War Never Changes (Spheres in Review)

[SangoProduction]

Preamble: Wow. I’m just about done with all the magic spheres. Just Mana remains. Maybe the third party ones too. Maybe. But yeah. Still no jobs letting me work, and I am sick of feeling unproductive. So I’m doing this again.
I have almost no hopes for this sphere. I kind of hated it each time I went through it before. But I’ll try to be unbiased in this review.

Link (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1C2kyMXFwwFOljQK8vPF1WJA5h3cIh1kKO89efqTjDss/edit?usp=sharing)

Post-Review Analysis:
Woah! Dude! This is why I love this series. Holy cow. OK, the goal in the series is to look at the optimistic chances of it being useful in a relevant build. (And whether such a build would be relevant to basically anyone.)
And that approach just transformed this seemingly trash tier (and overly bloated) sphere into something really bloody interesting and strong. I think I’m going to start pulling this into the core of my builds.
Granted, the majority of the totems are garbage… but there are totems that are probably so strong as to be in the cheese tier. Except it’s not that they hard shut down anything. They just automatically apply substantive debuffs to a massive area with no save.

Also. HOLY COW! 7 HOURS! WHY!

[Kitsuneymg]

War is my favorite sphere.

The base rally (new with USoP) is hot garbage and it stinks and they could have come up with almost anything better. Luckily, you can trade it for another rally. Do so. It’s absolute crap. Get Empower (with community minded) or Safety or replenish. Negating a crit, rerolling a *failed* save, or adding a ton to attack, defense, saves, or CL checks is amazing. Aid another is garbage.

Unless they changed things, there’s a drawback that forces you to make all totems auras, but grants totemic aura for free. Never seen a reason not to take that.

I think you’ve dramatically underestimated marauding momentum. In my giant slayer game, it was the most often used momentum on the team. Up to 20 feet of free action movement per round is amazing. It let people move almost charge distance and still attack action. It let people attack them position for AOOs. At lower levels, it let my archer still live action totem, standard action barrage, but still avoid cover from allies. It’s far better than i think you’re giving it credit for.

Favorable is weird. On one hand, 1d6 for 2 points seems so bad. But it stacks
With everything and doesn’t take an action. Keep in mind that initiative rolls are dexterity checks, so it’s 1d6 to those too. Albeit, expensive.

Empower. Community minded exists. So that’s 3 rounds. It’s moral, so there’s a ton of ways of pumping it too. Played a high level bard that did empower and group rally to send the party’s to hit bonus sky high. Useless if your GM adjusts to make sure you miss some percent of t he time, but man is +4 to hit or spell penetration checks for 3 rounds really good.

Squadron commander does two things. It knocks to to-hit totems(allegiance, courage) up to 2+2/10 cl. Which makes them pretty great since Personal Conflict drawback makes this an swift action aura (for a sp). It also enables mass command and group command. Mass command got nerfed hard in USoP, but it still lets you do mass buffs without needing the mass talents from each sphere. The drawback that gives this for feat free is a must-take, imo. Developer also said that it only applies to buffs, so your offensive totems still work.

FWIW, totem of doom is identical to bard’s dirge of doom and its two supporting feats.

Totem of heroic heart is a great one to keep up with your move action free totem all day. +5 to dex ability checks is +5 to initiative after all.

Haunting totem plus totem of tactical coordination with the squadron commander feat gets silly, just FYI. Still think courage and allegiance are better and either one of those is enough, but sniper can make you not miss on 1s, so maybe there is a call for “I don’t even need to roll?”

Totem of courage used to be a morale bonus to hit. Oh how the mighty have called. imperious bloodline, extreme mood swings, encouraging spell, and fascinated by the mundane used to all affect it. I cry.

Totem of tactical prowess goes well with the warleader tactic that makes everyone flank easier. Given the extreme nerf to courage, I’d go with this ad that tactic (and Personal Conflict for totemic aura) over courage.

Tactical totem: escape route is pretty great. Guardian does this better, but generally costs your focus/action to use.

I need to double check whispers. Pre USoP it granted a 20% ASF to anyone with verbal casting. The author hated how verbal was a “free” drawback. It used to be 50% in playtest, but that was chopped down because it was stupid. The concentration check and perception was a “by the way” to screwing verbal casters. Either way, this totem shouldn’t exist.

Warlord of the damned. Just affix your totems as auras. Then they don’t need to be moved.

Didn’t see martial presence. Empower for +4 to saves is pretty good. Especially if you’re using the stamina suggestion that fighters get it for free.

As I said. War is my favorite sphere, and I love discussing it and seeing what others think!

[SangoProduction]

I agree on the aid another nonsense.

