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2017-11-18, 03:41 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: [Drop Dead Studios] Spheres of Might Open Playtest
We decided to go more restrictive here to try and keep balance better, as we'd like drawbacks to be something that's more of a controlled element than it was before. Making them more structured will allow GMs to be more permissive of them since they're a known quantity, and it better lets us model what we'd like to do with these drawbacks. I can understand that it might not be the most popular call, but in the long term, we think it's the healthiest for the system.
My Pathfinder class guides
Alchemist
Barbarian
Warpriest
Investigator (Guide Addendum)
Gunslinger
Kineticist
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2017-11-18, 03:55 AM (ISO 8601)
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2017-11-18, 03:56 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: [Drop Dead Studios] Spheres of Might Open Playtest
I'm not sure what the problem with balance is supposed to be. I never felt it unbalancing to have more choices in SoP. On the other hand, I do feel restricted by the premade choices considerably. If I lose scout, why is Active Camouflage the most balanced choice? Heightened Awareness for a trapfinder instead seems fine to me. Effectively you are implying that the talents aren't roughly worth the same amount. That would be a talent balance problem, not a drawback problem. IMO, if something might be unbalanced, is if you can stack several drawbacks, but I don't really see that possibility as spheres/packages grant mostly one big base feature and the talents either depend on that feature or they don't. In other words, if you cut sensible, the drawbacks of the same sphere are effectively exclusive with each other.
Edit: Regarding Martial Traditions, I just had a simple idea how to make a fighter 1/conscript 1 the same as a conscript 1/fighter 1. First allow that retraining allows the swap of proficiencies with a martial tradition. Then stipulate that a retraining occurs if you take a practitioner class. There are several places where this occurs anyway, so this isn't a really new mechanic. If you don't like the automatic retraining, grant an opt-out in addition. The default needs to the retraining, as people building higher level characters can then ignore this dependency. Also it takes away the oddity, that a wizard 1/conscript 1 has no martial tradition and can't actually gain a martial tradition.Last edited by EldritchWeaver; 2017-11-18 at 04:41 AM.
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2017-11-18, 11:49 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: [Drop Dead Studios] Spheres of Might Open Playtest
I just have them retrain level 1 and let them switch it at the same time for free; so a Wizard one takes a level of Striker, but as a Wizard 1/Striker 1, it doesn't get martial tradition. If they find a trainer and spend some time training with them (retraining a level as normal) they can learn their ways (and beause they'd have their first level be a martial class , they would now get a martial tradition), I'd let them swap the levels rather than force them to become a striker 2 and then a Striker 1/Wizard 1.
Last edited by digiman619; 2017-11-18 at 11:58 AM.
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2017-11-18, 12:23 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: [Drop Dead Studios] Spheres of Might Open Playtest
If you are asking if a a SoM drawback has any interaction with SoP drawbacks: Firstly, SoM has no general drawbacks. So SoP can't count them for spell points anyway. And even if there were, the effects would be strictly separated. Secondly, sphere-specific drawbacks do not influence any spheres except the one it applies to. It doesn't matter, if you consider that cross-system or not.
While certainly a nice idea, I prefer an official rule. Especially one which allows building characters without worrying about the order of classes (as long no prestige classes are involved).
I have a general critic: There is no easy way to actually resurrect people via SoM. It is a shame that there is no legendary formulae for this, considering that it seems fine to have one to become immortal (but requires level 20). Only the doctor archetype can true resurrect people, but this effect comes online at level 17. As most people never get to that level, this ability might not actually exist. I would prefer if the ability would come up at the same level as raise dead and would work as raise dead, then scale level-appropriate to resurrection and true resurrection. Considering that it is a relatively easy fix for the doctor archetype, which can't be unbalancing to a campaign considering its effects, I don't see a reason why one wouldn't have that change. Unless you attempt a "no resurrection" campaign, but then you can remove that archetype or that ability only anyway.Avatar made by Mehangel - "Neigh?"
