The Creator of Spheres of Power Here: Ask Me Anything

[Ironsides]

I think there may be a issue with Dancing Weapon and object sizes. Let me quote the relevant rules first.

A weapon's size category isn't the same as its size as an object. Instead, a weapon's size category is keyed to the size of the intended wielder. In general, a light weapon is an object two size categories smaller than the wielder, a one-handed weapon is an object one size category smaller than the wielder, and a two-handed weapon is an object of the same size category as the wielder.

This is quoted from the PFSRD. Look at page 141 of the core rulebook (5th printing) to find it there.

To me this means that a Dagger that a medium sized character would wield would count as a Tiny object. However, the book states that a dagger is a Diminutive object instead which is differant from . To me the telekinesis Object Size table works better for players because it gives them more wiggle room. I would add this paragraph to the Telekinesis Sphere rules.

A weapon's size category isn't the same as its size as an object when picked up telekinetically. Instead, a weapon's size category is keyed to the size of the intended wielder. In general, a light weapon is an object three size categories smaller than the wielder, a one-handed weapon is an object two size category smaller than the wielder, and a two-handed weapon is one size category smaller than the weilder.

Castor Level	Object Size	Example Object Size	Weapon as Objects Sizes	Light Weapon	One-Handed Weapon	Two-Handed Weapon
1	Diminutive	Dagger	Diminutive	Small	Tiny	Diminutive
3	Tiny	Candelabra	Tiny	Medium (Dagger)	Small	Tiny
5	Small	Heavy Shield	Small	Large	Medium
8	Medium	Cage	Medium	Huge	Large	Small
11	Large	Statue	Large	Gargantuan	Huge	Large
15	Huge	Wagon	Huge	Colossal	Gargantuan	Huge
20	Gargantuan	Catapult	Gargantuan	Colossal	Colossal	Gargantuan
25	Colossal	Ship	Colossal	Colossal	Colossal	Colossal

Also do you need to be proficient with the weapon you are using with Dancing Weapon talent? I assume not but I want to be sure.

[Adam Meyers]

@AMKeledrath: How many orcs must a unicorn impale?

@A Lot of People: we are planning to release new spheres with upcoming projects, and advanced spheres is an idea I hadn't considered, but sounds awesome. we had some shadow abilities that got cut early on in the design process, perhaps it's time to pull those back out...

@Ironsides: You are not supposed to be able to take it more than once, but to make your concept I think I might allow that if I were the GM, but I might regret it in the high levels. You do not need to be proficient with the weapon to use it with Dancing Weapon, but considering how many feats there are that require you to be proficient with the weapon to take them, I'd stick to ones I was proficient with; use exclusively short swords or something so i could apply weapon focus to them, stuff like that.

@CyanEyed: It does provoke an attack of opportunity; it's the universal Pathfinder limit on castings that being said, if you're using a mid or low caster, taking combat casting is about all you need.

@Keledrath: Well that's a loaded question to ask a designer. Hm... Alchemy. Try as I might, I have not thought of a good way to do Spheres of a power with an alchemist concept that wasn't way too difficult or lengthy for daily use. The best I've got is making potions as if you were using the Brew Potion feat, but with a 1-minute crafting time and only you can drink them.

@stack: Personally, I would require Quick Teleport as well, and require them to spend that spell point each time they use it, but otherwise I don't see why not.

@ironsides: The problem is that there are multiple size charts in Pathfinder, and each of them has different objects listed as examples. I believe the reference to daggers as diminutive objects was pulled directly from a size chart, and therefore we didn't think that was something we needed to double check. I would go with the official Pathfinder ruling on weapon sizes, personally.

[Vhaidara]

I knew it was a loaded question. I never claimed to be a good person

On the subject of Alchemy, I actually think it is fine with Vancian. It actually makes a degree of sense in that style. If you really want to introduce it via Spheres, I would do it via casting traditions. You have to prepare your spells in advance in potion form, but then your allies can use them like potions

Okay, here's another one: Top 5 character concepts you've made with spheres. Concept, Class/Race, and sphere focus.

