps a chance to provoke makes reach weapon abusers really sad. Also makes your reach weapon abusers really happy. Halving movement speed...eh, it means it's harder to waddle up to you. But then you're forcing them to charge you now that they have no other choice.
Animate Object (I): There are a lot of options that the animate object has. In my estimation: As combatants, they are slightly tougher and less offensively capable than other minionmancy. But it is incredibly flexible, especially if you include the potential pre-USOP animate object abilities. And you'll quite literally never run out of minions you could summon until you're out of spell points.
Bestow Intelligence (I): I mean, this effect is existentially mortifying. You are creating the intelligence of a small child (at level 1) mere minutes to live, and not necessarily in a body that can do anything. Overall, it's probably not incredible. It's less information than a Nature sphere user can get by speaking with elements. It helps make your animate objects more autonomous (you monster). Also you could amplify the intelligence of a squirrel, and they could arguably tell you about who they came across. Or figure out why an animal is being so ornery, which can help defuse fights and offer side solutions to problems.
Alternative Energy allows for 2 more instances of Energy Enhancement. Again, martials will sing your praises.
Antimagic Aegis lets your effects persist in antimagic field. Obviously enough, is normally pretty difficult, and you'd only have taken both Magic Skin and Spell Ward if you're having abundant issues with god darned abjuration wizards. They are just waiting to drop an AMF on you. We all know it.
Magical Focus (S-C): Huh. Neat. So martial-casters can add every enhancement to their weapon, essentially free of cost. +4d6+5 damage at level 1? That might be a tad overkill. Just a tad. But you can just add damage incrementally as needed.
Reforge Object (G-S): Explicitly gives control over A construction point, with every alteration. So it's not quick, but you can fully change the animated object as you please.
Magician’s Trade (<G-S>): It's hard not to rate it as though you also had Magical Focus for unlimited weapon enchants to trade off. It'd be generally poor if you didn't have that. But if you consistently have opposing mages who consistently buff their allies, then go at it, bro!
Addictive Power (G-S): Most drawback feats are pretty bad. If you didn't want to face your drawback, face-first, you may as well have not picked it, and taken Extra Spell Points feat. But this is actually different. By level 4, you gain 2 spell points from 2 drawbacks (Addictive Casting), the equivalent of having spent the feat on Extra Spell Points. That's not a particularly high level. And this feat can trivialize the penalty, so long as you don't run into anti-magic fields.
Parts And Pieces (G-S): Seems to also be contradicting post-USOP, and essentially assuming you can customize your animated objects. But still, good. Concentrating power rather than having it in a billion tiny bloody minions is awesome.
March Of The Treants (F): Yeah. It's absolutely hilarious to envision, but it does, actually improve the Pummel ability a fair bit. Not incredibly - not as much as ranged pummel, but a fair bit.
Might Of The Grave (G): Enables death minionmancers to splash Enhancement, and get a slight action boost for doing so in combat. (As opposed to just getting Deep Enhancements.)
Animate Tornado (F): I can't get a total read on it, but it looks good. I would not build a character around that, but it looks good.
Durable Objects (G): Bonus hit points on minions. Make them soak more hits without seeming pointless to hit. Always a good strategy.
Enhanced Vigilance (G): War and Enhancement both tend towards martial-casters, so it's a semi-natural fit, actually.
Enhanced Contingency (I): Contingency is good, in so far as the one making it is good at making it. Slightly improves the power, I think. I'm not sure.
Tactical Animation (B-G): Flexing teamwork feats is nice. If you can find nice teamwork feats
Animated Arsenal (B-G): Seems to be a holdover from pre-USOP, where animate objects were constructed by you, rather than DM. But this explicitly gives you some control. (Realistically, GMs are going to expect you to have a standard set of minions statted out. But that's not RAW.)
Complex Animations (<B-G>): Again, seems like a hold over, but if your GM is willing to take extra effort to select another construction point, go ahead.
Exceptional Ally (B-G): This is useful exclusively for in-combat summoning, because you're paying a premium on its effects.
Enchanted Animation (B-G): This is useful exclusively for in-combat summoning, because you're paying a premium on its effects.
Tribal Mark (B-G): War and Enhancement go hand-in-hand, yes. But totems are really rather weak effects, mitigated by the idea that you affect a lot at once. And it doesn't give you authority to rally off of it.
