Improved Atavism (Spheres in Review)

[SangoProduction]

Preamble: Just happened to stumble across this while checking out the Extra Scholar Knack feat. Read through the pages of text associated, and decided that it was worth making an entire review on a single feat. Because it is.

Link (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1qYR75dEr-aJBbVQflkI7VFZbGAtd9CXVHrxUMDXAp8I/edit?usp=sharing)

Post-Review Analysis:
Overall, the ability sets are either quite useful, or pretty trash, with not much in between. Although each ability particular may be hit or miss.

[icefractal]

I got curious about "dumpster diving", started getting excited about Outsider, in a "annoying, but could be very significant" way, and then realized it doesn't even do that. Requiring a bestiary search for a situational advantage on some saves? :smallyuk:

While Magic Beast II is confusing, it seems ... decent?
AFAICT, if you use any SoM attack that involves a save, and they fail, you get a free attack (with some modifiers).

Curious what you mean about Aberration, and ... interesting. It's, conceptually, pretty cool. But for a PC? I haven't been in many campaigns where our foes did active scouting of us, and even when they did I doubt they were casting detection spells on individual PCs. Not really sure what a good way to write a "you're an enigma" ability for PCs would be; I think it would require better defined rules for enemy intelligence gathering (and for that to matter).

Ooze does look awesome, I would totally play a Jelly Berserker.
You know, you could even have an Ooze companion who used Ooze Atavism style. :smallbiggrin:

[Kitsuneymg]

You mention that’s it’s ambiguous whether barrage can make entangle an aoe or not. I’m not seeing how it can.

For normal barrage, it’s already covered that only the first attack counts as the attack action that gets neat stuff. For cone of death, it’s not an attack action (but it is a special barrage.) even if you argue that as a barrage it’s an attack action, cone of death has specific wording at the end that says it only works if the effect would apply to 10 attacks.


You make a similar ambiguity assertion on dragon. Unless otherwise stated, only the first attack of a multiple attack attack action counts as the attack action. So it’s only once per round unless you get multiple attack actions.

The relevant quote from Using Spheres of Might is:


For example, when making a Barrage or using Dual Wielding, it's normally the case that only your first attack counts as an attack action for the purpose of modifying it with talents and feats, and all the other attacks are extras that you cannot apply attack action modifiers to.

So the general rule is that you can’t use improved atavism to trigger multiple times on an attack action. The only time this occurs (as far as I remember) is with triangle slash, which specifically calls out all 3 attacks as being attack actions (and this attack actions. But it specifically doesn’t grant any extra attacks those attack actions might grant normally.)


Magical beast isn’t that hard to use once you apply actual editing to it. It’s just written backwards and the copy editor decided they wanted to knock off for a pint early. It describes the rend and then tells you when you can use said rend.

Once per round, while using improved atavism, when you confirm a crit OR when you hit someone with a SoM attack action that has a save and they fail the save, you can rend.

Your rend is a free action. It does damage equal to a weapon (The name rend seems to indicate a different weapon, but it doesn’t say that) plus 1.5 practitioner ability mod (PAM.) You can do this even when it’s not your turn (AoO.)

This rend can be used only with natural attacks, manufactured weapons, or IUS (so not spells or spell like weapons), but can be done with ranged weapons.

But yeah. Your save or suck attack actions and crits on other attacks (AoOs, full attack, readied actions, etc) can do extra damage once per round.



The outsider ability one is just stupid. Since it has both a “specific outsider” option and a clause about not having enough abilities, I’d just go full custom as a GM. I wish they just had a list of abilities in the feat. What’s ambiguous is things like “celestial resistance” that grant ER to multiple types. Is that one or multiple selections?


My take on this whole splat, was that improved atavism was meh and the Heritor is the only reason to even give Sorcerer the time of day in SoP. And man, is it great. 3/4 bab, d8, full caster, 20 flex talents, and gets bloodline tweaks to make many of them usable? And then martial and magical flexibility on top? Yeah. It’s like a prodigy that doesn’t require spreadsheets. Improved atavism just seemed a way to fill a lot of column space.