For example, for a kingmaker spheres game coming up on these forums, I'm making a gnome incanter. He has all the traditional drawbacks (focus, magical signs, 2x somatic, verbal). He focuses on the Time and Warp Spheres.

He's a university professor who gives lectures on theoretical magiphysics, drawing diagrams in the air (magical signs) with his handy dandy chalk (focus). As he does so, time and space warp in accordance to what he is teaching.

On a related note, why did you make Skilled casting SO hard? I really wanted to run it on him using Craft(Lectures), but even if I invested in Skill Focus, I'd still be running a 10% spell failure chance. It is by far the most flavorful drawback, but it is absolutely CRIPPLING.

[the_david]

Hey Adam, thanks for taking the time to answer questions.

How would the Magical Knack trait stack with caster levels?

I've noticed there's no mention of critical hits in both Energy Blade (Destruction Sphere) and Energy Weapon (Enhancement). Normally extra dice wouldn't be multiplied on a critical hit, but a +X would. Is this how I should treat crits under those circumstances?

Is an Adept a Low-Caster?

[stack]

I knew it was a loaded question. I never claimed to be a good person

On the subject of Alchemy, I actually think it is fine with Vancian. It actually makes a degree of sense in that style. If you really want to introduce it via Spheres, I would do it via casting traditions. You have to prepare your spells in advance in potion form, but then your allies can use them like potions

Okay, here's another one: Top 5 character concepts you've made with spheres. Concept, Class/Race, and sphere focus.

For example, for a kingmaker spheres game coming up on these forums, I'm making a gnome incanter. He has all the traditional drawbacks (focus, magical signs, 2x somatic, verbal). He focuses on the Time and Warp Spheres.

He's a university professor who gives lectures on theoretical magiphysics, drawing diagrams in the air (magical signs) with his handy dandy chalk (focus). As he does so, time and space warp in accordance to what he is teaching.

On a related note, why did you make Skilled casting SO hard? I really wanted to run it on him using Craft(Lectures), but even if I invested in Skill Focus, I'd still be running a 10% spell failure chance. It is by far the most flavorful drawback, but it is absolutely CRIPPLING.

Easier to manage at higher levels. Level 1 just doesn't have to resources to auto-pass, but after a few levels you can get another feat or item or other bonus source to hit 100% success.

[stack]

If using the dancing weapons telekinesis talent, what area do the lifted objects threaten?

[EldritchWeaver]

I've been thinking about to imitate the Pathfinder Cleric with the Incanter, but I don't see how you would get a better selection of armor/weapon proficiencies starting at level one. I had not yet time to look over the Expanded Options book, but at least the two Incanter archetypes provided don't match what I'm looking for. Anyone with an idea how to achieve that?

[stack]

Easiest way is taking a spheres archetype cleric for a level to get the proficiencies. They are full-casters, so you don't lose any CL. Grab domains and channeling as incanter specializations and you should be good to go. Heck, stay cleric and reap the benefits of free talents from domains.

I plan to do the similar on a druid for a PBP starting soon, two levels of druid (spheres/menhir savant) for armor, shields, detect (stuff), and place magic, then run incanter for more talents.

[stack]

Expanded Options - copy paste error, under recommended traditions the summoner says witch.

Triple goddess hedgewitch archetype - 17th level ability should specify if it counts as a [death] effect or not, highly relevant.

[Azernak0]

Another question:

Retry (time)
Does this grant the person back their resources as well? IE, a Barbarian's Rage, an Incanter's Spell Points, Mythic Power, etc? It never really explains that only stating "If you choose to redo your own turn in this manner, you do not recover the action or spell points spent using this ability."

So is Self target the only one not getting the Immediate Action and 2 SP back?

What about the Rogue opening a locked door that drops a boulder on his head? Is the boulder placed back? Does he still take the damage? If an alarm goes off, does it untrip? What about damage taken? Basically, is it this?