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2017-11-18, 12:53 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: [Drop Dead Studios] Spheres of Might Open Playtest
I was under the impression that the entire point of the sphere system was to enable more player choice and character customization. This seems like a move in direct opposition to that stated goal. I was also under the impression that each option was meant to be balanced with regards to every other option. So how does taking away my choice and forcing a particular option make it more balanced? How does decreasing player choice and character customization make for a healthier system? What is so unhealthy about allowing greater player choice and customization?
The point about GMs being more permissive doesn't particularly make sense when there are a number of drawbacks that DON'T force you to take a particular talent. None of Gladiator's drawbacks force you to take a specific talent. Yet all of Warleader's do. This isn't consistent, and becomes far less consistent when it is inevitably compared to the Spheres of Power system. Which is an issue in and of itself: Why are spellcasters afforded more choice in how they use their spheres than their martial counterparts?
What's healthiest for a system is internal consistency. This move to limit freedom is inconsistent both with itself, and with the goals of the larger Spheres system in its entirety. I strongly hope something is done about this.
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2017-11-18, 05:48 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: [Drop Dead Studios] Spheres of Might Open Playtest
If you see me talking about Shaper Psions, assume that anything not poison immune within 100 feet will be dead.
My Homebrew Signature such as it is.
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2017-11-18, 06:24 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: [Drop Dead Studios] Spheres of Might Open Playtest
I also would like to say that while I am not against some drawbacks choosing the bonus talent for you, I think that there were many which did not need to be so limited and could've allowed the player to choose the bonus talent from a small list. The Scout sphere drawback is a good example of one that should've allowed the player to choose a bonus talent from a small list (including Active Camouflage and Heightened Awareness).
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2017-11-18, 06:35 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: [Drop Dead Studios] Spheres of Might Open Playtest
You have a point, but the problem with whitelists is that when "The Theives' Handbook" with a focus on sneaking (or whatnot; there is plenty of room for more talents to be written) comes out, they either have to errata the drawback or disallow you getting any of the new stuff with drawbacks.
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2017-11-19, 01:29 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: [Drop Dead Studios] Spheres of Might Open Playtest
Although I agree that the Warleader drawbacks are very specific, I disagree with this assertion. If I made a rule that said 'Wizards can be Wis-based instead of Int-based' that would be an increase in player choice, but by your logic, it would be a decrease, because I haven't made the option open to people who want Cha-based wizards. I don't know everything going through the minds of SoM's designers, but I do know that if they simply wanted to allow players to choose exactly what powers they want in any combination, they would have made something like Hero System or M&M on top of PF. SoM give players options by making more builds viable, but it does not try to give the player complete freedom. Doing that in a class-based system would be a huge waste of time, and part of PF is the character building mini-game.
Instead, SoM tries to inject flavorful options into the game. Barbarism is a neat and flavorful option. If you don't like frightful roar, then don't take that drawback. Nothing is stopping you from buying the ability you want using another talent. It's not like PF, where certain classes get a blanket NO against certain things...you can have any power you want, as long as you pay for it. That is how SoM enables options. That, and making the cost of abilities at least close to their utility (**** Combat Expertise).
In addition, drawbacks are one of the most overpowered parts of SoP (you shouldn't be able to stack them, for a start). I don't blame the writers for wanting to clamp down on them. Drawbacks are supposed to be like archetypes for spheres - providing alternate takes on a core concept - not a way to get more talents.
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2017-11-19, 05:21 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: [Drop Dead Studios] Spheres of Might Open Playtest
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.Last edited by Quarian Rex; 2017-11-19 at 05:29 AM.
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2017-11-19, 06:37 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: [Drop Dead Studios] Spheres of Might Open Playtest
I think I'll bump my question here since it got the tail end on the last page and I feel probably got swept by in the new turn in the discussion. Just want to make sure I understand how this interaction works. Trying to figure out if Vital Strike is a good recommendation for our resident Scholar/Sniper considering the base damage of the related splash weapons. I'm leaning on no if my interpretation is correct, but I figured I'd make sure if I was correct or not first.