Also, having it as an aura is pretty incredible. not going to lie. Does come with a small radius decrease. Almost definitely worth it to save a talent, and swift action a round that you want to lug it around.

Eh... I've played innumerable different games under different DMs over the decades, and the only exception to the rule of everyone basically brawling it out in the middle for D&D-likes was 4e. I've not had a situation where 20 movement would have made a difference to basically anything outside of 4e.

Interesting... Initiative is an ability check... interesting. Well, I'm going to have to update a couple things.

I simply hate spending resources to then spend resources to declare the use of a roll booster, before even knowing that it could potentially be relevant at all. But if


OK. Community Minded does pretty much obliterate the previous ranking. I'll need to fix that.

Yeah. Totem of Heroic Heart affecting initiative is substantially different from when it's assumed not to.

Yup, auras definitely solves that issue with Warlord of the Damned. That should have been an obvious fix.


Currently fighting the need to sleep so that I might hopefully be able to have a proper sleep schedule. But I'll get to updating it soon.

[A.J.Gibson]

War is my favorite sphere.
I need to double check whispers. Pre USoP it granted a 20% ASF to anyone with verbal casting. The author hated how verbal was a “free” drawback. It used to be 50% in playtest, but that was chopped down because it was stupid. The concentration check and perception was a “by the way” to screwing verbal casters. Either way, this totem shouldn’t exist.


Good memory, I had forgotten about that.

The War handbook was the first book I wrote, and when you're writing for the first time, you want to fix everything in the system you hate. I got really carried away. I'd probably cut a quarter of it, if I could. I was also saddled with the awful totem mechanic, which was optimized for a party full of summoners. If I could have errataed it (like Amber did with Light), I would have made squadron commander the core mechanic, and a static totem would be an advanced talent. I also would have done away with a lot of the debuffing totems, as they don't really fit the theme of the sphere.

As for why some things are feats and others are advanced talents, DDS has very specific rules:
-basic talents can not ever ever ever have a prerequisite beyond the sphere's base ability
-advanced talents can have prerequisite levels and abilities (but not other spheres or anything outside the sphere), but their main feature is that they alter the game in a way that requires special attention from the GM because of their narrative consequences; the original War book had 20 advanced talents, and all of them were rejected because they didn't alter the game enough (Monument was written later), pretty much every new writer has gone through the process of having a bunch of advanced talents turned into feats
-everything else is a feat

[SangoProduction]

Good memory, I had forgotten about that.

The War handbook was the first book I wrote, and when you're writing for the first time, you want to fix everything in the system you hate. I got really carried away. I'd probably cut a quarter of it, if I could. I was also saddled with the awful totem mechanic, which was optimized for a party full of summoners. If I could have errataed it (like Amber did with Light), I would have made squadron commander the core mechanic, and a static totem would be an advanced talent. I also would have done away with a lot of the debuffing totems, as they don't really fit the theme of the sphere.

As for why some things are feats and others are advanced talents, DDS has very specific rules:
-basic talents can not ever ever ever have a prerequisite beyond the sphere's base ability
-advanced talents can have prerequisite levels and abilities (but not other spheres or anything outside the sphere), but their main feature is that they alter the game in a way that requires special attention from the GM because of their narrative consequences; the original War book had 20 advanced talents, and all of them were rejected because they didn't alter the game enough (Monument was written later), pretty much every new writer has gone through the process of having a bunch of advanced talents turned into feats
-everything else is a feat

I think I heard that before. Still pretty strange. Well, I'm glad to have a writer grace me with their presence and offer answers.

[Kitsuneymg]

Good memory, I had forgotten about that.

The War handbook was the first book I wrote, and when you're writing for the first time, you want to fix everything in the system you hate. I got really carried away. I'd probably cut a quarter of it, if I could. I was also saddled with the awful totem mechanic, which was optimized for a party full of summoners. If I could have errataed it (like Amber did with Light), I would have made squadron commander the core mechanic, and a static totem would be an advanced talent. I also would have done away with a lot of the debuffing totems, as they don't really fit the theme of the sphere.

As for why some things are feats and others are advanced talents, DDS has very specific rules:
-basic talents can not ever ever ever have a prerequisite beyond the sphere's base ability
-advanced talents can have prerequisite levels and abilities (but not other spheres or anything outside the sphere), but their main feature is that they alter the game in a way that requires special attention from the GM because of their narrative consequences; the original War book had 20 advanced talents, and all of them were rejected because they didn't alter the game enough (Monument was written later), pretty much every new writer has gone through the process of having a bunch of advanced talents turned into feats
-everything else is a feat

I do think there were a few too many thaumaturge totem feats back in the day :3

I’m still annoyed that USoP didn’t make the squadron commander the base part of the sphere. It fixes so many potential balance issues. And I still consider the war book to be one of the better, if not best handbooks.

