New OOTS products from CafePress
New OOTS t-shirts, ornaments, mugs, bags, and more
Results 1 to 7 of 7
  1. - Top - End - #1
    Troll in the Playground
     
    SangoProduction's Avatar

    Join Date
    Aug 2014
    Gender
    Male

    Default The Natural Order (SoP in review)

    Hey, I'm back, with so much free time it's giving me anxiety. So, I'm going to spend it looking at all the talents in the Nature Sphere, seeing what makes the cut, and what is just bad steak. USOP really helped the sphere a lot by just rounding up all the tiny little talents, and making them into big ones.

    A little note here: All the purely damage options are rated no better than Bad. This is because, for the same investment, you can instead just take a destruction sphere talent, and boom, you've blown the damage out of the water.

    Ranking system:
    (S) Super: You always want this. It's awesome.
    (G) Good: You would certainly not complain about having this, especially in the right builds / situations.
    (B) Bad: While perhaps better than nothing, you are giving up something for it, so probably shouldn't without a good reason.
    (N) No.
    <Angle brackets> around a rating indicates situational usefulness, and how good it is in that favorable situation.
    Spoiler: Geomancing packages, without other talents.
    Show
    Plant (S): Entangle (as a better version of Earth's) which even catches people trying to pass by, damage, and just grow your own crops without effort - which isn't useful at all, but is nice and flavorful. It requires plants, but just carry a potted plant, and you're fine (except for trees, those are hard to carry).
    Water (<G>): Fog would be better if, to fuel it, you didn't need to carry around 58 pounds of water. As a caster. The Freeze is better than Creation, but is much less flexible. And vortex is only really useful if you can bring its base below your height so that it actually covers an area. All in all, it's Good for aquatic campaigns
    Earth (G): A nice, solid package. It won't be anything to write home about, but it can be cool. (Do note that suffocation can take several minutes for even the weaker enemies. So yeah. That's not as strong as it looks.)
    Fire (B): Just does damage. It has very niche utility, but I don't see the point.
    Metal (N-B): It does damage, and its only utility is to use your casting to flex your weapon. Which is just another form of damage, without any benefit. If you were a martial character with magic talents, there would be much better forms of martial utility than this.
    Air (N): Absolutely nothing of use here. Or at least, of no reliable use. Maybe if you're playing an old time-y dungeon crawler, you could make use of the Purify Air. But then you run out of spell points, and curse that you chose to not take Warp to get out of the situation in the first place.


    Spoiler: General Nature Talents
    Show
    Deep Nature (S): Just drastically improves everything about the entire sphere, in terms of efficiency and action economy.
    Expanded Geomancing (<G>): On average, this isn't worth it for the packages alone. Instead, you should pick it only if you also have another talent that benefits highly from the package.
    Ranged Geomancy (B-G): Meh. Most of the time it's unnecessary. Almost all of the time, taking it twice is worthless. But it's there if you want it.
    Wild Instinct (N-B): The benefit just is not really there.


    Spoiler: Geomancy talents
    Show
    Note: The talent is rated on its best element.
    Create Nature (S): create the resources you need, often for 1 spell point. Granted Warp sphere's World in Miniature is better, but this is less investment
    Air (N): Woo, breathable air. Not as useful as you might think.
    Earth (S): get to create dirt without even spending a spell point as long as you got ground. It's even got utility of its own.
    Fire (G): You do damage. Yay. But doesn't cost a spell point. It makes the package at least acceptable.
    Metal (N): I wouldn't even say this is a net positive for the package.
    Plant (G): If it weren't so easy to carry around plants, aside from trees, which are just damage, this would be great.
    Water (?): So, you can summon in 1000 pounds of clean water every 2 caster levels. Which is fun. It also allows water to be used in a non-aquatic campaign.

    Elevated Nature (S): Normally a huge weakness of many geomancies is flying. This takes care of that without resorting to anything else. Plant and Earth spheres are real winners. Fire comes in second place, and the others get consolation prizes.

    Nature Lord (S): Improves the AoE of your abilities.

