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So, I've been looking over Spheres of Power a lot lately and considering incorporating it into a home game as a full replacement for normal magic. On the whole, I think the system is really solid and a great way to bring casters more in line with martial characters. My main concern, however, is that it removes a lot of the distinctions between classes.
Normally, there's a lot of flavor built into the spell list for each class. The Cleric's spell list looks a lot different than the Wizard's, for example, and the differences reflect a lot about the different flavors of the classes. The Inquisitor has a lot in common with the Cleric and Paladin, and thus has a good bit of overlap in the spell list, but also picks up a number of spells that fit the infiltration flavor, like invisibility. As spherecasters, though, you get none of that distinction. A Wizard can be just as competent a healer as a Cleric, and that feels a little weird.
It appears that there are some tools to remedy this in the form of casting traditions. However, this seems like an incomplete solution. As far as I can tell, you're only intended to have a single tradition. So, if the flavor of Wizards and Clerics comes primarily from differing traditions, how do you keep that flavor if a player decides to multiclass in each? It seems a little wrong to prevent a player from pursuing the flavor of a Mystic Theurge (though of course the actual prestige class doesn't fit with Spheres of Power at all).
Has anyone else run into this sort of dilemma? Any interesting takes on how to handle it?
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Spheres is generally open ended specifically to be flavor adjustable. The flavor is in what you allow or restrict through traditions. For example the example in the book that tells you how to straight up use the system to replicate Avatar the Last Airbender. Or look at worlds of power. The issue you're running into is you're limiting yourself to the traditions defined in the book when in the examples in the book it encourages making up some drawbacks to flavor your magic and world.
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What?! Are you kidding? It's awesome. All my players agree that they prefer it completely over the Vanician system.
It's an open little sandbox to build whatever casting you want, whether as a GM building for their world or a player building a character. It allows you to focus a character's concept and flavor extremely easily. I don't see it as losing the flavor of the class, I see it as gaining more or less unlimited possibilities for any given character and lets -you- shape what they are and their focus entirely.
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Got to agree with most of the other posters. Spheres of Power removes the rails and allows you to create a character with much more customized flavor, without forcing you to play a character hampered by someone else's baggage.
If you, as the GM, feel that your world should have different restrictions or rules to separate divine and arcane casting, it also provides tools for that in the Casting Traditions, or you can customize it in different ways.
In one of my games, magic is made up of diametrically opposed forces, so casters who use the Life sphere are barred from using Death (with the exception of a specific in-game cult represented by the Soulweaver class), characters with Creation can't take Destruction, etc. Deities have slightly altered portfolios so that different spheres fall under their influence, helping further tie Clerics to their deity's themes.
There's so much more you can do to customize your game world and the flavor of magic with Spheres of Power than with most other casting systems.
I will weight against most posters. Spheres of powers mostly locks you in on some specific flavor dictated by the sphere you chose instead of being able to be whatever the hell pleases you like in the vancian system. Spheres of power is good to play anime-based character that all tend to have their own specific shtick, but is crap if you want to actually "play with magic".
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I will weight against most posters. Spheres of powers mostly locks you in on some specific flavor dictated by the sphere you chose instead of being able to be whatever the hell pleases you like in the vancian system. Spheres of power is good to play anime-based character that all tend to have their own specific shtick, but is crap if you want to actually "play with magic".
I give you that with SoP you're limited in the sense that you're limited to the sphere(s) you choose and whatever tradition gets imposed on you, but vancian casting is limited by what spells exist. If you have an effect or concept in mind and the spell doesn't exist or isn't viable to count you're stuck. And speaking of spells that are viable, the list of viable spells is enough where many casters are cookie cutter or vie to go the magic bullet route. With SoP at the very least if you just use all your talents to gain spheres and not talents and make some spells using a spellbook to "play with magic". Even could have a tradition for prepared casting to get more spell points for it, maybe even add to the tradition that he can cast spells he doesn't have talents for.