[A.J.Gibson]

I do think there were a few too many thaumaturge totem feats back in the day :3

I’m still annoyed that USoP didn’t make the squadron commander the base part of the sphere. It fixes so many potential balance issues. And I still consider the war book to be one of the better, if not best handbooks.

The thaumaturge feats are another example of wanting to do everything. I actually went through each class and tried to think of something to give it that might produce some interesting builds, and some of those results are really reaching. If you look at the book, War has Armorist Arsenal Tricks, Rogue Talents, Eliciter Emotions, MageKnight mystic combats, and feats specifically for Energy Channelers, Investigators, Cavaliers (really), Soul Weavers, Paladins, Thaumaturges, Eliciters, Gunslinger/Swashbucklers, Symbiats, Hunters, Bard/Skalds, and Inquisitors. And a bunch of things for martials and characters using combat stamina. It was all too much. I'm just glad I cut that ridiculous hedgewitch tradition. I wish I had cut Mystic Assault as well.

[Kitsuneymg]

The thaumaturge feats are another example of wanting to do everything. I actually went through each class and tried to think of something to give it that might produce some interesting builds, and some of those results are really reaching. If you look at the book, War has Armorist Arsenal Tricks, Rogue Talents, Eliciter Emotions, MageKnight mystic combats, and feats specifically for Energy Channelers, Investigators, Cavaliers (really), Soul Weavers, Paladins, Thaumaturges, Eliciters, Gunslinger/Swashbucklers, Symbiats, Hunters, Bard/Skalds, and Inquisitors. And a bunch of things for martials and characters using combat stamina. It was all too much. I'm just glad I cut that ridiculous hedgewitch tradition. I wish I had cut Mystic Assault as well.

I think the [strike] talents mostly obviated Mystic Assault. I do wish I could pay feats to get spell combat instead of arcane weaponeer 2 on every gish build. I do sorely miss improved energy blade. The swift action activation and attack was amazing for literally every martial ever. Even if it’s just basic magical training to get a swift action attack with a +1d6 damage add.

I thought iron mage did make it into the final version? Or was there another Hedgewitch thing I forgot about? I do love iron mage. I find hedgwitch to be a bit behind the curve due to secret/talent starvation. Martial hedgewitch in particular feels really really lacking. So the iron mage giving good saves and great interaction with a great sphere kinda saved the class for me.

[A.J.Gibson]

I think the [strike] talents mostly obviated Mystic Assault. I do wish I could pay feats to get spell combat instead of arcane weaponeer 2 on every gish build. I do sorely miss improved energy blade. The swift action activation and attack was amazing for literally every martial ever. Even if it’s just basic magical training to get a swift action attack with a +1d6 damage add.

I thought iron mage did make it into the final version? Or was there another Hedgewitch thing I forgot about? I do love iron mage. I find hedgwitch to be a bit behind the curve due to secret/talent starvation. Martial hedgewitch in particular feels really really lacking. So the iron mage giving good saves and great interaction with a great sphere kinda saved the class for me.

I was referring to 'keening', a hedgewitch tradition that allowed the hedgewitch to sing a song that made people into crazy martials. Sorta like Skald, but involuntary, so it also screwed up enemy casters. It was a bad idea.

Iron Mage was a last minute rewrite of an incanter arch that basically turned incanter into a cleric (you lose 10 talents, but gain mid BAB, good fort, d8 hit dice, and some proficiencies). It became the 'dumping ground' for every idea I had that I felt shouldn't be available to every war caster.

I liked most of the archs in War, except Warmonger which is just...ick. Symbiat is such a horrid chassis to work with. If I could rewrite war hero, I would make it work for totems AND fate consecrations. Dark presence always felt cool to me, if not actually good. Ghost sovereign is probably my favorite thing I wrote from a flavor point of view. Divine Heretic original had a capstone that let you summon the embodiment of your chosen sphere to fight for you...but that was too much work to write. Combat engineer just doesn't work...it's one of those ideas that needed to not be tethered to the book it was in. You see that a lot in the sphere handbooks: writers coming up with cool ideas, but having trouble justifying including them in what they are writing. Wardmage still strikes me as a simple, cool take onthe swordmage, which probably should get turned into an SoM sphere. Call it the Escort sphere!

[Seerow]

I was referring to 'keening', a hedgewitch tradition that allowed the hedgewitch to sing a song that made people into crazy martials. Sorta like Skald, but involuntary, so it also screwed up enemy casters. It was a bad idea.

Iron Mage was a last minute rewrite of an incanter arch that basically turned incanter into a cleric (you lose 10 talents, but gain mid BAB, good fort, d8 hit dice, and some proficiencies). It became the 'dumping ground' for every idea I had that I felt shouldn't be available to every war caster.