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2017-11-19, 07:04 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: [Drop Dead Studios] Spheres of Might Open Playtest
Originally Posted by Improved Acid Flask
(Besides, as the past few threads have pointed out, the Alchemy sphere has some issues with resources during an adventuring day. Making their limited number of formulae more powerful through Vital Strike as opposed to forcing them to full attack and run out within one or two encounters seems like a decent way to help them out.)
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2017-11-19, 12:38 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: [Drop Dead Studios] Spheres of Might Open Playtest
If I take both Techsmith and Iron Chef as a Blacksmith, can I use Technical Maintenance ("[you] can perform the following maintenance") or do I just lose Craft Magic Arms and Armor for no gain because I traded the base Maintenance feature away?
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2017-11-19, 12:43 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: [Drop Dead Studios] Spheres of Might Open Playtest
Just out of curiousity, how close are you guys to getting a print run of SoM of the PDF of Champions of the Spheres?
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2017-11-19, 01:44 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: [Drop Dead Studios] Spheres of Might Open Playtest
The point of Spheres of Power, at least to me, was that I could build my character the way I wanted to, without the need of having a bunch of extraneous abilities that had nothing to do with the core character concept.
Drawbacks, I believe, were integral to this. If I wanted a character that could breathe fire in an AoE, I could spend a single talent to obtain the Destruction Sphere, a Drawback on Elemental Focus for a Fire Blast talent, and a Drawback on Shape Focus to grab Sculpt Blast. Is this now considered overpowered? Am I exploiting the system by erasing the native bludgeoning melee/ranged touch attack the Sphere gives me?
On the contrary, Drawbacks are the strength of the Spheres of Power system. Because of them I can fine tune a character concept and be capable of using every ability. If Elemental Focus forced me to take, say, Ice Blast, then my entire character concept would be drastically altered. Sure, I could always take Fire Blast later on as another talent, however then I am now forced to deal with a section of my character that I have no intent on using. Surely you can see the problem with this?
Just to point out, but if Sphere Drawbacks are to be considered archetypes, then why shouldn't they stack? Archetypes explicitly stack with each other so long as they don't remove the same abilities. Of course the same is true in Spheres of Power Drawbacks. So I'm afraid I really can't relate to your concerns over less stringent drawbacks.
And it still doesn't answer the fact that some spheres have stringent drawbacks, and some don't. This is inconsistent. If lax drawbacks are a problem, then you should erase them for every sphere. Otherwise, one has to ask why it's a problem for the Warleader Sphere, but not for the Gladiator Sphere?
And that's only within the same work. Spheres of Might will inexorably be compared to Spheres of Power, where the question then becomes, why are Spheres of Might drawbacks more stringent than Spheres of Power? It certainly isn't because of power, because I think we all agree that Spheres of Power, by design, is generally the stronger of the two.
Honestly, this whole thing just screams, "Martials can't have nice things," IMHO. And that's pretty much the opposite of why Spheres of Might exists. Or at least, why I thought it did.
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2017-11-19, 05:23 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: [Drop Dead Studios] Spheres of Might Open Playtest
If that's the case, then I think I'll definitely consider recommending to our player using it. My only hangup was whether the damage from ranks would be considered additional damage, such as with the sniper sphere's additional damage. Overall the damage through the vital strike line does add up quite a bit, but probably still lands in the range my group would find acceptable so I have no problems with this. I just wasn't sure if all that extra damage from ranks would intentionally be considered a part of base damage or should be considered separate. I suppose whether they're additional dice also matter for the purpose of crits, so getting a dev clarification would be nice, but I'll talk to our GM about it either way.
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2017-11-19, 08:08 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: [Drop Dead Studios] Spheres of Might Open Playtest
Might talents are fundamentally different than Power talents. A magic talent from SoP gained via a drawback typically gives you one extra modification to an ability you already spent a talent to be able to use, whereas each Might talent builds off a base you already had. This means that shedding a portion of a sphere you're not as interested in to gather more talents focused towards the aspect of the sphere you want to emphasize becomes much more powerful more quickly than it does when used with SoP drawbacks. That's why the SoM drawbacks lean towards specifying a specific thematically talent that provides an alternate starting point for the sphere rather than just opening a grab-bag. It's not about limiting choice, it's about maintaining balance and consistency.
