SangoProduction
2022-10-20, 09:50 PM
So, now we are finally at the reason I started adding "Maximize Caster Level" to my Spheres in Review: To see if the trade off of talents for caster levels is a meaningful one. (Also just to see if the sphere is better suited to half casters or full casters. But also this.)
There are a few criteria which contributes to how well, or how poorly a sphere performs on a Thaumaturge
1) Does it scale well with caster levels? (And does the temporary caster level apply.)
2) What are the minimum viable talents to functionally perform on the sphere.
3) Is the sphere any good to begin with? (Looking at you Telekinesis!)
I will have only a few ratings here
Good: It hits all of the points to be good on Thaumaturge, and does it rather comfortably.
Passable: It reasonably passes the threshold for usability on thaumaturge, but might be more difficult
Bad: Fails at at least one of the core criteria.
Horrible: None of the core criteria fit.
Good
Alteration - Good - Alteration is...reasonably flexible even on a few talents. There are a lot of niche talents that you can comfortably lose without feeling left out as an Alteration user. But the primary reason this is rated so highly is for specifically the offensive style of alteration, which requires literally one bad form talent (often Aquatic, but when the angry orc wielding Doomslayer is turned into a teeny kitty cat, they...well, they tend to be angry about it, but can't do much of effect to you). Not a lot of it scales particularly well with Caster level, but the DC and duration does.
Creation - Good - Immediately useful on one talent. Summons items, creates walls, all the good stuff. On one talent. All great stuff. Scales very well with CL, at a rate of 1-small-object-equivalent per level without additional talents.
Death - Good - Everything about the sphere loves caster level. In fact, it doesn't even functionally work at low caster level. And there isn't a lot of intrasphere interaction. Most talents generally just do their own thing, meaning you don't need to take a bunch to do whatever you want to do. Sure, you have to take a feat to have your forbidden lore count *permanently* towards your CL for controlling dead. But that's definitely a positive.
Destruction - Good - At level one, Forbidden Lore grants you +2d6 damage on your blast, and plus 1 save DC. (Plus some range/area, and maybe some of the Blast Type effects scale.) If this wasn't marked as Good, then I don't know what would.
Mana - Good - Very heavy emphasis on caster level, and... honestly... not a lot of good talents. You can get by, picking only the best ones, and it would be just fine. Assuming that Mana itself is a usable sphere in your campaign.
War - Good - This would probably be in a tier all its own, since some of the totem feats are really nice, and it just makes everything good about the sphere even better. Unless you're trying to use some totems that don't scale off of CL. ...In which case... why?
Passable
Conjuration - Passable - Conjuration is very talent-hungry... if you're looking for anything more than a generic pile of hit dice. (Or health potions, if you check out my Stay a While and Listen build). But if all you want is a very simple companion, you can get away with very few talents. And it scales well with CL... but best you can do is take Master Of Cosmos, to let your companions gain a bonus to Attack and skill checks equal to the forbidden lore, rather than increasing your effective CL. But hear me out. That's better than having a boosted CL, which translates into 3/4 the number of HD as your bonus CL. And those HD have less 1 BAB per HD. So it's great for your simple scout / Hit-Dice-bundle companions. And it has no risk of backlash.
Illusion - Passable - Unlike creation, the door is not immediately open as soon as you take the first talent. And to get really good talents, you do actually have to invest talents. But the opening talent is serviceable enough, with enough creativity. But it can scale well with caster level, such as with Blur at +5% miss chance per CL, and Decoy not only gaining at least 1 extra round of duration, but also at least 1 extra decoy starting at class level 5. (Which is good scaling for Decoy, because it has no front-loaded duration. It's purely scaling, plus 2 base decoys.) And suppression gets upwards of 3x your CL as a bonus to stealth (for incredibly very particular situations, if you have all the sense talents).
Mind - Passable - The difficulty here is that although Mind sphere absolutely relies on DC, and CL scaling affects that... the Eliciter is literally twice as efficient with its levels to DC scaling. Unless you're using a 1-level dip for the +2 CL. Which is sort of against the spirit of the class. Of course, there are some rounds/CL effects that are pretty cool, and which your CL bonus does help with, unique to DC. And in non-combat situations, adding +2 hours to a suggested task can be rather substantive.
Bad
Blood - Bad - Blood fails at #3....being a good sphere. It scales reasonably with CL, and certain styles of Blood magic can be accomplished on minimal talents. But it's just not a good sphere with good mechanics behind it.
Dark - Bad - A lot of styles of dark sphere are not intensive on their *need* for talents. (Though they very much prefer to have more talents.) But also don't tend to care too much for caster level. The ones that do are actually weaker to begin with. So yeah, generally not a great selection for this specific class, though Dark is a normally great sphere with superb support.
