SangoProduction
2023-01-17, 04:35 PM
Preamble: The Life sphere has, in all versions of Spheres that I've seen so far, been the easiest sphere to break the game with... not because of something stupid. Or power gamery. Or a misinterpretation of the rules... but just because you could easily spend too many points in becoming an effective healer... and completely negate all combat challenge that isn't instant death (and even then, advanced talents granted Revivify and Resurrections in PF). It made combats a time-wasting formality (even more blatantly than in normal session design). On more than one occasion, without even trying to, I've been asked by the DM to tone it down, or just to accept some nerfs for the health of the game.
I've been rather incredibly impressed by most implementations of the spheres I've seen so far in 5e. Thus, I want to see what they did with this sphere.
I have to admit, I'm kind of worried by the lack of talents in the table of contents.
Wiki: For those looking to follow along, the spheres 5e wiki can be found here (http://spheres5e.wikidot.com/). And the Life sphere in specific is found here (http://spheres5e.wikidot.com/life).
Post-Review Analysis: Well. I think this is a first for the 5e review. This not only failed to address the problems of the pf version, but also exacerbated it to the nth degree. You either have no healing. Or all the healing. There is no middle ground. Because all of the healing boost is found in one talent. It does not have any flexibility outside of just not being used. I mean, I get that 5e players just can't handle two talents adding numbers together for a total result. We play 5e because we want to play math rocks without the math. But Jesus, that's taking it a bit too far.
But outside of healing, the Restore function helps keep your team functioning through the most debilitating of conditions
Overall, I would recommend just adapting PF life sphere to 5e, rather than the other way around.
(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) Usable: 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.
Base Sphere contains the abilities you gain from using a talent on the sphere for the first time.
Cure: As an action, for a spell point, restore 1d8+KAM (key ability modifier) hp to one touched creature. An absolutely trivial amount of healing, with equally trivially scaling, going up to 4d8 by level 17. (So, HD = 17. Heal dice = 4. You are less than 1/4 as good at healing at level 17 as at level 1.... OK, d8 is admittedly like 1 hit dice worth of healing. It's decent at level 1.)
Invigorate: As an action, give a touched creature [proficiency bonus] temporary hp for up to 1 hour. This cannot result in (temp + current hp) > max hp. Basically, it's cantrip Band-Aids, as it also stabilizes those below 0 hp. It adds a tiny bit of extra buffer and topping off, if they aren't injured enough to actually bother healing. The augment to make the hp last all day is worthless (because it defeats the point of it being a cantrip), unless another talent substantially buffs this effect.
Restore: Yeah! This baby is the bomb, and I love it! You can end one disease, or one of the conditions: blinded, deafened, paralyzed, or poisoned. 3 of 4 of those conditions are absolutely debilitating. Disease can be... well... anything, but also debilitating. At the very least uncomfortable. (At the very worst, gives an excuse for powerful suits to shuts down the entire world.)
Sure, it costs an action and spell point, but that's chump change for literally no longer being paralyzed, and giving sight to the blind.
Basic Talents can be selected from the sphere, after you gain the base sphere. They tend to add functionality to the sphere. Each talent you spend can get you one of the following basic talents.
The following are groups of the basic talents.
They provided no sub-groups of basic talents. They are all just Basic Talents. (And advanced talents, but...maybe later.)
Fount of Life (1++): Fount of Life is easily the most powerful talent in all of Life sphere. (And the one that resulted in the most combat-trivialization issues in my experience.) If every other talent is running a marathon, this is racing across the earth in an F1-50...which may or may not be an applicable comparison. I don't know what an F1-50 is nor do I care to Google it.
Basically: It gives you a new internal target for you healing: your Fount of Life. This can accumulate healing, up to 10 x level. So what? You get like a well-rolled fighter's hit points to heal with. And you have to fill it up to begin with. It's not free healing. What's the big deal?
The big deal is that you can then draw upon this pool of healing without cost, for the precise amount you want. You will never again overflow healing. You can always top someone off. (Or just barely not top them off, using free Invigorate to do so.) And it's not just useful for topping off. It can be applied all at a burst. The boss crits your fighter? Well, they are back at full hp again. Are they dealing moderate damage, and you don't particularly care to help finish them off? Just heal back exactly the damage your allies take. It ruins all sense of suspense and tension (however illusory) when you're just permanently at full hp.