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2017-11-19, 08:37 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: [Drop Dead Studios] Spheres of Might Open Playtest
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2017-11-19, 08:56 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: [Drop Dead Studios] Spheres of Might Open Playtest
Maybe you missed it but look at my reply here. The issues with drawbacks in SoP do not really apply to drawbacks in SoM. They generally give up mutually exclusive options so any attempt to stack drawbacks (where not specifically prohibited) would essentially deny access to the entire sphere. These seem like overly harsh limitations attempting to fix a problem that doesn't exist in the SoM system. There is no balance or consistency being maintained by these choices, and it does seem to be mainly about limiting choice without any thematic or mechanical justification.
My previous post discussed this better. Please have a look at it.Avatar of awesome goodness courtesy of Cdr.Fallout.
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2017-11-19, 09:49 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: [Drop Dead Studios] Spheres of Might Open Playtest
You do make a point here, and the answer is that while the design team did have a specific directive, it was inconsistently applied due to a misunderstanding. This is why all of the drawbacks will have mandated talents post-update.
And that's only within the same work. Spheres of Might will inexorably be compared to Spheres of Power, where the question then becomes, why are Spheres of Might drawbacks more stringent than Spheres of Power? It certainly isn't because of power, because I think we all agree that Spheres of Power, by design, is generally the stronger of the two.
Honestly, this whole thing just screams, "Martials can't have nice things," IMHO. And that's pretty much the opposite of why Spheres of Might exists. Or at least, why I thought it did.
Each martial talent offers more, being worth a feat or more. Instead of one trick and some variations on that trick, each talent gives you a whole new option, whether that be extra attacks and debuffs against prone opponents, suplexing an opponent for a damage spike, or turning a single disarm into the foundation for an entire attack routine. And that's without touching Legendary talents that let you teleport by cleaving the air, fly by kicking your legs, kill someone in a locked room from miles away, etc.
Martial talents cover everything from additional attacks and riders to additional skills and static bonuses, often offering two or more of those in a single talent. Some of those talents can be problematic if accumulated too quickly, pushing damage or other metrics outside of their expected bounds. That's why each drawback mandated talent is handpicked to offer a unique and thematic starting point that won't accelerate certain metrics beyond their expected functionality. This was a decision that the team reached while incorporating a year's worth of feedback from 1/2 a dozen forums and dozens of play groups, as well as years of experience, careful evaluation, and extensive number-crunching. It didn't happen because we hate martials and thought it would be a lark to go absorb abuse from random people on the internet for less than half what we would have made during the same time period working at Burger King, it happened because we love martial characters and we wanted to make a book that did them justice, which provided avenues for creating all the interesting martial characters core Pathfinder doesn't support, and which does so in a way that incorporates balance and care and is appropriate for the widest number of groups possible.
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2017-11-19, 10:35 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: [Drop Dead Studios] Spheres of Might Open Playtest
Consider literally all of Alteration, where talents give you access to multiple movement modes, scent, pounce, free trip attempts, grab, energy resistances, etc. Any of these individual abilities would be worth a feat to get, and most of the talents each give you access to multiple abilities.
Last edited by Roadie; 2017-11-19 at 10:35 PM.
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2017-11-19, 10:43 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: [Drop Dead Studios] Spheres of Might Open Playtest
Yes, but alteration does not give you these abilities by itself. It lets you use your caster level (a resource you have paid for) and spell points (a resource you have paid for) to gain a number of traits for a limited period of time, and with the complication that they can be dispelled.
