The Orrery

A handbook to the Spheres of Power System for the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game

WHAT IS SPHERES OF POWER?

GUIDE TO COLOR CODING:

CLASSES & ARCHETYPES

SPHERES
Alteration
Talents:
Advanced Talents
Conjuration
Form Talents:
Other Talents:
Advanced Talents
Creation
Talents:
Advanced Talents
Dark
Blot Talents:
 Darkness Talents:
Meld Talents:
Shadow Talents:
Other Talents:
Advanced Talents
Death
Ghost Strike Talents:
Other Talents:
Advanced Talents:
Destruction
Blast Type Talents:
Blast Shape Talents
Other Talents
Advanced Talents
Divination
Alternate Divinations:
Sense Talents:
Divine Talents:
Other Talents:
Advanced Talents:
Enhancement
Enhance Talents:
Other Talents:
Advanced Talents:
Fate
Consecrate Talents:
Word Talents:
Other Talents:
Advanced Talents:
Fallen Fey (SkyPG)
Fey Blessing Talents:
 Other Talents:
Illusion
Talents:
Advanced Talents:
Life
Talents:
Advanced Talents
Light
Light Talents:
Other Talents:
Advanced Talents:
Mind
Charm Talents:
Cloud Talents:
Other Talents:
Advanced Talents:
Nature Sphere
Talents
Advanced Talents
Protection
Aegis Talents:
Ward Talents:
Ward & Aegis Talents:
Other Talents:
Advanced Talents:
Telekinesis
Talents:
Advanced Talents:
Time
Time Talents:
Talents:
 Advanced Talents:
War
Mandate Talents:
Momentum Talents:
Rally Talents:
Totem Talents:
Other Talents:
Advanced Talents:
Warp
Teleport Talents:
Space Talents:
Advanced Talents:
Weather
Talents:
Advanced Talents:

FEATS

TRAITS

CLASS ABILITIES

DRAWBACKS
General Drawbacks
Sphere Specific Drawbacks

BOONS

SPELLCRAFTING

EQUIPMENT

MAXIMUM CASTER LEVEL

WHAT IS SPHERES OF POWER?
Spheres of Power is a third party product made by Drop-Dead Studios for use with the
Pathfinder RPG. It creates an alternative magic system to use alongside or replace the existing
vancian slot and level system, giving at-will abilities and a resource pool for augmenting them,
broken down into ‘spheres’ focused around a variety of themes, each sphere providing basic
abilities that are expanded or altered by a talents that go with that sphere. For example, the
warp sphere allows a character to teleport a limited distance, with talents that increases the
range, allow you to target an enemy, or ignore line of sight for the teleport.

Far more than the default magic system, Spheres excels at allowing your character to be fully
functional at their specialty at low levels. If you want to make a charismatic frost queen, you can
shoot blasts of cold, cover enemies in ice, and make walls of ice, all at level 1. Teleporting,
invisible master swordsman? Easy.

The errata for the main book is found here. I will try to note errata in the relevant sections.

A good thread to post questions is here. I will try to incorporate important clarifications in this
guide.

A wiki for the system, not supported or endorsed by Drop Dead Studios in any way, so caveat
emptor, is here. It does tend to be more up to date as far as adding new material than I am,
though there were some minor omissions last I looked.

SOURCES: (WIP)
Spheres of Power: the core book for the system. Any material not noting another source is
either from here or I forgot to tag it. Endzeitgeist review here http://endzeitgeist.com/spheres-
power/

Battlemage’s Handbook: (Bat) the eighth sphere-specific release, focused on the war sphere.

Destroyer’s Handbook: (Des) the third sphere-specific release, focused on the destruction
sphere. Full disclosure: I wrote it. Therefore I will not be rating it. Waiting on a guest contributor
for that. Endzeitgeist review here http://endzeitgeist.com/destroyers-handbook/

Diviner’s Handbook: (Div) the fourth sphere-specific release, focused on the divination sphere.
Includes archetypes, talents, and expands alternate divinations to cover every sphere, among
other things. Endzeitgeist review here http://endzeitgeist.com/diviners-handbook/

Enhancer’s Handbook: (Enh) the fifth sphere-specific release, focused on the enhancement
sphere. Includes archetypes, talents, etc.

Expanded Options: (ExO) a supplementary release containing favored class bonuses, sphere
casting archetypes for base classes not previously covered, and archetypes for the SoP
classes.Endzeitgeist review here http://endzeitgeist.com/spheres-power-expanded-options/

Geomancer’s Handbook: (Geo) the first of the Patreon backed sphere-specific expansions
written by a variety of freelancers. Dedicated to the nature sphere, obviously. Introduces a new
geomancing package, metal. Contents added except for Paizo-class archetypes. Endzeitgeist
review here http://endzeitgeist.com/geomancers-handbook/
Illuminator’s Handbook: (ILL) the sixth sphere-specific release, focused on the light sphere.
Includes archetypes, talents, etc.

Mentalist’s Handbook: (Men) the tenth sphere-specific release, focused on the mind sphere.

Nyctomancer’s Handbook: (Nyc) the ninth sphere-specific release, focused on the dark sphere.

Player’s Guide to Skybourne: (SkyPG) A setting book for Drop Dead Studio’s new Skybourne
setting. Has content for both regular and sphere casting. Largely race/casting
tradition/religion/and airship basics for building a character, not setting info.

Shapeshifter’s Handbook: (Sha) the seventh sphere-specific release, focused on the alteration
sphere.

Telekinetic’s Handbook: (TK) the second sphere-specific release, focused on the telekinetic
sphere. Endzeitgeist review here http://endzeitgeist.com/telekinetics-handbook/

Worlds of Power: (WoP) a release containing three world concepts with additional ideas for
variant mechanics. Has four alternate classes, a few additional destruction talents, and other
miscellaneous content specific to each of the worlds presented. Endzeitgeist review here
http://endzeitgeist.com/worlds-power/

Since I don’t know where else to put it, if you need to figure out an equivalent spell level for a
sphere-effect, divide caster level by 2.

GUIDE TO COLOR CODING:

Red options are terrible and should generally be avoided.
Orange options are niche or mediocre and should be avoided outside of particular builds.
Green options are decent but not top priorities.
Blue options are the strongest and/or most versatile and should be prioritized.

CLASSES & ARCHETYPES

There are 11 new base classes available in the Spheres of Power book, each of which has
several archetypes, all currently residing in Expanded Options. Adam Meyers has stated, when
asked about why some classes have fixed casting stats and others do not:
“As for casting stats, we wanted to give people the freedom to pick their own stats, while not
bogging down people who didn't care for extreme customization with too many choices (hence,
why some classes can pick and some classes can't.) I see no problem in letting people change
it up, though…”
So talk to your GM if you want a different stat and don’t want to dip.
Geomancer's Handbook adds a trait for those whose GMs insist on a mechanical cost to casting
stat switching, unorthodox casting. See the traits section.

Armorist – full BAB, Low caster. Creates armor and weapons as needed, gaining a number of
arsenal tricks to boost combat ability. Wis-based.
 Blaster (Des) – trades summoned equipment for a bound arm cannon.

Warleader (ExO) – gain a mount and the tactician ability with its improvements but lose
bound equipment. You can still summon gear, but as usual summoned gear is not free
and has lower enchantment levels than bound equipment. There are plenty of other
ways to play a mounted warrior without giving up your core feature.

Soaring Blade (TK) – You only get light armor and can’t summon/bind armor or staves.
In return, you get full CL when lifting bound/summoned equipment. You also get several
new arsenal tricks to make your TK weaponry scarier. With full BAB and the ability to
focus much more heavily on your casting stat than other armorists, this may be the
strongest chassis for a dancing weapons build.

Symbiotic Knight (ExO) – give up bound equipment for symbiotic armor that can be
altered at will. This one is pretty cool. Later on you get to pick traits from the alteration
sphere, giving some excellent options. Good choice if you want a natural attack armorist.
Just remember that you aren’t automatically proficient with the heavy armor form.

Warden (Geo) – thematic class skills, banned from metal armor and shields. Loses
quick summons and armor training and gets the nature sphere with full CL for spirit
talents. Spirit talents aren’t great, though if you are allowed to take Natural Ally, then this
goes up to green. Stacks with symbiotic knight, which fixes the metal armor issue and
allows for a cool visual.

Elementalist – Medium BAB, middle caster. Destruction sphere specialist. Cha-based, though
no class features use it. I wrote a handbook. (Discussion thread here)

Admixture Savant (Des) – trade defensive abilities for a pool of admixture points to pay
for metamagic and the admixture talent, can study targets for more damage. Int Based.

Electrokinetic (TK) – An archetype combining electricity and telekinesis. You are limited
to blasts that deal electricity damage (and eventually sonic as well), but get full CL when
lifting metal objects (so most weapons) and can replace bonus feats with ‘stunts’ to
expand your abilities (such as being able to use your full CL to lift living creatures as well
as metal objects, sense electrical charges (including bioelectricity!), channel destructive
blasts through bludgeons, and binding enemies to walls with static). Even against
enemies immune to electricity, you can fall back on your medium-BAB bludgeoning,
meaning you are not as limited as other damage-type focused archetypes. Very cool.
Fire Warrior (ExO) – Fire, frequently resisted and poorly rated blast type above. That
said, resistance to fire is nice to have. You get a huge bonus to your land speed, so that
is interesting, though ask the monk just how awesome outrunning a cheetah is (Answer:
not very). Immunity to fire is a nice addition to the capstone, but DR10/magic is still a
joke. Getting your full level to the fire package of the nature sphere is nice, though
doesn’t happen until level 9. If you want to make a fire-bender, this is a good way to go,
but I’m not going to recommend it highly on its merits. It does what it sets out to do
nicely, but loses out compared to other options based on the weakness of fire as an
element and as a blast type. Nature does allow you to be adept at moving fires around,
but the action cost versus the utility seems questionable. Grab the shape veil feat from
 akashic mysteries for the circlet of brass to boost your fire damage further. This
archetype is actually rather decent for melee builds utilizing natural attacks via the fire
wielder talent, though geomancer gets bigger CL boosts.
Water Warrior (ExO) – Cold, also frequently resisted, but at least you get a decent rider
effect. You get the water package from nature and a swim speed. Swim speeds are only
situationally useful in most campaigns and can be easily negated with the alteration
sphere most of the time. Nature gives the strong freeze and fog abilities, though
supplying the water will get pricey in terms of spell points. Stronger in an aquatic heavy
campaign.
Wind Warrior (ExO) – No nature package for you, instead you get +2, then +4 on
bullrush checks. The bonus is nice to keep your checks relevant and combined with
improved/greater bulrush, pauldrons of the bull, and gauntlets of the skilled maneuver
you should be able to apply some significant BFC via pushing people around (and
triggering AOOs from your allies due to greater bulrush). High flight speeds with
improving maneuverability is nice, so that is an improvement as well. Immunity to non-
lethal at your capstone may open up shenanigans if you get tricky with a source of
regeneration. I’m probably overrating this one, but I’ve been looking for a reason to
pump air blast. <shrug>
Earth Warrior (ExO) – Stone blast, earth package, DR/adamantine. By the time the DR
matters a decent number of enemies will bypass it one way or another. DR3/adamantine
is very weak for level 17. Bumping to 15 as the capstone is better, but still not a big deal.
Stone blast is always applicable, a burrow speed opens up fun tactics, and tremorsense
is nice, giving this archetype a nice boost over other choices. The forge earth talent is
your strongest nature ability unless you happen to have a rather large pile of sand
handy, but it’s a doozy both in and out of combat.
Geomancer (ExO) – This is the archetype that dramatically changes the class,
swapping full levels in destruction for full levels in nature, with CL boosts to specific
packages in place of favored element. One package ends up with CL +6, another +4, a
third +2, which means you are getting some serious boosts. Wish they had the same
thing for the weather sphere (What, I like tossing tornados at my enemies!). See the
Spheres section for more info on the nature sphere. Note that permanent caster level
increases, like what the geomancer gets to the various packages, qualify you for
advanced talents early. Has melee potential with the fire wielder talent or by expanding
reach and critical range with the metal geomancing package. Question here, answer
here.

Eliciter – Medium BAB, middle caster. Mind sphere specialist. Potential to wreck encounters
and campaigns, make sure you have an option against mind-affecting immune creatures. Cha-
based. A handbook for the Eliciter can be found here.

Dominator (SkyPG) – (tiefling only) lose convincing for being able to dominate lower HD
creatures for rounds/day, and they get a new save each round. Requires a standard
each round to maintain. Its nice, but you aren’t HD capped if you just take the mind
control advanced talent. Which, as an eliciter, isn’t a big deal. Taking 10 on social skills
from convincing is nice and unique enough that you will notice the loss in any campaign
with significant social element. If mind control is available, this is not great. If you can’t
get mind control otherwise, it’s stronger. Depends on your campaign and GM.
 Id (ExO) – lose hypnosis, gain more emotions. Many emotions overlap with your mind
sphere powers, but you can get by well enough without hypnosis. Could go either way.
Hypnotist (ExO) – lose emotions, get an inspiration pool. Too bad it’s based on Int,
making you MAD. Many emotions are redundant with mind sphere talents, so you can
get by without them.

Fey Adept – poor BAB, high caster. Illusion sphere specialist. Create reality makes them both
extremely versatile and more powerful than any other class trying to specialize in illusions can
match. Cha-based.

Seelie Disciple (ExO) – lose stealthiness for versatile performance, fascinate, and
suggestion as the bard abilities. You can get by without what you give up, but you don’t
gain much other than the handy versatile performance.
Unseelie Disciple (ExO) – lose shadowmark and create reality for rogue abilities. No.
Do not do this. NPC material.
Wunderkind (WoP) - you keep a version of create reality, so you have the important
part. You also get light armor, which is a nice addition. Access to emotions is a fair boon,
since unlike the eliciter you are not necessarily heavily focused on the mind sphere so
avoid that redundancy. You even get an option to use emotions at range, which is nice,
but the limited pool that you also draw on for your create reality equivalent keeps it from
being something you can spam. The unique wild magic table is interesting and
potentially useful, but most options are as likely to affect allies and enemies equally and
if you boost the odds of a good result you forgo the option to increase the odds of the
effect triggering anyhow.

Hedgewitch – Medium BAB, middle caster. Build a class. Hard to say much because you have
so many options. Choose your stat. A handbook for the Hedgewitch can be found here.

Dragonblooded Mortal (ExO) – trade a tradition for dragon-y-ness. Good for a natural
attack build
Entropic Sage (Des) – a monk-like archetype focused on using the energy blade talent.

Forest Trickster (SkyPG) – (Gnome only) lose a tradition for...scent vs corpses and
creatures under 50% HP, 10 minute necrotic feeding...a boost to illusion CL (full
caster!)...lingering illusions...and permanent illusion. The first two are bad. Full CL to
illusions and having them persist after concentration is nice, so you could make a more
martial (if short) illusionist. Match up with spiritualism tradition for nice benefits, as
always. All but permanent illusions are gained at 1st level, unlike the other tradition-
replacing archetypes.
Triple Goddess (ExO) – trade a tradition for two free spheres, full CL in life, death, and
fate, plus buffs and a save or die. The only middle caster that can get full CL on three
spheres.
Dendrite (WoP) - basically you get your traditions pre-chosen, a limited list of secrets,
and are saddled with draining casting. It's not an archetype, it is entirely negative,
limiting you to a narrow set of choices to fit setting fluff. Really, it's an example of what
you can do with the system to fit a particular idea. Outside of the setting I would never
use it since there is almost nothing you can do with it that you can’t do with a normal
 hedgewitch. They do get access to two secrets for boosting out of combat knowledge
checks. Meh.

Incanter – poor BAB, high caster. Build a class. Specialization options allow a wide range of
concepts. Choose your stat.

Warlock (ExO) – get a familiar and a short-term stat buff for the cost of ONE THIRD OF
YOUR TALENTS. Garbage. There are many ways to get a familiar and the stat boost
isn’t worth the actions and cost for its duration.
Reincarnated Master (ExO) – really just a demo of how to apply existing class
archetypes to an incanter, not really anything to write home about.
Mage (WoP) - locked into Intelligence as a casting stat and forced to specialize, though
you have the option to choose to gain new abilities in your specialization or keep later
feats. Counterspell as a bonus at level 1 is notable. Focus casting, somatic casting, and
metamagic expert are mandatory for fluff reasons, though that could be easily discarded
if not playing in Grimoire. The final guild power is an advanced talent that also provides
its prerequisites, so this is a way to get an advanced talent even if they aren’t otherwise
available, and they come at level 10, which is late for some but early for others.
Exemplar (WoP) - you select an element, granting a bloodline, domain, and some class
skills, and comes with a pre-selected casting stat. Oh, and you get a code of conduct
too, mainly saying you will never use your opposite (light/dark, earth/air, fire/water). Due
to a suspected typo fire exemplar’s have to cast atonement often or die of dehydration
since they explicitly aren’t allowed to drink (not sure where very moist foods fall on the
code). Not much here that you can’t do with the default incanter, basically just showing
how you can alter a class to a setting.

Mageknight – Good BAB, low caster. Gets a variety of mystic combat options and decent anti-
magic defenses. Think ‘martial with cool magic tricks’ rather than ‘gish’. Choose your stat. A
handbook for the Mageknight may be found here.

Doomblade (Des) – trades out their save bonus for a special melee blast shape.
.
Kinetic Scourge (Des) – focused on the energy tether blast shape, mobile fighter.

Warrior of Holy Light (ExO) – you are a paladin. Errata that make glow shed bright light
from the start makes the action economy much better.
Utterdark Champion (ExO) – you are an anti-paladin.
Dragoon (ExO) – you get a mount. Too bad it doesn’t stack. Granting your mount your
mystic combat is pretty sweet, especially when you can increase its size or have it make
touch attacks to boost its accuracy. There were internal discussions with the developers
about allowing this to stack with the other archetypes, but a neat solution was difficult. If
you want to combine it with either Warrior of Holy Light or Utterdark Champion, it is
suggested that you give up a talent at second level. Discussion here.
Divine Lariat (ExO) – lose your casting for lasso tricks. It’s different, not sure how to rate
it.
 Sun Warrior (ILL) – focuses on the glory talent to be lit up all the time. Has fun size-
maximizing possibilities.

Shifter – medium BAB, middle caster. Alteration specialist, loves natural attacks. Wis-based. A
handbook for the Shifter may be found here.

Beastmind (ExO) – swaps out a bunch of minor abilities, overall probably an

improvement.
Elemental Scion (Des) –loses nature/animal themed abilities for greater proficiency with
elemental form, gains bonuses to destruction CL when their elemental form matches
their blast type.

Pack Master (ExO) – you get animal companions. You can get multiple, but given how
HD scales I wouldn’t recommend it unless you know what level the game stops and plan
accordingly. Loses quick and lingering transformation, which are nice, but so is having
another character.
Protean (Sha) – martial flexibility for alteration talents

Warshifter (Sha) – Path of War archetype.

Soul Weaver – Poor BAB, high caster. Gravitates toward healer and necromancer. Some
summoning and support abilities. Check the errata for an increase to channel energy uses. Cha-
based. A handbook for the Soul Weaver can be found here.

Lichling (ExO) – lose channel energy for undead-themed abilities. Not needed Con is
nice for low point buy games.
Dual Channeler (ExO) – drop bound nexus for the ability to channel positive and
negative energy and use both blessings and blights. Gives a different fluff, though the
summoning abilities may be missed.
Shaman (WoP) - wisdom based, which is a bonus, but other than that you replace your
summoned poltergeists/shadows with ghosts with random NPC class levels. You are
stuck with performance casting and painful casting, so watch that fort save and your skill
checks. Deathful magic is nice, I suppose, though with d6 HD I might not want to take
advantage of it often. Note that while the ghosts you can summon are weak, this ability
does give you access to CL12 castings of telekinesis as the spell at level 4, when a
wizard can get it at 9. It's not generally considered the greatest spell, but getting it that
early is notable even if you may be saddled with a commoner’s stats to execute them.
Shepard (SkyPG) - (merfolk only) lose syphon health and channel mastery, gain abilities
that require expending souls to instantly destroy undead. First ability only works against
undead with lower HD than you, the second ability is 1d4 HD/level, which is nice if you
are a fan of 3.5 turning. Not huge replacements, solid if fighting a large number of
undead but more narrowly focused that the base class.
Totemist (Geo) - Loses channel energy for channel balance, which can be used
offensively or for healing, but I would strongly recommend selective channel to not anger
your allies. Replaces blessing/blight with a different set of buffs.
Symbiat – medium BAB, middle caster. Brainy monk-bard. Int to AC, no armor, party buffing
abilities that cost rnds/day. Int-based.

Synapse (ExO) – more focused on teleporting. Out of sight, into mind is far too cool.
Telekinetic Warrior (ExO) – Full CL on telekinesis, trades battlefield relay for bonus with
telekinetic weapons. A good answer to the frequent question of ‘how do I fight with
telekinetic weapons?’. Of course, that is a question significantly complicated by the
release of the Telekinetic’s Handbook.
Hekatonkheires (TK) – You get full CL on telekinesis, like the telekinetic warrior, but
give up psionics for getting telekinetic ghost limbs, granting tentacles attacks. Your build
isn’t perhaps as straight-forward as with the TK warrior, having elements of a natural
attack build needed, though as you use your casting stat for TK tentacle attacks you
won’t want to just pile on more natural attacks from alteration. On the other hand, you
can still do all the bludgeoning goodness while also having decent reach and melee
ability to discourage enemies from getting up close. If nothing else, you can juggle
staves/rods/wands better than anyone.

Thaumaturge – medium BAB, high caster. Interesting option, very limited talents making it a
‘build-a-specialist’. Can get the highest CL in the game, especially for death and conjuration
since they can get feats to apply their forbidden lore to HD caps and companion HD, usually
hard to boost. Choose your stat. I wrote a handbook. (Discussion thread here)

Devourer (ExO) – The round after you confirm a critical hit, you can use forbidden lore
with no chance of backlash. The downside is that your base backlash percentage is 20%
instead of 15%. Awesome for melee builds that can grab a keen weapon with high crit
range. Long duration buffs can be cheesed by nonlethally punching your friends or
random livestock until you get lucky.
Eldritch Cultist (Div) – Trade backlash for a chance to be confused that increases each
time it's used and delays invocations to get the divination sphere. Nice for long-term
buffing as long as you can deal with the damage you deal yourself. Melee builds will like
it too, since confused characters can always attack the creature that attacked them last
round, so you won’t feel the full effect of the drawback. Dangerous to use for an
offensive caster that doesn’t want to get physical.
God-Blooded (SkyPG) – (aasimar only) locks you into a tradition (verbal and emotional
drawbacks aren’t too bad, though watch out for fear, easy focus boon is nice) and trades
occult knowledge for a couple domains, the second coming online at 10 & 14, plus fluff
abilities replacing master invoker. Locks you out of pact mage, which hurts a bit. It works
if you are in the setting and want the fluff, but it's nothing revolutionary.
Pact Mage (ExO) – Lose occult knowledge for new options for invocations. Infernal has
a great high-level choice, unspeakable is best at lower levels for a strong debuff option.
Infernal Pact’s dark lore can be passed off with channel punishment as usual, so grab
extra invocations and spam your strongest talents while dumping the penalty on your
familiar, zombie minion, or other convenient target.
Soulfire Master (Des) – burns CON instead of normal backlash. No failure on backlash
but has an increased chance (50%). Bonuses using the soulfire feat.
 Unseen Horror (TK) – Trade out bonus feats for an unseen servant and the ability to
augment your servant in various ways. There is some real utility here, but the
thaumaturge will feel the loss of the feats given their tiny talent pool. The more focused
you are on a limited set of abilities, the more you can afford it, but it is going to be a
tough call for the limited capabilities of the unseen horror at the levels you can start
stacking on multiple. A grappling hook or the ability to slip through cracks are cool and
flavorful, but you could have grabbed warp and unseeing teleport instead.

SPHERES
Since the value of each sphere can vary dramatically based on the class taking it and how many
talents in that sphere they take, rather than give each one an overall color rating, I will suggest
which classes or concepts benefit most from it by placing them in categories. The categories will
be as follows:
Dive – classes in this category will likely take most of their talents from this sphere.
Specialist casters will tend to be here in their preferred sphere.
Dabble – theses classes should consider taking a fair number of talents here, though it
doesn’t need to be the heart of your build.
Dip – grabbing 1-3 talents will benefit these classes, but more is probably overkill.
Don’t – this sphere has little synergy with the classes/builds listed.

Note that in any given build, you simply won’t have room for a sphere, regardless of how
good its talents are.

Alteration
Alphabetically our first selection, and it’s a gem. Base ability gives you blank form, which
basically lets you keep all your abilities and gear while being able to hang some traits on. You
start with a menu that offers a variety of natural attacks, darkvision, low-light vision, and a
disguise bonus. You can select more traits at a time as you level and get more options from the
various talents. Note that when using forms other than blank form, you have to contend with
gear melding and loss of physical attributes (natural attacks, darkvision, etc). The sphere is a
toolbox, granting a variety of movement modes, size changes, attacks, and special abilities; just
about anyone can benefit from something here. Special note on natural attacks – if you only
have one type (say pincers) of secondary natural attacks, they get to act like primary natural
attacks. This is nice since some secondary attacks start with higher damage dice, like pincers
starting at 1d6 instead of 1d4. It’s a small difference, though adds up if using size change and
encompassing light from the light sphere combined.

Dive – Shifters of course. Some druids as well.

Dabble – Melee-self buffers if using natural attacks, party support high casters for utility,
mobility, and a touch of debuffing.
Dip – Melee-self buffers looking for size increases and pounce, anyone in need of
mobility.
Don’t – If you are getting mobility from other spheres or alteration abilities from a party
member.
Talents:

Aberrant Body (Sha) – includes a variety of traits that allow you to spit acid, disrupt
concentration with sound, not be subject to flanking, etc.

Additional Limbs – a must for natural attackers to have places to land extra attacks. Also
gives attack options.

Aerial Agility (Sha) – includes a variety of traits that improve your flight capability, such
as hover.

Agile Transformation (Sha) – includes a variety of traits that increase your dexterity-
based abilities, such as dodge ac, increased initiative, evasion, and uncanny dodge.

Anarchic Transformation (Sha) – gain the form of a chaotic outsider, gaining DR and
energy resistance. Includes traits that grant your forms the same.

Animal Mind – when hitting an unwilling target, you can reduce their intelligence to 2,
though it gives another save. This can greatly nerf smart enemies, but if you can get a
target to fail two will saves in a row they ought to be hosed. Otherwise you are doing
something wrong. There are plenty of ways to make enemies suffer worse on failed will
saves, but if you are focused here then it’s not bad.

Animalistic Transformation – good speed, scent, a bite, and a touch of natural armor to
help compensate for the armor that just melded away. Scent and hooves can be added
to other forms. Basic, solid.

Anthropomorphic Transformation – make a humanoid. Good for sneaking an animal

companion or conjuration companion in somewhere it wouldn’t fit otherwise, at least for
a few minutes. Also allows hybrid forms, for your were-creature needs. Granting
intelligence is interesting as well. Clarification on how this works with mindless creatures
and feats/skills may be needed here.

Aquan Transformation – great for an aquatic campaign, but much less commonly useful
otherwise. I would rather pay the extra SP for elemental transformation into a water
elemental when you need the swim speed.

Aquatic Mastery (Sha) – includes a variety of traits that increase your combat capability
in water such as ink jet or keen scent.

Avian Transformation – glide until level 5, then you get real flight, though with poor
maneuverability. Natural attacks and armor round things out. If using alteration as your
primary means of flight, this will be cheaper than elemental transformation and doesn’t
lock you out of stacking extra limbs for natural attack builds.

Axiomatic Transformation (Sha) – gain the form of a lawful outsider, includes a variety of
traits that grant DR, reduces the amount of non-lethal damage you take, or increases
your resistance vs
Bestial Reflexes – several options, but you are here for pounce. Pounce is strong for any
melee, doubly so if you have a pile of natural attacks since having to move kills your
damage. Even good for support casters, since their targets will want it even if they
themselves have no use for it.

Bestial Spirit – trip is good early game, especially if you have full BAB and size increases
while rend is extra damage on claw-builds. Speaking with animals and vermin is
situationally useful, roundly superior to its equivalent in the nature sphere since this one
is free.

Bully (Sha) – includes a variety of traits that increases your capability to utilize charge,
pull, and push maneuvers.

Celestial Transformation (Sha) – gain the form of a good outsider, includes traits that
grant DR/evil or energy resistance.

Construct Transformation (Sha) – gain the form of a construct, includes traits that grant
DR/adamantine or spell resistance.

Dragon Transformation – A lot like animalistic transformation, except you get a breath
weapon that scales with CL. Stylish. Without the meta-breath feats from 3.5 it’s not as
useful, but you can get some mileage out of it. Breath weapon CL is caster-level based,
not target-based like the poison and web abilities from vermin transformation.

Elemental Transformation – this covers all your mobility needs shy of teleportation. The
only downsides are that it costs an extra SP and that you can’t stack natural attacks on it
(unless you are a shifter).

Extreme Adaptation (Sha) – includes a variety of traits that allow you to survive harsh
environmental conditions such as altitude, pressure, hot/cold environments, or airless.

Fey Transformation (Sha) – gain the form of a fey, includes traits that grant DR/cold iron,
wild empathy, or woodland stride.

Fiendish Transformation (Sha) – gain the form of an evil outsider, includes traits that
grant DR/good or energy resistance.

Giant Traits – Rock throwing and rock catching. Did you want these? I guess it fills in
between two great talents.

Greater Transformation – grant an extra trait. If you are grabbing more than one or two
talents here than you need this.

Lingering Transformation (Sha) – Your shapeshift last 2 additional rounds without

concentration; Spend a spell point to double your duration, explicitly stacks with Extend
Spell.

