[Spheres of Power] Magical Focus?

[Warriorking9001]

I've been scratching my head for the longest time over how the Magical Focus Feat works, mostly because it's difficult to figure out what the actually can be used for.

Magical Focus (Drawback)

Prerequisites: Focus Casting, access to the Enhancement sphere.

Benefits: Whenever you enhance your focus, you may choose to have the effect continue without concentration without spending a spell point. This feat only applies to the spell point spent to relinquish concentration. If another feat, talent, or class feature grants you the ability to spend more spell points when relinquishing concentration to improve the effects, you still need to spend the additional spell points to gain those benefits.

What I don't get is that... What if your casting focus is not actually something that can normally be enhanced? For example the Scion of the Crown example tradition on the wiki uses a 'Crown or Coronet' as its focus. What would you actually gain from enhancing a crown or coronet?

[GM Rednal]

Depends on the enhancement you're using. If it normally can't be enhanced at all, this feat ain't gonna do a lot for you. It's more useful for things like casting enhancements on a weapon you're using as a focus.

[Warriorking9001]

That makes sense, And I see that once again the Scion of the Crown basically gets screwed over.. sorry for sounding really negative about something stupid but I really wish that I understood the point of this casting background, it's so cool but seems completely useless.

Scion of the Crown
In a small Western kingdom, the princes and princesses are taught a unique casting tradition that draws on the symbolism of permanence through ponderous recitations of their family line back generations and straight-backed demonstrations of their authority. Throughout centuries of marriages, alliances, and usurpations, this tradition has spread throughout the land – however, competition with foreign traditions and the requirement of noble blood has left it as more of a curiosity than anything else.

Drawbacks: Extended Casting, Focus Casting (a crown or coronet), Skillful Casting (Knowledge: Nobility), Verbal Casting

Boons: Careful Magic (Drawback), Magical Focus (Drawback)

1: Extended casting is.. Workable, especially with Careful magic for someone trying to, say create long-term effects (Though I'd personally throw out the enhancement prerequisite and have the spell point effect be usable on any sphere ability)

Careful Magic (Drawback):

Prerequisites: Extended Casting, access to the Enhancement sphere.

Benefit: Your slow casting style results in more firmly constructed sphere effects. You add your casting ability score modifier as a bonus to your MSD (minimum +1) for the purposes of countering or dispelling your sphere effects. You may spend an additional spell point when enhancing a creature or object to force any creature attempting to dispel or counter that effect to roll twice and take the worse result.

2: Magical Focus: It seems like this is totally useless considering the fact that I don't know what kind of enhancements you could want to put on a coronet (unless you were going to let players cheese it that they can basically gain the benefits of their coronet as if it were a piece of magic equipment).
3: Skilled Casting: Granted depending on the situation this isn't that bad, you can maximize your skills but it's not horrid. (But for someone trying to be a dedicated caster it's not all that fun to have to roll a second skill check every time you want to do so, AND this is taking your full round action when you cast a standard action spell.)

I guess I'm just salty because of the idea that this sounds SO COOL.
An ancient artifact passed down through generations, with each ancestor helping to push the next in line further than they could reach, each of them gaining power and knowledge of magic across the ages... But then reality sets in that it really is 'more of a curiosity than anything else'

[GM Rednal]

Well, there's always animated objects or bestowing intelligence. I suppose you could also slap Magic Sink on it if you're enchanting the item in another way - nothing says you can't enhance an existing magic item. XD

[Warriorking9001]

Admittedly I forgot about bestowing intelligence... But your circlet isn't making knowledge checks if you'd be bumping intelligence yourself?

also magic sink?

[GM Rednal]

Magic Sink is an (enhance) talent. It basically sucks up Counterspell effects in place of the base power or item (Counterspell being Spheres' version of Dispel Magic - if playing a game with both Spheres and Vancian, it should also work against Dispels). If you play with a tactical GM (or you're using it against a party that likes dispelling), it can be a good barrier. I think that's a fairly small chunk of games, though, so it's a pretty low priority for a power most of the time. XD

To put it another way, though, Magical Focus in general and Scion of the Crown in particular work best when you have a specific, planned build you're going for and you know exactly how you're going to use your talents. Some Casting Traditions are really only effective with a certain playstyle, and that's kind of by design. The published ones are basically samples that highlight how a tradition/theme can be done. They're not equal in power, usefulness, or ease of play, nor are they intended to be. You could easily swap the crown to an heirloom sword, enchant your blade, and be ready to go.

[Warriorking9001]

I guess that I never really thought of the fact that they might have had different amounts of playability (mostly because I could totally imagine a really strict GM taking these traditions as gospel to what exists).

Also I guess with the particular note of "Specific, Planned Builds" I will note what I originally had imagined for it.

A Living Weapon Armorist (or just normal armorist could work too) using her birthright to go off and save the world. (Although I've over time slowly started to wonder whether it would be a Living Weapon or just a normal armorist). (though admittedly I was more thinking to use this concept for a book rather than a campaign)