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2017-11-19, 11:11 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: [Drop Dead Studios] Spheres of Might Open Playtest
And since the number of traits is very limited, that means you're generally getting different ways to use the power (do I grow wings and fly? Do I grow claws and climb?). You're not chaining many of those together, the way a martial can combo one or multiple spheres into a completely unique routine, and you can run out of them or have them taken away from you. It's also not stacking with any other polymorph effects. So it's a variation on a trick, even if that particular trick is one of the best tricks you could want.
And even then, compare it to Atheltics, where you can get climb, fly, and swim for a similar number of talents, and they're always on, they never compete with each other, and modifications to your base speed help all of them.
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2017-11-19, 11:32 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: [Drop Dead Studios] Spheres of Might Open Playtest
Perhaps it might be an idea to take a breath and step back for a min. No one is trying to heap abuse on you or anyone else. The post you replied to was trying to get a point across, and seemed to do it pretty well. You apparently see that point of view as being in opposition to your own but it is not an attack and it was not abusive. Legitimate concerns about the implementation of drawbacks in SoM have been brought up, both in relation to SoP and when looked at in a vacuum, and those concerns don't seem to have been addressed.
At best, those concerns have been met with the equivalent of, "it's for the best, we know what we're doing", but that kind of response doesn't provide any real answer. Please don't say that the decision was made for balance and to address potential problems without actually stating what those balances and problems actually are. Remember, we don't hear any of your internal discussions, we are only looking at the end result. The end result is that talent stacking using drawbacks as was seen in SoP is impossible in SoM. You can only (functionally) get a single drawback in any given Sphere (otherwise you would exclude almost all of the content of said Sphere, the only exception being the Trap Sphere, where you could functionally get two and still be viable). The abuses that your team seem so wary of don't exist. See my previous two posts on this page for why most of the current limitations don't work. Hearing that the teams response to criticism of the current limitations on SoM drawbacks is going to be adding even more limitations (instead of explaining/addressing the current issues) comes off as tone-deaf and... troubling.
Again, this isn't to say that specific limitations can't work, some of the current ones do, but most don't. The reason why is something that needs to be discussed more openly than has been done so far.Avatar of awesome goodness courtesy of Cdr.Fallout.
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2017-11-20, 12:01 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: [Drop Dead Studios] Spheres of Might Open Playtest
I did not mean to be rude or abusive by stating my opinion on one facet of your work; on the contrary, I think the system as a whole is great for helping out martial characters. However I air these complaints because I believe that this discussion could make the system even better than it already is now. It certainly does increases the power and versatility of martial characters, just as Spheres of Power reigned in the infinite versatility of spellcasters. However, in my view of a ideal game, there should be as little difference between the capabilities of a martial character and a caster character as possible. And while the two systems have certainly made huge steps in the balancing between martial and caster, I don't think we can reasonably say that SoM martials are yet equivalent to SoP casters in terms of power or versatility.
The easiest way to prove this, is to simply look at the number of SoM Legendary Talents that are effectively replicated with SoP Base Spheres. If I want to raise an undead army, I could grab the Warleader Sphere and then take the Legendary Talent, Armies of the Dead, which has a BAB +6 prerequisite. Even then, I have to succeed on a Diplomacy check to raise the undead's attitude all the way to friendly, and all of that assumes that undead are even around for me to use Diplomacy with in the first place. Compare that to any Spheres of Power caster, who can simply take the Death Sphere. Sure there are limitations to the undead you create (mainly longevity), but the character concept of a necromancer is still functional. You can always simply animate dead as needed, whatever undead you want, without having to ask the GM for permission, and without having to hope that the GM throws non-hostile undead at you to use diplomacy on in the first place (this Legendary talent would probably work a lot better if it worked on the defeated corpses of your enemies and then raised them, IMHO).