Floating Creation (F): Mass Tensor's Floating Discs. This is how you use Telekinesis! Except that floating objects can only move up and down. RIP.
Animate Structural Features (B): It takes your minionmancy and uses it for immobile, short-reach area control. But it does add flexibility. Plus, Bestow Life allows for you to animate your entire bloody house. Then you need some giant chicken legs to animate and run around with. Won't be incredibly useful outside of having a lot of eyes watching for ambushes.
Mounted Magician (B): There just aren't a bunch of things that you'd love to target yourself with to enhance your mount. Physical Enhancement (Con / Dex) definitely works. Maybe Harden/Weaken, if you can't access the Alteration sphere. Natural Enhancement for NA. That's probably about it. If you were desperate for speed, and you were mounted, you'd target your mount, not yourself.
Militant Animation (B): Spending a feat to grant your minions a flex feat. I mean... it's something.
Backdoor Control (F): That's an expensive way to get the donkey to get up and move the cart.
Enhanced Creation (B): Summoning weapons is a relatively weak use of creation sphere, and of the inanimate objects you can create, weapons are the best targets for any enhancements.
Solid Illusions (N-B): Destruction / Illusion dual sphere is better for pretty much every application of this I can think of.
Enhancing Telekinesis (N-B): If it were the other way around: Anything you enhance, you can try and lift, then you could Lighten and Lift, but as is, you are restricted by your Lift, which is a major restriction. But once you pass the restriction, you open up the use of Hostile Lift and Cripple in the same action.
Nature’s Enhancement (N-B): Meh. Spirit talents tend to be pretty weak, and you tend to not want to concentrate on either the enhancement nor spirit. Both last long enough that you don't really need to do it in combat, unless it's been dispelled. But if that's happening often enough that you want this feat, you should take something to counter dispel, like Magic Sink.
Floating Panoply (N): It's like Enhanced Creation, but using telekinesis sphere.
Animating Possession (I): I literally couldn't find where this Possession advanced talent was.
Object Familiar (F): You take an object you can already animate, and use that to replace your familiar... huh. OK. Do you lose the bonus you get just for having a familiar, like the toad granting +3 HP? You're spending a feat to make yourself weaker?
Alloy Enhancement (N): Metal package is bad, and you should feel bad.
Post review analysis: This sphere actually blew my expectations out of the water. Granted, there's still not a lot of exceptionally good effects (barring certain combos), and there's an incredible dearth of talents. But the feats do sort of make up for that.
I do enjoy that this magic sphere is more centered around the low-casters of the spheres. Many of the talents are front-loaded with weak scaling. Not all of them, but a lot of them. And that's pretty good design when you want the less magically capable to think it's a relatively good pick up for them.
I kind of wished that Animate Object were just its own sphere. It's got more feat and talent support than the entire sphere has talents.
Ranking system:
(S) Superb: 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.
- Special Ratings:
(C) Cheese: A talent so broken that it will be instantly banned if you use it as you could.
(I) Impossible: Can't be rated because it is just not defined enough to give a meaningful rating - it depends too much on DM ruling, or personal use. I'll just place it where I guess the average result would put it.
(F) Flavor: This indicates that the main draw to the talent is going to be its inherent fluff or flavor, rather than raw power or utility.
Enhance: Standard action to throw an (enhance) talent on a target creature or object.
An unwilling subject can make a Will save to prevent it.
It lasts for either concentration, or for 1 minute / caster level without concentration, if you spend a spell point.
So, overall, Enhance is a very low-risk ability, not needing you to commit spell points (on the mechanic itself) until you're sure it'll stick.
Enhance Equipment (B): Woo. You make backup weapons less bad. Might help in a fight at level 1 or 2, or if your DM really doesn't want to give your martials any weapons.
Deep Enhancement (S): 10 minute / level duration, and lingering free duration is pretty awesome. The sphere probably needs at least that.
Dual Enhancement (<S>): Basically Quicken Spell, but for only 1 spell point ... though only for a few multi-use enhancement sphere talents. Neat. But meh. But wait. It can be reasonably argued that both effects are just 1 effect, so if you wanted to spend a spell point to extend both, then you basically didn't spend any additional points. If your DM agrees, this is really cool. If they don't, then...eh. Depends on if you face enough things with enough senses that are worth stealing.
Greater Enhance Equipment (G-S): This can turn the base sphere from a "neat" to have to something of an early-game, game changer. I mean...an extra +1 to attack and damage isn't. But you also aren't having to refresh it every fight. And with Deep Enhancement, you can keep it going basically the whole adventuring day, and force the martials to sing your praises.
