SangoProduction
2024-03-28, 07:08 AM
Recently, I made a sage build. And in a previous iteration of it, I noticed that there might, very potentially, be potential in the metal sphere. I know I basically dismissed it last time (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?611804-Is-there-any-hope-at-all-for-Nature-(metal)-sphere&highlight=metal), to basically no pushback... probably with just cause, but I think there's potential, even beyond Sage doing what Sage does and making something seem busted, when it's actually just Sage. And even then, that was only on a very liberal reading of the rules.
So, yeah. Going to try it again. Give it the full college try. Obviously, for absolute value, Destruction sphere wins. 1 talent, and you've got auto-scaling damage, possibly AoE, and a rider disable. There is really no way for Magnetize to even attempt to compete in talent-to-talent value. But can it invest more talents to get more value?
So, CL 10 in all spheres. How you get that CL doesn't matter, to simplify comparisons. Why? it's a nice, round number. (And just before the logarithmic scaling really hits hard.)
Can we get Magnetize to do 10d6, with base Ore damage being 1d8? Well, we do have a bit of a cheat here. The Butchering Axe. 3d6 damage two handed medium weapon. Same size as the greatsword (arguable, but within an order of magnitude), and the greatsword is explicitly 1 size smaller than our current magnetize limit. So we can make it up to 4d6 base weapon damage. And we don't need proficiency. (Interestingly, it appears as though they went back and explicitly made this an Attack Action. We might use that later.)
So, at a base, we are down by 1d6 damage compared to the cantrip destruction sphere. But we also have to hit full AC and lug around a giant axe we can't actually use without magic. So, not looking great so far, but if we are level 10, and using weapons like a Martial class, then we certainly invested in a weapon.... But if we bring gold into this side of the equation, we'd also have to bring it into the destruction side, and I actually know there are a few ways to invest gold in Destruction sphere. And I also do not fully know how to exploit magic weapons. So let's not, and assume that it evens out.
Strictly spheres talents then.
We've got Pin-Ball, which, for 1 SP, gives us 3 additional attacks. Although they must all be against separate targets. Chain Blast does the exact same... but 7 (touch) attacks. And that's not a high tier blast shape. But it is the most easily compared talent. Again, things are stacked against us, and that's why it's an intriguing puzzle.
But let's see if we can't get 4 * (magnetize) damage to be equal 70d6 (245 expected dmg).
Nature Lord lets us target +1 size category, which lets us target a Huge-sized Butchering Axe. So we go from 4d6 to 6d6 base damage (supposedly - hard to find a primary source on weapon die scaling in PF). Now that's a jump.
I was going to recommend the Lighten talent, but it can't target anything larger than Huge until CL 11. What a tease. So, the base damage is stuck at a "mere" 6d6, which means we can now apply Vital Strike to it (because it's an attack action)... if we assume the BAB is at least +6, which is quite possibly fraudulent, but let's assume it's not. So we've now got a 12d6 base damage. 48d6 is still a ways off from 70d6.
At CL 10, Greater Enhance Equipment gets us a +4 weapon (ignoring the to-hit aspect), that's slightly better than +1d6 damage.
Then we've got Energy Enhancement granting us anywhere from 2d6+10 to 4d6+20 damage, depending on how your DM rules on the same effect stacking. 2d6+10 is roughly 5d6, so let's see how that compares before we add another 5d6 to the damage calcs.
18d6 * 4 = 72d6
So, even with the least favorable reading, we are able to pass up the damage of an Arcing Destructive Blast. We add in the extra 5d6 from the most favorable reading, and we get 23*4 = 92d6.
And we only involved one additional sphere at this point. It's an attack action, so we can add in Barrage to add an extra 2 attacks to that (which cannot be pin-balled, one would assume, though it is not explicitly stated). So we could take that to 138d6.
Or go with Sniper sphere for the rider effects.
It gets better with Chemical Coating from Alchemy sphere, adding another 1d6+5 (around 3d6 worth of damage), or your choice of generally meaningful effects. I assume that the coating lasting for a few rounds means that it doesn't stop on the first enemy hit like poisons would. I'm unsure on that point.
So, adding that in, it's roughly equivalent to 156d6.
Nothing else from the Combat spheres really seem to be of any meaningful impact.
There are definitely ways to optimize this even further, but we've got from meaningless 1d8 damage to 156d6 damage, which can very meaningfully compare to the 70d6 damage of Destruction sphere. And it's on fewer targets, which is actually a good thing for damage focusing.
That's some good work for 3 hours' time.
Let's tally up the cost.
Nature sphere (metal package)
Nature Lord
Manipulate Nature (1 SP per use)
Vital Strike
[Enhance Equipment + Greater Enhance Equipment + Deep Enhancement] (1 SP per 10 hours)
Energy Enhancement (4 SP per 100 minutes)
Barrage Sphere
Alchemy (formulae package)
Chemical Coating
So, net total: 11 feat-equivalents and 25 SP per 10 hours, plus 1 SP per use, in order to deal 156d6 damage.
