Commanding the Team (Spheres in Review)

[SangoProduction]

Preamble: Got an opportunity to play. I was interested in the commander class. I have no high hopes. I’m also quite certain that I reviewed the warleader sphere, and found it lacking. But damned if I can’t find that review. But if this turns out well, then I’ll have a new support martial class I can play.

Link

Post-Review Analysis:
The base class is neat, but definitely gets the spoiled taste by just 2 bad features. It is largely dependent upon the warleader sphere being worthwhile, or having a team with sets of options you can choose between to essentially turn into your round.

Spoiler: Class features

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Combat Training (M-G)
Adept combat training. Not incredible. Not the worst. I think the deal is that there’s already a bunch of class features, so you don’t need as many talents.

Commander (M)
Warleader bonus talent. I am initially unimpressed, going off memory, but I won’t say it’s bad.

Lingering Commands (G)
Getting their stat as extra rounds of duration? Seems like a great idea. Lowers action cost for using Warleader sphere.

Enhanced Tactics
You select one of the below abilities every even level. You can then use the select effects on any ally affected by the Warleader sphere.

Spoiler: Enhanced Tactics

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Directed Tackle ([C])
Assume you have a grapple specialist on your team. They grapple someone successfully.
You also take the War sphere to give your ally a free action grapple check for a spell point. They pin them.
And then you also give them another free action grapple for your standard action. So, in one round, an enemy, no matter their HP, is tied up with no chance to escape.
You get none of that power inherently from this, but if the team opportunity exists...

Direct Magical Assault ([S])
So long as you’ve got a useful set of spell casters with a variety of different spells they can whip out, you get to basically play pokemon, deciding which moveset needs to be used more for this given situation. Whether it’s rushing out buffs, getting a second attempt at sleeping a priority target, or getting a second fireball down range… This is very useful.
When you’ve got the team to give you those options.

Command Attack ([G])
*Looks again* Oh, Attack action. Not just an attack. You know? Martials really are nowhere near as flexible as casters. You are innately never going to get the large swathes of options from knowing your martial teammates. But with SoM, you do have some options. If your team picked those options.

Coordinated Assault / Troop Volley ([G, F])
Do you and someone else often get into melee / range with someone? Do you like the idea of opening the enemy’s defenses for your ally to exploit? Is your friend’s melee / ranged attack more useful than what you can spend your move action on? If you said yes to all of this, then this could be worth picking up.
Definitely feels less like an NPC when you also get to do something with your standard action.

Direct Charge ( [<G>] )
Assuming you’ve got a GM that has large maps

Command Movement (M)
Feels more flavorful to direct a move to a more advantageous position… than to say “Hey, go hit them a second time, dumb ass.” Largely doesn’t matter, but… I mean, you’re not giving up anything to have this.
Oh. No. I lied. This is one of the customization abilities And you actually have to select one of these tactics each even level. Well good thing I checked.

Mountaineering ([M])
So, this will probably give your team upwards of 20 or maybe even 25 climb speed for no action on your part. So…. potentially useful. If your GM likes to have particularly vertical layouts, and you don’t have fly and/or are afraid of dispel magic.
It does kind of feel like a silly “EX” ability, with nearly the effect of magic, by simply instructing people how to climb a wall. But let’s be honest, if it were just a bonus to climb checks, no matter how high, it would be worthless.

Defensive Rally (N-M)
You are now an ally magnet. By spending 1 move action, you move all affected allies 15 feet towards you. Which… I mean, if I’ve literally ever seen a situation where that’s useful, I don’t remember it.

Troop Upkeep (N-M)
Wow. I initially thought “Neat. A very slight bit of temp hp as a passive effect. Not great. Not even good. But not bad.” But it’s granted… at the beginning of your turn. Which is just so extremely inconvenient. At least make it the end of turn.

Expert Coordinator (u)
I keep thinking that I should review teamwork feats. Then I read them, sigh, dreading the idea, and don’t. But I’m certain there’s a teamwork feat that’s worth taking this for. Doesn’t take an action.

Facilitate Combo / Now’s Your Time (u)
I literally know and care nothing about this.
Rapid Repositioning (u)
I just want to say it’s bad. But I don’t feel like putting in the mental effort of justifying it more than I have in all my other mentions of combat movement.

Battlefield Specialist [N-M]
Oh, and they get another set of “pick a feature” features, but this time every… 6 levels after 3rd. Oh, ok. So it is very important to pick The right one.

Alright. I was reading through them. And they are limited to only particular terrain. If you’re not fighting in the terrain you picked, you don’t have the class feature. And just like Favored Enemy, that is ****ty design.

And like. Why not just have each terrain generically say “ignore nonmagical difficult terrain related to your specialized terrain”, rather than repeat it so many times, specifically?

I’ll just highlight particular standouts.
Desert offers very good perception bonuses.
Urban gains +2 AC… woo?
Underground minimizes the penalty for darkness.

Group Focus (M)
Either restore martial focus, or grant some nice bonuses for a round every day. Neat.

Logistic Specialty (N-M)
And another “pick a feature” feature. Neat.

Spoiler: Logistic Speciality

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Mercantile Connections (M)
By the level where you’re getting this discount, the discount probably doesn’t matter. Unless you’re buying low level consumables.

Call In A Specialist (M)
Once a week, gets to call in one of the following specialists. I was unduly intrigued because I thought it would just be any specialist. Which is rightfully insane. But it’s a weekly ability.

Medical Specialist (<S>)
Heals! Get yer heals here! Revive yer dead!

