Character Creation Discussion Thread

[Yamazaki]

10 hours ago, CraziFuzzy said:

Hilariously, I just went back to the wiki, and see this at the VERY bottom of the Trade Traditions page:

I don't know if I didn't see it before, or if it was added.. but there we go...

Just as a FYI - it was added with the Legends of the Spheres splat (aka Guile Champions splat, which for some reason isn't fully up on the wiki yet).

[Azerian Kelimon]

14 hours ago, Djacob91 said:

Yea, the Martial Mageknight doesn't have anything that says that they get more talents to use, so they still only get the four talents(plus 2 bonus magic talents at first level) that they would get under the base class. As for whether they make good gishes, I would suggest against the Martial Mageknight. Some of the other Mageknight archetypes might be more appealing, notably the ones that focus on a specific magic sphere. They often get some bonus to caster level for that focused sphere. Otherwise, many of the Mystic Combat options are what you really want out of the Mageknight class. Things like Swift Combatant for a free action move or Quickened Reflexes for improved AC. There is also the Knightknight archetype, which trades out the magic part for better martial focus(its an Adept Practitioner, so its gets 15 Might talents by lvl 20). And you can still pick up the Magemage Prestige Class to get the magic back for the gish part. After that, I'd double check what you want the other class part to be. Which is to say decide whether you want to pick a dedicated magic class, a martial class, or one of the mixed ones. The Magus's Arcane Weaponeer archetype might be a good place to look, either to compliment the Mageknight or just take its place.

 

I've looked at that one, yeah. What I'm eyeing right now is the Runesinger Fighter. It's an Expert Practitioner, so it gets a full set of 20 talents, but it also gets some very nice runes that effectively replicate (and with the right feats, outperform!) investing into setting up a Destructive Strike for that gish feeling, so that might be the play. It would be nice to have class features that actually do something to help with the concept instead of just being kinda there while the talents do all the heavy lifting.

The other side is a trifle trickier, just because finding a full-CL caster who also has a focus on something like War to add some more 'leader of men' spice is surprisingly hard, but I'm sure there's something out there.

 

...Oh! This reminds me. Three more questions for Saberfan:

A) Do Fighters get Combat Stamina for free, as suggested in the Unchained book, or does it require a feat?

B) Do talents which count as Associated Feats also count as such for the purposes of determining Stamina Trick access? The rules seem to point that way, but it's not 100% clear and I figure it's well worth making sure.

C) How does the Soul rune's strike effect interact with the Ancient Word feat? Dishing out a die per class level is kind of devastatingly broken and probably not how it's intended to be read (you have a non-zero chance to instantly kill a dragon by activating the rune against them if parsed that way), but it should probably get something from it.

Edited January 23 by Azerian Kelimon (see edit history)

[Djacob91]

The Iron Mage might work out.

[Azerian Kelimon]

Oooh, that's an interesting one. I'll give it some thought and see if I can cook up something neat with it.

[Taggerung559]

2 hours ago, Azerian Kelimon said:

 

I've looked at that one, yeah. What I'm eyeing right now is the Runesinger Fighter. It's an Expert Practitioner, so it gets a full set of 20 talents, but it also gets some very nice runes that effectively replicate (and with the right feats, outperform!) investing into setting up a Destructive Strike for that gish feeling, so that might be the play. It would be nice to have class features that actually do something to help with the concept instead of just being kinda there while the talents do all the heavy lifting.

The other side is a trifle trickier, just because finding a full-CL caster who also has a focus on something like War to add some more 'leader of men' spice is surprisingly hard, but I'm sure there's something out there.

 

...Oh! This reminds me. Three more questions for Saberfan:

A) Do Fighters get Combat Stamina for free, as suggested in the Unchained book, or does it require a feat?

B) Do talents which count as Associated Feats also count as such for the purposes of determining Stamina Trick access? The rules seem to point that way, but it's not 100% clear and I figure it's well worth making sure.

