Is it possible to be over-generalized?

[SangoProduction]

Spheres is really great because you can play exactly the character you want. Well, about as exactly as any Hard Build system like Pathfinder really allows for. Obviously something like FATE would be much more exact... by being completely abstract. But that's not the point

Anyway, I did recently run into an issue of just reaching out to like a dozen different spheres, over the course of 8 levels, and the character really felt like quite the mess. It was like there's nothing he was really trying to achieve, and is just absorbing useful talents like an amorphous blob.

Thankfully level 8 coincided with the character dying and being resurrected as a sick parody of life, so I took the opportunity to ask for a full rebuild that focused on necromancy. Felt good. Then again, it might just be the fresh shine that comes with getting a new coat of paint.

Of course, it was also really nice to finally be able to create a Spheres character where I wasn't constantly worried about getting Spheres marked as "broken 3rd party content," in a group I was familiar with.


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Anyway, before my sleep-addled brain continues to make rambling comments:

What are your thoughts and experiences with having Batman Wizards and what not. Do you ever feel the stretch of just constant, aimless expansion? Or does the spell list, enormously bloated though it may be, provide enough of a directed goal that it doesn't happen to you?

Or perhaps some other examples.

[bekeleven]

When I play as batman wizard, I like to tailor my gameplan a bit based on personality. Some batmen solve everything through enchantment, falling back on brute force only when required. Some focus on illusion, some on transmutation and morphing, others on movement. Spells, specifically, are a large enough subsystem that you can solve most problems using different parts of it.

These characters will take different feats, different prestige classes, specializations, wizard domains, etc. But they'll still have 80% of the same spells in their spellbooks. And even if they're built identically, they'll play differently.

[Quertus]

Eh, I tend to play… Hmmm… jealousy / envy characters well. "Oh, that looks cool - how can *I* do that?"

Or toolkit, "there's an app for that" characters. Spell research is my friend.

It's not quite Batman. But both archetypes are largely reactive - they require an environment to interact' with and gain desires from

But, when played in systems like D&D, with copious spells and spell research? Such characters don't really run out of things to gain.

[RandomPeasant]

I get different things from specialists and generalists. Sometimes you want to be a necromancer, and you want to have exclusively necromancy-themed powers that you use to solve your problems. Sometimes you want to have a broad toolkit and find the appropriate strategy to approach each problem you encounter. Neither is really better or worse, they're just different.