Information Specialist / Scouting Specialist (M-G)
Grants either a detailed map, or spends 5 days studying an area to see what happens. Which… I mean… you could probably just do the second one yourself.

Equipment Specialist (M)
If you need to adjust your equipment or to repair said equipment, and have no shop around, here you go. I guess. Would probably imply you couldn’t… anyway, don’t think about it

Overland March (N)
Probably doesn’t matter at all.

Call In the Cavalry (??)
You can summon in appropriate mounts for your party once per week, which just wander off during combat and come back afterwards. So strange. Hypothetically useful. But practically… not really going to make any difference in literally any situation.

Field Feeding (F)
Each day, your character forages enough to feed 10 medium humanoids per class level per day. So you are literally able to single handedly feed the village. Damage and fort save bonuses are still useful.

Secret Ways (N)
Aside from the spontaneously “finding” portals to your destination on a 45 gather information check each day, this largely doesn’t do much.

Advanced Tactician (G)
2 tactics at once. Neat.

Expert Tactician (G)
3 tactics at once. Neat. Not the worst capstone I’ve ever seen.

Archetypes

Spoiler: Fey Lord (G-S)

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Gains stuff. And loses nothing you care about.

Casting stuff (S):
Gets to be a real low caster. But loses… nothing. Combat Training is just a description of the martial talents. So you lose 15 martial talents. But gain 20 talents that can be either magical or martial. Go figure.
Should probably group in the loss of a HD size, and a BAB downgrade here too. Still positive.

Changeling Revealed (G-S)
Being not-humanoid is pretty huge. Makes you a lot harder to target with especially mental attacks, even if nothing else changes. And indeed, nothing else changes. You lose nothing for this.

Fey Affinity (G)
You wait until 3rd level to get full casting on the specialized sphere. But man, you get to give up battlefield specialist, so it’s a win.

Fey Subjects (<G>)
Replaces specialist options with city-focused specialists.

Spoiler: Deadlord (G-S)

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Better than the sum of its parts. Even through my bias, I see that this is quite a potent little archetype.

Reanimator’s Training (M-G)
Trying to ignore my minionmancy bias, it’s decent. It basically lets you spend your martial talents on reanimate talent of the death sphere. It does grant no caster level, however.

Dread Minions (G)
And this is why it doesn’t grant a caster level. You get this “special” reanimate, which takes a minute, and is affected by reanimate talents, and teamwork feats and warleader effects, and so on.
Gives up Lingering Commands, and the pointless battlefield specialist.

Call In A Dark Specialist (G)
Fairly useful specialists, actually.

Spoiler: Visionary General (G-S)

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Casting stuff (S):
Gets to be a real low caster. But loses… nothing, not even BAB or HD. Well, you lose 15 martial talents. But gain 20 talents that can be either magical or martial.

Visionary Command (N)
A pure nerf. Doesn’t affect your shouts any more. Doesn’t really matter. But by definition that’s N.

Glimpse Glory (G)
Gains an extra Divination sphere talent, and immediate full caster level for (sense) talents.

Calm Leadership (N)
No longer gets to use enhanced tactics on shouts.

Sight and Strategy (G-S)
Replaces each level of battlefield specialist with a sense talent. Which is great.

Shared Vision (N-M)
Eh. What sense would you prefer to grant to the group while you’re concentrating, but not just share for like an hour / CL? It’s not even a cantrip-like effect. Very hard to justify the use of. Like. Period. If it were a cantrip, it would be much easier.

General’s inspiration (G-S)
A constant bonus vs a 1/daily bonus? I prefer it.

Spoiler: Braveheart (G)

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A simple but true improvement, especially for martial-heavy parties.

Battle Fanfare (G)
Rather than having tactics extend naturally, they take part in a bardic performance. This lets you freely move the tactic once per round, which normally can’t be done with simple extension. I have no idea if the allowance to shout 1/round as a swift or move action is a “You do it faster” or a “You can only do it like this.” Probably the former.
The problem? You must be in bardic performance to take advantage of this. That’s a rounds/day ability, even as you level up. But by level 5, probably isn’t a big issue.

Raging Song ([G-S])
You give up the worst features of the class to gain Skald’s bardic performance. Impressive. Assuming your team is one that appreciates Inspire Rage, this is useful.

Spoiler: Bearon (M)

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Meh. I feel rather apathetic to this archetype. Could be a meme.

Essence of Bear (G)
Trades out Commander and Lingering commands for Bear sphere and Bear With Me, and a limited spell pool. Probably a neutral sphere change. And Bear With Me is one of the best talents of the small sphere.

Enhanced Bear (M)
Extra bear talent every 2 levels. Basically a more limited low caster. But doesn’t give up any martial talents. Which is neat. But you do lose the ability to play pokemon with your ally’s actions. A more reliable, but less flexible trade. Pretty neutral. I guess.
Oh, but you also gain the ability to let them use action-based bearacteristics, which they normally can’t. So they can use a swift action to gain bear arms, or the standard action to inflict confusion.

Call In A Bear (N-M)
Fairly pointless in general.

Spoiler: Other 2

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Vanguard (?)
Bloody hell man. I know that there are people who like aid another builds. And this basically wraps all of the components of said build into one class, and then some. But I can feel nothing but apathy towards it. It’s such an NPC thing to do. The improvements are slow and uninteresting.
But you can take the Helping (Purring) feat, and do it as a free action every turn, in addition to your other action options.

Noble (u)
Leadership. Literally not even bothering here.