C) How does the Soul rune's strike effect interact with the Ancient Word feat? Dishing out a die per class level is kind of devastatingly broken and probably not how it's intended to be read (you have a non-zero chance to instantly kill a dragon by activating the rune against them if parsed that way), but it should probably get something from it.

In regards to C, the soul rune's damage die is the d2 that does positive or negative energy damage and that is what would increase to a number of dice equal to your class level. The con/cha ability damage is an extra effect (like the sickened from pain rune, or the battered+deafened from thunder rune) and would be unaffected. That being said, I'm not the GM.

As for a class to pair with runesinger, incanter (potentially with the war sphere specialization) is always an option. It's less specifically war sphere oriented, but it does bring a boatload of talents to be able to grab everything* you want.

*not really, there's always more talents to grab.

[Azerian Kelimon]

You know, I think you're right. They ARE separate lines on the text. So the benefit would just be the +4 to save DCs (which is no joke and quite useful), and of course doing Level*d2 damage. That clears up an important question, tyvm!

[TheFred]

18 hours ago, Djacob91 said:

And you can still pick up the Magemage Prestige Class to get the magic back for the gish part. After that, I'd double check what you want the other class part to be. Which is to say decide whether you want to pick a dedicated magic class, a martial class, or one of the mixed ones. The Magus's Arcane Weaponeer archetype might be a good place to look, either to compliment the Mageknight or just take its place.

As much as I like Knightknight, Magemage basically trades BAB for a rather poor casting progression (and Advanced Magical Training as a bonus feat, which you could just have taken). I'd almost rather dip Incanter. The ability at L4 to boost your CL with one sphere helps a lot, and you do get a decent talent progression, and more talents overall that most anybody else, but it feels like a bit of a build-around and a rather odd one (it also has some niche usefulness - it sets your casting modifier to your practitioner modifier, for example, rather than the other way around, which potentially lets you get Con for casting).

Most forms of Magus are pretty epic in Spheres and pretty much any high-level/gestalt/ish setting thanks to the power of Spell Combat.

5 hours ago, Azerian Kelimon said:

What I'm eyeing right now is the Runesinger Fighter. It's an Expert Practitioner, so it gets a full set of 20 talents, but it also gets some very nice runes that effectively replicate (and with the right feats, outperform!) investing into setting up a Destructive Strike for that gish feeling, so that might be the play.

It's always worth comparing these sorts of archetypes with something like Conscript, which gets a better-than-full talent progression and Fighter-style bonus feats. However Runesinger is... kind of bonkers good, at least compared with the vanilla Fighter? Unless I'm reading this wrong, you only trade out Armour Training and Armour Mastery to get an Expert progression, which is a huge win, never mind the runes. It's perhaps telling of the Fighter that that's still only roughly on a par with the Conscript, though you keep Bravery (meh) and Weapon Training.

The runes themselves seem pretty uninspiring, honestly - the attack ones require a standard action so eh, and you can only use each 1/minute anyway. Still, they're just gravy at this point.

5 hours ago, Azerian Kelimon said:

C) How does the Soul rune's strike effect interact with the Ancient Word feat? Dishing out a die per class level is kind of devastatingly broken and probably not how it's intended to be read (you have a non-zero chance to instantly kill a dragon by activating the rune against them if parsed that way), but it should probably get something from it.

It just says to get a die per class level, so I don't think it can be read any other way? That is most definitely not devastatingly broken - it's on a par with a Destructive Blast (that you spend a spell point on) and works out at +31.5 damage average at L9, assuming d6s. Considering that you're only making a single attack, that's hardly broken. It does count as a Spheres special attack action... but also this is only 1/minute! And you have to expend martial focus. It would be fine if this were a little better than making a regular attack or full-attack, since you're likely only to get one in each encounter.

