SangoProduction
2023-10-26, 06:48 AM
https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?661474-Spellshot-Engineering-Success-(Spheres-in-Review)
The above is my review of the archetype. It's perhaps in a league of its own as a functional, meaningful gunslinger archetype in the spheres.
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This is basically just me organizing my initial thoughts on how I would make a build for this archetype. But the archetype and options are flexible enough that I think these musings might have value for others.
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So, its focus is on the (amp) talents introduced in the Archmagi's Handbook Let's see which of those talents would be worth taking for typical SSEs.
Ranked by how useful I expect it to be in a given build.
Visual Dynamics: Fascinate is such an incredible effect to give, especially for non-combat encounters.
And being able to hide that a magic explosion has happened around someone just gives strong Skyrim NPC vibes.
Acanodynamics: The standout amp is, unironically, Extended Spell, with its +2 CL for duration, for free. This enables early game Death sphere, where normally Death sphere's pretty dead until you have quite a few CL under you. Next most useful would be Massive Spell, for a larger radius to the effect (for a spell point, granted).
The other two amps are there to offer potential options if you(r enemies) are positioned well against you.
Intelligent Interactions: Lets you fireball the barbarian without getting an axe thrown at your face.
Notably, Avoidant Spells can make a chosen creature totally immune to the direct effects of your spell, so you can just chuck down a flame wall (or equivalent structure of "don't touch me") and sit inside of it. Which will undoubtedly annoy any melee enemies trying to hit the guy pelting them with spells and bullets.
Elemental Enhancement: Basically get to add an additional Destructive Blast rider effect to another Destructive Blast (or a few other effects, most of which are not meaningful, due to destruction sphere largely outclassing them at their job).
The stand out would be Acrid Spell. for being on Acid Damage, lasting for a base of 2 rounds, and makes your targets even easier to hit. And given that SSEs are designed to use (strike) talents... that means even greater spell success chance, while also boosting your allies.
Spell Mastery: If you are a person who is obsessed with Spell Penetration, this explicitly doesn't stack with it. And it's not passively in effect, and it's not until level 10 that you get the greater spell penetration... but it's literally at the cost of 1/3 of a talent, rather than 2 feats. That's a 6 times value differential... if you value the other amps equally.
Durable spell makes it harder to dispel. Which is also a thing you don't need often, and might occasionally like being able to do it when you need to.
However, the stand out is Favorite Spell, which marks enemies with stacking marks that basically increase the save DC against that spell for a minute. Amp that one Favorite Spell once (or however many times you want to / can stack it), and then use another amp. It just works. It is, however, an excessively boring play style to basically only make one decision on your tactic for the entire fight. Probably why you can't stack it very high until later.
Initiate's Training: We all know the Delayed Fireball memes. But, delaying any spell you want can cause true chaos in almost any role play encounter. Oh, and it also allows you to effectively get as many free rounds of combat in, before combat starts as you have spell points... and everyone else has patience. (Except: They thought of that nonsense, and made activating the delayed effect is a standard action. So you can still potentially alpha strike, especially if you have minions, but it's less free, and has the potential to fire early, since you can't limit the conditions to specific creatures performing the task.) Incidentally, thanks to this provision, you can cause yet further RP chaos, thanks to being able to have specific actions taken trigger the effect... which can be rather incriminating, if you know your target.
Oh, and I guess occasionally avoiding a general drawback can be useful. Like, Emotional Casting is typically a non-issue, but when it does become one, you are out of the casting game entirely... given that you are also part martial, not even this should really be an issue, but so be it.
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Those below this are really rather worthless.
Heightened Magic: The only real thing that could be of worth is Forceful Spell, as an extra layer of area denial... Oh. That does actually have abusive interactions, now that I see it, if you have something that could proc every single time they move, like caltrops, which would make them take the multiple instances of the trip attempt. I was specifically thinking of Wind Blades under Fog Mastery, but there's ambiguity in that wording which allows for the damage to be taken at once, rather than in each square... and let's be fair, reasonable DMs were probably taking that assumption any way, rather than stopping movement every 5 ft to roll damage for that square.