Let's also take a look at two of the other things you mentioned, Teleportation & Flight. Teleportation is a Legendary Talent from the Beserker Sphere, Rift Strike. It's functionally equivalent to the Advanced Talent from the Warp Sphere, True Teleport. This is great! But it's limited specifically to going from location A to B. If I want to be the guy who teleports around in combat, in a manner similar to Dimensional dervish, then I'm better served just taking the base Warp Sphere, which gives me access to short range teleportation from as early as level 1. Then there's Sparrow's Path, a Legendary Talent from the Athlethics Sphere that enables you to fly, albeit in a somewhat limited manner until level 8 or so. But in Spheres of Power, I could just as easily grab the Alteration Sphere as well as Elemental Transformation, and have access to a fly speed, a swim speed and a burrow speed all from first level, and all superior movement modes to what's available to an equivalent level Spheres of Might character, again without having to beg the GM to allow Legendary/Advanced Talents.
So when we compare the two systems directly, it's pretty clear which system has more "power." And this is before getting into stuff like the Life Sphere, for which there is no direct analogue in Spheres of Might. With this in mind, I have no idea how you can write off the abilities one obtains from Spheres of Power as "being worth a trait" and then directly say that the abilities one gains from Spheres of Might as "being worth a feat, or more." I fear there's a major disconnect in opinion here if this is true. That's not to say the SoM stuff isn't worth more than feat (one would hope so, IMHO), only that I think you may be drastically underselling Spheres of Power.
But getting back to the main point, I guess the issue from my point of view, is that Spheres of Power is already a stronger system than Spheres of Might. Or at least that's what I believe by directly comparing the two. Thus it's especially jarring to me that Spheres of Might is loosing out on the versatility of the Sphere Drawbacks. In Spheres of Power, if I didn't want a particular ability, there was always a drawback I could choose to get rid of it. But here, if I don't want a particular ability, my only choice to take the ability I don't want, or take another ability that I still may not want. Either way, it makes character creation more of a grab bag and less of a customization. It also differentiates my character less from other similar characters, since you can be sure that anyone who takes a sphere will definitely have either X ability, or Y ability. I can't help but feel that this subtracts from the system.
And sure, each talent in SoM may grant you a new ability. But if all of the abilities are balanced against each other, then why does it matter if I get an ability I choose for myself or an ability that is already chosen for me? The idea of pre-chosen talents as a balancing tool really only makes sense if you admit that you are purposely choosing substandard talents for those drawbacks. But then, why would you have substandard talents in the first place? If substandard talents were created just as drawback fodder, then it would be easier to just not have drawbacks at all, and save on word count. Of course, I doubt that this conspiracy theory tangent is the actual case here. I'm sure you have access to tons of playtest data that I don't have, but if there was a problem wherein the presence of drawbacks somehow led to an abuse of the system, then please tell us specifically so we can better understand the reasoning for this decision and have a more productive discussion on how to move forward. Without that reasoning, it simply seems like an arbitrary way to limit player choice and freedom in order to preemptively solve a problem that many don't even know/think exists.
Once more, I'd like to reiterate my love for both the Spheres of Power and Spheres of Might systems. I'm not complaining because I hate the system or it's developers. My only intention in writing out these long posts is to help the system be even better than it currently is. Drawbacks were one of my favorite things about the original Spheres of Power. Hearing that the current plan is to eliminate all player choice and variability from them is...disappointing, to say the least.
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2017-11-20, 12:25 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: [Drop Dead Studios] Spheres of Might Open Playtest
"Haven't been addressed" and "weren't addressed the way someone wanted them" are two different things. Drawbacks having mandated talents was a result of extensive feedback and review; the drawbacks originally didn't have mandated talents but players brought up concerns accompanied by builds, we reviewed those, looked at multiple ways of addressing those issues, and settled on mandated drawbacks (there were almost no drawbacks at all), since we saw that that solution was capable of addressing all the outstanding issues that had been brought up without putting cumbersome or excessive hindrances on numerous spheres and talents.
At best, those concerns have been met with the equivalent of, "it's for the best, we know what we're doing", but that kind of response doesn't provide any real answer. Please don't say that the decision was made for balance and to address potential problems without actually stating what those balances and problems actually are.
For reference, the things we're limiting are 6+ hit combos as early as level 2 with drawback manipulation, level 3 wide area field wipes, and a number of other issues I don't have in front of me right now. These issues were created by drawbacks allowing accelerated access to options that were ultimately supposed to be compatible, but shouldn't have been possible to assemble that early on.