Mass Alteration – required for support types, helpful for shifters than play well with
others, useless to those with the lycanthropic drawback.
Mimicry (Sha) – Study a creature for a full-round action (or spend a spell point as a swift)
to gain a corresponding alteration talent.

Morphic Weapon (Sha) – includes a variety of traits that allow you to either form
weapons out of your limbs, or graft weapons into you.

Object Transformation (Sha) – gain the form of an object with limited combat capability,
includes a trait that allows you to hide in plain sight.

Odiferous (Sha) – includes a variety of traits that allow you to gain and manipulate your
odor.

Ooze Transformation (Sha) – gain one of four ooze form packages, includes a variety of
traits that allow you to gain thematic ooze traits.

Orb Transformation (Sha) – gain the shape of a floating sphere-esque shape (such as a
skull, helmet, ball, etc) includes the float trait, which is a limited fly speed, possibly more
akin to levitation.

Perfect Imitation (Sha) – your +10 bonus to disguise checks now apply to imitating
individuals, gain camouflage as a trait, granting a +5 circumstance bonus to stealth
checks.

Plant Transformation – bigger armor boost than any other form. Even if you never turn
into a plant it can be worthwhile just to be able to use any extra trait slots for +2 NA
each.

Powerful Limbs (Sha) – includes a variety of traits that increase your physical prowess,
allowing you to wield larger weapons, increase the damage of one natural weapon, or
increased jump and carrying capacity.

Protean Mastery (Sha) – includes a variety of traits that allow you to leave a slot
unassigned (which can later be filled as desired), end bleed effects, gain DR/silver, or
gain fortification against critical hits and precision damage.

Prickly (Sha) – includes a variety of traits that grant you spines, spikes, etc.

Ranged Alteration – You may use shapeshift at Close range instead of touch.

Retain Ability (Sha) – you may keep one extraordinary or supernatural ability while under
the effects of a shapeshift (which uses up one slot).

Serpentine Transformation (Sha) – gain one of two serpent form packages (Constrictor
or Poisonous), includes traits that allow you to swallow, strangle or more effectively
utilize your bite attack while grappling.

Size Change – up to huge or down to diminutive, with stat changes as well. Casters and
sneaks like small sizes, brutes like large sizes, and inflicting the wrong size on the right
enemy can be fun.
 Subterranean Transformation – burrow and tremorsense. Tremorsense saves this from
being lower, since earth elementals can get burrow. Not that many other sources for
tremorsense. Tunnel and pounce natural attack builds will like this as well.

Swarm Transformation (Sha) – gain the form of a swarm, includes the divided self trait
(which grants you a +4 bonus on saves vs effects that target individual creatures).

Tentacles – one natural attack per trait, same as if adding limbs and claws in pairs. Also
can grant grab and constrict, so if you want to grapple this is your talent.

Twisted Transformation (Sha) – includes a variety of traits that allow you to manipulate
your target’s body including decreasing movement speed, blinding, or sickening them; or
you can create a pouch that can hold items that are two sizes smaller than yourself.

Undead Traits – a variety of trait options, though the more interesting ones are level-
gated. Eventually can give incorporeality, so that’s neat.

Vermin Transformation – climb speed, poison bite and web trait options. I rather like
web. Good for being creepy, though climb isn’t nearly as nice as fly in most cases.

Vitality (Sha) – includes traits that grant fast healing, immunity to sleep, or bonuses to
several debilitating effects.

Vocal Transformation (Sha) – includes a variety of traits that allow you manipulate
speech, you may grant or remove speech, mimic the voices of others, or grant a roar.

Serpentine Transformation (for the customization section of SoP, so not an ‘official’

talent) - grants a serpentine base form. Swim and climb speeds in one form, but you
aren’t using any weapons. Gives an alternate way to get grab, constrict, and poison.
Rather get grab and constrict from tentacles, since they are useful for natural attack
stacking. Con damage with a Con-based save would be nasty for blood-mage types, but
I would rather get that from vermin transformation, which grants a climb speed as well
and also gives web. Ultimately it doesn't give you anything you can’t get elsewhere and
locks you out of any weapon-based builds, though the lack of limbs can be overcome by
stacking tentacles for natural attacks or using extra limbs.

Advanced Talents

Diffuse Swarm (Sha) – become a much smaller swarm

Energy Manipulation (Sha) – grant immunity to an energy type, or grant vulnerability

instead.

Extreme Transformation (Sha) – increase the number of traits you may apply even
further.

Fusion (Sha) – combine the form of two adjacent creatures into a single individual

Homogenize (Sha) – increase the damage from twisted transformation.

 Permanent Transformation – Yes, please. Requires 10th level. I would have something
on every party member, even if just to boost speed and AC.

Size Mastery (Sha) – you may now alter your size beyond diminutive and gargantuan

Star Spawn Transformation (Sha) – gain the form of an eldritch horror.

Transform Object (Sha) – you may target objects with your shapeshift.

Conjuration
Our second sphere is a doozy. One of, if not the most, controversial sphere. Basic ability allows
you to summon a companion that acts rather like an eidolon for concentration for the cost of a
spell point, allowing another SP for minute/level duration. Form talents grant the companion new
abilities and all stack with each other, though if you have multiple companions each one must be
taken separately for each companion. Notable as the only sphere that lets you effectively boost
your caster level for the price of a talent, Boon Companion. Note that temporary CL boosts will
improve summoning duration, but NOT the companions HD. The only ways to do that are to
boost your actual CL, such as by leveling, taking a specialization with incanter, sphere sorcerer,
or sphere wizard, being a thaumaturge with the master of cosmos feat, or using the
aforementioned talent on a medium or low caster. Consider houseruling a limit on the number of
talents a given character can take in this sphere.

Dive – Thaumaturges with the master of cosmos feat, anyone who wants to spend more
resources on their pet than themselves or enjoy taking half an hour for each turn and
getting books thrown at them. Sphere summoners, of course.
Dabble – Mounted builds or caster who want bodyguards.
Dip – Those looking for a durable mount and extra body to round out the party.
Don’t – Low casters above level 10 when the companions HD start to fall irrevocably
behind.

Form Talents:

Additional Limbs – just like for alteration, gives bonuses and a place to put natural
attacks. Note that companions do not have a natural attack cap like an eidolon.

Aligned Creature – your companion can smite 1/day, getting an additional use every 7
HD. That’s not many uses, though smite is powerful.

Altered Size – permanently get bigger or smaller with stat adjustments to match. Be
careful that you don’t make your companion too big to fit indoors unless you have more
than one companion and can afford to leave one behind.

Armored Companion – gains a scaling armor bonus. Great for tanks, not bad for anyone.

Avian Creature – flight speed, your choice of wings and average maneuverability or
magical and perfect maneuverability. Your choice depends on a source for wing attacks
and how concerned you are with appearance and anti-magic fields.
Battle Creature – proficiency and two simple weapons with scaling enhancements,
martial if taken twice. Necessary if your companion is to wield weapons unless you just
have them take proficiency feats. This is probably a better choice, especially with the
free scaling.

Bestial – gain more natural attacks. Obviously required for natural attack builds, still
useful options for secondary attacks for others.

Boon Companion – treat your CL as 5 higher for the purposes of determining your
companion’s HD (max equal to your level). Required for mid-casters that want to keep
up and low casters that want to fall behind more slowly. Useless to full casters.

Draconic Creature – breath weapon, DC is Con-based. Not going to be my first pick.

Having an AoE is nice and it doesn’t have the idiotic usage limit the eidolon’s equivalent
gets, but it isn’t much damage.

Earth Creature – burrow speed and tremorsense. Handy for surprising enemies, less
helpful when everything starts flying.

Elemental Creature – small elemental damage boost on natural attacks that scales with
HD. It’s not huge, but with enough natural attacks it will add up. No good for weapon
users though.

Fortified Companion – Scaling Con-boost. Fort saves, HP, and breath weapon DCs get a
nice boost. Good to have, but not as exciting as other choices.

Lingering Companion – 1/hr level duration when spending a spell point to not have to
concentrate. Yeah, this is good. Combine with greater summoning to get the companion
for 24 hrs and the ability to dismiss and resummon for free during that period, handy for
places they don’t fit, either physically or socially.

Magical Attacks – natural attacks bypass increasing DR. Better off summoning it in the
morning and handing it an amulet of mighty fists.

Magical Companion – Scaling Cha-boost and CL equal to HD/2. There are some fun
tricks here. Look for spheres and talents that are useful with weak DCs and low CL. Also
works for packing your own healer. Fey adepts can grab situational stuff on the fly by
creating illusory casters this way.

Monstrous Attacks – add trip, grab, pull, constrict, or poison to a natural attack. The
scaling of HD means combat maneuvers may be iffy propositions, though size helps
(thaumaturges don’t worry about this so much due to higher HD companions).
Presumably poison scales off Con, so grab fortified companion.

Natural Aspect – Pounce, leaping attack, rend, trample, rock catching, rock throwing,
fast healing. Pounce is necessary for natural attackers and nice for weapon users with
iteratives. Fast healing is okay, but hardly a requirement. Rend works for claw builds, the
others are mostly fluff.

Powerful Companion – Scaling Str-boost. If going Str-based melee, you need it.
Otherwise pass.
 Quick Companion – Scaling Dex-boost. If going ranged or Dex-based melee, this is
required. Still nice for AC and initiative, as well as some skills.

Resistance – Scaling resistance to one element. Thematic, but it’s only one element.
Leave it be unless you expect to face one element quite often.

Roguish Creature – Need someone to do rogue stuff? Done.

Shadow Creature – Sneaky in dim light and only takes half damage from corporeal
creatures, but only deals half damage. Either give it a way to deal full damage or only
put this on a scout. A scout with perfect flight, diminutive size, rogue abilities, and a Dex
boost would be an excellent scout.

Shield Bearer – For more tanky-ness. Rather have my expendable minion dealing
damage.

Skillful Companion – more skill points and class skills. Good if you want a skillmonkey.

Transformative – can disguise itself. Okay for a social campaign, not much use for
hack’n’slash. Rather take magical companion and learn invisibility and disguise from
illusion, but it could have its place.

Undead Creature – gives a pile of immunities if taken twice, so that’s handy. Just
remember to find a way to heal with negative energy, take the fast healing ability from
natural aspect, or have someone with the fast healing talent from the life sphere.

Water Creature – Is your campaign aquatic? If not, don’t bother. Helpful if it is.

Willful Companion – Scaling Wis-boost. Gets to roll twice on all will saves. The base is
decent, boosting will saves and perception checks. The second part is great, given the
number and severity of will save effects.

Other Talents:

Extra Companion – you get another companion. Note that form talents must be taken
individually for each companion. Please don’t abuse this, your party doesn’t want to be
replaced by summons. (Unless that is the premise of a solo game…) This can get crazy,
so either houseruled caps or gentleman’s agreements are common.

Greater Summoning – duration increase for the cost of a spell point, combine with
lingering companion for 24 hr summons.

Link – telepathic communication with your companion. Great for scouts or sending your
summons adventuring while you stay home.

Ranged Summoning – Only good if using your companions as short-duration in-combat

summons. Otherwise it’s pointless since the distance when you summon in the morning
hardly matters.
Advanced Talents

Diagram – an advanced talent, available at level 1? Nice. Boosts your chances of

binding outsiders with the next advanced talent, so recommended unless only binding
friendly critters or very sure of your success without it.

****Summoning**** – planar binding/planar ally rolled into one. Yeah, if you can take this
you have access to one of the most powerful abilities in the game, for a price. Always
clear advanced talents with your GM, this one doubly so. Planar binding is frequently
mentioned in optimized play for a reason.

Creation
Two base abilities, alter and create. Alter lets you do minor damage or repairs to unattended,
non-magical objects, create lets you temporarily make vegetable matter. No intrinsic properties,
so no drug or poison farming. Dropping things on enemies’ heads is, however, permitted. This is
really a tool-box sphere, the ability to create material as needed has as many applications as
your ability to imagine them and while alter starts weak, it can be expanded into something fun
as well. (I don’t recommend the anvil-offense as your primary damage-mode, costs a spell point
every time.)

Note: “Wood and people would count as a dense material for the telekinesis sphere (which is
more based on size than density), but not as a dense material for the falling damage listed
under the Creation sphere (which is more based on density than size). We referenced rules
from all over Pathfinder when making our own, and sometimes the detailed inconsistencies
transferred over, I apologize.”

Dive – anyone who really likes dropping anvils and building instant walls. Due to SP
costs I recommend having other options though.
Dabble – Any full caster that wants a good, versatile utility option.
Dip – Any.
Don’t – Low casters who have party members to cover the utility provided.

Talents:

Change Material – change something from one material to another for a short time.
Benefits greatly from expanded materials. Applications include turning the castle door
into paper for your barbarian friend to Kool-Aid man through or putting out a fire by
turning the wood to stone.

Distant Creation – range on create goes from touch to close, then medium, etc.
Necessary for anvil drops, spell-interrupting walls, and any number of other uses. Need
it at least once.

Divided Creation – you can create multiple objects, though the total size can’t exceed
your maximum size and must be of the same type, or create one object with many parts
(example given – a tavern). “Where did that pile of barrels come from?” “It’s a cellar,
come on, they’re getting away!”
 Expanded Materials – now you can create stone, with metals coming with higher levels.
This gives you stronger materials and also do more damage when dropped on enemies.

Exquisite Detail – bonus equal to CL on craft checks to make complex or intricate

objects and they are harder to discern as fakes. Depends what you are making, the
stone wall covering your escape doesn’t NEED a bas relief, but it couldn’t hurt. More
important if supplying a squad of soldiers with temporary masterwork weapons.

Forge – permanently reshape things. Awesome.

Greater Destroy/Repair – Destroy and repair aren’t great anyhow. Destroy might be okay
if you fight a lot of constructs and combine it with potent alteration, but there are better
ways to spend your SP. Repair can just be spammed anyhow, so who cares?

Larger Creation – spend an SP to boost your max size. Nice to have, since size is rather
critical to many applications.

Lengthened Creation – created items can last for hr/level. Useful.

Potent Alteration – Spend a SP to target attended objects, creatures, magic items, etc.
How often do you need to repair magic items? Sunder isn’t that hot either. Meh.

A comment from Lirya on GitPg:

“Potent Alteration is orange at best, and might very well still be red. But changing an
ally's magic weapon into mithral (silver) or cold iron can also be nice if there is a DR or
regeneration issue.(…) I just want combining it with change material and using it against
animated objects to be mentioned as that strikes me the best use. You can also combine
it with Forge to reforge magic items of the wrong type into something your fighter can
use. So if you find a +X magical axe of awesome, but your fighter uses swords. Then
you can reforge the magic item into a sword. Basically, the talent has very niche
applications. But assuming you already have a lot of alter talents to combine it with,
there will be multiple niche applications so some of them might show up allowing you to
use the talent to perform awesome deeds. The player just needs to be creative which is
a key requirement for the whole sphere really.”

Advanced Talents

Create Materials – you can create things permanently. Requires level 10. Take it.

Fabricate – you can create detailed items with forge. Handy. You are a 1-man factory.

Fleshcraft – expanded materials now include flesh. Which means you can do some
serious debuffing, removing limbs, senses, etc, dealing constitution damage, or also act
as a healer and restore those things. Makes nifty disguises too!

Permanent Change – permanently change the castle wall to jello? Yes, please.
Dark
Hope you’ve skimmed the illumination rules, they may come in handy. Base ability creates an
area of darkness. Darkness talents give new options for the area of darkness, while meld talents
last for an hour (good for spellcrafting!) and give you new abilities while in your darkness. Note
that the default ability does nothing to hinder darkvision, so keep that in mind when building your
character and before using it on enemies that will completely ignore it (many, many enemies
have darkvision since it is attached to a significant number of creature types). Proper use
requires teamwork and preparation, but this sphere can be deadly if used properly.

Dive – someone who wants to play assassin and/or really likes the theme. Very thematic
for fetchlings.
Dabble – Martial builds that are willing to build around it since blocking vision with
deeper darkness and creating difficult terrain with thick darkness have no saves, support
casters willing to spend SP buffing the party to be able to work in the darkness. Offers
strong battlefield control if you are willing to prepare.
Dip – Support casters that want to be able to screw with enemies’ vision on occasion or
just deal with dark conditions in general (see the meld into darkness sphere-specific
drawback).
Don’t – Anyone who doesn’t want to refresh themselves on the illumination rules.

Blot Talents:

Creeping Lethargy (Nyc) - creatures in area must make Will save or become staggered or
asleep.
Flat Black (Nyc) - creates a pure black plane of darkness, increasing perception DC’s by +10.
Intoxicating Darkness (Nyc) - creatures in area must make Fort save or take Wisdom damage.
Numbing Darkness (Nyc) - creatures in area must make a Fort save or take Dexterity damage.
Obscure Passage (Nyc) - creates a portal of darkness that allows for passage through solid
substances (such as walls, floors or ceilings)
Shadow Slick (Nyc) - pretty much as the grease spell.
Shadow Tag (Nyc) - can magically track creatures for upto 1 mile away.
Tenebrous Legerdemain (Nyc) - can magically steal or pick things up via darkness.

Darkness Talents:

Black Lung (Nyc) - fort save or become sickened. Creatures with verbal casting drawback suffer
50% spell failure. If you take the talent a second time, you may also imbue the darkness with a
contact poison you possess.
Creeping Lethargy (Nyc) - creatures in area must make Will save or become staggered or
asleep.
Directional Darkness (Nyc) - your darkness doesn’t hinder sight from one direction.
Disorienting Darkness – will save or move in a random direction. Not an early pick, but very fun
once you get larger areas of darkness. Good battlefield control (in a chaotic, uncontrolled way).
(Nyc) If you invest in this talent a second time, you may as an immediate action choose which
direction they move when they fail their save (instead of rolling randomly).
Fearful Darkness – will save or shaken every round inside your darkness. Mind-affecting. Good
for softening up saves, great if you have a way to fear-stack.
Hungry Darkness – fort or lose 1 Con. Nasty if you have a large area and a way to keep them
there. Spellcraft it with disorienting, snagging, or thick darkness perhaps? Or use crystal blast,
entangle, or any of the other good BFC sphere abilities to hold them in place. Don’t bother
against undead and constructs though.
Intoxicating Darkness (Nyc) - creatures in area must make Fort save or take Wisdom damage.
Looming Darkness – will save or take a -1 to all saves. Weaker than shaken, but not mind-
affecting so doesn’t worry about immunities and resistances.
Numbing Darkness (Nyc) - creatures in area must make a Fort save or take Dexterity damage.
Pure Darkness – darkvision is cut down to 5’, low light vision is negated, all other senses cut in
half. No extra cost. Yeah, you want this.
Shadow Tag (Nyc) - can magically track creatures for upto 1 mile away.
Silent Darkness – penalizes perception checks to hear sounds from within your darkness. Great
for fighting grimlocks, I suppose, but the fact that it won’t stack with other darkness effects
without spellcrafting means this one is probably not getting pulled out often.
Snagging Darkness – reflex or entangled. Entangled is a great condition to inflict.
Tenebrous Legerdemain (Nyc) - can magically steal or pick things up via darkness.
Thick Darkness – darkness is difficult terrain! Since you have the ability to allow your party to
ignore this, it becomes awesome since you can hinder all your enemies while you and your
friends move unimpeded. Spellcraft with hungry or snagging darkness.

Meld Talents:

Clearsight – make a creature immune to the drawbacks of your darkness effects, though doesn’t
grant darkvision. Interestingly, those with darkvision can see in your deeper darkness with this.
Pretty much going to be required for playing nice with a party; (Nyc) - If taken a second time,
you may have your Clearsight be used with blots or areas of darkness created by allies.
Dark Slaughter – get sneak attack in your darkness. Doesn’t scale. Should be easy enough to
trigger, but with no scaling it isn’t great. Name oversells it a bit, I think.
Darkvision – grants darkvision or increases its range. You pretty much have to have darkvision
from somewhere to be functional in this sphere, whether by this, race, class, or other source
(alteration, items, etc). No color since there are many ways to get what you need.
Feed on Darkness – spell point for fast healing 1 for 1 minute per CL. It’s a way to heal if no one
has the life sphere. Fast healing also doesn’t care about negative and positive energy, so that
could be useful for some groups.
Hide in Darkness – hide in plain sight while in your darkness. Handy for certain builds. Very
handy if taking the drawback, since you can then use it in any dark area. Note that it really isn’t
necessary if your foes can’t observe you in darkness to begin with, such as those without
darkvision. The green rating presumes that enough enemies will have darkvision to make it
useful. Ranged builds using pure darkness should probably pass.
Step Through Darkness – move action to teleport between darkness effects, up to 30’. Great if
you have prepared the field, but loses a rank since it becomes useless without planning. (Nyc) If
you invest in this talent a second time, you increase the maximum distance teleported by 10 ft
per 3 CL (minimum +10 ft).
Stygian Immersion (Nyc) - will save or treat your blots as water (which imposes alot of penalties
such as requiring swim checks/speed and significantly hampering attacks).

Shadow Talents:

Blindfold (Nyc) – Blinds a single creature.

Shadow Lurk (Nyc) - Creates a minor shadow double. If taken a second time, the shadow
double becomes significantly more powerful.
Shadowed Mien (Nyc) - Creates a mask of darkness that gives bonuses to Bluff and Intimidate.
Shadow Slick (Nyc) - pretty much as the grease spell.
Shadow Stash (Nyc) - pretty much the Extradimensional Storage (space) talent from the Warp
sphere, except that they are visible in your shadow.
Shadow Tag (Nyc) - can magically track creatures for up to 1 mile away.

Other Talents:

Clinging Darkness (Nyc) - your blot or darkness is centered on a creature or object instead of an
area, causing the effect to move with the target. The target however receives a Will save each
round to end its effects.
Extinguish (Nyc) - extinguish all non-magical fires in the area of your darkness. May also be
used to dispel magical flame with a successful magic skill check.
Flowing Darkness (Nyc) - your blots areas of darkness becomes a spread, instead of an
emanation (meaning it will go around corners through cracks and holes in-order to fill the whole
area).
Gaze into the Abyss (Nyc) - pretty much shuts down any attempt at Diviner’s trying to divine
personal information about you as they must make a magic skill check or become stunned as if
viewing an overwhelming aura.
Greater Darkness – spend a spell point for a larger area. Very helpful for laying down your
darkness at the start of a fight.
Insinuate (Nyc) - your areas of darkness blend into natural shadows making them difficult to
perceive, until they fail a saving throw that is.
Lingering Darkness – get two rounds without concentrating. Good if you are low or trying to
save SP. Probably should have easy focus, but this can still be quite useful. Most fights are
decided in a few rounds anyhow.
Mass Meld (Nyc) - spend an extra spell point to meld an additional creature. Pretty much
useless, unlike all other ‘group’ or ‘mass’ talents in other spheres, you aren’t saving spell points
or significant time by having or using this talent. You are better off choosing anything else.
Obfuscation (Nyc) - creatures in areas of darkness or subject to one of your blot talents are
treated as if shielded by a thin sheet of lead for the purpose of Divination effects cast by others.
If taken a second time, you are treated as having 1 foot of lead for the purpose of Divination
effects cast by others.
Quick Meld – the only talent without ‘dark’ or ‘darkness’ in its name! Use melds on yourself as a
swift. Nice if you get dispelled or ambushed, but most of the time you should have your melds
up long beforehand, since they last for hours.
Shadow Coterie (Nyc) - you may apply multiple shadow talents to a single creature. Allows you
to have multiple shadow lurks active.
Sinister Surprise (Nyc) - you may create a darkness or blot effect as a magical trap which
remains dormant for 1 hour per caster level or until triggered. You may take this talent a second
time to include specific triggers or individuals to whom the trap doesn’t trigger.
Wall of Darkness – lets you divide your area up into cubes. Handy for not wasting space
blocked by walls or for laying down difficult terrain.

Advanced Talents

Animated Shadow (Nyc) - You gain an extra pair of shadow limbs which may manipulate
objects.
Black and Black Morality (Nyc) - Completely voids out any magical effect that depends upon
alignment.
Lightless Penumbra (Nyc) - You are protected against the negative effects of sunlight and other
light effects.
Melt into Shadow (Nyc) - You become a blot of shadow, which may increase your mobility
significantly.
Midnight – darkness has 2 mile radius. Dang. Requires level 10. Spellcraft with some of the
other darkness abilities to screw with entire cities. Note the bit about walls blocking it and the
darkness radiating from a central point. Still cool.
One with the Void (Nyc) - You become an area of darkness, which grants incorporeal and a
flight speed.
Shadow Double (Nyc) - As shadow lurk, except that it is far superior and can draw from your
spheres, talents and spell pool as necessary.
Shadow Walker – basically, you get the shadow walk spell, which is a thematic teleport. Very
nice to have. Note that since it is a meld, you can make it a swift action on yourself with quick
meld.

Death
Bust out the black nail polish and angst, it’s time for death! Two base abilities, ghost strike, a
ranged attack that fatigues or exhausts for rnds/level on a failed fort save, and reanimate, that
makes temporary simple undead (skeletons and zombies). You control them, up to twice your
CL.

Dive – classic necromancers, which are likely thaumaturges, incanters, soul weavers
(especially lichlings), sphere wizards, sphere clerics, or triple goddess hedgewitches.
Dabble – Debuffers and anyone that wants a wall of rotting corpses between themselves
and the enemy. Magus dip melee builds can make good use of ghost strike debuffs.
Dip – Mid and high casters looking to diversify their debuffing abilities.
Don’t – Low casters that don’t have the CL or DC to make use of it, anyone that likes
goodness, light, and slinging AoE positive energy effects.

Ghost Strike Talents:

Bleeding Wounds – ghost strike does CL/2 bleed damage. Bleed damage is generally a weak
option, easily removed and taking too long to add up. Pass.
Command Undead – spend a spell point to make undead friendly toward you, with limitations
similar to charm. Goes up a notch if you don’t have other means to do similar things, such as
channeling energy to command undead.
Curse – spell point to inflict a curse. Examples are more limited than bestow curse, but still has
decent debuffing ability.
Drain – spell point for a negative level, no save. Die size scales as CL increases. Great debuff.
They also stack. Consider it with a metamagic rod of empower or maximize.
Inflict Disease – because of the instant onset and the first save using your death sphere DC
rather than the default disease DC, this is a good way to land potentially hefty ability damage.
The subsequent saves are at fixed DCs, but anything you are hitting should be dead in a few
rounds, so making a couple saves over the next few days is irrelevant. Enemies that are
important enough to escape and trouble you again will also have the resources to cure
themselves, so think of this as more of a one-shot debuff than a disease. Some things are
immune, so drop it a couple ratings in campaigns heavy in undead, constructs, and paladins.
Manipulate Undead – ghost strike can damage undead or heal them by spending a spell point. It
works if you can’t channel negative energy or patch them up another way and you want to keep
your favorite pet going.
Necrotic Feeding – kill a target below 0 HP and get a buff. Action economy is against you, since
targets below 0 HP are unlikely to be a threat and you are spending a standard action to not
impact the battle that round. No save or CL dependency, so could be useful for low casters, but
enhancement bonuses are common anyhow, so probably not.
Sickening – sickened is a good debuff to soften up enemy saves. Nauseated shuts enemies
down hard.
Vampiric Strike – deal modest damage, gain temporary HP. Nice option to have, very worthwhile
on magus builds. Works with greater ghost strike as well, though the THP is capped. Nice
backup in a tough fight.
Weakening – potentially big Str or Dex penalties, though not impressive without spending a
spell point. Hit the enemies’ low stat and shut them down. Works best at higher levels.

Other Talents:

Cryptic Strike – make a ghost strike as part of a melee attack. This is great when you don’t have
iterative attacks, haste, numerous natural attacks, or some other source or bonus attacks. After
you do, this gives up too much for the modest damage of one attack at the cost of having to
target full AC.
Empowered Reanimate – animated creatures get +4 Str & Dex. All minion-animators will want
this.
Expanded Necromancy – variant undead options, though they count double for your control cap.
Greater Ghost Strike – spell point to make ghost strike a close range cone. Excellent with drain.
Greater Reanimate – get an extra 1 HD per CL to your control cap. Necessary for minion-
mancing.
Killing Curse – if it has failed three saves in the last minute and fails another one, it should be
dead anyway.
Lingering Necromancy – undead last for 1 hr/level instead of a minute. Do you even have to
think about it?
Mass Reanimate – reanimate multiple undead at once. If you are animating a few large undead
to start the day, or permanently with the advanced talent, then this is less useful. If you want to
turn a battlefield in your favor suddenly, it's perfect.
Necrotic Senses – concentrate on an undead under your control to perceive what it does. Go
fast zombie bat scout!

Advanced Talents:

Astral Projection – I am no expert, but it seems to pretty well match the lesser version of the
spell of the same name. Comes up often in high-op discussions, so I’m assuming blue is valid.
10th level. Travel in a disposable body, handy!
Astral Travel – this kicks the above up to full astral projection. 15th level. Not entirely certain that
they belong in death, but I suppose it fits as well as anything, but death certainly isn’t short of
advanced talents.
Greater Undead – permanently create more powerful undead, though you don’t automatically
control them. Watch out for special circumstances required, they still apply. Gets you your
vampire army though. Best if you have a way to control them, drops to orange otherwise, since
you will have to rely on your wits. CL 15.
Permanent Undead – your create undead buddies don’t fall over after a few minutes or hours.
Saves spell points from day to day, though have a way to patch them up. CL 5.
Possession – you can body-jack creatures while using project spirit. Ever play Geist? Yup, that’s
you. Just be sure someone is watching your body. CL 10.
Project Spirit – required for astral projection and possession. Good for scouting on its own.
CL10.
Soul Trap – trap souls in a costly gem, preventing resurrection and allowing them to be easily
called with summon spirit, provided you hold the stone. Not sure how great it is for players,
seems more plot-device-y, but I’m willing to hear arguments to the contrary.
Summon Spirit – summon a spirit to ask questions, animate an undead creature or animated
object, or bring it back to life if you have the resurrection life talent. Grants a path to having
undead party members, though you probably want greater undead for this so you can use an
undead type that will keep class levels (juju zombies are a reasonable choice, though I’m sure
there are plenty of others). CL 5.