I liked most of the archs in War, except Warmonger which is just...ick. Symbiat is such a horrid chassis to work with. If I could rewrite war hero, I would make it work for totems AND fate consecrations. Dark presence always felt cool to me, if not actually good. Ghost sovereign is probably my favorite thing I wrote from a flavor point of view. Divine Heretic original had a capstone that let you summon the embodiment of your chosen sphere to fight for you...but that was too much work to write. Combat engineer just doesn't work...it's one of those ideas that needed to not be tethered to the book it was in. You see that a lot in the sphere handbooks: writers coming up with cool ideas, but having trouble justifying including them in what they are writing. Wardmage still strikes me as a simple, cool take onthe swordmage, which probably should get turned into an SoM sphere. Call it the Escort sphere!

Since you mentioned not enjoying working with Symbiat, I'm curious.... what exactly was the idea of having the Symbiat as a base class?

Like we don't have a ton of spheres base classes in general. Having one of those classes taken up by something as niche and weird as the Symbiat has always felt off to me. Like I get that it's intended to be basically a Spheres Psywar.... but any insight as to why the flavor of fusing with a psionic aberration was chosen to introduce that? Like the base class really feels like it should have been an archetype of a more generic Psionic class. Also looking at Warmonger, I don't see anything in there particularly offensive. The ability to give allies different weapon damage dice is unique and I kind of like it. Not sure i'd ever use it but that's mostly because I have no interest in Symbiat than your work.


Oh and I just realized I hadn't replied to this thread before now despite lurking. War Sphere has turned into one of my favorite go-to dip spheres. Control build? Dip for Gyroscopic Totem. Buff build? Dip for Courage/Allegiance or Speed. Playing the skill monkey? Heroic Heart just makes you that much better and also helps out your allies. And hey while you've got this totem, may as well also take the drawback to swap out your Rally for Replenish to just say no to you or your allies getting taken out of the fight. You get a ton of benefit for relatively little investment, so still plenty of room to flesh out whatever else you're after without having to be a full support character to really take on that role.

For what it's worth Sango, I do recommend you take some time to go through the Teamwork feats. For the most part they are hot garbage, but as soon as you get the ability to share them with allies, there's more than a few worth spending a feat on. And given Spheres has added about a half dozen new ways to share those feats (though surprisingly not too many new teamwork feats, that's something I'd like to see explored) it warrants taking a closer look at.

[ezekielraiden]

I share your surprise at the War sphere Sango; I had basically ignored it as "not very useful or interesting," and am having to...thoroughly re-evaluate that stance. Especially since I am (hopefully) going to play a fairly buff-heavy character in the near future.

[A.J.Gibson]

Since you mentioned not enjoying working with Symbiat, I'm curious.... what exactly was the idea of having the Symbiat as a base class?

Like we don't have a ton of spheres base classes in general. Having one of those classes taken up by something as niche and weird as the Symbiat has always felt off to me. Like I get that it's intended to be basically a Spheres Psywar.... but any insight as to why the flavor of fusing with a psionic aberration was chosen to introduce that? Like the base class really feels like it should have been an archetype of a more generic Psionic class. Also looking at Warmonger, I don't see anything in there particularly offensive. The ability to give allies different weapon damage dice is unique and I kind of like it. Not sure i'd ever use it but that's mostly because I have no interest in Symbiat than your work.


I wasn't involved in the initial SoP product, so I don't know why the symbiat was included, though I've heard it was a kickstarter stretch goal.

I have a few problems with the symbiat. First, it grants two bonus spheres without granting full CL in either (which makes Mind Sphere a lot less effective). Second, it's too dippable for Int to AC (and two bonus talents!). My biggest problem is with the psionics ability, however.

Actually, I have two problems with psionics: first, it completely doesn't fit the rest of the class. The class is basically the Jedi class, but then it has this bard-ish buffing ability. Then the ability itself is built badly. It uses Paizo's awful rounds-per-day system (seriously, just make it at-will), has a bunch of abilities with different areas of effect (some are an aura, some affect a number of creatures), it parses out a bunch of abilities that make things confusing (is improved mind link a separate ability from mindlink? Obviously not, but it's separated out as it were), and share expertise is the sort of lazy yet still complicated crap you write to fill up space (share skill ranks? Really? Couldn't just grant a bonus to all skills?).

If I were to rewrite it, I would dump a bunch of the psionics abilities, make mind link, battlefield relay and maybe psionic fortress constant effects, and think of some way to integrate casting into what the class actually does. The class suffers from a common problem with DDS classes: it's hard coming up with class features that don't already exist as talents they can cast. Classes the spec in one sphere often have this issue. Same with archetypes.