[Mehangel]

Quick question concerning the Sphere Magus in Spheres of Power Expanded. Why does the Magus lose its Arcane Pool while the Hedgewitch gets it?

[Ssalarn]

Quick question concerning the Sphere Magus in Spheres of Power Expanded. Why does the Magus lose its Arcane Pool while the Hedgewitch gets it?

The Magus kind of worked with Spheres of Power much differently than the Hedgewitch, who was intended to interact with the system from the beginning. Here's Adam's response:

The reason we did the Magus the way we did was two-fold:
1. Especially at low-levels, spheres already give the Magus a significant power boost: because of the way his powers interacted with at-will sphere abilities, he ended up dual-wielding sword and sword-strike destructive blasts quite literally forever, and he ended up with two pools to work with when the poor Mageknight only had one to accomplish many of the same feats of power.
2. Aside from the weapon empowerment itself and certain Magus Arcana, most of the Magus' abilities dealt with swapping arcane points for spells, which meant depending on the trade ratio of arcane points for spell points, the two were virtually one pool anyway.
One could break the two pools apart, but it would mean recalculating 'trade-ins' for things like Spell Recall. I'd suggest Spell Recall becomes "Spend 3 arcane points in place of a spell point" and Improved Spell Recall becomes "Spend 2 arcane points in place of a spell point", but that hasn't really been tested so I can't vouch for it beyond sounds-good-off-the-top-of-my-head.

[stack]

Any chance of an elementalist archetype focused on weather the way the geomancer is focused on nature? I only ask because it seems an easy enough adaptation and I am inordinately fond of the weather sphere.

Speaking of which, when you concentrate on a weather effect while moving, the effect follows. Does each new square the effect enters require time to move up to the severity of the effect, or does the full severity move?

[Scowling Dragon]

Sweet, glad this thread is rather fresh. Nothing more disheartening then to find a help thread thats 5 years old.

Few questions:

A: Have you ever read Elements of Magic? Not accusing you of plagiarism. Your system is very differently structured just interesting.

B: This is just a personal taste thing: In my games I prefer all spell-casting traits be based off of wisdom, and all Will saves and the like be based off of Charisma. If I use this system, does this mess anything up in a major way? In my games most undead still have a constitution score representing the energy animating them, and only a few undeads use some other ability score as a constitution replacement (Usually Intelligence). I do this in order to give all of the stats purpose to avoid dumping of the stat.

[stack]

Expanded options geomancer loses favored element but no mention is made of elemental defense. Since you elemental defense is based on you favored element choices, how does this work for the geomancer?

Edit - Also, on the Drop Dead forums, you answered that the conjuration table can be extrapolated beyond CL 20. Does this apply to other tables that stop at 20? Obviously tables like weather cap since the system doesn't define conditions beyond those listed.

edit 2 - Nature Sphere Fire Wielder Talent only calls out unarmed strikes. Could we get a feat or some other method to allow it to apply to natural attacks? If I read it right, it would cap out at +4d6 fire per attack without CL boosting, which isn't that much for a commonly resisted element at high levels. I acknowledge that natural attacks create design problems, so understand if you prefer to decline.

[Ssalarn]

Sweet, glad this thread is rather fresh. Nothing more disheartening then to find a help thread thats 5 years old.

Few questions:

A: Have you ever read Elements of Magic? Not accusing you of plagiarism. Your system is very differently structured just interesting.

B: This is just a personal taste thing: In my games I prefer all spell-casting traits be based off of wisdom, and all Will saves and the like be based off of Charisma. If I use this system, does this mess anything up in a major way? In my games most undead still have a constitution score representing the energy animating them, and only a few undeads use some other ability score as a constitution replacement (Usually Intelligence). I do this in order to give all of the stats purpose to avoid dumping of the stat.

Adam's the designer and creator of SoP, but my name is credited as an author in the SoP:E book, so I'll stick out my neck a bit and answer B for you:

First and foremost, when you make a house rules change that wasn't considered in the design process, the law of unintended consequences says something is probably going to break somewhere, though you may never notice the nature of the break or its impact.

