Complete Spheres of Power Play Report - Rise of the Runelords


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This last weekend my group finished the Rise of the Runelords Adventure Path while the players utilized Spheres of Power almost completely. We did use a few traditional spells when a Spheres alternative was particularly far out of reach.

The following will be my best attempt to convey my experiences with using the Spheres of Power system mixed with the normal magic system. Some of this will be a copy from previous posts. Questions encouraged, I'll try to get back to them.

Characters:

Harrower Witch: I picked the Portents patron to really nail the Fortune-Teller feel. Being able to toss cards to give my normal touch spells some range just turned into an amazing benefit at the cost of a swift action. I initially went Fate and Divination, but I quickly diversified for two reasons, organic feel for character leveling and help accommodate for different challenges. I have since put points into Divination, Fate, Destruction, Time, Warp, Protection, and Creation. This makes being a Prepared Caster an exercise in planning.

Bloodrager: Alteration (get big, fly, etc.) Enhancement (enhancement bonuses, DR pen) Destruction (ranged attack in emergencies)

Soulweaver: Life (Healing, Status Removal) Death (Undead Horde), a little bit of Alteration. Later he picked up Permanent Alteration and this was an amazing game changer.

Slayer: Actually doesn’t use any magic, he uses Path of War maneuvers a little though. Great switch hitter, lousy spell caster.

Experiences by Adventure:

Book 1:

Book 1: Fate Sphere: Divine Force was great for debuffing groups of piddling little goblins. Time: Haste definitely helped melee kill more enemies than normal. Death Sphere didn’t get too much use but the occasional zombie goblin did find traps for us. I think we all laughed for a few minutes straight as the GM tried to describe the skeleton goblin crawling into the ‘lavatory’ to retrieve the treasure, and pulling the treasure chest back out while covered in enough manure to make him look like a normal dung covered goblin. Good times. We quickly realized that the Life Sphere could definitely hold its own with a little investment and undead create great blockers, even for ranged attacks. Using Pain with Echoing Words from the Fate Sphere also let me throw around enough non-lethal damage to save us from a TPK against Nualia, and also stopped Lyrie from using a wand during the fight.

Book 2:

Book 2: The undead at the start of this didn’t prove too bad for out melee since they passed a ton of Fort saves. Nothing really remarkable occurred in the other locations before Magnimar, but the Warp Sphere and Hallow in the Fate sphere stopped the Bloodrager from killing me. Remember, Echoing Words and Hallow BEFORE you bump into Dominate effects. We stumbled into a huge fight against the cultists and prevailed. Undead are great to fight against those crazy Skinsaw guys, especially since DR against slashing and they don’t get that buff against undead targets make them great targets. The GM did turn these guys into Sphere Casters and they leveraged level damaging melee attacks against us. Their leader also summoned a pair of snakes, but we managed to kill them all with area undead creation, melee with an almost-Haste, and a lot of use of Cackle and Fortune Hexes.

Book 3:

Book 3: Enter the big enemies, big enemies mean big bloody skeleton undead minions. I have a new terrified respect for a Soul Weaver ordering the bloody skeleton ogre into melee with an Ogre Hook. This is also when the Warp Sphere and Divination Sphere started to shine. I could Warp melee into flanks, myself out of trouble, and also divine in a large enough area to find enemies before they find us. Protection was also picked up around now; it made a handy damage soak against ranged attackers. We did wander into another meat grinder of a melee against all of Hook Mountain. An enlarged Bloodrager, Slayer shooting the rock throwing giant, Soul Weaver that created undead as they died and I tried to keep up good hexes and protection shields. It was rough, but we managed.

Book 4:

Book 4: The siege on Sandpoint was fun. Protection walls forced a dragon to crash to the ground. Giants had to batter them down since a Nat 20 Strength check wasn’t strong enough to burst through. Undead minions and a flying huge Bloodrager are lots of run.

So, Advanced Magic Talents are fun. I picked up Scry and Teleport around this level. I forgot to question the giants about how to get to Jorgenfist quickly, so I tried scrying Mokmurian. He failed his save on a roll of a 2, and I was able to get a good enough idea of the area to Teleport in. As soon as we arrived he went out and we searched for a bit before the horde of giants descended on us. We decided to port back out before they arrived. Took the long way back, killed a Taiga giant, which became the most terrifying undead minion to date, and ported back in again after all access looks like it was covered. This time the boss was out so we snuck around… well, killed stuff as we tried to sneak around. To fast forward, the fight against Mokmurian really showed the difference between spell systems.

