SangoProduction
2022-04-09, 09:27 PM
Preamble: Killing time. Trying to find a sphere I haven't reviewed. Beastmastery is just... way to DM-specific, period. Maybe Ride isn't. But Tame definitely is. So it's not really valid for a review. So, here's Brute. Hope that it's good.
And yay, thanks to my attention span of a coke-addicted hornet, I have managed to turn a time killing assignment to one that took 2 full days.
Post Review Analysis: Damn. Uh. OK. I was expecting a bunch of fancy "You move them that way. Congrats. Here's a cookie."
Instead, I got a face pounding. Like, they had to have designed the sphere with all of its parts working together. Especially Hammer's 2d6 damage on shoving someone into a wall or creature. To both targets. And then... No what? Just read the review. It becomes self-evident.
Flex Talents: Dazed and Confused (manhandle): If facing someone who really likes to use their full round.
Robbery (manhandle): If facing someone with no backup weapons, or whom you can steal something very valuable from. Despite massive penalties to stealing.
Muscular Surge: For whenever +10 strength to some utility functions is useful.
(1) Superb: You always want this if it's relevant to you. And it probably is.
(1.5) Really Good: Particularly useful bits of kit, but aren't quite must-haves. (Kept it decimal, because spreading out Good so far from Superb felt unrepresentative. But I needed a step between)
(2) Good: These make useful additions to the right builds. Among your first picks.
(3) Meh: Doesn't hurt to have. Wouldn't go out of your way for it.
(4) No: It technically has a use, but the cost to take simply doesn't outweigh the benefit.
(5) Never: There’s no non-trivial reason to pick it up, from its mechanics.
(6+) Harmful: Taking/using this is actively detrimental to your character.
<Angle brackets> around a rating indicates situational usefulness, and how good it is in that favorable situation.
[Square brackets] indicate a reliance on the group (players or DM) or campaign you’re playing in, and how well it does in those select groups.
Special Ratings:
(C) Cheese: A talent so broken that it will be instantly banned if you use it as you could.
(?) Unrated: I choose not to rate it. Often because it is just so far out of my wheelhouse, or it’s far too ambiguous.
(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.
(D) D***bag: Used for when your character wants to be a D***bag.
Shove (2): Move action. Move half speed, and melee touch attack. Deal Str mod damage, and apply battered until end of next turn. Or in place of an attack on charge. Why you would ever replace the charge attack with Str mod damage... I don't know. It's probably fine. Nothing to go out of your way to get, or to remove. This is a relatively easy source of Battered.
Unarmed (4, F): This sphere counts towards unarmed damage. Which is rather insubstantial. But includes IUS.
Manhandle: Bull rush, drag, reposition, or overrun CMs can apply one (manhandle talent). Free action CMs don't apply.
Robbery <1.5>: Disarm / steal. Picking up an item provokes AoO. You can bull rush on AoO. Even if you don't throw it away, you can throw them away. Which might be even harder for them to deal with. Only works against those who care.
Dazed And Confused <1.5>: Will save, or staggered for 1 round. 2 at 10 BAB. This is solid for non-SoM enemies. And non-casters. Well, casters also probably want to stop being pushed around, and move away to cast, so casters too.
Drop (2): Free action trip. yay. Took the Hammer Talent for bull rush damage? Yay, this causes damage too! Especially if taken twice. (Although requires more feats to make trip reliable.)
Dizzy Spin (2): Fort save or 20% miss chance for 1 round. 2 at BAB 10. Not bad.
Humiliate (4): Entangled. For 1 round. Not rooted. Not good. Even before considering that you kind of have to be melee, unless you're a Champion of the Spheres, and actually using magic to bull rush. So you can't use it to kite.
Throw (4): Throw 5 feet... woo. Oh, but a reflex save or fall prone. For a martial focus. Just pick either Perpetual Motion or Drop. Seriously. Granted, this is probably better than Drop, since it's a save... but worse because it takes martial focus. Eh. Whatever. I'm putting it here until someone argues me into ranking it higher.