    Fog Mastery (S): The standout winner is Fire, but Plant is close behind.
    Air (B): Incredibly moderate damage, considering that even at the diameter, it's only 20 feet of fog until level 5, and can be entirely saved against. It does effectively stop projectiles at least.
    Earth (B): It lets you get vortex on flying creatures. I guess. It can let you benefit from concealment without penalty if you have special senses.
    Fire (S): Save or be bloody blinded for a minute on entering or beginning their turn in the area. Wow. Also a persistent penalty to attack after they get out. It can also be a friendly effect if you guys have firesight.
    Metal (B): So, you spend a spell point to deal damage as a unaugmented destruction sphere attack. You also don't have the option to augment the damage, and it's not adding additional penalties outside of the area's concealment. At least it is comparable because of the AoE. They will walk out of it, so don't think you will get more than 1 round of damage off with it.
    Plant (G-S): save or sickened. Can self-escalate to nauseated. And acts as glitterdust.
    Water (G): Makes it really rather difficult to pass through the fog. It can also serve as a prepared slow fall.

    Plant Mastery (G-S): Doubles the level scaling on Entangle. The rest is largely fluff, until you get Pummel Mastery and Thrown Pummel.

    Temperature (G-S): Basically here just for the Trail Blaze. Guaranteed fatigue, with a good chance of exhaust, on a 120ft line. No duration on the debuffs either, so they must rest / magically restore in order to remove it

    Pummel Mastery (G-S): Improves the action economy of the pummel, and lets them apply debuffs, which suddenly makes it really desirable to use. It also makes Plant Mastery rather useful as well. And hey, when you finish up those debuffs, you can still free action damage, if they're in range.

    Earth Mastery (G-S): You get additional radius on your earth package, and lets Nature Lord work with it. You'd have to run the numbers at the break points, to compare it with water package's ice, but this scales better than creation, for size and thickness (although creation can obviously use metals and what not). Unearth is too niche to really impact this rating.

    Thrown Pummel (<G>): You'd probably want to take this and Pummel Mastery in the same level. Without it, this mostly pointless, relative to dipping Destruction sphere. But this really adds usability

    Hazardous Terrain (B): Nothing incredible. If given for free, you wouldn't turn it down.
    Water / Earth (B): Create caltrops (that are more likely to hit) in the area. Meh.
    Plant (B-G): Free damage on a good disable. Not a game breaking amount...or even a remarkable amount. Or anything more than just an itch. But it's just there without further investment.
    Fire (B): Weird. Still just damage, even optimistically.
    Metal (N): Just damage, and even delays the damage to until someone starts / moves into the area.

    Manipulate Nature (B): Overall, just really low impact.
    Air (B): It's got the full damage potential of Destruction sphere, but with none of the disable and a maximum creature size.
    Earth (N): This is really low impact, all things considered. And due to spell point usage, its out of combat use is exceptionally poor. And it's got no fine control.
    Fire (B): Lets you move your damage. I thought you could anyway, but cool.
    Metal (N): No. Take destruction sphere.
    Plant (<B-G>): Basically a stationary endure elements, and can essentially just be used to sleep at night. If that's a huge issue in your campaign, I'd recommend Warp's Extradimensional Room instead.
    Water (B): Bull rush. Meh...it's at least AoE. But unless Create Nature / World in Miniature (warp sphere) don't extend that range, it's really freaking short.

    Purify Nature (<O>): Marked O for other. It is pointless for most D&D. But it can be cool to do some stuff like that.

    Fire Mastery (N-B): Meh. There is some moderate utility, but not much.
    Air Mastery (N): Unless you plan to be falling a lot, then give up on this.
    Water Mastery (N): It expands your viable terrain to snow lands. If that's useful, then it's useful. Else, no.
    Reforge Mastery (N): Well, it's less terrible than Metal Mastery.
    Metal Mastery (N--): Still just damage. Not even good damage. And fortify is the most pathetic ability I have seen yet.