Fate - Bad - Almost none of the talents here particularly care about caster level, save for some caring about the save DC. And better for you to take a single feat for sphere focus than to spend half of your talents per level (feat equivalents) to get only some small deal of DC bonus.
Life - Bad - Incredible sphere. But it scales substantially better with talents than CL. And it already heals plenty without overcharging your CL.
Light - Bad - The sphere doesn't particularly care about caster level.
Nature - Bad - It's a decent sphere, and is definitely less talent-hungry than it was before USOP. But it's still talent hungry, and its CL scaling is relatively mediocre. I mean Water's freeze ability is like a supercharged casing from Creation sphere. But if you take this instead of creation sphere, you've given up that flexibility in order to have more focused... OK, this makes sense, thematically. But literally one talent, Nature Lord, is worth the same increase in the majority of the effects of the sphere, as 18 levels of Thaumaturge. It's not great.
Warp - Bad - It's decent. As a sphere to focus on, or to make the selling point of your Thaumaturge? No. Also it kind of needs to get talents under its belt before it's truly of great use.
Horrible
Divination - Horrible - Just to achieve a bare minimum functionality, you do need a good deal of talents. And it doesn't really care about caster levels.... In general, I wouldn't say the sphere is bad. But unless you're doing some tricks to specialize in it, or have it be really passive (check out my review)... it might be bad enough to put this in the Horrible category.
Enhancement - Horrible - The sphere is intentionally made for half casters, such that it largely frontloads its usefulness, with only light CL scaling, and instead scales on talents spent. The exact opposite of Thamaturge's deal. And the sphere is also pretty bad.
Protection - Horrible - The best thing you can attempt is the Barrier style... but it's basically a worse version of Creation sphere in the majority of ways. Including the number of talents you need to make it meaningful.
Telekinesis - Horrible - Despite *requiring* massive CL just to be used, it has almost no real CL scaling outside of the binary "can you use it or not?"
Time - Horrible - Only a few things scale with CL. And the sphere itself is kinda bad. Not much to even get out of the sphere. So, I'm saying by sheer fact that there is no minimum viable number of talents, that it fails that criteria as well.
Weather - ??? - I'll be honest. No idea. The CL increase does mean you get to access to your higher level weather manipulations more quickly. I do not have a firm grasp on Weather sphere, nor its purpose.
There are a few criteria which contributes to how well, or how poorly a sphere performs on a Thaumaturge
1) Does it scale well with caster levels? (And does the temporary caster level apply.)
2) What are the minimum viable talents to functionally perform on the sphere.
3) Is the sphere any good to begin with? (Looking at you Telekinesis!)
I will have only a few ratings here
Good: It hits all of the points to be good on Thaumaturge, and does it rather comfortably.
Passable: It reasonably passes the threshold for usability on thaumaturge, but might be more difficult
Bad: Fails at at least one of the core criteria.
Horrible: None of the core criteria fit.
Good
Alteration - Good - Alteration is...reasonably flexible even on a few talents. There are a lot of niche talents that you can comfortably lose without feeling left out as an Alteration user. But the primary reason this is rated so highly is for specifically the offensive style of alteration, which requires literally one bad form talent (often Aquatic, but when the angry orc wielding Doomslayer is turned into a teeny kitty cat, they...well, they tend to be angry about it, but can't do much of effect to you). Not a lot of it scales particularly well with Caster level, but the DC and duration does.
Creation - Good - Immediately useful on one talent. Summons items, creates walls, all the good stuff. On one talent. All great stuff. Scales very well with CL, at a rate of 1-small-object-equivalent per level without additional talents.
Death - Good - Everything about the sphere loves caster level. In fact, it doesn't even functionally work at low caster level. And there isn't a lot of intrasphere interaction. Most talents generally just do their own thing, meaning you don't need to take a bunch to do whatever you want to do. Sure, you have to take a feat to have your forbidden lore count *permanently* towards your CL for controlling dead. But that's definitely a positive.
Destruction - Good - At level one, Forbidden Lore grants you +2d6 damage on your blast, and plus 1 save DC. (Plus some range/area, and maybe some of the Blast Type effects scale.) If this wasn't marked as Good, then I don't know what would.
Mana - Good - Very heavy emphasis on caster level, and... honestly... not a lot of good talents. You can get by, picking only the best ones, and it would be just fine. Assuming that Mana itself is a usable sphere in your campaign.