Takedown (?): Honestly, grappling is such a toss up. Can be a no-damage KO. Can be a massive waste of time.
Break Defenses (1): If you're wanting to bull rush, then you're probably looking for them to make them provoke.
Brutal Boar’s Charge (1): Free action shove as part of the charge. Can even include your original charge target. That's fine. But most importantly, with Focused Might, that's a free action MF recharge.
Focused Might (1): Rated this highly, contingent on Brutal Boar's Charge. Because a(n easy) conditional free action refresh is good. And worst case, it's a nearly unconditional move action refresh. Which is still about normal.
Greater Shove (1.5): Combined with Power Attack, it's an additional 2 + BAB damage, over and above your base shove. It is just a move action touch attack at full BAB, so it's better than it seems. And you can apply "feats and talents such as Power attack." So maybe there's more to stack on that.
Great Physique (2): +1 effective Size for CMs. Nice. And another +1 per 5 BAB. Even nicer! Can't make you count as colossal. So only once does a size increase grant +2 to the check. So, look at it this way: Is (1 or 2) + (1/5 BAB) to your CMs worth it? Consider that Improved X only applies +2. To a singular CM. And this is also effective size for the purpose of actually doing the CM. Plus you kind of need every bonus you can get.
Armored Momentum (2): +2 to hit on charge, while wearing heavy armor. Neat.
Brutal Manhandle (2): MF for a second (manhandle)? Yeah, there are some good talents to apply a second time.
Dominoes (2): Trip the second creature, when moving another creature into it, disregarding reach.
Destabilizing Charge (3): Deny dex to 1 attack after your charge hits. Better than (base) feinting. Which is a very low bar. And at bare minimum, it might work for yourself next turn.
Hostile Movement (3): A bit of flexibility in how you move them. Except that it does basically double the number of squares moved. It doesn't seem to sacrifice the movement. Arguably it could count towards Hammer, if there was also a wall/creature to their side. Some DMs would see that as taking it a bit too far.
Unstoppable (3, F): OH YEAH! Makes charging more reliable. I guess. Not bad.
Earthquake Stomp (4): AoE trip for MF. Not bad, you'd think. But it's 5 ft around you. Which is pretty insubstantial.
Ornery Ox (4): Not strictly bad. But really rather niche and thus not great. As a stance, you get to attempt to overrun someone during your Shove's movement.
Greater Brute (5): Doesn't stack with the actual Imp / Greater Bull Rush. Doesn't break even before level 12. But once you get there, feel free to swap in to it.
Muscular Surge (F): Doesn't do much of practical benefit. But it sounds cool to add +10 to your strength...for carry capacity purposes. Aka multiply your current carry capacity by 4. At level 20. For a couple rounds. Compared to the various carry capacity items that are incredibly cheap and entirely passive.
Brace Weapon (?): OK, I see a pattern of charging. But I've literally never seen anyone try to use overrun. If you take Tower Shield Mastery, you can get +4 to overrun CMB before enchants. Could be neat. I dunno.
Stampede (?): Depends on how you read it. Either: Charging doesn't provoke, so long as you at least bull rush or overrun as part of it, Or: BR and overrun don't provoke, exclusively while charging. I prefer the former because it's less pointless.
Most of these are unrated. They are all nice if you have the Hammer talent. Hammer is such an overwhelming change to the applicability of all talents related to it, and it just got to confusing as to how I would rate it. In general, these talents are pretty bad, unless you have Hammer. But their interaction with it boosts damage.
Hammer (1+): You know? This really surprised me. Probably more because of the number of free action bull rushes than anything else. This is actually surprisingly damaging. Let's say you take Follow-Throw, and Perpetual Motion for 3 bull rushes (and just assume that CMs hit just as often as regular attacks (even though it doesn't, but that's complicated). So, taking this once is like a 3d8 weapon. Taken twice, it's like 6d6. That is rather remarkable. Quick Force lets you do it another 4 times as a move and swift action. Assuming they are already against something to be knocked into. And if that something is another creature, do your damage to that other one as well. (And there's potential to do multiple times this damage, if you roll into greater rushing ranges. Potential.)