As both a player and DM, I would just not allow this.
-
Greater Healing (1+): Well. OK. And here I was thinking that the way they balanced the healing was to knee cap it so hard it was unusable. I was incorrect. This is more healing (per character level) than any other healing spell (like Cure Wounds or Heal) in the game. And is always only costs 2 spell points - no upcasting needed for more healing. And the worst part? There's no bloody middle ground in 5e. Unlike in pathfinder, where you can just choose to not take all of the (Restore) talents so you don't overscale your healing, here, you either have no healing, or all the healing. What the hell?
This is ridiculously effective and efficient... compared to its peers. Of course, the argument then is: Well, healing in combat isn't good, and isn't a viable playstyle, while this is. And...fair. But it's still so outside of the realms of its Vancian peers that it definitely deserves to be pointed out. And it's reliable. No die rolling at all... Which I view as a good thing for healing. Your reactions should be more reliable than your actions, since they aren't proactive.
Either the effectiveness, or the efficiency needs to go down. Else, its general usability could be reduced, by giving it a time limit on what all is healed. But then it swings from either the same problem as Fount of Life burst healing, to total irrelevance, as the campaign doesn't deal damage fast enough for the time limit to yield effective healing. (Not to mention the book keeping of the time limit. People don't play 5e for that.)
Break Enchantment <1>: It's basically dispel magic for 2 spell points (because it's a 1 sp augment to a restore that already costs 1 sp). But it works even on curses and cursed items (if you roll well enough). Let's just say that having your barbarian no longer being a foot tall, or mind controlled is probably precisely the change you want. And for that, 2 spell points is a steal.
Resuscitate [1]: Do you have a particularly lethal GM? Congratulations. This is Revivify.
Greater Restore [1, F]: Depends entirely on the campaign and DM you are playing with. But exhaustion, reduced max hp, and reduced ability scores (especially in 5e) are all really rather bad things to have afflicted on you. You can now get rid of them for 2 sp. Also means that you can negate the effects of lack of sleep for just 2 spell points. (My food mage loved to make coffee. And he never slept. It was literally never relevant. But he never slept.)
Restore Movement <1>: Getting to outright remove Petrified or Restrained is actually enormous... when it is. Rarely are you actually going to be petrified without some way to get out of it in modern campaigns, unless you are given plenty of warnings. So that leaves Restrained which is... not particularly common, but when it happens, you'll be happy to have this.
Empathic Healing (1.5): One of the only augments that applies negative spell point costs. You reduce the cost of restoring conditions by 1, by taking those conditions onto yourself.
Restore Mind (1.5): By the sheer nature of 5e, most of the time those conditions, aside from unconscious, are going to come from magic, making it a better idea to take Break Enchantment instead, since it is even more versatile... except that Break Enchantment can fail. This cannot.
Adrenaline Surge (2): I'll go out on a limb and say that this is a solidly Good talent. It's basically a 1 sp augment to be able to "restore" being out of position, grappled, disarmed, or prone, in addition to the normal life-sphere action.
Esoteric Healing [2]: Do you need to heal undead and constructs? If so, here you go.
Latent Healing (2): Lets you store a life sphere effect, which *they* can trigger as a reaction on getting injured. Kinda like casting it into the Fount of Life, but withdrawing from the Latent Healing takes a reaction instead of an action. Cool. Except that it's actually more healthy for the game... in every possible way, really. Each person may only have 1 latent heal on them, so no mega bursts of healing. And it is removed on a short rest, not just a long one. (That's not really too much of an issue. Just a couple wasted spell points at worst. Punch your friend to activate it, if they somehow managed to not otherwise get injured enough to make them want to use it before the rest. Tops them up.)
Contagion (3): Eh. You can attempt to inflict the condition you restored onto someone else. But they need to be in range. Which means you'll undoubtedly need the reach metasphere talent. This makes it a minimum of a 3 sp action. Which is somewhat expensive, and impossible to do before level 5 (because you can't spend more SP on a single effect than your proficiency modifier). I'm not saying it's bad. Not by any means. And maybe you want reach anyway, because touch is pretty restrictive. But I don't see much benefit to taking this, and therein thinking too much about it.
Restorative Cure (3): It's neat to be able to both cure, and restore sight in one action. Doesn't tend to be a particularly critical ability to have. But I guess it's cool when it works out. Better against a DM who regularly uses conditions in their combats.
