Preamble: Yeah, I know dark is technically before those two, but they just make sense to be done together.

Post Review Analysis: I felt a little arbitrary in this one, and kept second guessing myself. But I think this is as correct as I could be. I'd definitely like some feedback on the placements though.

Spoiler: Ratings
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Warning: This rare rating is given to talents that have truly game-breaking potential. Or at the very least need very close inspection before being allowed.

Questionable: These talents have an outsized impact, and should be considered in context before being allowed.

Acceptable: This is your standard faire advanced talent tier. Worth looking at, but rarely is it going to cause the catastrophic downfall of your campaign.

Fluffy: These little to no functional difference to a character. These are also the safest to give out as reward talents. For example, if they beat the witch who eats children, they might manifest the ability to summon items made of gingerbread.

Unknown: For when I really just don't know where it would lie. It's probably needlessly complicated. Take a good look at it yourself. I'll try and provide a cliff notes version of the talent, along with potential pit falls.


Death

Spoiler: Warning
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Greater Curse (lvl 15): Curse is already the best Ghost Strike, period, with lots of room for custom curses. This expands on that.

Greater Undead (lvl 5): Allows the permanent creation of any undead up to CR 1/2 of CL, provided it's prerequisites are met. But doesn't give inherent control. Just 2 words: Wraith Apocalypse. Let alone whatever monster happened to be printed the week before you guys leveled up.


Spoiler: Questionable
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Astral Travel (lvl 15): An upgrade to Astral Projection which allows for proper planar travel to planes adjacent to the Astral, with physical copies of their bodies. To say it could be potentially disruptive (in a fun way) is probably putting it lightly. Especially when the DM doesn't know the planology of their world. Suffice it to say that the material plane tends to border the astral, though they aren't coplanar like Ethereal / Shadowfel. If I remember right.

Corpse Forge (lvl 3): Normally necros are kept in check by never having access to anything more than you provide explicit access for. With this, they can have that level one scorpion encounter still be a viable threat indefinitely, provided they have the bodies. But if that is disruptive... talk to them. Tell them that you didn't intend to give them such a powerful creature, and that they should just let go away.

Create Haunt (lvl 5): Introduces a whole subsystem (from base Pathfinder) that probably no one's ever heard about. Probably too much work to get your head around for one talent. Love the talent though. Just makes so much sense.

Soul Trap (lvl 15): At this level more for the RP consequences of being able to permanently sequester souls into gems. Mechanically, it's fine.


Spoiler: Acceptable
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Project Spirit (lvl 10): A duration of 1 rnd / CL, and major, explicit restrictions on what you can do with it does mean that it's basically a short-range scouting tool.

Astral Projection (lvl 10): An "upgrade" to Project Spirit, but you go explicitly to the Astral Plane, which is much less useful for scouting purposes.

Create Soul Gem (lvl 5): Briefly withholds the sweet release of death from a soul. And gives some sick bling at that. Has explicit RP consequences for certain targets which could be fun.

Deadlord’s Reach (lvl 5): Gives essentially indefinite range on all of your spells, given that you have undead, which you probably do with this talent. But it's ultimately a [range] talent. Most particularly useful for scouting / harassing.

Enervation (lvl 15): At level 15, this gives 2d4 negative levels. Respectable, with plenty of high-roll situations, but hardly a game changer.

Permanent Undead (lvl 5): Generally not going to affect how it plays out, and is largely a convenience thing, compared to Sustained Necromancy.

Possession (lvl 10): Unlike the Wraith class, this leaves behind your physical body which can still be attacked. This is definitely not a get out of jail free card, but it is a nice disable against high priority targets. Though many Mind sphere effects do much the same thing. At least in combat. This has social utility, if you increase your move speed.


Spoiler: Fluffy
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Extended Command (lvl 1): Change Command Undead from min/lvl to hour/level. Which is basically fine, especially given that they now count against reanimation HD.

Hollow Body (lvl 1): Catatonic "living," rather than regular undead. Much more easily passed off as acceptable in polite society. Indeed [politically incorrect] people were used for servants, historically. Very easy to pass them off as that.