Destruction
Base ability is a blast that does bludgeoning damage, 1d6 per odd caster level, with the option
to spend spell pool to boost it to 1d6/CL (min 2d6). Close range or melee touch by default.
Nothing to write home about, but you always have a way to hurt things. Your blast gets modified
by talents, but can only get 1 blast type talent and 1 blast shape talent on it at a time.

Note: 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.

With the release of the Destroyer’s handbook, the concept of blast type groups requires
consideration. Blasts within the same group count as the same blast type for feats, drawbacks,
etc that specify a single blast type and can be admixtured together without cost.

Worlds of Power offered a few additional and alternate blast type talents. These are to match
the elemental affinity theme of the Irhardt setting.

Dive – Elementalists and Thaumaturge builds that want to blast

Dabble – Incanters, wizards, and sorcerers that want battlefield control and a solid
damage option. Magus builds that want damage and debuffs on their spellstrikes.
 Dip – any high or middle caster that wants a back-up damage option with a touch of
debuffing or control.
Don’t – Low casters, you won’t have the CL for damage and you won’t have the stats for
high saves to land the rider effects.

Blast Type Talents:

Acid Blast – blast does acid damage and hits again the next round for 1/dice of the blast.
Not a bad element to have for straight damage. Less commonly resisted than fire and
cold.

Adhesive Blast (Des) – blast does acid damage, grants the entangled condition for 1
round on a failed reflex save. While the duration of entangled condition is minimal, it is a
decent debuff that makes landing hits easier all around.

Air Blast – blast is now non-lethal and you get a free bull rush on the target using your
CL + casting mod verses CMD. This is fun, given the way it interacts with some of the
shapes. If you boost your strength and grab the required feats this could get really fun.
Even without that, you should still be able to separate the mooks from the threats with
this. WoP variant: deals air elemental damage.
Note that, regarding your CMB, “size wouldn't affect anything, but I allow related feats to
affect it, yeah.” Meaning gauntlets of the skilled maneuver, pauldrons of the bull, etc are
good to go on air blast.

Alkali Blast (Des) – blast does d4’s acid damage, grants a free trip maneuver against
the target. Your CMB is based off of your CL, which means that this will be far more
useful for high casters as opposed to low casters, but the destruction sphere wasn’t low-
caster friendly to begin with.

Battering Blast (Des) –blast does d4’s bludgeoning damage, grants a free bull rush
maneuver against the target. Your CMB is based off of your CL. Does extra damage if
bull rush pushes target into solid object. Ignores spell resistance, spell turning,
penetrates globes of invulnerability, antimagic fields, etc.

Blinding Blast (Des) – blast does untyped damage, which increases to d8’s against
undead. The rider effect, blindness on a failed Fort save, while lasting only 1 round, will
compliment most other DPR combatants such as twf sneak attack rogues or
gunslingers. Not to mention, the damage being untyped means that fears of having your
blast resisted is easily closeted.

Blistering Blast (Des) – blast does fire damage, any creature damaged by the blast takes
a -2 penalty to Fort saves for 1d4 rounds (no save). Definitely a solid choice if someone
else in your party has abilities that target Fortitude. Otherwise, it’s rider effect may seem
wasted.

Blistering Blast (WoP) – fire damage and fort save or 1 point of Con damage. Beats fire
blast if you want to burn things, though the burning condition from fire blast is better at
lower levels. If you are doing ability damage Con is probably your best choice.
Bramble Blast (Des) - In the Destroyer’s Handbook, there is a section devoted to
creating Blast Group Categories. One such category is ‘Plant’. Bramble Blast is simply
put, Crystal Blast (see below) refluffed to be plants.

Crystal Blast – reduces your damage to d4’s and deals piercing damage. Why blue?
Your target needs a reflex save or is entangled and unable to move until breaking free.
Also, the target’s square or the blast’s area of effect are difficult terrain. A reminder about
entangled:
“The character is ensnared. Being entangled impedes movement, but
does not entirely prevent it unless the bonds are anchored to an immobile object
or tethered by an opposing force. An entangled creature moves at half speed,
cannot run or charge, and takes a –2 penalty on all attack rolls and a –4 penalty
to Dexterity. An entangled character who attempts to cast a spell must make a
concentration check (DC 15 + spell level) or lose the spell.”

You want this. Best BFC blast and debuff blast at the same time. WoP variant: deals land
elemental damage.

Drowning Blast (Des) – blast does bludgeoning damage, Nauseates on a failed Fort
save for 1 round. One round of the enemy not being able to full attack is a good one.
Definitely a solid blast type.

Electrical Blast – bonus against metal targets and a damage type that isn’t resisted often
unless fighting celestials. You shouldn’t be missing much with touch attacks.

Force Blast – force damage (awesome) + save vs prone (good). Second favorite blast
type. Note that prone targets get +4 to AC vs ranged attacks, but take a penalty versus
melee, so this is great for targets that your buddies are beating on, but not for sniping.
Blast shapes without attack rolls don’t care. Costs a spell point, unlike most blast types,
so remember that!

Fire blast – fire damage and sets the target on fire. On fire is weak after the earliest
levels, so if you aren’t staying at real low levels, don’t bother unless you expect to face
fire-vulnerable critters. Frequently used and frequently resisted. Has some use for
shutting down the more common regenerations, but the latter can often be covered by
acid anyhow.

Frost Blast – cold damage, fort or stagger. Staggered is a nice condition to inflict, though
the enemies you want it on the most have good fort saves. Still, beats fire. Commonly
resisted, so have other options.

Gale Blast (Des) – blast does nonlethal damage, makes a free trip attack on a
successful hit. CMB based on your CL.

Gloom Blast (Des) – blast does negative energy damage, failed fortitude save blinds
undead, sickens others. The duration of the rider effect is only 1 round so you better
make the best of it when it works.
Gloom Blast (WoP)– blast does darkness elemental damage and sickens for 1d4 on a
failed will save. Sickened is nice for lowering future saves and stacks with shaken from
nether blast, which is on your list if locked into the setting-specific materials for IIrhardt.

Hurricane Blast (Des) – blast does nonlethal damage, those hit take a penalty to ranged
attacks and fly checks for 1d4 rounds (no save). Are you worried about being picked off
by aerial attacks? What about snipers? What about aerial snipers? Well worry no longer.

Incandescent Blast (Des) – blast does untyped damage, any creatures damaged take a
-2 penalty to perception and Will saves for 1d4 rounds (no save). The damage dice
increases to d8’s against undead or those with light sensitivity. The -2 to perception,
might be somewhat counter intuitive, although it may have its uses. The penalty to Will is
just icing on the cake.

Incandescent Blast (WoP) – blast does light elemental damage and 1 temporary wisdom
damage on a failed will save. Wisdom damage is nice for softening up will saves, but if
you can get them to fail a will save there are such worse things to do to them.

Invigorating Blast (Des) – blast does d4’s positive energy damage, living creatures
instead of taking damage gain temporary hit points (which last for 1 hour), they also
must make a Fort save vs Daze for 1 round. Creates a nice buffer, and it is a good blast
for pacifist clerics who vow to never harm living creatures, but who also need to save
their spell points for curing their allies (not harming undead).

Living Crystal Blast (Des) – cost a spell point, blast does piercing damage, and functions
very similar to Crystal Blast, except that instead of difficult terrain, it creates entangle.
Both Living Crystal Blast and Crystal Blast have its uses, but if given the choice between
the two, I would choose Living Crystal Blast.

Lucent Blast (WoP)– blast does light elemental damage and gets +2 for piercing spell
resistance as well as reducing the target’s spell resistance by 1 for 1d4 rounds. Duration
is too short and reduction too small to really be helpful to the party. The boost to piercing
spell resistance is nice, but you are better off with stone blast unless you are locked out
of it due to setting limitations.

Mana Siphon (Des) – blast does d4’s nonlethal damage, on a failed Fort save
spherecasters damaged by this blast lose a scaling amount of spell points. You gain
these spell points which remain with you for 1 round per CL. In short, against
spherecasters, this blast is awesome, against anything else? Meh.

Numbing Blast (Des) – blast does cold damage, those damaged take a -2 penalty to
Reflex saves for 1d4 rounds. Cold is one of the most resisted damage types and Reflex
is one of the least threatening saves to fail. In short, unless you are built around it, be
prepared to become disappointed.

Numbing Blast (WoP)– blast does water elemental damage and 1 temporary wisdom
damage on a failed fort save. Reducing their reflex save and touch AC is nice, but it's
only going to matter every other hit. Hopefully they won’t survive enough hits for it to
really add up.
Nether Blast – negative energy and shaken, or no damage and frighten undead. Shaken
lowers future saves, if they aren’t immune.

Radiant Blast (Des) – blast does d4’s untyped damage, those damaged must make a
Fort save or treat all other creatures as if they had 20% miss chance for 1 round.
damage dice increases against undead.

Radiant Blast (WoP)– blast does light elemental damage and forces the target to treat all
other creatures as concealed for a round on a failed will save. This would be awesome
without the save, decent as it is. Better than minor amount of ability damage.

Razor Blast (Des) – blast does d4’s slashing damage, those damaged must make a
Reflex save or have their movement cut in half. Affects squares adjacent to the target as
well. In short another decent battlefield control talent.

Reverberating Blast (Des) – blast does sonic damage, those hit must make a Fort Save
take a penalty to concentration checks and mental skill checks equal to ½ CL. If
combating another mage, I would probably use this as a readied action, making casting
nearly impossible for other casters.

Rime Blast (WoP) – blast does water elemental damage and otherwise acts as crystal
blast, with a DC boost against fire affinity creatures. Crystal blast is great, this is great.

Searing Blast (Des) – blast does d8’s fire damage, its pretty straight forward. But it is
also identical to the talent published in Worlds of Power.

Searing Blast (WoP) – fire damage, uses d8s instead of d6s. Only blast type that
increases die size, so that’s nice. Handy if you have a way to maximize it for a reduced
cost.

Shattering Blast (Des) – blast does d4’s Sonic damage, it does full damage to objects
(instead of the standard half), and ignores up to ½ your CL in hardness. If you want to
tunnel your way into a tunnel, this is probably far more time effective than the Creation
sphere ability. Also useful for sundering enemy armor/weapons.

Shock Blast (Des) – blast does d4’s electricity damage, those damaged must make fort
save or become dazed for 1 round. A solid choice for a blast type. Daze ain't something
to scoff at, even if it is only for 1 round.

Shrapnel Blast (Des) – blast does d4’s slashing damage, which causes bleed damage
equal to the number of damage dice rolled. The blast overcomes spell resistance, and
penetrates globes of invulnerability, antimagic fields, etc. Bleed damage is one of those
things that as you gain levels becomes less significant as healing is readily available.
But because this talent functions against spell protected creatures, it is still a decent
choice, especially at low levels.

Static Blast (Des) – blast does electricity damage, on a successful hit make a free
disarm maneuver, with a +4 bonus against metal objects. Your CMB is based off of your
CL. Solid choice against creatures with weapons, not so much with natural weapons.
Better in campaigns featuring mostly weapon-using enemies rather than natural
attackers.
 Stone Blast – all three physical damage types, plus bypasses all kinds of magical
defenses (SR, globe of invulnerability, etc). Necessary at higher levels, though you could
try to boost your spell penetration and just assume some blasts will get resisted.

Tenebrous Blast (Des) – blast does negative energy damage, those hit by the blast take
a -2 penalty to attack rolls for 1d4 rounds (no save). Undead take no damage and are
sickened for 1 round instead (no save).

Tenebrous Blast (WoP) – blast does darkness elemental damage and 1 temporary
strength damage on a failed fortitude save. Not really adding up fast enough to matter in
most cases and doesn’t hurt any saves. Maybe you hope they are near their max load?
Most strength-based builds will have good fort saves.

Thorn Blast (Des) – This blast is a refluff of shrapnel blast above and is fluffed as plants.,

Thunder Blast – sonic is rarely resisted. Deafened isn’t great, but it does mess with
verbal casters.

Blast Shape Talents

Blast Trap – leave a blast for someone to step on. Has some possibilities, but it's likely a
filler choice for later on. Has some potential with spellcrafting.

Chain Blast (Des) – Instead of a single ray attack, make multiple ranged touch attacks (1
+ ½ your CL) It is solid choice of a blast shape if you want to target multiple foes but
dont want to invest in excluding allies from the blast’s effects.

Energy Aura (Des) – Spend a spell point and your blast surrounds you damaging any
within its aura for 1 round per CL.

Energy Bomb (Des) – Did you enjoy the bombs class feature of the alchemist? Well now
you can spend a spell point and create a consumable destructive blast which you can
hold onto and save for later (up-to 1 hour per CL). It has a thrown ranged of 20ft,but it
also has splash damage.

Energy Leap (Des) – Spend a spell point to do a line attack while moving to the end of
the blasts effect. Improves with range increases. Cannot be combined with extreme
range.

Energy Satellite (Des) – Create a destructive blast that orbits around you for 1 minute
per CL. You may launch the blast as an immediate action. You may only have a number
of orbiting satellites equal to the number of times this talent is taken. Hurl someone off a
ledge when they near it, stop them in their tracks with crystal blast when they try and run
away. It’s a great reaction talent, and the damage potential it adds is only part of its draw.

Energy Sphere – costs a spell point, makes a sphere for rounds/level that you can direct
as a move action. Directing it as a move action means you can make it hit twice per
round, helping your spell point economy by stretching other points you spend on it. This
is why it’s not efficient to spend points on your regular blast, spend an additional point
 and use it twice per round all fight instead! Great for single targets and small groups.
Reflex negates though, so not great against high-Dex targets.

Energy Tether (Des) – Cause your blast to become whip/rope-like keeping enemies from
running/flying off. Not particularly useful against larger creatures, melee attackers, or
those with teleportation. Combine with Energy Aura for the win.

Energy Wall – makes a good length wall or a modest diameter circle. This is the key to
your BFC. Costs a spell point, sadly.

Energy Weapon – standard action to channel destructive blasts through your weapon.
Might see use in an E6 type game where haste and iteratives won’t be as prevalent for
weapon-users, otherwise it isn’t enough to be worth having to hit full AC just to add
weapon damage. Basically, it’s the 3.5 warlock’s hideous blow (which blows hideously,
as the saying goes). If you want to do this, take two levels of magus for spellstrike
instead. Feats in the Destroyer’s handbook change its usefulness significantly. Improved
energy blade let’s you activate it as a swift to apply to your next attack, melee blaster
removes the AOO, and even low casters can find ways to keep up their CL with a single
blast type group.

Explosive Orb – basically, you spend a spell point to blast a wide area, ala fireball. It’s a
mook killer, though combined with crystal blast it becomes battlefield control, turning a
large area into difficult terrain.

Guided Strike – spell point to add +20 to your attack with destructive blast. Uhm… if you
really need to hit a target with great touch AC and evasion? Doesn’t help with miss
chance or mirror images. Used to be an auto-hit, but got nerfed.

Rebuff Blast – 1 round minor AC and reflex buff, spend a point to make it last two rounds
or use as an immediate. Not worth the standard action when you could be hurting things,
the boost to AC as an immediate is nice if you know it's a close roll. Gets better if you
can cheese the duration with spellcrafting.

Retributive Blast (Des) - If a melee attack misses you, spend a spell point and use
destructive blast against them as an immediate action..

Sculpt Blast – cone or line, cost a spell point. No thanks, better options are available.

Other Talents

Admixture (Des) - Increase casting time or spend an additional spell point to combine
two blast types in a single casting (dealing half damage of each), while keeping both
rider effects. The dice size is dependant on the size of the two separate blasts.

Cascade Failure (Des) - Every time an enemy is damaged by your destructive blast, they
take a -1 penalty to saving throws against your destructive blast until the end of your
next turn.

Clinging Blast (Des) - Spend a spell point to count you blast as continuous for the
purpose of concentration checks for 1 round.
 Crafted Blast – good for getting around physical resistances and boosting damage on
your base blast, but you can do the first with an element and the second is not a huge
difference.

Epicenter (Des) - You are immune to the effects of your own destructive blasts (damage
& rider effect). So now you can walk through your own energy walls, or cast energy
blasts centered on yourself.

Extended Range – close goes to medium, medium goes to long. Not top priorities, but
you want it at least once. Less important if you are only doing dungeon crawls with small
rooms, more important if in the open frequently.

Focused Blast (Des) - When unaltered by a (blast shape) talent, your blasts deal +1
damage per die.

Gather Energy (Des) - You may increase the casting time by 1 step instead of spending
a spell point when determining the amount of damage dealt. Definitely a staple for all
destruction sphere users.

Greater Blast (Des) - Increase the amount of damage your blasts do by 1 dice (not dice
size). The talent may be taken multiple times.

Selective Blast (Des) - You may exclude (1 +1 per 10 CL) creatures from the effects of
your blast. You may spend a spell point to to increase the amount of excluded creatures
by your CAB.

Wingbind (Des) - Your blast entangles creatures with flight. Those with non-magical flight
fall upon failed save. Less useful against those with magical flight.

Advanced Talents
Calamity – gives some different area options. Expensive and doesn’t come online until
late. Meh.

Crystal Cocoon (Des) - Requires CL 10+ and two talents from the Crystal Group. Your
crystal blasts make your targets helpless.

Disintegrate (blast type) (Des) - Requires CL 5+. You may spend an additional spell point
to have your destructive blasts deal untyped damage. Those reduced to 0 hp by the
blast become a fine dust (while leaving equipment unharmed). If targeting objects or
areas (including force effects), it destroys up to a 10-ft-cube of matter (attended objects
gain a fort save to negate effect, although still takes the blasts damage)..

Energy Cloud (blast shape) (Des) - Requires CL 10+. Spend +3 spell points to make
your destructive blast into a cloud of destruction. You are immune to the damage (but no
mention of rider effects) of your own cloud.

Extreme Range (Des) - Requires CL 5+ and Extreme Range x2. Your destructive blast
has a range of 1000 +100 ft per CL. You can only target large objects or squares, not
individuals beyond long range. Your blast takes effect 1 round after being used.
 Greater Admixture (Des) - Requires CL 5+ and Admixture. You may add a third blast
type and divide the damage between the three types.

Holy Smite (Des) - Requires CL 1+ and good alignment. Allows your blast to deal sacred
damage (which does an extra 50% damage vs [evil] creatures) if you spend an
additional spell point.

Penetrating Blast (Des) - Requires CL 5+. Allows your blast to ignore energy resistance
equal to your CL. You may spend a spell point to ignore up to twice your CL instead.
Energy immunity counts as energy resistance 40 for this purpose.

Radiation Blast (blast type) (Des) - Requires CL 5+ and two blast type talents from the
fire category. You may spend two additional spell points to cause your blast deal ½ fire,
½ untyped damage. In addition they must make a fort save vs Radiation poisoning.

Unholy Smite (Des) - Requires CL 1+ and evil alignment. Allows your blast to deal
profane damage (which does an extra 50% damage vs [good] creatures) if you spend an
additional spell point.

Divination
Unlike previous spheres, this one has no offensive application whatsoever. Here we are all
about detection and information gathering. Basic abilities are to detect magic, though it hits all of
medium range but takes 10 minutes unless you spend a spell point and doesn’t allow you to
move while concentrating, and read magic for hrs/level. Note that divining can be expanded
simply by having other spheres, so this one rewards diversity in your abilities. Can be hard on
the spell points if you are in a hurry though. Having traditional caster with detect magic make
you feel bad about the base divine power, while a level in druid with the menhir savant
archetype lets you detect a variety of monster types as well, so you can eliminate some of the
talents here if you want. The advanced talents are excellent, so the entire sphere is moved up a
notch if they are on the table.

Dive – if you want to be the party oracle, knowing exactly what lay beyond every door.
You need a lot of talents to do this well and still have other things to contribute, so
incanters and wizards will be your best bet.
Dabble – Anyone with the talents to spare can benefit from proper intel-gathering.
Dip – Everyone else can benefit from sense abilities to get blindsense, never be flat-
footed, spot traps, or to pierce illusions.
Don’t – If you get boosted senses from other sources or the party covers the need for
you.

Alternate Divinations:
You gain additional divination options based on the other spheres you possess.
Alteration - Divine Shapechanger (Div) In an Eberron style campaign where shapechangers are
common, this would be worth seeking out.
Conjuration - Divine Unnaturals You can find outsiders and aberrations. Outsiders come up a lot
(and some of them are sneaky about it) plus you get aberrations tossed in too. Someone
possessed? Scan them.
Creation - Divine Components (Div) Essentially a bonus on craft and engineering checks. Really
bad if you are limited to a single material you can create, since you can only divine that material.
Dark - Divine Dark (Div), give yourself see in darkness while you are divining. Neat, but it takes
heavy investment to be able to do anything BUT divine when you are divining, you could at least
direct others.
Divine Shadow (Div) divine creatures native to the plane of shadow. I haven’t run into many, not
likely to see use unless you expect them anyway.
Death - Divine Undead Undead are very common and fighting them can benefit from special
preparations. Less useful the less undead are running around, so mileage varies.
Destruction - Divine Hostility (Div) Detect when something takes damage, what type of damage,
and from which direction. Of course, if things are being damaged, you should probably be doing
something other than flat-footing yourself by divining.
Enhancement - Divine Enhancement (Div) Detect the presence and source (magic, alchemical,
etc) of temporary bonuses on creatures. Interesting, may have creative uses.
Fate - Divine Alignment, want to detect evil? Here you go. Handy in many campaigns.
-Divine Loyalties (Div), Could be awesome in a social heavy campaign, not going to matter for
kicking in doors.
- Divine Fate (Div) See an aura showing alignment of every creature you can see. Faster to get
a fix on alignment than using divine alignment four times, but only works for things you can see,
so less useful for early warning. I expect divine alignment to be better more often, since you can
use it to get the same effect, eventually.
Illusion - Divine Illusions get a will save against any illusions in the area. Problem is, you have to
suspect an illusion. How useful this is depends on how illusions are used in your campaign.
Light - Ultravision (Div) Bonus to perception and make a free perception check each round.
Handy for searching rooms and such, or at any critical juncture if you can pull it out quickly.
Life - Divine Life with fast divinations x2, you can stop and ping for living creatures whenever
you feel like it. Makes you very hard to sneak up on.
Mind - Divine Charm Buddy get charmed or otherwise influenced? King having his strings pulled
magically? Now you know.
Nature - Divine Elements (additional in (Div)) Diving for water is handy in a desert and gems
and ore would be great for a prospector, but you are often going to be blocked by the material in
the way if they aren’t near the surface. Divining for fire is pretty niche and usually finding platlife
isn’t a major concern (unless your campaign is based on the first part of Wall-E). Plant creatures
are a lot less common than undead. (Div) adds animal creatures for spirit (handy) and moves
ore to metal.
Protection - Divine Protection (Div) Learn the highest to lowest AC or saves. Interesting,
especially for groups that pay a lot of attention to the math.
Telekinesis - Divine Density (Div), Exactly what it sounds like. It’s a thing you can do.
Divine Force (Div) detects incorporeal creatures. Of course, if they fall into one of the other
categories, there may be more than one way to find them. I would take this over density though.
Time - Divine Time (Div) Get rough information back in time a few hours. Could be amazing or
even campaign breaking in the right situation. Kicking in doors? Less so (though could still have
uses there unless the monsters just stand motionless until they see PCs).
War - Divine Allegiance (Div) tell what side an individual claims to be on. Works as a sort of
detect charm.
Warp - Divine Warp (Div) Detect the presence of portals and such and get a bonus to identify
their properties. Helps find teleportation traps and is a good idea before jumping into a portal.
Weather - Divine Weather You get the same information as a DC 15 survival check. That you
could take 10 on. And the skill check scales. I mean, it doesn’t HURT if you are taking weather
for other reasons, but don’t go out of your way to get this ability.

Sense Talents:
Battlefield Sense – no longer flanked except by rogues 4 level higher. Handy.

Blindfolded Oracle – Blindsense for 30’ when you close your eyes. Very useful to avoid
invisible hazards and creatures. Spend another spell point for blindsight, which is
excellent. If you are using akashic mysteries material from DSP, grab the Eyes of the
Hawkguard veil to boost the range.

Detect Scrying – scry attempts have to beat your magic skill check, plus other related
bonuses. Nice to have for higher level play, but odds are the big bad will have a higher
CL than you. Great ability for the big bad to have though. Not a low level pick.

Discern Individual (Div) – bonus on monster lore checks and make them untrained.
Useful if you don’t have a knowledge monkey handy, but many groups will have
adequate resources in that department. On the other hand, sense talents have long
durations, so if you can spare a spell point to make sure to get everything you need its
not a bad idea either. If you have other abilities that benefit from high lore checks then
this scales in usefulness with the strength of those other abilities.

Foreshadow – bonus on initiative, AC, and reflex saves plus you aren’t flat-footed in the
surprise round. Scales very slowly, but still a worthwhile, broad-application buff.

Ghost Sight – CL bonus to perception checks to notice invisible and ethereal creatures.
Not as strong as say, see invisibility, but long lasting. The entire system largely moves
away from absolute abilities and counters, leaving room for scaling and skill checks. This
is a good example of that.

Logos – basically gives you the ability to speak and understand all languages. Handy if
you are in a campaign that frequently runs into this as an issue, but many campaigns
don’t really run into language barriers, so its value varies greatly.

Nature Sense (Div) – bonus on know (nature) and survival checks with the nice bonus of
dismissing it for a reroll in some circumstances. It’s not amazing, since you can often just
 take 10 on survival anyway, but might be worthwhile in nature-heavy campaigns or if
your party is deficient in those skills.

Prescience (Div) – bonus on attack and CMB. Very nice, though make sure you aren’t
getting other insight bonuses since they won’t stack. Dismissing it lets you stick a key
roll. Excellent.

Scent (Div) –scent upgradeable to a unique version of keen scent that can work above
water. While scent is available from alteration, the duration and the option to boost the
range make this unique. Finding bloody targets a mile away saves much other effort (like
detect teleport).

See Hazard – free perception check vs traps and hazards. Your point man should have
this on unless getting the effect from another source, like the trap spotter rogue talent.

Sense Magic – divine for magic constantly at a reduced range. Too bad it costs 2 SP.
Also too bad that traditional casters can just spam detect magic as a cantrip.

Shared Perception (Div) – share sight, smell, hearing, etc between a small group within
long range. Requires line of effect, limiting it in indoor locations, but still handy to make
sure everyone knows what the scout is seeing.

Sniper’s Eye (Div) – reduce range penalties and environmental penalties to ranged
attacks. Many builds can totally ignore this ability. When it is good though, it's great. If
you are a ranged attacker with a weather caster in the party or who frequently faces
weather casters, its great (or great for your support caster to give you, more likely). If
you rely on short-range thrown weapons, also very nice. Most encounters don’t occur at
ranges that a bow user can really leverage this, but if you are in a vehicle heavy game
(Skybourne, anyone?) that could change.

Tremorsense (Div) – not as good as blindsense, but doesn’t require closing your eyes
like blindfolded oracle. Underwater it’s flat better. Not so helpful against flyers and you
probably don’t need both, though this stops most ground-based things from sneaking up
on you and helps with burrowers as well. I would probably take blindfolded oracle
instead, but this has its place too. Also available from alteration, if you don’t mind looking
like a mole.

True Sight – scaling bonus to will saves against illusions. Absolutely necessary if your
GM likes throwing illusions at you. Helps counter the fey adept. If you don’t encounter
illusions, don’t bother.

Divine Talents:
Augury (Div) – spend a spell point to get an answer similar to the spell of the same
name. Stretches out for hours per level into the future. Clever use can make this a very
good thing, plus it’s very thematic for a diviner while not being as obnoxious for the GM
as other divination spells.

Detect Spellcaster (Div) – spend a spell point to divine for spellcasters (IE anything other
than Su or Ex abilities), plus you can spend an additional point to determine the type of
casting or casting traditions. Hard to rate, since spellcasters will be more likely to have
ways to detect or evade your divination but are the most dangerous foes you will face. A
 dedicated diviner will have a number of ways of detecting creatures; this is one, but you
may prefer other combinations.

Detect Secrets – spend a spell point to find secret doors and such. Could just take 20 on
perception in the time it takes to do this in many cases, unless you are in a hurry and
burn another spell point to do it as a standard action.

Detect Teleportation (Div)– divine the direction and distance traveled via teleport effect.
Campaign dependant. With SoP, enemies teleporting away at up to long range can
happen at level 1 if they are really trying, so this could help track them down, though if
true long distance teleportation is available in your game the value goes up significantly.
If your foes tend not to get away, don’t bother.

Detect Thoughts (Div)– divine the emotions of creatures you can see, granting a sense
motive bonus. Spell point lets you get surface thoughts. Great for a social-heavy game,
less for kicking in doors and killing stuff.

Divine Future – get a minor bonus on a future roll that can be passed off to an ally. You
can renew it after each use, so you can basically get it as many times per encounter as
you have taken the talent.

Divine Information – reroll a knowledge check with CL/2 bonus. Not bad, but checks in
combat will cost you a standard action and 2 SP. Mostly good for out of combat
research.

Dowsing – spell point to find the location of a creature or object in range. Potentially very
useful if you need to find something or someone.