War - Good - This would probably be in a tier all its own, since some of the totem feats are really nice, and it just makes everything good about the sphere even better. Unless you're trying to use some totems that don't scale off of CL. ...In which case... why?
Passable
Conjuration - Passable - Conjuration is very talent-hungry... if you're looking for anything more than a generic pile of hit dice. (Or health potions, if you check out my Stay a While and Listen build). But if all you want is a very simple companion, you can get away with very few talents. And it scales well with CL... but best you can do is take Master Of Cosmos, to let your companions gain a bonus to Attack and skill checks equal to the forbidden lore, rather than increasing your effective CL. But hear me out. That's better than having a boosted CL, which translates into 3/4 the number of HD as your bonus CL. And those HD have less 1 BAB per HD. So it's great for your simple scout / Hit-Dice-bundle companions. And it has no risk of backlash.
Illusion - Passable - Unlike creation, the door is not immediately open as soon as you take the first talent. And to get really good talents, you do actually have to invest talents. But the opening talent is serviceable enough, with enough creativity. But it can scale well with caster level, such as with Blur at +5% miss chance per CL, and Decoy not only gaining at least 1 extra round of duration, but also at least 1 extra decoy starting at class level 5. (Which is good scaling for Decoy, because it has no front-loaded duration. It's purely scaling, plus 2 base decoys.) And suppression gets upwards of 3x your CL as a bonus to stealth (for incredibly very particular situations, if you have all the sense talents).
Mind - Passable - The difficulty here is that although Mind sphere absolutely relies on DC, and CL scaling affects that... the Eliciter is literally twice as efficient with its levels to DC scaling. Unless you're using a 1-level dip for the +2 CL. Which is sort of against the spirit of the class. Of course, there are some rounds/CL effects that are pretty cool, and which your CL bonus does help with, unique to DC. And in non-combat situations, adding +2 hours to a suggested task can be rather substantive.
Bad
Blood - Bad - Blood fails at #3....being a good sphere. It scales reasonably with CL, and certain styles of Blood magic can be accomplished on minimal talents. But it's just not a good sphere with good mechanics behind it.
Dark - Bad - A lot of styles of dark sphere are not intensive on their *need* for talents. (Though they very much prefer to have more talents.) But also don't tend to care too much for caster level. The ones that do are actually weaker to begin with. So yeah, generally not a great selection for this specific class, though Dark is a normally great sphere with superb support.
Fate - Bad - Almost none of the talents here particularly care about caster level, save for some caring about the save DC. And better for you to take a single feat for sphere focus than to spend half of your talents per level (feat equivalents) to get only some small deal of DC bonus.
Life - Bad - Incredible sphere. But it scales substantially better with talents than CL. And it already heals plenty without overcharging your CL.
Light - Bad - The sphere doesn't particularly care about caster level.
Nature - Bad - It's a decent sphere, and is definitely less talent-hungry than it was before USOP. But it's still talent hungry, and its CL scaling is relatively mediocre. I mean Water's freeze ability is like a supercharged casing from Creation sphere. But if you take this instead of creation sphere, you've given up that flexibility in order to have more focused... OK, this makes sense, thematically. But literally one talent, Nature Lord, is worth the same increase in the majority of the effects of the sphere, as 18 levels of Thaumaturge. It's not great.
Warp - Bad - It's decent. As a sphere to focus on, or to make the selling point of your Thaumaturge? No. Also it kind of needs to get talents under its belt before it's truly of great use.
Horrible
Divination - Horrible - Just to achieve a bare minimum functionality, you do need a good deal of talents. And it doesn't really care about caster levels.... In general, I wouldn't say the sphere is bad. But unless you're doing some tricks to specialize in it, or have it be really passive (check out my review)... it might be bad enough to put this in the Horrible category.
Enhancement - Horrible - The sphere is intentionally made for half casters, such that it largely frontloads its usefulness, with only light CL scaling, and instead scales on talents spent. The exact opposite of Thamaturge's deal. And the sphere is also pretty bad.
Protection - Horrible - The best thing you can attempt is the Barrier style... but it's basically a worse version of Creation sphere in the majority of ways. Including the number of talents you need to make it meaningful.
Telekinesis - Horrible - Despite *requiring* massive CL just to be used, it has almost no real CL scaling outside of the binary "can you use it or not?"
Time - Horrible - Only a few things scale with CL. And the sphere itself is kinda bad. Not much to even get out of the sphere. So, I'm saying by sheer fact that there is no minimum viable number of talents, that it fails that criteria as well.
Weather - ??? - I'll be honest. No idea. The CL increase does mean you get to access to your higher level weather manipulations more quickly. I do not have a firm grasp on Weather sphere, nor its purpose.