Remember, we don't hear any of your internal discussions, we are only looking at the end result.
The end result is that talent stacking using drawbacks as was seen in SoP is impossible in SoM. You can only (functionally) get a single drawback in any given Sphere (otherwise you would exclude almost all of the content of said Sphere, the only exception being the Trap Sphere, where you could functionally get two and still be viable). The abuses that your team seem so wary of don't exist.
See my previous two posts on this page for why most of the current limitations don't work. Hearing that the teams response to criticism of the current limitations on SoM drawbacks is going to be adding even more limitations (instead of explaining/addressing the current issues) comes off as tone-deaf and... troubling.
Again, this isn't to say that specific limitations can't work, some of the current ones do, but most don't. The reason why is something that needs to be discussed more openly than has been done so far.
I don't know that we'd entirely agree with that statement. Our working premise is "assymetric balance". We're not just going to give you spell cards with the magic bits crossed out and replaced with "sword", "axe", or "kick", we tried to follow the natural flow of martial abilities into techniques and tricks that have a foundation in martial arts traditions, movies, cartoons, etc.
And while the two systems have certainly made huge steps in the balancing between martial and caster, I don't think we can reasonably say that SoM martials are yet equivalent to SoP casters in terms of power or versatility.
The easiest way to prove this, is to simply look at the number of SoM Legendary Talents that are effectively replicated with SoP Base Spheres. If I want to raise an undead army, I could grab the Warleader Sphere and then take the Legendary Talent, Armies of the Dead, which has a BAB +6 prerequisite. Even then, I have to succeed on a Diplomacy check to raise the undead's attitude all the way to friendly, and all of that assumes that undead are even around for me to use Diplomacy with in the first place. Compare that to any Spheres of Power caster, who can simply take the Death Sphere. Sure there are limitations to the undead you create (mainly longevity), but the character concept of a necromancer is still functional.
Now make a real comparison. Instead of saying that the orange isn't as good at being an apple as the apple, be impressed that it can imitate an apple at all and look at what the actual apple is doing. Beastmastery is the proper analogue for Death if you're talking about raising undead, since they're both minionmancy spheres. Really dig into the Beastmastery sphere and see what's there, then compare that to the Death sphere. Then compare Beastmastery and Warleader together against Death and War.
Spheres of Might isn't just Spheres of Power with the names changed. It's a new system that builds on the base rules and marries their strengths to the finesse and flexibility of the sphere system while shedding some of their weaknesses. An incanter teleports, the conscript backflips. The incanter throws a ball of fire, the conscript does a wide radius sweep with a longspear (or throws a vial of Imp. Alchemist's Fire).
So when we compare the two systems directly, it's pretty clear which system has more "power." And this is before getting into stuff like the Life Sphere, for which there is no direct analogue in Spheres of Might. With this in mind, I have no idea how you can write off the abilities one obtains from Spheres of Power as "being worth a trait" and then directly say that the abilities one gains from Spheres of Might as "being worth a feat, or more." I fear there's a major disconnect in opinion here if this is true. That's not to say the SoM stuff isn't worth more than feat (one would hope so, IMHO), only that I think you may be drastically underselling Spheres of Power.
But if all of the abilities are balanced against each other, then why does it matter if I get an ability I choose for myself or an ability that is already chosen for me?
We're not taking away choice; we're leaving the largest pool of choices we can while still avoiding extreme abuses of the system. Normalizing that across all drawbacks is in part to avoid having to have a conversation like this again, or risk a future freelancer not getting the memo on drawbacks and inadvertently opening a can of worms that forces a more intensive errata, like cutting the spheres off from each other and limiting the kind of talents we can add to various spheres. Our choices were make the spheres completely incompatible with each other and throw out dozens of cross-sphere character concepts, remove an entire swath of talents from about half of the spheres that were only problematic due to drawback abuse, put a gate on the drawbacks and specify which talents they grant so that we can avoid making the cross-sphere combos an issue in the first place, or just be cool with 5+ hit combos being a thing from level 1. Of all those, mandated talents on drawbacks was a clear winner.Last edited by Ssalarn; 2017-11-20 at 01:20 AM.
