SangoProduction
2022-06-04, 09:27 AM
Preamble: I've been in games where I made Spheres of Might characters. And they are much better at combat than their mundane counter parts, for sure. That was kind of the point. But, it seems pretty hard to grab talents that are simultaneously useable but don't just stack infinitely onto the singular thing you are looking to do. This often comes in the form of taking alternative addon effects, like how (snipe) can only apply one or 2 debuffs. But... always just a little disappointing feeling. (Can't wait for Spheres of Guile.)
So my purpose here is to go through the SoM talents and find all of the talents that can be reasonably useful outside of combat (including outside of traps).
Ratings:
1: Usable. Many characters can reasonably make use of it.
2: Rarely useful. Only a few characters/campaigns can reasonably get use out of it.
3: Meme. Has very little, or very exclusive uses.
*: Denotes that the talent is in a number of other categories equal to the number of stars. Each category's rating is not necessarily the same.
All of these talents (often base spheres) give free ranks for a particular skill, up to your level. Not bothering to rate these. They do what they do.
Alchemy: Craft(Alchemy)
Athletics (All packages): Climb, Fly, Acrobatics, Swim.
Ace Pilot - Athletics: Profession (Pilot).
Beastmastery (tame): Handle animal.
Beastmastery (ride): Ride
Craftsman - Equipment:
Fencing: Bluff
Read Foe - Fencing: Sense Motive
Gladiator: Intimidate
Scoundrel: Sleight of Hand
Scout: Stealth
Great Senses - Scout: Perception
Trap: Craft (Traps)
Warleader: Diplomacy
So that's upwards of +14 skill points per level, including Perception and Stealth.
Granted, only 8 are really relevant to most.
5 are what typical face characters care about
These talents grant bonuses / additional non-combat functions to skills.
Verbal Counter - Warleader (2): counter bluff checks with diplo/intimidate/bluff of your own, forcing out the truth, or a massive -5 to charisma checks for a day, making it harder to bluff you.
Bronco Buster - Beastmastery (2): Although it does involve CMD and will saves, and can be used in actual combat, it also can be used for just getting a wild mount. It also replaces Handle Animal with Ride check for mountable creatures.
Track the Scene - Scout (2): 1/2 lvl to follow tracks, and learn what happened while the tracks were being made.
Worked Match - Wrestling (2): Intimidate to improve attitude, with +1/2 level to check. Also make money with a grapple check (with +1/2 lvl to check, +2 per additional ally - needn't be humanoid).
Swift Movement / Store Momentum - Athletics (2)*: Each provide +4 to acrobatics checks for the purpose of jumping. Increasing by +4 per 5 or 10 levels.
Bob And Weave - Scoundrel (3): Grants you explicitly stealthable cover. if your ally has this as well, they also have stealthable cover. Just imagine it. You both get spotted by a guard... stop. Look directly at him. And start doing a Jojo jig before suddenly disappearing before his eyes. He then swears off alcohol and goes to bed. Clearly, this is not the intended use, and you'll get away with it precisely once. But fun none the less. My god. This is Dvati gold!
Shadowboxing - Boxing(3)*: Condense Acrobatics and Intimidate into Peform (Dance).
Blooded Skeptic - Duelist (3): Adds 1+1/4 BAB to sense motive.
No Honor Among Thieves - Scoundrel (3): Get to automatically detect pick pockets.
Trapsmith - Trap (3): Craft traps at gold rather than silver per day, and get to craft magical traps using Craft (Traps).
Discern Tells - Scout (3): Adds 1/2 level to sense motive vs scouted foes. Which tends to just be worse than Skill Focus. And that's not exactly an in-demand feat. (Though it sees occasional use.)
Honed Senses - Scout (3): +4 to detect fearful foes. Super specific.
Muscular Surge - Brute (3): + 1/2 BAB (or full BAB for martial focus) to jump, strength checks, and strength-based skills. And strength for carry capacity for a couple rounds. Not generally useful.
These talents grant some means of enhanced exploration.
Rope Swing - Athletics (1): Basically a teleport with a 30 + (5/4 lvl) ft range, but gives you added ability to help your allies traverse this plane of existence with good, solid anchors to tie things down on. Add in Cloth Snake Puppetry, and this is even useful in combat. Potentially.
Athletics Sphere (Any package) (2): From running, swimming and climbing faster to flying in high winds, the Athletics sphere helps you move through the world more reliably. Predictably.
Swift Movement / Store Momentum - Athletics (3)*: Adds 10 + (1 or 2)*lvl move speed. Which is rather laughable, and tends to make next to no difference. When was the last time the Barbarian/monk made particular use out of their speed?
Instance Foam - Alchemy (2): Reduces fall damage massively. By a minimum of 30 ft worth of prevented damage from level 1. Also arguably negates pit traps.
Lurker - Scout (2): There is little point in taking this if you aren't the team's scout, or you don't have invisibility, but it prevents you from *automatically* being spotted.