Now, since many of the classes let you pick your casting stat anyways, your proposed change will have much less impact in Spheres of Power than in most other systems, though it will have a few negative consequences, like making Armorists a bit weaker since their casting stat no longer supports their Will and they need to keep their physical stats relatively high since they're primarily a fighting class.

Undead having a CON score shouldn't change much.

The rest of this response is not SoP specific, and is more just a general opinion: it sounds like your tweak is a flavor fix that has a very wide reaching mechanical effect throughout the game. Casters generally have good Will saves anyways, so letting all of them use WIS just means that they're getting bonuses to pretty solid skills, like Perception, and if they do decide to shore up their Will further it actually pays off with better social skills and UMD. Wizards will lose out, because they're expected to have more skills due to a high INT, but it's not a big deal overall. Caster Clerics come out ahead because now they're benefiting evenly from both their casting and channeling stats.

Half-casters and non-casters who use WIS for class abilities get boned hard though. The Ranger and the Monk (particularly the UC version) expect that WIS to be shoring up their weak save and really don't have points to spare in most expected builds to shore up CHA as well. I totally get where the idea for the change comes from (what with CHA representing force of personality and WIS being your awareness and intuition), but the change actually is largely cosmetic for the more versatile (some would say more powerful) classes in the game, while it can be a harsh imposition for classes in the Tier 3 or lower range.

[stack]

Expanded again - thaumaturge - pact mage - infernal pact - dark lore: when you suffer the backlash penalty you do not lose any actions, correct? Very nice, especially when you stack it with the human favored class bonus to get +12 CL at level 17 (before whatever other bonuses you manage to have). Obviously its not something you can afford to do often, but makes for a great emergency button to fry the BBEG or heal the entire party to full or teleport the army away. Can the penalty still be passed off with channel punishment?

Unspeakable's curse of entropy is probably my favorite though, since it comes online at level 2 and never gets old. No-save debuffs are fun, even more-so as a free action.

Hmm, thaumaturge or mageknight for my next handbook? (need to polish the elementalist one first, but polishing is harder work)

Regarding invocations, technically you can't take free actions when it isn't your turn, making defensive invocation mostly useless. Perhaps errata specifying that you can use them even when it isn't your turn?

(I admit that the class is growing on me, despite my initial low-level reservations. The devourer archetype is a big part of this. I want to play a half-orc devourer using the human FCB and a keen falchion to gish it up.

[Adam Meyers]

@Keledrath: Aside from the NPCs from SoP itself, I've made a human thaumaturge fire package Nature expert that was a ball of fire speeding across the battlefield, a halfling incanter who rode on the back of her giant guerrilla conjured companion keeping it alive with the Protection sphere, and, inspired by someone's candy-mage from a different threat, I tried out my own human incanter creation-expert with the candy limited creation drawback.

Skilled casting was a weird one we kept going back and forth on, because a little optimization could make it so easy to never fail at, but we didn't want it to be only usable by optimizers, so we went in the middle and tried to make it work.

@the_david: Magical Knack really isn't appropriate for the SoP system; it's too designed for traditional caster levels.

If you are hitting someone with a normal destructive blast, a crit is a 20/x2. If you are applying a destructive blast to a weapon, the destructive blast's damage is not multiplied.

I would personally just make an adept a mid-caster for ease of everything, but a more accurate adaption I think would be a caster level progression of 0/1/2/2/3/4/4/5/6/6/7/8/8/9/10/10/11/12/12/13, with a magic talent gained at each caster level increase.

@stack: I would argue the weapon threatens whatever it does normally; a halberd would have reach, a longsword would threaten 5 ft, and a giant weapon would threaten a larger area.

@EldritchWeaver: I agree with the suggestion given; SoP provides an ease of multi-classing, such that it shouldn't be hard to divide up however you need to to get your concept going.

@stack: It should be a death effect, yes.

@Azernak0: Everything resets, things spent are un-spent, with the exception of the caster's immediate action and 2 SP.