Object Reading (Div) – bonus to appraise checks is decidedly meh, but that’s just a side
thing. The real reason you are taking this talent is for getting information about previous
owners. Awesome in any campaign with any level of intrigue and always fun for making
the GM come up with irrelevant details. Even in intrigue-free games you should be able
to find some use for it. It's a great psionic power, it’s a great talent.

Viewing – creates a scrying sensor in range. Safe scouting.

Witness the City (Div) – divine to make a gather information check with a bonus, plus
you can use perception for the check instead of diplomacy. Potentially solid in an urban
campaign, especially if there is some reason you don’t want to be going out and just
making the check normally, but it seems like most of the time you can just have the face
visit the tavern. Its cool, but I’m not sure I want to spend the talent on it outside of just
the right campaign. Efficient for spiritualism hedgewitches to grab on the fly, of course.

Other Talents:
Expanded DIvinations (Div)– get the alternate divinations for three spheres you don’t
possess. It’s nice if you want to focus heavily in divination, but the worth of the talent will
be entirely determined on which spheres you pick for it (and are therefore not using
those spheres in your build). Refer to the alternate divinations and judge for yourself.
 Fast Divination – divining take 1 minute instead of 10. Its nice and all, but if you have
time to take a minute you often have time for 10, unless you are performing a number of
divinations. Those divining frequently need it, others less so.

Fast Divination (Div)– you can take it a second time to reduce the time to 1 round! Now
you have my attention. Required for any divination user, this is a huge increase in the
utility of your divinations since you can now use them on the fly without cost.

Grant Sense – you can give sense abilities to others. Great for support casters.

Greater Divine – medium goes to long range for divine. If you are divining, you want the
range. Less useful in caves and such were your range is limited by the setting rather
than the ability.

Lingering Divination (Div) – like the other lingering talents for other spheres, you get to
keep the effect for two rounds after concentrating. If you are spending 10 minutes to
divine, pretty pointless. If you are playing the party radar and scanning for different
things each round after taking fast divination twice this is very nice.

Sensory Overload (Div) – takes a single target out of the action but requires your full
round to do so. Completely hoses single target enemies, but I hope people know better
than to toss out those kinds of encounters by now.

Widen Sight (Div) – sense abilities get a scaling range of close instead of a static 30’.
Don’t take it at first level, obviously. As a mid-late game pick, it's nice and gets better the
more senses you have up.

Advanced Talents:
Discern Location – need to find something? You found it. Too bad the best applications
will probably be blocked by plot-necessary prevention. CL 15.

Divine Knowledge – ask the universe a question, maybe get a useful answer.
Forewarned is forearmed. Careful use can be very powerful. CL 10.

Read Omens – a weaker general divination ability with higher base accuracy, still useful.
CL 5.

Scrying – is scrying, an excellent way to spy out all kinds of information. Take it. CL 10.

****True Seeing**** – basically covers the uses of a pile of sense abilities all at once for
a short duration. This one is a must-have for anyone with enough talents to meet the
prerequisites. CL 10.

Enhancement
The sphere of mostly minor buffs that don’t stack with common items. Fear not, not all is lost!
The mounted magician feat makes it useful for buffing yourself and your mount, but more
importantly the sphere also has animate object, a non-icky way to animate minions to fight for
you. A couple decent debuffs can also be had. Basic ability enhances a weapon or armor to +1,
+1 per 5 CL.
 Dive – mounted magician feat users who want to get bang for their buck, support casters
in low-wealth/magic item campaigns.
Dabble – Support and debuff builds.
Dip – Thaumaturges that just want to animate objects, martial builds that want one or
two specific enhancements. Telekinesis users that want to grab lighten.
Don’t – Anyone that has on-demand weapon enchantments (such as the magus).
Characters that are properly equipped for their level, don’t want animated minions, and
have other options for debuffs.

Enhance Talents:
Animate Object – you can animate an object of a size according to your CL. You can
also use this to mess with enemies’ gear, though that allows a save. This is sufficient
justification to take the sphere on its own. Obviously better with CL boosting abilities; low
and mid casters won’t get much from it.

Bestow Intelligence – grant intelligence to an animal, plant, or object and have them start
out friendly. This would be great for intelligence gathering, but they don’t know anything
about before they became intelligent. Needed for the bestow life advanced talent, so you
should take it by 10.

Corrosive Poison (Enh) – Adds a bit of acid damage to a poison. You have to apply it to
individual doses, so no buffing a shifter with a poisonous natural attack either. Combined
with Emphasize Virulence you can make a poison a lot more effective, but poisons are
iffy to start with. You would have to cast both out of combat and extend the durations to
make it practical, probably targeting several doses at once along with a method to apply
them quickly. I am not familiar with the unchained poison rules, they might help.

Cripple – slowly scaling penalty to all D20 rolls. Too bad they have to fail a will save for it
to work.

Cripple Movement (Enh) – Halves base speed or removes another movement speed.
Half movement speed is of some use, though once combat is joined it won’t matter
much, but stripping a creature of flight or burrow can shut down their tactics hard. Since
so many high level enemies depend on flight, it's stronger after the early levels.

Deadly Weapon – keen and a scaling bonus to crit confirms. Crit-fishers will likely just
get this on their weapon or take improved critical.

Emphasize Belief (Enh) – Non-trivial alignment based DR, hard to bypass. It isn’t much
at low levels or for low casters, but a nice buff to hand out once it starts adding up. Not
sure if there are any shenanigans opened by granting alignment subtypes. Harden gives
higher DR, though adamantine is bypassed by less enchanted weapons (+5 for
alignment, +4 for adamantine). In some campaigns alignment will be more easily
bypassed (DR/good in wrath of the righteous, for example) and against many monsters
bypassing it is irrelevant, so I would usually go for the higher value.

Emphasize Virulence (Enh) – Dose of poison requires an additional save. As noted with
corrosive poison, it makes poisons better, but I’m not sure it makes them good. If I had to
choose one, I would take the extra save I think.
Energy Weapon – elemental damage properties plus scaling bonus damage on top of
that? You can just use a different element as appropriate for the current challenge as
well.

Enhance Focus (Enh) – Significant boost on skills when taking 10. Tossing this out at will
is certainly nice, but your danger levels are likely lower when taking 10 to begin with and
you probably won’t want to spend a talent on it at the levels skill checks are critical. If
you have other abilities to take 10 when you normally couldn’t and more powerful
applications for certain skill checks, this could become quite nice.

False Energy (Enh) – Suppresses fatigued and reduces exhausted to fatigued

temporarily (ignoring it with a spellpoint). Could help alleviate the drawbacks of the
overcharge boon or let the barbarian rage cycle earlier. Going to be dependant on the
party and campaign, but ultimately the base restore of the Life sphere is probably a
better choice. Higher cost, but better utility.

Harden – improving an items hardness is probably a waste most of the time, but you can
give decent DR with this. I suppose you could harden an object, animate it, and then
give it DR since it is then a creature to make it rather tough.

Improved Flexibility (Enh) – Reduce squeezing penalties and time required for escape
artist checks. Useful if you have over-sized animated objects, size-change alteration
users, big animal companions, etc. in the party. Also for chasing down kobolds. If tight
spaces don’t come up and you don’t have any big creatures in the group, not worthwhile.

Improved Strength (Enh) – Increased carrying capacity? Meh. Wielding larger weapons
is nice though, especially on a vital strike build. This bears some consideration. You
need to plan around it, since you are wielding weapons that are actually larger to begin
with, not enlarged by this effect. Doesn’t do you any good if you don’t have the right
weapon around and you need new weapons to take advantage of the scaling breaks (or
a way to increase the actual size of an existing weapon). That said, it is not neither a
virtual or actual size increase, it is just a bigger weapon to start with, so you could stack
size change and encompassing light for truly ridiculous weapon dice. Check with your
GM though, since sizes over colossal get controversial, even if you can project the
proper dice off the progression, colossal++++ greatswords may be frowned upon.

Increase Speed (Enh) – You go faster and get a boost to related skill checks. Its nice,
might be hard to find room for over flashier options.

Lighten – only useful if using it with the telekinesis sphere or if you really want to carry
off that catapult.

Magic Sink (Enh) – Ablative protection against dispels. Obviously pointless before
dispelling comes online, potentially useful afterwards if you have a certain effect you
really don’t want to lose. Not entirely clear on how it interacts with improved (if the roll
against this fails, do you make other rolls against it or does the dispel just stop?) and
greater counterspell (does succeeding on the check against this allow all other checks to
be made or do you need an additional counterspell?), but could be very potent when
those become common. GM dependant, as I am sure not everyone throws enough
dispels at their players to warrant to cost of keeping this active.
Make Fragile (Enh) – Reduces hardness and grants the fragile property to an object.
Fragile isn’t amazing, given that there is only a 5% chance of it mattering with each
attack. The hardness reduction isn’t terribly impressive either. I can think of times it could
help, but taking the talent and the actions to cast it seem inefficient.

Mental Enhancement – scaling enhancement bonus to mental stats. Those that need it
probably are getting items anyhow.

Muffle Sound (Enh) – Muffles sound, obviously. Makes sound-based perception checks
more difficult. Pretty narrow.

Physical Enhancement – scaling enhancement bonus to physical stats. Again, those that
need it probably are getting items anyhow. Some value for summons, animated objects,
and other temporary allies that won’t have items.

Pursuant Ammunition (Enh) – Partially negate cover bonuses and eventually get around
total cover. Also creates the mental image of a cartoon bullet with a face stopping and
turning in mid-air, so points for that. If your party has ranged attackers and your GM
makes use of cover and positioning, this is handy. If you are all melee and fight on
featureless planes, less so.

Ragged Edges (Enh) – Weapon deals bleed damage, more if you spend an SP. Entire
creature types are immune to bleed and it doesn’t stack with itself, so I would grab and
cast energy weapon first, though combining this with whirlwhind attack or similar could
be amusing. ALso, more damage is more damage, so you can’t go entirely wrong
(unless fighting constructs, undead, etc).

Render Clumsy (Enh) – Notable attack penalty and make 5’ steps tricky, which is very
nice for locking casters into positions they don’t want to be. Not usually better than
outright blinding an enemy with steal senses though.

Staunch Resistance (Enh) – Untyped bonus (not sure if that is intentional) to a single
saving throw. Grab dual enhancement, mass enhancement, and deep enhancement and
buff will and fort for everybody.

Steal Senses – blind, deafen, or remove a special sense. Good as a general debuff,
great on odd occasions where you really need to strip something’s blindsight.

Still Tongue (Enh) – Like steal senses, except for speech/telepathy. Shuts down verbal
casters hard. Most SoP monsters don’t have the verbal drawback though, so your
mileage may vary. Casters tend to have strong will saves anyhow. Blinding enemies is
more generally applicable.

Superior Reflexes (Enh) – Increased initiative and more AOOs. Hard to go wrong with
that.

Supply Vigor (Enh) – Ignore part of some ability damage, drain, or penalty. Kind of a
stop-gap until you can fix it for real, so mostly useful if you don’t have the life sphere and
requisite talents available (in which case you should have taken that instead) or are out
of spell points. Its not useless, it's just painfully niche.
 Versatile Weapon – overcome DR equal to CL, though not DR/-. This is nice, but many
types of DR can be beaten by sufficient enhancement bonuses, which also boost
damage and accuracy. If you run into a lot of DR/alignment early on then this gets better.
If you see DR/mythic or epic or anything like that, this becomes much better. Better at
low levels as well, when you can’t just pump the enhancement high enough to beat most
types of DR.

Other Talents:
Deep Enhancement – spending a spell point makes enhancements last 10 minutes/level
instead of 1 minute/level. Depends how far apart your fights are, really. At higher levels it
should last several encounters. Would be great as hr/level, but as is…
Dual Enhancement (Enh) – Spell point to apply two options at once? Very nice with
things like energy weapon. Useless if you don’t have talents that apply, obviously.

Greater Enhancement – enhance equipment, the basic ability, gets +1 higher. You can
get ahead of the curve with this, especially for overcoming DR (+3 overcomes silver and
cold iron, +4 overcomes adamantine, +5 overcomes alignment, which calls into question
just how useful the versatile weapon talent is).
Lingering Enhancement – effects continue two rounds after concentrating. Helpful for
saving spell points. Too bad it doesn’t scale.
Mass Enhancement – spend an SP to hit multiple targets with the same effect. Note that
currently there is not ‘total size cannot exceed max size’ clause on this one like there is
with telekinesis or creation, so you can animate a pile of max-size animated objects at
once. This will probably get errata'd, so watch out for flying books if you try it.
Natural Enhancement (Enh) – You can apply weapon and armor enhancements to
natural weapons and armor. Combined with mass enhancement this is a nice
compliment to alteration for natural attack users who may not want to shell out for an
amulet of mighty fists, to conjuration users whose companions appear without gear,
object animators, etc. Don’t think it works on Make Fragile though.

Ranged Enhancement – increase your range a step. If you are using this sphere
significantly for offense or support you want this once. Twice might be overkill.

Advanced Talents:
Anti Magic Aegis (Enh) – Allows you to persist an aegis or enhancement in anti-magic
areas. Could be useful if you set things up right.

Ascetic Control (Enh) – Weird month-long duration, don’t have to eat, breathe, sleep,
and don’t bleed. Presumably you still have to rest to regain SP and the like. Interesting
thing to have and the upkeep is minimal.

Bestow Life – permanently animate on object, awaken an animal, or animate a body.

You can even make magic items intelligent. Even better, you can have one at a time as a
‘faithful companion’. Pet airship? Oh yes. Note that a thaumaturge with boons and
reasonable items can hit CL 20 for colossal object by the time you can take this at CL10.
 Give Magic Life (Enh) – Basically you create living spells. Utility is irrelevant, it's cool.
Combine with bestow life for a permanent living spells servant.

Referential Enhancement (Enh) – Days-long enhancement to particular targets in a fixed

area. Great for sieges and the like, not much use in ‘normal’ dungeon diving. Not rated
due to heavy campaign dependance.

Reverse Gravity – entertaining, but not terrible useful since so many things will be flying
by this point, which mostly negates it. CL 15.

Fate
Base abilities are (word) hallow, which basically gives protection from alignment for minutes at
the cost of a spell point, and (consecration) serendipity, which gives a minor luck bonus on most
d20 rolls for concentration rounds, or rnds/level if you spend a spell point. Grab the fortune’s
favorite trait on anyone who you will use that on. The first one is nice, equivalent to a 1st level
spell, the second is a pretty small buff to spend concentration or SP on, but will stack with
anything but other luck bonuses and effects a decent area.

Dive – dedicated support casters that can afford the SP and talent costs
Dabble – support casters looking for a few handy abilities (protection from alignment, roll
twice abilities
Dip – Rogue types that want to be able to open locks with magic, anyone who wants to
have bless and/or curse on tap.
Don’t – builds that don’t rely on forcing saves (many martials), anyone in a party with a
support caster that has fate.

Consecrate Talents:
Divine Force – a random effect on creatures of an opposite alignment. Frankly, none of
them are bad and you bypass undead immunities. Just hope you don’t roll for deaf. Fort
negates, which pushes it down a notch as many enemies have high fort saves. It’s not
clear if enemies inside the area for multiple rounds have to make new saves. Adam
Meyers – “Divine Force should specify that it is an instantaneous effect; unlike the
normal consecration, it has no 'duration' and can be used anew each round. We'll add
that to the errata.”

Judgement – you can specify actions with one sentence in the area of your
consecration, but you can’t cause self-harm and must obey your own judgements. Will
save negates. You can get creative with this one.

Tug Fate – a nice bonus or penalty, scaling up to a huge bonus/penalty, but only if the
enemy/ally roll a ten. The difference is big enough to likely change the outcome of the
roll (almost certain success/failure at higher levels), but it only takes effect 5% of the
time. I don’t have the statistical chops to crunch this one, but I’m betting it’s not
worthwhile.

Word Talents:
Bless – immediate action to let an ally roll twice and take best. Have to decide before the
roll though. Still, helps land those key rolls.
 Close – closes and locks a door, window, etc. It’s okay, but fairly niche and still costs an
SP.

Curse – the offensive opposite of bless. It gets a higher rating as you can plan on using
it to land nasty save or lose abilities.

Echoing Word – spell point to effect more creatures, 1 per 2 CL just like all the other
talents that do this. Use it when cursing a group of enemies before an AoE effect
(greater ghost strike, for example).

Harm – enemy takes CL/2 additional damage whenever taking damage. It’s not much
damage and costs a SP to maintain without concentration, but if you find the right ability
to combine it with it could add up. You can fruitfully set up a tough enemy by hitting them
with this and then letting your volley archer empty a few quivers, just don’t use clustered
shots to make all the hits count damage at once. Magic missile would also work also, if
you use traditional casting as well since they hit separately.

Mercy – enemy forced to do nonlethal damage on a failed save. Okay if you have
someone healing in combat, but if you can get them to fail a save there are more
worthwhile things to do to them.

Open – opposite of close. Nice if you are covering for the party rogue, not needed
broadly though.

Pain – the damage isn’t impressive, though the ability to prevent casting and the fact that
you can spam it, no save, to make casting difficult would make this very effective, if the
scaling worked better. Magic skill checks scale with ability and level, while this scales at
¾ level, so the DC drops off. DC 10+(1d4+CL/2)/2+CL/2 averages out to 11.25+3/4 * CL
(average DC 13 at level 2 vs MSB of 4-6, DC 20 at level 10 vs MSB of 13-16 (assumed
+2 staff)). It would still shut-down gish and martial builds, who will have lower casting
stats, but they are more likely to be able to coast on the buffs already cast, avoiding the
inconvenience here. If you really abuse CL boosters it could be worthwhile. In low level
only games it might get up to green.

Truth – target has to tell the truth on a failed will save. May as well concentrate on it,
since you are using it out of combat anyhow, unless you need your actions to use social
skills or something of that nature.

Other Talents:
Greater Serendipity – enemies also take a penalty when inside your serendipity, though
it sadly does not scale. If you use serendipity, then you may as well take it.

Advanced Talents:
Atonement – as the spell. Mostly a plot device or to undo alignment-system weirdness.
CL 10.

Geas – as the spell. Situationally useful, but the casting time makes it difficult to use
offensively. CL 10.
 Greater Geas – if you use geas, then you want this as well. Otherwise you don’t qualify
for it. CL 10.

Mark of Judgement – permanent duration on your geas with a big penalty. Again, if you
are using geas, this is a great addition, but I question the utility of the entire line in many
campaigns. CL 10.

Fallen Fey (SkyPG)

Base ability is Fey-Link, which lasts for minutes per level and changes your type to fey. While
under fey-link you can grant yourself fey-blessings as a free action. Each costs a spell point and
lasts for the duration of the fey-link. Default blessing, Nature-connection, gives a scaling
initiative and nature-y skill bonus in a certain terrain. Untyped, so stacks with everything and you
won’t likely change terrains that many times while it's up, so probably only activate once. Odd in
that it is a self-only sphere, no way to target others with your link or blessings, though some
blessings give abilities that can impact others. Unless free actions are limited by your GM, you
can toss up as many blessings as you can afford in one round. Intended for Skybourne elves
only.

Dive – it’s not a sphere to build a caster around.

Dabble – nice for fey adepts that can leverage a CL boost and some spell penetration,
plus stunning glance for when illusions need some back-up.
Dip – full caster looking to grab stunning glance or someone looking for every social skill
boost they can get.
Don’t – low caster’s can’t really use the good stuff all that efficiently. Most anyone other
than fey adepts probably isn’t looking twice, honestly.
Fey Blessing Talents:
Fey Beauty – small, scaling untyped bonus to charisma skill and ability checks. Nice for
diplomacy or intimidate builds, but not huge on its own.

Tree Meld– if you get caught by surprise and there is a nearby tree (or if you have plant
geomancing from Nature), this is a great way to hide and buff. Too many conditions there
to make it generally useful.

Trickery– you get a +2 cl bonus when using a sphere ability to “deceive, trick, or
humiliate” a target. Fair bit of interpretation here, but you could argue for many, many
uses of the illusion sphere here, so it's not a bad dip for fey adepts to boost their CL (and
thus saves, durations, size)

Beckoning Call – you can fascinate one form of non-fey. Not wild about fascinate as a
condition.

Stunning Glance – standard action to stun a target inside 30’ for 1 rnd, fort negates. Very
nice ability to have handy for spamming. Fort saves tend to be high and it isn’t great
against multiple targets, but if you can concentrate on another spell as a move and stun
with your standard you can be pretty efficient.

Animal Blessing – nearby animals get a luck bonus to saves, scaling. There may be
ways to leverage this, but it would require a decent amount of work to even make worth
taking. Okay if you are getting animal allies from Nature.
 Fey Secrets – once during the link you get a semi-random bonus on a roll, scales a bit.
You can take multiple times for more uses. Insight, so watch your bonus types. Helps on
a roll you really want to stick, but you are using it before the roll. Rather have bless from
Fate to roll twice as a swift.

Listen to the Wind – you know north and can predict the weather. Or just put points in
survival. There may be a time it could be useful, but I can’t imagine taking it over another
talent or sphere.

Fey Potency– scaling bonus to overcome SR. A mid to late game choice, but handy.
Should be on par with or better than the spell penetration feat by the time you take it (on
a full caster anyhow) and the bonus stacks.

Wild Walk - no trail, can’t be tracked in natural surroundings. Way too situational.

Other Talents:
Greater Fey-link– spend an extra spell point for your fey link to last 10 minutes/level.
Pays for itself if you want to keep your blessing up for more than one or two encounters,
so recommended if you are using the sphere much at all.

Illusion
Another toolbox sphere, illusions are largely limited by two things: your imagination and your
GM’s understanding of how illusions work. The SoP core book is kind enough to give good
examples and guidelines for using illusions, so that should be a help on the first part. For the
second, the general advice in various illusionist guides floating around the web should give you
some ideas. Basic abilities and tricks, that let you make simple images for entertainment or
disguise, and illusions, that require will saves to disbelieve. Illusion size scales with level.
Making an illusion requires a spell point and concentration, so easy focus is strongly
recommended.

Dive – if you want to focus heavily on illusions, you should play a fey adept. Seriously,
they can do things with this sphere other classes only dream of.
Dabble – Full casters who want some versatility and deception, especially if not just
playing a kick down the door dungeon crawl.
Dip – anyone who wants invisibility.
Don’t – face-smashers that don’t care about sneaking and don’t have the DCs to make
any illusions stick. Characters played by people who don’t use illusions.

Talents:
Complex Illusion – not needed for just tossing up simple illusions to confound pursuit or
other basic applications, this one is for the specialist to make truly elaborate deceptions.
Divers and dabblers want it, dippers can pass. Allowing for mass invisibility makes it
even better.

Daylight – illusions can give off brighter light. Pretty niche.

Enlarge Illusion – another one that’s great for specialists. You can make that dragon
levels sooner this way.
 Illusory Disguise – basic disguises can be had with just tricks, this lets you go beyond
that to change size categories or pretend to be a tree. More useful in social type
campaigns, but still good for being sneaky, though vanish does that too, in a different
way.

Illusory Odor – you can fake smell and taste. Less crucial than some other senses,
generally.

Illusory Sound – probably your first pick unless you just want invisibility. Lots of things
need to be heard before they are touched, smelled, or tasted.

Illusory Touch – I like taking this twice early on so that your illusion of a swarm of bees
can actually do damage. Let’s you make some very convincing illusions since they can
actually hurt.

Invisibility – perception checks are required to spot you and allows you to hide in plain
sight. Great for scouting. Note that it does not end when you make an attack, so it acts
like greater invisibility so long as you beat their perception checks.

Lingering Illusion – illusions persist two rounds after concentration. Nice to have,
especially if you get your concentration broken.

Manipulate Aura – make things seem magic, not magic, or differently magic. Niche.
Traveling con men love it though.

Ranged Illusion – step your ranges out farther. Necessary, especially as they get larger.

Silence – shuts down verbal casters and makes sneaking even easier. Depends on how
many verbal casters you face.

Advanced Talents:
Permanent Image – you can make illusions permanent. Great for invisibility, disguises,
and other applications. Hard to turn this one down.

Life
All the healing you’ll ever need and then some. Specialists will have the oomph to make in-
combat healing reasonably effective, though you never get the action economy efficiency of the
psionic vitalist. Base abilities are invigorate, which lets you patch up with temporary HP, cure,
which costs SP for real HP, and restore, which removes status effects. It’s this last one that
makes this sphere dramatically better than a wand of cure light wounds. A solid grounding here
will allow you to heal, remove status effects, and raise the dead. The Pathfinder system
presumes that the party will have access to these abilities, so every party is well advised to
have someone who at least dips here.

Dive – you really shouldn’t focus your entire build on this, though it is fine for NPCs and
cohorts. Even those taking many life talents should give themselves other options.
Protection or light would be thematic for many dedicated healer types.
Dabble – soul weavers, incanters playing cleric, and triple goddess hedge-witches that
want to play healer. Dabblers can play ‘the healer’ well.
Dip – if you just want to use items and patch up between combats a few well-chosen
talents can cover the system-required healing needs.
 Don’t – talent-starved classes that are supported by a more dedicated healer.

Talents:
Break Enchantment – a targeted dispel which allows you to dispel selectively that
doubles as remove curse/break enchantment. Two-for-one makes this hard to turn
down. Note that I can’t find any text preventing using this on an unwilling target, so this
can be used to strip enemies of buffs as well, though you’ll need to hit with a touch
attack.

Fount of Life – store heals for future use. Nice for preventing over-healing, which will be
useful for specialists, though mind the cap. As noted by a commenter, combine with
resuscitate and ranged healing for effective and talent-efficient life-saving.

Greater Healing – boost your cures. Okay on its own, better with Revitalize. Not your first
priority and can be passed on for those without full CL, since the benefits will be reduced
and they will likely not have the talents to burn here.

Greater Invigorate – more temp HP that last longer. Invigorate seems like more of a
stop-gap to me, wouldn’t be my first choice, though at early levels when SP are tight it
could be useful. Better if using healthy invigorate.

Greater Restore – more severe conditions are removed rather than reduced, all ability
damage healed, and stunned is removed. Makes restore much more efficient when
significant ability damage and frequent stronger effects come into play.

Healthy Invigorate – invigorate can go above max HP. Doesn’t add up the way the vigor
psionic power does. Just doesn’t seem like enough to be worthwhile, basically giving an
unhealable toughness for the cost of a spell point. If you take it, take greater invigorate
as well. I’d rather use the protection sphere.

Mass Healing – if you are playing healer, you need this. Great for increasing your HP per
SP and action economy.

Ranged Healing – yeah, you want this too. Getting into melee range to heal your
companions is bad if you are a squishy caster. Getting there in time to use resuscitate is
vital as well. Getting the healing off on multiple targets spread across the battlefield will
save lives and action economy.

Restorative Cure – speaking of action economy, you would have had to spellcraft these
together anyhow eventually, so taking the talent is more efficient action-wise.

Restore Health – someone ought to be able to, though these come up less often.

Restore Mind – boosts cure by 1d8, restore removes dazed and confused. They are bad
conditions to have.

Restore Movement – boosts cure, helps escape grapples and a chance to remove
paralysis. Not the flat ‘No Button’ that freedom of movement is, but that is a good thing
from a game-design standpoint in my opinion. Paralysis kills, so removing it in a timely
fashion is vital.
 Restore Senses – boosts cure, heals blindness, etc. Probably can get away with getting
this one from a scroll or other item, shouldn’t happen too often.

Restore Soul – boosts cure, removes all ability drain and temporary negative levels.
Negative levels stink and ability damage can be just as bad. It’s not always necessary to
remove them in combat, but they do have to be fixed.

Resuscitate – bring someone back with healing if dead less than a round. Make sure you
have ranged healing so you don’t have to worry as much about getting into position.
Note that with restore soul and the potential magnitude of your heals, your target could
be back to life with no ill effects beyond being prone.

Revitalize – turn your cure into fast healing. Great for out of combat healing since you
effectively get 10 HP/CL this way. With greater healing x4, mass healing, and CL 20, you
can theoretically heal 10,000 HP off of 2 SP (50 HP/minute x 20 minutes x 10 targets).
Not that these numbers matter in actual play, just doing math. This talent also allows you
to heal undead and others immune or weak to positive energy, since it is fast healing
rather than a positive energy effect like the base cure.

Advanced Talents
Regeneration – mostly regrows body parts and restores senses. If you don’t have
restore senses then this replaces that. Since limb loss isn’t mechanically defined in most
cases this really only useful for healing things inflicted outside the rules. CL 10.

Restore Mind and Body – remove permanent negative levels. They happen, they need
to be fixed. CL 15.

Resurrection – raise dead. Hopefully you fix things before this point, but that won’t
always happen. Its very existence has impacts on the campaign world. CL 10.

Greater Resurrection – “What do you mean we only have a fingernail? Fine, I can work
with that.” CL 15.

Light
You may think there isn’t much you can do tossing some light around, but this sphere has a
surprising selection of abilities. The base ability is glow, which grants a faerie fire-like effect as a
touch or ranged touch. You can then cause the target to shed light as a torch as a free action or
concentrate to make it shed bright light. On its own, this isn’t impressive, so you’ll need some
talents to add effects to your glow. Note that light talents don’t stack with each other (in the
absence of spellcrafting, anyhow).

Dive – Not sure there is currently a class or archetype suited to focusing on nothing but
light, though I suppose there might be a thaumaturge build in there somewhere.
Dabble – there are a number of good effects for a full or medium caster, debuffing
enemies and protecting themselves.
Dip – melee looking for reach and damage (encompassing light) and/or a solid no-save
debuff (bound light).
Don’t – You are using the dark sphere in a significant way, since they dispel each other.
Light Talents:
Beacon of Hope – small bonus on saves against fear. There are enough ways to get
bonuses on saves, especially against mind affecting, of which fear is a subset, and
morale bonuses don’t stack, so given that you are limited as to what effect you place on
your glow, I doubt this one is worth the SP.