Mass Enhancement (G-S): You save a bit of casting time when you want to hit multiple things. But if you want to extend the effect, you must spend a spell point on every single effect. So no real savings there. Is a mass two-round debuff good? Well...actually...kinda, yeah. Once you get enough levels to make it work.
Natural Enhancement (B-G): Amulet of Natural Armor is a bit out of the price range of most early game characters, especially for its relatively piddly benefits. This is neat if you already planned to get Greater Enhance Equipment, and doubly so if someone can also make use of the natural weapon boost.
Ranged Enhancement (B): For most purposes, long-term buff effects don't need long range. If you use it to debuff, take as many times as makes you comfortable.
Crippling Strike (N-B): You aren't just taking a touch attack and making it a regular one. You're taking no attack, just save, and adding an attack to it.
I'll separate the (Enhance) talents into buff and debuff and "Other".
Talents which can do both will appear in both sections, and be rated only for their ability in the given section.
Enhance Focus (<S>): Oh, wow. They made this good in USOP. Even if an Alchemy sphere user needed to gain Basic Magic Training, this is still worth the feats (in terms of pure skill bonuses). You'll be hard pressed to find other good uses for it. But it's a flexible talent, in so far as you have all skills in your hands.
Energy Enhancement (G-S): You can absolutely blow through your spell points to give your martial companion a heart attack at their damage. It's a very cute party trick, and every martial will love you. Especially since they can now buy interesting boosts to their weapons instead.
Magic Sink(<G-S>): Let's be frank, if you run into guys dispelling your hour-long enchants, you're going to be annoyed. You probably won't, if my experience tells me anything. But you'll be annoyed if you do.
Superior Poison (G): Two problems keeping it from being higher: Non-alchemy poisons not being particularly noteworthy (save for marvelous exceptions which will probably be shot down), and alchemy poisons don't last very long after creation. But for the scale of effect, this still gets a solid G rating.
Spectral Enhancement (<G>): If incorporeal enemies are relevant, and you want your martials to do something, here you go. Also Negative Energy Resistance is super rare,
Physical Enhancement (G): It's a neat little boost that anyone can appreciate. Even (or especially) martials don't have the money to buy items to boost all their physical stats, so this always has a use. Not always an incredible one, like Dexterity essentially just being temporary Dodge feat for most, bested by Natural Enhancement. But a boost none the lest.
Harden/Weaken (G): Very flexible. Nice. The DR is still beaten by Alteration sphere, but you can decrease bypassable DR by that amount. And give normal weapons a misfire chance. Nothing extremely incredible. But it's got to have points for flexibility.
Staunch Resistance (G): Strictly speaking, it's not a bad effect. It stacks with everything, and very slowly scales. If you know what you can expect in terms of saves, this could be cool. It has potential.
Lighten (B-G): It's a very small set of effects, outside of allowing Telekinesis to actually touch things. Which probably explains why you can target 2 sizes larger than telekinesis at the same CL. And you just take a single talent for it. So for improving your telekinetic friend, have a bump. If you wanted to get rid of Armor Check Penalties, just use Enhance Focus. It's just better.
Emphasize Belief (B-G): Very small amount of DR, but it stacks with other DR, and aligned damage is pretty difficult to come by, so it's quite reliable.
Mental Enhancement (B-G): Eh... Mental abilities tend to only truly need a boost when they are your primary ability, or you're a monk. You probably would prefer your higher effect, permanent item than this.
Alter Movement (B): Tiny boost in speed. Tiny boost in some movement skills. Alteration sphere does this better.
Deadly Weapon (B): Woo...crit...sigh. But also lets you flex damage type and into cold iron and silver. Not a good deal of flexing there, but it's something. Good if you're in a vampire/ware wolf/tinkerbell fanfic campaign
Supply Vigor (B): Strictly worse than Life sphere's solution...except for the USOP buff where it can apply to [stat] Enhancement, on top of the normal effects, at no extra cost. That still doesn't make it particularly good, but at least you simply get to bundle in a penalty suppressor with a real buff.
Superior Reflexes (N-B): Will a person who uses AoOs as a tactic really need +1 more? Eh...probably not. In most cases. So, is half of a trait as a boost to initiative worth a 10 minute spell? ...Eh...probably not.