    Spoiler: Spirit Talents
    Show
    Nature's Carapace (<S>): There are some good, if situational options.
    Air (<S>): 10% miss chance vs ranged attacks. Not ranged weapons, attacks. So you can avoid spells. And it's not concealment nor cover. This is unique and of good use, if enemies are ever ranged, let alone ranged spell slingers who attack.
    Earth (B): 10xCL temp hp, but only drains the temp HP at a rate of 1/2 CL per attack. And doesn't protect against anything that doesn't care about the DR.
    Fire (G): A damage aura is something you don't need to worry about, and only damages creatures. It's a great deterrent.
    Metal (<B>): Speed of heavy armor, protection and penalty of medium armor, and stat changes. For most casters, this is utterly worthless. Martials would prefer heavier armor. But maybe they would give it up for bonus to strength?
    Plant (N-B): Minor bonuses to natural armor.
    Water (<G>): Very niche. I would never take this for those situations, but if this happens to come along, and you need it, then nice.

    Resist Elements (S): Spell point to gain resistance / DR for 1 minute / CL, or to gain it for 1 round as an immediate action. That alone is what makes it good, so long as you have enough appropriate packages

    Wreath Of Elements (G-S): Gain an effect, or do an action as an immediate action or as a free action for a spell point. You really need to pump your CL and CAM if you want to do any of the maneuvers, as the writers said they don't include things like Improved Bull Rush. I will rate them as though you can reliably pull them off.
    Air (N): Bull rush 5 feet. Next.
    Earth (B): CL temp hp. Meh. Not terrible.
    Fire (N): CL fire damage, Ref for half. Next.
    Metal (G): Deflection bonus to AC and CMD. That can be the difference, and you don't have to use it except when it is.
    Plant (B-G): Grapple check to entangle them. Meh. Decent. If it works out, it can be -2 to hit, and a further -2 if they use dex. But you could have already entangled them if you have Plant.
    Water (G-S): Trip to drop them prone. Prone is a pretty incredibly good condition to inflict, with -4 to hit, -4 to AC, and can't used most ranged weapons, and curing it provokes.

    Nature's Movement (G): Grants special movement. Standouts are definitely Earth and Fire. Water is also useful in water. Avoid Air.
    Grant Spirit (G): It's basically a talent tax if you want to buff others. Normally you'd get a bonus talent for choosing to only buff yourself, so a net minus 2. But it's not the talent's fault.

    Destroy Element (G): Costs a spell point, but actually has decent effects. Stand outs are: Fire, for blinding and glitterdust in a cone; Dehydration for being quite comparable to Destruction, only off by 1 die size; and Plant if high HD-to-CR creatures with regen are fast healing are relevant to your campaign, or if you have a party with a lot of fort saves.

    Nature's Weapon (G): Fire lets you do damage as a pretend-martial.
    Air (B): Maybe if you want to destroy objects on a mass scale??
    Earth (<B-G>): I would actually use this exclusively for monk-style characters, as no one else can reasonable do so. The shield bonus and ignoring hardness appy regardless of the monk levels. And it's not a real shield.
    Fire (G): Unironically, this can do more damage than baseline empowered Destruction sphere, if dual-wielded. You still miss out on the disables, but it's for more damage, so it's a trade off. They even work as weapons, which has synergies in quite a few places.
    Metal (N): At best, you might be able to get 1.25x HD from BAB and 1/2 CL, using Basic Magic Training to gain CL on a full BAB user. You need at least 2x HD growth in order to keep up with CMD by CR.
    Plant (B): Eh...just cast actual entanglement. It's so much better. This is limited to once per round even.
    Water (N): No

    Nature Sight (<G>): Basically pick the one that is related to your Fog Mastery. Earth and Water are notable on their own though.

    Master of Elements (<G>): If you have some spirit talents, where some additional elements would be useful, but your spirit talents are the only places you'd have uses for them. Air is a good candidate, as there are no particularly good Air Geomancy talents, and the base package is just No.

    Speak With The Elements (B): This would have to be taken when it becomes blatantly obvious that it'll be useful.

    Friend to Wildlife (N-B): Meh, this probably won't be very useful.
    Speak With Wildlife (N-B): Even less

    Ride the Elements (N): Unless you're trying to do the infinite jump scaling build, then this is pointless.
    Instill Spirit (N): This is pretty worthless. No, instilling is not a way of cheesing drawbacks. A talent is worth a feat, and a feat is worth 2 spell points. If you're not getting at least 2 spell points (per sphere) out of the "cheesed" drawbacks at your level, you are netting a loss. Then there's the inconvenience factor, and how this is basically the charged spells drawback, but taking a talent instead of granting spell points.