A lot of the SoP classes are kinda bad. Eliciter has the best Mind sphere ability, but then as a bunch of mental abilities separate from them with a rounds-per-day mechanic, and then it has yet another mental ability which scales up to 11th level, and then you get a second one at 14th which you could have gotten at level 2. Why bother? Emotions could have been good, but the design just kills it. The shifter is supposedly a shapeshifting class, but really it's a gish which is especially good at alteration sphere. It should have been a ranger archetype. The soul weaver has a cool bound nexus, but then it treats souls as just another point resource. It's the biggest waste of potential I've seen in a class. The fey adept is decent, and it does the smart thing of not allowing just any illusion sphere user to duplicate any non-illusion sphere ability, but then someone decided that no class should have an ability that can not be taken as a feat. Elementalist is weird because it's really a monk and not the blaster mage people want to play, and it's favored element ability goes against what most people want to do with the elementalist and have lots of blast types. Thaumaturge is okay, but letting burn be transferred to other creatures is unforgivable to me. It really should have sphere-specific boosts instead of just a CL bump, so that all spheres are good with it. Something like the prodigy's list of moves. Incanter is way too dippable, and sphere specializations are a patch for sphere wizard - it's an example of the class feature issue I mentioned above. MageKnight is good except for it's weird class features having now theme (why do two of it's high level features reward crit fishing when none of it's low level features do?) and Hedgewitch is excellent (now that Combat tradition has been fixed), and Armorist is mostly good now with USoP (except for Bonded Staff).

[icefractal]

A lot of the SoP classes are kinda bad. Eliciter has the best Mind sphere ability, but then as a bunch of mental abilities separate from them with a rounds-per-day mechanic, and then it has yet another mental ability which scales up to 11th level, and then you get a second one at 14th which you could have gotten at level 2. Why bother? Emotions could have been good, but the design just kills it."Mind sphere with higher DC" can be pretty solid, especially if Recondite Stimuli is on the table. It's true that there's not much incentive to go pure Eliciter rather than mixing in Incanter/etc.

Overall I feel like Spheres encourages multiclassing (as a caster) to the extent that martials often do. After years of "thou shalt not multiclass a caster" as the rule, I find this a welcome change, but YMMV.


The shifter is supposedly a shapeshifting class, but really it's a gish which is especially good at alteration sphere. It should have been a ranger archetype.I've played a Shifter, and I feel like they're great at being a shapeshifting class. Spoiler block because this is tangential:Ok, you might ask - why not an Alteration Incanter? +1 CL and more talents. Well, Shifter does have some advantages for a combat-oriented shapeshifter, although I think Incanter might be better for an infiltration-focused one:
* Better BAB matters when you're using lots of non-touch attacks
* Quick Transformation and Lingering Transformation are quite useful
* Some of the Bestial Traits (bad name though, too much confusion with Alteration-sphere Traits) do things you can't otherwise replicate:
** Accommodating Form makes you a better shapeshifter than others of the same CL.
** Barding lets you meld and benefit from armor
** Chameleon works in an AMF and doesn't detect as magic, unlike the other Sphere talents that give HiPS.
** Magical Attacks is pretty nice when you're not rolling in cash. When you have 6+ natural weapons, boosting them individually gets expensive. And this lets you save your AoMFs for special properties.
** Melded Equipment is useful, and AFAIK unique to Shifter.
** Pounce is something you could get as a trait, but it costs a SP. Given that for a many-natural-weapon attacker (which IMO is the most potent Alteration strategy) you pretty much always want this, it's saving you a trait slot and a SP every time you change forms.
** Shifting Style - martial flex talents! What else gives you these with full Alteration CL?
** Several more of these are notable if Advanced Talents aren't allowed.
* It's a capstone ability, but Second Skin is rather cool. Screw your AMF, screw your Mage Slayer training, my "natural form" is being a shapeshifter.
* Apex Shifter trades those interesting but oddly-fitting communication abilities for even better shapeshifting. Slightly less cool capstone, but most games don't hit 20th anyway.

To be more on-topic:
I've always liked the totems (well, the ones I've taken), but I hadn't looked much at the Momentum or Mandate talents; I'll have to give those another look.

Scourging Totem, while it falls behind, was pretty decent at low-levels IME. Large AoE that lasts all fight and selectively hits enemies only? And you can stack them up? That's not actually easy to replicate - closest would be Searing Radiance with the Dim Light lens, but that requires prior setup and costs more SP (for a greater effect, TBF).

[SangoProduction]

On the topic of the Symbiat class, I did finish up the homebrewed version of Gravecrawler, with it being in my sig. With nary a rounds/day ability in sight.