Mercy Killing (lvl 1): Only notable mechanic to it is to prevent enemy necromancers from targeting the dead, and giving you time to get back to a temple for a low-cost resurrection. But they must be both conscious and willing.

Soul Drain (lvl 5): Lets them use most ghost strikes as non-death effects, bypassing immunities (but giving a +4 to save to those with immunities). So still suboptimal to not switch to another sphere, but it is at least an option.

Summon Spirit (lvl 5): Lets you do some manipulation with spirits. Most notably Soul Drain / Soul Trap. Has a lot of information-based utility.


Destruction

Spoiler: Warning
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Extreme Range (lvl 5): Ask what the intended purpose of this is. 10 times out of 10, it's not actually that useful for normal players. But there can be intent of playing an extreme sniper that doesn't even get in on the battlefield, which can be... disruptive. And then there's the occasion where they start at one side of the map, and the monsters at the other side, and the maps are just so large that they want to actually interact, and can't do so even with Long range abilities. Might be better to just shrink the maps instead of having them take this.

Energy Cloud (lvl 10): 3 spell points on the shape alone. And with good reason, as it's got damned good AoE and inherent self-immunity to the effect. And it's got concealment as a fog cloud spell. But it is a persistent effect, which means that it gets to effectively use high-power blast types repeatedly. Even if it lasted 1 minute, that's 10 rounds of [blast type], which could have costed 10+ spell points. And that's before considering allowing multiple areas of Energy Cloud to overlap and independently do damage. Don't allow that, and ask the player to refrain from the top tier blast types, and it's probably fine. (Energetic Affliction was simply single target, but even that was too much, and it was removed in USOP.)

Blast Array (lvl 10): You can apply separate admixtures and blast types to each and every ray. Really neat. Gives Blast Salvo a reason to exist. And they managed to keep it from being a stupidly busted by saying that no creature can be affected by more than 3 non-damaging effects from this ability. This is no more than normal with G. Admixture.
Is this broken then? No. But can it slow down the game massively, with someone pulling out the "perfect" combination of blast types and damage distributions for each and every ray (up to 6 by level 10)? You bet your bottom dollar it will.


Spoiler: Questionable
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Calamity (lvl 10): This is, in all likelihood, not going to add much combat effectiveness. But it does add plenty of potential for civilian devastation. Or single handedly defeating entire armies (of the mundane, medieval, maladapted-to-magic variant). Which sure, they could already do. But just better now.


Spoiler: Acceptable
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Crystal Cocoon (lvl 10): Doubles down on the Crystals' CC. Rather effectively at that.

Grandmaster (lvl 1): Basically turns it from a funny gimmick into basically a chain-spell with range-based AoE. Generally not obtrusive.

Radiation Blast (lvl 5): It sacrifices the normal disable to potentially apply Con drain, which is relatively insubstantial until at least the third failed save. And it costs 2 spell points. This is fine, by almost any measure.

Split Blast (lvl 1): Really neat ability, actually. Lets you target different blasts for each of the targets to the limits of Admixture. Blast Salvo, though, is just a pretty bad, unless you were going for a out-of-sphere damage boost build. (And yes, you can have 2 rays of different types going at the same person to get both effects... but you can also just do that with regular admixture. This is honestly probably fluffy.)

Greater Admixture (lvl 5): Spends an extra spell point to add on another disable to the admixture. It's probably a bit overkill. Wouldn't say it's particularly broken (barring just stacking the best of the disables Destruction sphere has).


Spoiler: Fluffy
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Disintegrate (lvl 5): Makes it hard to resurrect the target, and doesn't give them a chance to be Dying. Also adds some anti-material utility as well. Has no disable like other blast types do.

Erratic Blast (lvl 1): A goofy "Chaos blast," whose only benefit is that you can potentially gain the effects of a bunch of blast types that you don't own. But randomly.

Penetrating Blast (lvl 5): There is only one reason to pick this as a talent and not just select another blast type: because you want to deal exclusively in a particular type of damage. Which isn't a great idea. But there is literally no way for this to be any better than a non-advanced blast type.