SangoProduction
2022-05-16, 09:33 AM
Preamble: I don't feel like playing video games, and have nothing else to do right now. So I'll check out the advanced talents for these 2 spheres. Conjuration just had very little, and I didn't want to spam this site.
Post Review Analysis: Conjuration is actually remarkably tame, with its only Warning talents being related to a poorly designed talent, rather than one that's implicitly game breaking.
Creation on the other hand? Oof. Need to be careful with what you allow in from that sphere's advanced talents.
Warning: This rare rating is given to talents that have truly game-breaking potential. Or at the very least need very close inspection before being allowed.
Questionable: These talents have an outsized impact, and should be considered in context before being allowed.
Acceptable: This is your standard faire advanced talent tier. Worth looking at, but rarely is it going to cause the catastrophic downfall of your campaign.
Fluffy: These little to no functional difference to a character. These are also the safest to give out as reward talents. For example, if they beat the witch who eats children, they might manifest the ability to summon items made of gingerbread.
Unknown: For when I really just don't know where it would lie. It's probably needlessly complicated. Take a good look at it yourself. I'll try and provide a cliff notes version of the talent, along with potential pit falls.
Conjuration
Call Planar Creature / Diagram / Entrapping Circle: Basically ritual casting to summon extraplanars to help. Just way over complicated, and kind of encourages dumpster diving for good, summonable creatures. I'd give a very narrow version of this for when they've earned the services of such a creature. But I'd... probably just make it a custom ability. And I have done so.
Expendable Summons: Lets companions be continually resummoned, after dying. This summoning does cost spell points - it simply doesn't cost *additional* spell points for dying.
Greater Altered Size: Change by 1 size category per talent, starting at CL 15.
Possessive Companion: Potentially take control of an enemy. Like a more expensive Mind sphere effect, with the added flavor of actually implanting something to control them.
Regenerating Companion: Turns fast healing to regeneration, and doesn't unsummon them unless the regen is suppressed. Neat. The important deal is that that basically lets a healer come in and get them back into shape, rather than relying on resummoning via Expendable Summons. Effective Difference? Very little.
Troop Companion: Basically swarms, but made of bigger things.
Vanishing Companion: Hide in Plain Sight for one companion. Scouting is one of the roles that the Conjuration sphere supports, with fairly high abundance. It works.
Greater Healing: +1 fast healing / 3 HD for a single companion. Not particularly useful. But it's neat.
Channel Companion: I'm not sure what a possessing companion can actually *do.* It's arguable that a passively possessing creature can cast spells and take mental actions. Active possession basically removes your main character's actions, which tends to be more detrimental than useful. I'm not sure when one would want that.
Creation
Costly Creation: Even at level 15, the talent itself is telling you to think deeply about the consequences. I need say nothing more.
Duplicate: The base effect is fine and simply opens up neat little things. If you allow the Fleshcrafting combo, though, that gets troublesome. Even just the most straightforward thing: To create a copy of yourself. And it gives no limits on how much you can do that, getting an indefinite number of bonus actions at half CL.
Imperfect Recreation: Fully duplicates the real creature. But "balances" it by being uncontrollable.
Fleshcraft: Creating flesh is fine. And is in fact an ethical means of obtaining undead. However, it implies that if you Change Material on a living creature, they become an object (that lives, but doesn't detect as living). Which is a save or lose, and this interacts with other advanced talents in (potentially) undesirable ways.
Mythical Material Maker: Making adamantine by level 15? Not generally an issue. Having the intent of making any non-divine materials? *Potentially* an issue. Find out what is the intended usage.
Create Materials / Permanent Change: Permanently creating items and structures and what not can be... interesting. Especially if you allow them to be sold. If you don't it'd probably see most use in "Kingdom building," where they mass fabricate mundane arms and armor and homes and infrastructure. Stuff that generally will not break the game, unless you had a particular intent for how they'd get the stuff.
Material Body: You know Kevin Eleven from Ben 10 Alien Force? Able to absorb materials into his body? Incredibly neat. And I love that you can actually do something like this pretty early on. The problem? Getting DR 10/adamantine that blocks up to 60 damage by level 6 may be a little much.