(Most dragons, by the way, have quite a lot of hp... you have a non-zero chance to do +54 damage with this, but you'd need to (a) have a decent bit of base damage too, (b) roll all 6s, something which you have a ~0.00001% chance of doing (there's a 99% chance of getting 43 or below), and (c) be fighting a very weak dragon - CR9 dragons have ~100 health, but we're gestalt, so appropriate threats are likely several points of CR higher. I would expect to be fighting stuff more like Adult dragons, which have closer to 200 health. Oh, and you still have to hit it in the first place)

I would rather take Signature Technique, honestly, and spam the rune attack... assuming it's even worth spending your actions on at all.

Ah, sorry, missed the Soul Rune bit. Yeah, I suspect that's just the regular damage still, not the additional ability damage.

Edited January 23 by TheFred (see edit history)

[Saberfan]

I've been adjusting my sleep schedule from 1st shift to a 3rd as part of my career change and apologize for being absent during the last few days while my mind and body adjusted to a radically different circadian rhythm.

On 1/20/2024 at 3:42 AM, Rudra said:

Out of curiosity, will the members of the party meet for the first time ingame, or will the group be an already established one, with previous adventures together? or something else? looking at the(many!) apps i see some who appear recent recruits while others imply they have been realmwardens for some time.

the bane of kree background end with her signing the admission form, making her a fresh recruit, but if the party has already worked together i need to modify it a bit

I will leave that up to individual players. There will be a short roleplay section at the beginning of the game with the characters at the guildhall, so that will be an opportunity for any 'new party members' to join up or for the whole party to 'meet back up' for more adventures.

On 1/22/2024 at 11:17 AM, Yamazaki said:

I don't know if it's been asked before, but how do you feel about trading feat progression for Skill Talents, as per this table? I ask specifically about doing this while having both Magic and Combat talent progression thru my normal classes.

 

Personally, I only would like to go Trained, to gain a handful of Skill talents to help flesh out my concept.

 

Alternatively, would it be possible to trade out my combat talent progression of one class for the equivalent skill talent progression? For example, I'm eying Inquisitor (Sphere/Soldier of the gods) as one side of my gestalt, and instead of getting Adept combat talent progression, but get journeyman skill progression?

I would be willing to allow for that trade of Skill Expertise for feats.

On 1/22/2024 at 2:33 PM, Azerian Kelimon said:

So here's an interesting question I don't think I've seen any answers on (please correct me if I'm blind and just missed it!): How well-known and established are our characters within Nexus? Obviously we're decently high leveled so we've got a lot of adventures under our belt, but in the grand scheme of things, where do we stand as far as the City of Cities is concerned? Are we considered relative rookies within the Realmwardens? Trusted agents? Are we well-known such that less senior Realmwardens discuss our jobs as tavern gossip, or are we just guys? Just trying to get a sense of how much leeway we have to 'paint in' details about the hub here, as opposed to just our homeworld.

It's ultimately up to each person as to what their background and renown throughout the Nexus and/or Realmwardens are. Gatewalkers are generally considered a cut above normal members within the Realmwardens as a result of their powers, but that's because their powers make them uniquely suited for traveling between the planes (via Gatewalking) and interacting with every race (via their innate Tongues). Speaking of Gatewalkers and their powers, a few of the less ambitious have made a name for themselves as planar guides or translators/interpreters within the Nexus.

On 1/22/2024 at 4:53 PM, Azerian Kelimon said:

Bonus question related to the above:

 

It's been said that the Leadership sphere (and Leadership-likes) are allowed. My question is, is the additional complexity something you're fine with, Saberfan? They do make combats and exploration more complex, since having a pack of Scoobies to command allows players to be in multiple places at once and get more done. If, for example, you'd prefer noncombatant followers to having to deal with cohorts, that might potentially change what talents I pick, since the goal is to make sure we all have a fun time and not just players.

I am fine with the additional complexity as long as the player knows what they are getting themselves into.

5 hours ago, Azerian Kelimon said:

 

I've looked at that one, yeah. What I'm eyeing right now is the Runesinger Fighter. It's an Expert Practitioner, so it gets a full set of 20 talents, but it also gets some very nice runes that effectively replicate (and with the right feats, outperform!) investing into setting up a Destructive Strike for that gish feeling, so that might be the play. It would be nice to have class features that actually do something to help with the concept instead of just being kinda there while the talents do all the heavy lifting.

