Spheres of Power (PFRPG)

I read the glowing reviews from Endzeitgeist and thought, wow, this will be a neat system for the players. Little did I know that the players would take literally every opportunity to abuse this system that they could. They will take abilities that chop up their action economy and have them acting through and literally on top of every other player’s turn in the game.

The system itself is quite creative. It uses a power points system that moves away from what smarky players like to call “Vancian Casting”. If you want to try a power points modular system, this is a good one to go with. The problem is that this system doesn’t take game balance, IE the literal math upon which the entire game is built, into consideration. It throws balance and game economy out the window.

My recommendation to GM/DMs is to only allow this if you trust your players 100%. It is too easy to abuse, and I’ve had to learn over the course of three campaigns spread through five years that Spheres of Power/Might players will do everything they can to destroy the game balance and make the entire game about them and their single PC.

As for design, I can only give this system FOUR stars, because it just takes everything that the game was built upon and ignores it. I deducted another star because when I backed this on Kickstarter, it was sold as the ULTIMATE SPHERES OF POWER.

Ultimate is an adjective meaning “being or happening at the end of a process; final.”

This book is anything but the final collection and honestly, I felt betrayed by the creators. They continued to release supplements during the kickstarter that were not included and then continued to release supplements after the Kickstarter was concluded. I wanted to purchase the system in its final form, not the PENULTIMATE version. Be upfront with your customers next time.

In summation, an interesting system. Horrible for game balance. Too easy to abuse by power gaming players. Deceptive marketing from the designers.

Recommended to avoid at all costs, unless you want your game destroyed. Only let your friends that you absolutely trust play with it. Otherwise, avoid it.

First off, I want to lead with the fact I'm basing this on the hardcopy. Some of these issues may be changed in the PDF, but at the time of writing at least some of my issues have been corrected, but not all. First I'll address something that annoyed me, but which didn't factor into my rating.

The fiction in each chapter follows a series of characters who are jerks at best, and often evil. I'll be honest, if I'd looked at the fiction before the rules, I wouldn't have even bothered buying the book. My recommendation is to ignore the fiction.

Pros: The system is designed so that when you use magic, you use everything at full-power unless you choose to scale it back. This is awesome in that low-end powers really never go out of style. While the infinite nature of most abilities is somewhat worrying, most of the game-changing powers are gated behind Spell Points, which you'll always want, or advanced talents which the GM can restrict access to. Even without advanced talents, you can build entire characters around a single sphere and have a broad range of satisfying options, though I personally find that I always want more.

This book also contains rules for customizing requirements for different casting traditions, allowing you to inject a sort of artificial magical divide without having something as sharp as Arcane/Divine/Psychic, and uses an example that shows how to create elemental martial artists in style. The Spellcrafting system isn't well explained, but allows you to create new and unique spells sanely with your GM's permission, and both the Rituals and Incantations were a delight to read.

In the Magic Items section, the Staves and Wands are great, actually giving a reason for a mage to have a staff or wand more often. The rest of the chapter will be in Cons, which... yeah.

Cons: So, the editing of the hardcopy was not nearly as good as the concepts as a whole. Every couple of pages I noticed an extremely jarring typo, just often enough I couldn't forget about them (Ligh sphere instead of Light, DR?bludgeoning) which I believe are corrected in the PDF. The Elementalist having Frost Resistance has not been, however. I also find the classes to be... problematic. It really will depend on the group, but personally I've never had a problem with a fighter getting utterly overshadowed, but the Armorist rather thoroughly stomps the fighter, IMO. Your mileage may vary. These cost a star, and if it weren't for the magic items, the product would be 4 stars for me.

Magic Items: This is the train wreck of the book. They reiterate much of the crafting rules from the Core Rules, which is annoying but understandable, then add their own twist on them which is poorly explained, then mangle the crafting feats. Why does a door that magically locks itself need to be made with Craft Rod? Why does Craft Wondrous Item only create charged or use-per-day items? Why are all worn items like a Cloak of Resistance created with Forge Ring? The authors obviously wanted to change how item creation feats worked, but refused to change the names. Considering everything else they did, they should have just created new item creation feats and been done with it, rather than trying to redefine the definitions of the existing feats. And most disappointing of all? The one question I had, of how much an item that added to a caster's spell points would cost, isn't answered anywhere.

Summary: I love the concept, and the rules as a whole work quite well, though some abilities will require a fair amount of GM adjudication, which isn't necessarily good. However, I'm extremely wary of the classes, and the magic item section is largely a disaster.

If you get no other third party materials, get this book. It manages to both close the power gap between martial and magical characters while making mages feel even more like mages.

I never liked the "Vancian" magic system, but I do like a lot of other things about Pathfinder. My gaming group is now using this for all our campaigns.

Picked this up on a whim and it just...it works. Like the freedom of casting this gives without overpowering the player is great, and really helps solves issues with casters. Kinda wish it was easier to incorporate into alchemist and stuff, but that's a minor concern, it's an awesome book and deserves your attention.