[Drop Dead Studios] Spheres of Might Open Playtest

[Quarian Rex]

Drawbacks are supposed to be like archetypes for spheres - providing alternate takes on a core concept - not a way to get more talents.

I get what you're saying here, and even agree to a point, but I have to side with some of the other commenters on this issue. Sometimes the restrictions make sense. Bloody Slasher getting Long Cuts makes sense and someone focusing on bleed would go for that regardless. This reinforces the specialty instead of restricting it. Other times it pigeonholes characters in completely unnecessary ways.

Warleader is the best example of this. Can you think of a leader who directs his men without bluster and spittle flying from his mouth? Who, with but a word, directs his troops to victory with the brilliance of his tactics, never having to raise his voice? Yes you can. Can you think of such a leader who can do so without making his troops move (flee) faster? Even if you've never heard of Miles Teg, Andrew "Ender" Wiggin, or Shiroe (from Log Horizon) I know that you can.

Can you think of a leader who is incapable of advanced tactics yet carries the day on pure testicular fortitude? Yes you can. Can you think of one who does so through charisma and brashness instead of fear? If you have seen Kamina from Gurren Lagann then you sure as hell can. The current limitations on Barbarism mean that I can't make a spiritual successor to Kamina in SoM.

Also, comparing drawbacks in SoM to those on SoP is a false equivalency I think. Where SoP offered many, many, options to gain extra talents through niche limitations, that was partially balanced against the 'talent tax' that many spheres have. While one of the design philosophies of the Spheres books seems to try to get away from such things, it is only partially successful. There are many magic spheres that require extreme investment to get passable results, and the system as a whole has evolved to reflect this, with every new book providing more talents (each often requiring far more talents to be useful), and more drawbacks in order to afford them.

SoM seems to largely avoid this. With the exception of Beastmastery, the Might spheres are generally a big list of pretty even side-grades, each adding additional options to the base ability yet nothing really being required. All of the drawbacks for SoM are no mere niche limitations. They all remove core abilities from the base sphere (many times its only base ability) and so are usually mutually exclusive. The problems you have with drawbacks in SoP just do not exist in SoM, and the nature of talents in SoM mean that it just doesn't have to. The only thing needed to avoid the arms escalation is to keep a very tight reign on drawbacks in future books. That should be pretty easy since the current drawbacks are tightly linked to the base sphere abilities and not much else.

TL;DR - Concern about talent/drawback bloat in SoP seems to have lead to overzealous pre-emptive nerfing of most of the SoM drawbacks. These are unnecessary limitations that don't need to be there and completely block valid, intuitive, character concepts. While restrictions can work for some drawbacks, where thematically appropriate, most of the forced choices seem to be arbitrary, unnecessary, and don't seem to actually address any valid balance concerns.

Perhaps that can still be changed.