Granted, that is literally Stoneskin spell... a few levels early, and with no material cost. And it gets double dipped scaling on the damage blocked side, with Object of Force material. (Used to be ridiculous back before USOP.)
Ooze Originator: This can just be troublesome to deal with. Not game breaking, but troublesome, as per normal with monster-manual-pulling summoners.
Corp Criadhach: Either enables a duplicate to be a crummy destruction sphere effect, or a voodoo doll. Now, they become instantly aware of the magic being cast upon them. Even while sleeping. So some particularly devious man can just cast Duplicate every day while the BBEG is sleeping, and really tick him off.
Dissolution: Damn. I like it. Makes the Destroy function actually... functional. And gives it a purpose, in terms of destroying items specifically.
Fabricate: You can make proper, fancy adjustments to objects without ruining them. Permanently, as an instantaneous transformation.
Create Minds Think Alike: Lets your animated objects, created from Creation sphere-made statues, use your skill ranks. It is also aware of the circumstances of its sentience, which will end in a few minutes.
Internal Creation: Ignoring age-restricted uses... very, very neat ability which works great for a surgeon-type character. Imagine if a surgeon could just straight up delete that bullet without surgery? I mean... presumably Life sphere pushes it out as part of the heal, but still. Also works for barring doors... like creating a wall wood do. But... um. Lock picking? Yeah, you can just destroy the lock and make it again. Oh... hm. Well, this does seem sort of redundant, doesn't it?
Magma Mastery: At level 10, they can create 30 cubic feet of lava before other talents. A 5x5x5 cube is 125 cubic feet. So... yeah. Going to be hard to inflict total immersion on anyone. Might work as a trap with plenty of set up.
Plasma Projection: It's a 1d10 elec/fire touch attack sword. With the opportunity to spend 1 spell point to deal +1d10 damage per round. If they are doing some really complex attack spam thing, then maybe it would be notable. But really, it's just a light saber. It's cool.
State Shift: Everything functional about this is already handled by Change Material, which is a prerequisite. This is just fluff.
Sustenance: You can make / turn things into food and drink.
Post Review Analysis: Conjuration is actually remarkably tame, with its only Warning talents being related to a poorly designed talent, rather than one that's implicitly game breaking.
Creation on the other hand? Oof. Need to be careful with what you allow in from that sphere's advanced talents.
Warning: This rare rating is given to talents that have truly game-breaking potential. Or at the very least need very close inspection before being allowed.
Questionable: These talents have an outsized impact, and should be considered in context before being allowed.
Acceptable: This is your standard faire advanced talent tier. Worth looking at, but rarely is it going to cause the catastrophic downfall of your campaign.
Fluffy: These little to no functional difference to a character. These are also the safest to give out as reward talents. For example, if they beat the witch who eats children, they might manifest the ability to summon items made of gingerbread.
Unknown: For when I really just don't know where it would lie. It's probably needlessly complicated. Take a good look at it yourself. I'll try and provide a cliff notes version of the talent, along with potential pit falls.
Conjuration
Call Planar Creature / Diagram / Entrapping Circle: Basically ritual casting to summon extraplanars to help. Just way over complicated, and kind of encourages dumpster diving for good, summonable creatures. I'd give a very narrow version of this for when they've earned the services of such a creature. But I'd... probably just make it a custom ability. And I have done so.
Expendable Summons: Lets companions be continually resummoned, after dying. This summoning does cost spell points - it simply doesn't cost *additional* spell points for dying.
Greater Altered Size: Change by 1 size category per talent, starting at CL 15.
Possessive Companion: Potentially take control of an enemy. Like a more expensive Mind sphere effect, with the added flavor of actually implanting something to control them.
Regenerating Companion: Turns fast healing to regeneration, and doesn't unsummon them unless the regen is suppressed. Neat. The important deal is that that basically lets a healer come in and get them back into shape, rather than relying on resummoning via Expendable Summons. Effective Difference? Very little.
Troop Companion: Basically swarms, but made of bigger things.