And this isn't some weird, abstract build from many sources, these are all from this one sphere.
Smash (1+): Much the same as Hammer, but less conditional. Also less potential. But you can also add enhancement bonuses and Weapon focus to bull rush.
Basically let's you get in what's effectively an unarmed strike (/light weapon attack), when you bull rush. So you're not *just* shoving them around. You're getting them closer to capitulation. But it also stacks with Hammer. I have to say the damage can get fairly radical.
Shift Weight: AoO bull rush. Which is kinda bad compared to trip. But you can now get people against the wall and keep them there. Also reposition, if you want to keep someone right where they were, while they were trying to move away. (I personally homebrew all of them as one thing. But hey. Pathfinder is screwy like that. Spheres just tries to help.)
Follow-Through: Free action bull rush on successful attack action. Which could have also been a bull rush. Which gave a free action bull rush with Perpetual Motion. All in all, probably overkill. But maybe your team has a lot of AoO they like to do. (Better with Hammer.)
Quick Force: With this, you could alpha in for 3 bull rushes in a round... if you were already in melee. So probably you'd just charge to close the distance on first round. Then on subsequent rounds you'd do your stuff. Again, probably overkill, unless you are using Hammer. In which case this is probably required. A typical round would probably be: Shove (recharge focus), Standard BR (bull rush), free BR, free BR, Swift BR, free BR. Which...again, only matters at all if you're using Hammer.
Perpetual Motion (manhandle): A second free action bull rush. *Does not invoke additional manhandle talents.* Generally 1 bull rush does the job, if you actually succeeded at it. But sometimes that wall of flame is inconveniently far away. (Better with Hammer talent)
Slapper: Insignificant change to shove. But your bull rushes now batter. Which is honestly not particularly notable. This is probably straight up bad. But now you can spend the move action on yet another bull rush, assuming that you have a free action regain Martial Focus. And you don't worry about that penalty to CMD you're missing out on.
And yay, thanks to my attention span of a coke-addicted hornet, I have managed to turn a time killing assignment to one that took 2 full days.
Post Review Analysis: Damn. Uh. OK. I was expecting a bunch of fancy "You move them that way. Congrats. Here's a cookie."
Instead, I got a face pounding. Like, they had to have designed the sphere with all of its parts working together. Especially Hammer's 2d6 damage on shoving someone into a wall or creature. To both targets. And then... No what? Just read the review. It becomes self-evident.
Flex Talents: Dazed and Confused (manhandle): If facing someone who really likes to use their full round.
Robbery (manhandle): If facing someone with no backup weapons, or whom you can steal something very valuable from. Despite massive penalties to stealing.
Muscular Surge: For whenever +10 strength to some utility functions is useful.
(1) Superb: You always want this if it's relevant to you. And it probably is.
(1.5) Really Good: Particularly useful bits of kit, but aren't quite must-haves. (Kept it decimal, because spreading out Good so far from Superb felt unrepresentative. But I needed a step between)
(2) Good: These make useful additions to the right builds. Among your first picks.
(3) Meh: Doesn't hurt to have. Wouldn't go out of your way for it.
(4) No: It technically has a use, but the cost to take simply doesn't outweigh the benefit.
(5) Never: There’s no non-trivial reason to pick it up, from its mechanics.
(6+) Harmful: Taking/using this is actively detrimental to your character.
<Angle brackets> around a rating indicates situational usefulness, and how good it is in that favorable situation.
[Square brackets] indicate a reliance on the group (players or DM) or campaign you’re playing in, and how well it does in those select groups.
Special Ratings:
(C) Cheese: A talent so broken that it will be instantly banned if you use it as you could.
(?) Unrated: I choose not to rate it. Often because it is just so far out of my wheelhouse, or it’s far too ambiguous.