Blinding Light – glowing targets are dazzled, a minor debuff but no save is allowed, but
for a spell point you can force a fort save versus blindness for everything in the area,
repeating the save each round. Careful where you put it though, it doesn’t discriminate. I
would consider trying to spellcraft a light version of the clearsight meld ability from the
dark sphere if you want to use this up close, or just use illuminate to make the glow a
cone. The enemies most inconvenienced by blindness will often have good fort saves,
but potentially hitting multiple and forcing new saves each round keep this strong.

Bound Light – target is entangled and must make a fort save or be staggered each
round. Nice! Errata adds a SP cost, but it’s worth it. Note the entangle has no save,
making this excellent for low casters looking for debuff and control.

Encompassing Light – effective size increase, scaling up to three increase at CL 20.

Great for melee reach builds, vital-strike builds looking for die-size boosts, and combat
maneuver users. Anyone else can pass unless granting it to others. Note that each
creature is allowed one source of actual size increase (like size change from alteration)
and one effective size change (this), additional sources of either type don’t stack.

Guiding Light – small circumstance bonus against glowing targets, scales if glowing
brightly. It’s a fairly minor bonus after the earliest levels, though it could be worthwhile if
you boost your CL and the attackers don’t have another source of vision related
circumstance bonuses.

Hypnotic Pattern – fascinate effects can be tricky to use and easy to break, so not really
one I can strongly recommend. If you want to play yard light to your enemy’s moth,
consider grabbing the hands of the bard veil from akashic mysteries to boost the DC.

Repelling Light – keeps enemies from closing with the source of the light. Awesome for
keeping enemies off you, even if the melee types will have good fort saves. New saves
each round and an area of effect means even if one gets through you can step away and
make them beat your save again. Martial types won’t have the DC to make it worthwhile,
but casters will love it.

Revealing Light – bright light revealing invisible things. Given that the invisibility illusion
talent is pretty nice for combat, this is a great hard counter.

Searing Light – trivial, easily resisted damage over time. The long duration is nice,
effectively dealing 10 fire damage/level (double to undead), but how many fights last
minutes? How many enemies worth slapping this on would be unable to dispel, out-heal,
or plain resist it? Even resistance 5 makes it completely useless against even undead.
No thanks.

Other Talents:
Area Glow – hit targets in an AoE with your glow, though making them glow brightly still
requires individual attention. Nice for landing the base effect, especially on invisible foes
 who may be tough to land a touch attack on and also allows you to set up multiple
targets for focusing on in subsequent rounds.

Dancing Lights – can make glow effects without a target. Not more than a cantrip on its
own, but may be useful in combination with other talents, like repelling light or revealing
light.

Illuminate – turn the light shed from your glow into a cone, doubling the distance. Very
helpful for blinding light, potentially useful for repelling and revealing light. Not really
worthwhile if not using any of those, unless you are spellcrafting other effects onto it,
which has potential.

Lasting Light – glow lasts 10 minutes/CL. Doesn’t boost bright light’s duration. If you
aren’t using bright light most effects that you would want to keep going out of combat
can be kept up easily enough. Anything really useful requires bright light, so why bother?
Might work for tracking fleeing enemies with light link, but is it worth a talent?

Light Link – lets you keep track of anything under the effect of your glow unless it leaves
the plane. Base ability only lasts for minutes/CL, so you won’t have long to find them, but
it’s still helpful if you are the type to always have a glow on the big bad.

Ranged Light – medium range improves to long. Medium is pretty good already, so this
is a ‘take it if you need it’ talent. Depends on campaign and strategy, not likely to be a
top priority either way.

Advanced Talents:
Daylight – shed bright light for 2 miles. Incredibly nasty if spellcrafting it with talents like
repelling light or blinding light. Burn villages to death with searing light. If not
spellcrafting, it really is pretty much just a way to annoy the neighbors or dispel its dark
counterpart.

Mind
Save or lose: the Sphere. Not so hot against undead, plants, constructs, etc., so have a backup
plan. Your base power is the suggestion charm, with more charms available as talents. Each
charm has three strengths with increasing costs. They are all mind-affecting (compulsion)
effects, so dip fey-bloodline sorcerer on your eliciter for maximum DCs. This section includes a
nice chart for gauging what qualifies as reasonable, against nature, etc.

Dive – Eliciters, of course.

Dabble – full casters that have the DCs to land effects that can end fights or circumvent
them entirely, with the potential to make your GM tear out his hair.
Dip – if you want a single buff or a basic ability to smooth social situations.
Don’t – low casters who don’t want the minor buffs for themselves, parties where the
face role is well covered, anyone delving the undead-filled tomb of the construct king.

Charm Talents:
Amnesia (Men) - erase a target’s memory.

Calm (Men) - suppress emotions such as hostility and excitement.

Candor (Men) - compel others to speak the truth.

Cerebral Strike (Men) - unleash a storm of psychic energy.

Command – force a target to perform a simple action, scaling up to total control of their
bodies. Yeah, that’s powerful. Broken with the insanity advanced talent.

Confusion – too erratic and unpredictable. If you can get them to fail a will save, you can
do better than this. Could be useful for stealthily starting trouble for others I suppose.

Courage – a solid buff, if short-lived. Combine with insanity for fun.

Disrupt Focus (Men) - You make it harder for a target to concentrate on using their
magic.

Enthrall – improve dispositions, good for being social or avoiding combat. The more
blood-thirsty members of your party will hate you for ending too many fights this way.

Fear – more predictable than confusion and softens enemies up for future saves. The
greater charm hits them with shaken even if they save, so always useful. Consider using
it at a reduced CL with a least metamagic rod of quicken to prep your target.

Gestures (Men) - You are a puppetmaster of another creature’s body, controlling or

manipulating their movements.

Hostility – the lesser version is nice for filler and to start bar fights while invisible. Greater
has some buffing potential, but is useful for preventing casters from casting. Powerful
gives rage to your friends or turns your enemy into a mindless berserker, which has its
uses.

Inception (Men) - You add trivia, knowledge, and memories to a person’s mind.

Inspiration – decent bonuses as immediate actions, great for making key checks pass.

Mind Shield (Men) - protects the mind from mental assaults.

Mind Spy (Men) - see the world through the target’s eyes.

Paralyze – action denial is golden. Paralyzed targets are coup de grace bait.

Project Thoughts – silent communication has its uses, though if you have another source
for telepathy in the party you can skip it.

Read Mind – great for social encounters, doesn’t have the shut-down capacity in combat
of other talents. In a social-heavy campaign it’s a must-grab.

Sleep – sleeping targets are as good as dead in most cases.

Utterances (Men) - control or impede speech of another.

Vision – open for a great deal of creativity,

 Amnesia (from the customization section of SoP, so not an ‘official’ talent) - makes your
target forget something or a period of time, depending on the strength. Great for an
intrigue-heavy campaign, not terribly useful if just kicking down doors.

Cloud Talents:
Dispersion (Men) - makes it difficult for a creature to focus on a specific object in the
area.
Esteem (Men) - imbue creatures with self-worth.
Lure (Men) - draws creatures to a specific location.
Misdirect (Men) - draws creatures away from a specific location.

Other Talents:
****Expanded Charm**** – absolutely required for anyone using mind unless you are in a
single race, no monsters setting. So, yeah, take it early and gladly. Or grudgingly, since it
is a talent tax to get around a restriction built into the sphere.

Group Charm – end entire encounters as a standard action, saving spell points to boot.
Yeah, you need it.

Powerful Charm – the powerful charms are worth unlocking, so take it even though it
feels like a tax.

Ranged Mind – close to medium, medium to long, good to have.

Advanced Talents:
Deadly Vision – basically phantasmal killer, save twice or die. Two saves and no effect if
they pass either one makes this very swing-y. Good for killing rogues, I guess? CL 10.

Greater Communication – communicate even across planes. Should come in handy. CL

10.

Insanity – make the confusion charm permanent and undispellable. Could be fun in a
‘screw-up the kingdom’ kind of way, but as far as in-combat use goes it isn’t great, since
most things you want to use it on won’t survive the combat anyhow and confused targets
can just attack the last creature to attack them. High-profile targets out of combat will
often have access to restore mind. CL 10.

Memetic Link (Men) - Link a creature with thrall allowing for the combined strength of
will.

Mind Control – greater duration and the ability to communicate with enthralled targets.
Combine with insanity to make an army of meat-puppets. CL 10.

Recondite Stimuli (Men) - allows you to use Mind sphere abilities on a specific creature
type (from a list) normally immune to mind affecting effects. May be taken multiple times,
choosing a different creature type each time.

Zeitgeist (cloud) (Men) - your charm effects may affect populations of upto 5,000 or less.
Nature Sphere
Your base abilities here are divided into four geomancing packages, plantlife, water, earth, and
fire, each with sub-options, and the spirit option, which does nothing by itself but describes how
some talents are used. Fire, water, and plantlife benefit from being able to supply their own
prerequisites, with water and plantlife doing so elegantly.
Plantlife
Entangle – concentration duration, entangle anything that fails a save and make difficult
terrain. Similar to the druid spell but without the ludicrous area at level 1. Strong BFC
when you have plants around, useless otherwise. Fortunately you have ways to fix that.
Growth – spend a spell point to make plants produce food. Not really helping in combat
outside of some unusual situations, but helpful in a survival type campaign. Also
thematic.
Pummel – concentration, makes a tree attack nearby enemies. First of all, the image is
beautiful and I recommend plantlife as a package just so you can have trees beat people
up. The size of the tree or branch is limited by your CL and of course the presence of
trees.
Water
Vortex – If your enemies are in a large body of water, this is great. If not, move on.
Fog – fog is great, but you need water to start with. You can cover that with the create
water talent or with the weather sphere, though if you have weather you can make your
own fog anyway.
Freeze – cross lakes in style! Freezing enemies is excellent, you just have to get them
wet first, meaning it isn’t often going to be a power you can lead with. The create water
talent solves this issue, so spread the frostbite!
Earth
Bury – another terrain dependent control option, requiring sand. If you can choose or
prepare the terrain you will be awesome. Earth would make for a nasty desert encounter
NPC. If only you had a way to knock enemies prone…
Tremor – Oh, wait, you do! Costs a spell point, but gives you an AoE trip attempt. If you
go intelligence based you can grab combat expertise and improved/greater trip to
augment this check. Prone is good, prone, immobile, and suffocating is better (see bury).
Too bad suffocating takes so long. Still, holds them in place and out of your hair nicely.
Dust Storm – area concealment, requires sand or loose dirt. Loose dirt shouldn’t be too
hard to come by outdoors, could be harder inside the king’s palace.
Fire
Manipulate Lava – remember how all these geomancing abilities are somewhat limited in
utility by the terrain available? Yeah, this one takes the cake. Most enemies that you
could catch in a lava vortex probably are not going to be terribly inconvenienced by
swimming in lava, though it still does offer control over a VERY specific battlefield.
 Making obsidian is probably more useful, but you still need material to work with. If you
combine with the melt earth talent, then this becomes much more useful, using the
vortex to trap them while they burn to death.
Create Fire – you can make modest sized fires without fuel. Unleash your inner pyro.
Affect fire – make fires larger or smaller, limited by CL. Could make the ‘on fire’ rider of
destruction’s fire blast more useful.
Metal
Recover Ore - kind of like creation, you get to spend a spell point to make simple objects
from metal drawn from dirt or sand that can’t be dispelled but break down after hrs/CL.
You can make improvised weapons as well. It isn’t amazing on its own until you get to
high enough levels for big objects, but forms the basis for some of the other talents.
Magnetize - grab small unattended metal objects or make attacks (ranged, NOT ranged
touch!) with scaling damage (or weapon damage, if using a weapon). Retrieving items
from a distance is handy but you aren’t doing much damage with this on its own.
Dive – Geomancer elementalists, anyone going for a druid theme.
Dabble – Full casters with an appropriate theme or looking for BFC.
Dip – fire-wielding natural attack melee builds. Anyone who wants to be able to talk to
anything.
Don’t – Low casters, the good abilities are CL and/or save dependent.

Talents

Earth Talents
Flying Debris (earth) (Geo) – your tremors can knock low-flying creatures to the ground,
but it’s a skill check versus your CMB roll, so unlikely to work well against anything with
high maneuverability. You also don’t get to use your casting stat for your CMB, so this
may be hard to land against anything invested in the fly skill. Knocking them prone is
great when it works though.
Forge Earth (earth, geomancing) – You can reshape the terrain. Tactically useful,
strategically wonderful. Given enough time you can build a labyrinth.
Speak with Stone (earth, spirit) – one of these speak talents should be able to get you
information of just about anything. Again, limited by your GM.
Spike Stones (earth) (Geo) – tremor leaves caltrops behind. The damage scales, making
them better than normal caltrops, but they only last 1 rnd. Still, it's BFC with no additional
cost.
Stoneskin (earth, spirit) (Geo) – DR/adamantine is nice. Spellcraft it to pass it around the
group efficiently.
Whirlwind (earth, geomancing) – vortex for earth-users. Needs sand.
Fire Talents
Feed on Fire (fire, spirit) – gain fire resistance and heal a bit from the fire damage you
resist. Works as a roundabout self-heal. Costs a spell point, so no free heals. Not
convinced it’s worth it.
Fire Wielder (fire) – Add fire damage to your unarmed strikes. I can’t recommend
building around flaming punches, but if you must then this is a fair way to do it. However,
if you grab a large number of natural attacks, you can actually become potent against
anything not fire resistant. Note that the current text specifies unarmed strikes only, but
per Adam Meyers:
“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.”

Move Fire (fire, geomancing) – take a fire and move it, plus you can sustain it with a
spell point. Not enough damage potential for primary offense, it has its uses though.
Smokescreen (fire) (Geo) – you can make clouds of smoke when reducing a fire’s size.
With proper set-up (Goz masks, fogcutter lens, etc) this can give your party almost
complete control over the field. Less awesome before you reach that point, but can still
cover an escape, prevent ranged combat, or a number of other things.
Metal Talents
Altered Edge (metal, geomancing) (Geo) – increase or decrease a metal weapon’s
threat range. Mostly useful for buffing crit-builds, so best for particular builds or helping
out a party member, though has some debuff potential if you know you are facing a crit
fisher. Combine with forged reach for an interesting geomancer build.
Arsenal (metal, geomancing) (Geo) – weapons formed with recover ore are no longer
considered improvised. Unless you have a build that uses recover ore to make weapons
frequently it is going to be pretty niche.
Blade Barrier (metal, geomancing) (Geo) – attach a piece of metal to a creature that
then makes free attacks when things get close. Free attacks are awesome, but ore
damage isn’t high, so you will likely be using a weapon, but even then you only get base
weapon damage, no stat mod, so a greatsword would require CL 4 and do 2d6 damage.
Not bad, but requires an attack roll modified by your casting stat, so BAB will be an issue
for low casters.
Blade Whip (metal, geomancing) (Geo) – spell point to use your weapon to trip, disarm,
or sunder a target out to close range with a CL-based bonus. The range and bonus open
up maneuvers to classes that would normally shun them. I think this would be a strong
choice for a melee-based geomancer build.
Chill Metal (metal, water, geomancing) (Geo) – Damage is minor, but disarming is nice
when it applies. Locking up complex objects is a nice touch but likely won’t come up too
often, though no size limit is given (errata?) so go ahead and stop the clock-tower. Many
enemies won’t have significant metal objects, though this will depend heavily on your
campaign, shifting its value up or down.
Expanded Ore (metal, geomancing) (Geo) – your version of expanded materials. It isn’t
much on its own at low levels, but has implications other places, such as if you are
making weapons for yourself. Once you start making really large objects from recover
ore, you may come to appreciate the extra hardness and HP.
Forged Reach (metal, geomancing) (Geo) – scaling reach bonus! Combine with
encompassing light and size change for truly terrifying melee reach. Takes a bit to set
that up though. Very nice for any melee build, but combines frighteningly well with
altered edge for a self-buffing geomancer. Also great for buffers to hand out to their
meatshields. Very scary if you drop it on a lock-down build like a warder.
Heat Metal (metal, fire, geomancing) (Geo) – Identical to chill metal but with a different
flavor of damage. Pick one or the other if you are going to, I don’t expect it to be
worthwhile to have both just to get around resistance/immunity. Damage is minor, but
disarming is nice when it applies. Locking up complex objects is a nice touch but likely
won’t come up too often, though no size limit is given (errata?) so go ahead and stop the
clock-tower. Many enemies won’t have significant metal objects, though this will depend
heavily on your campaign, shifting its value up or down.
Hemoglobin (metal, geomancing) (Geo) – scaling Con damage is nice, though it requires
a ranged touch attack and allows a fort save. You don’t recover much from it, but that
isn’t really the point, is it? You are now Magneto in the prison escape in X-men 2. Costs
a spell point.
Manipulate Object (metal, geomancing) (Geo) – 2 SP to permanently increase or
decrease hardness. Does you GM use sunder against you frequently? Works for beefing
up your base during downtime, but the bonuses aren’t huge. Compared to other talents
you can get, I think I would pass.
Oxidization Ray (metal, geomancing) (Geo) – sort of a sunder-ray, though also useful
against metal enemies (there are a few, but not so many that it is a major reason to pick
this one up). Avoids the problem of sunder ruining useful loot, but doesn’t do anything to
get around hardness or objects taking half-damage by default. You GM may not
appreciate having to figure out the HP and composition of random magic items. If you
fight a lot of encounters against single enemies with powerful items, this could be
awesome.
Pin-Ball (metal, geomancing) (Geo) – you can hit a frightful number of enemies this way,
so long as you don’t miss. Too bad you have to hit full AC. Still, with CL boosts, the right
arrangement of enemies (need two within range to keep the hits coming), and the largest
weapon you can handle this could do impressive damage.
Shrapnel (metal, geomancing) (Geo) – deal bleed damage equal to your ore damage
when using magnetize. It’s fair bleed damage, but enemies that can’t fix it are unlikely to
be major threats for long anyhow, plus a number of common enemy types are flat-out
immune. Messy with pin-ball, DM might call for acrobatics checks to not slip in the
puddles of blood you leave behind. Bleed damage doesn’t stack though, so only hit each
target with bleed once. Works out for a hit-and-run style, at least until many enemies
have fast healing or regeneration.
Tough as Mettle (metal, spirit) (Geo) – stalwart for minutes/level. Stalwart is good, this is
good. Not sure about how it fits in with geomancing beyond the pun.
Plantlife Talents
Aggravating Vegetation (plantlife, geomancing) (Geo)– pummeling plants can
antagonize their target. Useful battlefield control.
Barkskin (plantlife, spirit) (Geo)– scaling bonus to natural armor, handy, especially if you
don’t have a good source for AC boosts from the protection sphere. Stealth bonus is
situational, but could be useful on occasion.
Grow Plants (plantlife, geomancing) – the plantlife equivalent of create water. Need a
tree to slap someone? Now you have it. Has the same action-economy built-in, so you
can call up thorns and have them entangle someone all in one action. No fancy plants,
so just stop those thoughts of black lotus farming.
Ranged Pummel (plantlife, geomancing)(Geo) – more reach on your pummels, which is
handy since the enemy may not be polite enough to stand still.
Sap Coagulation (plantlife) (Geo) – forfeit pummel damage to fatigue your target.
Debuffs can be worth more than damage, so its a nice option to have.
Speak with Plants (plantlife, spirit) – more intelligence gathering capability. Plants are
everywhere and you can talk to them. Limited by your GMs interpretation of just what a
plant can perceive.
Spores (plantlife) (Geo) – forfeit pummel damage force saves versus sickened, which
can escalate to nauseated! Nauseated is a nasty condition, so against vulnerable targets
this could be the best pummel.
Thorns (plantlife, geomancing) – the damage is weak, so it’s not worth it if you don’t
have the means to keep enemies in them. Stack it with entangle (or better yet, spellcraft
it to combine them into one action).
Towering Growth (plantlife) – Once flying enemies become common, you need this.
Remember to laugh manically as a bunch of weeds pull a dragon to the ground.
Spirit Talents
Animal Friend (spirit) – spend a spell point to improve an animal’s attitude for a time. You
can also call an animal to you and you know if none of that type are in the area. Nice if
you face animal encounters often as you can just shut them down. Creative use of
knowing what animal types are nearby could come up (the enemy is known to have a
pet crocodile, which are not native to the region, which he takes everywhere!).
Barkskin (plantlife, spirit) (Geo)– scaling bonus to natural armor, handy, especially if you
don’t have a good source for AC boosts from the protection sphere. Stealth bonus is
situational, but could be useful on occasion.
Feed on Fire (fire, spirit) – gain fire resistance and heal a bit from the fire damage you
resist. Works as a roundabout self-heal. Costs a spell point, so no free heals. Not
convinced it’s worth it.
Naturesight (spirit) (Geo) – get new senses based on what packages you have.
Excellent! No SP cost, either. you don’t feel so bad about not taking divination now, eh?
Rejuvenation (spirit) (Geo) – unlimited out of combat healing, up to ½ max. Not earth-
shattering, but reduces the load on the healer a bit. Really depends on party
composition; if you are spamming wands between combat, this could be worthwhile. If
you have a vitalist, it's hilarious (just redirect the healing to the rest of the party until they
are all full). Other parties may not really feel the need though, like if you have someone
heavily invested in the life sphere.
Speak with Animals (spirit) – nice to have, combos well with animal friend to get a helper
in a pinch. It shouldn’t be hard to find an animal that has seen something useful, though
they likely won’t understand what they saw. Alteration can do it for free and someone in
the party should have alteration access, hence losing a level in the ratings.
Speak with Plants (plantlife, spirit) – more intelligence gathering capability. Plants are
everywhere and you can talk to them. Limited by your GMs interpretation of just what a
plant can perceive.
Speak with Stone (earth, spirit) – one of these speak talents should be able to get you
information of just about anything. Again, limited by your GM.
Speak with Water (water, spirit) (Geo) – aren’t we chatty? Listen to the brook babble.
Information gathering always has uses, but you may find that there are less useful water
sources than there are conveniently placed stones. Well defined, so not as limited by
your GM as others. Size of the body of water is not defined, so annoy your GM by using
it on an ocean. (May need clarification here)
Stoneskin (earth, spirit) (Geo) – DR/adamantine is nice. Spellcraft it to pass it around the
group efficiently.
Tough as Mettle (metal, spirit) (Geo) – stalwart for minutes/level. Stalwart is good, this is
good. Not sure about how it fits in with geomancing beyond the pun.
Waterwalk (water, spirit) – walk on water and get a swim speed for a spell point. Meh.
Swim can be had easily from alteration, as can flight (see elemental transformation).
Wild Instinct (spirit) (Geo)– uncanny dodge/improved uncanny dodge (if taken twice)
while concentrating on nature abilities. Odds are you will spend most of every combat
concentrating, so you get fair coverage, but doesn't often matter for being flat-footed at
the start of combat. Take it if your DM likes invisible attackers and take it twice if you
face a lot of sneak attackers, but it’s not going to be a top pick.
Water Talents
Create Water (water, geomancing) – now you can get things wet. The action
automatically combines with water geomancing effects, so your action economy doesn’t
suffer. Costs a spell point.
Waterwalk (water, spirit) – walk on water and get a swim speed for a spell point. Meh.
Swim can be had easily from alteration, as can flight (see elemental transformation).
 Wave (water, geomancing) – spell point for an area bull rush. It’s okay, but most of the
time you will have to create water for it to work, which gets pricey. Better if in an aquatic
campaign.
General/Universal Nature Talents
Expanded Geomancing – Get a package you don’t already have.
Grant Spirit (Geo) – Pass off your spirit effects to others. Depends on what you have for
spirit talents. Many of them would benefit little from sharing.
Greater Range – exactly what it says. Close to medium, medium to long. You will likely
want it at least once, since close range can be rather restrictive.
Lingering Nature (Geo) – your nature abilities last for 2 rnds without concentrating. Very
nice.
Nature Barrier (Geo) – costs 2 SP, but walls are an excellent form of battlefield control.
Shelter (Geomancing) (Geo) – at first glance you may think this is an out of combat,
adventuring ability, but it is not that well suited to leaving up overnight. It really seems to
be a way to protect your archers and casters from enemy melee, at least until you fail a
MSB roll versus the damage. This time could vary considerably, since creatures with
many natural attacks will tend to have low per hit damage. Two-handed barbarians will
break through it easily. Hoses flying enemies, though, so has a niche.
Multiple Package Talents
Acid Rain (water, metal, geomancing) (Geo)– fog is useful. Damage-dealing fog even
more so, especially since you can also drop entangle on them. Ouch.
Boil Water (fire, water, geomancing)(Geo) – 1d6/2 CL fire damage to creatures in an
area of water. Going to be very campaign dependant, like other abilities that require a
creature to be in water. Doesn’t seem to work on creatures that are merely wet, as from
create water. There is also the question of which CL to use if you have different CLs for
different packages.
Melt Earth (earth, fire, geomancing)(Geo) – the damage is nothing to write home about,
but immobilizing targets is great if you can get them to stop in the area, which could be
tricky. Takes some set-up, but worthwhile.
Nauseating Fog (plantlife, water)(Geo) –stinking cloud! Seriously, unless you are facing
immune critters (undead, constructs, etc) then this can end encounters.

Advanced Talents

Earthquake (earth, geomancing) – great in the right terrain, but in the open enough
creatures will be flying by 15th level that it won’t matter.

Eternal Steel (metal, plantlife, geomancing)(Geo) – grant a metal creature or object

slowly scaling regeneration. Regeneration is great to have, but there are other ways to
 fix your gear. Better if you have an animated object buddy around or a way to count
yourself as metal (forgeborn maybe?). Requires CL 8.

Freezing Geyser (fire, water, geomancing)(Geo) A blast with many stages and an
entangle effect to boot. If you can hold an enemy in it, they ought to be toast. Requires
CL 15.

Living Steel (metal, plantlife, geomancing)(Geo) – metal object heals slowly and armor
as a chance to break attacker’s weapons when they roll a 1. Minor, minor bonuses.
Requires CL 5.

Material of Legend (metal)(Geo) – recover ore can make elysian bronze, fire-forged
steel, or frost-forged steel. The material types...they aren’t that special. They aren’t BAD,
but by the time you can take this, you probably already have weapons and armor that
you have invested a bit of cash in and the properties of these materials seem fairly
insignificant if you are just extracting them to hit stuff with. Requires CL 10.

Natural Ally (spirit)(Geo) call a fey, magical beast, plant, or vermin with a CR up to ½
your CL. Disposable minions are awesome. Disposable minions with a useful type or
spell-like abilities (or flat-out casting) is great. Useable only 1/day. Requires CL 1.

Persistent Fog (water, spirit) (Geo) – Permanent fog. Nasty with acid rain or nauseating
fog. Requires CL 10.

Rapid Growth (plantlife, geomancing) – great for fluff uses and amazing as strategic
control, since a suddenly appearing jungle can really mess with an army or hide a
village.

Tsunami (water, geomancing) – Makes a mess and pushes enemies around, doesn’t
have the wide-reaching effects of plant growth though.

Volcano (fire, geomancing) – Creates a nice sized area that no one wants to be in.

Zoetic Geomancy (Geo) – Elemental or plant minion. Awesome. Requires CL 10.

Protection
Buff, buff, buff your party to victory! AC, resistance, rerolls, anti-magic, and general damage
mitigation are the order of the day. Abilities are split into wards – area effects, and aegis –
hr/level single-target buffs. Basic ward makes a wall that stops movement and damage, though
it’s easily broken. Still enough to really mess with bomb-lobbers and energy orb users. Readied
actions can really mess with your enemies’ movement as well. Basic aegis grants a scaling
deflection bonus. Note: the base ward ability is intended to count as a force effect.

Dive – your active abilities are limited to dropping wards and dismissing aegis effects, so
I wouldn’t focus here exclusively, you need something else active to do once you wards
are up.
Dabble – passive builds like healers that want to both pre-buff and have something
active to do in combat before healing is required.
Dip – you took somatic casting twice. Defensive-minded magi can get excellent mileage
out of this as well, just popping a ward to reduce incoming damage (or 5’ step away to
 make the enemy break the ward before getting adjacent again). Just tossing out greater
barriers can mess up a battlefield.
Don’t – you get protection support from elsewhere.

Aegis Talents:
Armored Magic – 3 AC or 1 shield, scaling. Covers for mage armor and shield, though
weaker than either to start with. Duration beats shield, anyhow. Good to have if you don’t
have armor. I would use the base aegis for a deflection bonus before using the shield
option here, but they do stack and there are talents that benefit from having multiple
aegis up so they can be dismissed.

Breathless – target doesn’t need to breath. Useful, though maybe wait a few levels since
it won’t come up every day or hopefully too often at low levels, unless you feel the urge
to walk across the bottom of the lake.

Deathless – bonus against the death sphere and death effects. Doesn’t scale, so useful
for low casters as well. You can save to negate even if the effect doesn’t allow one, so
this is how you deal with anyone that took my advice on the level-draining ghost strike.

Guardian – targets take a penalty if within 10’ of the bearer of this aegis and trying to
attack someone else. No save, but the penalty is small, especially for low casters. Best
use is probably by a full caster to put on a low caster.

Obstruction – DR/- that lasts until it has absorbed 10 x CL damage. Strong against
archers and enemies with many natural attacks, less so against casters and two-handed
melee. Still, that can add up to quite a bit of damage you didn’t take.

Painful Aegis – attackers take CL/2 non-lethal. It's not a lot of damage and several
significant creature types are immune to nonlethal. Stronger if you know you are facing
natural attackers.

Protected Health – non-scaling bonus against poison and disease. It’s a fair bonus if you
know you’ll need it, but you should not be neglecting your fortitude saves anyway. It’s
cheap enough to toss up in the morning I suppose.