So yeah, it could be used to save a rogue from the results of a botched trap disarming by re-setting the trap, etc.

@Mehangel: The quote reposted above is correct.

@stack: We'd already done 5 elementalist archetypes so we had to draw the line somewhere, but yeah that would be completely doable and was slated to be the 6th.

As the weather sphere effect moves, each new 5-ft square would need to grow into the full effect a round at a time, and the 5-ft squares left behind would go back to normal weather a round at a time.

@Scowling Dragon:

A: We looked through a bunch of alternate magic systems during our research phase, and that was one of them, yeah.

B: I don't think changes like that should break anything too great; it would make some classes weaker, some classes stronger, but is the kind of flavorful change to the rules that always interest me as a player.

@stack:

A. We updated elemental defense in the book and PDF a while ago; elemental defense no longer plays off of favored element. If your game is hitting high enough levels and your caster levels are getting that far up there, yeah a lot of them could expand beyond their list-tops. It's another thing that couldn't be included because of page-space and page-count, but we might do a guidebook in the future for epic-level SoP play with tables that go higher.

B. You're right; Fire Wielder should apply to natural attacks. We borrowed language from similar abilities from Core Pathfinder to make sure our language was congruent, and they only mentioned unarmed strikes, but I'd say it should apply to natural attacks as well.

C. The human benefit is only a +2 to your Forbidden Lore bonus by level 16, making your 17th level bonus a +8, not +12, and yeah, it can still be passed off with channel punishment. As we've had these disagreements on the Thaumaturge's power before, though, I'd say do whatever makes it more fun for you to roll with.

[stack]

The +12 was from the infernal pack level 14 ability giving another +4 over the base +6 and human +2.

On weather, that makes sense, just makes me a little sad that I can't run into the room and start frying things with lightning right away, which probably would have been excessive.

With some optimization its not too hard to get off the charts before the highest levels assuming the use of staves (because how could you NOT use a staff?), boons, and the thaumaturge, so I look forward to a guide on extending them formally. I don't expect to personally need it, being a low-level player myself, I just like knowing its covered.

[EldritchWeaver]

Thanks to you both @Adam and @stack for your replies. I'll employ your suggestion in my game.

[Scowling Dragon]

Half-casters and non-casters who use WIS for class abilities get boned hard though. The Ranger and the Monk (particularly the UC version) expect that WIS to be shoring up their weak save and really don't have points to spare in most expected builds to shore up CHA as well. I totally get where the idea for the change comes from (what with CHA representing force of personality and WIS being your awareness and intuition), but the change actually is largely cosmetic for the more versatile (some would say more powerful) classes in the game, while it can be a harsh imposition for classes in the Tier 3 or lower range.

Eh, I use more house-rules, variant classes and rules edits than any other person, using automatic progression, and a whole bunch of other crap. I primarily use Talented Genius Guide Versions of all the martial classes in any case, and Hero Points. So this shouldn't hurt as bad. I don't like dump stats ever in any case.

Also I just noticed the following hiccup under sphere summoner:

Recommended Casting Tradition: The classic feel of the
witch can be recreated through taking the traditional magic
casting tradition.

It lists the witch recommendation.

[EldritchWeaver]

What was the reason that "Crafted Blast" no longer applies to altered blasts?

[Adam Meyers]

EldritchWeaver: It is the blast type talent for the unaltered destructive blast, which was once force but was changed.

[EldritchWeaver]

Yes, but previously Crafted Blast would have worked on e.g. fire typed blasts. Why did you weaken it? To make the normal blast more desirable?

Edit: Something I noticed when looking at the Sphere Arcanist: You give a high-caster only 10 magic talents (compare this to the Incanter who gets 30). Also only these 10 magic talents may be exchanged once per day. Not having played one yet, I still wonder, if 10 talents at level 20 are actually enough? That seems kinda low, especially that exploits seem to mimic sphere talents/feats in a weaker form and with higher costs (see below). An Arcanist/Incanter multiclass seems to be able to access more talents/feats, for the price that less talents can be switched out. On the other hand, with Quick Study you can get any magic talent (whose prereqs you fulfill?). That seems very potent, but it still costs a full-round action. So an ill-prepared Arcanist might be able to attack only at half speed until he switches out the useless ones. I suppose a relatively easy fix without blowing the current balance completely apart would be to grant Extra Magic Talent bonus feats which can't be switched.

