SangoProduction
2021-02-11, 07:13 PM
We finally circle back around to this sphere, now don't we? Well, it had to happen. Got to say, just from base impressions, having permanent Fey-Link for your animal companion is better than spending a spell point for a relatively minor minutes-long buff. But we'll see.
Post-Review Analysis: I actually kind of hated the time I spent examining this sphere. And, I think for the first time, this sphere has more talents in the N tier than G. And I thought I was being exceptionally generous.
Although...I had the misconception that the Fey-Link itself cost a spell point. It is obviously not as bad when it's just a more standard 1 spell point per buff. Still, not many actually good talents before even considering their cost.
Full or Partial Caster: ...Not sure. The extremely punishing duration and cost (in SP and talents) seems to encourage full casting. But none of the scaling, when there is any, actually has a good CL ratio. I think it's kind of meant for partial casters. But there aren't many real martial-benefiting talents.
Flex Talents: Beastward...wards off beasts and vermin. Crown Of The Courts does the same for fey. Plant Friend for plants. Tree Meld is pretty damned effective stealth when you're by some trees. Beckoning Call to drag away guards.
Ranking system:
(S) Superb: You always want this. It's awesome.
(G) Good: These make useful additions to the right builds.
(M) Meh: 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.
(G-S): Powerful talents that are almost, but not quite, universally useful or desirable.
(M-G): These are pretty reasonable talents of mediocre strength.
(N-M): It technically has a use, but the cost simply doesn't outweigh the benefit.
Base Sphere
Fey-Link: Gain the effects of Fey Link as a swift action. This lasts 1 minute / spell level. Your creature type is considered fey, and nothing else for the duration. You neither gain nor lose any benefits of your (sub)types.
Yup. That's all it does as a base line. The Fey Link.
Adding fey-blessings: While Fey-Link is active, you may spend 1 spell point as a free action to gain the benefits of a fey-blessing for the duration of the fey-link.
This is great when you want to burst all of your buffs all at once. In fact, that's probably the optimal way to use it, if at all - short duration aside. And it's...rather costly, as you could guess.
However, due to the tying of the effects to Fey-Link, this means that if you later decide you want to have another buff that wasn't in your burst, it's going to still expire at the same time your earlier casts do. Which...is a huge downside.
Nature Connection: Favored Terrain...except you can pick the terrain at cast time. Which basically just means it's a very minor boost to...admittedly the most important checks of the game. Save for the saves.
General Talents
Greater Fey-Link (S): Increased duration. Awesome. Considering literally all fey-blessings are buffs tied to your time limit... And you can improve it to an hour/CL with a single spell point, and it affects all your fey blessings you add on. So, pretty hype, if you picked out some of the passively good talents.
Share Link (I): If this means that you can just assign any of your current fey-blessings to also affect your shared allies as a free action, this is relatively great, if you have Greater Fey Link. If it just means you are simply able to cast your blessing on someone, this is trash and should never be considered.
The third paragraph implies it's the former interpretation. But the wording isn't clear. This really doesn't help with the whole "I'm spending all my spell points every minute" deal, but you are affecting more people.
Gremlin’s Presence (S): Actually has 2 useful effects. The Unnamed Sickened-like Jinx, and Pugwampi's Aura, which is just a passive AoE save penalty.
Mantle Of Autumn (S): Friendly AoE concealment / fog effect. Can be used by grouping with your allies, or by rushing your enemies. Nice.
Tree Meld (<G-S>): Given that you have trees to slip into, this is basically a Self-Sanctuary spell, in addition to effectively disappearing if you made a stealth check so they didn't see you do this. Shared with allies, in a forested location, you can be guerilla fighters like none other.
Grace Of The Sidhe (<G-S>): If you are using SoM, then you do have a move action free that you can use for shuffling around, and miss chance is pretty good. It's one of the most expensive and conditional miss chances in Spheres, and doesn't scale but in the context of this sphere? Pretty good.
Enchanting Music (G): Pretty much only useful for Dancing Tune, to prevent brutes from getting full attacks off. But that's a good use.
Shadow Collector (G): A fey blessing that tries and slightly offset just how expensive this sphere is. Neat. Mana draining is like 10x more effective vs vancian casters, and almost meaningless vs sphere casters. But it's god some neat, if niche, uses.
Crown Of The Courts (<G>): Fey are pretty nasty. But when was the last one you've seen one in game? So yeah. Cool if you already know you are facing fey.
Beckoning Call (<G>): Hello Pied Piper. Whose children are you stealing today? Oh, also nice for luring guards off to safe locations. For stuff and things.
Ventriloquism (G): The natural fellow to Beckoning Call lets you lure away guards without exposing yourself, although it adds yet another degree of failure. But this is one of the few effects in this sphere that aren't locked out for 24 hours on a successful save. Oh, and it's distant communication, which is pretty nice.
Saboteur (G): Given that you are responsible for disabling traps and locks, this is cool. Although most disable device checks are on narrative time, meaning that the improved speed means little. it is still pretty neat.
Beastward (<G>, F): Animals are relatively common...early on. And it certainly allows you to sell that you are definitely not a vampire. Or Terminator. And you can innately extend it to allies. So... it has its uses.
Winterfey (<M-G>): Your natural attacks can penetrate damage reduction by just doing cold damage instead. Awesome. Everything else here is pretty pointless.
Weapons Of The Wild (M-G): 3 primary attacks with alignment penetration. Takes up trait slots, so can't stack it as easily with Alteration NA spam, which is much more effective. Also costs an insane amount of spell points for what you get. But they aren't restricted to 1 NA per limb or head.
Trickery (I, F): Depends entirely on what your DM considered humiliating, tricking, or deceiving. But a good effect, if you can get it applied relatively broadly. Perhaps with the proper fluff.
Fae Light (M-G): Another Fascinate ability, but without included luring away. But sometimes you want to be able to not have that.
Fear Aura (M): A passive fear aura is pretty cool. Costs too much for its effect, but that's just a feature of the sphere. Oh, and they are also immune for 24 hours, if they make the save.
Fairy Dust (I): You only get to know 2 options from the list, per talent spent. And each activation of the fey-blessing only grants 1 for active use. But there are some useful one here. That being said, it only mentions 1 way of activating the powder. I would add a ranged/melee touch attack to "have the bag be destroyed." Otherwise this would be hot garbage.
Unthreatening Form (M): Meh. I'd much rather just take Alteration sphere, which is simultaneously more free, costs less, and isn't canceled simply by doing something offensive.
Spores (M): If you have some way to force early saves on disease (such as Disease Lord feat from Death sphere), then you can make for decent support to fear-using allies by giving your melee a disease coating. The Snare is like a Tanglefoot Bag cantrip. Except it cost 1 spell point to add to a fey link which also cost 1 spell point.
Animate Hair (M): Stand out use? Letting you reload while dual wielding. But you can also make it really hard to move away. I guess. A back up for when tripping is hard.
Fade (M): Concealment while flanking is relatively nice. Somewhat trivial to overcome, unless you're swarming with a bunch of people But it's still nice.
Natural Dominion (M): Basically Command Undead, but for beasties, and they can't be commanded again if they make their save.
Pixie Sticks (M): Ignoring the cost of Fey Link, this relatively efficient out of combat healing. Considering Fey Link's cost, <Mass> Cure / Fast healing would be more effective, quicker, uses fewer actions and has same cost. Oh, this grants plant-based minionmancy. Cool.
Zolavoi’s Mantle (N-M): Literally just a worse version of Mantle of Autumn.
Misplacement (N-M, F): Virtually no practical uses, save for more easily stealing a spell component pouch. But it's funny.
Fey Beauty (N-M, F): Even for face characters, this is really quite insignificant. I mean... At least it is fluffed as actual beauty, which Charisma is not inherently.
Aelfwine (N-M, F): These are such incredibly minor effects. But if you want fairy wine, rather than rot gut, and you want it to be magically conjured, and not inherently taste bland like most sustenance-granting spells... here you go.
Long Step (N-M): In a vacuum, 10 ft teleportation for a move action isn't the worst thing in the world, and is solidly "OK". Not great. Not horrible. Pretty situationally useful. You can just do so much more with other spheres.
Snare Setter (N-M): At first, I was like "Oh, that's neat and could be useful if you've got prep time." And then it says only 1 may be set at a time. Well, it definitely had a chance.
Nature’s Empathy (N-M): You know that fluff piece ability for druid? Well, you can now spend a spell point and a talent for such a privileged ability. And you can make spiders like you...although...Beastward is a thing, and doesn't have a save.
Fey Potency (N-M): For the same feat-equivalent as this costs, you could have a permanent, nonmagical Spell Penetration feat for double the effectiveness. And if you compare it to Piercing Spell metamagic feat, this costs more, and provides 1/5 of the bonus. But I guess if you are affecting 6-16 (depending on the number of other blessings sharing the initial Fey Link cost, and if you boosted the duration of Fey Link), then I guess you could get more total net bonuses per spell point. But boy is that unrealistic.
Plant Friend (N-M): Beastward but for plants.
Water Creature (N-M): Spell point on top of Fey-Link to enable the use of the basic cantrip of Destruction sphere, but more restrictive. Or you can make anti-difficult water terrain. A lot of it, but really doesn't matter. Or make some combat maneuvers against those in water.
Summon Fairy (I): Minionmancy. Not bothering.
Wood/Stone Shape (N-M): Extremely minor effects.
Wild Walk (N): Natural, nonmagical terrain just doesn't hurt
Stunning Glance (N): You spend your action to potentially ruin the action of another. Bad trade. But if you fail to ruin their action, you are at least forced to do something else with your time.
Listen To The Wind (N): Simulates a Survival check. As a DM, I would grant a circumstance bonus to navigation when you have an intuitive sense of where North is. But that's house rule. Also, a check to navigate? Seems a bit superfluous.
Mantle Of Spring (N): No.
Fairy Flight (N): Not really the talent's fault that Alteration sphere has 100 ft flight from level 1. But... yeah.
Natural Blessing (N): A minor boost to saves for some companions.
Fey Secrets (N): Spend a spell point to gain a 1d4 boost to a single roll. Wow that is pathetic.
Feast and Famine (N): This is basically a worse, shorter range Ghost Strike that costs a spell point just to enable its use.
Fairy Alchemy (G): There are some decent options. One downside is that it almost feels like this is admitting that the base talent can't innately allow you to throw the powder. That's not great.
Enchanting Performance (B): Spend rounds of bardic performance to enable the use of feats affecting bardic performance to affect Beckoning Call or Enchanting Music. It at least lets you do it if you run out of spell points but have some bard levels.
Unseelie Trapper (N): Not worth the effort.
Water Manipulator (N, F): A terrible talent, but hey. Now you can use the abilities at will.
Post-Review Analysis: I actually kind of hated the time I spent examining this sphere. And, I think for the first time, this sphere has more talents in the N tier than G. And I thought I was being exceptionally generous.
Although...I had the misconception that the Fey-Link itself cost a spell point. It is obviously not as bad when it's just a more standard 1 spell point per buff. Still, not many actually good talents before even considering their cost.
Full or Partial Caster: ...Not sure. The extremely punishing duration and cost (in SP and talents) seems to encourage full casting. But none of the scaling, when there is any, actually has a good CL ratio. I think it's kind of meant for partial casters. But there aren't many real martial-benefiting talents.
Flex Talents: Beastward...wards off beasts and vermin. Crown Of The Courts does the same for fey. Plant Friend for plants. Tree Meld is pretty damned effective stealth when you're by some trees. Beckoning Call to drag away guards.
Ranking system:
(S) Superb: You always want this. It's awesome.
(G) Good: These make useful additions to the right builds.
(M) Meh: 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.
(G-S): Powerful talents that are almost, but not quite, universally useful or desirable.
(M-G): These are pretty reasonable talents of mediocre strength.
(N-M): It technically has a use, but the cost simply doesn't outweigh the benefit.
Base Sphere
Fey-Link: Gain the effects of Fey Link as a swift action. This lasts 1 minute / spell level. Your creature type is considered fey, and nothing else for the duration. You neither gain nor lose any benefits of your (sub)types.
Yup. That's all it does as a base line. The Fey Link.
Adding fey-blessings: While Fey-Link is active, you may spend 1 spell point as a free action to gain the benefits of a fey-blessing for the duration of the fey-link.
This is great when you want to burst all of your buffs all at once. In fact, that's probably the optimal way to use it, if at all - short duration aside. And it's...rather costly, as you could guess.
However, due to the tying of the effects to Fey-Link, this means that if you later decide you want to have another buff that wasn't in your burst, it's going to still expire at the same time your earlier casts do. Which...is a huge downside.
Nature Connection: Favored Terrain...except you can pick the terrain at cast time. Which basically just means it's a very minor boost to...admittedly the most important checks of the game. Save for the saves.
General Talents
Greater Fey-Link (S): Increased duration. Awesome. Considering literally all fey-blessings are buffs tied to your time limit... And you can improve it to an hour/CL with a single spell point, and it affects all your fey blessings you add on. So, pretty hype, if you picked out some of the passively good talents.
Share Link (I): If this means that you can just assign any of your current fey-blessings to also affect your shared allies as a free action, this is relatively great, if you have Greater Fey Link. If it just means you are simply able to cast your blessing on someone, this is trash and should never be considered.
The third paragraph implies it's the former interpretation. But the wording isn't clear. This really doesn't help with the whole "I'm spending all my spell points every minute" deal, but you are affecting more people.
Gremlin’s Presence (S): Actually has 2 useful effects. The Unnamed Sickened-like Jinx, and Pugwampi's Aura, which is just a passive AoE save penalty.
Mantle Of Autumn (S): Friendly AoE concealment / fog effect. Can be used by grouping with your allies, or by rushing your enemies. Nice.
Tree Meld (<G-S>): Given that you have trees to slip into, this is basically a Self-Sanctuary spell, in addition to effectively disappearing if you made a stealth check so they didn't see you do this. Shared with allies, in a forested location, you can be guerilla fighters like none other.
Grace Of The Sidhe (<G-S>): If you are using SoM, then you do have a move action free that you can use for shuffling around, and miss chance is pretty good. It's one of the most expensive and conditional miss chances in Spheres, and doesn't scale but in the context of this sphere? Pretty good.
Enchanting Music (G): Pretty much only useful for Dancing Tune, to prevent brutes from getting full attacks off. But that's a good use.
Shadow Collector (G): A fey blessing that tries and slightly offset just how expensive this sphere is. Neat. Mana draining is like 10x more effective vs vancian casters, and almost meaningless vs sphere casters. But it's god some neat, if niche, uses.
Crown Of The Courts (<G>): Fey are pretty nasty. But when was the last one you've seen one in game? So yeah. Cool if you already know you are facing fey.
Beckoning Call (<G>): Hello Pied Piper. Whose children are you stealing today? Oh, also nice for luring guards off to safe locations. For stuff and things.
Ventriloquism (G): The natural fellow to Beckoning Call lets you lure away guards without exposing yourself, although it adds yet another degree of failure. But this is one of the few effects in this sphere that aren't locked out for 24 hours on a successful save. Oh, and it's distant communication, which is pretty nice.
Saboteur (G): Given that you are responsible for disabling traps and locks, this is cool. Although most disable device checks are on narrative time, meaning that the improved speed means little. it is still pretty neat.
Beastward (<G>, F): Animals are relatively common...early on. And it certainly allows you to sell that you are definitely not a vampire. Or Terminator. And you can innately extend it to allies. So... it has its uses.
Winterfey (<M-G>): Your natural attacks can penetrate damage reduction by just doing cold damage instead. Awesome. Everything else here is pretty pointless.
Weapons Of The Wild (M-G): 3 primary attacks with alignment penetration. Takes up trait slots, so can't stack it as easily with Alteration NA spam, which is much more effective. Also costs an insane amount of spell points for what you get. But they aren't restricted to 1 NA per limb or head.
Trickery (I, F): Depends entirely on what your DM considered humiliating, tricking, or deceiving. But a good effect, if you can get it applied relatively broadly. Perhaps with the proper fluff.
Fae Light (M-G): Another Fascinate ability, but without included luring away. But sometimes you want to be able to not have that.
Fear Aura (M): A passive fear aura is pretty cool. Costs too much for its effect, but that's just a feature of the sphere. Oh, and they are also immune for 24 hours, if they make the save.
Fairy Dust (I): You only get to know 2 options from the list, per talent spent. And each activation of the fey-blessing only grants 1 for active use. But there are some useful one here. That being said, it only mentions 1 way of activating the powder. I would add a ranged/melee touch attack to "have the bag be destroyed." Otherwise this would be hot garbage.
Unthreatening Form (M): Meh. I'd much rather just take Alteration sphere, which is simultaneously more free, costs less, and isn't canceled simply by doing something offensive.