Greater Invigorate (4): Augment 1 sp to grant a very small temp hp shield to your allies.
Revitalize (?): At a baseline, this basically means, instead of your normal heal of 1d8+5 immediately, you are healing for 10 over 10 rounds, for concentration. That's a particularly bad deal. Especially given that you could have spent this talent on Greater Healing. But it kind of has to be, because of metasphere effects. For example, Extend, for 1 spell point can turn that from 10 rounds to 100 rounds. You are now healing for 100 points over 100 rounds, instead of 1d8+5. Which is why it also requires concentration. And locking yourself out of all other concentration spheres... doesn't mean much if you plan around that being your use of concentration. So, you've got essentially infinite health overtime for a few spell points. And its weaknesses are basically not weaknesses for its use cases (healing out of combat). So, I'm pretty sure this is superbly useful, but I'm not sure. They made it substantially less of an instant-take than before, with help of the 5e innovations. This is a good thing.
I legitimately want to know your opinions on this.
Diagnose (F): Basically for interacting with NPCs. Gives you a diagnostic readout of the target. The DM will love you when you tell him you're taking it, because this will give so many plot hooks.
Variants are restrictions upon the use of the sphere, but often gives something in recompense. They are more here for flavor than for power.
Limited Restoration: Choose between the condition removal and the hp healing. Can't use or gain talents that affect it. From a "it won't screw the game," stand point in 5e, I would recommend giving up the hp healing. Gain a talent in exchange.
Regenerate: You may target only yourself with the life sphere talents. This grants you an interesting choice. Either Revitalize (fast healing), or Quicken from the Universal sphere. This can be easily abused to gain access to Quicken, which can affect most spheres, while having the most minimal investment in Life sphere.
But, used as-intended... Healing has always gone well with Guardian sphere. Not normally to the point where it's worth bothering with if you're not a full caster in PF. But everyone is a "full caster" in 5e. And the talents are all super condensed.
Sympathetic: On a flavor perspective, I bloody love this variant. It literally embodies the self-sacrificing nature of heroes who will take on the pain of others. Sadly, Empathic Healing no longer affects actual healing, and only for restoring conditions... is still fine and fun. Depending. It does basically mean you don't really get to remove the most debilitating of conditions and spell effects. I mean, sure, getting rid of Charm Person from the barbarian is one thing, but placing Charm Person onto the healer...
I've been rather incredibly impressed by most implementations of the spheres I've seen so far in 5e. Thus, I want to see what they did with this sphere.
I have to admit, I'm kind of worried by the lack of talents in the table of contents.
Wiki: For those looking to follow along, the spheres 5e wiki can be found here (http://spheres5e.wikidot.com/). And the Life sphere in specific is found here (http://spheres5e.wikidot.com/life).
Post-Review Analysis: Well. I think this is a first for the 5e review. This not only failed to address the problems of the pf version, but also exacerbated it to the nth degree. You either have no healing. Or all the healing. There is no middle ground. Because all of the healing boost is found in one talent. It does not have any flexibility outside of just not being used. I mean, I get that 5e players just can't handle two talents adding numbers together for a total result. We play 5e because we want to play math rocks without the math. But Jesus, that's taking it a bit too far.
But outside of healing, the Restore function helps keep your team functioning through the most debilitating of conditions
Overall, I would recommend just adapting PF life sphere to 5e, rather than the other way around.
(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) Usable: 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.
Base Sphere contains the abilities you gain from using a talent on the sphere for the first time.
Cure: As an action, for a spell point, restore 1d8+KAM (key ability modifier) hp to one touched creature. An absolutely trivial amount of healing, with equally trivially scaling, going up to 4d8 by level 17. (So, HD = 17. Heal dice = 4. You are less than 1/4 as good at healing at level 17 as at level 1.... OK, d8 is admittedly like 1 hit dice worth of healing. It's decent at level 1.)
Invigorate: As an action, give a touched creature [proficiency bonus] temporary hp for up to 1 hour. This cannot result in (temp + current hp) > max hp. Basically, it's cantrip Band-Aids, as it also stabilizes those below 0 hp. It adds a tiny bit of extra buffer and topping off, if they aren't injured enough to actually bother healing. The augment to make the hp last all day is worthless (because it defeats the point of it being a cantrip), unless another talent substantially buffs this effect.