But you are right in that unless you fanaggle the traditions you're more than likely to stick with a specific schtick. Which isn't an unfair criticism but I have the opinion that this is an incredible boon. While you can minorly simulate vancian casting with SoP, you have to fight the system to stick with a schtick with spell slots. and more opinionated; it has always bothered me that there's no rhyme or reason to learning new spells. Some things like bloodlines give you a consistent pattern, somewhat, but for the most part you just learn whatever. You want to cast Fireball, then you can. No need to learn how to cast a fire spell first or even a conjuration spell. Heck it can even be in your opposed school and you can still learn it. Looking at feat trees this is one of the most unfair parts of the entire game. I know that this has turned into an unrelated rant but once the entirety of Spheres of Powers came out I had been analyzing it for months getting more and more upset at vancian casting. I have all the core books and two fat third party hardcovers with thousands of spells and I still can't make the magus I want.
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That does depend entirely on what you mean by "magic".
Typically, in my mind, if someone is a conjurer, they are a CONJURER. They summon things. They form bindings with otherworldly beings and tap into their power to destroy their foes. A shapeshifter is a SHAPESHIFTER, solving problems by changing forms.
Magic OUGHT to have a shtick, in my opinion. Wizards are all the same after a while because arcane schools are basically just a decoration. The diviner's still conjuring minions and throwing acid and lightning, the evoker's still gazing into the future and turning into a dragon, the transmuter's still mind-controlling some enemies while weaving an illusion to scare off others...it's a buffet table. Wizards are supposed to be magical scientists, but instead of being like real-life scientists who are experts in a field like technology or biology or weather or sociology or economics, they're like movie scientists who are good at EVERY field because it's all science, right?
Spheres vs vancian is the same for me. Sphere casters are scientist who actually have a specialty. Vancian casters do everything because they have magic and all magic is fundamentally the same to them, regardless of fluff.
This is very much my opinion. I don't view the core Vancian magic system's total lack of unifying themes to be a plus. The system provided by spheres of power where you create a focused and individualized character is far superior, in my opinion.
Plus, you get exactly the tools you want, and don't end up bogged down with extra parts you don't necessarily want or need. A big example of that for me is the Shifter over the Druid. The Shifter gives you an extremely capable class that has one neat focus. If all you want is the shapeshifting, you can keep building on that vein. If you want to mix in nature spellcasting, you can grab other spheres like Nature or Weather, or conjuration if you want to summon animals to aid you. You get the tools you need to build your concept, and only as many others as you want. Plus, since you build on your spellcasting the same way a martial character builds on his feats, you end up with much better game balance, and you don't have weird nonsense like a character who has never cast a fire spell before being able to grab a 9th level spell like fiery body or meteor swarm.
One of my biggest issues with the spells in Pathfinder is that the Wizard's casting doesn't actually resemble anything outside of D&D/Pathfinder, including the works of Jack Vance that it's supposedly based off of. Spheres of Power lets you emulate pretty much anything though, whether it's Gandalf or Radagast the Brown, the spellcasting techniques in Steven Erikson's Malazan Book of the Fallen series, Jim Butcher's Dresden Files casting, Conan-esque magic, or yes, the magic you see in pretty much any anime. The Armorist class is pretty much your direct portal to playing a character like Erza Scarlet from Fairy Tail.
Of course, I do have to admit that anime-esque casting isn't unique to Spheres of Power; if you're playing a really ridiculously high-powered game that's supposed to copy Naruto Shippuden, where all the casters ninjas are using complex hand gestures and calling out the names of their spells techniques, summoning ridiculously powerful giant creatures, cloning themselves, creating their own dimensions, and creating an environment where non-casters are largely despised and looked down on except a few extremely rare exceptions, traditional Vancian casting does an okay job of that.
I give you that with SoP you're limited in the sense that you're limited to the sphere(s) you choose and whatever tradition gets imposed on you, but vancian casting is limited by what spells exist. If you have an effect or concept in mind and the spell doesn't exist or isn't viable to count you're stuck. And speaking of spells that are viable, the list of viable spells is enough where many casters are cookie cutter or vie to go the magic bullet route. With SoP at the very least if you just use all your talents to gain spheres and not talents and make some spells using a spellbook to "play with magic". Even could have a tradition for prepared casting to get more spell points for it, maybe even add to the tradition that he can cast spells he doesn't have talents for.