Overall, pretty weak, unless you find an abuse target, which almost goes without saying.
Power Dynamics: There is nothing of particular note here. I mean with Severed Spell, it might allow you to potentially deal damage to otherwise immune enemies, but that is very much up for debate. So there really isn't much here.
Stable Spell literally raises the average from 3.5 to 3.67, until level 10. For d4, it does slightly better from 2.5 to 2.75. Again... not of much note. That would be 2 extra damage if you rolled 10 d4s. (Granted, by that point, you would have access to replacing 3s, which brings it up to 3.25 - basically a d6 on a d4. Best case scenario.)
Energy Modification: This is so far down the list. There is no reliable amp that you'd normally use. This could be worth flexing, if you are going under water, and don't already have a narrative way to still function under water. (And if you don't, you should probably just... find one. It's probably intended that you don't just hold your breath for the entire dungeon. That said, this talent could *be* one of those narrative methods.)
(Strike) spheres.
For obvious reasons, the gunslinger caster likes to sling attacks with their spells. It can be largely ignored, for the broader category of spells that can be enhanced, but since guns are kinda the primary identity, we should identify the spheres with (strike) talents, and rate which ones would be the best to actually play with.
Ranked by how generally usable the sphere is, as well as the interaction with (strike) - since again, you might not neccesarily be tied 100% to the strike.
Notably, as a gunslinger, you still target touch attack, while getting to have a real attack go off with your spell.
And any sphere not mentioned here is inapplicable, or I just don't care enough to mention them. Like Fate sphere's Shrieking Strike being specifically melee. (Or some other weird interpretation. It's probably a typo. Let's be honest. What's written doesn't make sense.) Or Illusion sphere's 3rd party strike talent. Because who cares.
Destruction: The obvious choice that everyone is going to at least dip into. Also most of the other Blast Shapes are also validly enhanced.
Death: Horrible early duration, but Arcanodynamics can help with that. Plus now, you also get a bit of damage to go alongside the debuffs. [mass] is validly enhanced, as a cone.
Enhancement: Scales poorly with CL, which you have in abundance. But notably, unlike Death, has a high floor, letting you apply -2 to all d20 rolls for a full minute at level 1. (Ignoring Death sphere's permanent Curse, which really should be an advanced talent.)
This also makes it a safe pick up, even without investing anything into maintaining its CL, because it's just not that important.
And yet further, as a part-martial, you definitely benefit from a fair few of these talents - simply as buffs, not even attacks. You can use a weapon that's two sizes larger than normal by making it weightless, just as one example. This is perhaps the more surprisingly decent spheres for this archetype.
Nature: Third party, but... You could Bury / Entangle your targets on hitting them with a bullet. Normally the drawback to those effects is that you basically spend your entire turn achieving very little of anything outside, but this turns them into (single target) rider effects for your attack. If I'm reading it right.
Creation: Get to alter your target. Makes for an interesting Sunder-e option. But you've already got Magnify/Minimize which is just "make the item irrelevant," making the sunder use kinda meaningless. But it does explicitly work with Scatter weapons. So you pull out your Blunderbuss of Pantaloon Growth to do this, without giving up on your damage per round (ignoring the opportunity cost of not casting another spell, because you clearly had a good reason to want to get rid of that item).
Weather: Now, this is a strange pick, but there are a (very) few fantastic shrouds you can shoot. And then plenty of good mantles. You won't be particularly useful when it comes to controlling weather (nor is that really the aesthetic we're going for), but if you're working aside another weather mage, you've potentially got something going on. (So this is a conditional ranking.)
Time: Eh... A rather middling to low tier sphere at the best of times, where you really have to pick the peanuts from the log. But some of those peanuts can be good eating.