Restore: Yeah! This baby is the bomb, and I love it! You can end one disease, or one of the conditions: blinded, deafened, paralyzed, or poisoned. 3 of 4 of those conditions are absolutely debilitating. Disease can be... well... anything, but also debilitating. At the very least uncomfortable. (At the very worst, gives an excuse for powerful suits to shuts down the entire world.)
Sure, it costs an action and spell point, but that's chump change for literally no longer being paralyzed, and giving sight to the blind.
Basic Talents can be selected from the sphere, after you gain the base sphere. They tend to add functionality to the sphere. Each talent you spend can get you one of the following basic talents.
The following are groups of the basic talents.
They provided no sub-groups of basic talents. They are all just Basic Talents. (And advanced talents, but...maybe later.)
Fount of Life (1++): Fount of Life is easily the most powerful talent in all of Life sphere. (And the one that resulted in the most combat-trivialization issues in my experience.) If every other talent is running a marathon, this is racing across the earth in an F1-50...which may or may not be an applicable comparison. I don't know what an F1-50 is nor do I care to Google it.
Basically: It gives you a new internal target for you healing: your Fount of Life. This can accumulate healing, up to 10 x level. So what? You get like a well-rolled fighter's hit points to heal with. And you have to fill it up to begin with. It's not free healing. What's the big deal?
The big deal is that you can then draw upon this pool of healing without cost, for the precise amount you want. You will never again overflow healing. You can always top someone off. (Or just barely not top them off, using free Invigorate to do so.) And it's not just useful for topping off. It can be applied all at a burst. The boss crits your fighter? Well, they are back at full hp again. Are they dealing moderate damage, and you don't particularly care to help finish them off? Just heal back exactly the damage your allies take. It ruins all sense of suspense and tension (however illusory) when you're just permanently at full hp.
As both a player and DM, I would just not allow this.
-
Greater Healing (1+): Well. OK. And here I was thinking that the way they balanced the healing was to knee cap it so hard it was unusable. I was incorrect. This is more healing (per character level) than any other healing spell (like Cure Wounds or Heal) in the game. And is always only costs 2 spell points - no upcasting needed for more healing. And the worst part? There's no bloody middle ground in 5e. Unlike in pathfinder, where you can just choose to not take all of the (Restore) talents so you don't overscale your healing, here, you either have no healing, or all the healing. What the hell?
This is ridiculously effective and efficient... compared to its peers. Of course, the argument then is: Well, healing in combat isn't good, and isn't a viable playstyle, while this is. And...fair. But it's still so outside of the realms of its Vancian peers that it definitely deserves to be pointed out. And it's reliable. No die rolling at all... Which I view as a good thing for healing. Your reactions should be more reliable than your actions, since they aren't proactive.
Either the effectiveness, or the efficiency needs to go down. Else, its general usability could be reduced, by giving it a time limit on what all is healed. But then it swings from either the same problem as Fount of Life burst healing, to total irrelevance, as the campaign doesn't deal damage fast enough for the time limit to yield effective healing. (Not to mention the book keeping of the time limit. People don't play 5e for that.)
Break Enchantment <1>: It's basically dispel magic for 2 spell points (because it's a 1 sp augment to a restore that already costs 1 sp). But it works even on curses and cursed items (if you roll well enough). Let's just say that having your barbarian no longer being a foot tall, or mind controlled is probably precisely the change you want. And for that, 2 spell points is a steal.
Resuscitate [1]: Do you have a particularly lethal GM? Congratulations. This is Revivify.
Greater Restore [1, F]: Depends entirely on the campaign and DM you are playing with. But exhaustion, reduced max hp, and reduced ability scores (especially in 5e) are all really rather bad things to have afflicted on you. You can now get rid of them for 2 sp. Also means that you can negate the effects of lack of sleep for just 2 spell points. (My food mage loved to make coffee. And he never slept. It was literally never relevant. But he never slept.)
Restore Movement <1>: Getting to outright remove Petrified or Restrained is actually enormous... when it is. Rarely are you actually going to be petrified without some way to get out of it in modern campaigns, unless you are given plenty of warnings. So that leaves Restrained which is... not particularly common, but when it happens, you'll be happy to have this.