Vanishing Companion: Hide in Plain Sight for one companion. Scouting is one of the roles that the Conjuration sphere supports, with fairly high abundance. It works.
Greater Healing: +1 fast healing / 3 HD for a single companion. Not particularly useful. But it's neat.
Channel Companion: I'm not sure what a possessing companion can actually *do.* It's arguable that a passively possessing creature can cast spells and take mental actions. Active possession basically removes your main character's actions, which tends to be more detrimental than useful. I'm not sure when one would want that.
Creation
Costly Creation: Even at level 15, the talent itself is telling you to think deeply about the consequences. I need say nothing more.
Duplicate: The base effect is fine and simply opens up neat little things. If you allow the Fleshcrafting combo, though, that gets troublesome. Even just the most straightforward thing: To create a copy of yourself. And it gives no limits on how much you can do that, getting an indefinite number of bonus actions at half CL.
Imperfect Recreation: Fully duplicates the real creature. But "balances" it by being uncontrollable.
Fleshcraft: Creating flesh is fine. And is in fact an ethical means of obtaining undead. However, it implies that if you Change Material on a living creature, they become an object (that lives, but doesn't detect as living). Which is a save or lose, and this interacts with other advanced talents in (potentially) undesirable ways.
Mythical Material Maker: Making adamantine by level 15? Not generally an issue. Having the intent of making any non-divine materials? *Potentially* an issue. Find out what is the intended usage.
Create Materials / Permanent Change: Permanently creating items and structures and what not can be... interesting. Especially if you allow them to be sold. If you don't it'd probably see most use in "Kingdom building," where they mass fabricate mundane arms and armor and homes and infrastructure. Stuff that generally will not break the game, unless you had a particular intent for how they'd get the stuff.
Material Body: You know Kevin Eleven from Ben 10 Alien Force? Able to absorb materials into his body? Incredibly neat. And I love that you can actually do something like this pretty early on. The problem? Getting DR 10/adamantine that blocks up to 60 damage by level 6 may be a little much.
Granted, that is literally Stoneskin spell... a few levels early, and with no material cost. And it gets double dipped scaling on the damage blocked side, with Object of Force material. (Used to be ridiculous back before USOP.)
Ooze Originator: This can just be troublesome to deal with. Not game breaking, but troublesome, as per normal with monster-manual-pulling summoners.
Corp Criadhach: Either enables a duplicate to be a crummy destruction sphere effect, or a voodoo doll. Now, they become instantly aware of the magic being cast upon them. Even while sleeping. So some particularly devious man can just cast Duplicate every day while the BBEG is sleeping, and really tick him off.
Dissolution: Damn. I like it. Makes the Destroy function actually... functional. And gives it a purpose, in terms of destroying items specifically.
Fabricate: You can make proper, fancy adjustments to objects without ruining them. Permanently, as an instantaneous transformation.
Create Minds Think Alike: Lets your animated objects, created from Creation sphere-made statues, use your skill ranks. It is also aware of the circumstances of its sentience, which will end in a few minutes.
Internal Creation: Ignoring age-restricted uses... very, very neat ability which works great for a surgeon-type character. Imagine if a surgeon could just straight up delete that bullet without surgery? I mean... presumably Life sphere pushes it out as part of the heal, but still. Also works for barring doors... like creating a wall wood do. But... um. Lock picking? Yeah, you can just destroy the lock and make it again. Oh... hm. Well, this does seem sort of redundant, doesn't it?
Magma Mastery: At level 10, they can create 30 cubic feet of lava before other talents. A 5x5x5 cube is 125 cubic feet. So... yeah. Going to be hard to inflict total immersion on anyone. Might work as a trap with plenty of set up.
Plasma Projection: It's a 1d10 elec/fire touch attack sword. With the opportunity to spend 1 spell point to deal +1d10 damage per round. If they are doing some really complex attack spam thing, then maybe it would be notable. But really, it's just a light saber. It's cool.
State Shift: Everything functional about this is already handled by Change Material, which is a prerequisite. This is just fluff.
Sustenance: You can make / turn things into food and drink.