Blood: I mean, the blood arts can be pretty cool. Plus I have some homebrew blood art talents in my signature as well.
Warp: Expensive, and takes a fair few talents to actually make useful. But the primary downside is that you use your entire turn (and a lot of resources) to maybe inconvenience a singular person. Now, you do all of that, but also hit them with an attack from your gun! (I can definitely understand wanting to teleport a dragon off your axe, but it's a dragon. I don't think you can. Just run. Or teleport for that matter.)
Mind: Rated so poorly, based on it really not seeming to fit the aesthetic. And the aesthetic is pretty much the only reason why you picked this archetype rather than incanter 20.
Life: Shoot people to heal them. Fun. Also gives you innate range on typically melee healing - letting the healer stand far enough back to not bother. (Also can be used to apply the offensive Life effects. And hurt undead. Obviously.)
Telekinesis: Let's just assume you're never going to even consider it before you can at least lift medium creatures. Once you can do that, however... It's at least usable. And it's a meaningful rider effect to your attack.
Alteration: Eh. Basically a save or lose, for the vast, vast majority of creatures, even if you don't choose to turn them into a fish. A barbarian sheep doesn't have an axe. A beholder fire elemental doesn't have eye rays (but still is a fire elemental, why did you do that - oh right). A toad witch can't cast spells (typically). The fact that you are adding a bit of chip damage onto that really does not make a lick of difference. Also I hate offensive Shapeshift for precisely this reason. It's so uninteractive.
Mana: Nope. I'm not even going to broach it. It's so dry and boring. Not even Archmage book could save the sphere from the dreadful hate that I feel for the sphere.
Special Mention:
War sphere. Because Momentum is just my pet mechanic. Also as a gish, you do benefit more from the sphere than most casters. (Even though the Strike talent is specifically not a (strike) talent.)
So.... That really doesn't narrow things down for us. Almost every sphere has a (strike) talent, no matter how useless it is, next to regular casting. And those that didn't, got third party strike talents.
So, Most obviously good picks:
Death and Destruction.
Enhancement is also a great pick.
The rest would probably just be down to your particular gunslinger's aesthetic choice.
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And now for the Combat spheres, since it also gets to choose from those talents.
It is getting to be 7 am. So this is just in the order that I notice them.
Barrage: Obviously, more attacks is more gooder.
But it's a special attack action, which doesn't fit with spell attack, and there's nothing that gives it a special exemption.
Beastmastery: Having a mount can be useful - assuming that you have a way to handle the animal without a move action. (Nature sphere does let you speak with animals, and speaking is a free action.)
Berserker: Just a generally good sphere. Useful special attack action (given the right (exertion) talent(s)).
Boxing: Makes for a fun stand off.
Dual Wielding: Bonus attack on swift action. Problem being that you are already using swift action for your (amps).
Duelist: Bleed-based rider effects. Some are good.
Fencing: The sneak attack / feinting sphere. As soon as level 3, you can do that without a check as a swift... action... Oh. Hmm. Amp talents require immediate actions to use. Which does sap the swift action of next round. This isn't quite as free as I though.
Still probably well worth it.
Sniper: Fantastic choice. Great talents. My favorite ranged sphere. Incompatible with spell casting, until level 7. But it's a great sphere, which you can always fall back on when out of spell points.
Scoundrel / Sniper: See review on Dirty Sniper.
Alchemy (poison): Yeah, poison works. Potentially. I've had a DM that required some sort of special ammo to dispense poisons before though. Also really not needed.
Armor stuff: Might be useful depending on your gunslinger's choices.
Expert Reloading.
Fast Draw (I think inherent to Gunslinger. Not bothering to check)
Versatile Fighter: Deadly Aim, plus occasional use of other stuff.
Weapon Master: Shift weapon damage from Piercing to slash or bludgeoning. Not particularly important.
