Spheres of Power is a completely new magic system for the Pathfinder RPG and other D20 systems, built from the ground up to provide an easy and intuitive approach to concept-based magic. Spheres of Power lets you adapt magic to fit your needs rather than forcing games to adapt to the magic, and contains everything players and GMs need to bring a multiplicity of concepts to life through a system of at-will abilities, talent-based magic, and a ki-like system of Spell Points.
Included in this book you will find:
20 Magic Spheres—including alteration, creation, conjuration, dark, death, destruction, divination, enhancement, fate, illusion, life, light, mind, nature, protection, telekinesis, time, war, warp, and weather.
11 New Base Classes—including the thaumaturge, the elementalist, the mageknight, the armorist, the occultist, the eliciter, the soul weaver, the fey adept, the symbiat, the hedgewitch, the shifter.
Advanced Magic—including rituals, spellcrafting, advanced talents, and incantations. These systems may be implemented in part or en masse to grant a gaming table complete control over how magic interacts with their setting.
Casting Traditions—allowing both players and GMs to customize not only their characters, but even the entire concept of magic itself.
Magic Item Creation Rules—adapting the entirety of magic item creation to the new system.
NPCs for every new base class to spark ideas or drop into a game.
Guilds and Organizations to sprinkle throughout your world.
Sample Worlds, ready to play or to provide guidelines for adapting Spheres of Power to a variety of different world and game ideas.
And much, much more!
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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.
Flexible magic system that allows casters to be casters
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.
Not sure if this has been covered or not, but when using Animate Object on a weapon does it use its own damage die, damage type, and critical range or the stats listed in the appendix?
Like, say I animated a longsword. Would it use the damage qualities of a small animated object as listed in the appendix and do 1d3 bludgeon, or 1d8 slashing/piercing damage as per its stats in the equipment section?
They should probably follow the stats listed in the appendix, modified as necessary based on how the CP were spent. So, 1d3 bludgeon. (The entire Animated Objects system is basically balanced around those stats, so allowing higher damage dice at no additional cost wouldn't be particularly fair.)
They should probably follow the stats listed in the appendix, modified as necessary based on how the CP were spent. So, 1d3 bludgeon. (The entire Animated Objects system is basically balanced around those stats, so allowing higher damage dice at no additional cost wouldn't be particularly fair.)
Plus said objects' having rudimentary "intelligence" would keep them from being very effective from a lore perspective.
If I create a Pathfinder Fighter level 1, who discovers his talents and then takes Armorist without a "casting tradition" from 2nd level on, is there a chance of "arcane spell failure" if he wears heavy armor?
Can you point to a place where it says that in the rulebook, either way?
No, there is no chance of spell failure from wearing armor in that situation. Spherecasters in general do not suffer from ASF unless they've taken the Somatic Casting drawback at least once. Unless my search function is messing up, the only place spell failure is mentioned in the main book is in the drawbacks section.
If I create a Pathfinder Fighter level 1, who discovers his talents and then takes Armorist without a "casting tradition" from 2nd level on, is there a chance of "arcane spell failure" if he wears heavy armor?
Can you point to a place where it says that in the rulebook, either way?
-- david
Page 8 of Spheres of Power:
Quote:
Unlike spells, however, sphere abilities do not require gestures or magic words, nor are they divided between Arcane and Divine sources (although Chapter 5 of this book details Casting Traditions - a way for players and GMs to re-introduce these particulars and distinctions).
To quote from the Core Rulebook:
Quote:
Arcane Spell Failure Chance: Armor interferes with the gestures that a spellcaster must make to cast an arcane spell that has a somatic component. Arcane spellcasters face the possibility of arcane spell failure if they're wearing armor. Bards can wear light armor and use shields without incurring any arcane spell failure chance for their bard spells.
Casting an Arcane Spell in Armor: A character who casts an arcane spell while wearing armor must usually make an arcane spell failure check. The number in the Arcane Spell Failure Chance column on Table: Armor and Shields is the percentage chance that the spell fails and is ruined. If the spell lacks a somatic component, however, it can be cast with no chance of arcane spell failure.
And finally, from page 153 of Spheres of Power:
Quote:
Likewise, while arcane casters from the core Pathfinder system must chant, gesture, and provide material to cast spells and cannot use magic effectively while wearing armor, an SoP caster requires little more than a thought to create a magical effect, regardless of her situation.
So yeah, spherecasting is not arcane, not a spell, and does not by default have somatic components unless your casting tradition reintroduces it (as described on page 158).
If I create a Pathfinder Fighter level 1, who discovers his talents and then takes Armorist without a "casting tradition" from 2nd level on, is there a chance of "arcane spell failure" if he wears heavy armor?
Can you point to a place where it says that in the rulebook, either way?
-- david
Spheres of Power, pg 8, paragraph 2, 3rd sentence wrote:
Unlike spells, however, sphere abilities do not require gestures or magic words, nor are they divided between Arcane and Divine sources (although Chapter 5 of this book details Casting Traditions--a way for players and GMs to re-introduce these particulars and distinctions).
Spheres of Power, pg 153, paragraph 2, 3rd sentence wrote:
Likewise, while arcane casters from the core Pathfinder system must chant, gesture, and provide material to cast spells and cannot use magic effectively while wearing armor, an SoP caster requires little more than a thought to create a magical effect, regardless of their situation.
Spheres of Power, pg 153, paragraph 3 wrote:
Casting traditions are comprised of general drawbacks, sphere-specific drawbacks, and boons. General drawbacks and boons must be selected when the caster gains their first level in a casting class, while sphere-specific drawbacks are gained when the character first gains the sphere they modify.
Spheres of Power, pg 158, General Drawback: Somatic Casting wrote:
You must gesture to cast spells--a process that requires you to have at least 1 hand unoccupied. When using magic, you cannot wear armor heavier than light without incurring a chance of arcane failure.
You may select this drawback twice. If taken a second time, you cannot wear any armor or use a shield without incurring a chance of arcane spell failure.
I hope these quotations from the book help to answer your question.
Thanks guys. Those are the ones that I found except for:
Quote:
Spheres of Power, pg 153, paragraph 2, 3rd sentence wrote:
Likewise, while arcane casters from the core Pathfinder system must chant, gesture, and provide material to cast spells and cannot use magic effectively while wearing armor, an SoP caster requires little more than a thought to create a magical effect, regardless of their situation.
Just a heads up, Wizard's Academy has been released which is an Adventure module for Spheres of Power and includes a small Bestiary including 100 monsters.
In fairness, a lot of people new to the system probably wouldn't have thought to check the Rituals page. o wo/ ...Which is probably why it's linked to at the end of the section you linked to.
The other handbooks are currently in production, with a few currently being playtested (you can get access to that - and the books as soon as they release) by supporting the Patreon campaign. ^^
I don't think Warp is currently being made, but the goal is to expand EVERY Sphere, and if you like the system, they're definitely worth supporting.
Is this book ever going to be available through Paizo again? I ordered a copy on November 2nd. On the order summary it says Product Not In Stock, but it doesn't (and didn't) say that anywhere on this page for the book >_<
What? I am so sorry; in the past, Paizo has informed me when they were out of stock and needed new books. I will get them new books immediately, and until then if you want a hard copy I know the d20pfsrd.com sture still has them in stock.
Honestly, I'm impressed with how quickly you responded, DDS.
We've been getting by with the wiki stuff, but I'm a book guy at heart. Love having the real thing.
Traditions: Hedgewitches draw power from their traditions, blending magic and hidden knowledge to powerful effect. A hedgewitch chooses two traditions at 1st level, gaining their class skills, tradition benefts, tradition powers, and their tradition masteries at 20th level. In addition, each tradition grants access to a number of secrets the hedgewitch may choose whenever she gains a secret.
When I get a secret (all even levels), do I gain a secret from each tradition (ie. 2 secrets) or do I only get a secret from one of the traditions (ie. 1 secret)?
I'm pretty sure you select one secret each time you gain them. The key bit is "In addition, each tradition grants access to a number of secrets the hedgewitch may choose whenever she gains a secret."
Basically, the two traditions combine to give you a selection of Secrets, from which you choose one at a time.
Been working on a buch of Sphere based Rot Shamen for a campaign I'm working on. Their Magic Tradition generally involves plucking vermine from their clammy dead flesh and either eating them or throwing them at targets. Most them of them are using a mix of Death and Alteration Spheres
One of my named villains for the campaign can use Alteration to turn a PC into a swarm of insects and reduce their Int to 2.
I'm looking forward to describing how an insect burrows into the victim's flesh and then their entire body begins to fall apart into worms, maggots and roaches.
I've been reading through this book, and so far I love it. I was curious how a weather specialist would play out, so I started reading through the Weather sphere...and I'm wondering if I'm missing something. It looks very underpowered for being effective in combat. It takes several rounds to get to higher severity weather, whose effects often aren't felt for *hours*. The maximum effectiveness of the weather sphere seems rather weak.
The effects of the Wind section are detrimental to ranged weapons, flames, and a DC 10 STR check is pretty easy to overcome. It seems pretty ineffective until you get to Tornado.
Cold/heat damage are measured in terms of 1d6 per hour to start with, capping at 3d6 per round. You don't even deal damage per round until severity 6. Granted, you can fatigue opponents, but it still feels lacking.
Precipitation by itself deals in line of sight penalizing, and at higher severity has the nebulous effects of "flash flood" and "great flood", lacking some description like "creatures made of clay or fire take X damage" to help players and DM's figure out what those terms do. Heavy snow seems somewhat useful, but only occurs after multiple hours of snowfall, which is almost irrelevant to combat.
The lightning strike from storm is random unless you get the accompanying talent, and caps out at 10d8 per round at around character level 12-14, which is decidedly underwhelming in an isolated context.
Am I taking the wrong thought process in how the fantasy of a weather mage should play out? Am I missing some beneficial interactions, or the utility of being able to concentrate to increase weather severity while doing something else?
My experience is that Weather isn't particularly helpful for the first few levels - not unless you seriously focus on it. Even then, yeah, it's mainly intended for broad area effects - small AoE's are Destruction's thing. You could definitely put on a show and try to convince people you're stronger than you are, though. XD
For a truly weather-focused character, you probably want to use Spellcrafting to add new effects.
Perhaps I'm just too used to the very explicit spell effects spelled out (no pun intended) in the spell description in the core rulebook. The main advantage of that method is that you don't get into an argument with the DM on abstract physics methods. Focusing in on the difference between a flash flood and a great flood...is there a difference? It doesn't describe how deep the water is. Can you sail a boat in one but not the other? The ability to use wind to fell trees seems potentially useful, but you pick an ability because it WILL be useful, not because it might be useful. How often does the need to wreck a city arise?
As I was reading, it seems like this sphere is most useful when you use it to cancel out difficult weather...but that's just not interesting or fun.
It's true that there aren't too many situations in which a massive effect is better than a relatively focused one. XD You generally have to invest a lot into Weather to make it worthwhile - and maybe do good planning with the terrain, too.
Maybe I'm still missing something, but how did it ever get worthwhile? On the surface I don't see anything that looks particularly worthwhile about specializing in the Weather sphere. Maybe it'll get a handbook to flesh it out more? I love the idea of a weather mage, but when you're measuring your damage output in terms of 1d4/d6/d8 per minute or hour, something seems wrong.
In my estimation, the Weather sphere is more a "strategic" tool than a "tactical" one. That said, though, I seriously dig its range of abilities. SoP has let me build a sorcerer that feels more like a druid, honestly, but once he gets Greater Weather and hits 7th level? --> It's on! Grab a few thematic Destruction talents, and he's golden.
Given that they've done ones for most of the others, that's a definite.
I would say Weather's drawback isn't that it can't do immediate combat stuff, but that it's radius and duration (after spending a spell point) don't provide it with much punch on a tactical or RP scale. It might make a good anti-army or RP-challenge sphere (you could shut down supply movements and trade with snow or rain, or moderate the weather to help a community survive) if it could affect more area for longer.
And it's good for there to be SOMETHING on the large tactical scale, whether that's creating nasty weather for PCs approaching a fortress or building your own bunker and attacking a big force outside from the sky. ^^ It's not something super in-demand for every group, but then, neither are most of the Spheres. And variety is good.
Though the real fun requires talents like Greater Size (up your radius to 400 + 40 ft per caster level) and Lengthened Weather (cause it to last for 1 hour per rather than 1 minute). Vanilla still seems a bit anemic, though that's not only a problem with Weather (some of the Nature packages, like Fire, aren't wowing at base).
Think of it as a sphere for the kingmaker system and its expansions. Would work really well as a supporting wizard for a fantasy empire and the character gets to concentrate on the kingdom instead of individual RP/adventuring.
Think of it as a sphere for the kingmaker system and its expansions. Would work really well as a supporting wizard for a fantasy empire and the character gets to concentrate on the kingdom instead of individual RP/adventuring.
Even then it still seems a bit middling: With only the base talent you're only affecting 220-600 ft across at a time, depending on Caster Level. 880-2400 ft with Greater Size. So starting out you're maybe a really convenient sprinkler system or can make a single castle/town always the same temperature (remember you need Lengthened Weather to not either be concentrating or spending a spell point every 1-20 minutes). Things don't get really glorious until 10th caster level and Advanced Talents are allowed and you can use climate to affect 4 miles across.
I'm not saying Weather is bad. It just occurs to me that the scale is set oddly: either you can affect a large area for combat size, but it takes time to get to a useful level, or you can not worry about how long it takes but not affect a really significant area.
If it were me I'd give the base sphere the option of reducing the size of the area to allow for some kind of concentration of the effect.
I agree that Weather feels a bit more plot-y than some other Spheres. XD The Creator's Handbook introduced the Diagram Magic drawback, which feels great for quests like 'Find the diagrams being used to attack the town with storms and stop the casters'. It's not for every game, but then, the same could be said of most of the Spheres.
It's not for every game, but then, the same could be said of most of the Spheres.
Maybe SoP could maybe do with some more examples of how spheres can fit into various settings. I remember way back in the kickstarter they gave some examples like emulating Jedi, so more of those might be useful. (I should note I don't own Worlds of Power.)
I think that's done well enough with the sample casting traditions. ^^ There's plenty of ideas and inspiration there for making spherecasting fit almost any setting.
Well, the Technician class lets you build your own vehicle. You could also adapt the Beastmastery sphere for vehicles easily enough. Anything other than a personal vehicle may be better handled by something else, though. XD
I think that's done well enough with the sample casting traditions. ^^ There's plenty of ideas and inspiration there for making spherecasting fit almost any setting.
If that were the case I'd say the sample traditions would occasionally tell you that there were spheres you're not allowed to take. In some cases it not just how you cast but what you cast that the setting detail dictates, but there's not much example of that.
The default of the system is that any caster can take any sphere. Anything beyond that is a house-rule, so I'm not surprised that none of the sample traditions have that limitation.
The flexibility of the system I think is one of my favorite things about it. There is a lot of room to customize the bits and pieces for your setting. Between the Casting and Martial traditions you can create a really strong feel for a part of your world.
(EX: a guide of thieves who have gladiatorial knife fights and who snort ground up mana stones for magic)
Anything beyond that is a house-rule, so I'm not surprised that none of the sample traditions have that limitation.
Yes, but what I'm talking about is examples with stronger direction. Not designed for use in every game/campaign.
The Unified Traditions in Champions of the Spheres are like that. The Death Knight for example requires you to take the Death Sphere and Cryptic Strike instead of letting you just take any 2 spheres.
Well, DDS has been known to add new drawbacks and traditions and such in the expansion content. ^^ I suppose you can always ask if they can try to work something like that into the next release, just for the example.