[SangoProduction]

That was mostly an example, because there are ways to hit multiple things in one action (like a scatter or splash weapon). Although I didn't know that bit about barrage in particular. So I'll correct that.

And yeah, the outside thing is just horribly written and thought out. It's almost certainly 1 slot per tag/descriptor, rather than per ability.
Although one has to admit that getting advantage on all saves against up to 4 different tags would be pretty neat... if you could at all predict them. Fire is probably a good bet. Poison could be, too. Mind affecting would be very useful and applicable. Just...hyper reliant on both situation, predictability, and GM allowance.

Your description of magical beast's ability 2 makes sense.

[Kitsuneymg]

So here’s like. A mini dump of the best outsider types, imo.

A number of specific outsiders have SR, does that give advantage vs spells that are SR: yes? Does DR/alignment grant alignment based saves? If so, I didn’t write those down. I also didn’t really go into “immune to fear” as that’s not too hard to do with a lot of specific creatures. Or a ring.

Outsider(angle) grants acid, cold, petrification, electricity, fire, poison, and evil.

Outside(asura) get curses, disease, poison, acid, electricity, and enchantments. Curses and Enchantments are why you’re here.

Outsider(daemon) gets acid, death effects, disease, poison, cold, electricity, and fire. 4 elements and death effects. Poisons are nice.

Outsider(elemental) is odd. Bleed, paralysis, poison, sleep effects, stunning, and breathless. So I guess blood sphere and any inhaled poison or magic that a doesn’t work against breathless creatures, and drowning saves? Stunning and paralysis are interesting, but freedom of movement (if available in your game) is probably better.

Outsider(inevitable) death effects, disease, mind-affecting effects, necromancy effects, paralysis, poison, sleep, stun, and any effect that requires a Fortitude save (unless the effect also works on objects, or is harmless. Nonlethal damage, ability damage, ability drain, fatigue, exhaustion, energy drain, and death from massive damage. Wow. That seems like a very good one if your GM is reticent to add new extras.

Outsider(protean) has acid, electricity, sonic, and freedom of movement.

Outsider(quilppoth) cold, mind-affecting effects, poison, acid, electricity, and fire. Vs daemon, this is probably slightly better. Death wars exists, but immune to mind effecting is much harder to get.

Specific creatures of note. This is not exhaustive, just some random ones I found that looked very good.

Animated dream: incorporeal. Does this mean any non-ghost touch effect? Because that is wild.

Algae Psycopomp. All 5 elements, SR, swarm(targeted effects, weapon damage), death effects, disease, poison. Maybe weapon damage would be blade barrier?

Charon. Daemon plus ability damage, ability drain, charm effects, compulsion effects, energy drain, petrification, SR.

Ember weaver Psychopomp: charm, death effects, disease, fire, poison, spells with the [light] descriptor, cold, electricity, SR. Charm and the light sphere are new. Death effects and fire are great.

Oltheros Psychopomp: all-around vision(save vs... flanking?), cyclic energy(any negative or positive energy effect that does damage?), mind blank(so anything MB protects against. Seems like it would stack with actual mind blank too), ability damage, ability drain, death effects, disease, energy drain, poison, cold, electricity, SR. Rarer elements, but that list of specifics is great and includes some real nasties. Mind Blank seems like a very good one to grab too. Advantage on all mind effecting and vs divination? Nice!

Shoki Psychopomp: acid, charm, cold, death effects, disease, fear, poison, sleep, electricity, SR. Charm and sleep are the more unique ones here.

Viduus Psychopomp: death effects, disease, mind-affecting effects, poison, cold, electricity, SR. Death and mind affecting are great to grab. Disease and poison are niche, but can really screw your. Especially at low levels. Cold and electricity are middling useful.


Obviously didn’t list everything. I tried to not list things that were already covered better by another type. Inevitable seems the largest grab bag of abilities. Animated Dream is ridiculous if your GM buys that at face value. Psychopomps have a ton of unique defense lists.

[SangoProduction]

This will be a very useful list for anyone silly enough to take it.