So, some solid choices
The best ones would probably
Berseker, then Fencing, then Sniper, and lastly Beastmastery.
The above is my review of the archetype. It's perhaps in a league of its own as a functional, meaningful gunslinger archetype in the spheres.
---
This is basically just me organizing my initial thoughts on how I would make a build for this archetype. But the archetype and options are flexible enough that I think these musings might have value for others.
--
So, its focus is on the (amp) talents introduced in the Archmagi's Handbook Let's see which of those talents would be worth taking for typical SSEs.
Ranked by how useful I expect it to be in a given build.
Visual Dynamics: Fascinate is such an incredible effect to give, especially for non-combat encounters.
And being able to hide that a magic explosion has happened around someone just gives strong Skyrim NPC vibes.
Acanodynamics: The standout amp is, unironically, Extended Spell, with its +2 CL for duration, for free. This enables early game Death sphere, where normally Death sphere's pretty dead until you have quite a few CL under you. Next most useful would be Massive Spell, for a larger radius to the effect (for a spell point, granted).
The other two amps are there to offer potential options if you(r enemies) are positioned well against you.
Intelligent Interactions: Lets you fireball the barbarian without getting an axe thrown at your face.
Notably, Avoidant Spells can make a chosen creature totally immune to the direct effects of your spell, so you can just chuck down a flame wall (or equivalent structure of "don't touch me") and sit inside of it. Which will undoubtedly annoy any melee enemies trying to hit the guy pelting them with spells and bullets.
Elemental Enhancement: Basically get to add an additional Destructive Blast rider effect to another Destructive Blast (or a few other effects, most of which are not meaningful, due to destruction sphere largely outclassing them at their job).
The stand out would be Acrid Spell. for being on Acid Damage, lasting for a base of 2 rounds, and makes your targets even easier to hit. And given that SSEs are designed to use (strike) talents... that means even greater spell success chance, while also boosting your allies.
Spell Mastery: If you are a person who is obsessed with Spell Penetration, this explicitly doesn't stack with it. And it's not passively in effect, and it's not until level 10 that you get the greater spell penetration... but it's literally at the cost of 1/3 of a talent, rather than 2 feats. That's a 6 times value differential... if you value the other amps equally.
Durable spell makes it harder to dispel. Which is also a thing you don't need often, and might occasionally like being able to do it when you need to.
However, the stand out is Favorite Spell, which marks enemies with stacking marks that basically increase the save DC against that spell for a minute. Amp that one Favorite Spell once (or however many times you want to / can stack it), and then use another amp. It just works. It is, however, an excessively boring play style to basically only make one decision on your tactic for the entire fight. Probably why you can't stack it very high until later.
Initiate's Training: We all know the Delayed Fireball memes. But, delaying any spell you want can cause true chaos in almost any role play encounter. Oh, and it also allows you to effectively get as many free rounds of combat in, before combat starts as you have spell points... and everyone else has patience. (Except: They thought of that nonsense, and made activating the delayed effect is a standard action. So you can still potentially alpha strike, especially if you have minions, but it's less free, and has the potential to fire early, since you can't limit the conditions to specific creatures performing the task.) Incidentally, thanks to this provision, you can cause yet further RP chaos, thanks to being able to have specific actions taken trigger the effect... which can be rather incriminating, if you know your target.
Oh, and I guess occasionally avoiding a general drawback can be useful. Like, Emotional Casting is typically a non-issue, but when it does become one, you are out of the casting game entirely... given that you are also part martial, not even this should really be an issue, but so be it.
---
Those below this are really rather worthless.
Heightened Magic: The only real thing that could be of worth is Forceful Spell, as an extra layer of area denial... Oh. That does actually have abusive interactions, now that I see it, if you have something that could proc every single time they move, like caltrops, which would make them take the multiple instances of the trip attempt. I was specifically thinking of Wind Blades under Fog Mastery, but there's ambiguity in that wording which allows for the damage to be taken at once, rather than in each square... and let's be fair, reasonable DMs were probably taking that assumption any way, rather than stopping movement every 5 ft to roll damage for that square.