    To be added later: Each sphere, holistically.
    Last edited by SangoProduction; 2020-08-08 at 07:58 PM.

  2. - Top - End - #2
    Barbarian in the Playground
    Join Date
    Sep 2014
    Location
    Alabama
    Gender
    Female

    Default Re: The Natural Order (SoP in review)

    You seem very concerned with damage and a certain specific kind of campaign to the exclusion of the sphere's utility and more general applications. The damage is mostly there for specialists and those who took the Dual Sphere feat to augment their elemental damage.

  3. - Top - End - #3
    Troll in the Playground
     
    SangoProduction's Avatar

    Join Date
    Aug 2014
    Gender
    Male

    Default Re: The Natural Order (SoP in review)

    Quote Originally Posted by Dr_Dinosaur View Post
    You seem very concerned with damage and a certain specific kind of campaign to the exclusion of the sphere's utility and more general applications. The damage is mostly there for specialists and those who took the Dual Sphere feat to augment their elemental damage.
    I did pretty much fully explain the reason why the damage parts of the sphere aren't good - it's because Destruction sphere is better at that, hitting touch and...well, doing more damage, and having some disable. The notable exception is Fire Wielder.

  4. - Top - End - #4
    Dwarf in the Playground
     
    GnomeWizardGuy

    Join Date
    Sep 2019

    Default Re: The Natural Order (SoP in review)

    It would take ages to exhaustively address this; overall I agree with it though definitely not with everything.

    One thing I definitely disagree with is that N rating on the Water option for Nature's Weapon. Self-enchanting throwing knives that you can recreate as a free action pretty much solves every problem with throwing builds for one talent. And then you can grab the Mage of Ice and Rime feat and create any weapon you're proficient with, or get free-action reloads on guns and xbows and stuff. It's a lot more powerful than you're giving it credit for.

  5. - Top - End - #5
    Troll in the Playground
     
    SangoProduction's Avatar

    Join Date
    Aug 2014
    Gender
    Male

    Default Re: The Natural Order (SoP in review)

    Quote Originally Posted by KatsOfLoathing View Post
    It would take ages to exhaustively address this; overall I agree with it though definitely not with everything.

    One thing I definitely disagree with is that N rating on the Water option for Nature's Weapon. Self-enchanting throwing knives that you can recreate as a free action pretty much solves every problem with throwing builds for one talent. And then you can grab the Mage of Ice and Rime feat and create any weapon you're proficient with, or get free-action reloads on guns and xbows and stuff. It's a lot more powerful than you're giving it credit for.
    I rated the talents as they were, with exception to the 3 tree-smacking talents - just like how the water package isn't rated based on Fog Mastery. Knives are pretty much pointless weapons. But if I were to continue onto the feats, it would get the rating based on what the feat does, which is quite notable. (I did review all the feats, but then the site just error'd out and didn't post. And that was a really long list. lol.)

    But I certainly encourage feedback.
    Last edited by SangoProduction; 2020-08-07 at 09:27 PM.

  6. - Top - End - #6
    Troll in the Playground
     
    Hunter Noventa's Avatar

    Join Date
    Apr 2007
    Gender
    Male

    Default Re: The Natural Order (SoP in review)

    It might just be that I'm looking at the wiki, but the Decompose from Destroy Element doesn't seem to specify that it's plant only, just any living creature, which really bumps up the usefulness.
    "And if you don't, the consequences will be dire!"
    "What? They'll have three extra hit dice and a rend attack?"

    Factotum Variants!

  7. - Top - End - #7
    Troll in the Playground
     
    SangoProduction's Avatar

    Join Date
    Aug 2014
    Gender
    Male

    Default Re: The Natural Order (SoP in review)

    Quote Originally Posted by Hunter Noventa View Post
    It might just be that I'm looking at the wiki, but the Decompose from Destroy Element doesn't seem to specify that it's plant only, just any living creature, which really bumps up the usefulness.
    Huh. I read that over and over again. OK, I'll adjust it, thanks.

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •