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Spheres of Might (PFRPG) PDF

4.50/5 (based on 6 ratings)
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Starfinder Compatible!!

There's so much more to martial combat than swinging a sword, and so much more to martial characters than waiting for the next fight.

Spheres of Might is a brand new approach to building martial characters in the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game. From the makers of Spheres of Power, Spheres of Might changes combat into a cinematic experience, replacing boring, repetitive combats with tactical decisions, dynamic exchanges, and a host of options that let martial characters be as fun to play outside of combat as they are inside.

Within this book, you'll find:

8 New Classes — including the armiger, the blacksmith, the commander, the conscript, the scholar, the sentinel, the striker, and the technician.

23 Combat Spheres — granting a host of new abilities based on concept, including alchemy, athletics, barrage, barroom, beastmastery, berserker, boxing, brute, dual wielding, duelist, equipment, fencing, gladiator, guardian, lancer, open hand, scoundrel, scout, shield, sniper, trap, warleader, and wrestler.

Full Archetype Support — both for new classes and old classes, giving a breadth of new options for creating and enjoying martial play.

Legendary Talents — for when games deserve to become truly epic, legendary talents allow games to reach beyond the gritty to truly mythical proportions, including leaping mountains, stealing skills, and bending armies of monsters to your will through sheer force of personality.

Non-Magic Support — with the help of the scholar's knowledge, the blacksmith's skills, and the technician's inventions, Spheres of Might gives a variety of options to facilitate games with little or no magic at all, greatly expanding the stories that can be told with the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game without requiring extensive re-balancing.

GM Support — including monsters from CR 1-21, along with guidelines for making the most of cinematic combat and the Spheres of Might system in your games.

NPCs for every new class to spark ideas or drop into a game.

Starfinder Conversion — giving you the information needed to adapt the system to Starfinder rules.

And much, much more!

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Are there errors or omissions in this product information? Got corrections? Let us know at store@paizo.com.

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4.50/5 (based on 6 ratings)

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Spheres of Might just as unbalanced as the Spheres of Power system.

3/5 —

Game Masters, Beware! Fun system for Players that is ripe for abuse!

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 three stars. The way the creators take action economy and literally IGNORE it is a pain in the derriere. Taking the notion of acting on top of other players' turns is just a horrible idea. Once may be acceptable, but over and over is not. It's a game designed for a group of people to play and enjoy, not for one player to take control of every other player's turns. It's honestly disgusting.

In summation, an interesting system. Horrible for game balance. Too easy to abuse by power gaming players.

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.

An Endzeitgeist.com review

5/5 —

This massive rules-book clocks in at 238 pages, 1 page front cover, 1 page inside of front cover, 1 page editorial, 2 pages of ToC, 1 page forewords, 1 page blank,1 page SRD, 1 page back cover, leaving us with 229 pages of content, so let’s take a look!

This review was requested by my patreons.

All right, we begin this massive beast of a tome with a brief piece of introductory prose to get you into the proper mindset, before explaining the basics of the system: Each character gets a series of talents, called combat talents. The number of these is defined by the class, though a feat exists that nets you an additional one. A combat talent may also be spent to gain access to a combat sphere, gaining that sphere’s base abilities and providing access to the sphere-specific talents. If a character would gain a sphere they already possess, you instead choose a talent. Saving throws, if any, are based on DC 10 + ½ BAB of the attacker + the relevant key ability modifier, here called “practitioner modifier.” If a character uses a talent, but has no class feature that defines a practitioner modifier, you default to Wisdom. Multiclass characters may use the higher of the two modifiers of their practitioner modifiers – this is important, since it retains multiclassing viability sans requiring a feat tax. Combat training nets you bonus talents that usually, but certainly not always, mirror the BAB-progression: Full BAB is equal to “Expert”, ¾ BAB-progression to “Adept” and ½ BAB-progression is equal to “Proficient.” This codifies talent-advancement in a way that is independent from the classes and easy to reference, while also providing an elegant balancing tool. Furthermore, characters may choose to exchange feat-progressions they’d gain to instead purchase Proficient or Adept combat talent progression – this, fyi, maintains compatibility with Spheres of Power.

And that’s already the basis of the system! Nope, I am not kidding! It’s that simple and elegant. That being said, there is more associated terminology that we need to define, some of which you’ll know from standard Pathfinder. It is a testament to the foresight exhibited by the authors that e.g. the Attack action as such is properly defined – something that regularly causes confusion on the various messageboards. This step is also important, since some combat talents and e.g. Vital Strike, both modifying an Attack action, can be applied to the same attack. This also properly mentions the interaction, or rather, lack thereof, with e.g. Cleave and similar Standard action-based attack forms. In short: Attack action =/= standard action. The definition here also makes clear that we can expect the book to reward flowing combat, i.e. fights that do not boil down to just trading full attacks and waiting who keels over first. “Special attack actions” should also be noted – they behave pretty much like attack actions, but only one per round may be executed. This is an important balancing caveat.

“Associated feats” denote feats whose effects can be duplicated by specific talents, which also means that the talents can act as prerequisite-substitutions for the associated feats. This is important once we get to the feat-groups that require a significant array of feats to qualify for and retains transparency in that regard without invalidating the feats themselves.

Now, the book does something really clever with action economy to combat the tendency to constantly just trade blows. The book takes a two-pronged approach here. The first would be the battered condition, which imposes a -2 penalty to CMD and also prevents you from executing AoOs. Furthermore, certain talents have different activation actions or effects versus battered targets. The condition may be removed simply enough – the Life sphere’s restore does the trick, as do effects like lesser restoration…and here, things become interesting: You can get rid of it via taking the total defense action. This obviously costs you precious actions, but it makes sense – when we picture being subjected to a battering down, like e.g. in the original Star Wars trilogy or similar media, it makes sense that you have to collect yourself. The second approach here would be the introduction of the martial focus. Any character with a combat talent or a feat granting access, gets the martial focus after a minute of rest or after taking the total defense action. HOWEVER, you may never regain the focus more than once per round. You may expend this focus as part of making a Fort- or Ref-save to have the result rolled treated as 13, and, analogue to psionics, there is a VAST amount of options that is based on expenditure of the focus. Once more, we have an action economy game here, and one that ties into the battered condition: Since you regain the focus as part of the same condition-removing action, this encourages you to actually alternate between combat strategies. Additionally, the base ability use allows you to be more reliably competent versus things that you should be capable of evading.

This modification of basic combat strategies are absolutely amazing, but the book does not stop there, not by a long shot. We also get rules-clarifications for e.g. double-barreled weapons and e.g. improvised weapon damage by size. Similarly, unarmed damage now scales independent of class, which is a huge plus as far as I’m concerned. The number of talents the character has governs the damage inflicted.

Now, the book does not just leave you in the dark regarding actual expressions of martial arts in the game world. You do not have to read and digest the whole book to start using it: Instead, we begin with a massive chapter of martial traditions, some of which are gained as part of the proficiencies of a class. This codifies basically a talent array for you, not unlike e.g. combat styles of the ranger class. One could also see them as thematic suggestions and the book provides notes on designing your own martial traditions. This section, beyond codifying mini-talent-trees, can also be seen as a perfect guideline for your own tinkering. Want to have a shield master? Check the tradition. Steppe rider? Suitable talents noted. I love this.

Now, the book contains no less than 8 new classes. If I analyze these in the level of depth that I usually go for, then this review will become a bloated 30-plus-pages monstrosity, so I’ll be a bit briefer than usual. The first class would be the Armiger, who gets d10 HD, 4 + Int skills, full BAB-progression, good Fort- and Ref-saves, proficient talent progression and may choose a mental attribute as practitioner modifier. This would also be a good time to note that classes here grant e.g. a martial tradition when taken at 1st level – this provides access, obviously, but also prevents multiclass-cheesing. The armiger is obviously inspired by games like the latest Final Fantasy, centering around the idea of customized weapons, each of which grants a sphere and talent – basically, you have combat modes hard-coded into the class, and no, you can’t cheese that with dual-wielding. Only one customized weapon grants its benefits at a given time – though TWFing with them, obviously, is still possible. The class also gains options to cycle through these special weapons, which also improve. The low general progression regarding talents is offset by the modes, making this an inspired class. I really, really adore it.

The blacksmith get d10 HD, 4 + Int skills,full BAB-progression, good Fort- and Will-saves as well as Expert martial progression, with Constitution as governing practitioner modifier. The blacksmith is obviously somewhat equipment-themed and can provide benefits to allies by finetuning their equipment, basically providing 24-hour buffs. They also are sunder/anti-construct specialists, gaining scaling bonus damage and later learning to damage natural armor/weapons. The class also has some serious crafting prowess going on and the class receives an array of smithing insights that can provide e.g. Gunsmithing, damage objects to hurt their wielders, etc. He can also learn to reforge items, which is pretty cool.

The commander gets d8 HD, 6 + Int skills per level, ¾ BAB-progression, good Fort- and Will-saves and Adept martial progression, with Int or Cha as governing practitioner modifiers. Now, there are a couple of really good, commander-style classes out there. As far as favorites are concerned, Amora Game’s battle lord from Liber Influxus Communis, and, obviously, Dreamscarred Press’ Tactician come to mind. Where the former is a leader from the front, the latter is a coordinator defined by a psionic network and psionics. The commander is, chassis-wise, closer to the latter. The commander actually has next to no overlap with both: While tangible and potent benefits for allies are the bread and butter of these fellows, we also have terrain-specific tricks and logistics specialties – these provide really uncommon and intriguing benefits that focus on adventuring beyond combat. This class is fantastic. Love it to bits.

The conscript gets d10 HD, 4 + Int skills per level, full BAB-progression, good Fort- and Ref-saves as well as Expert martial progression, governed by one of the mental attributes. This is basically the “build your own” SoM-class type class. From dual identity to banner to studied target, it allows you to customize options galore and also comes with sphere specializations, basically bloodline/domain-ish linear ability progressions that kick in at 3rd, 8th and 20th level. This is the class for the folks who want a certain skillset be viable sans requiring a ton of multiclassing shenanigans.

The scholar gets ½ BAB-progression, good Ref- and Will-saves, d6 HD, 8 + Int skills per level and proficient martial progression governed by Intelligence. Beyond being capable of providing some healing, we get flashbangs, DaVinci-style gliders, etc. – this is basically the Renaissance ideal of the universal scholar, embodied as a class. Super helpful, versatile, interesting – and perfectly capable of working in even no/low-magic games. That is not to say that this fellow is not viable in your regular fantasy setting though! I really love how the system allows you to play a really smart, versatile non-magical scholar. Another huge winner.

The sentinel gets d12 HD, full BAB-progression, good Fort- and Will-saves, 4 + Int skills per level, as well as expert martial progression, using Wisdom as governing practitioner modifier. The class, unsurprisingly, is the tank of the roster, and is an actually viable defensive base class. It is pretty technical in comparison, but comes out rather nicely. I am not a fan of the decision to be able to use Wisdom bonus instead of Dexterity to govern the one, at least pro forma, bad save of the class, but the capping of class level here prevents low level characters with universally good saves. Otherwise, the focus on challenges, ability to lock down targets etc, is nice., and stalwart, one of my least favorite abilities in all of Pathfinder (evasion for Fort AND Will) is relegated to 9th level. So yeah, I enjoy the class more than I figured I would!

The striker gets d10 HD, 4 + Int skills per level, good Fort- and Ref-saves, full BAB-progression as well as Expert martial progression governed by Constitution. The class is something of a monk-ish specialist, but that, at least in theory, sounds less interesting in the system, with monk-ish powers not more broadly available. Well, instead of just slapping several talents on the class, the striker takes a different approach: It is, in essence, a mana-bar martial. Let me explain: The striker has a resource called “tension” that increases upon taking damage, upon successfully hitting creatures, and upon moving a lot. This builds and may be expended to generate special effects, with the class gaining striker arts, which can provide unique effects or expand the ways in which you can spend the resource. And no, you can’t hoard it out of combat, and it doesn’t have a dumb per-combat mechanic. The playing experience here is really interesting and fun – but from all the classes, this is one that has the most expansion potential. Basically, you have a cool resource-management game in addition to the spheres-engine, making this a surprisingly strategic class to play.

Finally, there would be the technician, who receives d8 HD, 6 + Int mod skills per day, good Ref- and Will-saves, 3/4 BAB-progression as well as adept martial progression governed by Intelligence. This class takes up no less than 18 pages, and it is a BEAST. This is, in essence, the practical inventor to the scholar’s more theoretic approach; the sapper, the golemsmith, the pulp fantasy exploring inventor. It is the most complex class herein and the one that requires the most amount of system mastery, but it rewards you for allowing for an impressive amount of different concepts being realized even before you begin diving into the depths of the spheres system.

Now, the book also contains a ton of archetypes for your perusal: Alchemist, antipaladin, brawler, cavalier, fighter, gunslinger, hunter, investigator, magus, monk, paladin, ranger, ninja, rogue, samurai, slayer, swashbuckler, thaumaturge and even the vigilante get their due here, and that is before we take a look at the archetypes for the new classes, some of which made me smile from ear to ear. Battlefield armigers, for example, modify their chassis to instead make an improbable weapon, like an axe-bladed crossbow or the like. The iron chef blacksmith is a neat take on the battle cook, while the techsmith provides the means to poach in the technician’s playground, while doctor or slime savant scholars make for meaningful tweaks of the base engine of the class. Some of these tie in with the spheres system to a rather impressive degree, with e.g. the adamant guardian changing the focus of the sentinel from challenges to patrols, while another interacts with the berserker sphere. There also would be basically a true neutral paladin-ish variant here. Striker can opt for blackpowder or mutation specialties, and expert shadowed fists, scouts and grappling specialists are covered here as well. Technicians may elect for the mad scientist archetype (yes, you can make shrink rays…), and a suit pilot and basically a mythbuster can also be found here.

The whole classes/archetypes-chapter has been a huge surprise for me. You see, as much as I like Spheres of Power, I’m not the biggest fan of its classes. To me, they always felt like vessels to conduct the sphere-engine, not like truly distinct concepts that would make me go for them on virtue of their own engines. This book does not suffer from this limitation. I absolutely would love to play, in slightly varying degrees, all the classes introduced within this book. There are a TON of amazing concepts here and the engines presented for the classes are actually compelling and interesting BEFORE you start adding the sphere-engine! Furthermore, the classes herein allow you to do unique things that set them apart before diving into sphere-selection. That is a huge plus as far as I’m concerned. Add to that the fact that the classes actually manage to present compelling engines that reward versatile playstyles even before the main meat of the system is in place, and we have what must be called a resounding success.

Part II of my review can be found here!

Finally -

—

Using a friends PDF of this atm (waiting for print to be available). Read it cover to cover. The Legendary talents are the funnest part of this book and some of the Martial spheres are a bit weak IMO but overall lot of flavor and good design. Easily a 5 star product, on par /w Ultimate Psionics as far as content quality and a big step up in overall quality from DDS other titles. Waiting for handbooks now :)

5/5 —

Disclaimer: I backed the Kickstarter for this project and followed it since the beginning and participated in the playtesting of this material.

One thing that I would like to say upfront is that if you are ONLY planning to purchase this product in hopes that it will make martials on-par with Tier 1 classes (such as the Wizard, Cleric, and Druid), DON'T. Even if your game has replaced core vancian spellcasting with spherecasting, Spheres of Power is still without a doubt superior to martials using Spheres of Might. It has been discussed at length that it wasn't the mission of Spheres of Might to fix martials in that regard.

What I will say this product does do, is allow you to build martials who are defined not so much by their class, but how you build them, and it all starts with Martial Traditions.

In Core pathfinder, all too often you will find GM's and Players who are under the false impression that in-order to play a specific character concept, you must have levels in a base class or prestige class which matches the name. For example, if you want to play a ninja, you must have levels in the ninja class; if you want to play a samurai, you must have levels in the samurai class; if you want to play a druid, you must have levels in the druid class, etc.

Spheres of Power (the older companion product), throws this notion out the window with the use of Casting Traditions. With casting traditions you can play any spherecasting class and just choose the relevant casting tradition. For example, you could be an Armorist with the druidic casting tradition, a Hedgewitch with the druidic casting tradition, or an Incanter with the druidic casting tradition; it makes no difference.

Spheres of Might, does the same thing for martial characters with the use of Martial Traditions. Which allows you to define your character even further by defining just how your character was trained. Where you a knight? A thief? A gladiator? There are martial traditions for these and 30+ more, while also including guidelines to creating your own. And that is just the beginning.

After picking your martial tradition (which determines bonus starting proficiencies and starting combat spheres), you can further build, define, and expand your character even further by picking up spheres and talents from a list of 20+ combat spheres which cover aspects such as Alchemy, Beastmastery, Dual Wielding, Sniping, and Scouting (just to name a few).

Spheres of Might also includes Legendary Talents (which like Advanced Talents from Spheres of Power) must be approved individually by a GM. Personally, for a number of legendary talents, I feel they were locked behind a specific level unnecessarily. Most notably legendary talents such as Sever, which allows for the amputation of limbs (but is locked behind a BAB prerequisite of +11). The problem I see with this is that it infers that soldiers in war do not experience limb loss unless fighting something with 11 or more HD. It also infers that a medieval surgeons cannot amputate limbs before 11th level. Ofcourse the authors have repeatively given their explanation for such saying that it is because they don't want players to lose limbs before magic is available which can restore the condition (which I feel is a weak argument, seeing that death is a condition that players face at 1st level without affordable means or restoring that condition). However, these small gripes are not ones that I consider strong enough to reduce my rating of this product significantly.

Spheres of Might also offers a wide range of new base classes (and archetypes) which utilize Spheres of Might to its fullest potential, all of which I feel are fun alternatives to a number of Paizo Classes. For example, the Scholar class could easily fill the role of a number of classes (alchemist, bard, cleric, or wizard); whereas the rogue class could easily be replaced by the new Conscript, Striker, or Technician class (depending upon the type of rogue built).

For GM's Spheres of Might includes an array of pre-statted monsters ranging from CR 1-20, aswell as fast and easy guidelines for giving Martial Traditions to monsters.

Personally, I feel that Spheres of Might shines the most when combined with Spheres of Power, as they compliment each other nicely by lowering the power of casters, while raising the utility of martials; and while Spherecasters are without a doubt still superior to Spheremartials, this product does allow a martial to more fully enjoy his contribution to the game table.

Plenty of neat options for a different kind of Martial character

4/5 —

This book offers Martial Options for players that want less full attack and more Action Movie/Anime/Video game imagery. If you play a martial to optimize your DPR and make all the full attacks, then at the very least, the Spheres of Might provide utility, movement, and defenses, as well as something more meaningful than just regular attacks when you can't full attack.

If you want to play like the book wants you to play, with less full attacking and using all your actions to do different things, then you'll probably enjoy this, and they have some fun creative classes to take advantage of the system, as well as some archetypes and easy conversion system for the first party classes.

effects scale well, so your debuffs and bonuses can stay relevant in to the late game.

Very notably, the Guardian Sphere does a decent job of letting people play tanks.

While most of the content seems relatively balanced, there's some things that leave me scratching my head, like the sentinel class gaining evasion across all 3 saves.

All in all, I like this book and the direction it goes, but I'd like it a lot more if there were more options competative with full attacks.

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Oh, I'm not against god wizards at all... as long as it's the PCs opponents, not the PCs themselves :D

Still good to hear that I didn't spend my money for nought (= just for having stuff ^^). I already own a lot of the Drop Dead offerings, so the prospect of being able to actually use them for what I plan to do, makes me an even more happy buyer. Now I only need to actually get me to work on that damned idea I have had in my head for way too long now.

But I digress. So just as another question: Who wrote that introductory tale for SoM, because I really like this stuff?
WormysQueue wrote:
But I digress. So just as another question: Who wrote that introductory tale for SoM, because I really like this stuff?

Unless I am mistaken, I believe Adam Meyers writes the introductions. I also like the introduction, but I dislike how it constantly switches between narrative and informative texts. I would prefer if they were separated with the narrative story or informative text first, followed by the other.

I have another question about the book itself. Does it assume the reader is already familiar with Spheres of Power rules, or can someone new to them jump right in to Spheres of Might?
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Pathfinder Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber
Golurkcanfly wrote:
I have another question about the book itself. Does it assume the reader is already familiar with Spheres of Power rules, or can someone new to them jump right in to Spheres of Might?

All the necessary information is presented; Might-based spheres function a bit differently than Power-based spheres anyways, so things need to be defined, even if the general concept should be familiar to those coming in from Spheres of Power.

Paizo Employee Design Manager
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Golurkcanfly wrote:


EDIT: Quick question: I absolutely adore DDS' Luchador class. How would that work in Spheres of Might?

To a certain extent, when I wrote The Luchador it was kind of a test run for some of the basic system of Spheres of Might. The Luchador was something I put together in part as an example of what I meant when I tried to explain the concept of "cinematic combat" to Adam before it became the design directive of SoM. We also reprinted a couple luchador feats since they had already fixed certain things with grappling and CMD and there was no need to reinvent the wheel.

So overall The Luchador is very compatible, and if the book hadn't already been so dense I would have included at least one luchador archetype in there. The only stumbling block you might run into is that some of the luchador's stable talents were used as the basis for certain Wrestling talents, so you'll want to avoid overlapping them.

GM Rednal wrote:


Also, since my earlier question appears to have been missed...

Should things that grant a Shield bonus, but aren't actually shields, count for the Shield Sphere?

I thought that Ehn had answered this for some reason, but generally no, unless it has text that says "..this (item, weapon, etc.) acts like / can be used as a shield" or something to that effect. There's a monster talent for using your tail as a shield in SoM for one example, and another example would be the shield cloak wondrous item which says that it can be used "as if it were a masterwork light wooden shield". Essentially, granting a shield bonus alone isn't enough, it needs to say somewhere that it can be treated as or used as a shield as well.

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I bought the PDF, and I like what I see. I bought it for martial options, but found something I've been looking for for a while now, which is simple monster taming rules.

Glad to see most of my favorite Luchador abilities were ported over as well.

A backer here, and boy was I pleased. Especially a fire breathing true dragon that ain't weak to cold damage, finally! I didn't even expect one to appear in this book...

Anyway, I have questions too.

1. As someone may have already said somewhere else, do the spheres associated with Improvd Unarmed Strike automatically gain its original benefits (always considered armed), even with no mention of it already included in the text?

2. For sphere martials, would you recommend the whole Vital Strike chain as the main source of scaling damage? Or was I lazy and didn't find SoM's own damage scaling methods already in the book?

3. It's a mix of a request and a question; which Conscript Sphere Specialization would reap its class level+1 scaling benefits the most? As such, do the scaling skill ranks for certain spheres and talents also benefit from said feature (21 ranks at conscript 20)?
Paizo Employee Design Manager
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Lucas Yew wrote:
A backer here, and boy was I pleased. Especially a fire breathing true dragon that ain't weak to cold damage, finally! I didn't even expect one to appear in this book...

The martial monsters section was something I was very excited to get to work on and something I'm glad we fit in the book :)

Quote:

Anyway, I have questions too.

1. As someone may have already said somewhere else, do the spheres associated with Improvd Unarmed Strike automatically gain its original benefits (always considered armed), even with no mention of it already included in the text?

Yes. We had some disappearing text there that will be updated before we go to print.

Quote:


2. For sphere martials, would you recommend the whole Vital Strike chain as the main source of scaling damage? Or was I lazy and didn't find SoM's own damage scaling methods already in the book?

Not every build will need it, but it's generally going to be a strong and anticipated option for a lot of builds, yeah.

Quote:


3. It's a mix of a request and a question; which Conscript Sphere Specialization would reap its class level+1 scaling benefits the most? As such, do the scaling skill ranks for certain spheres and talents also benefit from said feature (21 ranks at conscript 20)?

Yes. The scaling ranks are also affected by the sphere specialization ability, which makes all the skill spheres strong choices for specialization since this tends to roll down to DCs, effects, and pretty much every other function of the sphere. Dueling and other spheres with damage scaling options like Sniper can also benefit from the faster damage acquisition.

Thanks for the quick answers! Speaking of iron dragons, I found out the great wyrm is missing one extra fully ranked skill (probably due to missing out the inherent bonus), and some places have typos like "kowledge"...
Shadow Lodge

Rules for adding SoM to monsters made it in?! *eyes glint and a devious smile appears* goooooood.....l
Paizo Employee Design Manager
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Lucas Yew wrote:
Thanks for the quick answers! Speaking of iron dragons, I found out the great wyrm is missing one extra fully ranked skill (probably due to missing out the inherent bonus), and some places have typos like "kowledge"...

I'll check that out and get it added to our errata docs so we can fix it before the print run. Thanks for the catch!

Dragonborn3 wrote:
Rules for adding SoM to monsters made it in?! *eyes glint and a devious smile appears* goooooood.....l

Along with new and modified monsters covering CRs 1-21! And an entire GM Toolbox section with tips for running and structuring encounters, special martial monster talents, and other handy tools. It's one of my favorite chapters and not just because I wrote a significant portion of it :)

I got to playtest a lot of the monsters we included in the book, and several monsters that didn't end up being included, and it was some serious fun. One of the first martial monsters I threw at my group was a hill giant with the power forward tradition and it really forced the party to get smart about how they needed to handle the fight.
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Note, if you want to run a Conan style campaign with SOP and SOM, it's actually pretty easy. Use the basic talents from SOM, but for any wizards in SOP, you can allow them only a few basic talents, with most of their powerful spells being used as incantations. A wizard may have a few incantations of Monster Summoning VI ready, but if he's caught unprotected, or exhausted (say, because he's preparing to summong one of hte dark gods Conan wizards were so fond of), he'll be largely restricted to basic sphere talents that aren't really overwhelming against a sullen eyed barbarian's good steel.

Hi Guys
How many pages is it?
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J4RH34D wrote:

Hi Guys

How many pages is it?
I like using pages to give me an idea of cost per page

238

Papa-DRB wrote:
J4RH34D wrote:

Hi Guys

How many pages is it?
I like using pages to give me an idea of cost per page
238

Thank you

Pathfinder Adventure Path, Lost Omens Subscriber; Pathfinder Battles Case Subscriber

With associated feats, if I take the Barrage sphere I get two basic things. First I get PBS then I get the Barrage ability that has Rapid Shot as an associated feat. Do I still need to take Rapid Shot as a feat if I would like to take a Full Attack to take advantage of a Haste spell and the extra shot from Rapid Shot? Or by virtue of having the Barrage sphere I can opt to either; Attack action Barrage or Full Attack with Rapid Shot?

Reading the Scholar's Glider ability, and the first part of the second paragraph makes it sound like a 6+ level Glider can be used to fly for multiple hours. Yet the next sentence makes it sound like the Glider is limited in uses per day that can't last longer than 1 hour.

Is there something I'm not understanding?
Paizo Employee Design Manager
SilvercatMoonpaw wrote:

Reading the Scholar's Glider ability, and the first part of the second paragraph makes it sound like a 6+ level Glider can be used to fly for multiple hours. Yet the next sentence makes it sound like the Glider is limited in uses per day that can't last longer than 1 hour.

Is there something I'm not understanding?

Hmmm, it looks like there was some editing done either for space or clarity that ended up muddying the waters a bit. I'll try and get it straightened out so it reads as it should but essentially it's supposed to work like this-

At 1st level the scholar makes a glider that allows her or an ally to glide and fall safely for up to 1 + Int mod rounds per use. This is single use for an ally, but the scholar can use hers up to 1+Int mod times without breaking it.

At 6th level the glider can now be used to fly up to 30 ft. per round with average maneuverability; we had a minutes per class level clause associated with this that must have been eaten or edited out at some point, but same deal as the normal gliders, this option is single use for anyone other than the scholar while the scholar gets multiple uses based on her Intelligence.

At 10th level the fly speed improves to 60 ft. with good maneuverability and this is where the hours/level duration is supposed to kick in.

So there's two trackers involved- how long each use can last, and how many uses a given glider grants. It's always single use for an ally, kind of like if the scholar was a wizard casting a feather fall or fly spell with a contingency trigger on the ally, while the scholar who created the glider is familiar enough with how it operates to use it multiple times without breaking it.

I'll be having a quick discussion with the group to clarify how we're going to clean this up again for the print version so it both reads and works as intended.

***EDIT***

Here's the new text I proposed for the errata, let me know if this helps clarify function-

Aeronautics:

The scholar has learned how to construct a basic
gliding apparatus that can be quickly assembled and disassembled
for easy use. It takes the scholar 1 hour to assemble the
glider, and it has a number of hit points equal to the scholar’s
class level, hardness equal to twice her Intelligence bonus (minimum
2), and weighs 10 lbs. The scholar may attach the glider to
her or an ally’s pack or clothing as a standard action; while it is
attached, the character can make a DC 15 Fly check to fall safely
from any height without taking falling damage. When falling
safely, they may make an additional DC 15 Fly check to glide,
moving 5 ft. laterally for every 10 ft. they fall. Allies may use a
glider in this manner once for a maximum number of rounds
equal to 1 + the scholar’s Intelligence modifier before it breaks,
and the scholar can use the glider in this way a total number
of times per day equal to her Intelligence bonus (minimum 1)
for the same duration; any attempt to exceed this usage results
in failure and causes the glider to break, forcing the scholar to
spend an hour building a new one before it can be used again. Only one glider can be attached to a single creature at a time.
At 6th level, the scholar and any ally given a glider are able to fly with a speed of 30 ft. and average maneuverability. The duration that the glider lasts during a single use increases to a number of minutes equal to 1 + the scholar’s Intelligence bonus. In addition to using the glider to fall safely, the scholar can use the glider to fly a total number of times per day equal to 1+ her Intelligence bonus; any attempt to exceed this usage or remain in flight after the glider’s normal duration results in failure and causes the glider to break, forcing the scholar to build a new one before it can be used again. Allies using a glider still suffer breakage after the first usage.
When the scholar reaches 10th level, her gliders instead grant a fly speed of 60 ft. with good maneuverability and may now stay aloft during a single use for a number of hours equal to 1/2 the scholar’s class level (rounded down).

Pathfinder Adventure Path, Lost Omens Subscriber; Pathfinder Battles Case Subscriber

In addition to my Associated Feat question for Cone of Death, Barrage adv talent, does it no longer have the scaling BaB requirement? Being able to take it 3 times pre lvl 10 is amazing and terrifying.

Okay I have a question.

One of the things I adore about spheres of power is that you can just plug and play spheres into any spellcasting class you want barring dealing with specific class features that don't play well with sop.

So how about spheres of might? How easy is it to plug and play a som version of random class that catches my eye?
Pathfinder Adventure Path, Lost Omens Subscriber; Pathfinder Battles Case Subscriber

SoM seems much easier to just blend in than SoP does to me. I still have confusion on how some things work for SoP that I'll eventually need to figure out, but SoM is pretty straightforward for the most part
Paizo Employee Design Manager
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Robert Jordan wrote:
In addition to my Associated Feat question for Cone of Death, Barrage adv talent, does it no longer have the scaling BaB requirement? Being able to take it 3 times pre lvl 10 is amazing and terrifying.

I bumped your previous question over to Adam and haven't heard anything back, sorry. I'll bump him again and let him know that this question could use addressing as well since I don't know if that's an intentional update or if something got trimmed for space that shouldn't have.

StSword wrote:

Okay I have a question.

One of the things I adore about spheres of power is that you can just plug and play spheres into any spellcasting class you want barring dealing with specific class features that don't play well with sop.

So how about spheres of might? How easy is it to plug and play a som version of random class that catches my eye?

SoM is very dippable and accessible. You can simply spend feats on talents, or you can take a feat replacement option to gain a talent progression. Because martial combat is different than magic and isn't so much a subsystem as it is a core part of the game, you can't just trade one class feature out for another (like trading vancian spellcasting for spheres casting and a spell pool), but we did our best to make it as accessible to as wide an array of characters as possible.

@Robert Jordan: Dang, you've found things that need to be updated. Taking barrage doesn't let you make full attack Rapid Shots, and by that logic I guess it should be removed as an associated feat.

For Cone of Death, you should only be able to take that once 'per 5 bab you possess'; we'll add that in our pre-print update.
Ssalarn wrote:
Here's the new text I proposed for the errata, let me know if this helps clarify function-

Yes, it does.

Pathfinder Adventure Path, Lost Omens Subscriber; Pathfinder Battles Case Subscriber

No problem you guys always deliver. Barrage and Sniper are the two spheres i paid the most attention to during the llaytest, while my wife will be sad about not being able to drop army slaying salvos at level 6 I am glad it was just an editing error.

So, since it sounds like we're definitely getting a pre-print update... do we have an estimate for when that might be?

(If not, that's also fine. XD I know that sometimes it's hard to give even a rough range until you're sure of what you need to do and how long it'll take. I'm just curious.)
Paizo Employee Design Manager
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GM Rednal wrote:

So, since it sounds like we're definitely getting a pre-print update... do we have an estimate for when that might be?

(If not, that's also fine. XD I know that sometimes it's hard to give even a rough range until you're sure of what you need to do and how long it'll take. I'm just curious.)

I believe that we're hoping to have both the Champions of the Spheres PDF and the Spheres of Might print option out before the end of December, but of course the amount of corrections that end up needing to be made will inevitably affect that since there's a delay between scheduling the print run, receiving and approving the proof, and finalizing the order, let alone shipping and receiving.

We're definitely working to keep that window between now and the time people have print copies in their hands as narrow as possible while ensuring the quality of the final product though.
Paizo Employee Design Manager
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I wanted to pop in real quick as we go into the weekend and thank everyone for a great first week! We hit silver in less than a week on DriveThruRPG and the response from everyone has been phenomenal. Thank you all for your feedback and support!
Shadow Lodge

I started reading the PDF and, after skimming the Armiger, got to Blacksmith and found out I could stand by my earlier assumption that it could be a decent class even without Spheres.

Excellent job. :)

Minor:

The Savant (Thaumaturge) archetype's Masterful Insights should probably have the following text: "This replaces Master Invoker."

Sorry if it's been brought up already, but the talents in the statblocks of sample characters needs another pass. In a majority of cases it's a minor issue where the talent listed doesn't quite match its actual name. For example, the armiger Justyna has Barrage's Vigilante Sharpshooter and Lancer's Opportune Impale, where it should be Impalement, while the blacksmith Blake has Beserker's Leg-Breaker vs. Leg-Smasher.

In other cases it's a little more confusing, where the talent harks back to a name from the playtests: the conscript Aira has Fencing's Create Opening which, I remember digging through the copies I had made of the playtest materials in my trash bin and finding out what its new name was, but it has no obvious reference by which to figure it out.
Paizo Employee Design Manager
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White Unggoy wrote:

Sorry if it's been brought up already, but the talents in the statblocks of sample characters needs another pass. In a majority of cases it's a minor issue where the talent listed doesn't quite match its actual name. For example, the armiger Justyna has Barrage's Vigilante Sharpshooter and Lancer's Opportune Impale, where it should be Impalement, while the blacksmith Blake has Beserker's Leg-Breaker vs. Leg-Smasher.

In other cases it's a little more confusing, where the talent harks back to a name from the playtests: the conscript Aira has Fencing's Create Opening which, I remember digging through the copies I had made of the playtest materials in my trash bin and finding out what its new name was, but it has no obvious reference by which to figure it out.

We're looking into it. Several of the sample characters were created by Kickstarter backers who paid to have their characters featured in the book, so in all likelihood we received their characters, verified them against an older copy of the rules before the post-playtest review phase where some of the talents and names where changed, and marked them as completed, and then didn't catch the changes as they were moved to layout. Regardless of how it happened, we'll work on getting it all cleaned up and run an update ahead of the print release.

Shadow Lodge

Does anyone else feel like the Gun Kata talent does not live up to it's namesake? I hear Gun Kata and think Equilibrium but can't use the talent to recreate that.

I guess I could use it with a charge, but then I need a specific gun anyway and those are expensive, so at low-levels where it would be great because you only have one attack... you can't use the smack and shoot option.

I think it does just fine really. Cleric John just seems like a high level character beating down, for the most part, lots of low level mooks.

Movie aside, there are invariably going to be some things that work much better in some settings than others, mainly ones where guns are easily available.

To use in a setting like Golarion; start with a class that gives Gunsmithing. (That's the feature that starts with a junky gun, right?)
Pathfinder Adventure Path, Lost Omens Subscriber; Pathfinder Battles Case Subscriber

With Custom Training from the Equipment sphere if you are a race that has Weapon Familiarity and therefor treat an exotic weapon with X in it's name as martial does it count as an Exotic weapon using 2 weapon slots from Custom Training? Or does it count as 1 weapon as it is Martial for your race?
Shadow Lodge
Wraithguard wrote:

I think it does just fine really. Cleric John just seems like a high level character beating down, for the most part, lots of low level mooks.

Movie aside, there are invariably going to be some things that work much better in some settings than others, mainly ones where guns are easily available.

To use in a setting like Golarion; start with a class that gives Gunsmithing. (That's the feature that starts with a junky gun, right?)

I suppose my desire for it to be more than a single attack is so you'd actually use it after getting iterative attacks. That seems to be a design choice though. With Sniper it makes perfect sense, but for other Spheres where you want to make more attacks, like Dual Weilding... the most you get is two? Is this to make Barrage(which is awesome but resource intensive) look even better?

I'm pretty sure one of the fundamental design goals of Spheres of Might was "make people able to do things besides full attacking". XD So... yeah.
Shadow Lodge

Then things should be as good as Full Attacking at all levels, yes?
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I think that depends on what you define "good" as. Ssalarn noted earlier that they weren't really trying to 'beat' things like the raw damage of the Fighter. Rather than being "same damage, plus effects" it's closer to "less damage, but with effects to compensate".

To put it another way, it's sort of like going from "100% Damage" to "75% Damage + 25% Debuffs". For example...

You start with the Fencing Sphere, and use Fast Feint to fake your target out as a Move Action. Adding Feint Strike lets you shoot them before you run over (or stab them after you get close, I suppose), giving you a bonus attack along with your movement. After running up, you use your Gun Kata as an attack action, adding the Face Strike exploit from the Fencing Sphere (basically giving your whole party concealment against that foe), then adding the Duelist Sphere and its Debilitating Injuries talent to further reduce your foe's accuracy. That's three attacks, plus movement, plus a pretty decent accuracy debuff to the enemy and some extra bleed damage for fun.

It may not have the raw power of full-attack archery, but I definitely don't think it's going to be a bad result for a round.
Shadow Lodge

Hmm... I suppose I'm going to need to either play around with the Spheres a little more or wait for the Hardback and let a friend take a crack at it.

So far Impale and Open Hand seem like they might have some synergy. Tripping to lower AC is going to help Impale hit easily, for example.
Paizo Employee Design Manager
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Robert Jordan wrote:
With Custom Training from the Equipment sphere if you are a race that has Weapon Familiarity and therefor treat an exotic weapon with X in it's name as martial does it count as an Exotic weapon using 2 weapon slots from Custom Training? Or does it count as 1 weapon as it is Martial for your race?

It should count as 1 since you treat it as a martial weapon.