Regarding exploits: In particular, the damage exploits seem redundant and limited compared to the Destruction sphere talents. You are spending a points of the Arcane Reservoir for the same damage you'd get by a destruction sphere talent at-will. The Energy Sphere talent seems to be superior to the greater exploits as well, although you do need to pay 1 SP here. So why would people choose these? I have the feeling that if the option would be given to turn exploits into magic related bonus feats, the number of actual interesting exploits drops low. This seems to be a missed opportunity to clean up this class.

[Mehangel]

Quick question, is there a reason why spell descriptors were not added to specific sphere abilities? For example I notice that all the sphere powers that deal with fire or deal fire damage do not have the [fire] descriptor, nor do any with cold, acid or sonic. Was this intentional? Are they supposed to have the descriptor tags? Or do they have it, but are simply stated off to the side in some sidebar that I did not see?

[Adam Meyers]

@EldritchWeaver: I'm not sure I understand the question; Crafted Blast was created for the unaltered blast, and never applied to all blasts.

The arcanist's schtick is very spell dependent, and their sphere variant was our way of keeping their flavor of being able to swap out spells. Never underestimate the power of a caster who can completely swap his sphere setup from combat to utility to town on a daily basis, nor underestimate the power of an exploit that does the work of the Destruction sphere + 2 talents. The arcanist is all about versatility, and the damage-dealing exploits still serve the same purpose as with a spell arcanist; You could invest heavily in destructive magic and be a versatile blaster, or you can take one exploit to always have direct damage covered, and invest those extra three talents int0 Time, Death, or something else equally nasty.


@Mehangel: It seemed unnecessary; there are very few places where descriptors are used, and very few of those places we found translate very much to spheres. Some sphere effects mention their descriptors- The Mind sphere is mind-altering compulsion (except enthrall which states it is a charm effect), and the ghost strike from the Death sphere says it is a Death effect. Beyond that, it shouldn't be hard to decide which descriptors an effect should have if knowing it is [fire] becomes necessary.

[Mehangel]

Lets say at level 11 a Soulweaver takes the leadership feat. As its cohort it chooses the monster cohort: Ghoul. Lets say the soulweaver at this time has a leadership score to have a Ghoul cohort with 3 levels in fighter. On its first level of fighter, it acquires the Basic Magical Training: Death Sphere. On its third level of fighter it gains the feat Advanced Magical Training.

How would you handle the 2 undead Hit Dice for the Ghoul for purposes of the Advanced Magical Training?

I understand 'Rules As Written' state that the feat only grants a caster level with class levels, not racial HD. Should a feat be homebrewed to allow Racial Hit Dice be counted as Low-Caster? Or do you suggest that a houserule be made to allow Advanced Magical Training count Racial HD as non-sphere casting class levels?

What is your recommendation?

[Scowling Dragon]

Quick question:

I prefer to use the armor as DR rules, however the issue is that your character sheets are locked from editing. Could you be kind enough to either a: Unlock the sheet for editing, or B: have a version with that variant rule?

[Adam Meyers]

@Mehangel: Racial hit dice for PCs are such a finicky thing that I've never seen a GM not have to tweak something here or there. I'd allow Advanced Magic Training to work for racial HD, but be ready in case it somehow gets out of hand. I don't think it will, though.

@Scowling Dragon: Huh. I'll ask our layout person; I don't see why not, but I'm not the one who makes things like that.

[stack]

The way I read it, the sphere magus can use any known sphere/talent with spell combat and spell strike, not limited to talents gained from magus levels. Is this correct? If so, I need to update my handbook because two levels of sphere magus is an awesome dip. Going to be key to my melee thaumaturge build as well.