The other side is a trifle trickier, just because finding a full-CL caster who also has a focus on something like War to add some more 'leader of men' spice is surprisingly hard, but I'm sure there's something out there.

 

...Oh! This reminds me. Three more questions for Saberfan:

A) Do Fighters get Combat Stamina for free, as suggested in the Unchained book, or does it require a feat?

B) Do talents which count as Associated Feats also count as such for the purposes of determining Stamina Trick access? The rules seem to point that way, but it's not 100% clear and I figure it's well worth making sure.

C) How does the Soul rune's strike effect interact with the Ancient Word feat? Dishing out a die per class level is kind of devastatingly broken and probably not how it's intended to be read (you have a non-zero chance to instantly kill a dragon by activating the rune against them if parsed that way), but it should probably get something from it.

Combat Stamina can be purchased via a feat. Spheres Fighters are a quite a bit better than their vanilla counterparts and don't need the boost that free Combat Stamina gives them.

It has been my understanding, at least based on Spheres Discord crawling I did a while back, that Talents count as Associated Feats.

It seems that your question about Soul Rune has already been answered.

[TheFred]

You said that classes with Gunsmithing can have Gun Training like Gunslingers, so stuff like the Gun Chemist Alchemist as well as Gunslinger archetypes that normally lose Gun Training (Spellshot Engineer in Spheres for example). Does this also extend to classes which get it as an option, e.g. Conscript with Blackpowder training or Technician with the Insight that gives it to them? What about the Firearm Proficiency talent from Equipment? There's a note that adds a battered firearm to that but full-on Gun Training seems generous.

How open are you to combining archetypes, particularly Spheres and non-Spheres archetypes, that wouldn't normally be allowed to stack? For example, anything which changes proficiencies ought to be fairly irrelevant IMO if you're trading them for a martial tradition so long as you still qualify for one, and some things modify spells but again they'd still just get replaced with spheres so long as it's not something like Diminished Casting.

Only Spheres and Spheres-archetyped base classes are allowed, but how about Prestige Classes?

[Azerian Kelimon]

36 minutes ago, TheFred said:

As much as I like Knightknight, Magemage basically trades BAB for a rather poor casting progression (and Advanced Magical Training as a bonus feat, which you could just have taken). I'd almost rather dip Incanter. The ability at L4 to boost your CL with one sphere helps a lot, and you do get a decent talent progression, and more talents overall that most anybody else, but it feels like a bit of a build-around and a rather odd one (it also has some niche usefulness - it sets your casting modifier to your practitioner modifier, for example, rather than the other way around, which potentially lets you get Con for casting).

Most forms of Magus are pretty epic in Spheres and pretty much any high-level/gestalt/ish setting thanks to the power of Spell Combat.

It's always worth comparing these sorts of archetypes with something like Conscript, which gets a better-than-full talent progression and Fighter-style bonus feats. However Runesinger is... kind of bonkers good, at least compared with the vanilla Fighter? Unless I'm reading this wrong, you only trade out Armour Training and Armour Mastery to get an Expert progression, which is a huge win, never mind the runes. It's perhaps telling of the Fighter that that's still only roughly on a par with the Conscript, though you keep Bravery (meh) and Weapon Training.

The runes themselves seem pretty uninspiring, honestly - the attack ones require a standard action so eh, and you can only use each 1/minute anyway. Still, they're just gravy at this point.