Resistance – guess what won’t stack with the common and affordable cloak of
resistance! Something else to burn for heals or rerolls I guess?

Slippery – small scaling bonus to escape restraints and grapples. Meh.

Ward Talents:
Repel (Alignment) – creatures of a given alignment can’t cross this ward, but if they
make the save they are immune 24 hrs. You know what? No creatures can cross your
barrier without taking it down, no save allowed. This doesn’t cost a spell point and can’t
be damaged, so it has its uses, especially if you mostly face one alignment.

Ward & Aegis Talents:

Energy Resistance – grant scaling energy resistance as an aegis or suppress energy as
a ward. You have to select the energy type, but many monsters advertise what they use
and many spheres casters like a theme, so this is nice to have.
 Peacebound – the ward option is dependent on no targets making their save, making it
hard to use on groups. Still has uses if you spellcraft it with your barrier ward and use
distant protect to lock a small number of enemies in a bubble they cannot take the
actions to break, if attacking your ward counts as violent action. Aegis works like
sanctuary, which is excellent for any support/buffer/healer. Leave this up all day and your
AC becomes much less of an issue.

Spell Ward – spell resistance as an aegis, which causes issues given the nature of spell
resistance. The ward is better, since you can suppress an area (use distant protection),
though it’s not an absolute shut-down it does work on items and summons.

Other Talents:
Community – you can redirect damage between creatures under your aegis. Very useful
with the proper setup and party composition.

Distant Protection – highly rated for the specialist, since the ability to drop your ward
over an alchemist about to lob a bomb or the spell ward over a caster to disrupt casting
is excellent.

Healing Aegis – modifier + CL HP for dispelling any number of aegis on a target as an

immediate. Emergency healing only, since you will likely be stripping them of significant
defenses, but it beats death.

Greater Barrier – your barrier ward can be shaped into a plane and can be boosted up to
10 HP/CL, which makes it significantly more durable. Shouldn’t go down to a single
attack with this.

Luck – dismiss an aegis for a reroll. Rerolls are very powerful and the action cost is low
enough to make this a strong choice.

Status – you know the direction, distance, and status of any creature under your aegis.
Since that will likely be your entire party at any given moment, this is certainly helpful.
Really only worth taking if you are buffing the party regularly with aegis anyhow; self-
buffers won’t benefit, obviously.

Advanced Talents:
Adaptation – spend 2 SP to get a combinations of breathless and energy resistance,
with all the elements covered. Nice as an all-purpose, all-day defense. CL 10.

Anti-Magic Aura – spell wards don’t require MSB checks if you spend an extra spell
point. Totally worth it if you are trying to shut down a caster.

Unplottable – totally undetectable to magic. Fairly necessary at high-level play to protect

the party from scrying and such. Even better if you use invisibility, since the hard counter
to it won’t work on you.

Telekinesis
Lifting objects, enemies, and fighting with floating weapons are the hallmarks of this sphere.
Basic telekinesis lets you lift objects of increasing size, while sustained force lets them keep
moving without concentration, hostile lift lets you lift (and drop) enemies (provided they aren’t
too large), bludgeon lets you…bludgeon things, and finally catch allows you to ready an action
to stop a projectile.

Note: “Wood and people would count as a dense material for the telekinesis sphere (which is
more based on size than density), but not as a dense material for the falling damage listed
under the Creation sphere (which is more based on density than size). We referenced rules
from all over Pathfinder when making our own, and sometimes the detailed inconsistencies
transferred over, I apologize.”

And “If you are maintaining the hostile lift effect and the flying creature does not make their Will
save, they cannot move.”

Dive – thaumaturge builds focused on dancing weapons and lifting enemies and
symbiat-telekinetic warriors.
Dabble – casters that want to use a field of weapons to threaten space and the ability to
juggle enemies with their minds
Dip – perfect flight speeds
Don’t – low casters, most abilities are heavily dependent on size, so you won’t have the
CL to do much. Even the maneuvers use CL, so you may as well move on.

Talents:

Acceleration (TK) – basically, you can charge with bludgeons, plus charge feats if you
have flair. The AC penalty isn’t going to hurt since attacking your bludgeons is unlikely
to be a winning tactic and the range boost could be the difference between just moving
and getting an attack off. If you have a build that can leverage charging feats this could
be very nice, but I can’t think of too many charging feats I would build around right off
(haven’t looked into it).

Call to Hand (TK) – grab an unattended item as a swift. It is a nice thing to be able to do,
but it won’t be essential for most builds. Not sure if the unattended limitation prevents
you from using it on things in your own possession.

Catch Shield (TK) – Standard and a SP to use catch 1/round without a readied action.
Duration is short, so you are only pulling this out when you know things are going to be
flying your way. Awesome for blocking alchemist bombs, less so against volley archers
(too many arrows). More efficient that quick catch if you can prepare, but the standard
action activation coupled with the short duration means this is not an early game pick.

Cohesion (TK) – objects (and only objects) you lift gain hardness and AC, plus they don’t
take damage from being used as a bludgeon or take penalties form the broken condition.
How often are your bludgeons attacked and how often is the bonus this grants going to
make enough of a difference? Weapons don’t take damage from being used as
bludgeons as it is, so this really comes down to the frequency you find enemies
attacking your weapons. I would rather attack the caster myself, given the difficulty of
concentration checks from damage.

Dampening Field (TK) – DR/piercing that scales with level is nice, though bites and
claws beat it by default so less useful against common monster natural attacks. Still, it is
solid DR. You are better off getting DR/- or DR/adamantine from Protection or Metal if
you can, but if you are already invested (and get higher CL) in TK then it’s a reasonable
option.

Dancing Weapon – lifted objects count as weapons under your control, allowing you to
threaten areas. Combine with divided mind and combat reflexes to make yourself as
approachable as a flaming porcupine. Flair will let you use weapon feats as well. This is
a better choice for maneuver builds than telekinetic maneuver for any maneuver that can
be performed with a weapon, since you won’t have the will save or -5 penalty (note that
at level 20 the -5 penalty is equal to the difference to your CMB between being full BAB
and medium BAB). You also add your casting mod to damage, making a casting-stat
focused melee build decent, though poor BAB classes will suffer as you advance, thus
the recommendation for the medium BAB classes with full CL in the sphere
(thaumaturge and symbiat – telekinetic warrior) or at least enough of the sphere to get
by (Electrokinetic Elementalist) or, perhaps best of all, full BAB and full CL in enough of
the sphere to get by (Soaring Blade Armorist) for specializing here.

Note: the best weapons to use dancing weapon on are probably bastard swords or
dwarven waraxes, since the are 1d10 1-handed weapons, allowing you to put them on a
higher die track when increasing size.

(CLARIFICATIONS ARE IN THE TK HANDBOOK “Telekinetics in Depth” Chapter,

which supersedes the Ask Me Anything thread answers below in any place they
conflict)

Since attacking with dancing weapons has raised a number of questions, here is Adam
Meyer’s more detailed explanation:

“Using telekinesis is a standard action, with bludgeoning being something you can do
with telekinesis after it has been activated. Easy Focus would apply (after the initial
standard action to lift the object).

Technically you cannot attack multiple times with the same weapon, but you can attack
with multiple weapons if you have divided mind. The number of attacks you can make is
the same as you could make when making a full-attack.

If you have Easy Focus and all the prerequisite Telekinesis talents you've mentioned,
you could attack telekinetically as a move action and get a 'full-attack' with your
bludgeons and also cast a spell or make an attack as a standard action, which would in
essence give you +1 attack per round.

You cannot use Sustained Force to Bludgeon a target, but you could use it to hold an
object in the air, ready and waiting for you to take control of it as a standard action to
bludgeon people. When doing so, the weapon would still grant flanking bonuses,
provided you have Dancing Weapon.

You can flank with your own floating weapon, yeah, and the weapon can do sneak
attack damage if it is within 30 ft. and flanking a target either with you or another ally.
Each bludgeon under your control would gain this benefit, but remember the limit on
your number of attacks.
When using multiple bludgeons as a single bludgeon to make an attack, just combine
their size together; I'll probably have to include a chart for how to calculate this for
something like a bunch of daggers, but perhaps an easier way to do it is to say, when
combining weapons into a single attack like this, use the biggest weapon to make the
attack and add +1 damage for each object added to it for the purposes of this combined
bludgeon.

If you have two-weapon fighting, you can apply it to your attacks with a bludgeon; you
gain +1 bludgeon attack that round, but it and your highest BAB attack suffer the penalty
for two-weapon fighting as usual. All items as considered 'light' for this purpose when
sustained via telekinesis.”

And “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.”

Deflect (TK) – simply deflect projectiles instead of catching them when using catch.
What makes this great is that there is no save, substantially increasing the defensive
value of catch and the talents associated with it. If you are using catch, then you want
this.

Divided Mind – you can lift multiple targets, though you are capped by total size, making
lifting multiple enemies something that has to wait awhile. Early on this can be useful for
lifting multiple light melee weapons to fish for AoOs.

Finesse – allows subtle manipulations. Not sure when you need to perform craft checks
at range, but now you can. You do get to sub your casting ability modifier for the skills
attribute, so there could be some tricks there. Combining with flair lets you play rogue
from a safe distance, which obviously beats the alternative, though long-handled tools
cover some of those situations anyhow and no spheres classes natively get the ability to
disable magic traps other than charlatanism tradition hedgewitches, though you can get
it from some paizo-class archetypes (seeker oracles and sorcerers, for example).

Flair – mostly enhances other talents and applies feats. Improved trip will be great with
dancing weapons, for example, while precise shot is all but required for any ranged
combat.

Flight – perfect fly speed, provided you can lift the target. Flight is a necessary effect,
you have to get it from somewhere and perfect flight for minutes/level is pretty darn
good.

Floating Shield (TK) – lift a shield and grant its AC to anything in its square, plus you can
use sustained force and orbit to make keeping them covered easier. Humorously, I think
that since the shield is in its own square that it grants its shield bonus to itself, helping to
foil sunder attempts. Probably wouldn’t let that work as a GM though. It doesn’t specify if
it counts as wielding a shield for those classes that would suffer from doing so, but I
presume not as they are not really wielding it (or even touching it). As such, proficiency
penalties don’t matter either, so grab a tower shield and keep it in orbit for a nice AC
boost.
Forceful Telekinesis (TK) – boost an object’s effective size when used as a bludgeon and
got +2 to CMB/CMD when using telekinesis. If you are using TK for more than flight you
will need this. Grab the biggest greatsword you can lift and a fistful of d6.

Friction Field (TK) – big ball of difficult terrain. It’s obvious by now that I like battlefield
control. The damage rider here is just a bonus.

Gravity Shift (TK) – could be handy if tracking encumbrance, but probably mainly useful
for giving a no-save -2 attack penalty in an area. Careful targeted and ranged or reach
weapons will help avoid hitting your allies with this penalty. Halving weapon ranges could
be useful against pistol/thrown builds, while doubling helpful for the same, though
making use of the doubling requires some coordination.

Gravity Ward (TK) – keep enemies from getting too close, very nice since many melee
that you don’t want adjacent won’t have great will saves. Even better, you can put it
anywhere in your range, so block narrow tunnels and halls. Doesn’t appear to stop
attacks with sufficient reach or ranged weapons in any way though, so won’t save you in
an open area against larger foes.

Gravity Well (TK) – pull enemies to a central point. Not great early on due to your size
limits, but later it can really hose mooks.

Greater Speed – you can move lifted things faster. Necessary for a specialist or dippers
grabbing flight. Also lets you move lifted enemies faster, so combine with increased
range for longer drops.

Homing (TK) – keep a bludgeon chasing an enemy after you miss, works with divided
mind. I love the image, but if you are a focused bludgeon-wielder you are probably just
as well off concentrating to attack against next round. That isn’t to say it isn’t useful; you
can leave the homing bludgeons to do their work while you lift others to target more
enemies, or the same enemy with more attacks, it just may get expensive to keep a
swarm going. Neat trick to have in a big fight though.

Idle Concentration (TK) – concentrate on TK as a swift, but you can’t move them, attack,
use hostile lift, etc. Allows you to keep stuff in the air (extra weapons, yourself) while you
are doing other things without paying for sustained force. Just being able to keep
yourself in the air when you are being stingy with SP could make it worthwhile I suppose.

Increased Range – exactly what you expect.

Kinetic Field (TK) – wall of ‘will save or no projectiles’. Shuts archers and gunners down
pretty hard, not effective on most casters. Doesn’t stop objects other than projectiles, so
you can move your dancing weapons through it just fine. At higher levels you can block
cannon balls all day long, which is amusing.

Kinetic Sense (TK) – you can grab things you can’t see, provided you target the right
space and can spend an SP for 30’ blindsense. Invisible enemies are advised to stay
more than 30’ plus one move action away from you now. Dealing with invisibility is a
requirement; if you are a TK user this is a good way to do it, though I wouldn’t grab it
until a few levels in due to the odds of significant invisible enemies in the earliest stages
of the game.
Mobile Bludgeon (TK) – full attack with a single bludgeon. You know how you had to
carry a sack full of weapons and either pay a pile of money or suffer not having them
decently enchanted? Yeah, now you can grab the biggest greatsword you can find,
enchant it as well as you can afford, and go to town. Even better for flying blades that
can upgrade their weapon size and enchantments for free as they level. You could use
enhancement instead, but as noted under the enhancing telekinesis feat, why not do
both?

Momentum Line (TK) – makes a line of doubled movement. It certainly has tactical
applications, but using it may require more set-up and coordination than the benefit
warrants.

Orbit (TK) – keep an item or items floating around you, ready for quick use. Works great
with floating shield and dancing weapon. Also useful for juggling wands, staves, and
other items. The size limit is tight, but with powerful telekinesis you should be fine. You
are taking powerful telekinesis, right? Keep in mind that certain item types can be made
in almost any shape, so your ‘staff’ doesn’t have to be a six-foot hunk of wood; make
smaller items when possible for ease of orbiting them.

Parry (TK) – you can grab use catch to deflect melee attacks and even disarm them if
you have Steal. Handy defense with quick catch.

Powerful Telekinesis – increase the size of object you can lift by a category. Necessary
for using the sphere unless you are just grabbing flight for yourself at mid to high levels
or only using telekinetic maneuvers.

Quick Catch – spend a SP to make catches or pushes (per the talent) as an immediate
action. Solves the painful action economy issues of those two abilities. Pushing falling
enemies into the ground is funny and this makes it much easier to pull off.

Return (TK) – fling caught projectiles back at your attacker. Nice if you are using catch,
but doesn’t work with catch shield.

Steal – steal or disarm, but using your CL in place of BAB and eating a -5 penalty while
allowing a will save. Full casters can get significant CL boosts to compensate for the
penalty, but I question the worth of these two maneuvers, especially with a will save
attached.

Telekinetic Crush (TK) – slowly damage lifted creatures or make a strength check
(replaced by casting stat with scaling bonus) to break an object. Cool and has various
applications, but not really an offensive tool due to the damage scaling.

Telekinetic Maneuver – like steal, but with the rest of the combat maneuvers as options.
Will saves keep it from being great, but there are fun things to be done with dirty tricks at
higher levels and divided mind lets you spread the joy. Pump your CL as much as
possible to keep up with CMD scaling. The bred for war trait and combat maneuver feats
will be needed if you want to specialize here, probably best to pick one or two
maneuvers. Medium BAB classes have an advantage in getting the feats sooner, though
full CL is vital, meaning thaumaturge and symbiat – telekinetic warrior are your best bets.
Best build would probably be symbiat – telekinetic warrior 1 for the bonus sphere and Int
 to AC, then thaumaturge – devourer, using lifted rapiers to trigger crits for free forbidden
lore usage to mass trip/bulrush/etc. targets.

Telekinetic Push – boost range, weapon size, speed, or falling damage or slow a target
to negate fall damage. Gets you an extra size natively, so still useful if you don’t get full
CL, but the action cost is high for relatively minor bonuses unless combining with quick
catch, which carries a SP cost.

Telekinetic Tools (TK)– make tools, including instruments if you have flair, and tie up
enemies with a CMB check. It’s not amazing, but you need it to be a Green Lantern.

Tether (TK) – tie two objects or creatures together. Great for preventing escape and
playing pranks. Reflex save, not will, giving you a touch of diversity you could use as is a
TK specialist. This is an ability that asks you to use your imagination, both in combat and
for utility. Also useful for level where your size limits prevent you from lifting enemies.

Weaponize (TK)– bludgeon without a bludgeon. Lack of enchantments will keep this
from being a primary method of attack, but it’s a nice back-up to grab when you can
afford it.

Whirlwind Assembly (TK) – quickly switch around weapons, armor, and other items.
Again, it is a wonderfully visual ability. Not sure how useful it is in most campaigns where
you effectively never take your armor off, but could be useful when being more subtle. As
you get more weapons and staves, moving them around as a swift will be handy, though
just grabbing orbit will alleviate that somewhat.

Unofficial extra talent from discussion thread:

Telekinetic Smash REPLACED BY TELEKINETIC CRUSH IN THE TK HANDBOOK

When using your telekinesis on a target, you may spend a spell point to attempt to rip it
apart telekinetically. This can be used to rip apart a section of a larger object, such as
breaking down a door or punching a hole through a wall. Make a Strength check to
break the object, but rather than Strength, you gain a bonus to the roll equal to your
caster level. If using this ability on a creature you are controlling telekinetically (for
example, an enemy already under the effects of a hostile lift), you instead deal 1d6
damage per caster level to the target (Fortitude half).

Telekinetic smash may be used as part of the action required to create or maintain a
telekinetic effect on a target.

Decent damage, especially if lifting multiple targets and bludgeoning them into each
other at the same time (easy focus helps here), plus some utility in making decent
strength checks.

Advanced Talents:
Affix (TK) – pin a lifted object in place permanently. Two saves, but hard to break once
it’s in place. Pin your enemies to the sky (not recommended against archers). Basically
save three times or be neutralized. 2SP, CL 10.
 Astral Affixation (TK) – add a spell point to affix to give them a reflex save or be
paralyzed and make them even harder to get free. Paralyzed is as good as dead;
paralyzed and floating in the air until they starve is just mean. CL 15

Choking Grasp (TK) – fort saves or begin suffocating. Three failed saves are death, even
one drops you to 0 HP. Very nasty, Lord Vader. CL10

Disperse Force (TK) – immediate action and 2 SP to negate damage from one attack.
Need I explain further? CL 10

Effortless Telekinesis – sustained force lasts for hours/level. Great for all-day flight,
limited applicability for other applications, unless you really don’t like carrying your pack.
CL 10.

Focused Might (TK) – boost you lift size another category, increasing concentration time,
or two categories but be limited to the basic lift ability. Your size categories can never
increase fast enough. Take it! CL 5.

Gravity Manipulation (TK) – boost gravity shift to give no or objective gravity. Much more
entertaining.

Linear Acceleration (TK) – bludgeon railgun! Does some damage and has an AOE save
or daze, which is always nice to inflict. Too bad you have already spent a spell point on
hostile lift to get an enemy in the air. CL10

Puppet (TK) – play the “Stop hitting yourself!” game. One extra spell point to control an
enemy’s physical actions. Works great for replicating various badguys from fiction. Not
entirely clear on the action economy of it though, do you get a full round from them as
long as you concentrate? CL 10.

Time
Time, what is time? A really fun sphere. Basic abilities let you haste or slow target, range touch.
Hard to use in the earliest levels due to duration, but granting an ally an extra attack never goes
out of style.

Dive – full caster looking to buff, debuff, and generally control actions on the battlefield.
Dabble – high or mid casters that want to strengthen their support abilities.
Dip – Martials that want to grab haste for themselves.
Don’t – Martials getting bonus attacks, which don’t stack, from another source.

Time Talents:
After Image – scaling blur effect, with decent duration if maintained with a spell point.
Miss chances are good.

Age – add or remove physical ability scores, no change to mental scores. No instant
death from extreme age, high or low. Minute/level duration prevents it from letting you
cheese your starting stats with aging. Works well enough as a debuff, though fort
negates makes it less useful against the targets most reliant on physical ability scores.
-6 con is good against anyone though.
 Eject – kick a target out of time for rnds/level. Works for saving a severely debilitated ally
for later healing or isolating a tough baddie while you clean up the mooks, but if you can
get them to fail a will save steal time may be a better choice.

Fast Time – run effects out faster. Better than just dispelling since there is no MSB
check, but worse since the result isn’t instant. Burst shape is nice too. Neither help you if
the status effect you need to run out is preventing you from casting.

Repetition – spell point to take 20 on Str & Dex checks, swift activation if self only. Really
depends on how much you rely on skills.

Retry – ally blow a key save or attack? Try the whole thing over! Expensive, but
amazingly useful.

Shift Time – steal an action from your next round. Useful for laying out BFC and debuffs
at the start of a fight so your party can clean up afterwards.

Steal Time – daze a target and get an extra standard action! Extra actions are capped,
but getting extra actions is amazing. Chaining it relies on enemies failing saves and
burning SP quickly, but still very nice.

Time Freeze – useful for dodging attacks or getting allies into position around a frozen
enemy. Timing is tricky when used on the defensive though, since interrupts will require
readied actions. Area is relatively small as well.

Talents:
Group Time – alter time on multiple targets. Obviously necessary for serious use.

Improved Haste – haste now gets all the benefits of the haste spell, not just the extra
attack.

Improved Slow – slow reduces move speed and penalizes attack, AC, and Ref saves.
May as well if you are slowing them anyhow.

Ranged Time – short term buffs and debuffs are hard to use at touch range. Take this at
least once, probably twice.

Advanced Talents:
Temporal Stasis – indefinitely prevent any change to a target. I’m sure there are
shenanigans to be had, but it seems rather limited to me. CL 15.

War
War, what is it good for? Mass buffing and a fair number of immediate action abilities. Base
ability is totem of war, giving a slowly scaling damage boost. Talents mostly fall into totems,
which give alternative area of effect buffs and debuffs with impressive range and rally abilities,
immediate actions which work inside your totem’s area. Note that if all you want is the rally
abilities, you can ditch totems with a drawback that also frees you from having to be in a totem’s
area to use the rally. Most totems aren’t terribly impressive, so this isn’t much of a loss for most
builds. Due to the ability to buff large groups, the scaling on most totems is unimpressive, but
they have potential if you can spellcraft stronger effects onto them.
 Dive – support casters in large, heavily martial groups or in campaigns that frequently
feature large scale engagements.
Dabble – mid and high support casters looking to prep the field prior to or early in the
combat.
Dip – Anyone can benefit from a rally or two, grab the drawback to save the action of
setting up a totem.
Don’t – Martials getting bonus attacks, which don’t stack, from another source.

Mandate Talents:
Adroitness (Bat) – when one member is missed with an attack, the other paired member
gains a +4 morale bonus to damage against that enemy.
Aptitude (Bat) – when one member succeeds a skill check, the other paired member
gains a +4 morale bonus to the same skill check.
Awareness (Bat) – when one member damages an enemy, the other other paired
member may ignore any miss chance that enemy possesses.
Guile (Bat) - when one member successfully uses a combat maneuver, the other paired
member gains total concealment against the enemy.

Mobility (Bat) - when one member moves adjacent to a creature, the other paired
member may as an immediate action, move up to their movement speed as-long as they
end adjacent to the same creature.

Perseverance (Bat) - when one member regains hit points, the other paired member
gains an equal number of temporary hit points (upto their maximum hit points).

Resolve (Bat) - when one member hits an enemy with an attack, the other paired
member gains a +4 morale bonus to AC, CMD, and Saves against the abilities of the
enemy.

Ruthlessness (Bat) - when one member misses an enemy with an attack, the other
paired member may use a combat maneuver as an immediate action.

Tenacity (Bat) - when one member succeeds a saving throw, the other paired member
gains a +4 morale bonus to saves.

Vindictiveness (Bat) - when one member hits an enemy with an attack, the other paired
member gains a +2 bonus to attack and CMB against that enemy.

Momentum Talents:
Aggressive Momentum (Bat) – spend 3 momentum to gain additional attack that stacks
with haste.
Damaging Momentum (Bat) - When an ally hits with an attack, the ally may spend 2
points of momentum to add your CAM to their damage.

Demoralizing Momentum (Bat) - Immediate action to demoralize an enemy with a

successful attack.
 Favorable Momentum (Bat) - Ally may spend 2 points of momentum to add +1d6 to a
skill or ability check.

Marauding Momentum (Bat) - Allies may spend up to 4 points of momentum each round
to moving 5ft per point spent. Movement used this way does not provoke attacks of
opportunity.

Resilient Momentum (Bat) - Allies may spend a single point of momentum to reduce any
hit point damage they take by your CAM.

Tactical Momentum (Bat) - Allies may spend a single point of momentum to gain an
insight bonus to a single combat maneuver equal to you CAM, in addition, they do not
provoke attacks of opportunity with using that maneuver.

Threatening Momentum (Bat) - Allies who roll a natural 16+ on an attack roll may
consider their attack a critical hit for the purpose of triggering critical feats (no
confirmation roll necessary).

Rally Talents:
Absorb – transfers damage between allies range, costs a SP. Unlike the similar effect in
protection, this doesn’t require set-up, though protection users will likely have an aegis
on everyone in the party anyhow.

Counterattack (Bat) - Whenever an enemy misses an ally, you can rally the ally granting
a free attack. If the ally’s attack hits, they gain a +4 dodge bonus to AC and are no
longer flat-footed.

Empower (Bat) - Grant an ally a +4 morale bonus to attack rolls, AC, saving throws,
concentration checks, spell penetration checks, CMB and CMD for 1 round.

Engage (Bat) - Ally may do one of many move actions from a list, or another simple non-
offensive action deemed appropriate from the GM.

Finish (Bat) - Ally may reroll an attack roll (even a confirmation roll for critical hits), must
use second roll even if worse.

Intercept (Bat) - Switch places with an adjacent ally. If done in response to an attack,
then the swapping ally is attacked in its place.

Position – immediate action to move allies a small distance without AoOs. It's not much,
but can be just enough to set up the fighter for a full attack or get the rogue flanking.

Retribution – it’s not much damage, but there is no save and it's an immediate action,
plus you can choose the element on the fly, making this pretty handy when you have
enough spell points to burn on it.

Revitalize – reroll a failed save. Life saver.

Safety – turn a crit into a regular hit. Another life-saver.

 Strike (Bat) - Grant allies an immediate action combat maneuver, for which they provoke
no attacks of opportunity.

Totem Talents:
Absolute Totem (Bat) – increases hardness of allies equipment, gives allies bonus to
sunder attempts, allies may make sunder attempts as immediate actions.

Blood Totem – reduce damage taken by 1 and inflict one in return, with slow scaling. Too
little to matter after level 1 or 2.

Divisive Totem (Bat) - Enemies must make a Will save or else treat their allies as
enemies.

Giving Totem (Bat) - Creatures within the totem who are healed or damaged by a
positive energy ability have the effect increased by your caster level.

Gyroscopic Totem (Bat) - Dramatically hinders the movement of enemies. Unfortunately,

it does not affect creatures with movement modes beyond basic land, thus becoming
exceedingly “worthless” beyond 5th level when flight, burrow, climb, etc become more
common.

Hallowed Totem – reduce saves against positive energy… Maybe in an undead heavy
campaign? No, probably not worth it even then.

Haunting Totem (Bat) - Enemies must make a will save or be considered flanked while
within the totem’s area.

Invigorating Totem – temporary HP, 1/level up to CL. Too bad totems only last for CL
rnds. It’s basically fast healing 1 for a large area. While in combat. Yeah.

Quickening Totem (Bat) - Allies within the totem gain a scaling dodge bonus vs Attacks
of Opportunity.

Rebellious Totem (Bat) - Make a Magic Skill Check to free creatures inside the totem
from mental domination and/or control.

Scourging Totem – CL/2 damage to enemies in the totem’s area. Not much damage, but
it could wear down mooks in a big fight.

Tactical Totem (Bat) - Grant all allies within your totem a teamwork feat you possess,
spend an additional spell point to grant teamwork feats which you do not possess.

Taking Totem (Bat) - Same as Giving Totem but with negative energy instead of positive
energy.

Totem of Allegiance – small bonus to saves and attack, but only for those that match
your alignment. At least the bonus is untyped. Scaling is terrible.

Totem of Courage – small bonus to attack and saves against fear. Morale, so stacks with
totem of allegiance. Scaling still terrible.
Totem of Deep Thought (Bat) - Grant a competence bonus to concentration; spend an
additional spell point to affect spell penetration as well.

Totem of Doom – AoE shaken isn’t bad, taking it multiple times to escalate the effect
would be great, but it doesn’t stack with itself, so this is limited to parties that can lay
down decent base fear effects. Requires some coordination and useless against
mindless enemies, but beats your other choices.

Totem of Enemies – opposite of totem of allegiance. Penalties are still small with terrible
scaling, but at least there is no save. You are more likely to face enemies that all share
an alignment then to have the party all share an alignment.

Totem of Expulsion (Bat) - Severely hamper non-native outsiders (including allies),

hurting their spell resistance, energy resistance, and damage reduction (even affecting
energy immunity).

Totem of Foresight (Bat) - Allies within the totem roll d20’s against two targets and then
choose which of the two targets they will attack.

Totem of Insanity (Bat) - Enemies within the totem must make a Will save or have a 50%
chance to attack their nearest ally.

Totem of Iron – +1 NA, though it doesn’t have a clause allowing it to stack with other
sources. Amulet of natural armor +1 is 2,000 GP. Scaling is terrible (heard that one
before?).

Totem of Liberation – small bonus against charms, compulsions, and mind-sphere

abilities (redundant, but it doesn’t hurt to mention). Scaling is somewhat better, but there
are a number of sources for boosts against these types of effects and I would rather just
boost will saves generally anyhow.