Unimpeded Positioning - Scout (2): Probably should go in memes. Out of combat ignoring of difficult terrain doesn't tend to matter. But it would be a disservice to not make notable mention of it in this section specifically.
Canny Compression - Athletics (3): Can squeeze to as much as 1/8 your space by level 10. Each size category is 1/2. So, a gnome can squeeze to the spaces as though a fine creature (the smallest possible category). You're basically a liquid by that point.
Wall Stunt - Athletics (3): Basically worse Rope Swing, until you get more than 80 move speed.
Strong Lungs - Athletics (3): Hold breath for twice normal time. Almost never an issue.
Unfettering Armor - Equipment (3): A bad talent all around. Especially as those planning on using heavy armor don't particularly care about movement speed.
Cut And Run - Scoundrel (3): Move half speed after a successful theft. You absolutely obnoxious pick pocket. That's its only out of combat use.
These talents grant buffs that help outside of combat.
War Paint - Alchemy (1): You get a bunch of buffs to choose from. Definitely plenty of winners and losers here, but +5 perception and stealth, and the resistances are nice. (Though you only get to select 2 per talent spent, so you'd only take resistances if you knew from the outset that you needed them. But they are hour-long buffs.
Anesthetic Dosage - Alchemy (1): Do I really need to explain to a modern human just what a game changer anesthesia is? This is a better roleplay effect than a mechanical buff. Of course... actual healing... anyway. Shh.
Neutralizer - Alchemy (2): Sucks as an actual formulae talent. You'd never use it for combat. But for say... traversing through a volcano, or surviving a snow storm? You aren't suffering any attacks, but still get protection.
Academic/Performance Enhancer - Alchemy (3): Alchemical bonus to a stat in exchange for the opposing stat. For 1 minute. Not good, either for in or out of combat.
Cold-Weather Adaptation - Equipment (3): Unsurprisingly, only useful for arctic-style campaigns.
Beastmastery sphere (1): All of it, basically. Or a huge chunk of the non-Ride portion of the sphere. Especially getting nonmagical familiars and animal companions, and a squad of creatures to do your bidding.
Cloth Snake Puppetry - Equipment (1): Adds 10+(5/4 BAB) feet of reach, including for manipulating objects. You're basically a cowboy from a Western flick. Almost anyone can make use of it out of combat, and in combat it supports a large segment of the martial sector - the area denial AoO-mancers.
Somnambulance - Scout (1): Effectively a martial's "Don't need to sleep." By having you sleep without suffering any penalties of sleeping.
Shadowboxing -Boxing (2)*: Fascinate people while doing a dance. Great for the more social/heist-style campaigns. Don't often get this as a nonmagical effect.
Sense And Resist Scrying - Scout (3): Actually pointless.
So my purpose here is to go through the SoM talents and find all of the talents that can be reasonably useful outside of combat (including outside of traps).
Ratings:
1: Usable. Many characters can reasonably make use of it.
2: Rarely useful. Only a few characters/campaigns can reasonably get use out of it.
3: Meme. Has very little, or very exclusive uses.
*: Denotes that the talent is in a number of other categories equal to the number of stars. Each category's rating is not necessarily the same.
All of these talents (often base spheres) give free ranks for a particular skill, up to your level. Not bothering to rate these. They do what they do.
Alchemy: Craft(Alchemy)
Athletics (All packages): Climb, Fly, Acrobatics, Swim.
Ace Pilot - Athletics: Profession (Pilot).
Beastmastery (tame): Handle animal.
Beastmastery (ride): Ride
Craftsman - Equipment:
Fencing: Bluff
Read Foe - Fencing: Sense Motive
Gladiator: Intimidate
Scoundrel: Sleight of Hand
Scout: Stealth
Great Senses - Scout: Perception
Trap: Craft (Traps)
Warleader: Diplomacy
So that's upwards of +14 skill points per level, including Perception and Stealth.
Granted, only 8 are really relevant to most.
5 are what typical face characters care about
These talents grant bonuses / additional non-combat functions to skills.
Verbal Counter - Warleader (2): counter bluff checks with diplo/intimidate/bluff of your own, forcing out the truth, or a massive -5 to charisma checks for a day, making it harder to bluff you.
Bronco Buster - Beastmastery (2): Although it does involve CMD and will saves, and can be used in actual combat, it also can be used for just getting a wild mount. It also replaces Handle Animal with Ride check for mountable creatures.
Track the Scene - Scout (2): 1/2 lvl to follow tracks, and learn what happened while the tracks were being made.
Worked Match - Wrestling (2): Intimidate to improve attitude, with +1/2 level to check. Also make money with a grapple check (with +1/2 lvl to check, +2 per additional ally - needn't be humanoid).
Swift Movement / Store Momentum - Athletics (2)*: Each provide +4 to acrobatics checks for the purpose of jumping. Increasing by +4 per 5 or 10 levels.