Spores (M): If you have some way to force early saves on disease (such as Disease Lord feat from Death sphere), then you can make for decent support to fear-using allies by giving your melee a disease coating. The Snare is like a Tanglefoot Bag cantrip. Except it cost 1 spell point to add to a fey link which also cost 1 spell point.
Animate Hair (M): Stand out use? Letting you reload while dual wielding. But you can also make it really hard to move away. I guess. A back up for when tripping is hard.
Fade (M): Concealment while flanking is relatively nice. Somewhat trivial to overcome, unless you're swarming with a bunch of people But it's still nice.
Natural Dominion (M): Basically Command Undead, but for beasties, and they can't be commanded again if they make their save.
Pixie Sticks (M): Ignoring the cost of Fey Link, this relatively efficient out of combat healing. Considering Fey Link's cost, <Mass> Cure / Fast healing would be more effective, quicker, uses fewer actions and has same cost. Oh, this grants plant-based minionmancy. Cool.
Zolavoi’s Mantle (N-M): Literally just a worse version of Mantle of Autumn.
Misplacement (N-M, F): Virtually no practical uses, save for more easily stealing a spell component pouch. But it's funny.
Fey Beauty (N-M, F): Even for face characters, this is really quite insignificant. I mean... At least it is fluffed as actual beauty, which Charisma is not inherently.
Aelfwine (N-M, F): These are such incredibly minor effects. But if you want fairy wine, rather than rot gut, and you want it to be magically conjured, and not inherently taste bland like most sustenance-granting spells... here you go.
Long Step (N-M): In a vacuum, 10 ft teleportation for a move action isn't the worst thing in the world, and is solidly "OK". Not great. Not horrible. Pretty situationally useful. You can just do so much more with other spheres.
Snare Setter (N-M): At first, I was like "Oh, that's neat and could be useful if you've got prep time." And then it says only 1 may be set at a time. Well, it definitely had a chance.
Nature’s Empathy (N-M): You know that fluff piece ability for druid? Well, you can now spend a spell point and a talent for such a privileged ability. And you can make spiders like you...although...Beastward is a thing, and doesn't have a save.
Fey Potency (N-M): For the same feat-equivalent as this costs, you could have a permanent, nonmagical Spell Penetration feat for double the effectiveness. And if you compare it to Piercing Spell metamagic feat, this costs more, and provides 1/5 of the bonus. But I guess if you are affecting 6-16 (depending on the number of other blessings sharing the initial Fey Link cost, and if you boosted the duration of Fey Link), then I guess you could get more total net bonuses per spell point. But boy is that unrealistic.
Plant Friend (N-M): Beastward but for plants.
Water Creature (N-M): Spell point on top of Fey-Link to enable the use of the basic cantrip of Destruction sphere, but more restrictive. Or you can make anti-difficult water terrain. A lot of it, but really doesn't matter. Or make some combat maneuvers against those in water.
Summon Fairy (I): Minionmancy. Not bothering.
Wood/Stone Shape (N-M): Extremely minor effects.
Wild Walk (N): Natural, nonmagical terrain just doesn't hurt
Stunning Glance (N): You spend your action to potentially ruin the action of another. Bad trade. But if you fail to ruin their action, you are at least forced to do something else with your time.
Listen To The Wind (N): Simulates a Survival check. As a DM, I would grant a circumstance bonus to navigation when you have an intuitive sense of where North is. But that's house rule. Also, a check to navigate? Seems a bit superfluous.
Mantle Of Spring (N): No.
Fairy Flight (N): Not really the talent's fault that Alteration sphere has 100 ft flight from level 1. But... yeah.
Natural Blessing (N): A minor boost to saves for some companions.
Fey Secrets (N): Spend a spell point to gain a 1d4 boost to a single roll. Wow that is pathetic.
Feast and Famine (N): This is basically a worse, shorter range Ghost Strike that costs a spell point just to enable its use.
Fairy Alchemy (G): There are some decent options. One downside is that it almost feels like this is admitting that the base talent can't innately allow you to throw the powder. That's not great.
Enchanting Performance (B): Spend rounds of bardic performance to enable the use of feats affecting bardic performance to affect Beckoning Call or Enchanting Music. It at least lets you do it if you run out of spell points but have some bard levels.
Unseelie Trapper (N): Not worth the effort.
Water Manipulator (N, F): A terrible talent, but hey. Now you can use the abilities at will.