(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.
(D) D***bag: Used for when your character wants to be a D***bag.
Shove (2): Move action. Move half speed, and melee touch attack. Deal Str mod damage, and apply battered until end of next turn. Or in place of an attack on charge. Why you would ever replace the charge attack with Str mod damage... I don't know. It's probably fine. Nothing to go out of your way to get, or to remove. This is a relatively easy source of Battered.
Unarmed (4, F): This sphere counts towards unarmed damage. Which is rather insubstantial. But includes IUS.
Manhandle: Bull rush, drag, reposition, or overrun CMs can apply one (manhandle talent). Free action CMs don't apply.
Robbery <1.5>: Disarm / steal. Picking up an item provokes AoO. You can bull rush on AoO. Even if you don't throw it away, you can throw them away. Which might be even harder for them to deal with. Only works against those who care.
Dazed And Confused <1.5>: Will save, or staggered for 1 round. 2 at 10 BAB. This is solid for non-SoM enemies. And non-casters. Well, casters also probably want to stop being pushed around, and move away to cast, so casters too.
Drop (2): Free action trip. yay. Took the Hammer Talent for bull rush damage? Yay, this causes damage too! Especially if taken twice. (Although requires more feats to make trip reliable.)
Dizzy Spin (2): Fort save or 20% miss chance for 1 round. 2 at BAB 10. Not bad.
Humiliate (4): Entangled. For 1 round. Not rooted. Not good. Even before considering that you kind of have to be melee, unless you're a Champion of the Spheres, and actually using magic to bull rush. So you can't use it to kite.
Throw (4): Throw 5 feet... woo. Oh, but a reflex save or fall prone. For a martial focus. Just pick either Perpetual Motion or Drop. Seriously. Granted, this is probably better than Drop, since it's a save... but worse because it takes martial focus. Eh. Whatever. I'm putting it here until someone argues me into ranking it higher.
Takedown (?): Honestly, grappling is such a toss up. Can be a no-damage KO. Can be a massive waste of time.
Break Defenses (1): If you're wanting to bull rush, then you're probably looking for them to make them provoke.
Brutal Boar’s Charge (1): Free action shove as part of the charge. Can even include your original charge target. That's fine. But most importantly, with Focused Might, that's a free action MF recharge.
Focused Might (1): Rated this highly, contingent on Brutal Boar's Charge. Because a(n easy) conditional free action refresh is good. And worst case, it's a nearly unconditional move action refresh. Which is still about normal.
Greater Shove (1.5): Combined with Power Attack, it's an additional 2 + BAB damage, over and above your base shove. It is just a move action touch attack at full BAB, so it's better than it seems. And you can apply "feats and talents such as Power attack." So maybe there's more to stack on that.
Great Physique (2): +1 effective Size for CMs. Nice. And another +1 per 5 BAB. Even nicer! Can't make you count as colossal. So only once does a size increase grant +2 to the check. So, look at it this way: Is (1 or 2) + (1/5 BAB) to your CMs worth it? Consider that Improved X only applies +2. To a singular CM. And this is also effective size for the purpose of actually doing the CM. Plus you kind of need every bonus you can get.
Armored Momentum (2): +2 to hit on charge, while wearing heavy armor. Neat.
Brutal Manhandle (2): MF for a second (manhandle)? Yeah, there are some good talents to apply a second time.
Dominoes (2): Trip the second creature, when moving another creature into it, disregarding reach.
Destabilizing Charge (3): Deny dex to 1 attack after your charge hits. Better than (base) feinting. Which is a very low bar. And at bare minimum, it might work for yourself next turn.
Hostile Movement (3): A bit of flexibility in how you move them. Except that it does basically double the number of squares moved. It doesn't seem to sacrifice the movement. Arguably it could count towards Hammer, if there was also a wall/creature to their side. Some DMs would see that as taking it a bit too far.
Unstoppable (3, F): OH YEAH! Makes charging more reliable. I guess. Not bad.
