Megnetize theory crafting (Spheres of Power)

[SangoProduction]

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, 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.

[Seerow]

I'm curious what advantage this has over someone using the same weapon size buffing shenanigans and the Telekenesis Sphere or just taking Bottle Rocket and throwing it.

Like what is Metal bringing to the table in this build that is unique? I guess it's that it is an attack action so you can vital strike multiple targets with it? But with the way Attack Actions typically work, I am not sold that Pinball lets you treat every attack as a vital strike/attack action rather than just the first attack.

[SangoProduction]

I'm curious what advantage this has over someone using the same weapon size buffing shenanigans and the Telekenesis Sphere or just taking Bottle Rocket and throwing it.

Like what is Metal bringing to the table in this build that is unique? I guess it's that it is an attack action so you can vital strike multiple targets with it? But with the way Attack Actions typically work, I am not sold that Pinball lets you treat every attack as a vital strike/attack action rather than just the first attack.

To be fair, I am not positive how it interacts with Barrage, period, and that would probably be the most definitive source of whether or not it applies. I was using the most liberal readings possible to give it the best shot. (Yeah, believe it or not, but I've literally never gotten a character that simultaneously used Barrage, got to a +6 BAB, and desperately needed damage in the form of an additional instance of their weapon damage.) Well, actually the most liberal possible reading would be that for each Barrage hit, you could proc Pin-Ball. I don't think it would actually pass by any DM though, and so really haven't given it much of a second thought.
Anyway, if contested on the fact, I would say.. yeah, it could quite possibly only apply on the singular attack from the initial attack action (which seems like the intent), and not any follow up procs. Which would sap 6d6 per attack (except the first). Bringing it down to "just" 18 * 6 = 108d6, which still beats Arcing Destruction sphere in raw damage.

Use over Telekinesis: TK kinda sucks, and is a full size category smaller at the same CL. Magnetize is an attack action automatically. TK takes a talent to do so. (Though, let's be honest, that's really not too helpful, comparatively.)
And in general, anything you try to emulate with TK is going to cost more, and perform worse. I do thankfully have an adapted version of the 5e TK sphere which I think is much better implemented. (Though this thought experiment made me see why they used logarithmic scaling...)

As for its advantages over bottle rocket / throwing: You get to use your casting ability modifier to hit. And you get decent range, but no range increments (but if Short range isn't enough just take Ranged Geomancy), and additional attacks per round with pinball. And you don't have to deal with needing to have it return to you. And overall, there's a lot less hassle. (Arguably, you don't need proficiency either, but I can see the arguments to be made to say otherwise.)

Compared to size buffing with Oversized Weapons... At CL 10 Alteration, you can go from Medium to Huge. And wield +1 size category, which would be another 2d6 per hit (I think), plus 2d6 on Vital Strike... But lacks Barrage and Magnetize for the bonus attacks. So you'd be reliant on the AoOs, which you'd no doubt have access to with your size, but still reliant on getting the AoOs procced and paying attention during combat so that you make sure not to miss it, rather than just having all the attacks up front.

Also, the metal package does have access to the ability to mildly flex damage type to account for DR, which none of the other "I'm just using a weapon" options give. (Although Destruction sphere implicitly has unless you go out of your way to pick types that don't have that.)

Oh, and I missed it but Heat / Cool Metal in Nature sphere's Reforge Mastery adds +1d6 damage to weapon attacks (though as a concentration effect, and explicitly (but also obviously) one at a time).


And there is the utility of turning enemy metallic weapons into not-weapons (returning to normal when you're done), and manipulating metal outside of combat has its obvious uses.
It's definitely much more limited than Creation sphere... But it's still usable.
Correction: Haha. No. Reforge does not work on objects attended by anyone other than yourself. There's not even a talent to allow that. That's... a bit needless.

[Ady]

Just wanted to highlight the Wiki Clarifications from the Spheres Wiki (Using Spheres of Might) regarding Vital Strike

Attack Actions and Multiple Attacks

Some talents and options allow you to make additional attacks. In general, you may only apply things that can modify an attack action once when making that attack action unless the option itself specifically says otherwise. For example, when making a Barrage or using Dual Wielding, it's normally the case that only your first attack counts as an attack action for the purpose of modifying it with talents and feats, and all the other attacks are extras that you cannot apply attack action modifiers to. This includes things like any form of Split Shot, where your first attack can be split between multiple targets. You only apply the attack action modifiers once, period, unless an option explicitly states otherwise.

The interaction with Vital Strike does sadly make this Magnetize theory-crafting scale a lot worse, but I'm personally glad Barrage doesn't get to Vital Strike on every attack; that'd be a bit much. Reading through this just made me think that it's an awful lot of effort to use when I could be making a Mageknight with the Berserker talent that lets me throw my oversized Butchering Axe, and almost everything in this theory crafting would apply there too.

I love Nature magic from a thematic standpoint, I really enjoyed playing a Frostweaver, and want to play other elemental weavers; This makes the fact that Metal sucks all the more tragic, but I feel there's just a need for a fundamental shift in design to make it a worthwhile element if they're going to keep it secondary to Destruction in damage for design purposes.

In either case, I feel very strongly that given the existing weapons in Pathfinder, it'd be far more sensible to just make the Fine object damage be a 1d4 so that a 2nd level Metal bender can chuck a greatsword-sized hunk of metal for as much damage as an actual Greatsword. It wouldn't solve Metal's problems, but it'd make it just that bit nicer.

EDIT: They also may have altered the wording on Pin Ball recently since it now says, "These additional attacks are not attack actions" on the second line.

[SangoProduction]

Just wanted to highlight the Wiki Clarifications from the Spheres Wiki (Using Spheres of Might) regarding Vital Strike



The interaction with Vital Strike does sadly make this Magnetize theory-crafting scale a lot worse, but I'm personally glad Barrage doesn't get to Vital Strike on every attack; that'd be a bit much. Reading through this just made me think that it's an awful lot of effort to use when I could be making a Mageknight with the Berserker talent that lets me throw my oversized Butchering Axe, and almost everything in this theory crafting would apply there too.

I love Nature magic from a thematic standpoint, I really enjoyed playing a Frostweaver, and want to play other elemental weavers; This makes the fact that Metal sucks all the more tragic, but I feel there's just a need for a fundamental shift in design to make it a worthwhile element if they're going to keep it secondary to Destruction in damage for design purposes.

In either case, I feel very strongly that given the existing weapons in Pathfinder, it'd be far more sensible to just make the Fine object damage be a 1d4 so that a 2nd level Metal bender can chuck a greatsword-sized hunk of metal for as much damage as an actual Greatsword. It wouldn't solve Metal's problems, but it'd make it just that bit nicer.

EDIT: They also may have altered the wording on Pin Ball recently since it now says, "These additional attacks are not attack actions" on the second line.

Yeah. I read "These additional attacks are not attack actions" as meaning that they don't proc things that happen on attack actions. I'd have to totally redo the maths on the damage. Which I don't feel like doing. Pretty sure I did multiply that in.
But yeah. Mageknight gets their casting ability to hit. Throwing is still relatively short range, but aside from that, there's really no other upside to Magnetize.