I share your surprise at the War sphere Sango; I had basically ignored it as "not very useful or interesting," and am having to...thoroughly re-evaluate that stance. Especially since I am (hopefully) going to play a fairly buff-heavy character in the near future.

Truly, you don't know how much that little comment made me smile.

[Kitsuneymg]

I share your surprise at the War sphere Sango; I had basically ignored it as "not very useful or interesting," and am having to...thoroughly re-evaluate that stance. Especially since I am (hopefully) going to play a fairly buff-heavy character in the near future.

I highly suggest also looking at fate motifs. The Hermit and the Empress were two very nice general purpose ones. The one that allows rerolls on 1s is also excellent. Sadly, USoP put an end to using mass command to share those. But they are still great buffs.

[A.J.Gibson]

I've played a Shifter, and I feel like they're great at being a shapeshifting class. Ok, you might ask - why not an Alteration Incanter? +1 CL and more talents. Well, Shifter does have some advantages for a combat-oriented shapeshifter, although I think Incanter might be better for an infiltration-focused one:
* Better BAB matters when you're using lots of non-touch attacks
* Quick Transformation and Lingering Transformation are quite useful
* Some of the Bestial Traits (bad name though, too much confusion with Alteration-sphere Traits) do things you can't otherwise replicate:
** Accommodating Form makes you a better shapeshifter than others of the same CL.
** Barding lets you meld and benefit from armor
** Chameleon works in an AMF and doesn't detect as magic, unlike the other Sphere talents that give HiPS.
** Magical Attacks is pretty nice when you're not rolling in cash. When you have 6+ natural weapons, boosting them individually gets expensive. And this lets you save your AoMFs for special properties.
** Melded Equipment is useful, and AFAIK unique to Shifter.
** Pounce is something you could get as a trait, but it costs a SP. Given that for a many-natural-weapon attacker (which IMO is the most potent Alteration strategy) you pretty much always want this, it's saving you a trait slot and a SP every time you change forms.
** Shifting Style - martial flex talents! What else gives you these with full Alteration CL?
** Several more of these are notable if Advanced Talents aren't allowed.
* It's a capstone ability, but Second Skin is rather cool. Screw your AMF, screw your Mage Slayer training, my "natural form" is being a shapeshifter.
* Apex Shifter trades those interesting but oddly-fitting communication abilities for even better shapeshifting. Slightly less cool capstone, but most games don't hit 20th anyway.[/SPOILER]


Alteration incanter would be a bad idea, probably. But making the shifter a ranger or hunter archetype sounds right to me. A lot of the shifter's abilities suffer from the problem I mentioned earlier: why is it a class feature and not a talent. Quick Transformation and Lingering Transformation equivalents exist for other spheres as talents already, for example. In my mind, however, the best class design would have been a full martial that wasn't a caster, that instead can use Alteration sphere talents as spell like abilities, similar to War Hero.

[icefractal]

Depends on what they give up, I guess? Like, if I'm playing a Shapeshifter, I don't care about Favored Enemy, nor do I care about any weapon-based fighting style. So I'd rather have pure shapeshifting potential than either of those. And I feel like mid-BAB gives more room for the shapeshifting itself to be strong without overwhelming non-shapeshifting martials. Actually I kind of feel like Apex Shifter could be the main class with the current Shifter as an archetype, because the "communicate with everything" abilities feel less central to the shapeshifting concept.

As for martial vs magical shifter - the martial version would be cool too, but I think shapeshifting goes well with a number of other magic abilities, and I like that there's a class that can combine those.

Also on an aesthetic level, IDK how I feel about "archetypes" which change everything about a class and are actually more word count than the original class itself. Those should just be classes, it's not like there's a limited number allowed.

[ezekielraiden]

Truly, you don't know how much that little comment made me smile.
Good to hear. Sounds like smiles all around, which is a blessing these days.

Also! Found a useful synergy. SoM gives us another morale bonus duration extender: Alchemy's Green War Paint. One-talent dip gets you that, another color of choice (prob Yellow or Black), and 5 skill ranks. Even lacking class skill bonus and having a -1 Int mod, Take 10 + portable alchemy kit would guarantee success at 5th level. At 10 ranks, the paint gives the equivalent of Community-Minded, and in theory the two stack. 4-6 round durations on stuff that normally only lasts 1 round, for the paltry price of 1 talent, 1 trait, and 15 minutes' prep work every few hours? I'd call that a good deal.


I highly suggest also looking at fate motifs. The Hermit and the Empress were two very nice general purpose ones. The one that allows rerolls on 1s is also excellent. Sadly, USoP put an end to using mass command to share those. But they are still great buffs.
Oh yeah, already on those. Currently have Hanged Man, Empress was gonna be my next pick. My only dislike with Hermit is that it eats swift actions. The Fool is also quite nice (as SangoProduction pointed out in the Fate review).