Earthquake Stomp (4): AoE trip for MF. Not bad, you'd think. But it's 5 ft around you. Which is pretty insubstantial.
Ornery Ox (4): Not strictly bad. But really rather niche and thus not great. As a stance, you get to attempt to overrun someone during your Shove's movement.
Greater Brute (5): Doesn't stack with the actual Imp / Greater Bull Rush. Doesn't break even before level 12. But once you get there, feel free to swap in to it.
Muscular Surge (F): Doesn't do much of practical benefit. But it sounds cool to add +10 to your strength...for carry capacity purposes. Aka multiply your current carry capacity by 4. At level 20. For a couple rounds. Compared to the various carry capacity items that are incredibly cheap and entirely passive.
Brace Weapon (?): OK, I see a pattern of charging. But I've literally never seen anyone try to use overrun. If you take Tower Shield Mastery, you can get +4 to overrun CMB before enchants. Could be neat. I dunno.
Stampede (?): Depends on how you read it. Either: Charging doesn't provoke, so long as you at least bull rush or overrun as part of it, Or: BR and overrun don't provoke, exclusively while charging. I prefer the former because it's less pointless.
Most of these are unrated. They are all nice if you have the Hammer talent. Hammer is such an overwhelming change to the applicability of all talents related to it, and it just got to confusing as to how I would rate it. In general, these talents are pretty bad, unless you have Hammer. But their interaction with it boosts damage.
Hammer (1+): You know? This really surprised me. Probably more because of the number of free action bull rushes than anything else. This is actually surprisingly damaging. Let's say you take Follow-Throw, and Perpetual Motion for 3 bull rushes (and just assume that CMs hit just as often as regular attacks (even though it doesn't, but that's complicated). So, taking this once is like a 3d8 weapon. Taken twice, it's like 6d6. That is rather remarkable. Quick Force lets you do it another 4 times as a move and swift action. Assuming they are already against something to be knocked into. And if that something is another creature, do your damage to that other one as well. (And there's potential to do multiple times this damage, if you roll into greater rushing ranges. Potential.)
And this isn't some weird, abstract build from many sources, these are all from this one sphere.
Smash (1+): Much the same as Hammer, but less conditional. Also less potential. But you can also add enhancement bonuses and Weapon focus to bull rush.
Basically let's you get in what's effectively an unarmed strike (/light weapon attack), when you bull rush. So you're not *just* shoving them around. You're getting them closer to capitulation. But it also stacks with Hammer. I have to say the damage can get fairly radical.
Shift Weight: AoO bull rush. Which is kinda bad compared to trip. But you can now get people against the wall and keep them there. Also reposition, if you want to keep someone right where they were, while they were trying to move away. (I personally homebrew all of them as one thing. But hey. Pathfinder is screwy like that. Spheres just tries to help.)
Follow-Through: Free action bull rush on successful attack action. Which could have also been a bull rush. Which gave a free action bull rush with Perpetual Motion. All in all, probably overkill. But maybe your team has a lot of AoO they like to do. (Better with Hammer.)
Quick Force: With this, you could alpha in for 3 bull rushes in a round... if you were already in melee. So probably you'd just charge to close the distance on first round. Then on subsequent rounds you'd do your stuff. Again, probably overkill, unless you are using Hammer. In which case this is probably required. A typical round would probably be: Shove (recharge focus), Standard BR (bull rush), free BR, free BR, Swift BR, free BR. Which...again, only matters at all if you're using Hammer.
Perpetual Motion (manhandle): A second free action bull rush. *Does not invoke additional manhandle talents.* Generally 1 bull rush does the job, if you actually succeeded at it. But sometimes that wall of flame is inconveniently far away. (Better with Hammer talent)
Slapper: Insignificant change to shove. But your bull rushes now batter. Which is honestly not particularly notable. This is probably straight up bad. But now you can spend the move action on yet another bull rush, assuming that you have a free action regain Martial Focus. And you don't worry about that penalty to CMD you're missing out on.