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2017-11-20, 01:19 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: [Drop Dead Studios] Spheres of Might Open Playtest
Something I'd like to say here is that the team this time wasn't in love with every precedent that SoP sent. Yes, it did a lot of things right, but we had our own ideas for how to make things more internally consistent, which involved standardizing drawbacks in this way. Drawbacks are a VERY powerful option, and as we've seen, people are capable of utilizing them in ways we couldn't have expected before. Unlike what I assumed SoP had in mind when making them, the SoM team was well aware that we'd have expansions, and because of that, hard locking drawbacks the way that we have secures us from not needing to worry about new talents that possibly break with these drawbacks. The team knows that we won't be working on every future supplement, so while we can ensure that the base drawbacks are fair for core SoM, we can't plan for every possible future book, and because of that, talent locking drawbacks felt like a way to make sure these drawbacks don't eventually become the backbone of breaking the system we've poured ourselves into. This opens the door for future books to include their own specific drawbacks which can be looked over in seclusion because we don't have to compare all the new options and everything else each time, which makes life easier for both our newer developers and the older staff in that we are capable of avoiding chimeric builds being overpowered (as well as we can at least) as well as allow for new specific drawbacks in newer books for new talents, which allows us to make sure our content is more balanced on your end as well as ours.
Is it limiting? Yeah, and we're not 100% happy about that, but as we've learned through this project, we sometimes need certain things in place when creating something like SoM to make sure the entire book doesn't become "Oh, with this one combo, you can do a million damage, book's broken!", as that's something that we've seen far too often to other projects which were otherwise fine. So this is me as a developer telling all of you that these decisions were made both for the health of the base product as well as possible expansions since we need to look at the long game for things like this. Developing for this new system has been a joy, and we do thank every one of you for the feedback, and we'd like to ask that you trust us when we make decisions like this, as we're doing it to make sure we can put out the best product possible. We'll always try to be around when we can to answer questions, and we do accept that not everyone will enjoy this option, but this is the reason we've chosen to structure things like this.My Pathfinder class guides
Alchemist
Barbarian
Warpriest
Investigator (Guide Addendum)
Gunslinger
Kineticist
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2017-11-20, 02:03 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: [Drop Dead Studios] Spheres of Might Open Playtest
So the idea is that there is, or perhaps may be in the future, some combination of talents whereby taking them together is unbalanced? Could you perhaps give an example?
Even without the example though, locking drawbacks doesn't inherently fix that problem. It just slows it down. Rather than coming online at level 2, it'll come online at level 5, only with a bunch of extraneous abilities that the player might not want (which ironically hurts more than if it were in SoP precisely because SoM talents aren't meant to exist in a vacuum). And even then, there's always the Conscript, who'll likely still be able to pull it off at level 2 anyway, isn't there? Is it alright for the Conscript, but not for anybody else?
I suppose there's no point in continuing this discussion if the decision is already made though. I'll just have to live with the disappointment until a Handbook comes out with more options, I suppose.Last edited by Kaouse; 2017-11-20 at 02:04 AM.
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2017-11-20, 02:47 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: [Drop Dead Studios] Spheres of Might Open Playtest
The conscript is accounted for in our measures and his accelerated ability to acquire talents is balanced against the class features and options of the other classes. While he can assemble talents more quickly, mandated drawbacks threshold that to an appropriate level where it's competitive with the options the other classes have available.
Pushing that combo from 2nd to 5th or 6th on the conscript means the conscript's combo is coming online around the same time other classes get their major boosters, the full spread of their class abilities, and or their extra attacks in a full attack. Pushing it to 7th-9th on the Blacksmith means his stronger class features are keeping pace with the Conscript's greater talent pool, and both baselines are within an acceptable variance of appropriate performance within those levels.