Depends on what they give up, I guess? Like, if I'm playing a Shapeshifter, I don't care about Favored Enemy, nor do I care about any weapon-based fighting style. So I'd rather have pure shapeshifting potential than either of those. And I feel like mid-BAB gives more room for the shapeshifting itself to be strong without overwhelming non-shapeshifting martials.
Completely agreed. The class could do more to ensure that you specifically specialize in self-transformation, rather than generally being good at anything Alteration. But an archetype that changed Ranger to mid-BAB and gave up Favored Terrain, Favored Enemy, companion bond, and weapon fighting styles....doesn't really keep anything from Ranger, and I see no reason why someone who specializes in warping their own bodies would have any of those class features. (Nor do I understand why they're Beastial Traits. Nobody's gonna take Prey unless they've exhausted all the other vaguely good picks, and Accommodating Form is gonna eat half your picks almost guaranteed--flexible free trait every 4 levels from a new talent of your choosing each time? Heck yeah. Waaaaay better than a type-locked bonus to hit and damage and a few skills.)


Actually I kind of feel like Apex Shifter could be the main class with the current Shifter as an archetype, because the "communicate with everything" abilities feel less central to the shapeshifting concept.
As long as all the other archetypes were appropriately juggled in order to stack with it, I'd have no problem with that.


Also on an aesthetic level, IDK how I feel about "archetypes" which change everything about a class and are actually more word count than the original class itself. Those should just be classes, it's not like there's a limited number allowed.
Same, but I've always been skeptical of the urge toward class reductionism unless there's a really, really solid reason for it. It's true that we don't need to make a whole new class every time we hit a new idea, but we also don't need 5 classes that each have 30 Spheres archetypes. There's a balance to be struck.

[Eldaran]

Since you mentioned not enjoying working with Symbiat, I'm curious.... what exactly was the idea of having the Symbiat as a base class?



So if you think of the weirdest classes from the original SoP book, there might be a few that come to mind, there's a reason for this. Symbiat, Armorist, Thaumaturge, and something else... maybe Soul Weaver or Fey Adept... are all classes created by Kickstarter backers and then refined by Adam Meyers. So they tend to have some funky mechanics, and in the case of the Symbiat it's just a horrible mess because I guess the designer based it on some very specific character of theirs.

Also, you're greatly overrating Empower "+4 morale bonus to either attack rolls and CMB, AC and CMD, saving throws, or concentration checks and spell penetration checks." Each comma denotes an "or" clause, so you only pick one of those sets of bonuses, so just attack rolls and CMB, or just AC and CMD, you don't get everything. It used to work like that before USoP though.

[ezekielraiden]

Also, you're greatly overrating Empower "+4 morale bonus to either attack rolls and CMB, AC and CMD, saving throws, or concentration checks and spell penetration checks." Each comma denotes an "or" clause, so you only pick one of those sets of bonuses, so just attack rolls and CMB, or just AC and CMD, you don't get everything. It used to work like that before USoP though.

Even as an "or" rather than an "and," handing out +4 attack/CMB (or to all saves) to an ally, with all the ways morale bonuses can be enhanced, is a pretty nice trick--hard to justify not taking it, which is at least G-S by Sango's metric as I understand it. If it really were all of the listed options simultaneously, I'd personally call it S tier with zero extra investment and C (or beyond) if you do any optimizing for it.

I can't see an argument for anything less than G, which hardly means it's "greatly" overrated.

[Eldaran]

Well, let's compare it to his rating for Strike, he gives Strike a bad rating, but Strike is massively powerful, it's action economy. It's not hard to make characters good with combat maneuvers, especially if SoM is on the table, which it likely will be with SoP involved, and even if it's not SoP characters can give out some hefty buffs that make CMB checks likely to succeed up to at least level 15ish. So lets say you're a mageknight and you have one other melee in the party, you strike rally your ally and resounding it to yourself, you trip the target and with improved trip you both get an Opp attack, then they Dirty Trick it to blind. For 1 SP you got two attacks, a trip, and a blind; all as an immediate action.

But it gets better, you can do drivebys of enemies if you have more reach than them or a way of avoiding opp attacks since you can take an immediate action in the middle of a move, or you can use it to stop a charging enemy or an enemy that is attempting to get to your allies. If you have 3 or 4 martials in a party it's absolutely absurd with mass rally.

+4 to attacks for 1-3 rounds is just a lot less meaningful than a reroll, negate crit, or a bunch of combat maneuvers. +4 to saves is the best option, but perhaps the biggest problem with Empower is that it's a morale bonus so it's competing with Heroism or the Mind sphere equivalent.