Improved Flexibility (N-B): A niche bonus to a not very used skill doesn't sell me on it being worthwhile. If you're consistently getting pinned and tied up, well, someone's just being mean, but Dimension Door or Warp sphere might be better investments.
Energize Body (N-B): You could Restore from Life sphere. And the rest is just really blood niche, and you wouldn't even spend a feat to get those effects permanently. Let alone needing to spend spell points every 10*CL minutes.
Traveling Weapon (N-B): Returning weapon ability is not good. Blink Back Belt or SoM's Throwing Mastery is non-actions that happen immediately rather than at the end of turn. The cover reduction also isn't a good effect. It serves a decent early game role, but you're spending your more limited early game talents on such a minor role.
Ragged Edge (N): You realize you can already spend 4 spell points on 4d6+4*CL points every swing, right? You don't need to take this for slightly more damage. It doesn't even stack with multiple hits.
Lighten (C): If you are at a level where you can make an enemy weightless, it's essentially a save or lose for any martial enemy. Not because of the inconsequential attack penalty, but because they can't move, outside of a single jump off a wall/floor at 1/2 their move speed. They don't fall back to the ground. Pepper em with arrows. Or Shurikens. Unlike Hostile lift there's not a save every round to be released.
Steal Senses (G-S): Blind for CL minutes. And they don't have a way, implicit to the effect, of cleansing the blindness, and it can extend to other senses, if so desired. That's nice.
Steal Capacity (<G-S>): A reasonable DM would only allow the type of actions listed. But even so, many mages have issues casting without being able to talk. And you can tell Earth Gliders to stop doing that, arguably trapping them as soon as they pop up
Cripple (G): Even with the USOP buff to make it immediately comparable to sickened, it still falls short of most sickened-inflicting talents for having no other effect or escalation it can do. That said, if you've already got people inflicting sickened and fatigued, and what not, and you're still set on inflicting a debuff, this is an option that stacks with everything else.
Harden/Weaken (G): Very flexible. Nice. The DR is still beaten by Alteration sphere, but you can decrease bypassable DR by that amount. And give normal weapons a misfire chance. Nothing extremely incredible. But it's got to have points for flexibility.
Alter Movement (G): Actually, giving 5-foot steps a chance to provoke makes reach weapon abusers really sad. Also makes your reach weapon abusers really happy. Halving movement speed...eh, it means it's harder to waddle up to you. But then you're forcing them to charge you now that they have no other choice.
Animate Object (I): There are a lot of options that the animate object has. In my estimation: As combatants, they are slightly tougher and less offensively capable than other minionmancy. But it is incredibly flexible, especially if you include the potential pre-USOP animate object abilities. And you'll quite literally never run out of minions you could summon until you're out of spell points.
Bestow Intelligence (I): I mean, this effect is existentially mortifying. You are creating the intelligence of a small child (at level 1) mere minutes to live, and not necessarily in a body that can do anything. Overall, it's probably not incredible. It's less information than a Nature sphere user can get by speaking with elements. It helps make your animate objects more autonomous (you monster). Also you could amplify the intelligence of a squirrel, and they could arguably tell you about who they came across. Or figure out why an animal is being so ornery, which can help defuse fights and offer side solutions to problems.
Alternative Energy allows for 2 more instances of Energy Enhancement. Again, martials will sing your praises.
Antimagic Aegis lets your effects persist in antimagic field. Obviously enough, is normally pretty difficult, and you'd only have taken both Magic Skin and Spell Ward if you're having abundant issues with god darned abjuration wizards. They are just waiting to drop an AMF on you. We all know it.
Magical Focus (S-C): Huh. Neat. So martial-casters can add every enhancement to their weapon, essentially free of cost. +4d6+5 damage at level 1? That might be a tad overkill. Just a tad. But you can just add damage incrementally as needed.
Reforge Object (G-S): Explicitly gives control over A construction point, with every alteration. So it's not quick, but you can fully change the animated object as you please.
Magician’s Trade (<G-S>): It's hard not to rate it as though you also had Magical Focus for unlimited weapon enchants to trade off. It'd be generally poor if you didn't have that. But if you consistently have opposing mages who consistently buff their allies, then go at it, bro!
Addictive Power (G-S): Most drawback feats are pretty bad. If you didn't want to face your drawback, face-first, you may as well have not picked it, and taken Extra Spell Points feat. But this is actually different. By level 4, you gain 2 spell points from 2 drawbacks (Addictive Casting), the equivalent of having spent the feat on Extra Spell Points. That's not a particularly high level. And this feat can trivialize the penalty, so long as you don't run into anti-magic fields.