Overall, pretty weak, unless you find an abuse target, which almost goes without saying.
Power Dynamics: There is nothing of particular note here. I mean with Severed Spell, it might allow you to potentially deal damage to otherwise immune enemies, but that is very much up for debate. So there really isn't much here.
Stable Spell literally raises the average from 3.5 to 3.67, until level 10. For d4, it does slightly better from 2.5 to 2.75. Again... not of much note. That would be 2 extra damage if you rolled 10 d4s. (Granted, by that point, you would have access to replacing 3s, which brings it up to 3.25 - basically a d6 on a d4. Best case scenario.)
Energy Modification: This is so far down the list. There is no reliable amp that you'd normally use. This could be worth flexing, if you are going under water, and don't already have a narrative way to still function under water. (And if you don't, you should probably just... find one. It's probably intended that you don't just hold your breath for the entire dungeon. That said, this talent could *be* one of those narrative methods.)
(Strike) spheres.
For obvious reasons, the gunslinger caster likes to sling attacks with their spells. It can be largely ignored, for the broader category of spells that can be enhanced, but since guns are kinda the primary identity, we should identify the spheres with (strike) talents, and rate which ones would be the best to actually play with.
Ranked by how generally usable the sphere is, as well as the interaction with (strike) - since again, you might not neccesarily be tied 100% to the strike.
Notably, as a gunslinger, you still target touch attack, while getting to have a real attack go off with your spell.
And any sphere not mentioned here is inapplicable, or I just don't care enough to mention them. Like Fate sphere's Shrieking Strike being specifically melee. (Or some other weird interpretation. It's probably a typo. Let's be honest. What's written doesn't make sense.) Or Illusion sphere's 3rd party strike talent. Because who cares.
Destruction: The obvious choice that everyone is going to at least dip into. Also most of the other Blast Shapes are also validly enhanced.
Death: Horrible early duration, but Arcanodynamics can help with that. Plus now, you also get a bit of damage to go alongside the debuffs. [mass] is validly enhanced, as a cone.
Enhancement: Scales poorly with CL, which you have in abundance. But notably, unlike Death, has a high floor, letting you apply -2 to all d20 rolls for a full minute at level 1. (Ignoring Death sphere's permanent Curse, which really should be an advanced talent.)
This also makes it a safe pick up, even without investing anything into maintaining its CL, because it's just not that important.
And yet further, as a part-martial, you definitely benefit from a fair few of these talents - simply as buffs, not even attacks. You can use a weapon that's two sizes larger than normal by making it weightless, just as one example. This is perhaps the more surprisingly decent spheres for this archetype.
Nature: Third party, but... You could Bury / Entangle your targets on hitting them with a bullet. Normally the drawback to those effects is that you basically spend your entire turn achieving very little of anything outside, but this turns them into (single target) rider effects for your attack. If I'm reading it right.
Creation: Get to alter your target. Makes for an interesting Sunder-e option. But you've already got Magnify/Minimize which is just "make the item irrelevant," making the sunder use kinda meaningless. But it does explicitly work with Scatter weapons. So you pull out your Blunderbuss of Pantaloon Growth to do this, without giving up on your damage per round (ignoring the opportunity cost of not casting another spell, because you clearly had a good reason to want to get rid of that item).
Weather: Now, this is a strange pick, but there are a (very) few fantastic shrouds you can shoot. And then plenty of good mantles. You won't be particularly useful when it comes to controlling weather (nor is that really the aesthetic we're going for), but if you're working aside another weather mage, you've potentially got something going on. (So this is a conditional ranking.)
Time: Eh... A rather middling to low tier sphere at the best of times, where you really have to pick the peanuts from the log. But some of those peanuts can be good eating.