Dragonborn3 wrote:


I suppose my desire for it to be more than a single attack is so you'd actually use it after getting iterative attacks. That seems to be a design choice though. With Sniper it makes perfect sense, but for other Spheres where you want to make more attacks, like Dual Weilding... the most you get is two? Is this to make Barrage(which is awesome but resource intensive) look even better?

You can stack up multiple attacks, you just don't do a traditional full attack routine. My gun kata monk character from a playtest game used Monk Weapon Training, Gun Kata, and the Dual Wielding sphere to make up to 3 unarmed strikes and one pistol attack off of his main attack action. His normal attack routine was unarmed strike (attack action), pistol attack (swift action), unarmed strike (monk weapon training), unarmed strike (dual wielding), using the last unarmed strike to attempt to trip the opponent. If he tripped the opponent and they provoked an attack of opportunity trying to stand up on their turn, he'd use Dual Opportunity to hit them with two more unarmed strikes.

Dragonborn3 wrote:
Then things should be as good as Full Attacking at all levels, yes?

What do you mean by "as good as"? If you mean "deal as much damage with an attack action as a full attack" then that's that not "as good as" that's "better than". Like I showed above, you can get in a really strong multi-hit routine using our system if that's the way you want to go. A character who wants to make a build that gets in a dozen attacks a round can do so, they're just going to be using AoOs and other options to set up the routine.

For an attack action that involves debuffs and such though? No, it really shouldn't be dealing as much damage as a full attack. You're getting the advantage of debuffs, enhanced positioning, personal buffs, and other effects. If you got all that and still dealt as much damage as a full attack, we would have failed in our attempts to make a balanced system. So if you want to make a whole bunch of attacks, you can build to do that, and your damage will be on par with a traditional full attacker (potentially just a teensy bit better than some full attacks since you can more consistently take advantage of your AoO attacks than a traditional combatant). If you're building for a lower number of hits with a larger number of debuffs and abilities, you're making that trade between utility and damage. Generally you're going to finish the fight in the same timeframe thanks to the enemy being weakened and made more vulnerable by your techniques. The other thing is, even if you find yourself in a position where you literally can't debuff or reposition to any greater effect, where the enemy is lying broken and bleeding directly in front of you while surrounded by your allies and all you need to do is finish it, we didn't take away your option to just full attack out if that's the thing you think will work best. A conscript in one of my games took just the Dual Wielding specialization and spent his bonus and regular feats to branch out into full attack TWF options and ended up being ridiculously strong thanks to the fact that he was either moving and making 2-4 attacks with debuff riders, or standing still and dropping 6 attacks in a blender routine.
You're always going to have effective and strong options using Spheres of Might, but "effective and strong" doesn't necessarily mean, and shouldn't mean, "always deals as much damage as a full attack".

An idea for a tradition:

Disciple of Andre
Equipment: Rock Toss
Brute
Wrestling
Variable - choice of : Equipment: Unarmored Training, Open Hand: Counterbalance or Barrrom: Barrom Expert (tables, chairs etc).
Paizo Employee Design Manager
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Lord Mhoram wrote:

An idea for a tradition:

Disciple of Andre
Equipment: Rock Toss
Brute
Wrestling
Variable - choice of : Equipment: Unarmored Training, Open Hand: Counterbalance or Barrrom: Barrom Expert (tables, chairs etc).

Wouldn't it be better to name it after Fezzik?

Ssalarn wrote:
Lord Mhoram wrote:

An idea for a tradition:

Disciple of Andre
Equipment: Rock Toss
Brute
Wrestling
Variable - choice of : Equipment: Unarmored Training, Open Hand: Counterbalance or Barrrom: Barrom Expert (tables, chairs etc).

Wouldn't it be better to name it after Fezzik?

That could work. I was sort going after Andre's whole thing - I know in wrestling he would lean on and just push people around (hence the brute, not even thinking "brute squad") the the Barrom Expert. But yeah...

The new title:
Fezzik's disciples.
Paizo Employee Design Manager
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Lord Mhoram wrote:
Ssalarn wrote:
Lord Mhoram wrote:

An idea for a tradition:

Disciple of Andre
Equipment: Rock Toss
Brute
Wrestling
Variable - choice of : Equipment: Unarmored Training, Open Hand: Counterbalance or Barrrom: Barrom Expert (tables, chairs etc).

Wouldn't it be better to name it after Fezzik?

That could work. I was sort going after Andre's whole thing - I know in wrestling he would lean on and just push people around (hence the brute, not even thinking "brute squad") the the Barrom Expert. But yeah...

The new title:
Fezzik's disciples.

I'd just never seen him throw a rock at someone outside of the movie :P

It's a fun discipline though, I'm really glad the team took to the idea. I originally wrote them up as a possible compromise for how we could give martial classes the equivalent of the two bonus spheres SoP characters get without overloading them at 1st level, and everyone hadn't even finished approving the change before they were in there making their own new martial disciplines. I think we cut like a dozen out of the book solely because we had to draw a line somewhere.
Ssalarn wrote:
I think we cut like a dozen out of the book solely because we had to draw a line somewhere.

Upshot: you have another $0.99 product.

Paizo Employee Design Manager
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SilvercatMoonpaw wrote:
Ssalarn wrote:
I think we cut like a dozen out of the book solely because we had to draw a line somewhere.
Upshot: you have another $0.99 product.

I can almost guarantee that will be happening.

Pathfinder Rulebook Subscriber

How's the gish book looking so far?
Paizo Employee Design Manager
Kryzbyn wrote:
How's the gish book looking so far?

Adam's pushing to wrap up playtesting and start getting everything packaged up this weekend so it can go into layout.

Pathfinder Rulebook Subscriber

Sweet :)
You feeling good about the content?
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