It also really encourages creativity. My buddy Cheapy put together a character who was meant to be a shaman who drew his power from the heavens and celestial bodies. He used the Fate sphere to represent the influence of astrological powers, grabbed Life for some minor healing abilities, and focused on Creation, using it to create meteors that crashed out of the heavens on his foes.
The whole spellcrafting thing got me thinking of campaigns where Spherecasting was the precurser to spells controlling magic in it's raw form. Also if you use some of the school-sphere translation tables you can use spellcrafting to give access to printed spells, which is neat because I like to put spells into spellbooks for players to find as loot.
But on topic; Traditions kind of make the limitations/uniqueness between casting. One thing I had planned put casting spheres into Final Fantasy color groupings with a tradition for each group. Basically your tradition restricts you to a group and you're considered a lower caster level to cast spheres outside your tradition.
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Also, you don't have to ignore a class's fluff just because they no longer operate on arcane/divine lists, considering the differentiation between divine and arcane casting lists was very arbitrary. If anything, you have more flavor because now you can make your "spell list" match your concept.
Lets say you wanna be a celestial bloodline sorcerer, gaining celestially flavored powers from your bloodline. With vancian, this gives you a few healing/restorative spells as bloodline spells, letting you dip in the flavor of being celestially influenced. With Spheres, this celestial bloodline sorcerer does not have to settle for dipping in the flavor, and can instead dive head first! They could grab Light Sphere, Life Sphere, Protection Sphere, and maybe even Conjuration to gain a celestial ally. The Character's flavor stayed the same between the two systems. The only difference is that one gets a little bit of celestial bloodline stuff, while the other is made up entirely of celestial bloodline stuff.
What I am trying to convey is that, with spheres, you aren't limited to being forced to build your own flavor. You can also use it to enhance, not dilute, the original flavor of the classes.
Awesome to see so much of a response. Thanks to everyone that provided input!
So, to be completely clear:
At least to some extent, I see the flexibility of the system as a boon. I love that you can more easily have a themed Wizard or Sorcerer. That's great. It also lets you get around some of the oddities, like Fire Domain Clerics getting to cast all of one fire spell per level each day.
Where it's breaking down for me is trying to figure out how to keep clear differences between different types of casters (not just arcane vs divine, but even things like Bard vs Wizard and Warpriest vs Inquisitor) without introducing a lot of bookkeeping or causing issues with multiclassing.
Rednal's idea of different casting traditions for each sphere sounds really great from a thematic standpoint. I'm worried that it would add a lot of bookkeeping and slowdown at the table, though, as players suddenly have to keep a bunch of different rules in mind for each sphere they take.
If I keep the casting traditions purely as a way to differentiate classes, that still leaves the question of how to handle multiclassing. There's not really a concept of an "owning" class for each sphere. Even if there were, you still have the same bookkeeping issues. Plus, with normal Pathfinder casting, you get the flavor distinctions between a Fire Evocation Wizard and a Fire Domain Cleric, and it's preserved when multiclassing. So even with an "owning" class, you'd need some reasonable way to get a sphere for both classes -- and then you have two separate traditions you can use with that sphere, which is sort of confusing.
Does that all make sense?
In one of my games, magic is made up of diametrically opposed forces, so casters who use the Life sphere are barred from using Death (with the exception of a specific in-game cult represented by the Soulweaver class), characters with Creation can't take Destruction, etc. Deities have slightly altered portfolios so that different spheres fall under their influence, helping further tie Clerics to their deity's themes.
This is a really cool idea, and I may well steal it. Thanks!
Also, you don't have to ignore a class's fluff just because they no longer operate on arcane/divine lists, considering the differentiation between divine and arcane casting lists was very arbitrary. If anything, you have more flavor because now you can make your "spell list" match your concept.
It sounds like it may come down to having a more active hand in character creation and leveling to make sure that the player's concept continues to fit the fluff of the class and how that class is intended to fit in the world.