Blood: I mean, the blood arts can be pretty cool. Plus I have some homebrew blood art talents in my signature as well.
Warp: Expensive, and takes a fair few talents to actually make useful. But the primary downside is that you use your entire turn (and a lot of resources) to maybe inconvenience a singular person. Now, you do all of that, but also hit them with an attack from your gun! (I can definitely understand wanting to teleport a dragon off your axe, but it's a dragon. I don't think you can. Just run. Or teleport for that matter.)
Mind: Rated so poorly, based on it really not seeming to fit the aesthetic. And the aesthetic is pretty much the only reason why you picked this archetype rather than incanter 20.
Life: Shoot people to heal them. Fun. Also gives you innate range on typically melee healing - letting the healer stand far enough back to not bother. (Also can be used to apply the offensive Life effects. And hurt undead. Obviously.)
Telekinesis: Let's just assume you're never going to even consider it before you can at least lift medium creatures. Once you can do that, however... It's at least usable. And it's a meaningful rider effect to your attack.
Alteration: Eh. Basically a save or lose, for the vast, vast majority of creatures, even if you don't choose to turn them into a fish. A barbarian sheep doesn't have an axe. A beholder fire elemental doesn't have eye rays (but still is a fire elemental, why did you do that - oh right). A toad witch can't cast spells (typically). The fact that you are adding a bit of chip damage onto that really does not make a lick of difference. Also I hate offensive Shapeshift for precisely this reason. It's so uninteractive.
Mana: Nope. I'm not even going to broach it. It's so dry and boring. Not even Archmage book could save the sphere from the dreadful hate that I feel for the sphere.
Special Mention:
War sphere. Because Momentum is just my pet mechanic. Also as a gish, you do benefit more from the sphere than most casters. (Even though the Strike talent is specifically not a (strike) talent.)
So.... That really doesn't narrow things down for us. Almost every sphere has a (strike) talent, no matter how useless it is, next to regular casting. And those that didn't, got third party strike talents.
So, Most obviously good picks:
Death and Destruction.
Enhancement is also a great pick.
The rest would probably just be down to your particular gunslinger's aesthetic choice.
-----
And now for the Combat spheres, since it also gets to choose from those talents.
It is getting to be 7 am. So this is just in the order that I notice them.
Barrage: Obviously, more attacks is more gooder.
But it's a special attack action, which doesn't fit with spell attack, and there's nothing that gives it a special exemption.
Beastmastery: Having a mount can be useful - assuming that you have a way to handle the animal without a move action. (Nature sphere does let you speak with animals, and speaking is a free action.)
Berserker: Just a generally good sphere. Useful special attack action (given the right (exertion) talent(s)).
Boxing: Makes for a fun stand off.
Dual Wielding: Bonus attack on swift action. Problem being that you are already using swift action for your (amps).
Duelist: Bleed-based rider effects. Some are good.
Fencing: The sneak attack / feinting sphere. As soon as level 3, you can do that without a check as a swift... action... Oh. Hmm. Amp talents require immediate actions to use. Which does sap the swift action of next round. This isn't quite as free as I though.
Still probably well worth it.
Sniper: Fantastic choice. Great talents. My favorite ranged sphere. Incompatible with spell casting, until level 7. But it's a great sphere, which you can always fall back on when out of spell points.
Scoundrel / Sniper: See review on Dirty Sniper.
Alchemy (poison): Yeah, poison works. Potentially. I've had a DM that required some sort of special ammo to dispense poisons before though. Also really not needed.
Armor stuff: Might be useful depending on your gunslinger's choices.
Expert Reloading.
Fast Draw (I think inherent to Gunslinger. Not bothering to check)
Versatile Fighter: Deadly Aim, plus occasional use of other stuff.
Weapon Master: Shift weapon damage from Piercing to slash or bludgeoning. Not particularly important.
So, some solid choices
The best ones would probably
Berseker, then Fencing, then Sniper, and lastly Beastmastery.