Bob And Weave - Scoundrel (3): Grants you explicitly stealthable cover. if your ally has this as well, they also have stealthable cover. Just imagine it. You both get spotted by a guard... stop. Look directly at him. And start doing a Jojo jig before suddenly disappearing before his eyes. He then swears off alcohol and goes to bed. Clearly, this is not the intended use, and you'll get away with it precisely once. But fun none the less. My god. This is Dvati gold!
Shadowboxing - Boxing(3)*: Condense Acrobatics and Intimidate into Peform (Dance).
Blooded Skeptic - Duelist (3): Adds 1+1/4 BAB to sense motive.
No Honor Among Thieves - Scoundrel (3): Get to automatically detect pick pockets.
Trapsmith - Trap (3): Craft traps at gold rather than silver per day, and get to craft magical traps using Craft (Traps).
Discern Tells - Scout (3): Adds 1/2 level to sense motive vs scouted foes. Which tends to just be worse than Skill Focus. And that's not exactly an in-demand feat. (Though it sees occasional use.)
Honed Senses - Scout (3): +4 to detect fearful foes. Super specific.
Muscular Surge - Brute (3): + 1/2 BAB (or full BAB for martial focus) to jump, strength checks, and strength-based skills. And strength for carry capacity for a couple rounds. Not generally useful.
These talents grant some means of enhanced exploration.
Rope Swing - Athletics (1): Basically a teleport with a 30 + (5/4 lvl) ft range, but gives you added ability to help your allies traverse this plane of existence with good, solid anchors to tie things down on. Add in Cloth Snake Puppetry, and this is even useful in combat. Potentially.
Athletics Sphere (Any package) (2): From running, swimming and climbing faster to flying in high winds, the Athletics sphere helps you move through the world more reliably. Predictably.
Swift Movement / Store Momentum - Athletics (3)*: Adds 10 + (1 or 2)*lvl move speed. Which is rather laughable, and tends to make next to no difference. When was the last time the Barbarian/monk made particular use out of their speed?
Instance Foam - Alchemy (2): Reduces fall damage massively. By a minimum of 30 ft worth of prevented damage from level 1. Also arguably negates pit traps.
Lurker - Scout (2): There is little point in taking this if you aren't the team's scout, or you don't have invisibility, but it prevents you from *automatically* being spotted.
Unimpeded Positioning - Scout (2): Probably should go in memes. Out of combat ignoring of difficult terrain doesn't tend to matter. But it would be a disservice to not make notable mention of it in this section specifically.
Canny Compression - Athletics (3): Can squeeze to as much as 1/8 your space by level 10. Each size category is 1/2. So, a gnome can squeeze to the spaces as though a fine creature (the smallest possible category). You're basically a liquid by that point.
Wall Stunt - Athletics (3): Basically worse Rope Swing, until you get more than 80 move speed.
Strong Lungs - Athletics (3): Hold breath for twice normal time. Almost never an issue.
Unfettering Armor - Equipment (3): A bad talent all around. Especially as those planning on using heavy armor don't particularly care about movement speed.
Cut And Run - Scoundrel (3): Move half speed after a successful theft. You absolutely obnoxious pick pocket. That's its only out of combat use.
These talents grant buffs that help outside of combat.
War Paint - Alchemy (1): You get a bunch of buffs to choose from. Definitely plenty of winners and losers here, but +5 perception and stealth, and the resistances are nice. (Though you only get to select 2 per talent spent, so you'd only take resistances if you knew from the outset that you needed them. But they are hour-long buffs.
Anesthetic Dosage - Alchemy (1): Do I really need to explain to a modern human just what a game changer anesthesia is? This is a better roleplay effect than a mechanical buff. Of course... actual healing... anyway. Shh.
Neutralizer - Alchemy (2): Sucks as an actual formulae talent. You'd never use it for combat. But for say... traversing through a volcano, or surviving a snow storm? You aren't suffering any attacks, but still get protection.
Academic/Performance Enhancer - Alchemy (3): Alchemical bonus to a stat in exchange for the opposing stat. For 1 minute. Not good, either for in or out of combat.
Cold-Weather Adaptation - Equipment (3): Unsurprisingly, only useful for arctic-style campaigns.
Beastmastery sphere (1): All of it, basically. Or a huge chunk of the non-Ride portion of the sphere. Especially getting nonmagical familiars and animal companions, and a squad of creatures to do your bidding.
Cloth Snake Puppetry - Equipment (1): Adds 10+(5/4 BAB) feet of reach, including for manipulating objects. You're basically a cowboy from a Western flick. Almost anyone can make use of it out of combat, and in combat it supports a large segment of the martial sector - the area denial AoO-mancers.
Somnambulance - Scout (1): Effectively a martial's "Don't need to sleep." By having you sleep without suffering any penalties of sleeping.
Shadowboxing -Boxing (2)*: Fascinate people while doing a dance. Great for the more social/heist-style campaigns. Don't often get this as a nonmagical effect.
Sense And Resist Scrying - Scout (3): Actually pointless.