Replacing PF w / Path of War, Spheres of Power, Ultimate Psionics, and Akashic Mysteries?


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So, I'm feeling pretty adventurous lately... Been liking what I've been reading on quite a few of some 3pp products, and now I'm seriously running a game without any of the base classes or vancian magic.

Instead, I was thinking of using Akashic Mysteries, Spheres of Power, Path of War, and Ultimate Psionics.

Mainly, I'm just curious if anyone has any experience in how all 4 of these products interact (I'd assume DSP's 3 things interact very well together, at the very least); or if anyone's run a similar game before. I like what I read on d20pfsrd.com and friend's copies (and fully plan to buy all of the above when i've got cash to burn, which should be sometime around x-mas), have re-read them at least several times so far, but I'm having some sort of mental block bringing it cohesively together in consideration for replacing a good portion of the basic system.

Anyone have any thoughts/opinions on this? If it matters, it'd be a homebrew game built from the ground-up to account for the changes (I'm not so insane as to leave vancian beasties and NPCs, though it would make for an interesting "you're all suddenly called to another world" kind of game).


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I've already been in a game where everything (races, feats, spells) except for skills from the Core Rulebook was verbotten. It was fun. Really gave us the encouragement to run new stuff, out of the box stuff. I say go for it.

Grand Lodge

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I mix a lot of 3PP togeather and never touch a core book, except for the main rules.

But you need to be careful on two on your list, IMO.
Path of War brings martials up to current Paizo Wizard damage ratio.
Spheres of Power brings that spellcasting down to Paizo martial level.

Mixing those two I find a gap in the casting / martial arena.

"=" means compatible from my playtesting

Paizo = Path of War
Paizo = Spheres of Power

Path of War /=/ Spheres of Power

If i am wrong and I might be, it's just my opinion and testing.

And while mixing magic and psionics is suppose to be interchangeable, I just don't like to mix the two. They work fine together, but I'm not a huge fan of mixing the pot.


Nn, yeah, that sounds about right. XD Spheres of Power is mostly an all-day casting style, so a lot of its abilities are less powerful than equivalent Vancian spells might be.


I don't really have any experience with Akashic Mysteries, but I've used PoW, UPsi, and SoP together with Strange Magic and the whole collection works flawlessly. When you are trying to see how different subsystems interact, remember that each new type of ability is counted as (Sp), (Su), or (Ex) (depending on the subsystem and the specific ability in question).


I'm not sure if Path of War really comes up to Wizard level power but they're significantly more over the top than psionics and spheres of power. It does make this weird paradigm where martials have prepared slots and casters have a lot of at-will abilities and a pool when you mix Path of War and Spheres of Power.

Honestly I have yet to feel confident enough about it to mix the two in the same campaign so I wouldn't know for sure. I think Ssalarn has.


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Now something really crazy would be to combine a Path of War progression with one of the others to create an ultimate monster of a class. And then make all your classes do that.

GarnathFrostmantle wrote:
Path of War /=/ Spheres of Power

It would be a nice change from Pathfinder Core to reverse the power relationship.


After hearing so many good things about it, this was the tipping point that convinced me to get Spheres of Power. :P

As to the idea of mixing these systems, try it out. You'll get a much more practical understanding that way.


Scythia wrote:

After hearing so many good things about it, this was the tipping point that convinced me to get Spheres of Power. :P

As to the idea of mixing these systems, try it out. You'll get a much more practical understanding that way.

You haven't yet? Its been on Paizo's top 10 3pp best selling list for months. Usually that's reserved for Ultimate Psionics.


Malwing wrote:
Scythia wrote:

After hearing so many good things about it, this was the tipping point that convinced me to get Spheres of Power. :P

As to the idea of mixing these systems, try it out. You'll get a much more practical understanding that way.

You haven't yet? Its been on Paizo's top 10 3pp best selling list for months. Usually that's reserved for Ultimate Psionics.

Funny enough I was in on the Kickstarter back in 2013, but I never did get around to downloading my reward copy until tonight.

Paizo Employee Design Manager

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Malwing wrote:
***I havee yet to feel confident enough about it to mix the two in the same campaign so I wouldn't know for sure. I think Ssalarn has.

Yeah, that's actually pretty common at my tables. Spheres of Power is my preferred spell casting system for arcane/divine characters, so I've used it with pretty much every DSP subsystem.

The basic layout of magic for the game I'm currently running actually looks like-

Arcane (modern traditions)- Spheres of Power exclusively

Arcane (ancient and/or primitive cultures)- Akashic Mysteries

Divine (deific)- Spheres of Power exclusively

Martial- Liber Influxus (Battle Lord, Mnemonic, Momenta), Path of War (Stalker, Warder, some archetypes and homebrew)

Psionics/Mental (alien or robotic creatures) - Ultimate Psionics

It all clicks together very well.


Malwing wrote:
Scythia wrote:

After hearing so many good things about it, this was the tipping point that convinced me to get Spheres of Power. :P

As to the idea of mixing these systems, try it out. You'll get a much more practical understanding that way.

You haven't yet? Its been on Paizo's top 10 3pp best selling list for months. Usually that's reserved for Ultimate Psionics.

I hadn't gotten it before because I don't have a problem with the magic system as is. I have one consistent magic player; he plays Sorcerer and would rather have Disintegrate than Wish any day. :P

Going tonight and reading reviews, particularly yours, convinced me to at least look into it as an option. That it is talked up for being thematic is pretty appealing.


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Oh, yeah. Spheres of Power is outstanding at supporting ideas and themes. XD I genuinely think it works best when you start your character creation process by saying "You know, it would be really cool if I could do X..."


Thanks for all the info folks. I'll have to give it a shot sometime in the near future. Soon as I can get a schedule with anyone from some old groups (currently just my fiance and I, and she can't handle reading for too long on a computer screen, maybe I can hijack a library printer next time I have a bunch of pocket change). Hoping there's a gaming club at the college I'm heading to in January, lol.

That said, I've never heard of Liber Influxus, but it sounds interesting, and I'll have to put that somewhere on my list. Strange Magic is something I've been eyeing, and really, really want that one. Almost as much as UPsi.

So far, I've tooled around with Psionics, and am fairly familiar with it. I was a big fan of Incarnum back in 3.5, so Akashic Mysteries was familiar enough to gauge. I had 0 experience with Tome of Battle, so what I've read of PoW on d20pfsrd.com was rather refreshing. Spheres of Power makes a lot of sense thematically, and reminds me greatly of an old favorite pc strategy game of mine, Age of Wonders, so it's got some nostalgia there, hah.

And, yes... While it may seem odd to some people, I think it'd be rather refreshing to kind of 'flip' the power level with SoP and PoW, if it winds up that drastic. I mean, this is what martials DO, they KILL things/DEFEND things/OTHER combat things. And in a world where magic permeates the fabric of pretty much everything in existence, why wouldn't they do as well if not better than mages and their fireballs?

Hmm... Now I'm considering polishing up my homebrew Channeling system I admittedly ripped and re-jiggered from the Wheel of Time RPG and slapping that down as well. Just because. It'd make for a logical progression of magic. Akashic veilweaving, taking the mystic energies and crudely shaping them -> Connecting directly to the source of magic for much more powerful effects, at the risk of becoming addicted to it and burning yourself out -> Refined organization and careful usage, resulting in recognizing the "Spheres" of magic and their traditions.

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