Totem of Mobility – make bonus 5’ steps as swift actions. Nice if you don’t need your
swift for anything else or really need to get into position, but I’d rather have the position
rally and just use that the few times you’ll need it.

Totem of Screaming Skin (Bat) - Allies who miss an enemy by a roll 5 or less (but not a
natural 1), cause a glancing blow dealing damage equal to your CAM to the enemy.

Totem of Shared Sight (Bat) - If one ally is not surprised, the entire party is not surprised;
If one ally makes their save to disbelieve an illusion, the entire party disbelieves the
illusion.

Totem of Speed – scaling speed bonus. You could spam it for overland travel and it has
some use in combat. At least it scales faster than most totems.

Totem of Stability – bonus to CMD. Decent if your GM likes maneuvers, useless

otherwise.

Totem of Stumbling – enemies get a penalty to CMD. This is hard to find elsewhere, so a
great pick-up in groups that utilize maneuvers.
 Totem of Tactical Coordination (Bat) - Allies do not take hit point damage from spells,
attacks, or abilities from other allies within the totem, and may choose to auto-succeed
any saves of an ally’s abilities.

Totem of Tactical Prowess – boost flanking, high ground bonuses, etc. Combine with
mobility and position to maximize flanking bonuses. Don’t see high-ground bonuses
come up that often, but if you have a mounted party it helps.

Totem of the Dragon Slayer (Bat) - scaling bonus to reflex saves vs area effects; spend
an additional spell point to effectively grant allies within the totem the evasion ability.

Totem of the Heroic Heart (Bat) - Grant a bonus to physical ability checks.

Totem of the War Dance (Bat) - Allies may spend their move actions to grant another ally
another movement.

Totem of Whispers (Bat) - A debuff totem granting a penalty to perception and

concentration checks, while also hampering those who use verbal components for spells
or abilities.

Unhallowed Totem – might be slightly better than hallowed totem due to the general
offensive potential of negative energy channeling. If you having a focused channeling
build (soul weaver – blessing/blight master) it should be worthwhile. Otherwise not.

Other Talents:
Bleeding Battlefield (Bat) - Enemies within your totems cannot heal naturally, halves fast
healing and regeneration, but otherwise doesn’t hinder magical healing.

Blood Bond (Bat) - mandates you create last longer without concentration (or even
longer if you yourself are a member of the mandate).

Call to Arms (Bat) - You may create mandates or totems as a move action, if taken a
second time, may create them as a swift action.

Close Cooperation (Bat) - Allies you share mandates with are considered within touch
range for the purpose of sphere and supernatural abilities.

Combat Inertia (Bat) - Whenever you spend a spell point on a War sphere ability, regain
1 momentum.

Declaration of War (Bat) - Choose a creature type when creating a totem, creatures of
that type take a -2 penalty to saves vs your totem.

Eternal Vigilance (Bat) - You may rally any ally within 30 ft, even if you lack a totem; and
you may always rally yourself.

Greater Rally - An extra spell point and Revitalize just saved the whole party. Position
can now get the squishy caster out of trouble, the fighter in full-attack range AND the
rogue in flanking position with one immediate action. Loses out to Group Teleport in
distance, but hard to beat immediate actions.
 Hammer and Anvil (Bat) - Whenever you enter a mandate with another creature, you
may grant the other paired member a teamwork feat you possess. The ally must meet
the feat’s prerequisites.

Lingering Resentment (Bat) - Mandates and Totems last two additional rounds after you
stop concentrating.

Mental Assault (Bat) - Increase the DC of all mind affecting abilities used within totems
you create by +2.

Ranged Totem – you can set your totems in increasing ranges. Be great if their area
wasn’t already so large and most totems weren’t awful.

Redeployment (Bat) - you may move your totem’s as a swift action.

Resounding Rally (Bat) - Whenever you rally a target, you may also rally yourself for
free.

Resourcefulness (Bat) - Increase your momentum pool by the number of momentum

talents you possess.

Steadfast Totem (Bat) - Totems last 1 minute per CL instead of 1 round per CL when you
spend a spell point.

Totemic Aura (Bat) - You may place totems on creatures and have the totem effect follow
them around.

Totemic Presence (Bat) - A weaker version of Totemic Aura, but where you can only
place totem auras on yourself, but may also do so as a move action.

Advanced Talents:
Carry the Flag (Bat) – place a totem on a ship or vessel; the totem will cover the entire
area of the ship and move along with it.

Commander – an okay bonus if using the mass combat rules, utterly useless otherwise.

Monument (Bat) – place a totem on a statue or other stationary architecture; create a

totem that lasts for 1 day per CL with a range of 1 mile per CL.

Warp
What a difference a single letter makes. Warp, the sphere of tactical teleportation and slap-stick
cartoon pockets. Basic ability is teleport, teleporting a touched creature inside of close range.
Talents are broken into Teleport and Bend Space, which lets you make pockets dimensions for
storage and such.

Dive – chess-master type full casters.

Dabble – any support type. Any caster that wants to play ferry-man with the long range
teleportation from the advanced talents.
Dip – Martials looking for mobility grabbing quick and emergency teleport.
Don’t – I have a hard time imagining NOT wanting short-range teleportation, much less
long range.
Teleport Talents:
Distant Teleport – when you spend SP to boost your range, it goes to long instead of
medium. Get out of dodge fast that way.

Emergency Teleport – teleport as an immediate action. Doesn’t flat out avoid attacks en
route, but does give a bonus against them. Try using it to warp behind cover before you
are targeted to get around this limitation.

Group Teleport – exactly what you expect. Combine with ranged teleport to shuffle the
board whenever you need to. You control your party’s positions.

Quick Teleport – SP to teleport as a move action. Gets you around while saving your
standard for other things without the range limits of emergency teleport, so a worthwhile
option. Note that anyone with two levels of magus may be better off just using spell
combat to tele-pounce for free.

Ranged Teleport – no need to touch targets. You need this if you are doing more than
just moving yourself around.

Splinter – mediocre damage when using hostile teleport. If you are using hostile teleport,
it’s free damage, but not really a good offensive mode on its own.

Swap Placement – you can have creatures swap places when teleporting. Clever use of
this can stretch your headcount when your CL is too low to hit everyone you want to with
group teleport. It’s also free.

Teleport Object – teleport objects independent of people. Not sure why this isn’t in the
base ability, honestly. Teleporting ranged attacks is a neat trick, but the readied action
and will save sink it. Useful otherwise, just a bit disappointing that the coolest thing you
can do isn’t actually that helpful. If you GM is lenient regarding what counts as a discrete
object it gets stronger since you can start warping locks off doors and such. Splinter lets
you ignore hardness as well, but the cost would add up.

Teleport Trap – handy if you know where the enemy is coming from and can prepare the
field.

Unseeing Teleport – spend SP to ignore the line of sight requirement. Very needed.

Unwilling Teleport – teleport enemies, but they get a will save and you are limited to solid
surfaces in open areas. Dangerous or harmful locations give a hefty bonus to the save.
Still useful for controlling the battlefield.

Space Talents:
Extra Dimensional Space – a pocket you can hang out in or spend SP to make a
temporary pit trap. Neat, but it seems to be of limited use unless you are allowed to open
the 10’ version of the opening sideways through a locked door or something equally
cheesy. It would be higher if the pit version was either meaner or free.
 Extra Dimensional Storage – a scaling bag of holding. Inferior to the classic handy
haversack due to action and spell point cost for quick access, but still useful. Gets better
if you get thrown in jail or are smuggling.

Plane Manipulator – teleportation denial is useful against other warp users at any level,
while preventing planar travel will help keep higher level enemies from escaping easily
or summoning backup. Banishment is a good ability to have as well, making this a solid
package and an excellent counter to anyone abusing the conjuration sphere.

Teleport Beacon – not sure why this has the [space] tag, but it does. Mark a spot to go
back to up to hrs/lvl later at any distance or an item to bring to you with the same
duration. Taken multiple times to allow multiple beacons. At the very least, it’s a great
panic button. Used creatively, you can sneak the party, or an army with the gate
advanced talent, into any place your rat or hummingbird familiar can sneak or into the
vault where your ‘confiscated’ weapon was taken. Also good for calling focus items back.
Warp the scout back to the party, thieves can use it to send loot to their lair, bounty
hunters can warp criminals into prison, it’s great.

Advanced Talents:
Create Demiplane – your own permanent demiplane. Do I need to explain why you want
this? Cl 15.

Dimensional Lock – limited area and duration keep it from top marks. CL 15.

Flawless Teleport – exactly what it says. If you are allowed to take it, then you need it.
CL 15.

Planeshift – the planes are your playground. May not be available in some campaigns
and fundamentally changes the nature of the setting. CL10.

Portal – sometimes group teleport isn’t enough to get the job done. You can move a lot
of stuff with readied actions and a portal, like sneaking small armies to your teleportation
beacon. If you can cover your needs with group teleport it isn’t needed though.

True Teleport – long range travel, the bane of many GMs that don’t properly account for
it in their campaign set-up. If you can get it, you have to have it.

Weather
Do you like mass destruction? I like mass destruction. Weather gives you the elemental power
to utterly wreck everything in a very wide area. The only downside is set-up time. The base
ability scales slowly, but even with no further investment you can make heavy fog at CL 1, given
a few rounds warm up. Hot and cold don’t do much on their own at low severities, but you can
always stay comfortable. Weather really starts to come into its own once you can hit severity 4
on wind and rain for some impressive lightning storms. Overall you get some damage and a
decent amount of control, with fog, snow, wind, etc to hinder your foes. Note that in campaigns
that primarily take place indoors and in cramped quarters, weather should be avoided since you
will be starting from severity 1 every time you open a door. The various conditions are nicely
summarized so you don’t have to search the SRD every time you use them. Despite its limits,
thinking about what you can do with this sphere always makes me smile. It’s really one of my
favorites.
Note: “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.”

Dive – due to ramp-time, it is good to have options outside of weather, so a singular

focus is inadvisable for a PC. Makes good villains though, especially with climate.
Dabble – want to play druid?
Dip – sneaks looking for a fog cloud or nature users looking to get thing wet to save on
create water costs.
Don’t – low casters have little use here.

Talents:
Boiling Lord – turn your hot rain into an AoE fire damage effect. It isn’t a huge amount of
damage, 1d6/severity, and fire is often resisted, but it can cover a large area and you
can bring it on line at fairly low levels.

Cold Lord – boost your cold severity by 1, create a safe zone in the middle. Good if you
get to severity 5 or are combining with precipitation to make your enemies slog through
snow.

Focused Weather – change the center of your weather and reduce the area. Handy if
there are things you don’t want to destroy or if you want to block a particular area.

Greater Size – out to long range. Less suspicious than the medium sized storm of doom
on a sunny day. Since every new square your effect enters requires ramp-time, this help
keep your weather where you need it by getting it started before you get there.

Greater Weather – spend SP to affect additional categories. Since you won’t always
have the time to wait, this can really cut down on how long it takes to get your storm
going.

Heat Lord – boost your heat severity by 1, create a safe zone in the middle. Same as
cold lord.

Lengthened Weather – persist for hours instead of minutes with a spell point. Often
going to be overkill, unless you are trying to make a flood.

Rain Lord – boost your rain severity by 1, create a safe zone in the middle. Severity 4 in
wind and rain gets you a nice thunderstorm as early as level 1, which is great fun if you
grab storm lord twice for strong early-game blasting. Go read boiling lord, snow lord, etc.
Having a safe zone is good when the hail, boiling rain, etc start.

Severe Weather – spend an SP to boost your severity by 1. Good early on and lets you
get more powerful effects earlier, though once you get them from your CL it should be
retrained. This is the only way to get 7th level severity, provided you take the “Lord”
talents, as severity normally caps at 5.

Snow Lord – turn snow to hail, doing minor damage. Boiling does more damage, but
snow hinders movement, so it depends on your needs.
 Storm Lord – control the lightning strike for storms. You really need this twice to make
the strikes come every round to make it effective. Basically a free attack if you are
maintaining the weather. “Guiding the lightning would be a free action.”

Wind Lord – control the direction the wind blows with several options and lets you control
the direction of tornados if you can control that severity (note this ability when reading
climate below).

Advanced Talents:
Climate – 20 minute casting time, 2 MILE radius. You can really wreck stuff this way.

FEATS
Advanced Magical Training – a multiclassing feat, letting you get ½ CL for non-casting
class levels. Obviously the use of this feat is entirely build dependent. The more levels
you spend elsewhere, the more you need it.

Alloy Creation (Geo) – Saves a talent on expanded materials if you use both creation
and metal geomancing. Also doubles your effective recover ore size, which makes it very
nice for a dedicated metal geomancer. If you qualify for it, you probably ought to take it.
If not, you probably don’t care.

Alloy Enhancement (Geo) – Enhance an object in the same action as you make it with
recover ore. Efficient action-economy-wise, but seems mainly useful if making weapons
on the fly. Could combine it with Alloy Telekinesis for quickly buffing your dancing
weapons.

Alloy Telekinesis (Geo) – Main drawback here is that the Telekinetic Handbooks also has
ways to get around needing a weapon handy to bludgeon with. This works fine, but still
suffer the limits of recover ore regarding source, which could bite you when you need it
most (prison, for example).

Arcane Empowerment – this is for traditional casters dipping their toes in spheres. Spell
points for +2 DC isn’t bad.

Arcing Strike (Des) - Identical to improved precise shot, except it requires a bad talent
instead of a bad feat, is destructive blast specific... and costs a spell point to use.

Artificery – it’s the master craftsman feat plus. You aren’t limited to what crafting feats
you can apply it to and you get +2 to the skill. Needed as a prerequisite for dedicated
crafters. Note that your skill ranks will be higher than your CL for low and mid casters,
making it very helpful if you want to craft with them, while high-casters will only take it if
they need it for the improved version.

Artificery, Improved – you now longer need the base sphere to craft an item. Useful for a
dedicated crafter. Probably want to be intelligence based to boost spellcraft, though if
you choose a profession skill for artificery then wisdom based builds work just as well.
Crafting is going to be group, GM, and campaign dependent, so take it if it works.

Atmospheric Imbuement (Des) -

Auger of Combat (Div)– you can use Intelligence to make your attack rolls, but only if
you go last in the initiative count. Doesn’t help damage, so not anything for a tricky
melee concept here. Seems best for caster’s but casters really like going first as a rule.

Basic Magic Training – gives basic access to the system. Okay for grabbing a trick
(probably warp, let’s be honest) on a non-caster. Combine with advanced magic training
to make any class a low caster for the price of feats.

Blessing/Blight Mastery – spend an extra channel to apply a blessing or blight to a

creature you affected. Keeps you back from the frontlines if using blights and channel
energy offensively and saves action economy if using blessings in combat. Obviously
only for soul weavers.

Blessing/Blight Versatility – hefty prerequisites, but being able to use both is pretty cool.
You may want the archetype that does this for free instead of spending the feats though,
depends on how you plan on using bound nexus. Soul weavers only.

Cantrips – you get an array of minor magical abilities that mimic traditional cantrips. Note
that detect magic is not on the list. Adam Meyers has stated that it was omitted
deliberately, due to personal preference to not have at-will magic detection. Ask your
GM. If you are playing with traditional casters, they have it anyway but there is no reason
for you not to.

Channel Destruction(Des) -

Circle Casting – you can aid another to increase CL, with a large enough group getting
up to +5 CL max. Not that great in combat, but powerful for long duration out of combat
spells. It would be blue, but it depends on other people's builds unless you can get
leadership or another source of minions. Even then, it requires CL 10, so it isn’t
happening early.

Coastal Infusion (Geo) – Awesome bonus, limited applicability. If you are playing in
fantasy-Venice, take it. Other campaigns will find it too narrow.

Contingency – combine with the right sphere and this is a lifesaver in a very literal way.
Check out teleportation beacon, for example.

Counterspell – you can spend a spell point to dispel an ongoing effect or as a readied
action to counterspell. Dispel is a thing casters are expected to have, so this feat is good
if no one else in your group can cover it.

Counterspell, Improved – spend more spell points to hit more effects or an area. If you
have counterspell, you probably want this too.

Counterspell, Greater – you can hit artifacts now and dispel in a 40’ radius. Notable for
hitting magic items rather than only creatures in its area form. You can potentially take
out a large percentage of an enemy’s items this way, which can have a significant impact
at higher levels.
Counterspell Mastery – counterspell as an immediate action. Shutting down an enemy
caster’s big moment can make a tough encounter a cake-walk. If you are in the
counterspelling field, get it.

Counterweight (TK) – walk across surfaces that can’t support you. Nice enough before
you can fly, but you are likely taking it as a prerequisite for other feats.

Craft Rituals – rituals are a way to get traditional magic effects that are absent from the
spheres system. Useful if traditional magic is absent from your campaign, not worth it
otherwise.

Create Spell Book – if you use the spell crafting system heavily, this will be nice to have.
Depends on how broadly you are spread and how lenient your GM is with spellcrafting. A
spellbook is a great place to store all the spells you are not using in combat (long lasting
buffs, utility spells, etc.) since the extra time won’t matter; craft your casting mod in
combat spells, everything else goes in here.

Deadly Targeting (Des) -

Delay Magic – could be useful in the right situation, but requires planning and foresight.

Elicit Strike – are you making an unarmed eliciter? No, I didn’t think so.

Energy Snake (Des) -

Energy Specialization (Des) -

Enhancing Admixture (Des) -

Enhancing Telekinesis (TK)– you may enhance an item and lift it in one action, as well
as concentrate on both effects in one action. Action economy is king. Even if you have a
nice weapon already enchanted, there are probably enhancements worth adding (less
so for low-casters due to scaling on some of them).

Extra Arsenal Trick – armorists get a fair number and a given build will likely not want
them all, but could be useful for getting the ones you need quickly then retraining later
once you have more from your class.

Extra Bestial Trait – shifters only, of course, but helpful for grabbing extra, especially
around the level breaks where there will be several you want at once. You don’t get that
many from your levels and they are very helpful as they apply even when shifted.

Extra Electrokinetic Stunt (TK)– you will likely want these faster than you get them, so
this is a great way to grab the ones you need. You can always take regular bonus feats if
you run out, or retrain this later on.

Extra Emotion – unless you go for the id archetype, your eliciter won’t be able to fill out
very many emotions since by the time you get another slot you need it for the higher
level version of the one you have. Necessary if you want more emotions.
Extra Invocations – two more uses of invocations for the thaumaturge. Most
thaumaturges are going to be hard pressed to squeeze this in, but invocation uses are
usually in short supply, especially if you go pact mage to get more ways to burn them up.
Martial builds focused more on physical stats need it even more, but will be even less
likely to have spare feats in many cases.

Extra Magic Talent – The feat you take whenever you don’t have something you really
need. Every feat should be weighed against this one, since you can never have too
many talents.

Extra Mystic Combat – mageknights get a fair number of options and relatively few slots,
so this is nice to have.

Extra Nexus Power – keeps your soul weaver summoning in more encounters. Useful if
you find yourself running out.

Extra Psionics – given that the symbiat spends psionics by the round, it seems likely you
will run out at low levels. Might want to retrain later on. Too bad the early levels are when
you most need feats to get your build setup. May want lingering psionics instead.

Extra Secret – see a pattern? Hedgewitches have a plethora of options, so you should
be able to find something you like.

Extra Shadowstuff – for fey adepts. Shadow blast isn’t terribly efficient damage-wise, but
once you get create reality you will be able to use up quite a few shadow points. Of
course, you will be using spell points at the same time, so don’t get more shadow points
then you are going to use.

Extra Spell Pool –- 2 more spell points each time. You can never have too many.

Extra Unseen Augmentation (TK) – necessary if you want to get good use out of your
unseen horror early on, when its abilities are most useful. You can still take regular
bonus feats, so you don’t have to worry about running out of options.

Extradimensional Assembly (TK) – pull gear out of your extradimensional storage for
free when using whirlwind assembly. Certainly makes swapping between sets of gear
more efficient, given the normal cost of extradimensional storage, but that presumes that
you need to be doing this often enough to spend a feat on it. Campaign dependant.

Fan the Flame (Des) - boosts on fire damage to match the damage of the largest fire you
can manipulate with fire geomancing. This isn't a bad feat, but all its prerequisites ARE
bad. Yellow, simply because it can only make the best of a bad situation.

Fear and Flame (Des) - creatures that are on fire must save against escalating fear
conditions. The cumulative, ongoing fear can be really nasty, especially if you build for it.
That said, it's partially just making up for fire blast being underpowered, and its mind-
affecting.

Fertilize Nature (Geo) – Remember how many concentration effects you have as a
nature-user? You need this if you use earth and plantlife with any regularity. Should
stack with the lingering nature talent as well, giving you 4 rnds without concentration,
which should cover the majority of most fights, allowing you to save SP while still
layering effects. This can save you from having to have the easy focus boon.

Floating Panoply (TK) – enhance everything your lift with divided mind when using
enhancing telekinesis. Necessary if using a large number of bludgeons, skip it if focusing
on one large weapon..

Focused Blast Type Group (Des) - +5 CL capped at HD for one blast type group

Fool Magic – a neat, unique feat. If you go Cha-based then you can make good use of
this (or if you trait bluff over to Intelligence). Prerequisites are under review by the devs
for possible reduction, since they are pretty hefty. Disguise especially doesn’t really
match up with the feat. Good for an intrigue type campaign.

Force Shield (TK) – +2 shield bonus at the cost of an empty hand. Built dependant, but
TK focused builts can often afford an empty hand. MW bucklers are cheaper than feats,
and mithral buckler have no ASF for those that are concerned. Nice to have if your class
prevents you from wearing a shield at all though.

Formulae Geomancing (Geo) – High requirements, but you get theoretical access to
the entire alchemist list with this (capped at extract level of ⅓ CL), which is amazing
versatility. Obviously only useful if alchemists exist in your campaign setting and
dependant on the availability of formulae books. I would recommend GMs keep an eye
on this one, as the potential flexibility pushes the bounds of the general design of the
SoP system if you have full magic-marts available.

Frozen to the Bone (Des) - replace reflex saves with fortitude saves on blasts that deal
cold damage. While useful, its very narrow. You need to be using a reflex save, cold
damage effect.

Ghostly Admixture (Admixture) (Des) -

Greater Channel Destruction (Des) - boost channel destruction damage

Greater Hypnosis – eliciter’s hypnotism goes out to medium range. Keeps you farther
from danger, which is always a good thing. Useless for ids, of course.

Greater Latent Magic (WoP) – if you took shadowdancer or lycanthrope, you can add
your paragon level (setting specific) to your CL. Boost isn’t huge. If you are worried
about CL, you are better off with the more versatile basic/advanced magic training feats.
Not that it is likely to come up anyhow, with this being specific to mechanics in a one of
the WoP settings.

Heavy Hand (Des) - deal bludgeoning damage instead of nonlethal for a reduced die
size, attack and DC bonus with nonlethal

Illuminating Admixture (Admixture) (Des) -

Imbue with Nature (Des) - bypass SR if you have matching nature geomancing package.
It’s a good pick-up if you have what you need to use it, but not something worth building
towards on its own.

Improved Favored Element (Des) - increase damage bonus of second and third favored
elements

Improved Energy Blade (Des) - activate energy blade as a swift action to apply to your
next attack. A must-have for anyone wanting to combine melee with destruction. Terrible
for standard blaster casters though.

Improved Energy Leap (Des) - combine explosive orb with your energy leap

Improved Energy Wall (Des) - wall grants cover, blocks some projectiles.

Improved Rebuff (Des) - spell point to make attack roll to intercept projectiles. Requires
a poor talent, only works once per turn, eats a spell point, takes your immediate action,
and you have to make an attack roll. Doesn't help against atypical projectiles.
May end up annihilating magical thrown weapons though.

Lingering Link – vastly reduce the cost of using mind link. If you use mink link at all this
will save a pile of rounds of psionics and also let you have it up before combat.

Lingering Link, Greater – ever want to use mindlink while you have another psionics
effect up? Now you can. Telepathic communication is nice to have, though there are
other sources for it.

Lingering Psionics – another way to help save rounds of psionics. Pretty good since
most combats only last a few rounds anyhow.

Lurker in Darkness (Div)– your stealth isn’t automatically bypassed by special senses.
You a sneak? Take it.

Lycanthrope (WoP) – another way to spend a feat to become a caster, though at CL1
and saddling you with the lycanthropy drawback. It beats basic magic training if you want
animalistic transformation. You can grab greater latent magic to boost your CL and SP
pool. If you are already a caster, you can’t take it and wouldn’t want to anyhow.

Master Artisan – Thaumaturge adds forbidden lore bonus to the CL cap for one craft
feat. Niche.

Master of Cosmos – Are you playing a thaumaturge with the conjuration sphere? Then
you have this feat. Take it, take it NOW! This makes you the strongest conjuration user in
the game, especially combined with boosts like the human FCB. Note that Adam Meyers
has stated that you should extrapolate the chart for CLs above 20. Erata reduces this to
a bonus on attack rolls and skill checks. Still a high priority for any thaumaturge using
conjuration, but only a shadow of its former self.

Master of Death – Boosting the Thaumaturge undead control cap is handy, making them
a strong choice for minion-based necromancy.
Material Infusion (Des) - treat physical blasts as special materials.

Melee Blaster (Des) - melee destructive blasts no longer provoke.

Mind Opener – boost your battlefield relay DC by 2. Saves you wasted actions when the
target saves.

Mind Wrack (Admixture) (Des) -

Morphic Admixture (Admixture) (Des) -

Mounted Magician – Are you mounted and using the enhancement sphere heavily?
Then it’s great. Otherwise it’s useless.

Orb Expert (Des) -

Occult Savant – for Thaumaturges that didn’t take pact mage this is a solid feat,
provided you are the party encyclopedia or you use UMD a fair amount. UMD users
benefit the most.

Perceptive Psionics – symbiats get quite a few class-specific feats, don’t they? This one
gives you half-benefit on battlefield relay when the target makes its save. Nice at low
levels when you need a standard action to activate it, less useful when it gets down to a
swift.

Perpetual Sphere (Des) -

Practiced Seer (Div)– lets you use MSB instead of CL for the duration of sense abilities.
Low-CL builds using sense talents will like this one by the mid-levels to save from having
to re-cast. Mid-casters can get by without it and high casters don’t care.

Precognicient Protection (Div)– Get an insight bonus to AC for every active sense ability,
capped with a scaling cap. Nice boost if you will be having senses up anyhow, just make
sure you aren’t getting insight elsewhere. You can also dismiss it to negate a crit, which
is a nifty feature.

Precognicient Resistance (Div)– Get an resistance bonus to saves for every active
sense ability, capped with a scaling cap. Harder to recommend given how economical
cloaks of resistance are, but the ability to dismiss it for a re-roll is not too shabby. If you
can’t get or don’t want a cloak, it's decent.

Precognicient Smite (Div)– Get an insight bonus to attack and damage for every active
sense ability, capped with a scaling cap. Nice boost if you will be having senses up
anyhow, just make sure you aren’t getting insight elsewhere (such as prescient).
Prescient scales with CL, this only requires level and active senses and also applies to
damage. Low-casters using divination could do a lot worse.

Reach Blade (Admixture) (Des) -

Ritual Caster – you don’t need the base sphere to perform a ritual. Campaign
dependent, as with all the ritual feats.
Ritual Master – Use your MDB instead of your CL for ritual CL. Decent for less than full
casters that need to use rituals, but most parties will have a full caster.

Shadowblast – spend an extra shadow point for a cone instead of a single target. Mass
debuff, minor damage.

Shadowdancer (WoP) – another way to spend a feat to become a caster,granting CL1

and the darkness sphere (but you get saddled with the meld into dark drawback). It
beats basic magic training if you want step through darkness and the ability to pick up
other meld talents. You can grab greater latent magic to boost your CL and SP pool. If
you are already a caster, you can’t take it and wouldn’t want to anyhow.

Smoulder Resin (Geo) – Add your casting ability modifier in fire damage to pummel.
Decent boost, even if it is a commonly resisted type. Plantlife focused builds will
probably get fair mileage out of it unless they primarily stick to the non-damaging
pummels. Best at low levels before resistance is common, though can still add up if you
can maintain multiple pummels (lingering nature talent + fertilize nature feat).

Space-rending Admixture (Admixture) (Des) -

Spell Dabbler (SkyPG) – you can prepare a single ritual per day of the highest level you
can cast, spending spell points to do so, then cast it at any point, augmenting it with
boons you possess. Once per day for the cost of a feat is limiting, but the potential
versatility is impressive if you have ritual caster (basically allowing you to pull out one
spell from any list as long as you have 15 minutes to ready it). You don’t pay the cost for
preforming the ritual. Of course, the real reason to take this is to get spell adept.

Spell Adept (SkyPG) - when using spell dabbler, instead take an hour to prepare up to 4
rituals per level, paying for them when you prepare them. Congratulations, you are a
wizard with a small number of slots and access to every list. Now, this is a very powerful
feat in a game where you have easy access to whatever ritual you desire. If running a
spheres-only game, I would suggest just banning it unless you are keeping very tight
control over what rituals are available.

Soulfire (Des) - take Con burn for temporary SP

Steam Geomancing (Geo) – Pay a spell point to split fire or cold damage to be half of
each. If the target has resistance to one or the other, you are still losing most of half of
your damage, while if they have immunity you should use something different anyhow. I
don’t think the name fits either. Could work if you are pigeonholed into fire damage by
theme, so in that case it is unfortunately necessary.

Superior Rebuff – Grant improved evasion when using rebuff to give cover. Giving
improved evasion as an immediate action is nice, but it would get awfully expensive and
comes online late. Gets much better if you can cheese the length of rebuff with
spellcrafting.
Spellcrafting – you can mix and match spheres when creating spells. Some effects will
require GM judgement, but this is potentially amazing depending on your creativity in
combining effects.