[SangoProduction]

So if you think of the weirdest classes from the original SoP book, there might be a few that come to mind, there's a reason for this. Symbiat, Armorist, Thaumaturge, and something else... maybe Soul Weaver or Fey Adept... are all classes created by Kickstarter backers and then refined by Adam Meyers. So they tend to have some funky mechanics, and in the case of the Symbiat it's just a horrible mess because I guess the designer based it on some very specific character of theirs.

Also, you're greatly overrating Empower "+4 morale bonus to either attack rolls and CMB, AC and CMD, saving throws, or concentration checks and spell penetration checks." Each comma denotes an "or" clause, so you only pick one of those sets of bonuses, so just attack rolls and CMB, or just AC and CMD, you don't get everything. It used to work like that before USoP though.

You are 100% correct. I saw multiple *and* in the sentence, including the final one, and read it as an inclusive list of bonuses. Not to mention that it did make sense for a large bonus to so much to have a vanishingly short duration.
That's much less good. Immediate action to grant a large bonus to saves, and potentially deny a critical confirm, is still really rather nice. But this is significantly less good with that realization made.


I don't see combat maneuvers as worthwhile. Simply because, in order to have a character that can effectively do them, you must have a character that can basically only do one of them, and rarely effect the game state to an incredible degree better than hitting them with a stick.
The exception is for trip, which has become rather meta, for fairly obvious, good reasons. Though it still requires a character dedicated to it.
You make a good argument on the action economy side. And it applies to trip as an immediate action, which is even more reliable than AoO. If... once per turn for a spell point. But quite useful.

[ezekielraiden]

Additional nifty combo I stumbled upon recently: Sage + Close Cooperation for buffing allies. The Enhancer esoteric training requires that your allies be "within your reach," so Close Cooperation means if you have a Mandate with someone, they're treated as within touch range. Being able to spend a swift to grant a pre-buffed ally up to +10 untyped to one of their physical stats is Quite Nice (and eventually getting another +4 to a different physical stat ain't half bad), and as long as you've got a reasonable Wis mod it'll last basically a whole combat. Hit and damage stat is the best choice most of the time, but a +5 bonus to Reflex or Fort could be huge in the right fight. Not that Sage needed any additional goodies, mind, but I wouldn't be surprised if there are other useful Sphere buffs out there that require touch range and thus would synergize with Close Cooperation.

[Seerow]

Additional nifty combo I stumbled upon recently: Sage + Close Cooperation for buffing allies. The Enhancer esoteric training requires that your allies be "within your reach," so Close Cooperation means if you have a Mandate with someone, they're treated as within touch range. Being able to spend a swift to grant a pre-buffed ally up to +10 untyped to one of their physical stats is Quite Nice (and getting another +4 to a different physical stat ain't half bad), and as long as you've got a reasonable Wis mod it'll last basically a whole combat. Not that Sage needed any additional goodies, but I wouldn't be surprised if there are other useful Sphere buffs out there that require touch range and thus would synergize with Close Cooperation.

There are plenty of things that enjoy having the extended range.... but Sage is a really bad example because it's pretty widely accepted as broken beyond reason and I have never seen anyone once even talk about playing one except to see if it is as broken as they'd heard.

[ezekielraiden]

There are plenty of things that enjoy having the extended range.... but Sage is a really bad example because it's pretty widely accepted as broken beyond reason and I have never seen anyone once even talk about playing one except to see if it is as broken as they'd heard.

I'm playing one because it made sense for the character concept I was pursuing (tribal character transcending mortal limits by connecting with a powerful good outsider). Yes, I'm aware that it's (overweeningly) strong, I've taken that as an excuse to do fun and/or group-support things, since I know I'd have to actively make bad choices to mess it up.

[SangoProduction]

Additional nifty combo I stumbled upon recently: Sage + Close Cooperation for buffing allies. The Enhancer esoteric training requires that your allies be "within your reach," so Close Cooperation means if you have a Mandate with someone, they're treated as within touch range. Being able to spend a swift to grant a pre-buffed ally up to +10 untyped to one of their physical stats is Quite Nice (and eventually getting another +4 to a different physical stat ain't half bad), and as long as you've got a reasonable Wis mod it'll last basically a whole combat. Hit and damage stat is the best choice most of the time, but a +5 bonus to Reflex or Fort could be huge in the right fight. Not that Sage needed any additional goodies, mind, but I wouldn't be surprised if there are other useful Sphere buffs out there that require touch range and thus would synergize with Close Cooperation.

Nice. I definitely missed that. As you mentioned, the last thing Sage needs is to be even more effective. lol. But additional knowledge of potential uses is always appreciated.