I spent almost all of my swift actions and standard actions dispelling and counterspelling the Disintegrates and Cloudkills/Fog Clouds. Invisibility is amazingly powerful, especially since there isn’t a great way to purge or see it without multiple Divination Talents. Disintegrate eventually nuked me, killing me instantly since the GM rolled a little high for damage. Finding him took quite a while and he only died since he flubbed a Defensive Casting roll. Either way, it took the party weeks to make it back to get me Reincarnated (The GM wanted to throw me a bone and mess with me, Lizardfolk Witch now. Roll with the punches)

Book 5:

Book 5: The crazy spells going out from some of the casters here have helped us realize that Spheres of Power is about creating interesting effects and utilizing the built in counters. The spells in the game are about I-Win buttons and Save-or-Die. Rarely can a Spheres spell trivialize an encounter, but an Echoing Word Hallow did prevent a room of succubi from doing anything at all… the GM just waived the fight.

Book 6:

This is when the fights got really hectic and the permanent Alteration effects really started to come alive. Permanent flight, darkvision, and bonus versus mind affecting saves is crazy. The GM decided to knock up Karzoug's champion to 11 and she was capable of dispatching our meat tank relatively quickly. Our Slayer was able to damage her effectively, but we had to find some way to keep her occupied and not hacking us into tiny bits. Walls of Force proved effective, and I quickly earned the enemies ire, getting grappled and having her teleport right behind me ready to kill me the next turn. Luckily another full attack from the Slayer knocked her out and the Necro's skeleton destroyed the Lamia holding me. Another useful strategy against single enemies I discovered was a channeled Word:Harm. Adding 8 damage to any damage they suffer can add up quick when two damage dealers can Full Attack.

Karzoug:

No monologue from a boss is great. Right down to business.

This was an intense fight. Khalib had retreated back here, and a Planetar had joined us since we spent the night resting right outside the entrance so we could level up. Prepared Casting isn't so great a drawback when you have ONE fight to prepare for, and have a decent idea what you will need.

I augmented my previous strategy with a Group and Ranged Time so I could Eject multiple enemies. Other than that, Emergency Teleport is definitely a great pick. Not sure what the other guys picked for there new stuff, but it all worked fine.

I won initiative, and had been rolling great initiative all night. I started with a gutsy move forward and an Eject Time to every giant in the room. The two Rune Giants passed, but the other two failed. Knocked two enemies out at the start, awesome. The Necro ordered his soldiers forward to guard me and his conjured Shadow to harass Khalib. The Slayer and Bloodrager engaged the Rune Giants after one giant knocked a skeleton of ours into the molten abyss.

Karzoug laid down some serious damage and buffs during his turn while Khalib tried to ruin some of our defenses against Transmutations. The Dragon flew around, not accomplishing much really, but he did some damage.

Next turn I threw out a room wide Word : Harm to speed up the fight, and managed to beat Khalib and Karzoug's SR. Rune Giants quickly dropped, Planetar died from a Wail of the Banshee, thankfully preventing me from dying since he managed to absorb enough HP from the spell. More defenses, were put up, including a Prismatic Wall and other effects, which destroyed the Greater Shadow. Dragon was out of sight of the Slayer, so he was safe for a turn.

A room wide Word:Pain started ticking serious damage every turn, and would continue long after I suspected I would die from a failed save. Karzoug hit the Necro with Maze, which would need a Nat 20 to get back, and the Slayer with a Meteor Swarm, he rolled low though. Khalib stripped another defense from the Slayer. The Slayer took out the dragon handily and the Bloodrager delayed for me.

I opened a Portal so the Bloodrager could get to Karzoug and the Slayer could easily shoot him. The ticking non-lethal from Pain caused Khalib to fall unconscious. Bloodrager beat Karzoug up and the Slayer poked him full of holes. Karzoug stepped back, Wished for his HP back and vanished.

We identified it as a Dimension Door. The two martials went to scour the area for him while I just popped off a quick Divination, easily finding him and sending in the cavalry. Karzoug gave it his best, trying to turn the Bloodrager into a harmless critter, but Khalib hadn;t done his job well enough and it fizzled harmlessly off the Dominant weapon. Two Full Attack routines later and he was finished.

Khalib was left alive to find his place in this new world and as a gesture of good will Transmuted my half-elf Reincarnated as a Lizardfolk back into a Half-Elf. A successful end to a long journey.


Sounds awesome. I wonder if I'll ever get a chance to try Spheres in actual play.

Liberty's Edge

How much, if any, of the material outside of the base book did you use?


I would also like to know if anyone in the party utilized sphere handbook expansions?


Stack wrote:
How much, if any, of the material outside of the base book did you use?

We kept strictly to the base book.

The next campaign is Curse of the Crimson Throne and as a player in it, the GM tasked me with coming up with leveled up clerics for us to fight. He also said that he would throw in some special requests for certain occasions.

I believe we plan on using the handbooks in this playthrough. If it is as successful as I hope it is (success of the magic system, not the party necessarily) my homebrew setting will use Spheres of Power as a complete replacement of the normal system.

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