 

Re: Runes, it's a special attack action that should stack with Vital Strike, provides rider effects with very solid hit chances (since they scale at the usual Spheres rate but Ancient Word can make all of them significantly more likely to land), and even adds extra damage on top. At lower levels, the fact that you only get to use them once per encounter each makes them just decent burst damage options...but we are level 9 so one rune can be picked out to just brighten up every single turn automatically. I was eyeing the Strength rune, for example, and that one would provide 5 to 9d6 P/B/S damage, plus an automatic free Trip, Bull Rush, Reposition or any other sort of combat maneuver every round, OR a full-speed move action bull rush -- effectively like getting an instance of Brute's Follow-Through that stacks with Follow-Through itself, or Quick Force if that would be more useful. Considering how many shenanigans one can get up to with combat maneuvers in spheres, that seems quite good. Am I missing something that makes it worse than I think it is?

[Saberfan]

22 minutes ago, TheFred said:

You said that classes with Gunsmithing can have Gun Training like Gunslingers, so stuff like the Gun Chemist Alchemist as well as Gunslinger archetypes that normally lose Gun Training (Spellshot Engineer in Spheres for example). Does this also extend to classes which get it as an option, e.g. Conscript with Blackpowder training or Technician with the Insight that gives it to them? What about the Firearm Proficiency talent from Equipment? There's a note that adds a battered firearm to that but full-on Gun Training seems generous.

How open are you to combining archetypes, particularly Spheres and non-Spheres archetypes, that wouldn't normally be allowed to stack? For example, anything which changes proficiencies ought to be fairly irrelevant IMO if you're trading them for a martial tradition so long as you still qualify for one, and some things modify spells but again they'd still just get replaced with spheres so long as it's not something like Diminished Casting.

Only Spheres and Spheres-archetyped base classes are allowed, but how about Prestige Classes?

Generally-speaking, any instance of the Gunsmithing-Gun Training rules apply regardless of where they come from and that includes both options- talents, archetypes, etc- and traditional class features. There may be a few corner cases where it wouldn't apply, but none immediately come to mind.

I would need to see what archetypes you are talking about potentially taking to give a definitive answer to whether or not they would stack and/or whether they would need tailoring to fit the Spheres framework.

Prestige Classes are generally fine, but may need minor modifications to fit Spheres if they would normally advance traditional spellcasting or something similarly out of place for this game. I would need a little more information on what you plan on taking before making a definitive ruling.

[namo]

47 minutes ago, Azerian Kelimon said:

Re: Runes, it's a special attack action that should stack with Vital Strike, provides rider effects with very solid hit chances (since they scale at the usual Spheres rate but Ancient Word can make all of them significantly more likely to land), and even adds extra damage on top. At lower levels, the fact that you only get to use them once per encounter each makes them just decent burst damage options...but we are level 9 so one rune can be picked out to just brighten up every single turn automatically. I was eyeing the Strength rune, for example, and that one would provide 5 to 9d6 P/B/S damage, plus an automatic free Trip, Bull Rush, Reposition or any other sort of combat maneuver every round, OR a full-speed move action bull rush -- effectively like getting an instance of Brute's Follow-Through that stacks with Follow-Through itself, or Quick Force if that would be more useful. Considering how many shenanigans one can get up to with combat maneuvers in spheres, that seems quite good. Am I missing something that makes it worse than I think it is?

I'm by no means an expert, but this seems fine to me in terms of in-combat contribution. And bull-rushing all over the place could be fun.

The limits of it are probably the usual ones: CMD tends to scale really fast with CR.

[TheFred]

28 minutes ago, Saberfan said:

Generally-speaking, any instance of the Gunsmithing-Gun Training rules apply regardless of where they come from and that includes both options- talents, archetypes, etc- and traditional class features. There may be a few corner cases where it wouldn't apply, but none immediately come to mind.

I would need to see what archetypes you are talking about potentially taking to give a definitive answer to whether or not they would stack and/or whether they would need tailoring to fit the Spheres framework.

Prestige Classes are generally fine, but may need minor modifications to fit Spheres if they would normally advance traditional spellcasting or something similarly out of place for this game. I would need a little more information on what you plan on taking before making a definitive ruling.

OK, so no crazy Gunslinger dipping? Sounds good!