Would I ever bloody spend that many build resources to try and compete with a single-talent Destruction sphere, and have a more well-rounded character? No. But is the Metal package utterly irredemable, for what it is? No. It kind of has to be shafted precisely because it can be optimized, as I demonstrate here.
So, yeah. Going to try it again. Give it the full college try. Obviously, for absolute value, Destruction sphere wins. 1 talent, and you've got auto-scaling damage, possibly AoE, and a rider disable. There is really no way for Magnetize to even attempt to compete in talent-to-talent value. But can it invest more talents to get more value?
So, CL 10 in all spheres. How you get that CL doesn't matter, to simplify comparisons. Why? it's a nice, round number. (And just before the logarithmic scaling really hits hard.)
Can we get Magnetize to do 10d6, with base Ore damage being 1d8? Well, we do have a bit of a cheat here. The Butchering Axe. 3d6 damage two handed medium weapon. Same size as the greatsword (arguable, but within an order of magnitude), and the greatsword is explicitly 1 size smaller than our current magnetize limit. So we can make it up to 4d6 base weapon damage. And we don't need proficiency. (Interestingly, it appears as though they went back and explicitly made this an Attack Action. We might use that later.)
So, at a base, we are down by 1d6 damage compared to the cantrip destruction sphere. But we also have to hit full AC and lug around a giant axe we can't actually use without magic. So, not looking great so far, but if we are level 10, and using weapons like a Martial class, then we certainly invested in a weapon.... But if we bring gold into this side of the equation, we'd also have to bring it into the destruction side, and I actually know there are a few ways to invest gold in Destruction sphere. And I also do not fully know how to exploit magic weapons. So let's not, and assume that it evens out.
Strictly spheres talents then.
We've got Pin-Ball, which, for 1 SP, gives us 3 additional attacks. Although they must all be against separate targets. Chain Blast does the exact same... but 7 (touch) attacks. And that's not a high tier blast shape. But it is the most easily compared talent. Again, things are stacked against us, and that's why it's an intriguing puzzle.
But let's see if we can't get 4 * (magnetize) damage to be equal 70d6 (245 expected dmg).
Nature Lord lets us target +1 size category, which lets us target a Huge-sized Butchering Axe. So we go from 4d6 to 6d6 base damage (supposedly - hard to find a primary source on weapon die scaling in PF). Now that's a jump.
I was going to recommend the Lighten talent, but it can't target anything larger than Huge until CL 11. What a tease. So, the base damage is stuck at a "mere" 6d6, which means we can now apply Vital Strike to it (because it's an attack action)... if we assume the BAB is at least +6, which is quite possibly fraudulent, but let's assume it's not. So we've now got a 12d6 base damage. 48d6 is still a ways off from 70d6.
At CL 10, Greater Enhance Equipment gets us a +4 weapon (ignoring the to-hit aspect), that's slightly better than +1d6 damage.
Then we've got Energy Enhancement granting us anywhere from 2d6+10 to 4d6+20 damage, depending on how your DM rules on the same effect stacking. 2d6+10 is roughly 5d6, so let's see how that compares before we add another 5d6 to the damage calcs.
18d6 * 4 = 72d6
So, even with the least favorable reading, we are able to pass up the damage of an Arcing Destructive Blast. We add in the extra 5d6 from the most favorable reading, and we get 23*4 = 92d6.
And we only involved one additional sphere at this point. It's an attack action, so we can add in Barrage to add an extra 2 attacks to that (which cannot be pin-balled, one would assume, though it is not explicitly stated). So we could take that to 138d6.
Or go with Sniper sphere for the rider effects.
It gets better with Chemical Coating from Alchemy sphere, adding another 1d6+5 (around 3d6 worth of damage), or your choice of generally meaningful effects. I assume that the coating lasting for a few rounds means that it doesn't stop on the first enemy hit like poisons would. I'm unsure on that point.
So, adding that in, it's roughly equivalent to 156d6.
Nothing else from the Combat spheres really seem to be of any meaningful impact.
There are definitely ways to optimize this even further, but we've got from meaningless 1d8 damage to 156d6 damage, which can very meaningfully compare to the 70d6 damage of Destruction sphere. And it's on fewer targets, which is actually a good thing for damage focusing.
That's some good work for 3 hours' time.
Let's tally up the cost.
Nature sphere (metal package)
Nature Lord
Manipulate Nature (1 SP per use)
Vital Strike
[Enhance Equipment + Greater Enhance Equipment + Deep Enhancement] (1 SP per 10 hours)
Energy Enhancement (4 SP per 100 minutes)
Barrage Sphere
Alchemy (formulae package)
Chemical Coating
So, net total: 11 feat-equivalents and 25 SP per 10 hours, plus 1 SP per use, in order to deal 156d6 damage.
Would I ever bloody spend that many build resources to try and compete with a single-talent Destruction sphere, and have a more well-rounded character? No. But is the Metal package utterly irredemable, for what it is? No. It kind of has to be shafted precisely because it can be optimized, as I demonstrate here.