Empathic Healing (1.5): One of the only augments that applies negative spell point costs. You reduce the cost of restoring conditions by 1, by taking those conditions onto yourself.
Restore Mind (1.5): By the sheer nature of 5e, most of the time those conditions, aside from unconscious, are going to come from magic, making it a better idea to take Break Enchantment instead, since it is even more versatile... except that Break Enchantment can fail. This cannot.
Adrenaline Surge (2): I'll go out on a limb and say that this is a solidly Good talent. It's basically a 1 sp augment to be able to "restore" being out of position, grappled, disarmed, or prone, in addition to the normal life-sphere action.
Esoteric Healing [2]: Do you need to heal undead and constructs? If so, here you go.
Latent Healing (2): Lets you store a life sphere effect, which *they* can trigger as a reaction on getting injured. Kinda like casting it into the Fount of Life, but withdrawing from the Latent Healing takes a reaction instead of an action. Cool. Except that it's actually more healthy for the game... in every possible way, really. Each person may only have 1 latent heal on them, so no mega bursts of healing. And it is removed on a short rest, not just a long one. (That's not really too much of an issue. Just a couple wasted spell points at worst. Punch your friend to activate it, if they somehow managed to not otherwise get injured enough to make them want to use it before the rest. Tops them up.)
Contagion (3): Eh. You can attempt to inflict the condition you restored onto someone else. But they need to be in range. Which means you'll undoubtedly need the reach metasphere talent. This makes it a minimum of a 3 sp action. Which is somewhat expensive, and impossible to do before level 5 (because you can't spend more SP on a single effect than your proficiency modifier). I'm not saying it's bad. Not by any means. And maybe you want reach anyway, because touch is pretty restrictive. But I don't see much benefit to taking this, and therein thinking too much about it.
Restorative Cure (3): It's neat to be able to both cure, and restore sight in one action. Doesn't tend to be a particularly critical ability to have. But I guess it's cool when it works out. Better against a DM who regularly uses conditions in their combats.
Greater Invigorate (4): Augment 1 sp to grant a very small temp hp shield to your allies.
Revitalize (?): At a baseline, this basically means, instead of your normal heal of 1d8+5 immediately, you are healing for 10 over 10 rounds, for concentration. That's a particularly bad deal. Especially given that you could have spent this talent on Greater Healing. But it kind of has to be, because of metasphere effects. For example, Extend, for 1 spell point can turn that from 10 rounds to 100 rounds. You are now healing for 100 points over 100 rounds, instead of 1d8+5. Which is why it also requires concentration. And locking yourself out of all other concentration spheres... doesn't mean much if you plan around that being your use of concentration. So, you've got essentially infinite health overtime for a few spell points. And its weaknesses are basically not weaknesses for its use cases (healing out of combat). So, I'm pretty sure this is superbly useful, but I'm not sure. They made it substantially less of an instant-take than before, with help of the 5e innovations. This is a good thing.
I legitimately want to know your opinions on this.
Diagnose (F): Basically for interacting with NPCs. Gives you a diagnostic readout of the target. The DM will love you when you tell him you're taking it, because this will give so many plot hooks.
Variants are restrictions upon the use of the sphere, but often gives something in recompense. They are more here for flavor than for power.
Limited Restoration: Choose between the condition removal and the hp healing. Can't use or gain talents that affect it. From a "it won't screw the game," stand point in 5e, I would recommend giving up the hp healing. Gain a talent in exchange.
Regenerate: You may target only yourself with the life sphere talents. This grants you an interesting choice. Either Revitalize (fast healing), or Quicken from the Universal sphere. This can be easily abused to gain access to Quicken, which can affect most spheres, while having the most minimal investment in Life sphere.
But, used as-intended... Healing has always gone well with Guardian sphere. Not normally to the point where it's worth bothering with if you're not a full caster in PF. But everyone is a "full caster" in 5e. And the talents are all super condensed.
Sympathetic: On a flavor perspective, I bloody love this variant. It literally embodies the self-sacrificing nature of heroes who will take on the pain of others. Sadly, Empathic Healing no longer affects actual healing, and only for restoring conditions... is still fine and fun. Depending. It does basically mean you don't really get to remove the most debilitating of conditions and spell effects. I mean, sure, getting rid of Charm Person from the barbarian is one thing, but placing Charm Person onto the healer...