Fair enough. The only specific one I had in mind (for a different character anyway, and I'm probably not going to switch up entirely now... but still just like brainstorming) was Experimentalist + Martial Thaumaturge, since both modify feats but the former only adds options. Admittedly many Paizo archetypes are like that; more likely I'd be thinking something like Ley Line Guardian + Sphere Witch (though that's maybe a bad example since it offers a CL boost and those are often handled differently in Spheres).

For PrCs I was really just thinking plain old non-casting ones, just because you've banned regular non-Spheres classes like Fighter or whatever too - casting PrCs would need a proper Spheres conversion, which might be simple, but would I think be pretty case-by-case.

56 minutes ago, Azerian Kelimon said:

Re: Runes, it's a special attack action that should stack with Vital Strike, provides rider effects with very solid hit chances (since they scale at the usual Spheres rate but Ancient Word can make all of them significantly more likely to land), and even adds extra damage on top. At lower levels, the fact that you only get to use them once per encounter each makes them just decent burst damage options...but we are level 9 so one rune can be picked out to just brighten up every single turn automatically. I was eyeing the Strength rune, for example, and that one would provide 5 to 9d6 P/B/S damage, plus an automatic free Trip, Bull Rush, Reposition or any other sort of combat maneuver every round, OR a full-speed move action bull rush -- effectively like getting an instance of Brute's Follow-Through that stacks with Follow-Through itself, or Quick Force if that would be more useful. Considering how many shenanigans one can get up to with combat maneuvers in spheres, that seems quite good. Am I missing something that makes it worse than I think it is?

No, not missing anything I don't think, and these can be good - just, in a vacuum, they're probably not. I don't want to give up my full attack to make just one attack with a +5d6 bonus, usually, even with a free trip, and I definitely don't want to spend a feat to do it more than 1/encounter. This is like everything in Spheres, though: attack actions still suck unless you're investing in them enough to flip them over. None of the Spheres single-attack options are good on their own, but if you combine a bunch of them together they can get good. That takes more resources though.

Strength is probably one of the better of the runes for the attack option, particularly given the flexibility. Soul might be decent if you're spamming it every round but I'd worry too slow. Thunder and Water have no-save effects (and Water has a cool movement option too).

I actually like the look of Defender's Sigil, for AoO tanks, though you kind of also need Signature Technique for it to be good. All in all, I suspect that the runes aren't really worth the investment (unless you're already doing attack actions and don't have a better special, in which case grab Signature Technique for sure).

[Saberfan]

3 hours ago, TheFred said:

OK, so no crazy Gunslinger dipping? Sounds good!

Fair enough. The only specific one I had in mind (for a different character anyway, and I'm probably not going to switch up entirely now... but still just like brainstorming) was Experimentalist + Martial Thaumaturge, since both modify feats but the former only adds options. Admittedly many Paizo archetypes are like that; more likely I'd be thinking something like Ley Line Guardian + Sphere Witch (though that's maybe a bad example since it offers a CL boost and those are often handled differently in Spheres).

For PrCs I was really just thinking plain old non-casting ones, just because you've banned regular non-Spheres classes like Fighter or whatever too - casting PrCs would need a proper Spheres conversion, which might be simple, but would I think be pretty case-by-case.

I've always ruled that archetypes that alter the same thing in non-contradicting ways can be taken alongside each other. So an archetype that, for example, adds new rogue talent options could be taken alongside one that removes rogue talents altogether. That's not the official way of handling it of course, but my stance remains regardless.

Yeah, if you mean Prestige Classes like Assassin or Stalwart Defender, feel free to take those. Caster-centric PrCs need proper evaluation obviously, but most of those should be also be fine as long as people checked with me first and were willing to accept whatever modifications were necessary to make them conform to spheres.

Edited January 24 by Saberfan (see edit history)

[Escheton]

Just found the thread. Looks like it's been up for a month or so. Has a deadline been given yet? A quick perusal didn't spot me one.
And would need a good two weeks for a character with this many options.
Also, hey everyone