Parts And Pieces (G-S): Seems to also be contradicting post-USOP, and essentially assuming you can customize your animated objects. But still, good. Concentrating power rather than having it in a billion tiny bloody minions is awesome.
March Of The Treants (F): Yeah. It's absolutely hilarious to envision, but it does, actually improve the Pummel ability a fair bit. Not incredibly - not as much as ranged pummel, but a fair bit.
Might Of The Grave (G): Enables death minionmancers to splash Enhancement, and get a slight action boost for doing so in combat. (As opposed to just getting Deep Enhancements.)
Animate Tornado (F): I can't get a total read on it, but it looks good. I would not build a character around that, but it looks good.
Durable Objects (G): Bonus hit points on minions. Make them soak more hits without seeming pointless to hit. Always a good strategy.
Enhanced Vigilance (G): War and Enhancement both tend towards martial-casters, so it's a semi-natural fit, actually.
Enhanced Contingency (I): Contingency is good, in so far as the one making it is good at making it. Slightly improves the power, I think. I'm not sure.
Tactical Animation (B-G): Flexing teamwork feats is nice. If you can find nice teamwork feats
Animated Arsenal (B-G): Seems to be a holdover from pre-USOP, where animate objects were constructed by you, rather than DM. But this explicitly gives you some control. (Realistically, GMs are going to expect you to have a standard set of minions statted out. But that's not RAW.)
Complex Animations (<B-G>): Again, seems like a hold over, but if your GM is willing to take extra effort to select another construction point, go ahead.
Exceptional Ally (B-G): This is useful exclusively for in-combat summoning, because you're paying a premium on its effects.
Enchanted Animation (B-G): This is useful exclusively for in-combat summoning, because you're paying a premium on its effects.
Tribal Mark (B-G): War and Enhancement go hand-in-hand, yes. But totems are really rather weak effects, mitigated by the idea that you affect a lot at once. And it doesn't give you authority to rally off of it.
Floating Creation (F): Mass Tensor's Floating Discs. This is how you use Telekinesis! Except that floating objects can only move up and down. RIP.
Animate Structural Features (B): It takes your minionmancy and uses it for immobile, short-reach area control. But it does add flexibility. Plus, Bestow Life allows for you to animate your entire bloody house. Then you need some giant chicken legs to animate and run around with. Won't be incredibly useful outside of having a lot of eyes watching for ambushes.
Mounted Magician (B): There just aren't a bunch of things that you'd love to target yourself with to enhance your mount. Physical Enhancement (Con / Dex) definitely works. Maybe Harden/Weaken, if you can't access the Alteration sphere. Natural Enhancement for NA. That's probably about it. If you were desperate for speed, and you were mounted, you'd target your mount, not yourself.
Militant Animation (B): Spending a feat to grant your minions a flex feat. I mean... it's something.
Backdoor Control (F): That's an expensive way to get the donkey to get up and move the cart.
Enhanced Creation (B): Summoning weapons is a relatively weak use of creation sphere, and of the inanimate objects you can create, weapons are the best targets for any enhancements.
Solid Illusions (N-B): Destruction / Illusion dual sphere is better for pretty much every application of this I can think of.
Enhancing Telekinesis (N-B): If it were the other way around: Anything you enhance, you can try and lift, then you could Lighten and Lift, but as is, you are restricted by your Lift, which is a major restriction. But once you pass the restriction, you open up the use of Hostile Lift and Cripple in the same action.
Nature’s Enhancement (N-B): Meh. Spirit talents tend to be pretty weak, and you tend to not want to concentrate on either the enhancement nor spirit. Both last long enough that you don't really need to do it in combat, unless it's been dispelled. But if that's happening often enough that you want this feat, you should take something to counter dispel, like Magic Sink.
Floating Panoply (N): It's like Enhanced Creation, but using telekinesis sphere.
Animating Possession (I): I literally couldn't find where this Possession advanced talent was.
Object Familiar (F): You take an object you can already animate, and use that to replace your familiar... huh. OK. Do you lose the bonus you get just for having a familiar, like the toad granting +3 HP? You're spending a feat to make yourself weaker?
Alloy Enhancement (N): Metal package is bad, and you should feel bad.