Sphere Focus – pick a sphere, +1 DC. Good for focused casters, such as eliciters,
elementalists, fey adepts, and thaumaturges

Tabulated Mind (Div)– You can take swift and immediate actions and aren’t flat-footed
while divining, plus can spend SP to reduce concentration cost while divining. Utility
depends on how you use divinations really. You usually aren’t divining in combat and
hopefully you have allies to watch your back while you divine out of combat. Lingering
divination and fast divination taken twice let you divine one round and then coast two, so
that is probably a better route.

Trance – apply emotion effects to yourself as a move. Rage and joy have the only buffs
presently, but joy’s is quite nice and rage works if you have some kind of melee eliciter
build. If you don’t have either of those emotions, forget it.

Telekinetic Admixture (Admixture) (Des) -

Tether Adept -

Time-thief's Admixture (Admixture) (Des) -

Umbral Admixture (Admixture) (Des) -

Wand Wielder – requires CL10 like a number of feats, lets you use your CL if higher than
your wand’s CL. Wands are a great way to expand your options and low CL wands are
cheap. You already use your stat for the DC, so this is great.

Warp Burst (Des) - combine explosive orb with your warp

BONUS UNPUBLISHED, UNTESTED FEATS FROM THE ASK ME ANYTHING

THREAD:

Wand Aficionado
Prerequisite: CL1.
Benefit: You can use any wand, even if you do not possess the base sphere.
Useful for specialists to gain access to missing effects.

Telekinetic Storm
Prerequisites: Telekinesis Sphere, Divided Mind, 4th Caster Level or higher with the
Telekinesis Sphere, and one of the following feats: Two-Weapon Fighting, Rapid Shot.
Effect: As a full-round action, you may spend 2 spell points to make a bludgeon attack
with every object you are holding with your Telekinesis. You may move each object up to
your telekinesis speed in order to make the attack.
I haven’t fully considered the uses of this, but with sustained force it could get pretty
broken.
TRAITS
The only traits in the main book are organization traits, which will be sorted by
organization. Other traits will be sorted by type. As for existing traits, some of the more
interesting are listed here and a guide is started here. If you are allowed traits that boost
caster level to apply to your caster level in Spheres of Power, then those are AWESOME
for medium and low casters. Also note that serendipity from the fate sphere gives a luck
bonus, so grab fate’s favored if your party will be under serendipity often.

Blue Cowls

Formal Arcane Training - access to low level scrolls and rituals is nice, but if this ability is
needed you should probably take the feat. Handy to fill in until you can fit ritual caster in,
then retrain the trait.

Magebreaker - A rare bonus to dispel and counter checks. Very necessary if you are
planning on dispelling and countering. Obviously not needed for others.

Magecraft - a bonus on making new rituals. How often are you making new rituals?
Seems unlikely and a trait to boost your spellcraft globally would be more useful. They
would both be trait bonuses so not stack. Pass.

Whitecloud Monastery

Foehammer - Small bonus to attack one type of humanoid. Very nice in certain
campaigns, too narrow in most.

Thunderclap - add a deafened rider to destruction sphere crits. You aren’t cirt’ing that
often with destruction anyhow and it allows a save, though a magus could find it useful
against caster’s with verbal casting requirements.

Inner Peace - one a day reroll, of a concentration check, but with a penalty. Rerolls are
nice, the penalty less so, but it could bail you out of a botched roll and save a lost action
and some spell points.

Lightning blitz - a small to hit bonus once per combat? Meh.

The Bloodworks

Preserver - minor boost to life sphere useage. Pretty small. Pass.

Necromaster - Small bonus on saves on effects from undead. Useful if your campaign
features undead heavily, probably better off with a general save boosting trait otherwise.

Undertaker - how many times do you roll saves versus disease? Yeah.

Beast Wardens

Beast Tamer - Bonus to handle animal and diplomacy versus wild animals. Very small,
very narrow. Lycanthropes, which make up a significant portion of the organization,
 already get a bonus against their animal type. Seems like you would be better off getting
a broad bonus to either skill.

Guide - you can feed one person per point you beat the DC 10 by for gathering food
instead of one person per two points. You should be able to take 10 on these checks, so
a few skill ranks and passable wisdom mostly negate the need for this.

Savagery - possibly the worst trait I have ever seen. You waste a full round action to
study a target to get +1 to a SINGLE attack. Instead of, you know, getting a full round of
attacks against them. Even in an ambush situation the bonus is trivial. The fluff doesn’t
make sense either, “I am so savage I carefully study my target for a round before
attacking.” Simply awful. I need another color for this level of useless.

Artificier’s Guild

Gem Polisher - talk about narrow bonuses. No. Just get a general bonus, OF THE
SAME MAGNITUDE, to a specific save.

Guild Craftsmen - most craft skills aren’t any worth taking unless using background skills
other than craft alchemy, and you can get a bigger bonus than this for that one. Unless
you have skilled casting, why spend a trait to boost this? If taking skilled casting, there
are many other traits to give you a similar bonus, some with better side benefits.

Guinea Pig - a bonus to saves versus magic items? Not as bad as it sounds given the
way wand DCs work with spheres, but it's still narrow.

Lab Rat - detecting magic with a touch isn’t bad considering how much harder it is to
detect magic if only using spheres and not talking your GM into letting detect magic fall
under the cantrips feat.(more to follow)

The White Lotus Cult

Slayer Pupil - Know (religion) is a good skill, but this only applies to identifying
weaknesses, not even identifying the actual creature. It really should say it applies to
monster lore checks, since that is the actual check being made. Inferior to requiem.

Requiem - this one gives a broader bonus, though only +1, to knowledge religion
checks, makes it a class skill (potentially worth +3 alone), and gives you a neat side
ability that won’t likely see much use but it unique and flavorful. Trait bonuses don’t
stack, so take this instead of slayer’s pupil unless you already have religion as a class
skill and don’t want to know anything other than how to fight undead.

Combat Traits

Practiced Aim (Des) - accuracy bonus on destructive blasts. Nice early on, ages poorly
due to touch AC not increasing much on average.

Schooled Avoidance (Des) - save bonus against destructive blasts. Way too specific.

Faith Traits
 Conscious Cultist (Div) - +1 CL to divination, mind, and telekinesis, capped by HD.
Awesome for multiclassers. Useless for full-casters, of course. Also let’s you hang out for
rituals and things, a nice touch.

Grove Neophyte (Geo) - +1 CL to alteration, nature, and weather, capped by HD.

Awesome for multiclassers. Useless for full-casters, of course. Also let’s you hang out for
rituals and things, a nice touch.

Untethered (TK) - gets you self-flight at an earlier level with a side of being harder for
enemies to lift. Great in the levels it effects, might want to retrain later though.

Magic Traits

Dual Limit (TK) - select a second material if you have limited telekinesis. Rather just buy
off the drawback, but it's useful if you have a specific concept.

Destructive Talent (Des) - slow scaling damage bonus on destructive blasts

Destructive Reservoir (Des) - fatigue self for 2 temp SP

Favored Damage (Des) - +2 CL bonus to destruction, capped at level

Friendly Fortune Teller (Div) - reduce the cost for divining regarding an object you are
touching. You take object reading? Then this is worth 2 SP per day that you would have
used object reading twice. Must-have for investigative types, hard to employ for others
though since you will often prefer to divine to find things in an area rather than in regard
to a single object.

Kinetic Drain (TK) - move action for a temporary spell point

Potential Energy (TK) - second pool of 2 SP that does NOT refresh itself. Best if you
have downtime between adventuring days. Not good on marathon campaigns where you
never get a break to refill it.

Omen Reader (Div) - cast read magic at will. It's a cantrip. Take it if you need it, or use
the sense from the basic divination ability instead, unless you gave it up via drawback.

Unorthodox Casting (Geo) - Switch your casting stat to another mental stat! Awesome if
you need it and your GM doesn’t allow it for free. Note that it doesn’t impact other class
features, so fey adepts and the like don’t get much mileage from it.

Unrealized Telekinetic (TK) - mage hand at will is nice, but not spectacular. Qualifying for
Protokinesis feats opens them up to builds that otherwise couldn’t get them as easily, so
that is its primary purpose.

Social Traits

Meditative (Div) - Increase casting time to reduce the cost of sense abilities twice per
day. Given the duration of sense abilities, this is basically two free spell points. Excellent.
CLASS ABILITIES
Arsenal Tricks
Destructive Weapons (Des) - adds destructive focus, greater destructive focus, and blast
vessel to available weapon enhancements.

KI Powers (Unchained Monk)

Elementalist (WoP) - get nature or weather with a lousy CL. Weather can be useable
somewhat if you use enough ki powers to take more talents, but if you want to be a
caster that badly why not play a caster? CL is worse than taking basic and advanced
magic training.

Wielder of the Mystic Force (WoP) - get telekinesis or mind with a lousy CL. Mind is
almost entirely dependant on save DCs and telekinesis really needs CL for scaling, so
your weak CL is going to make these largely flavor abilities rather than something really
useful.

Incanter Specializations
Admixture Adept (Des) - admixture talent and pool as an admixture adept half your level

Omnimental Familiar(Des) - slow scaling damage bonus on destructive blasts

DRAWBACKS
Spell points looking scarce? Trying to match a particular character from fiction or the
standard magic system? Looking for limitations on your arcane power? Drawbacks are
the answer! You may, with GM approval, take a number of drawbacks. These can be
general drawbacks, taken at creation, which can either be traded in for boons or to
increase the rate you accumulate spell points as you level (1/level maximum with five
drawbacks), or sphere-specific drawbacks, taken when first gaining a given sphere,
which grant a bonus talent in that sphere. Sphere specific drawbacks can also be
removed by ‘paying’ for the bonus talent later on, making them a good option early on for
expanding your breadth of abilities.

Note that drawbacks are as much a world-building tool as an optimization and

customization tool. A given setting may be limited to rune magic (skilled casting and
extended casting) or have scholars (somatic x2, verbal, prepared) verses bloodmages
(draining casting, painful magic, and the fortified casting boon), or anything else you can
come up with.

General Drawbacks

Addictive Casting – make a fort save every time you use a spell point, with an increasing
DC or gain an addiction. This one counts as two drawbacks, but it is really nasty. Could
be workable if you have lots of downtime and few encounters per day, but I count it
mostly as NPC or world-building material. Note that you can’t get any worse once you hit
severe (-2 str, Dex, Con, Wis, & Casting Stat), so if you can live with that(high point buy
maybe?) then you don’t really care and may as well take it.
Draining Casting – Take unhealable non-lethal damage every time to use a sphere
ability. It works as the basis for a blood-mage type character combined with the Fortified
Casting boon. Great if all you do is summon conjuration companions or raise a few
undead each morning or if you are a low caster burning your SP on class abilities, but
anyone that needs to cast almost every round (blasters, debuffers, etc) will hate it.

Emotional Casting (SkyPG) – emotion and fear effects prevent your casting. You can
compensate with logical spell, but be aware that intimidate DCs are pretty low, so if your
GM wants to, you are easy to shut down.

Extended Casting – All your sphere abilities take longer to use, increasing times by one
step. Excellent for dedicated minion masters or builds that do all their casting out of
combat. Taking a full round for anything in-combat hurts and it’s even worse if you
already are lengthening casting times with spellcrafting.

Focus Casting – Casting requires a focus object, with penalties similar to the wizard’s
arcane bond. Depends on your GM. If disarms and prisons feature heavily in your
campaigns, avoid it. Note that you can make the DC for your casting lower by voluntarily
reducing the CL of the ability you are using, which can help ensure you get the ability off
in a pinch (best if the ability isn’t save-dependent). Grab the warp sphere and
teleportation beacon to make sure you can call it back to you if lost.

Magical Signs – some tell-tale lets everyone in 30’ knows you are casting and what the
nature of the spell is. Avoid it if you are trying to be stealthy, but most of the time the ball
of death/stack of minions/angry tree will give you away anyhow.

Material Casting – every ability costs money based on CL. The exact nature of the
material spent is dependent on your GM. Another one that is fine for builds that use a
few long-lasting abilities.

Painful Magic – fort save or be sickened every time you cast, escalating to nauseated if
already sickened. Duration is short. Almost a freebie if doing the blood-mage combo
(draining casting + fortified casting) since you will have such high CON you won’t miss
the save often. For everyone else, you can pull it off if you optimize your Fort save, but
you risk bad rolls stealing actions at key times. As is often the case, it doesn’t hurt out of
combat casting at all.

Prepared Caster – You have to assign spell points to spheres at the beginning of each
day. If you focus heavily on only a few spheres, this can be a decent option. For
example, set aside just enough SP to keep your conjuration companion going all day,
then dump the rest in your other main sphere. More diversified builds should be cautious
though.

Rigorous Concentration – Increases concentration DCs by 10 unless you increase

casting time. BAD for melee casters, workable for others.

Skilled Casting – you have to make a perform, craft, or profession skill check or suffer
reduced caster level. This meshes well with many concepts and characters from fiction.
It might be tough early on, but skill checks can be optimized, especially after you have a
few levels under your belt. An interesting option. Note that humans and half-elves can
 get skill focus at level 1 and other races offer various skill boosting options. Also note
that the chosen skill might carry drawbacks, like perform (sing) doesn’t work in a silence
effect or (dance) if you are immobilized. One rank, 18 in the stat, favored class bonus, a
trait, and skill focus get you to 12 at level 1, so a racial bonus or another skill feat pretty
well gets you there.

Somatic Casting – you require a free hand to cast and now have to pay attention to
arcane spell failure chances. Taken once allow light armor, twice allows no armor. Avoid
it if your GM likes grappling enemies or if you have proficiency in the heavier armors
from your class, but otherwise it is a strong option for taking once, provided you don’t
have a source for better than light armor. Note that only armor is mentioned, so bucklers
are fine. If your GM decides otherwise, mithral bucklers have 0% ASF and are
reasonably priced. Grab still spell sometime, just in case. If you take it twice, check out
the protection sphere for the mage-armor equivalent, armored magic.

Verbal Casting – you now have verbal components. If you have skilled casting in a skill
that requires vocalization, this is a freebie. Not so good for sneaks, good for others. Grab
silent spell for emergencies.

Wild Magic – 10% chance to add a rod of wonder effect to your casting. Hilarious, but
your party may hate you. If your GM uses the rod of wonder table as suggested, this is
actually quite good so long as you make sure your effects happen AT enemies, since
most of the options on the table impact the target. Not recommended if you do healing
and buffing. If your GM uses a different table your mileage may vary. Unrated since it is
so concept and GM dependent.

Sphere Specific Drawbacks

Alteration:
Beast Soul – can’t use the blank form. Decreases your versatility, but gets a form talent
so may be worthwhile. If you only want to grab movement modes, use this to get
elemental form, which is really nice for a single talent. Combine with lycanthropic to get
the talent to increase duration and you can get most of what you really need from
alteration unless you are a natural attacker.
Lycanthropic – you can only use alteration on yourself. Fine early on, keeping it will
depend on your party composition. Sometimes it’s handy to be able to give everyone
flight for a bit. If you can be selfish, take it.

Conjuration:
Elongated Summoning – summoning your companion takes a minute. If you grab the
talents for an all-day companion, this becomes trivial. If you want to use your companion
as a combat summons, then leave it alone.

Creation:
Limited Creation – choose either alter or create. Turning a door into candy to break
through more easily is too much fun and you certainly don’t want to give up creation, so
pass.
Material Focus – only one type of material? Workable. Stone or iron are likely the most
versatile options, though you can go nuts with thematics here, since even shadowstuff is
an option (for all your shadowcrafting needs). I’ve even seen this as part of a ‘candy-
mage’ build, which is too awesome not to mention (if the candy-mage originator reads
this, drop a note to get credit!).

Dark:
Meld into Darkness – You can’t create darkness, but can meld into any dim or darker
light. In the right campaign, this could be useful, not really a fan in general.

Death:
Deathful Touch – ghost strike is melee only. Workable on magus builds, I hate giving up
the range though.
Necromatic Limit – lose either ghost strike or reanimate. If you only want minions OR
debuffs, this is great. Depends on your concept.

Destruction: The latter two are better for another class dabbling in destruction, not for a
specialist.
Aligned Combatant – scales damage down based on how close the target is to your
alignment. Campaign dependent, would be great in Wrath of the Righteous, but terrible
in many others.
Energy Focus – can only use one blast type. This is for being dedicated to a theme. If
you take force or crystal you can get by, I suppose. Gets better if you can take it early on
and just buy it off later since the base blast doesn’t offer much on its own.
Destructive Touch – you now have no range, destructive blast is touch only. Locks you
out of several blast shapes and the remaining ones have to start adjacent to you. Blech.
With a magus dip this can be less bad, but I still would be reluctant to lose your ranged
option.
Shape Focus (Des) - can only use one blast shape. Good for dippers.

Divination:
Limited Divination – Lose sense or divine. If you just want a few helpful options, you can
lose divine and its choice of ridiculous casting times or spell points cost coupled with
immobility.
Hidden Magic – lose the detect and read magic base abilities. Detect magic is nice to
have (though much better in cantrip form rather than 10-minute casting or daily resource
form). Okay if someone else can cover it easily.

Enhancement:
Bodily Enhancement – can’t target equipment or objects. Maybe very early until you buy
it back. No animating objects spoils the fun.
Personal Magics – can’t target others. If you can be greedy, take it. If you are the party
buffer, don’t. Again, no animating objects spoils the fun.

Fate:
Neutrality – can’t use hallow. Basically, you give up protection from (alignment) for a
bonus talent. If you are getting the effect consistently from elsewhere then it’s a good
idea.
Personal Fate – can only target self. Okay if only dipping your toes in for a couple buffs,
but you lose any of the debuffing and party support potential of the sphere.

Illusion
Disappearance – you have to take invisibility as your bonus for this drawback and can’t
use illusions for anything else. Nice for being sneaky, but illusions can be very powerful.
Worth a look, but might be better to get invisibility via wand and keep your versatility.
Personal Illusions - can only put illusions on yourself. Not worth it.

Life
Limited Restoration – lose restore or cure/invigorate. The great strength of the base life
sphere is how well it covers your healing needs with only the base sphere. This gimps
your effects terribly. If you have to take it, keep restore and get HP healing from items,
since ability damage and status conditions are harder to heal anyway.
Regenerate – doable if you already have someone in the party that can cover healing,
but if you are picking up the sphere you should probably be able to use it on others as
well.

Light
Touch of Light – another one to knock range down to touch. Some effects, like blinding
light, would be really annoying to have only at touch range. Others would be okay.
Choose carefully. If you are only grabbing light to get encompassing light on a melee
build, then go for it.

Mind
Animal Shaman – affect only animals. Doesn’t grant a talent and doesn’t bar you from
taking expanded mind, which you want right away if using the mind sphere, so this is
really just for NPCs and dedicated druids types.
Empath – can’t plant suggestions. Suggestions aren’t bad, but if there is another charm
you prefer to start with then go for it.

Nature
Nature Spirit – Can only use spirit powers, not geomancing. Terrible. You’ll be able to
talk to anything, if you take the right talents, but lose all offensive abilities. Nope. Warden
armorists, however, won’t mind as much since they are only half-casters with
geomancing talents but full casters with spirit talents. The geomancer’s handbook also
added some options here, like the nature ally advanced talent, which makes this more
reasonable though still not great.

Protection
Limited Protection – Lose ward or aegis. If using protection primarily for long-term buffs,
losing ward doesn’t hurt too much since you will be using other actions in combat. Not
sure I would give up aegis though.
Protected Soul – aegis is self only. Good if you can be selfish, obviously not for support
builds.
Aligned Protection – the sphere only works against a certain alignment. Not very good
generally, but fine in certain campaigns where 99% of enemies will be of a particular
alignment (Wrath of the Righteous, for example).

Time
Altered Time – lose haste and slow options. You have other debuffs than slow and the
usefulness of haste is dependent on how much of the party needs full attacks. Workable
for caster-types.
Personal Time – self only. Lose all the fun offensive uses? No thanks. If you only are
grabbing time to haste yourself on a martial build it works though.
Telekinesis
Limited Telekinesis – You can only use telekinesis on one type of material. Only if you
are building a themed character. Hostile telekinesis is right out the window with this one.

War
Battlefield Manipulation – lose totems, rally effects work within a radius from you. Pretty
nice, actually, since you no longer have to spend an action setting up a totem and rally
effects are fairly action efficient. That said, most of the sphere options are totems, so you
have a pretty limited selection.
Solo Combatant – can only rally yourself. Reroll saves, block critical hits, damage
attackers, you have some decent options here. Combine with the above for some decent
defenses on a martial build.

Warp
Limited Warp – can only warp to areas that meet certain conditions (light, dark, water,
etc). You have the potential to be able to start things on fire or create water or darkness,
etc., but I still can’t recommend it since warp suffers too much if you have to spend a
turn setting it up.
Personal Warp – selfishness again. Nice way to get a talent to boost your mobility if you
don’t care about playing chessmaster or using the unwilling version.
Bender – can’t teleport. Just buy a handy haversack already!

Weather
Focused Weather – only affect one weather category. Meh. Wind or rain are your best
bets, but I wouldn’t go this route except for thematic reasons.
BOONS
Here is the payoff (other than spell points) for your drawbacks, each boon costing two
drawbacks. Not many options, but worth looking at.

Bound Creature (SkyPG) – (Requires focused Casting) This one is quite a bit different
and comes in two flavors. The first costs 2 drawbacks as normal and gives you the
conjuration sphere (or extra companion) for a companion that is not extraplanar and can
be a type of your choice (no, you don’t get the HD/BAB/saves/misc traits of that type),
with a form talent to match the chosen type. No summoning required either. You can
upgrade this companion with additional talents as normal and the creature counts as
your focus. Getting a ‘free’ companion is awesome, but losing it REALLY hurts (no focus
for 30 days or until leveling) so keep it safe!

The second version of this boon supercharges your companion, a dragon, with a bunch
of additional talents, but costs 4 drawbacks. On top of that, you are stuck with focus
mechanics similar to the Dragonrider 3pp class. Makes first level tough, since you need
a standard each round just to direct your dragon until level 2 when it drops to a move,
making it much easier to work with. Amazing for a thaumaturge, given all the talents you
get out of the deal that allow you to focus on other things, like enhancement buffs and
the mounted caster feat. Lowcasters playing above 10 should avoid it though, since you
will fall behind on your companion HD. Keep the focus action cost in mind and NEVER
LOSE YOUR COMPANION. Unless you are about to rest for a month or level.

Deathful Magic – you get a CL boost when injured, +1 below 50% HP, +2 under 25%. I
prefer to avoid being able to use this one, but things go south and that extra juice may
make a difference.

Easy Focus - you can maintain concentration as a move action. Required if focusing on
spheres that use concentration abilities heavily, allowing you to save precious SP. If
casting out of combat or not using concentration abilities, skip it.

Empowered Abilities – Bonus CL if you get low on spell points. Interesting way to boost
yourself through the end of the day and doesn't require being near death.

Fortified Casting – Con as your casting stat! Too bad you can’t take it without the
draining casting drawback. If you qualify, take it.

Metamagic Expert – you get +1 CL when using a metamagic feat. Merciful and
tenebrous spells can be +0, making them just take longer. Not sure if you want to tie
yourself to them though. If you expect to use metamagic a lot (hedgewitches can get
reducers, for example), then definitely take it, otherwise you have better things to get.

Overcharge – you can add +2 CL at the cost of being fatigued, then exhausted, then
collapsing. Neat way to boost your power for finishing that final fight or escaping in an
emergency. Better if you have a way to quickly recover from the conditions inflicted.
Great if focused on long-term buffs and other out of combat casting. Note that a familiar
with a wand of lesser restoration can come in really handy with this one.
SPELLCRAFTING
A neat little option in the advanced magic section to allow you to combine abilities at the cost of
longer casting times and spell point costs. You can only have a number made up to your casting
mod, so make them count, though you can grab the spellbook feat to keep more handy. Without
the spellcrafting feat, you can’t combine different spheres, but even with the limitations you
should make a few, updating them as needed as you gain talents.
For destruction, I would recommend a simple combo of your favorite blasts, like force blast as
the base (best damage type barring vulnerabilities) with crystal blast (to entangle, which helps
offset the AC increase from prone). Combining the two is only complexity 1, so you can use it as
a full-round action at no cost. Add your favorite shape in for the base ability for a second spell,
say the orb shape, and you have a wide AoE blast that will do good almost never resisted
damage, even to incorporeals, while knocking them prone and entangling them, at the modest
cost of losing your move action that round. Similar things can be done with many other spheres,
like draining levels and giving targets a disease with death.
Note that with the spellcrafting feat, you can combine different spheres and most importantly,
the base sphere sets the CL and saves of the finished spell. Charming crystal trap? Teleport an
enemy and make them blink out of time for a bit? Go nuts. Just keep in mind the complexity, you
don’t want to push your casting time past a full-round action for anything to be used in combat
and the spell point cost for higher complexities gets painful fast. Also note that duration is set by
the base ability, so look at abilities like protection (aegis) for anchoring shorter duration buffs to
get them for 10 minutes/level. Even without doing this, it’s great for doubling up buffs to save
time in combat or adding ‘mass’ options to talents that don’t get a mass talent in their sphere,
like creating a mass aegis to save huge amounts of SP.
Note that all spells are subject to GM approval..
I hope to expand this section in the future. Suggestions are welcome.

EQUIPMENT
Questions about gear for sphere-casters have come up frequently lately, so I thought a few words ought
be said in that regard.

Spheres of Power Magic Items: Spheres of Power has a re-worked magic item system to correspond with
the casting system. Some games may use it exclusively, but many will use them alongside traditional
items. Ultimately, you want a good staff.

Scrolls - you need to have the base sphere to use a scroll without UMD, so these are mainly good for
niche talents that aren’t worth picking up to have all the time, but may save you some heartache that
one time in the campaign it comes up.
Wondrous Items - great for constant effects or talents that you need once or twice a day or for at-will
charged items (like normal wands, sphere wands work differently).

Rods - for at-will abilities. Great for shoring up your weak points. By the upper levels you should have a
golf-bag full of these for various situations.

Rings - all continuous items fall here, boosting the utility of the craft rings feat. Mostly relevant if you are
only using sphere items so that normal wondrous items are not available for you stat boosts and other
necessary effects.

Wands - another way to grab talents you don’t have for base spheres you do. Note that the DC of wand
abilities is set by the wands level and your casting mod. Wands come with a small pool of spell points
that the caster has to recharge, max 1/day recharge rate.

Staves - staves work differently with spheres. Basically, they carry an enhancement bonus, like a weapon,
that applies to a certain sphere. They can also be made to carry additional talents or apply to other
spheres, with costs similar to weapon enchantments. You want the biggest bonus to your primary
offensive sphere you can afford (+5 is the max, +10 equivalent with other abilities). Expanding it to cover
your other favorite combat spheres is a good investment. Carry separate staves for out of combat
spheres since combining them gets expensive. Spheres that care less about caster level (life) or scale
slowly (War) can put a lower priority on staves, while heavily CL scaling spheres (telekinesis) or any
power that allows a save (most offensive abilities) will benefit more from the boost.

Traditional Magic Items: Mostly, you want the standard array of stat and save boosters. Your casting
should primarily be augmented with Spheres items, with the exception of metamagic rods. Note that
you can use traditional scrolls and wands that correspond to your spheres and talents, though some
adjudication is required from your DM.

Metamagic Rods - these are handy. Because your equivalent spell level will go up as your CL does, unless
you lower it willingly reducing your effects and save DCs, you will generally want the highest grade rod
 available for your desired effect (why extend a power if you have to cut its duration in half to use the
rod?). Dazing is of course wonderful, empower and maximize are nice for blasting if you can afford them.

Orange Prism Ioun Stone - CL boost that stacks with everything. Great when you can afford it. Just about
any sphere caster can benefit from this, though some spheres benefit less than others, so you may want
to wait a bit in those cases.

Stat boosters - just like any other class, you need your key stats enhanced.

Handy Haversack - always useful for quick retrieval of potions, wands, and odd items.

Muleback Cords/Heavyload belt - the other solutions to carrying capacity.

Cloaks of resistance - you need them just as much as anyone else unless you are picking up resistance
bonuses from somewhere else.

Gauntlets of Skilled Maneuver - nice if you use maneuvers.

Pauldrons of the Bull - amazing for bullrushing.

Amulet of Mighty Fists – only for the natural attackers, but essential for them since you can enhance all
of your attacks at once.

MAXIMUM CASTER LEVEL

A brief calculation of the highest possible caster level for a sphere effect, just for fun.
SOURCE CL DETAILS
Base caster level 20 20 levels in High Caster Classes
Forbidden Lore
Human Thaumaturge FCB
Dark Lore
Incanter Specialization
Place Magic+
Circle Casting
Deathful Magic Boon
Empowered Abilities Boon
Metamagic Expert Boon
Overcharge Boon
Staff +5
Orange Prism Ioun Stone+
6 Thaumaturge level 17
2 Favored class bonus for human thaumaturges @ lv 16
4 Thaumaturge (Pact mage) w/ infernal pact 14th level
1 Dip 1 level of incanter or sphere wizard and specialize
in the chosen sphere or take focus sphere with a
sphere sorcerer*
1 Menhir Savant druid level 2
5 Get a bunch of friends with circle casting
2 Boon with less than 25% HP
2 Have no SP left (cast from a wand with wand wielder or
access SP from another circle magic user)
1 Add a metamagic feat to the casting
2 Get fatigued
5 Staff of selected sphere +5
1

TOTAL 52 Hard to actually make use of it though.

*This needs errata, since as currently written the sphere sorcerer gets the +1 CL from a
differently named ability and neither bonus has a type. Adam confirmed here that they are not
intended to stack.
+
Only apply with GM permission since abilities that impact traditional casting CL do not
automatically transfer to SoP.